Heroes in Business - Bill George fmr Chairman CEO Medtronic 30Billion revenue company, Author True North

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Find your True North. Bill George fmr Chairman CEO Medtronic 30Billion revenue company, Author True North is interviewed by David Cogan famous host Heroes Show and founder Eliances entrepreneur community.   

up in the sky look it's captivating it's energizing it's alliances heroes alliances is the destination for entrepreneurs investors ceos inventors leaders celebrities and startups where our heroes in business align now here's your host flying in, David Kogan, founder of Eliance's. That's right. How many radio hosts do you know that could actually fly in? Well, I'm able to fly in because of the energy and what we learn from the people that are on our show, just like when I recently had on the co-founder. So please make sure that you go to alliances.com to check out that interview and past interviews. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com because it is the only place

where entrepreneurs align. I'm very excited about our next guest today. He's got quite a career and we're gonna learn a lot today. So please welcome to the show Bill George. He is the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, which is now a $30 billion revenue company. And he is author of the Emerging Leader Edition of True North. And you can go ahead and reach him by going to BillGeorge.org. And now that we've got that out of the way, Bill, welcome to the show.

I'm honored to have you on today. David, it's great to be with you. This is exciting. All right. So let's jump into, I mean, you're, you know, chairman and CEO of just a ginormous company that most people know and heard of, certainly in the business world and that of Medtronic. Like, how did you get to be that role? How did you work up to that role?

Or how did, where did it come from? People always, you know, they look at CEOs, especially of these large companies and just go, how did it happen? CEOs, especially of these large companies, and just go, how did it happen? David, I've got to go back and say that our company was founded by Errol Bakken, who invented Pacemaker, who was a great entrepreneur. And he could only take the company so far, and he needed people to help him build it. So I came in in 1989 to really build the company from what it was then, about $750 million, and really expand it way beyond pacemakers into many, many other healthcare fields, all implantable

devices or surgical instruments. And so that was my job. I can't claim to be the entrepreneur. The closest I came to entrepreneurship is my first job was to create the consumer microwave oven business back in 1970 to 1978. So I had about eight and a half years, nine and a half years of doing that. And that was a great experience. I was an entrepreneur, not a true entrepreneur. I have such admiration for entrepreneurs because they built the American economy. And where in the world can you have entrepreneurship and the freedom to build

a company like you have in this country but bill how did you take it again from somebody who founded it and then they realized they took it to another level and then you able to come in and you know where did the knowledge in that come from to be able to take what was existing which is just as much of a challenge and all of that taking it to a whole nother level well i had to build the leadership team, a group of really committed leaders. And Earl had written the mission of restoring people to full life and health. And my job was to get everyone aligned around that mission and its values. When I went there, we had 4,000 employees.

When I left, it was about 26,000. Today, it's 100,000. But how do you get people in a global company fully aligned around that premise? And that was the key. And then look, Earl never limited us to pacemakers. So look beyond. What other things can we do to help people in spine surgery, in diabetes, in other forms of cardiac surgery, in stents, in cardiovascular, and moving into lots of new fields.

So what I tried to do was really spur the innovation and treat the innovators to really honor them and give them the freedom to create whole new disease, you know, solutions for ongoing disease and tractable disease, which is exactly what we did for the 13 years I was involved. And my successors have carried that on yeah I mean look at the company and first of all companies still in business and now larger and I mean it continues to to grow so you know congratulations because it does start with the foundation of the founder and then having you built it on and passing it passing the baton and so on so you

know congratulations on on all that. I mean, right. You know, in fact, most companies, right. What the rate is, is if they've made it even to the one year, four year, five year mark in itself is a miracle. And by the way, too, the Alliance, the show now is going, you ready for this? We're going on, I think our seven, six, seven, seven, I think six or seventh year, which again is a miracle itself. And by the way, we've now done 1,300 interviews. So thank you so much. Congratulations. And we're still rocking and rolling because of people like you, Bill George, who is again, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic. Medtronic is currently now a $30 billion revenue company and author of Emerging Leader Edition of True North. You can go to his website, BillGeorge.org. So let's talk

about, I'm going to shorten it just for here, is the True North, Emerging Leader of True North. So you interview some extremely household name CEOs. Talk to us about how did the Emerging Edition come to be and why did you pick the specific CEOs? David, I think it's time for new generation leaders to take over. The baby boomers have had their shot. And it's time for the Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Zs that I refer to as emerging leaders. And my book is intended to be a clarion call to get them to step up and take over, not to hold back, not to wait in line, to know that they can lead now in a different way. Because if you think of the younger leaders that I'm talking to, that the last 20 years

of their leadership has all been shaped by crises, from 9-11 to the great financial meltdown to COVID, Russia, Ukraine, everything going on now. And I think a lot of the senior leaders were kind of trained and taught in business schools on a very stable time. But now we need leaders that have the moral courage, the character, because leadership is character, and the authenticity to align people around a common mission and values. And if you can do that as a leader, you can have a real powerhouse. I was never the expert in medical technology.

