752: How to Start the Top Job, with Scott Keller

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
One of the most critical phases of taking on the top job is what you do at the start. Whether it’s stepping into the role as president, general manager, executive director, owner, or CEO, starting well can make all the difference in this episode, how to begin in the best way possible. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 752. Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. A huge transition for a leader is taking on the top job.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:56]:
Taking on any big job, but especially the top job. It’s a transition that is unique like none other. It’s also a transition that often comes with many headwinds, stumbling blocks and of course failures. To today a conversation on how to do a better job at making that transition into the top role. I’m so pleased to welcome back to the show Scott Keller. Scott is a senior partner at McKinsey where he co leads the firm’s global CEO excellence work within the strategy and corporate finance practice and serves as global leader in the organization practice. He’s a New York Times best selling author and trusted Advisor to boards, CEOs and senior leadership teams with whom he guides multi year enterprise wide transformations that shape the future of institutions. His colleagues in him are the authors of the new book A CEO for All Seasons: Mastering the Cycles of Leadership.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:51]:
Scott, a pleasure to have you back. Welcome.

Scott Keller [00:01:54]:
Hey, great to be here Dave. Thanks for having me.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:56]:
I mentioned in the intro that this is a big transition going into the top job. And you write, “One third to one half of new CEOs are considered to be failing within 18 months of taking the role. And more than 90% of those CEOs confess that they wish they’d managed their transition differently.” In your work you have a lot of conversations with those folks. What do CEOs say that they would have done differently?

Scott Keller [00:02:24]:
Yeah, look, answer that question, Dave. Just to start us out, we did do a survey of, you know, thousands of executives and their boards and their teams in order to. And these are CEOs when I say executives there. And to Uncover where do CEOs see themselves as being successful yet somehow the board sees them as far less successful and their team see them far less successful. And that helped us uncover blind spots across all stages of the role. And you asked me about transitioning into the role. We obviously didn’t have data for transitioning in because you don’t know who’s going to be the CEO. So we relied more on pattern recognition for what the pitfalls are.

Scott Keller [00:03:04]:
And so we kind of combined that pattern recognition of the pitfalls from average CEOs for the transitioning, preparing for the role stage. And we put that together with these interviews with. It ended up to be 83 of what we analytically determined were the top 200 CEOs of the last 15 years. Years. And that’s where we got the insights that we’ll share today. So let me actually stop there and then I’ll get into your question, Dave. But does that make sense in terms of the, the body of research that goes into what we’re about to talk about?

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:32]:
It does, and I’m so glad you framed it that way because there are four ingredients that you’ve highlighted that are helpful in the transition in for success. Knowing where that comes from is huge. And before we get into the details of some of that, one of the other things you write is the best. You say “the best CEOs don’t miss the opportunity to make their first six to 12 months both a personal transition of great import and a profound moment of institutional renewal.” And I was reflecting on that line and noticing the both and in that. And I think that’s significant. What is it about that both and that’s important?

Scott Keller [00:04:15]:
Well, and this is a theme that runs throughout. You know, our book is called A CEO for All Seasons. And when we talk about those seasons, we are talking about the first season and let’s call it spring, just to make the analogy. That’s where you’re, you’re stepping up to the role and it’s preparing for making yourself someone who can be seen as a great candidate that the board will look upon as well. You’re a very viable candidate and we’d love to have you involved in the interview process and hopefully you get the big job. That’s season one. Then there’s summer, which is season two, which is how do you start strong in the role? How do you transition in strong? And that’s what we’re going to talk in a lot more detail about. And then the third stage is how do you stay ahead? Let’s call it fall in the role.

Scott Keller [00:04:58]:
And that can be quite a long fall, by the way, depending on who you are. But it does become a challenge to avoid the complacency that can set in. And then there’s the winter phase, which is sending it forward. How do you transition out of the role successfully and gracefully. And how do you do that in a way that ultimately your legacy probably is pinned as much on how successful your successor is, as much as it is on how successful your tenure was. So throughout all of those, not just the transition in, there’s this dovetailing in the same way the four seasons are a cycle and that annual cycles compound upon themselves and that, you know, a farmer would think about crop rotation, they’d think about pest control, they’d think about biodiversity, they’d think about all those things over a number of seasons. You can imagine that a CEO’s four seasons in addition to the next CEO’s four seasons, in the context of the previous CEO’s four seasons, that is. What if you’re a board member, you’re trying to create that institutional success across multiple CEOs.

