Heroes in Business - Kevin Sharer former CEO Amgen $16Billion company and Adam Bryant 30 year journalist NYT, Authors The CEO Test

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

Top thing a CEO can do..Kevin Sharer former CEO Amgen $16Billion company and Adam Bryant 30 year journalist NYT, Authors The CEO Test (available on Amazon) are interviewed by David Cogan founder of Eliances and host of the Eliances Heroes Show. Broadcast on am and fm network channels, internet radio and online syndication.  

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. And we're back. And I mean, every single week we do this, we unlock the secrets of celebrities, heroes, CEOs, chairmen, and so much more. And I really appreciate the feedback we continue to have when we had the chairman of JetBlue Airways on. So make sure you continue to listen, watch, and view. You can catch past episodes, you know, at Eliancer.com,

because this is the Eliance's Hero Show, the only place where entrepreneurs align. All right, get this. We're going to learn the secret. It's going to be about the CEO test. And we have with us Adam Bryant and Kevin Scherer. First of all, Adam is a 30-year journalist at the New York Times, and Scherer is the former CEO of Amgen. Amgen, you know you've heard that. They're only the world's largest biotech company with $16 billion in sales. Now they formed together their book, and we're going to talk about that. Here's the title though. Listen to this. The CEO Test, Master the Challenges that Make or Break

All Leaders. And again, you can find that on amazon.com or of course we'll have it on our website at alliances.com. So let's jump right in. Guys, first of all, how did you come together to say, let's write a book together? Well, Adam and I first met, oh gosh, when he wrote The Corner Office for The New York Times. I was one of his first interviewees. And we connected via mutual friend about two years ago when I was teaching at Harvard. And I had the cheek to tell a distinguished journalist, a guy who had written a couple of books, hey, we had to write a book together. And Adam didn't laugh. And we actually formed a really great team, spent two years, a lot of whiteboards, a lot of time. I was an enormously lucky guy to be able to connect with somebody like Adam, who's done over 600 CEO interviews. And I think we really were complimentary and I'm delighted with the result. And David, I'll just add, we're really trying to create the metaphorical tea with the

breadth of my 600 plus interviews about leadership with CEOs and other leaders and the incredible depth of Kevin's experience, not only as a CEO, a board director, he mentors CEOs today of multinational corporations. He taught leadership at Harvard for eight years. As he said, between the two of us, we do get that kind of breadth and depth. And I think that really came through in the book. So what's the objective? Is there actually a test that you put together that makes what a CEO could be or talk to us on that? Sure. Go ahead, Kevin. The objective is not to describe the characteristics of a leader like resilience, intelligence, character. We kind of take that as table stakes. We go to the things that actually make or break all leaders and try to describe those things in

practical ways. How do you manage a team? How do you establish a culture? What's the simple plan for leadership? How do you handle a crisis? How do you transform? How do you manage the inner game? It's practical things. And at the CEO level, they are at the highest level of expression, but they're lessons for everybody who is or wants to be a leader. They're the things that are sometimes easy to say, but boy, they're hard to do. And we try to be practical. And Kevin, I mean, you had led Amgen, again, a $16 billion company. So clearly you've had to make some major decisions throughout your career in that.

major decisions throughout your career and that. So either Kevin or Adam, in regards to then, you know, the question many people ask is, is, you know, is a CEO and or a leader, is that something born? Is that something they're inherited with? Is that something that, you know, is it dependent on anything specific if you were to drill down? Go ahead, Kevin. Dependent on anything specific, if you were to drill down. Go ahead, Kevin. Well, I think you certainly have to have some inherent characteristics, but I'm a giant believer in leaders can be developed. It's not charisma.

It's a set of behaviors. It's a set of personal values. The ability of human beings to grow is gigantically underappreciated. And what we're trying to do in this book is help those people who really want to grow see live examples to understand what good looks like. And leadership comes in all kinds of styles. I am an absolute believer that leaders are made much more than they're born. And if all you depend on is what you were born with, you're probably not going to get there. David, I'll just add, I mean, over the 30-year career,

somebody in management leadership positions, they are going to learn certain lessons through experience. But our goal in this book is to shorten the learning curve and basically share the insights and wisdom for hundreds of CEOs, including Kevin, so that people can say, okay, these are the biggest challenges. Not only are these, these are the biggest challenges, but here's the playbook for how to do them well. You know, we just share a lot of tips and tactics and frameworks and tools to show people how to do this rather than just say to them, hey, this is important. Absolutely. And that's why they need to continue watching. Listen to me, David Kogan, the host of the alliances hero show. So make sure you go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com Times, and Cher is the former CEO of Amgen, world's largest biotech company. Again, a $16 billion company. They've come together,

