The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 412: Kevin Sharer (Former CEO of Amgen) - What Operational Excellence Looks Like

Episode Date: March 28, 2021

Text LEARNERS to 44222... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Kevin Sharer has a distinguished career as a successful CEO and Board Member. He is currently a senior lecturer at Harvard University Business School and continues to mentor a select number of senior executives. Either as a Chairman, independent director, or mentor, Sharer has been a part of more than 20 successful CEO-successor transitions. Kevin led Amgen for 20 years, first as President and then as CEO for 12 years. Under Sharer's leadership, the company achieved annual revenue of $16 billion with operations in 55 countries.  Notes: "What Operational Excellence Looks Like" Must know the details Must have a listening system to know where problems brew The leaders have a clear agreement with the team on what success is A cadence of clear communication The leader must embody the behavior... They are the model Must have real empathy for people and care about them The leader needs to assess when things go wrong so that they don't make the same mistake twice... Kevin spent 110 days underwater in a submarine... When he left the Navy, he knew he wanted to be a manager. He joined a program at AT&T to become one... He had an ambition to rise high in an organization Kevin's dad - A military aviator. His hero and role model. his dad cared a lot about leadership... How did Kevin earn the CEO role at Amgen? Spent 8 years as the President of the company. And "made it pretty obvious" to hire him for the CEO role He consistently delivered results and formed a strong partnership with the CEO How to sustain what's special about a company as it grows? The book Built to Last by Jim Collins was very helpful.... How to create and live your values? They are not defined by what's written down, it's the behavior of the people. And that starts at the top... Understand what your real values are. If you don't believe in the values, you shouldn't work there... You "have to have social data to know that the values are real." Ask others in the organization: "Are the values you experience consistent with the values stated by the company?" How he got hired as the President at Amgen? "I first decided that I wanted to be a General Manager and not a functional specialists." Kevin pursued that through General Electric and got great experience...They hired him in part because of his broad range of experience. It was a multi-step interview process. Kevin interviewed with 20 people at the company before getting the offer... Listening ability: Kevin went from bad to great... "On the way up in my career, I had the view that I was so fast, so smart... It was working. I thought I was being helpful by telling others what I thought, but I was cutting off the full picture." Kevin had an eye opening moment when he asked the CEO of IBM to talk about leadership with his team... "I learned to listen for comprehension. Listen to understand first." "You need to listen to the entire eco-system." Big idea: Pick 10 CEOs who didn't make it: "Seven of them weren't situationally aware." What are some "must-have" hiring qualities? A record of good knowledge Great communication skill Comfort in their own skin Curious - they must ask questions Answer the question, "what are your goals?" Answer the question, "what have you learned from failure?" "If five people were asked about you, what would they say?" Their accomplishments speak for themselves. They don't have to overly sell themselves They need to "clearly want the job." A good sense of humor Hiring trap: "There is a bias for us to hire people like us. It's overwhelming. We're wired to think, "other is dangerous." We must be aware of that."

The objective of listening is not only to learn, but to become fully situationally aware so that as you make decisions, you're making the best decisions you can. This episode is brought to you by a very special advertising partner for me. In fact, this is an endorsement of how great their product is because this year for Father's Day, I got my dad Storyworth. and what it is, each week Story Worth will send a question to your loved one. Or you can choose the question. It is then sent through StoryWor's platform. The person you then buy this gift for will respond to your question and can add in some cool pictures to help with the memories. And at the end of 52 weeks, StoryWorth will compile all of your stories, including the photos, into a video.

beautiful keepsake book that's shipped for free. And this is a book that I know my family will treasure forever. It is a highlight of my week seeing the responses that my dad has given to these questions. In fact, I'm learning so much about him and his life that I didn't know before, which is amazing considering how much we talk. And so I would urge you to give your loved ones the gift of spending time together wherever you lived with Storyworth. Get started right away with no shipping required by going to Storyworth.com slash leader. You'll get $10 off your first purchase. That's storyworth.com slash leader. Welcome to the Learning Leader show presented by Rixie and Meyer. I am your host, Ryan Hawke.

