The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 398: Jim Collins - The Art Of Getting People To Want To Do What Must Be Done (Part 2)

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more details... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Jim Collins books include Good to Great, the #1 bestseller, which examines why some companies make the leap and others don't; the enduring classic Built to Last, which discovers why some companies remain visionary for generations; How the Mighty Fall, which delves into how once-great companies can self-destruct; and Great by Choice, which uncovers the leadership behaviors for thriving in chaos and uncertainty. Jim has also published two monographs that extend the ideas in his primary books: Good to Great and the Social Sectors and Turning the Flywheel. His most recent publication is BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0), an ambitious upgrade of his very first book; it returns Jim to his original focus on small, entrepreneurial companies and honors his coauthor and mentor Bill Lazier. Notes: What Exactly is Leadership?" "True leadership only exists if people follow when they would otherwise have the freedom to not follow." Many business leaders think they are leading when in fact they're simply exercising power, and they might discover to their horror that no one would follow them if they had no power. General Colin Powell said, "In my 35 years of service, I don't ever recall telling anyone, 'That's an order." "Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done." When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, one of the first people he called was Jim Collins. Jim asked Steve,"what did you first build upon to emerge from the darkness? What gave you hope?" Steve was talking with perhaps the greatest product visionary of our time.. so he expected him to talk about operating systems or the Macintosh computer or other product ideas.  But he didn't. What did he talk about? People. "It was all about the WHO." History is the "study of surprises." There will be no "new normal," there will only be a continuous series of "not normal" episodes, defying predictions and unforeseen by most of us until they happen. This is why we double down on the "first who" principle. Track the number 1 metric: some say sales or profitability or cash flow or something about products. But there's one metric that towers above them all that's rarely spoken about in meetings. And that is: The percentage of key seats on the bus filled with the right people  for those seats. How to know when to shift from "develop" to "replace?" Jim has distilled years of reflection down to 7 questions that he offers to stimulate your thinking when you face the "develop or replace" conundrum.  Are you beginning to lose other people by keeping this person in the seat? Do you have a values problem, a will problem, or a skills problem? What's the person's relationship to the window and the mirror? Does the person see the work as a job or a responsibility? Has your confidence in the person gone up or down in the last year? Do you have a bus problem or a seat problem? How would you feel if the person quit? Jim spent time at West Point as the Chair for the Study of Leadership… One of they key things he learned from that time was the importance of focusing on your unit and taking care of your people, not your career… "The key to a leader's impact is sincerity. Before he can inspire with emotion he must be swayed by it himself. Before he can move their tears his own must flow. To convince them he must himself believe." - Winston Churchill Kroger made the leap because they became fanatical about getting the right people in the right seats A key position at your company does the following: Has hiring responsibility A failure by them could expose the company to disaster Their performance has an outsized impact on the business as a whole The Personal Hedgehog Concept You love to do the work You're doing something you're wired for The market will pay you for it Great success in life is when you have people in key seats that fit their hedgehog When analyzing if a person should remain on the team, ask, "What is the person's relationship with the window or the mirror?" We want people who have a tremendous capacity to grow. Be a growth machine. An example of a world-class leader? Wendy Kopp, CEO and Co-Founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent nonprofit organizations working to expand educational opportunity in their own countries and the Founder of Teach For America. "Wendy had no power and not much charisma, and yet she got hundreds of thousands of people to sign up and do work that is not fun." That's leadership. "Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done." The #1 responsibility of a leader is to catalyze a clear and shared vision for the company and secure commitment to and vigorous pursuit of that vision. From Jim, "I'm more of a teacher than a leader. What's my leadership artistry? Trust." Ann Mulcahy saved Xerox. She kept getting promoted... When asked how she earned those promotions, Anne said, "I tried to make my mini-bus a sparkling pocket of greatness." They came to her and said, "We want you to drive the whole bus."

Paying attention to what's right in front of you and taking care of your people, take care of your people, not your career. Take care of the bus you have rather than thinking about, I need to drive a bigger bus. And if you do that, you are more likely to die of indigestion of having too much opportunity for responsibility than starvation for too little. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show, presented by Brixie and Meyer. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, learners to 44222 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. Receive Mindful Monday updates when I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking about,

and it will also give you more details about how my book, Welcome to Management, will help you become a more effective leader. Text, learners to 4422. Now on to tonight's featured leader, the legendary Jim Collins. This is part two of our conversation. If you have not listened to Part 1, go to the episode prior to this one and listen to that first. This is the conclusion of that long conversation. For those of you who don't know, Jim Collins is the author of many books.