Scott Keller [00:05:58]:
And in that way, a CEO’s success is dependent on the extent to which they can make their organization successful and that they can find the next S curve of performance and health for their organization. And so as you’re an individual transitioning into the role, there’s going to be all of the things that you need to get used to. You mentioned it before, Dave, where, you know, it’s a role that most CEOs say, I just, you know, it’d be like becoming a parent or falling in love or it’s like you don’t know it until you’ve done it, even though you can talk about it a lot and you can think about it a lot. And once you’re in it, there’s a lot of personal transition that needs to happen. But at the same time, you need to keep in mind that institutional angle that you are part of an institution’s broader process. So let’s think about Summer as it is, which is transitioning into the role and what’s going to be different on the individual level? Well, first thing is people are going to all find your jokes 10 times as funny and look at you that you’re 10 times as tall. And that’s going to create a very me centric or CEO centric view of the world. And that is something that you’ll need to guard against.

Scott Keller [00:07:05]:
And that’s going to be at a level which you have never seen before. I remember the CEO of Etsy, the company that he led beforehand, he had an office where he had his computer that was facing where people could see his computer. And at one point he just changed his office format and people couldn’t see his computer. And all of a sudden the rumors ran rampant. That the business was going to be sold. And what Josh told us was that, like that, you know, it was just people’s perception of, oh my gosh, if he’s hiding something, if he turned his computer around. And really it was simply a remodel of his office. And that level of attention people pay to what you do and scrutiny on what you do, it is a spotlight that burns more brightly than one could ever imagine.

Scott Keller [00:07:48]:
And you combine that with having 12 bosses, which you’ve never had before in your life. And by the way, those bosses, and this is meeting board members, they’re kind of part timers. They’re not in the day to day of the business and you have no peers. So that means that no one you report to sees what you see fully, and no one who reports to you sees what you see. And that’s quite a lonely place. You combine all those together, add to that that you’re accountable for literally everything that happens on your watch. And it’s a time of deep personal transition, right?

Dave Stachowiak [00:08:23]:
So.

Scott Keller [00:08:24]:
So that’s the personal part of it. Now, if you look at the institutional part of it, there’s a great German American psychologist, his name is Kurt Lewin. And his kind of model of how organizations work is that they go through stages of going from being frozen to unfreezing and then to refreezing. And you know, when things refreeze, you get sort of resistance to change and group conformity and things like that. And so there are things that naturally unfreeze an organization that can happen to an organization. It could be an external thing like, you know, Covid unfroze a lot of organizations. It could be a geopolitical conflict. There’s also internal crises that can happen.

Scott Keller [00:09:01]:
So you might have a cyber breach or an ethics violation or a hostile takeover bid or something like that. Those are unfreezing events that savvy leaders take advantage of. And in the scheme of organizations, a CEO transition is one of those unfreezing events. And so looking at it that way, that’s where we get the institutional lens that there is a massive unfreezing opportunity. And I remember Raymond Lagarta, who’s the CEO of Pepsi. He everyone during a transition is expecting change and they’re going to be disappointed if you don’t make change. And that’s a unique situation for a CEO. And so that’s where we get this institutional angle that you described that is just so important.

Scott Keller [00:09:40]:
And how do you do that?

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:41]:
And you described the, as you call it in the book, reality distortion, that CEOs experience because of all the factors you mentioned. And you also cite speaking of change and transition, you cite William Bridges in the fact that change is what happens to people, but transition is internal. It’s what happens in people’s minds as they go through change. And you call that distinction subtle but also vital, especially for a new CEO. What’s critical about that distinction?