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Text learners to 4-4-222. Now, on tonight's featured leader, it's a great one, Kevin Scherer. He led Amgen for 20 years, first as president, and then as CEO for 12 of those years. Under his leadership, the company achieved annual, revenue of $16 billion with operations in 55 countries. They saw dramatic growth and Amgen was recognized as among the world's most innovative as well as largest biotechnology companies. Kevin is also the co-author of a book titled The CEO Test, Master the Challenges that Make

or Break All Leaders. A few of the topics we discussed. Kevin shares what he learned from his time as a leader on a fast attack nuclear submarine. Yes, Kevin was in the Navy and has some fantastic stories that he shares during this conversation. Then the primary difference between leading individual contributors versus leading leaders. A big difference in Kevin is very helpful in describing how he made that job. jump in his career and how you can make the jump in yours. And then how to create and ensure you are living your values, both personally as well as at your company. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Kevin Sherer. So I want to start Kevin a little bit earlier in your life. This is when you

were in the Navy. And I read that your job was leading a fast attack nuclear submarine, and I wasn't really sure what that meant. Can you describe a couple things? One, your time leading a submarine like that. Whenever you hear the word nuclear, it really makes you perk up, as well as some of the key learnings that you picked up that helped you later in life from that experience. Okay, sure. This was in the time frame when I was basically 23 to 30 years old.

if you've ever seen the movie The Hunt for Red October, which I think still is out there, the American submarine that jumped out of the water toward the end of the movie is exactly the kind of submarine I was on. It was a Los Angeles-class ship, and attacked submarines' mission is to go collect intelligence. And I was on these ships in the height of the Cold War, so we'd go mix it up with the Russian submarines, and the hunt for Red October sort of gave you an idea of what was going on. And I didn't run the submarine. That's the job of the commanding officer, but I was the number three officer. And I had responsibility for about a hundred people and all aspects of the propulsion plant, the nuclear power plant, everything to do with engineering on the ship.

And I also was an officer of the deck, so I'd drive the ship around too. So at age 25, 26, it was a heady bunch of responsibilities. And before we put to sea, I managed the ship as it was being built at Newport News Shipyard. So I showed up when the ship was on the ways and left the ship after a year of at sea operations. And it was about as intense and experience as a young leader could have. And the thing I learned in the Navy is what operating excellence looks like. And I think it's really important early in your career to be exposed to what good looks like so you you understand what that is and you form some basic habits yourself now the navy was an operating place we had operating responsibilities and that's what I focused on but I also led five other officers and

a hundred young in their 20s and in some a little bit younger enlisted people it was dynamic and I had to interact with the shipyard and the Navy bureaucracy. So it was probably the job where I had the most responsibility compared to my experience, but it really put me in good stead later when I came to Amgen and biotechnology manufacturing is a very complicated thing. And what I learned in the Admiral Rickover Navy about high quality manufacturing really, really paid off. So it was a great place to start. What are some of the commonalities among operational excellence? So some of the keys to operating at an excellent level, both from a, I guess, military perspective and really just a life and leadership perspective. I think, Ryan, that from the Navy, what it taught me was to be an

excellent operator, and that could be a functional leader. could be a manufacturing leader, could be a quality control sales. It doesn't matter. You have to know the details. You have to know the important details. Number two, you have to have a listening system where you have a sense of where the problems are brewing. You can't have a situation where every problem comes to you at some critical moment. You've got to have some anticipatory system. Three, you've got to make sure that your leader, and you have a very clear agreement on what responsibilities are, how we're going to measure success, when we're going to measure success, and what the nature, the cadence and content of our communications patterns are. Next, you've got to be a role model leader. You have to embody in the way that you behave and the way that you talk to people and the way you listen to people, that you're modeling the leadership behaviors. You want the people who work for you to also model.

And finally, you've got to have real empathy for the people. You have to respect the people. You have to be sure they understand you care about them. And all those things apply whether you're a first-time leader or you're running some enormous thing. And I learned all that stuff in the Navy. And probably the last thing I learned is that we need to assess when things go wrong and learn lessons from them so we don't make the same mistake twice. The submarine force has a history of exceptionally successful operations.

And I lay it to this willingness to take a look at things when they don't go right and learn from them. can you think of a moment in time or an example when something went terribly wrong in the Navy and what happened and what you learned from it? Well, we never had anything that went terribly wrong. I'm happy to say because the consequences on a submarine of terribly wrong are really, really bad. Wait, real quick, how long are you on the submarine submerged in the water without ever like seeing light? I'm I maybe that's a dumb question but I'm fascinated by that that's a question's often asked and

yeah the answer always sort of floors people the longest I was underwater was 110 days without seeing daylight bingo yeah what what was that like so like quarantining and sheltering in place for you has to be pretty easy well the the thing about the submarine different than COVID is you knew when it was going to end okay yeah and you were I guess you were with other people too in a way. I hope you like those other people. I hope you like those other people. Yeah. No, it was it was kind of like being on a spaceship. And the tempo of operations were usually pretty, pretty mild. But once we mixed it up with the Russians, it was intensely exciting. I never had anything that went terribly wrong. But we did have things that would operationally go