He sold more than 10 million copies, including good to great, great by choice, built to last, and most recently, beyond entrepreneurship 2.0. It's an ambitious upgrade of his very first book. Jim returns to the material that he worked on with his co-author and mentor Bill Lazier. And Bill comes up throughout part one and part two of these episodes with Jim. of the topics covered in part two. Jim defines what leadership is and does so with perhaps more clarity than I've ever heard. And then he shares how you can develop your own personal hedgehog and why you need to. And then he shares the one key metric that towers above all others and it's rarely spoken about, yet should

be in your very next meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, it's part two with the legendary Jim Collins. Bill created a generosity flywheel. And part of how he did that and how I know you are the same is you think of the mantra, never stifle a generous impulse. And so one day, I want to go to another moment, one day, two large wooden crows. appear on your front porch. Can you, can you finish that story?

So, so, this is just, this is so typical bill. And so, you, Joanne and I, we didn't, we didn't come from, we came from about as far away from wealthy families as you could get on. And I lived in a basement at one point that was just cold and, and, and, uh, we had a Christmas rock because we couldn't afford to have a Christmas tree and such. So, you know, just even started having even a bottle of wine, no matter how expensive, would be a real treat with Joanne and I, as we were getting started. And but Bill loved really good wine. And he is really wonderful wine seller.

And one day, I commented about how much, you know, I really enjoyed the glasses of wine that we would get a chance to share with him that we could at that point have never afforded. And so shortly after that comment or somewhere down the road, these two crates show up. I'm like, what is this? And I opened it up. And it's these two crates of, I mean, really exquisite one. I mean, we're talking French bordeaux and really great cabernets and just really good wine. Like, you're almost a feel bad opening one of them. And we have a little tiny, like standing rack that we built down in our basement.

We can't even fit all the wine bottles in. And so I called Bill. I said, you know, what's the deal with this? And he said, oh, Dorothy and I were having an inventory problem. meaning we don't have enough space for the wine in our cellar. He had a huge cellar. I don't know if he had these. We were having an inventory problem.

And I was wondering if maybe you could help me out by taking some of this off my hands. And so he had this way of he was just generous by nature, but he had this way of exercising his generosity as if you're doing him a favor by accepting his generosity. And I always remember this line. It actually is a line that comes from Bill Hewlett, who's probably the most well-known business person that reminded me of Bill and countenance and flavor and so forth. And Bill Hewlett always had this line that he believed people.

He never sniper generous and false. And that is a great mantra for living. You're sitting there, you're trying to decide, you know, I wonder if this person's doing a wonderful job. I mean, is it time to maybe raise their salary recognition? or gosh, there's, I mean, there's all these different places in your life, but just like, if you have a generous impulse, never stifle, a generous impulse. It's so good, man. I could cover all the Bill stuff. There's a few other things outside of that that I want to hit if you, if you like. Yeah, please, please, please. Okay. Actually, another one is an interaction with a different person, a different leader, a leader that probably more people have heard of than Bill, although I love what you're doing to get his name out there because.

the latest book beyond entrepreneurship 2.0, which his name is equal in size to yours on the cover of that book, is it's so good. I mean, it is, my dad came over and he saw it the other day and he's just like, man, you got another one. I go, look at the title, look at the author of that. It's like, whoa, Jim, and I just said, it's, it's so good. It is just, it's so well written and well told. Not surprising, obviously. But anyway, October 2007, you get a phone call. And on the other end of the phone call, it's Steve Jobs. He has this idea of creating Apple University. And you, because you're you, of course, say, instead of him, you know, asking you questions, you immediately flip it and ask him questions like you do to everybody, including me. You said,

what did you first build upon to emerge from the darkness? What gave you, hope because people forget that there was some really rough time. I mean, Steve got fired from Apple at one point. A company you're talking with perhaps the greatest product visionary of all time, of our time. And so obviously you're expecting him to talk about the operating systems or the Macintosh computer or other product ideas. And yet he doesn't. What did he talk about? So it was actually a, it was very interesting for me to hear this. And of course, he, of course, was always ultimately going to, you know, go to the great products. And in the end, he wanted to create a great company that would create great products and would be able to do so long after he was there.

And what he was thinking very much about is kind of the ultimate product would be Apple computer company itself, right? And that would be the ultimate iPod, the ultimate iPhone, if we could get that right, and so that it could continue to take on. And, of course, so far, it really has. But so he called me about this, and I was asking questions, but what I was so struck by was the first thing he started talking about was people. And I knew that he had, you know, from our research, I knew that he had also, you know, short up the cost structure as well, like, you got to remember what it was like in 1997.

1997, Apple was really on the verge of irrelevance and perhaps losing its independence, maybe even death. It probably wasn't going to die. It probably would have been bought by somebody, but they'd even tried to sell themselves to other companies and having succeeded. And then came this moment when, after years in the wilderness, Apple needed a new operating system, and it turned out Next, which was this other company that he'd been working on, happened to have the right to an operating system.