Scott Keller [00:10:18]:
Yeah, look, when you’re in a transition into a CEO role or any role, and the beautiful thing about working with truly the greatest CEOs in the world in the last 15 years is the learnings from that crucible of leadership that is so complex and so at scale. Those learnings are applicable broadly across a lot of leadership contexts. And so I think it’s true in any leadership context. It’s just particularly true in the CEO context. And so when we think about what you just described, you do get this reality distortion field very quickly. And the best CEOs are very conscious about guarding against it and they’re guarding against it by thinking about how do I stay humble yet remain bold during this period? And the stay humble you can imagine if you’re thinking about the vision of a company, there’s a certain type of CEO I’m going to call it the average CEO who starts to think about what legacy am I going to leave? That’s going to be important. A CEO who is staying humble yet bold is thinking about not the legacy I’m going to leave, but what organizational purpose do I serve. Or if you think about your own leadership, you’re not thinking about what are the expectations you have of others, but how are you putting in place the conditions for others to be successful.

Scott Keller [00:11:34]:
It’s just a different mindset and a different lens. And you think about your team. A lot of leaders think about, well, how do I complement my weaknesses with my team? And that’s important, but it’s more what team do we need on the field to win is the most important thing. When you think about what needs to change, a leader who’s thinking more about themselves, it’s like what’s broken that I need to lead the charge in fixing. Whereas someone who’s thinking more about the institution will think more about how do we respect our past and at the same time use it to disrupt our future. Just different mindsets, even how you get the organization engaged in what the new direction will be. An average CEO will say, how will I get the organization on board with my vision? I think a great CEO, what we learned anyway, feels like they’ll think about how Will I engage the organization in creating our shared vision? You know, it’s more of a co creation mentality. An average CEO might think to themselves, you know, how am I going to measure whether I’m successful? And you know, a great CEO is going to be like, what’s the scoreboard to know that we as a team are winning.

Scott Keller [00:12:35]:
It’s just a different approach from a more of a mindset standpoint that helps keep CEOs grounded in the face of that reality distortion field that can otherwise take over.

Dave Stachowiak [00:12:45]:
Yeah, it’s a bit subtle in a way, but it’s also really significant. And it all comes to the point of the first ingredient you highlight at this stage of transitioning in and starting strong is not making it about you. And it’s so tempting in that reality distortion for it to become about you. What’s my legacy? How do I know if I’m successful? All the things you just said. But being able to make that mindset shift to this is about the organization, institution. Theoretically it makes sense. Like we all think that way theoretically. But being able to put the actual questions that we’re asking in that frame is, is key in this, isn’t it?

Scott Keller [00:13:27]:
Absolutely. I mean, absolutely. And you know, it’s one thing to talk about the mindset behind it, it’s another thing in a way to talk about what do you do then with that. And part of that leads us to probably the second big point. The first big point, I guess would be really as you take on the role, it’s very important to not make it about you. I think that is the biggest first point because everything else just leads you towards it, definitely becoming about you and feeding your ego and making it about the I versus the weight. But the second thing is the practical manifestation is listen first, then act. Now you’ll have a point of view.

Scott Keller [00:14:07]:
Absolutely. And you need to have a point of view on what the bold moves are to take the organization forward. But even having that point of view, the best CEOs seem to start out with a broad based listening tour. That’s step one. Secondly, it’s creating one source of the truth with facts only. Then it’s really asserting the bold moves that are going to take the organization forward and then thinking about how to communicate those in the most elegantly simple and engaging manner possible. And so as we think about how does that not making about you translate into what you do? That listening tour is listening to all stakeholders and it’s having conversations. I remember Marilyn Houston from Lockheed Martin telling us people are going to tell you things that three months later they won’t tell you.