wrong and one of them is a bit complicated, but let me give it a crack. We had a hydraulic system, and hydraulics are oil under pressure that's the motive force to move the rudder, to move valves. So it's the muscle of the ship. And we had a place where the pressure was generated on one side was air and on the other side was oil and the 3,000 pound air, through a piston, pressurized the oil, and that was the source of the motive power. And the problem was this, this piston kept leaking all the time. So you have oil leaking into this high pressure air in a closed environment, pretty unsafe. And we went through the whole process, and we finally found out the shipyard had put the wrong piston in the vessel, the so-called accumulator,

in which the oil and air met. And so that was a case of really pulling the thread, not giving up and following things all the way to their conclusion. And that was maybe my first big accomplishment as a young officer was with the people I worked for to figure that out. You mentioned that you were dancing with the Russians. Were there moments in time where you feared torpedoes or war? or I don't I have no no that was not that was not on the table I mean you know theoretically it might have been but but no the cat mouse between the two navies and the cold war was pretty well established the Americans had an overwhelming acoustic advantage and the Russians had fine ships they were fine sailors but we had advantages that that we could take advantage of so you didn't go to bed at night thinking hmm I'm a little

scared that that that never was a part of your mindset no probably maybe i should have been but you know were others i mean or no you guys were all like we're good we're good to go we're down here for a hundred days we're okay yeah yeah we had enormous confidence in our ship in our in our and each other and in our training and it was pretty remarkable to put a 40 year old person that was the captain with 120 people and say hey go out by yourself for 110 days not very many communications you're kind of on your own. Good luck. Wow, it's remarkable. Let's transition from your time. So you leave the Navy. What do you decide to go do next and why? I wanted a job that had management responsibility. And I found out that generally in the civilian world at that time, they wouldn't

give you a management job, except for at AT&T, which was one giant, million person company, they had a program that would let you be a manager right away and that they would promote you quickly. And that's what I went for because I wanted the managerial responsibility and I wanted an opportunity to advance. Why do you want that? I had an ambition. I was to rise as high as I could rise. I was a young, optimistic, arrogant. I'd had a very positive experience in the Navy. I'd gotten some recognitions in the Navy that suggested maybe I had potential. And it was just raw ambition combined with some early success. And so I like maybe a lot of your listeners, I wanted to rise as high as I could and make as big an accomplishment or contributions as I could.

Where do you think that comes from? What was your, what was your upbringing? are your parents like? My father was a military aviator. He was a role model and people whose whose parents were in the military and particularly in aviation. You get this sort of hero look at your at your folks and my dad cared a lot about leadership. He talked to me about it a lot. And he clearly with my mom conveyed to me that that, hey, you've got a chance here. You ought to do your best. And it wasn't a negative thing. It wasn't some pathology.

I think it was ambition from a good place with a good support system. So I want to fast forward in your career some because Kevin, there's so much to get to. I'm fascinated by how people earn jobs. And you eventually become the CEO of Amgen. I know there's a path there. how do you because there's a lot of people listening that want to get promoted to the next role and certainly i'm sure i want to be a CEO but there's a there's a there's a pathway there's a when the decision was coming to make the choice how did you earn the respect and earn the

sign off of the decision makers for you to become the CEO of amgen it was actually by the time i was appointed CEO it it was pretty obvious in other words i was hired as the number two, the president, and number two jobs from the outside are high-risk career jobs. You know, you don't know the company, they don't know you. If you don't work out, the CEO can fire you and it's no big deal. So the real time I earned my stripes to be CEO of Amgen is during those eight years I was president and I was a board member. And what I was able to do in those, that period of time, was demonstrate my leadership capability, deliver results.

I was responsible for sales, marketing, engineering, manufacturing. I formed a strong partnership with my boss, who was the CEO. So he and I had the same values. We had the same goals for the company writ large. I was on the board. They knew me very well. there were many assessments of me done. So it was a body of work over a long period of time. And if I had, for example, not been accepted by the company, I hadn't been accepted by my team,

I'd made bad hiring mistakes, I couldn't deliver on our commitments, et cetera, et cetera, I wouldn't have gotten the job. But I had a chance over those years to basically check every box that anybody who's making a decision about the CEO job would have wanted to check, they knew me very, very well. And so it wasn't a competition. There weren't three people in competition, and I got the job. I was kind of the heir apparent, and it was going to be me, or they're going to have to go outside the company to get somebody.