And so he got to come back into Apple to bring the operating system, but he kind of came in as the operating system, if you will, and got to revitalize Apple. But you need to remember, Apple, most people thought Apple was just no longer going to be relevant in the world. I mean, it was really at, it was in late, late, late stage four of the five stages of the decline. And if you go to stage five, you never come back. And he starts saying about people. And the first thing he started talking about was, well, I had to find the people. who still believed in the magic, still believed in the original sort of vision of what this place was really all about. And the image I had was sort of a Star Wars image of like the scattered Jedi,

right? And the empire was out there doing its empire thing, but you find the Jedi and you pull them out of the woodwork and around those core people would become the way to reignite and re-establish the spark of Apple. And of course, then, you know, we did great products and so forth. But, you know, all those products we associate with the later stages of Apple, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, all that. Those came to years later. I mean, they weren't into the 2000s, right? A decade later, I think, for the iPhone after Steve came back.

And the reason I start that chapter there, which is a chapter on some of the things I've learned about how to do the first who principle, is that, even somebody that we so associate with the what, the product, the iPhone, the iPad, the Matt. His first was who. And this idea that if I get the right who's, that's the only way in the long one, we're going to get the best what. And if even Steve Jobs is that way, it sort of almost Uber makes the point about it's still first who's. too. And one of the things you, when you work with companies, is ask them about metrics that they track and then even prioritize those metrics.

And this is one area where you do have an answer. And there's one metric that towers above them all, beyond sales and profitability and cash flow or product innovation. There's one. And that one metric is the percentage of kids. Key seats on the bus filled with the right people for those seats. When you're talking about metrics and the metric that towers above them all, I'd love to hear you expand on that. I have a follow up about, you know, sometimes when we need to make changes, because that's part of this too.

And it's the hard, not always fun part when you have to make changes, whether it's firing somebody or what. So that, but that part I thought really stood out to me when we're looking at. at the metric set, this is the one. This is the one to really think about first. So, we were talking earlier about the questions I like to ask folks when they come to the lab. And another one of the questions that's in the playlist that I almost will always go to relatively early in the first sequence is everybody take out a blank sheet of paper. And now I want you to write down what percent of the key seats on this overall bus? Are you highly confident you have filled with right people for those key seats today.

And everybody writes it down. And then they ask a simple question, how many people have a number of 90% or above? And you rarely get a lot of hands up. And then I just say some very simply, you have just identified your number one priority. If I'm talking with any of you two years from now, I want that 90%.

I'm sorry. If we ended our session here, if we ended our time together here, like that's that would be like I'd be fine if you did that and nothing else I'd be fine because everything starts there and what and so when people have their management meetings when they have their team meetings when they have whatever you're tracking metrics or customer service indices or looking at your you know your current cash burn or your return on sales or whatever it happens because it's good I like for you to run the number sports I think that's great but the

number one metric is, and it should start every conversation is where are we on right people in the key seats. And there's, now I want to be really clear, this is the key seats. So if you take, let's just use an example, a historical example of say the good to great transition of Kroger in contrast to say A&P. And one of the really key ways that Kroger made the leap from good to great when it did its whole super store shift and A&P didn't and eventually disappeared, right? So it's a great historical contrast because either one of them could have been good to great company, but one of them was and the other one wasn't. One of the key differences is that the Kroger people became fanatic about the right people in KC's.

And the A&P people, we've found much less evidence of them being fanatic about that. Now, does that mean that absolutely every banker and every checker was the absolute ultimate, you know, right person? I'm the Tom Brady of, you know, checkout person, right? No, what you have is you have to be really rigorous. What are the key seats? So maybe not every single bag or checker meets the full test of a key seat, but the store manager sure does because the store manager is the real people of the culture in that store.

So part of it is figuring out what are the key seats? And the test of a key seed is any seat that meets any one of these three tests. and it could meet more than one. A, anyone that's in a seat that has significant hiring responsibility. B, anyone that's in a key seat where failure in that seat could expose the company to catastrophe. So if you have, say, a cybersecurity seat and they fail, right? That could be a massively exposed flight. And third is any key seat where performance in that seat has an outsized impact on the performance of the enterprise.

And there are lots of ways. You can have somebody who doesn't have anybody reporting to them or a single person, but they're that one scientist off working on the recommant DNA breakthrough that's going to lead the epigen, right? Massive outsized impact on the company, they're in a key seat, right? Even though they don't have any people reporting to them, maybe. They're just that one crucial scientist. So once you know what your key seats are, then you begin to go through them and you say,

okay, which ones are we highly confident that we have filled with the right person for that key seat today? Now, some people are still in process or the seat might be unfilled or you're still testing somebody out or whatever. But I think a good target to shoot for is we really need to try to get to 90% on it. That is, if you do that, everything else, it's not that the rest doesn't matter. You still have to get, you know, you still have to get confronted little fact. You still have to get the flywheel turning right. You still have to get out of the things you can't be the best in the world at.

And all these sorts of things, of course, it's discipline. bought and disciplined action after you have the disciplined people. But if you don't have the disciplined people, if you don't have the right people at the start, none of the rest of it matters. And that's why it starts there. How do you know, one of the questions that comes up a lot, Jim, is, I don't know if I should fire this person or if I need to seem to work with them more. I'm not really sure.