Scott Keller [00:14:54]:
So get in there early, have the conversations. Brad Smith from Intuit talked about how important it was to ask the question what are the things that people aren’t telling me that they should. But getting around to customers or clients, getting around to regulators, getting around to community groups, obviously getting around to employees, I mean, doing those rounds are very important and using those as part of your fact base to hold up the mirror on where are we as an organization and what can we aspire to? And then the one version of the truth is actually really important because there’s going to be a lot of people protecting their turf and wanting to show you that they’ve been doing everything great and to be able to kind of get fact based cut through on, well, where exactly are we? And that’s across a number of dimensions. Whether it’s how the capital markets view us, whether it’s what our strategy is, whether it’s where we stand commercially, cost and capital position, organizationally, how efficient are we, what our reputation is. Being able to hold up the mirror creates a very strong platform. Part of that unfreezing that can happen is reinforced by that fact base.

Dave Stachowiak [00:15:56]:
Yeah, I was thinking about that analogy of Lewin’s unfreezing that you mentioned earlier and specifically that quote from Marilyn Hewson of people are going to tell you things when you’re new that they’re not going to tell you in a few months or certainly in a few years. And by nature of taking on the new top job, like there is an unfreezing that happens. There’s a, there’s a moment where you’re going to hear some truth that you’re not going to hear going forward. And I. And that just speaks to the power of starting with listening because if you don’t do that first, inevitably you’re going to miss that three, four, five months down the road because people just, the organization starts to freeze again and you don’t hear those things anymore.

Scott Keller [00:16:40]:
Yeah, that is completely right. Completely right. And as we think about then you will hear those things and then it’s what you do with them and how you hold down to a short list of well, what really are the moves that you feel the organization and that you’re hearing from the organization. And it’s based on kind of the passion you hear in the organization, the opportunities you see and the capability that you’re seeing out there. At the intersection of those are going to be a short list of bold moves that you can take to Move the organization forward. And those bold moves, if you think about, you know, Satya Nadella taking over Microsoft, it’s things like massive capital investment in productivity. It’s selling the handsets business. It’s moving from kind of a software in a box to software as a subscription service.

Scott Keller [00:17:27]:
It’s thinking about how do we create a growth mindset, going from know it alls to learn it all. So these are the kind of things that we’re on the short list of. Satya’s like, okay, this is the short list of bold moves that will move the needle and take us forward. And I think that’s what that listening tour really helps you get towards in a way that people see themselves in it and people feel real ownership of it and real excitement to execute. And then, you know, Dave, just to continue in this kind of what I would call point number two in terms of great transitions. So this listen then act phase, there’s then that, you know, how do you communicate that well? And a lot of people, I think, have probably heard of the notion of flash fiction. Flash fiction is a literary genre that, you know, you’re ostensibly supposed to be able to write a novel in six words or less.

Scott Keller [00:18:18]:
And you know that that is by definition, a novel is a certain number of words. So it’s kind of just an idea. But can you tell a rich and emotive story in a very pithy and brief way? And so allegedly the most famous one of these is from Ernest Hemingway. And these are the six words. For sale, baby shoes, never worn. Now, in that’s a heavy story, especially if you’re a parent, if you’ve ever dealt with miscarriages, anything of that nature, you might even bring a tear to your eye. For sale, baby shoes never worn. So that I offer that just as an example of, well, how do you encapsulate where you want to take the organization? Doesn’t have to be six words or less, but it could be.

Scott Keller [00:19:04]:
And so, for example, Piyush Gupta, DBS, you know what he suggested in what came to be the vision for DBS was let’s be the technology company that makes banking joyful. Technology company that makes banking joyful. Six words. But in those six words, you can kind of get the whole strategy. So they’re not going to operate like a financial services company. They’re literally going to operate like a tech company that has all sorts of operational implications, all sorts of capital investment implications, talent implications. That makes banking joyful. Means we’re going to play in the financial services space and we’re going to focus on customer service being our biggest differentiator and so in customer experience.