I learned a lot about it, but we had a lot of experts around me. But your job is to lead people towards a greater goal that helps people. In fact, mention some of the ones that you had that were in your book, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Uber and a number of other ones? Well, actually, those are leaders. Zuckerberg and people like Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos and Travis Kalanick were ones that didn't know their true north and they went off track. And I think Zuckerberg's still off track. He's more concerned about how many users he has than he is enabling the social site where we can have reasonable

conversations because now there's so many foreign actors and bots coming on, you can hardly have a reasonable conversation. So I think Mark kind of lost his way, as did Travis, creating kind of a boys club at Uber. Now, it's a new world there, and Uber's doing a lot better. Theranos, of course, is out of business. But I think the leaders we had are really excited. Let me give you an example. Corey Berry, Best Buy, took over 44 years old and totally, and then she hit COVID and she had to lead through that crisis. Her successor got the company on, predecessor got the company on the right track, but she

led through that crisis. Or Melanie Hobson at Aerial Investments. Or we have a young man in there, Kabir Bharti. You know that he was of the Inc. 5000, David, the fastest growing company for three years, 48,000% growth. But Kabir had a total meltdown and he almost died because of overworking and stress. And I think he learned a lot about that. We share his story. It's the first story in the book about how you can become a better leader. died because of overworking and stress. I think he learned a lot about that. We share his story. It's the first story in the book about how you can become a better leader.

We have a mix of more senior leaders, people like Inder Nooyi and Paul Polman and Mary Barra, Howard Schultz, everyone knows, who are really forerunners of the new way of thinking, but also captures a number of emerging leaders who are really doing it well. It may not be household names like some of the ones we had, like Hubert Jolie. Yeah. In fact, names and some of the other ones, Rent the Runway, right? Jen Hyman. Jen had a big challenge, you know.

I mean, so many women love what Rent the Runway did because they didn't have to go out and buy fancy dresses and all that. But, you know, guess what? Everything shut down in March of 2020. And so did her business. And so she totally had to reinvent the business. And she's coming back strongly now. But it had to be rethinking the entire business model, just like Corey Berry did at Best Buy, because you couldn't go into the stores. And so how do you reach people? And so I think, how do you come into their home? So I think that's that kind of rethinking that emerging leaders have, not just kind of be as steady as she goes, but rethink the whole business model of their companies, because times are tough out there. You know, Bill, we're always all trying

to find kind of that golden gem. Is there a specific link since you've interviewed you know you know so many of the emerging leaders and these you know household names is there is there a common threat i think there is i think today's leaders that are making it are very authentic and they have a lot of courage to do what they believe is right. And by the way, those are the same characteristics you see in great entrepreneurs. Now, some of them get off track, as I mentioned, but if you have those qualities, and then the key is how do you align people around that vision you have, that mission, that sense of Medtronic? How do we align people around restoring people to full life and health? That was our mission.

But getting everyone aligned, from the people on the production lines, to the people in the engineering labs, to people out in the field helping doctors. And I think the great leaders can bring people together like John Hyman has. You know, they're really terrific at that. And that's very different. They don't manage anymore by kind of sitting on top of the enterprise, creating a huge structure and just delegating. They engage with their people. They coach people to become better leaders. They're not just judging them. I think that's the old way of thinking about it. I think now our job is to really is to coach people to reach their full potential. That's been

my purpose. And writing a book is certainly a huge feat in its own and stuff. I mean, I know we've interviewed a number of authors and stuff, and it seems like a book is truly never done. So how did it come to be as far as you even wanting to do? And again, the True North and then the emerging leader edition of True North. I got to know a young guy named Zach Clayton, who took on my social media back in 2009 when I was very naive about it and really helped me build it up. But he's built up. He started a company with nothing. He's now got $300 million in revenues, running a lot of websites

for his own, for people that need home services and home care, mattresses, and lots of things. But Zach is a great entrepreneur. He's 37 years old, a true millennial. And he and I worked together and debated back and forth and kind of put everything down in writing and said, here's what we think it's going to take to lead in this new world. It's not what we did in the past, but it's how do we have to lead today in today's world.