If firing someone shows failure or management, so how do you know when to shift from develop to replace? Yeah. So this is something we write about in the chapter. And first, I want to maybe, before I even directly answer that, highlight two things. The first is, it's a phrase that goes all the way back to good to great. And I know you and I, for different relationships to that work, have deep emotional relationship to good to great. And in good to great, there's a line, because that's the book where the research led to the idea of first who, right?

We found that those two companies from good to great first focused on who, then focused on what, that's where the idea came from. And in BE 2.0, I want to sort of expand on that idea, particularly for smaller mid-sized company leaders and so forth. But there's a key phrase in good to great, which is be rigorous, not ruthless. And back to the idea of relationships. Just because somebody might not make it on the bus doesn't mean you don't have a relationship with them. And if somebody leaves the bus or you ask them to leave the bus or whatever, that may be a very rigorous decision to get to the right people, you know, 90% key seats filled with the right people. But they're people. And I, you know, one of the things that has always concerned me about the who principle when we wrote it is that people might skip over that idea.

It's a tremendous burden of responsibility. If you brought somebody on the bus and you put them in the wrong seat and you made a hiring decision, that's on you. and therefore it is up to you to handle it in a way that is not ruthless, that is of concern for the person. And in such a way that you always ask yourself, could you call this person on their birthday every year for the rest of your lives and would they welcome the call? Would they maybe even thank you for helping them get on with their lives? And that brings me to the second point.

One of the concepts about how do you sort of fitting with a key seat. One of the concepts in good to grade is the hedgehog concept. And the hedgehog concept is, you know, the three circles of focusing on one or a few big things that meet the test of we're incredibly passionate about it. We can be the best in the world at it. And it really drives our economic engine. And you do more things that fit those three circles and fewer things that don't fit those three circles and you begin to build firewall momentum. There's the personal hedgehog. The personal hedgehog is the same idea, but translated to an individual, which is,

the first circle is about, am I doing something I'm passionate about and love to do? Second circle is not best in the world, but am I doing something for which I am encoded? I am wired for. And the difference on this is so critical. I thought I was going to be a mathematician. I went off to college, I majored in mathematical sciences, and I was very good at math. But then I met those people who are genetically encoded for men. And it's kind of like being an athlete where you know you're good, and then you see what someone

else does, and you say, I'm really good, but that person is wired for that. And that's not my hedgehog. no matter how good I am on it, I'm not made for it. So finding those things that when you do them, you feel like, I'm really made, I'm cut for this, I'm really made for this, I'm wired for this, I'm encoded for this. That's the second circle. And the third circle is you can get paid to do it. You're doing something useful enough in the world that a company will pay you to do it or you can build a business around it or however, you can have an economic engine that allow you to pursue your goals. And then you have your personal hedge job. I think one of the great success,

processes in life is when you have people in seats on the bus that fit with their personal hedgehog. And the more that you can basically say, what does it ultimately mean to have a right person in a key seat? It's somebody that when they look at it, they say, I feel so psych to be in the seat because actually, I'm passionate about this and I love to do it. And what the seat demands sort of really activates what I'm encoded for. Oh, and what it does is useful enough.

they pay me to do it. Wow, what a great win. And it's a great one to the company. And then if somebody, sometimes the conversation with somebody leaving the company is, you know, this just isn't your hedgehog. And I've had people call me who weren't in their hedgehog, who I'm in touch with, call them on their birthday, as I had a conversation just this last year with somebody who's like,

you know, one of the best things that ever happened was you said, this wasn't my hedgehog. I found my hedgehog. I am so happy doing. what I really, what is really my head job and is just absolutely thriving and making a huge difference in the world. And so that's really in the end what you want to get to. So let me pause right there because there are these other elements of that of like kind of what sorts of tests or how would you think about are there any generic aspects of right people in KC,

etc. But I thought maybe those two very human aspects of it might be worth touching on. you also have some questions you ask right to try to to try to determine between are we in develop or are we in replace mode right like what are what's a question or two you could to get to get that started in your own mind because like you're really a socratic style teacher of a coach so what are some questions people could could use for themselves if they're like oh i don't know what to do here should i fire them do i just try to help them what should i do well and also by the way uh you always have to ask one of the questions is, do I have a bus problem or do I have a seat problem? So it could be that you have a wonderful right person on the bus, but you have them in the wrong seat. And one of the most wonderful things that you can experience as a leader or a builder or a manager is you saw that. And you recognize that now hopefully it's harder. This is why one of the things makes running a smaller company a lot harder. You just have fewer key seats and fewer shots on goals. And fewer shots on goal of being able to say, this is a great person, but they're not in a seat that really

fits with them to be able to move them to a seat where they're really going to thrive and flourish. Or maybe the seats scale much faster than the person has scaled, which happens in growing companies a lot. They were the right person in that seat. But then the demands of the seat grew at 4x and they only grew at 2x, right? And now you've got, you have to sort of find a way to slice the dime into the seat. A couple of the other questions that I find very useful, Now, I want to be really clear. I put these questions in Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0. There are seven questions in there.