Scott Keller [00:19:49]:
So I mean it’s all there in six words or less. Or Herb Hayner, who at, at Adidas, he talked about we help athletes beat their competition. That’s very different than we try to beat our competition, which is Nike. So we help athletes beat their competition. That has a, that has myriad implications for how you think about who do you have as your spokespeople, how much do you put into R and D? What do you think about as your advertiser? I mean there’s just, there’s, it’s all there. And so that is kind of the final piece of it. If you’re going to start with a listening tour, get a fact based one version of the truth, lock in a short list of bold moves and then communicate those moves under the umbrella of an elegantly simple. Doesn’t have to be six words or less, but the flash fiction version that really captures the imagination for people.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:36]:
Yeah, huge. I’m curious on one piece of that you mentioned a bit ago the everybody just sort of naturally self preservation whenever there’s a transition going on, trying to make the case that they’ve been doing it the right way. Whatever part of the organization getting to that fact based one version of the truth, the CEOs who really do this well, who are able to filter through that, really see the truth, at least in the best possible way for what it is. What do you see that they do better than the average folks and helping filter through that?

Scott Keller [00:21:13]:
Well, I mean I’ve got to be, this is not meant to be a sales call for consultants but a lot of them do engage a third party to come in and take a truly objective third party lens to the equation. Those that do it internally usually give someone the mandate. And the mandate is we need to take an outside in view here. And so the litmus test is always are we looking from a truly objective standpoint? And there’s a lot of ways to do this. I mean if you take for example like Michael Dell, who’s been in the role for a long time, obviously he’s done a thought exercise with his team for a long time as well. Which is hey, in five years time we’re going to have a new competitor that’s in all of the businesses that we’re in today and they’re going to be faster, they’re going to be more innovative and they’re going to be lower cost and they’re going to put us out of business. And the only way we’re going to defend on, like, defend against that is if we become that company.

Scott Keller [00:22:13]:
So let’s take that lens to our diagnostic, right? Let’s take that lens to our fact base. And so how you ask the question also matters, as well as just, you know, ensuring there’s sort of an independent party doing the data gathering and the auditing. That can be your finance function, that can be your strategy function, but it’s not just having people self report or else you get a whole lot of watermelons, which everything looks green on the outside, but if you really dig into it, you find a lot of red there. From a stoplight analogy standpoint, in terms of the colors, does that make sense?

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:44]:
It does. And it’s always fascinating to me how much of effective leadership is asking the right question in the right way. Right. And by doing that and by framing it that way, you’re more likely to hear the things that you need to hear. And that’s maybe a lead into the third ingredient, which you say is nailing your firsts. And one of the points you make in this section is that you need to err toward complete candor. Tell me more about what you mean by that.

Scott Keller [00:23:18]:
Yeah. Put it this way. I’m thinking of the CEO who told us this, and I’m blanking on it now, exactly who it was. But the idea is that if there are problems, they only get bigger the longer you wait to surface them.

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:34]:
Right?

Scott Keller [00:23:34]:
And if you err towards complete candor, you end up, first of all building trust, but you also end up not letting things get bigger or more out of hand. And thirdly, you also are able to create a narrative across stakeholders that is consistent. And, you know, a lot of CEOs were like, I can’t remember. My memory’s just not good enough. As smart as people might think I am, to be able to tell multiple stories to multiple stakeholders, does it have one narrative for the board and one narrative for the street and one narrative for employees? And so having that radical candor to just tell it like it is and to set that tone from the beginning. So with the board, for example, CEOs coming in often find it very helpful to have just a private session, just them and the board at the beginning of the board meeting. And they literally will do a balanced set of like, hey, here’s the five, six or seven things that are going great and that you should know about, and we should celebrate. And here’s the five, six, seven things that are.

Scott Keller [00:24:27]:
I’m Worried about that are on my mind. And they might not be big deals yet, but you need to know the whispers so if they start to become screams, we can act quickly. And then with the street, as Uber Jolie talked about how important it is to get the say, do ratio right. And the more you do that, the less people want to talk to you. And with the street, it’s all about the say do ratio. And so just having candor about here’s what we think’s going to happen and then if you really believe that’s what’s going to happen, it happens. That builds trust over time and that is a powerful way to move forward.

Dave Stachowiak [00:24:57]:
So tell me more about the say do ratio and how we should be thinking about that.