I had a really good dialogue with the board and my boss, so it wasn't a big mystery. And so it was a great process. was fully ready and the board had a lot of confidence in me. And so the day I took the job, I could, I could move with with some speed to help the company get to the next stage. You mentioned that your values aligned with the CEO when you were the president. What, what are some of your core values and how did you come up with them? The alignment I speak of, was not random. We were a venture capital-based company, relatively small, a couple thousand people. We were growing rapidly. We asked ourselves the question, how do we sustain the specialness we have as a

small company as we grow? How do we communicate to the many thousands of people we expected to hire what it was like around here and what we expected of you? I'd read a book called Built to Last, a famous, famous book. Jim. In that book, I got the idea that companies that are enduring and successful and potentially great have a very defined culture. And the culture is defined by the values that we adopt as a company and the values communicate how we expect each other to behave and what's important.

And so I suggested the CEO and he agreed, we launched a process to define our values. And we came up after a long period of time and participation of the senior team, a set of values that it's now 25 years later, seven of the eight are still the same. And we agreed on that our company would be science-based. Teams would count.

We'd compete intensely to win. ethics mattered. You would read these things and you would say these aren't particularly revolutionary. What was revolutionary is we meant it, we modeled it, we trained it, we enforced it. If you were an unrepentant value felon, you were fired. I don't care how you were performing. Everybody was a value misdemeanor offender once in a while, except for ethics. You only get one chance. There's no, you know, that's a black or white. But, but the values became real. And the CEO and I, although very different stylistically, if you met Gordon today and, and talk to him, you'd say he and Kevin couldn't stylistically be more different, but that didn't matter because we were united in

values. The other thing is he was a former Navy person and we implicitly understood he was the captain. I was the executive officer. We know exactly what that meant. And so I could really help him and leave him to do the things that he needed to do. And I could, I could, I could be supportive. And he gave me a lot of independence too. It was a great partnership. So when coming up with values, there are people, Kevin Lai, who are leading teams. You think it's best to enlist the help of the entire team, the leadership team. Let's say someone is a mid-level manager and they are leading a team of five leaders who have 10 people each. So five people, then there's 50 below them. And they say, oh, this episode is really speaking to me from Kevin. He's a CEO of Amgen. He's got this Navy background. He's really big on Jim Collins

and built the last and building our culture. And it's all about living your values. What's the best process for that person, that avatar to create and live out their values? You include all 50 of those people, just your core five, just yourself. What's the best way? Here's, this is a complicated an answer and I apologize. It's okay. I'm a an intense believer that the values of the enterprise are not defined by what's written down. They're defined by the behavior of the top team. And let's say the top team are the top 20. That is the CEO, the people who report to the CEO, and maybe the people report to them. So the CEO, the CEO, the CEO. So the CEO, the CEO, next layer, next layer. Let's suppose that you're not part of that group, and you are this

avatar you mentioned with 50 people. So the first thing you have to do is understand what the real values are. Are they what's written down, or are they the behaviors of the top, and are those behaviors somewhat different? So you've got to be very realistic in understanding what the true values are. Now, you have a choice. If you don't believe in those values, you probably shouldn't work there because it ain't going to work out for you. But let's assume that you do believe in the values. So the first thing you've got to do is convene a session with your top, your direct reports and have a conversation, hey, what are the values around here really and what do we think about it? Next question is, in our group, are we living those values? Do we have any problem with those values?

Are those values helping us? Are they getting in our way? Sort of what's our situational reality where we work and in the people we work for? Then I asked myself a question, do I need to tell my boss that there's some aspect of the current value? either as lived or as stated that are problematic and maybe we need to think about a change. And that would take some significant thought. It would take some significant political skill to find a way to raise that thought with your boss in a constructive way. And now we're getting into some advanced work.

But in a good company, if a thought, person who is respected, who leads 50 people, comes to the boss and says, you know, 80% of the values, I'm right there. But, you know, this value is getting in our way. And we should stare into that. We have to really talk about it. And so your objective as the leader of the 50 is not necessarily to change the value. It's to spark a conversation that could come out with a constructive move to make the values better. And that might mean restated in some way. It might mean the behavior of the top. And the last thing I would say is you've got to have social data to know if the values are real. And here's exactly what I mean. Most companies ask their employees, I don't care if you're

100,000 person company or 100 person company, some anonymous survey that, that basically says, how do you like your job? How do you like your boss? How do you like how things are going around here? And one of those questions should be are the values that you experience where you work in your unit consistent with the values as stated by the company? That's social data.

And we would do that every two years at Amgen. And so I could say, I have social data on how the, values are lived at the company, not just anecdotal data, not just my exhortations. I can tell you what the people really believe. And so getting the culture right is hard, but really important. And it's a matter of intentionality, not a matter of kind of socializing things. How many different jobs did you have at Amgen? Two.

So you were the president and CEO? Yeah. But Amgen was a very different company. Yeah. When I started, it was small. When I left, it was enormous. And so that 20 years, they were two the same job titles, but the jobs were very different because the company itself was very different as we grew.