We don't need to go through all of them. I'll give you a taste of them. But I want to be really clear about something. Again, back, rigorous, not ruthless. It's judgment and it's people. And so it's not like, oh, I've answered four of the seven. So now I have my answer, right? It's, you know, these are meant to have you think in a very rigorous way rather than

here's a flow chart or I can do a diagnostic tool or something like that. It's human judgment. with compassion. One of the questions that I always like to think about is what is the person's relationship to the window and the mirror. And there are people who are, when things go well, they're really good at pointing out the window to give credit to other people and to give credit to things that help them. and tail ones that were at their back for how things went well, the humility side of it.

And when things go badly, even if it was a bunch of stuff that was out of their control, their natural instinct is to stand in front of the mirror and say, I'm still responsible for this. There are things I can do to grow from this. What could I have, what did I not see that I, that in the future I maybe could better see? What kinds of mechanisms could I build that would indicate that whatever, right, or systems I should have in place or timelines I should build or whatever. I'm looking in the mirror. It didn't go well.

I'm not blaming anyone else. And then there are other folks who are the opposite. When things go badly, it's somehow always out there. Pointing out the window, right? It's, oh, well, the economy wasn't good enough. Or these people let me down. Or the FedEx didn't arrive on time. Or whatever it happens to be, right, but it's pointing out the window.

And then, but then when things go well, they kind of have a really good way of sort of muscling themselves in front of the mirror and sort of saying, yeah, I am really good. Look at me. I'm going to take the credit for this. And that's a, it's a question because I find the people who are able to look in the mirror when things go badly and really learn from them and who are really good to point out the window to credit others. very naturally are the ones who have a tremendous capacity to grow. And that's, you know, in the end, I was just on the phone this morning with a person who's been close on our team for a long time. And she, the signature of her is her growth. And when she first started, she actually really struggled. It's been years now. We've worked together.

And she's just a constant growth. everything. She's just like, how could I do this better? How could I go? She just absolutely wants to always learn and always learn and always learn and always grow and always grow and always learn and always grow. And that's what she drives on. And so I will take somebody any day that they're just, they're constantly that way over somebody who just starts really well. Because it's the long-term compounding effect of that growth that ultimately is a joy. to be around. Jim, I love to close with a kind of a basic question with a potentially complex answer. And that is defining true leadership because there are business leaders who may be

listening that think they are leading when in fact they're simply exercising power. and they might discover to their horror that no one would follow them if they had no power. And so you've said true leadership only exist if people follow when they would otherwise have the freedom to not follow. I want this to be a mirror moment for people of you kind of sharing more about what exactly is leadership. What's true leadership versus just a title, a position, or power? Yeah. So let's, this is a great one to spend a bit of time on it. I think we should play with a little bit before we close because it's, it's been a journey

for me to understand more and more about this. So let's begin, first of all, with a great leader. Wendy Kott, who founded Teach for America and now Teach for All. Wendy is one of the greatest leaders that I've ever known. And she's a true level five leader. One Inc. Magazine, at one point, we're having a conversation, and we're talking about the entrepreneur of the decade. This was back in around 2009.

I'm like, oh, it's Wendy Kopp. I mean, hands down. And it's really interesting about Wendy. So, first of all, she doesn't have the power of career. charisma. She's not like a powerfully charismatic personality. And I always like to use her as an example that if you have a charismatic cause, you do not need a charismatic personality because the cause is charismatic. And your company's cause can be charismatic. And I had this privilege to serve a two-year appointment as the class of 1951 chair for the study of leadership at the United States Military

Academy at West Point. And it was a phenomenal experience for me. Because I, I, I, I, I, I went there, you know, first it was finally a chance for me to be able to do something in a very direct way that I care very deeply about, which is somewhere in my life, I needed a way to directly serve my country. And so to be asked to come in and spend time with the cadets at West Point was a marvelous gift to me to be able to do that. Not service like theirs, where they have to go out and lead in really dangerous places, but, you know, kind of baby service to them, but still direct service to my country. And then in that role, as the chair for the study of leadership, but within the world's greatest leadership institution that I know of, there are probably, Annapolis is one of them, like our military academies are some of the great leadership development institutions in the world. And as part of that, I would lead toocratic sessions with cadets. And I would sometimes bring a guest with me to engage and discuss, you know, all kinds of topics. And one time I brought Wendy Kopp with me.