Scott Keller [00:25:01]:
Well, and I think it applies to all stakeholders, to be honest. And so one of the traps that CEOs can fall into early is they can always want to be putting a positive veneer on things and promising the moon in some ways. And what they quickly find is they will be punished for that as those promises don’t come to fruition. And they not only lose trust, but they destroy value. And so, you know, consistently being able to deliver on what you say, it’s classic trust equation of openness and reliability and not having too much of a self orientation and being congruent. You know, that’s what drives trust, at least through, through some models. And you know, that’s exactly what these CEOs are talking about, is you want to establish trust with all of your stakeholders. And if you’re not offering true candor in relation to how you’re feeling, where things are, then you’re going to be putting on a false face.

Scott Keller [00:25:50]:
Now by the way, I will put in there that they also at the same time adhere to the Stockdale Paradox, which you probably read about in good to Great or books like that. The Stockdale Paradox is that regardless of what the situation is, you do as a leader, always want to give hope and you always want to have hope. But at the same time you’re able to confront the brutal reality, whatever that is. And that comes from Admiral Scott Stockdale, who was a prisoner of war, I believe, in Vietnam, who survived as a prisoner of war with that belief and that hope that he would be saved and rescued, but at the same time, very practically dealt with the realities, the brutal reality of his day to day. So that’s all wrapped up in this candor piece. It doesn’t just mean if things are dire, you’re dire, you’re going to find a way to think about how can we make it not dire. But you’re not going to not acknowledge that it’s dire.

Dave Stachowiak [00:26:45]:
And you also invite us in the scope of nailing the firsts, “Prepare intensely for moments of truth.” What does that look like?

Scott Keller [00:26:56]:
Yeah, look, I love. You probably read it in there, too. But I love the concept of this because I think this is what the CEOs we spoke to were very aware of, whether they were aware of the specific experiment or not. But in 1946, psychologist Solomon Asch got a group of people together and he gave them one of two sentences. And the first one was this sentence, Steve is smart, diligent, critical, impulsive, and jealous. And then the second sentence that he gave to other people was, steve is jealous, impulsive, critical, diligent, and smart. So it’s the same five words, but the first sentence starts with, steve is smart and diligent.

Scott Keller [00:27:34]:
The second sentence starts with, steve is jealous and impulsive. And so then it was a question of people were asked to evaluate what they thought of Steve. And people who were given the first sentence, steve is smart, diligent, critical, impulsive, and jealous. They were far more positive on Steve than people who were given the second sentence. It emphasizes the primacy effect on you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And so in transition, thinking about even if people know who you are from your previous job, you are still making a first impression of you as the CEO, setting the tone for who you will be, setting the tone for what you expect from others. And so you know, it was Michael Fisher from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical center that he said, for any of these moments of truth, prepare, prepare, prepare that. Just prepare, prepare, prepare.

Scott Keller [00:28:24]:
And whether that’s your first board meeting, whether that’s your first analyst presentation, whether that’s your first town hall, any of these firsts that will come up when you’re in the role they do require or should require attention at a level that is disproportionate to what you might have given it in the past to make sure you nail those first, because that sets you on a trajectory that it gives you a slipstream to work within, where you’ll find people have more grace if things don’t go exactly according to plan. That makes sense?

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:53]:
It does. And it’s a good lead into the fourth ingredient, which you cite, one of the CEOs that you researched who makes the invitation to play big ball. And one of the ways that you all think about this through the research is time management, setting clear boundaries, staying extremely disciplined. This is something that comes up again and again with our members and listeners as well. Scott, I we run into constant challenges of like how to do that well, when you see a new CEO do this well, do it better, what is it they do that helps?

Scott Keller [00:29:33]:
Yeah, there’s a few things and I’ll credit that by the way to Sandy Cutler, who’s the former CEO of Eaton. And he did say, he said play big ball, not small ball. And he said by that I mean spending time on the things that no one else can in ways that magnify your effectiveness without getting mired in things that don’t make a difference. And so, you know, classic prioritization type vibe to it. But practically speaking, by the way, I would say that a lot of we, I talked earlier about how the great CEOs had avoided some of the blind spots and some of the trip falls. I would say that is true for some of them. It is also true for many of them that they just were so quick to realize, oh my gosh, this is, I’m in a bad place and I need to adjust quickly. And so they are more equivalent to, you know, a coach who has a losing game but doesn’t ever not have a championship season than they are someone who doesn’t make any mistakes.