How did you get hired as the president? I'm not sure. Really? Did you say, why do you think, why do you think they picked you? Well, I think I know, but there's a lesson in this. I want to answer the question behind the question. I had no background in health care. I'd never heard of Amgen, ever.

But what I did decide at the age that maybe many of our listeners today might be, say my early career time, maybe 30 to 35, I decided I wanted to be a general man I didn't want to be a functional specialist. I wanted to have the skills, the experience, the opportunity to run a profit and loss thing. So early on, I said, I want to be a general manager. And I pursued that objective through General Electric and then into MCI. And so by the time Amgen's looking for a number two, I'd had quite a number of general manager jobs in a variety of industries. And that was unusual for somebody in their early 40s, which I was. And so in the way that the people find candidates, I got a hunch how they found me, but I've never been sure. And I literally got a

fax one day, the days we used to have faxes. And it said, do you know anybody who wants to be president of Amgen? I never heard AMGEN, didn't know anything about it. And I looked it up and I said, yeah, me, I'd like to be president of Amgen. And the reason they hired me is because of my broad general management experience and my, you know, I don't want to be arrogant, but I had a nice professional track of success. And they figured I could learn the biopharmaceutical industry. And if they made a mistake, they could fire me. and it wouldn't really hurt the company.

Do you remember the interview process? Oh, yeah. Take us inside the room or rooms. Well, it was a multi-step. I met a recruiter and the company had given up. They'd said, we can't find a number two. They'd offered the job to a few people. They didn't take it.

The recruiter upon meeting me said, and his name was Bob Taylor, hey, you got to consider this guy. He's got what you need. And then I went out and met the CEO. And I remember sitting his house in Malibu. I'm a California guy. I was living at Washington. The waves are crashing.

I'm trying to play cool. I'm dying to get this job and be in California again. Try to act like whatever type out of thing. Yeah, I'm trying to act cool. But inside, it was like, boy, do I want this job. And then he and I clicked. and then he had me interview with probably 20 people in the company, including all the people I would lead. And this company's process was basically if the people who you were going to lead didn't like you, you could be vetoed.

The good news was once you were hired, it was like the family was inviting you in. It isn't like the CEO said, how just in Mars last week? and I found this guy, you'll like them. And then I had to go meet a couple of the members of the board. And the first question I remember was founder of the company, Pitch Johnson. He was at his Harvard Business School reunion. I meet him in a hotel in Cambridge. He says, you know nothing about healthcare.

You're a phone company guy. Why in the world should we hire you? I had an answer. And then I met his partner, Bill Bose. What was the answer? The answer was I have a strong, knowledge of leadership, of general management. The things that I have experience in are important.

The things I don't know I can learn. I have a track record of moving from one industry to another and learning it. I learned how I know I can take a nuclear reactor plant apart in my head. I think I'll be able to figure out biology and I will work hard to do it. That's a good answer with the nuclear. Okay. I feel okay with this. And then I met the other founder of the company, Bill Bowes,

in the coffee shop of the Fairmont. We had about a 15 minute conversation about, I don't even know what. He hit the table and said, okay, that's it. Good. And they hired me. How much of the role was money involved,

or it wasn't about that? It was the job. Zero. Zero. Did you even know what the money was at this time? I was, I was, yeah, when the offer came, they made an offer to me.

Yeah. And the money was acceptable. The opportunity, was so gigantically more in financial terms that I could have even imagined. I didn't care about it in a sense. I figured if I did well and the company did well, the money would take care of itself. Right. It wasn't a negotiation.

I said, hey, fine. Yeah. So up front, you were going to be fine, but you weren't going to kill it. You're only going to do well. Your incentives were aligned with the company's growth and incentives. Oh, absolutely. I knew it was a. heavy stock option package.

And if we did well, and it turned out to be an enormously positive offer, but I couldn't have known that at the time because I didn't know what the stock would do. Gotcha. So, okay, I want to talk, you know, I spoke with your friend Adam Bryant. Adam told me to kick your shins here to get you gone. Kevin, it seems like you guys have a really good relationship. Yeah, we do. And I want to talk about the CEO test, which is the book that you guys wrote.

together and a few of the keys in it. We won't cover all of it, but we'll touch some, some important parts that I care about. So one of the things I've noticed that when I was doing my research, I saw that you said about yourself was that you were a terrible listener earlier in your life, earlier in your career, and that you had to learn to get better at that. And I think you've got some advice from the CEO of IBM at one point around becoming a better listener. Can you share the story about your lack of ability to listen well and then how you were able to. The reason why I say go from bad to good is because I want to help people go from something that maybe they're not good at and to get really good at it, which is something

you've developed. Can you share the story behind that and your key learnings as you went? Yeah. On the way up in the organizations, I was a member, and I think it's still pretty typical, you wanted to distinguish yourself as capable early and often. And I had the view, and I'm embarrassed to admit this, but it's true. I had the view that I was so fast, so smart that you show me three tiles on the mosaic, and I could guess the picture.