And it was very interesting because we were in this seminar room, the Eisenhower seminar room at West Point. And it's not a very big room. I mean, it's it probably seats 30 maybe, something like that around a table. And the cadets were initially having trouble even hearing Wendy because she's very soft-spoken. But they were really on edge because what she did and how she created this huge flywheel, or education, and now it's taking it around the world, and extraordinary leadership results. But she doesn't walk in with like, here I am,

the great charismatic leaders. She's Wendy. And so as she got to talking, one of the things that began to dawn on me is how she got hundreds of thousands of young people to want to sign up to be deployed into our most difficult environments, Harlem and the Mississippi Delta and the Bronx and so forth, to be engaged with teaching and then some of them to stay in the world of education.

And interestingly, she was able to do this with people who had lots of other options because they were coming out of really great colleges and so forth to sign up and go do this. And it's not like it was a fun thing to do. These were really demanding roles. And she had zero power over it. She didn't have the power of money, right, because they could make more doing something else. She didn't have direct, she didn't have like the power of government mandate. She didn't have the power of like being able to tell people to do it.

And yet she got created sort of this, this vacuumed in all these young people who wanted to do it. And so when I would be there with the cadets, I would say, you'll never confuse the rank, your rank with your leadership. You should be able to lead even if nobody knows what your rank is. That's what Wendy teaches. She had no rank, but she read. And of course, the great cadets would understand this very deeply because it's part of how West Point teaches. And that sort of brings around to a question that I had wrestled with. I spent my years studying what makes great companies tick.

And in that, of course, through 6,000 years of combined corporate history and whether it be the level 5 leaders, in good to great, or the 10x leaders in grade by choice or whatever, really systematically studying some of the greatest chief executives of all time. Everything from Andy Grove over Intel, Kathleen Graham, the Washington Post. I mean, just some of the Anne Mulcahy who saved Xerox and some of the greatest corporate CEOs of all time. But I was left with this really kind of question of my mind, which is we talk about leadership all the time, but what exactly is it? I mean, this is a term to really have any meaning to it because I don't really know what exactly it is. And so when I went to West Point in the chair for the study of leadership,

I thought, well, if I'm in the chair for the study of leadership, I'm going to walk away with a definition and an understanding of what I actually think leadership is. If I can't learn it at West Point, I'm not going to learn it anywhere. It's been in the business of building leaders for over 200 years. What is it? And in my exploration there, I came across the materials of Dwight Eisenhower, General Eisenhower. And in that, I stumbled across the way he thought about what leadership is. And it just, all the tumblers went into place that produced for me something that really fit with all my research, whether it being the business social or social sectors, et cetera,

to what the essence of leadership is. Not necessarily level five versus level four, because those are both leaders, but the essence of what it means to lead. And it's simply this. It's the art of getting people to want to do what must be done. Now, if I have enough power, I can get you to do stuff.

That's just using power. And notice the elements of that definition. One of your first responsibilities as a leader is to see what must be done. And that may come by group discussion. It may come by insight. It may come by whatever. But the sense of this must be done. Someone's got to do something.

Someone has got to do something. The second part is it's not about getting people to do it. It's about how do you get people to really want to do it? Wendy couldn't go out and make people do two plus years of really hard teaching. She had to get people to want to do it. And then third, it's an art. And I love the word art, which Eisenhower used. Because the way I think of it is, if you look at artists,

they're all different kinds of artists and all different kinds of even within a genre there are different kinds of artists I mean Berlioz wrote different music than Beethoven wrote and Beethoven really departed from Hayd or if you take great rock groups

right, the art of Led Zeppelin is really, really different than the art of the Beatles even though they have a lot of overlap between them or you look at writers, right? The writing artistry of the Tony Morrison might be very different than say the writing artistry of a John McFeed, but they're artists. And what I came to see is that it's an art where you have to sort of figure out what kind

of artist you are. Now, some people in their artistic toolkit, is it really good at giving a speech? The speech is not leadership. It's simply an art form for getting people to want to do what must be done. For other people, they may never be able to give a speech. I've been really, really learning a ton about Benjamin Franklin for another reason for other research I'm working on. And in the Constitutional Convention, as I understand it, there was this, he wasn't a great speaker, right? That wasn't Franklin, right?

He was really just, he was Franklin, right? But in the Constitutional Convention, there was this great debate about how are we going to handle the fact that we have large states and small states and how are you going to are you going to have it proportional or have going to divide it up, Senate and House and so on and so forth. And what Franklin had this a marvelous ability to do was to kind of like bring together the right people and engage them in a conversation to help them see, this may be imperfect, but it's better than anything else anyone or whatever done. I'd like you to join me in this on the Constitution, right, and like his back patio. Well, that's leadership too. And then, you know, he would put out this one sort of perfect set of words that would help sort of capture like that, but be in writing, perhaps.

That's the way that people would really hear it. And so, you know, there's, there's, it may be that you're really good at just what I'm really good at. I'm not saying me. I'm just saying somebody might be good at is I am really good at figuring out who the four people are that should be in a room together and ask the one right question and get out of the way. my artistry, and I'm more of a teacher than a leader, but somebody I had to prepare for a conversation on one point, and the question came up, you know, what is my leadership artistry? It took me a long, so I just asked my people.