and they've created this book. It's titled The CEO Test, Master the Challenges That Make or Break All Leaders. You could find it where? Adam, where can they find it? Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google it. You'll find all the places that are selling it that's awesome awesome and so Adam you know you've interviewed 600 CEOs and leaders and stuff heck you can have my job now we could switch roles here you can do the interview with your experience but what are some of the if you were to pinpoint some of the magic characteristics that they do have in common, what would that be? I put it at the top. And we really talk about this in the first chapter of this book is this ability to simplify complexity and to distill the message and the strategy of the company down to, you know, a simple statement, a short paragraph, so they can stand up in front of all their employees

and answer the question that employees deserve to be answered, which is, where are we going and how are we going to get there? And while that sounds simple, it's very hard for a lot of people. And so just that it is a cornerstone of strategy, which you need to have if you're going to succeed as a leader and as an organization. It all starts with that. Yeah, the ability to simplify complexity is a rare skill and is a powerful tool. What about, too, is there anything now that parents can do to help instill what traits that you've seen people be so successful at? Again, both of you, very successful careers. Is there anything in

secrecy you could share? We have a lot of parents that listen, a lot of business owners now and stuff. You know, they want what's best for their children and to grow up and be successful like you two have been. Yeah, I can jump in. I think just the power of listening is a really underappreciated skill and increasingly underappreciated in our society where everything's sort of digital and texting. But I think if you're a good listener, it's a manifestation of curiosity. life, in effect, kind of interviewing people, you know, formally like I do it or informally, and just trying to sort of glean their lessons and insights, you can just learn a tremendous amount. And I'd say that, completely agree with Adam, but it boils down to something pretty simple. Character is destiny. Develop good character, be curious, be kind. Be humble and have some confidence to go outside your comfort zone to learn.

You'll be fine. Now, Adam, out of the 600 interviews that you've done with CEOs and leaders in that, any particular one stand out the most? There's this guy named Kevin Scherer that was pretty. No, I will say, David, you know, one of one of the biggest surprises that I had over the course of the interviews, you know, I always ask everybody, how do you hire? What questions do you ask? What qualities are you looking for? And some of the things that I've heard that CEOs ask job candidates because they need to get them off their scripts, right? Because everybody's got the same script for job interviews of my biggest weakness is I care too much and I work too hard. So they're always coming up with creative ways. And honestly, I've just heard some bizarre things. And this book took you how many, two years to put together? Yeah, from start to finish. But again, as Kevin alluded to earlier,

there's a lot of early kind of whiteboarding sessions. And we did adopt this metaphor as a kind of shorthand of Russian nesting dolls. Because if you say, let's write a book about leadership, you're going to need a lot of whiteboards. You're going to fill it up with 300 things. Because at the end of the day, leadership is kind of about everything, right? And so how do we then figure out, okay, what are the seven things that truly make or break all leaders? And in that process, you know, we had a lot of conversations. Well, this idea nests inside that other idea, because, you know, you take things like trustworthiness and authenticity, those are related. So that was a big part of the process. And that was a lot of hours.

Wow. Wow. I mean, and how did you feel when Kevin, you know, went to you and said, hey, let's put a book together. I mean, that's a big deal. And having somebody like Kevin, I mean, you know, background served on a gazillion different boards and, you know, all the experience. Yeah. You know, not that I want to inflate, you know, Kevin's ego or anything, but he's honestly one of the smartest people I've ever met. Kevin has this laser-like ability to get to the heart of any issue. I've learned over the years of working with Kevin that if you ask him about literally anything, he will say without missing a beat, these are the three most important things you need to know about that. And he's usually right.

Wow. All right, Kevin, any last words from you? And he's usually right. Wow. All right, Kevin, any last words from you? My last words are people can grow and this book will help them grow. If you want to grow, you can. And you've got more potential inside you than you can possibly imagine. Excellent. Well, again, Adam and Kevin, boy, you have walked the talk.

You share the master secrets to be a successful CEO. You know what? That's a hero. Make sure you get their book. Go to Amazon.com or any of the other places online. Get their book. The CEO Test. Master the challenges that make or break all leaders.

This has been David Kupnick with the Alliance Hero Show. When we return, we have the CFO of Herbalife Nutrition. With that, again, David Kogan with E-Liances.