We didn't need to waste any more time talking about other tiles. Now, the problem for me was I was actually pretty good at doing that. And the decisions I had made along the way with that kind of an approach had worked out okay. So my bad listening habits were, if you will, rewarded. It was working for me. And I had pretty good instincts about signals of dance. danger, could I trust people, et cetera. So I had a bunch of behaviors that allowed me to be this bad listener. And the other thing was that I thought I was being helpful. That is, let's not waste time

you telling me what you think. Let's get to the really important stuff, which is me telling you what to do. And so I'll help you right out here. Now, I would say it with a smile. I wasn't a bully. I, but still, I was cutting off an opportunity to hear the whole picture. And I got away with it. People liked me okay. Results were okay. And then Sam Palazano, who was trying to peddle some IBM deal to the company, I said, okay, Sam, but I want, and I would do this with all the CEOs who'd come by to pedal stuff.

I'd say, I want you to talk to the vice presidents of AMGEN. and just talk about leadership and what you learned on the way. So Sam in this discussion talks about his time in Japan as the IBM president of Japan. And he said, you know what I learned in Japan? I learned to listen for comprehension. All I wanted to do is understand. I didn't want to direct. I didn't I didn't want to argue. I wanted to understand. Then once I understood, we could move on to consideration of options, more conversation, et cetera, but understanding. And in that moment, I realized that I would listen, we'll put quotes around listen, but I really had eight tracks going on my mind all the time. I wasn't listening. I was, what am I going to say next? What am I going to do this

weekend. What are three other problems I care about? That was a big revelation. Then we had a crisis at Amgen that it's sort of amazing. It didn't cost me my job, but it didn't. And I realized in that crisis that this, this leader, this listening pathology I had was one of the root causes of why we got there. And then I, then it started to dawn on me that listening for comprehension is a big idea and you have to listen to all the stakeholders that are in the environment. And the way at Harvard, I would talk to my students. I said, look, the idea is you're a CEO, you're naked in the jungle, you got a knife, everybody wants to kill you.

It's not personal. And you've got to listen to everything. What's that breeze? What's that crunchy noise? The cloud just came over. In other words, you've got to listen to. to the entire ecosystem, not just what's in front of you. And so I came up with this idea that we talk about in the book,

which is developing a listening ecosystem, which means you listen not to just who's in front of you, but everything that might be involved, and you try to listen for comprehension. And so like most things, it was a hard lesson for me to learn, but I believe it's, I believe it's a profound, insight because most people are are not good listeners, not because they don't listen only to the person in front of them. They don't have good listening hygiene for the person in front of them,

but they don't take listening as listen to the whole environment in which you operate. Did you think you were a good listener? Oh, sure. So you lacked some awareness in one area. I had almost no awareness. I thought I thought I was a great listener because I was efficient. I was fast and I made good decisions. The reason I better a better way a better way to put it was I got away with it. Sure. And there are a lot there are people listening right now. It's funny. Meta but they're listening right now saying, ah, yeah, I don't really that's not I don't really that's not an issue for me. I'm a good listener. It's a listen. It's an issue for virtually everybody. Everyone, everyone. Because what I would say is let's let's let's take our advertising.

and let's say that he or she is in fact a good listener to the people they work directly with. Let's say they are. What I wonder is how well do they listen to customers, competitors, teammates, the company vibe itself, the government, product development. Yeah. It's a combination of how well do you listen in the moment and how broadly do you listen over time? Yeah, it's developing an awareness around it and just the fact that this is something I need to be cognizant of and think about. And I think a lot of people struggle with this. And that's why I pose that

to you because you were doing well. So you could argue with people like, hey, calm down. Get off my back. We're doing well. Your results were there. Everything was good. And yet you realized, as I think great learning leaders do, that you had an area where you could improve. And it took a moment with with somebody else that imparted some advice to you that helped you. And the big idea, if I want to put a name to what I'm trying to talk about, if we were to, we don't have time today, it's not our purpose, but if we were to have a conversation, you pick 10 CEOs who didn't make it. Okay.

I would advance the thought that seven of those people didn't make it because they were not situationally aware. They didn't really understand where they were, where the company was. And the reason they weren't situationally aware is they were neither broadly based enough in their listening, nor were they thoughtful enough in their listening. They tended to define their own little reality, and that was it. And so the objective of listening is not only to learn, but to become fully situationally aware so that as you, make decisions, you're making the best decisions you can. It's a great point.