And the answer that I came back from the people around me, because I had no idea how to answer it, was I trust them and give them a ton of freedom in framework, in a framework, right, a ton of freedom to manage themselves to do their best work. And I didn't really realize that's my artistry, but what that does is for these wonderful people, when you trust them and give them a lot of freedom to manage themselves to do their best work,

they really want to do their best work. So each leader then, it's the same, you know, has to figure out what must be done, but then what's the artistry of creating the conditions where people will really want to do it? And that has nothing to do with power. If I put a gun to your head, I can get you to do a lot of things, but it doesn't mean I led you. That's where I come back and say something very simple. This is why we should learn from the social sector. the business sector should learn more from the social sectors.

Because in the business sector, executives often have a lot of real power, power of executive decision. In the social sectors, you actually are often dealing with, as one university professor or president put it to me, said, I'm dealing with a thousand points of no. And you have very diffuse power. And so if you could actually learn how people who don't have power lead and get great things done, and where do you learn that? You learn by looking outside of business, rather than learning from business leaders.

Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done. I think you also quoted General Colin Powell. He said in my 35 years of service, I don't ever recall telling anyone, quote, that's an order. Yep. Right. Even in that world where you think that's what it is every day and he never said it ever in his career. Amazing. Well, and actually what I would love to maybe if we can just take a moment to close out a couple of other great lessons from that, be picking up on the Powell one. And then one of the things that really was an eye opener for me when I went and did the study at the time at West Point and then got to know my friends in the military who I so greatly respect. And, you know, you have this image that the way, well, it's easy in the military, you just order people around.

Man, the best general officers that I got to know, the best officers, the best captains and lieutenants and majors and colonels. And they don't do that. They don't do that. They don't. They, the best ones would look at it is that they're failing as leaders if they have to order people to do stuff. It's more by their style. And so the caricature. of that is not what I generally observed amongst the very, very best military officers.

But I would love to share one maybe, would be a great closing story because it's one of the ones. I put it in the book, but I just, I think it's one of the great career lessons. Do we have time to do it? You have all the time you want, man. We've talked a lot here about people and decisions and now the leadership piece. I want to share with you. It's a story.

It's in the people chapter of Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0. And it's, it's a, I often have young people who come to me and say, you know, looking for career advice. No, I've actually kind of come to the conclusion that I usually now want to respond to them and say, if you really want my career advice, you should stop asking that question.

And, and, and then I tell them about, if I have the opportunity to. I'd like to think about two leaders. One is Anne Mulcay who saved Xerox, who was not ever angling to be chief executive of Xerox, but when Xerox was in serious trouble in the early 2000s, or late 90s, early 2000s, the board was really struggling with who should lead the company.

And a very inspired board member said, well, let me ask a simple question. Who inside this company would people trust and follow? because they just so believe that that leader would have the interest of the best interest of the company at heart, even though we have to make really brutally hard decisions. And one name came up over and over again, which was Anne Mokap. And so they tapped her to be chief executive of Xerox, and it's great turnaround story, wrote about it and how the mighty fall and how she took Xerox from late stage four and helped give it another shot at life.

What was really interesting is that her whole approach was she didn't, she wasn't, She wasn't really focused on what's the next big thing in her career. She always understood, I have a minibus. I have a pocket of responsibility, and I'm going to make my minibus a sparkling pocket of greatness. And I'm going to focus with what I have, not where I'm going next to my career. I have people. I have a minibus. I have something that's right in front of me.

And I'm going to make it the very, very best I can. And it might be small, it might be big, but my responsibility is to make that a pocket of And because she did that every step along the way, she just kept getting asked to drive bigger and bigger buses. And then one day they're like, they said, we need you to drive the whole bus. And because she'd done that over and over, she had this incredible currency of trust. People trusted her because they'd seen the way she led. It wasn't about Anne and what Anne was going and what Anne was going. She was just really taking care of her people and taking care of her buses every time she had them.

And then that brings me to the second story. this had a big impact on me. It's from General Lloyd Austin. And General Lloyd Austin became a dear friend through my experiences with West Point and the military. One of the great leaders that I've had the privilege to know, who I still know. And General Austin and I were having a conversation once he had invited me down to spend time with him when he was commander of Sentcom at this time. And we were talking about career arcs and so forth. And, you know, commanders, and Com is really significant responsibility. West Point graduate 75, a four-star general.

And as we speak right now, he's the nominee for Secretary of Defense. But I was talking with General Austin and told me this story about how being a few years out of West Point, he began wondering, you know, am I being promoted fast enough? What's my career on? How am I doing? Et cetera. And he said, well, one day I just sort of woke up and decided this is not very helpful. I made this decision. I would instead ask a different question. I would decide, how am I caring for my people? I decided I would not focus on my career. I would focus on taking care of my people. And everything changed. They would not let me fail. And of course, from there, has one of the most remarkable career records that's still not done.