Excellent. Well, again, you know, truly incredible. Again, we're talking with Bill George, former chairman, CEO of Medtronic. Medtronic is now currently a $30 billion company. Make sure that you get his book too, Emerging Leader Edition of True North. I wrote with Zach Clayton. And again, you can get that. You can go to billgeorge.org, stuff like that. You know, Bill, do you ever just, if there was one significant takeaway from where you picked up from the point of with Medtronic to where you left it, and you're handing, you know, really you're handing the baton, and significant trust the next person that's taking your place in that.

Two things. One is what was going through your mind? And three is kind of we ask that is, what did you whisper or say to that person of, was it like good luck, goodbye, or what? Well, I set a 10-year limit on being CEO. And so I felt like in an innovative company, a creative company,

you've got to be willing to turn it over. You give it all you got for 10 years and then you move on to the next thing, but allow someone else to take over. So we have a new team of management. Now Jeff Martha is leading the company, doing a terrific job. Very entrepreneurial, very innovative, very creative. And you know, big companies become too bureaucratic, too cumbersome. So my advice was keep it lean, keep it agile, and continue to put all the money into innovation. And you'll stumble. Things don't was keep it lean, keep it agile, and continue to put all the money into innovation. And you'll stumble. Things don't work. We had a number of innovations we thought were going to be great. I didn't work. But the ones we did turned into a grand

slam home run. So they helped so many people. And so I think you've got to do that. But then I said, what am I going to do now? So I went, I was asked to come back to my alma mater, Harvard Business School and teach. And I've been teaching there the last 18, 19 years and try to help other leaders. So today, in some sense, David, my purpose, my North Star, if you will, as we call it in the book, my purpose is to help people reach their full potential. And in a sense that hadn't changed. I'm just doing it on a much wider aperture with many more people. And so the book is intended to help everyone reach their full potential, not just to be part of a big bureaucracy, but to do everything they can do and find joy in it

and help other people along the way. And Bill, what kind of secrets could you share, though, with parents to perhaps instill that into their children to be able to do that? You've got to let your children go their own way. And today's leadership, David, has really changed. It used to be leadership is about the smartest person in the room. It's not true anymore. Leadership today is about leading with your heart.

And what does that mean? You've got to have passion for the business. When I was at Honeywell, the reason I went to Medtronic is I didn't have any passion for the business. It was just like, gee, just making money. But today, you've got an eye to lead with, you not only have to have passion, you have to have compassion for the people you serve. If Medtronic doesn't have compassion for the patients that are struggling to lead full lives, we can't do our jobs. And you have to have empathy. Every CEO I know is talking about worried about the well-being of their employees. That was never true in the past. And I think that empathy for people, like Satya Nadella at Microsoft talks about,

if you want to work at Microsoft, you better have empathy for the customers we serve and the employees you work with. And finally, I think the most important quality that's been grossly overlooked is courage. Do you have courage to do the right thing, to go against the grain, to make a bold decision. I mean, that's what Steve Jobs did at Apple. You know, that's what Mark Benioff's doing at Salesforce. These leaders have done so well because they have courage. And today, I put one more word with that, moral courage, because you have a certain set of convictions of trying to help other people. And with that, I think that's what it takes to be a great leader today.

Yes, you have to be intelligent. You have to be smart. You have to know how to work the numbers. But you can hire people around you to do that. But you need to have these leadership qualities. That's why I'm trying to inspire people to not hold back, but to use their qualities and move ahead and not think, oh, I'm too young. I can't do it. No, get out there and not think, oh, I'm too young. I can't do it. No, get out there and do it. We need to change the world. Well said. And you definitely

helped change the world. With that, Bill, you lead with your North Star and you help others to find their true North with your book. You could reach him again at BillGeorge.org. And he is the co-author of Emerging Leader Edition of True North. That's what makes a hero. So make sure you reach out to BillGeorge.org because you've been listening, watching me, David Kogan, host of the Alliance's Hero Show. Thank you so much. Bill George, thank you so much too for being here today and sharing the wisdom of others for the next leaders in our society. Thank you, David. I'm no hero, but it's a privilege to be on your show. I hope we can create some new heroes out there as a result.

Oh, yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.