Scott Keller [00:30:18]:
So I don’t want to paint these CEOs we talked to as not falling into some of these traps because these are hard things to solve.

Dave Stachowiak [00:30:24]:
Yeah.

Scott Keller [00:30:24]:
But getting more practical on the time management piece, Brad Smith, for example, from Intuit, I mentioned him before but in lots of CEOs have this they set boundary conditions on. So for Brad, it was 30% of his time for external activities in any given month and his assistant would actively work with him on that. And even to get our interview in, he had to take something out because there was already 30% booked in there. But he was this constant prioritization within that but it would never go over that. And that way he had the amount of time he needed for internal activities and that had its own buckets. There’s color coding. I remember Ajay Banga just saying how he’s former CEO of mastercard, now leading the World Bank. He, he talked about how quickly his life spiraled out of control because he made these commitments that said, I’m going to get back to emails within 24 hours and I’m going to visit all of our geographies.

Scott Keller [00:31:15]:
And he found himself one night in Singapore calling home, talking to his crying daughter who he was going to miss one of her performances and completely exhausted and trying to get his inbox done and just was at his breaking point. And that’s where he went to more of a color coded calendar with clear kind of limits on the different buckets and things like that of how he wanted to spend his time. I would also say that being clear on your bold moves, so having a short list of bold moves that you know will move the needle is a very clarifying thing. Because as you think about where you spend your time, how many of the meetings that you’re in, how many of the interactions you’re having with clients or regulators or whatever it might be, how many of those are actually advancing the cause on the handful of five or six bold moves that you’re taking, whether it’s M and A moves, whether it’s differentiation, whether it’s reallocating capital, investing capital, productivity, efficiency, whatever it might be. So that’s also helpful. And then maybe as a last one that I’ll mention from One of the CEOs, Doug Peterson, from S and P, I love this one. This helped me, actually. He said, I very quickly adopted an approach that whenever there was a request for my time that came in that was to do something two or three months out, he would ask his assistant to always prompt the question, if this was tomorrow, if this event or meeting was happening tomorrow, would I be regretting having said yes? Because I think we all know it’s so easy to say yes to things that are two and three months out because it’s like, oh yeah, calendar is relatively clear versus tomorrow.

Scott Keller [00:32:46]:
But anyway, if the answer would be that if this was happening tomorrow, you’d be feeling like, oh, why did I say yes then? Just say no now. And he said that was a very important part of his time management strategy. And maybe just one more thing to add on this is time management’s important, but so is energy management. And so we, we heard a lot of CEOs talk about how they just tend to be better in the morning. So they’ll put their tough meetings in the mornings. They, they tend to love the client interaction more than the internal machinations. And so they would follow up kind of a big finance meeting with a client interaction and then put another governance meeting in and then a client interaction and just to, to manage their energy flow through the days and the weeks. You know, some of them structured in walks in the afternoon or lunch with employees.

Scott Keller [00:33:28]:
And these are all just ways to not get in what energy management people call an energy trough, where you have something that depletes your energy, followed by something else that depletes your energy, followed by something else that depletes your energy. And then you’re just not in a great place as a leader. Better to have, if it’s a depleter, follow it by something that is sort of more an enhancer and get that balance right. So that’s another piece of the equation in terms of calendar management.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:49]:
And so many of these go hand in hand. I think about everything you just said and how it comes back to so much of the listening and acting. Right. If you have a fact base, one version of the truth, a short list of bold moves, then. tactically, it makes those decisions easier. Of like, all right, what’s the 30% time? What’s the color code? Whatever the system that emerges around that, it’s huge. Yeah, yeah. So four things we’ve talked about.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:12]:
Not making it, about you listening, then acting, nailing your first, playing big ball. Obviously, we’re only hitting on one of the seasons here, Scott, like summer. Right. We’re not talking about the leading up to it. We’re not talking about the ongoing and then the succession. Of course, there’s so much more in the book. We’re just scratching the surface. I am curious as you and your colleagues have put together this research, have looked at all of your past interactions, talked with CEOs, put together interviews for the book.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:41]:
What, if anything, have you changed your mind on?