Okay, I'm going to talk about hiring. Not you, not you getting hired, but you hiring other people and people that work for you, the people that they hire. So I mentioned that there are people currently driving in their car, perhaps, hopefully that we're back to that in some places in the world that are listening, going to an interview right now for a leadership position. And they are prepped and ready. They look good.

They feel good. And so think of that person. And not that you want to change their story, but what are some of the must-haves in a person for you, Kevin, to hire them to be a leader at one of your companies? They must have a record that the individual can describe in a way that conveys to me they have good self-knowledge. They must be able to describe.

their record in a way that I conclude their effective communicators. Hopefully, they're comfortable in their own skin and they don't radiate arrogance, anger, impatience, those kind of negative things. Hopefully they have a few questions that are thoughtful questions that suggest they've actually thought about why they want to work here. They should have an answer to the question, what are your goals? They should have an answer to the question. You've undoubtedly had some things that didn't work out for you, what you learned from them, an answer to the question, if five people who worked with you were talking about you, what would they say? That'd be a good place to kind of be prepared. Can you think of an example or two of someone that you've

interviewed that they just blew you away? They absolutely crushed it. And this is a person you probably would be happy to name because it's all good stuff. But can you think of somebody like that and that they left it in this, a mark on you as their preparedness, as their competence, as their their willingness to show up and be curious and ready to go? I was fortunate, very fortunate, that I was able to meet quite a number of those people. And they all had some common characteristics. They had record, and these were now senior people, so more along in their career. They were probably in their mid-40s.

They had track records that were clearly marked them as very accomplished people. They were all comfortable in their own skin. They weren't worried about, gee, I've got to sell myself. So I felt like I was talking to a colleague right away. They clearly wanted the job and could convey that desire in positive, healthy ways. they were clearly intelligent. They had a sense of humor. It was a relaxed conversation.

I could see myself partnering with them. Now, what I want to put in right now, though, is a problem I had. One of these people was diverse. They were all men. One was African American. But the bias of all of us to hide, people like us is almost overwhelming. We want to hire people we're comfortable with. We want to hire

people who sort of like what we like. We might even want to hire people who went to the same school we went to. And the way we're wired as human beings from the cave, from the cave is other is dangerous. That's how we're wired in our DNA. That's how we survive. We survive. is cave cave men and women. And so you've got to be aware that your bias is to pick somebody like you, like you in background, like you in personality. And it takes real mindfulness to say, I value different. I value different experiences.

That's not easy. But if you're not, if you don't, if you don't come to. to the interview with that awareness, you're likely never to do it. Yeah, it's great, great point. Two more questions, Kevin. First, what is the difference between leading a team of individual contributors and leading leaders? This is the next step up. So some people make that first leap where you're an individual contributor and then all of a

sudden you're managing a team. And now the next level is you make that leap from manager to maybe a VP title where now you're leading a team of leaders. What's the biggest difference between that second jump? I will answer that question, but I'm a touch on, I think, a really important point. It may be that what's similar is more important than what's different. Okay. That is, you have to really care about the people who work for you. You have to see them as people that for you to succeed, they have to succeed. You want to help them. You want to try to coach them. You want to make their objectives clear. You want to have positive communication

pathways. You want to be available. You want to be understanding. You want to listen well. So all of those things are the same. And if you don't do those when you're a leader of leaders, the price to you of not doing that gets bigger and bigger and bigger. You may be get away with it when you've got six people working directly for you because you can almost do their job for them if you have to. But as you get to be a leader of leaders, you can't. So you've got to have the fundamentals right. The difference is that when you pick your direct reports as a leader of leaders, you're defining the quality of your organization because it's almost impossible to imagine that really good people will long work for people who aren't really good.

So if you hire a bunch of bees working for you, you've pretty much defined that your organization is going to be full of a bunch of bees. If you don't have absolute clarity with the leaders of leaders about how you're going to measure success, what the frequency of your interaction is going to be, et cetera, you're not going to know what's going on. And the biggest difference between individual contributor management and leader or leader management is a concept called altitude. As a leader of individuals, you can operate a pretty low altitude all the time. How did that account call go?

What was the last factory run, et cetera? Leader of leaders, sometimes you're at a pretty high altitude. What's our strategy? What are you doing this quarter? But sometimes you've got to know, I need to go to very low altitude here. Something isn't happening just right. I've got to go to low altitude. Or that's really, really important.