And General Austin, and Ann Mulcahy, for folks, you think about like, I'm looking for career advice, I'm looking for career guidance, paying attention to what's right in front of you and taking care of your people, take care of your people, not your career. take care of the bus you have rather than thinking about I need to drive a bigger bus. And if you do that, you're more likely to die of indigestion, having too much opportunity for responsibility than starvation for too little. Wow. Thank you so much, Jim.

I mean, that last part reminds me of a mentor in my life who I value so much named Brian Miller when he says to me, has he got promoted and promoted and promoted and promoted. I said, how did you do it? How did you do it? He goes, you know what, man? I just always think about how to be excellent at my current job. And when my current job is leading a team, it's all about those people. It's all about them.

And so I found that when I focused on them and helping them, I kept getting tapped on the shoulder. And I think it's such good advice of thinking, about how to build an awesome career and some incredible relationships along the way, which by the way is pretty much all that matters is if you find yourself in a leadership role and you focus so much of your effort on helping them be successful, it will build a great life and a great career. I know this. I was at my dad's graduation, I'm sorry, his retirement party. They packed this standing room only room.

And at the very beginning, the MC said, real quick, can we get a show of hands and maybe stand up for anyone in here who Keith Hawk has directly, I mean directly impacted by through talking, meeting, a lunch, whatever, hundreds and hundreds of people stood up. It was an emotional moment. And I think that's what it's about, man. Like that's, that's when it's about like my focus is on helping others do everything they can to hit, hit and exceed their potential.

like what that's leadership that's what it's all about so jim this is just the greatest i'm so i'm so grateful for you and everything you've put out you've changed my life long before we ever talked and now we've got to do it two times and i'd certainly love to continue doing it as we both progress man well i intend to keep progressing as i like to as much remind myself as as as anyone else i'm 62 uh but uh if genes and health permitting i think of it is uh i'm 30 years into a 60 year career, so I'm at about the midpoint. And, you know, I intend to keep going and moving on to new questions. But I really appreciate you drawing out about Bill and bringing out Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0,

the book we wrote together all those years ago, the very, very first book I ever wrote was with Bill. And the chance to be able to bring Bill to the world to share his mentorship with all these people. Bill is smiling. because that's in the end what it was ultimately all about is changing the lives of other people. I highly recommend you get this book, Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, B-2.0, B-E-2.0, B-E-2.0, all of the names of the book. It's so, it's got multiple names. I emailed Mel and asked her, like, which name should we call it?

I'm going to call it all the names. But no, it's so good. It's so well done. And I found myself, it's one of those books where you'll just constantly take notes and notes and notes and notes and that's that's what it's all about and so i'm grateful that you you put the effort to write it um and put it out there man and uh highly encouraged people to get it it's it's just not surprising considering that the bibles for me was was first good to great and then great by choice the 10 mile march like all of it built to last uh and this one's right there so i highly encourage people to get it and like i said jim i'd certainly want to continue our dialogue as we both progress man very good well you have found your hedgehog

Try it. Hopefully next time I'm just going to, you'll think, oh, he's getting a little bit better. Getting a little bit better. That's my goal. That's my goal. That's my goal. Let's keep getting better. That compounds over time.

But no, thank you so much, my really appreciate it. All right. Take care. Thanks, Jim. Okay. It's still a bit surreal to think back that I just finished up a two-hour conversation with one of my leadership heroes. And at times, people say it can be dangerous.

to meet your heroes because you've set such high expectations for them. It's almost impossible for them to meet them. And yet, Jim somehow finds a way to exceed them. I am so grateful for his care, his curiosity, his love, his willingness to prepare, his attention to detail, his respect for time. I mean, everything about him blows my mind. There are, There's so much to get to in these two episodes. If you somehow listen to this one first, go back, listen to part one. This is part two of this long conversation with the legendary Jim Collins. A few of the highlights from this one when he discussed your personal hedgehog concept,

meaning what is it that you love to do, that you're great at doing, and that the market is willing to pay you to do. And then when Jim clearly defined leadership, perhaps as well as I've ever heard it, and that is true leadership only exist if people follow when they would otherwise have the freedom to not follow. That's what it's all about, right? It's the art of getting people to want to do what must be done. And as a leader, you need to know what must be done. And it's the art of getting people to want to do what must be done. And then the one key metric that towers above all others that's rarely spoken about, right? It's the percentage of key seats on the bus filled with the right people for those seats.

Think about that metric and measuring yourself against that one. And I want to say, once again, thank you so much for continuing to spread the message, a person at a time. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with the legendary Jim Collins, I think it could help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to tell your friends and tell others to listen and writing a review, an Apple podcast and rating the show, hopefully five stars, because you continue to do that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful.

Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.