Scott Keller [00:34:45]:
What have I changed my mind on? Well, I’ve changed my mind on what it means to be a great CEO, to be honest. And what I mean by that is I grew up in the era of, you know, CEO. My perception of CEOs was the more of the Gordon Gekko, greed is good type view of the world. And what we found is that actually the CEOs who excel most, as we talked about already in the trans. Even just in the transition phase, but we mentioned how it cuts across the seasons, is, yes, there is a boldness that these CEOs have. They’re willing to take risks. They’re willing to do things that are without precedent. But there’s an underlying humility and humanity to these CEOs.

Scott Keller [00:35:28]:
And so that’s just not a world that I had imagined would characterize the world’s truly the world’s best CEOs in the last 15 years. And, you know, that makes me more excited for the future of business and the future of the world, that CEOs who are succeeding are that way.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:45]:
Scott Keller is co author of A CEO for all seasons Mastering the Cycles of Leadership Scott, thanks to you and your colleagues for all your work. Really appreciate it.

Scott Keller [00:35:54]:
Well, thanks again for having me, Dave. It’s always great to be here and you ask great questions.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:58]:
A pleasure. If this conversation was helpful to you three related episodes, I’d recommend One of them is the last time Scott was on the podcast. Episode 585 How Top Leaders Influence Great Teamwork. One of the critical findings that McKinsey and Scott and his team have found is that top leaders, the most successful ones, are unequivocal on making sure that the entire leadership team is focused on being one team, not siloing the organization. More on how they do that in episode 585. I think it’s a critical compliment to this conversation. Also recommended episode 590 how to genuinely show up for Others Marshall Goldsmith was my guest on that episode and Marshall and I talked about the reality that story certainly focus in the top job experience and also many senior leaders experience every single day, which is getting pulled into all kinds of different situations, often with a very different tone and emotion attached to them. If you’re a senior leader, it is not at all unusual to get pulled into a conversation where you’re giving someone really tough feedback and it’s a very difficult and demanding conversation. And then the very next hour you may be celebrating an accomplishment for a team which is an entirely different kind of emotion and energy.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:20]:
Senior leaders run into this all the time and in fact have those situations happen every single day, every single week and need to jump between them and yet show up genuinely in each moment. Marshall and I talked about how to actually do that well, what are the principles to actually show up effectively in each of those situations and be present for what it needs. Episode 590, Step by Step, some of the things to do in order to show up well. And then finally, I’d recommend episode 617 how to Start a Big Leadership Role. Carol Kauffman was my guest on that episode. We talked about taking on any large leadership role, whether it’s the top job or not. And one of the big principles she talked about in that conversation that I see a lot of leaders miss is what peer relationships look like. Beginning the process of building strong relationships with peers.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:06]:
Oftentimes we think up and down, but we don’t think side to side in those relationships. She makes the case for why we should be giving those as much if not more attention. Episode 617 all of those episodes you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website and I’m inviting you today to set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com because you’re going to get access to a whole suite of benefits inside of the free membership on our website. One of them is all of the episode and book notes. Every time I prepare a conversation I am thinking through details of all the things that we talk about in the episode. Also many things that we don’t. Often I’m pulling highlights from the books of guests and their research and work and I’m putting those in my interview notes. Those are available for download as PDFs to you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:51]:
They come in the weekly guides. Also they’re available on the website. It’s all part of the free membership. All you need to do is just go over to coachingforleaders.com set up your free membership. You’ll have access to all of those under the Interview and book notes section, plus all of the other benefits of free membership, including the ability to search by topic or all of the episodes since 2011. Again, coachingforleaders.com to set that up. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest.

Dave Stachowiak [00:39:19]:
Next Monday I am welcoming Vanessa Dresscat to the show. We are going to be talking about the key norm of a high performing team. Join me for that conversation, especially if you are leading the team right now. Have a great week and see you back Monday.