And they need my individual help on that problem. So this idea of what altitude to operate at gets more important. And the other thing in a leader of leaders job, you're also more involved in representing your leaders to the rest of the organization. So you're kind of running interference forum, getting the resources they want, advocating for them, et cetera. So this concept of altitude awareness and representation of your group to the rest of the organization gets more important. And then the all important thing is, and I'll repeat it, hire the right people. There is no substitute for the best team, none. Yep.

I remember having, I saw a speech of Urban Meyer, who's now just been named the coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. He coached at Ohio State for a while. Famous guy, yeah. Yeah, they said, Urban, what's the key to your team winning a national title? This is after you won a national championship at Ohio State. And he goes, well, it's really three things. And it's recruiting, and then it's recruiting, and then it's recruiting. And so much of it applied to all areas of life.

It's about the who. as Jim Collins would call, as he said on this show, it's, it's, it's the people you surround yourself with. The who is everything, whether it's your friends, your spouse, the people you hire, right? Yeah, it's, it's everything. This is so good. Kevin, one more question. So I would venture, I guess that a lot of people come to you quite frequently and whether they're a new college graduate, they're trying to have a career like yours, whatever it may be. I'm curious for some general pieces of life advice that you would give to a recent college graduate who wants to leave their mark, make a positive contribution in the world, have a good family, all those things. What's some general pieces of life advice you'd give to them? I have an answer as I think, you know, I was on the faculty at Harvard Business School for eight years, and I wrote a column for the newspaper, and I wrote 50 of them. And one of the columns was that question.

and first of all, most important decision you will make is who is your life partner? Most important. It will, for all the reasons, but so do the best you can and make the right choice. Second, you should have some clarity

on generally what do you want to do. Do you want to be an investor? And an investor could mean venture capital, private equity, hedge fund, et cetera. Do you want to be an advisor? That could be a consultant, an accountant, a lawyer, or do you want to be an operator? And an operator means you're eventually going to want to run something. You're an operating manager and a company. So, or, and I'm assuming that we're talking about business, there's this whole other question. of do you want to be in business? Do you want to be in government? Do you want to be in the law,

etc? And that's probably the first decision. But in business, first is which one of those three do you want to be? Next, pick a good company and a good industry. And good industries are ones that have social purpose. They have growth. They have the financial resources, et cetera, and then pick a good company, which means you're proud of the company, you identify with their values, you trust the leaders, you feel good about the product or service, and you can learn what good looks like. And then just do your best and be prepared to change. You'll probably have to make decisions to move and make sure those are good decisions. Love it. Thank you so much, Kevin, for investing your time, especially when you're

I'm pulling you off the ski slopes out there in Colorado. I appreciate it, man. And the book here is the CEO test, master the challenges that make or break all leaders. As you've heard before, I spoke with Kevin's buddy, Adam Bryant. And the cool thing about the two different conversations is we did not cover anything even remotely close to the same in these conversations, which is my goal coming into this was to have two completely different conversations because you guys have wildly different experiences. that go into this really cool book that I encourage people to get. So, Kevin, thank you for investing your time. I encourage people to get the book. And I would love if you'd be up for it to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man.

Yeah, Ryan, I didn't know what to expect. And you exceeded my expectations. It was fun. And I'm passionate about this topic. And anytime I'm, I'm game. Thanks a lot. It's evident that you are. And it shows. And it makes it makes these conversations so much fun and fulfilling and it juices me up man so I really appreciate inspiring your your wisdom inspiring me as well as so many others today man okay glad to help take care thank you all right I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with leaders like Kevin Cher someone who was a CEO of Amgen who led so many people and was responsible for so much over the course of his career.

And to get an inside look is worth so much. I hope you found this one as enjoyable and as valuable and useful as I did. A few of my notes and key takeaways. How about that off-site meeting they had with the CEO of IBM when they discussed what it meant to be a great listener and not just listening to wait to speak, But listening for comprehension, listening to understand, that is a much more effective way to lead. And then when he shared the must have qualities to get hired as a leader at Amgen, a few of them he mentioned, a high level of self-awareness, great communication skill, comfort in your own skin, curiosity, the willingness and ability to ask questions.

with a mindset set to learn. And then how he earned both the president's role at Amgen as well as the CEO title. And how his prior work and his ability to sell himself and share how he could take the company to the next level was what got him the job. And how he built a relationship, earned trust through that time with the key decision makers. was what he was able to do in order to get the job and thrive while in it. I hope you enjoyed this one again as much as I did. I am so grateful for you to tell a friend or two. You should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with the former CEO of Amgen, Kevin Cher.

It will help you as you progress in your quest to be an excellent leader. And because you tell a friend and because you write a review, and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcasts. You continue to give 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 this soon. Can't wait.