Robert Kaplan: What to Ask the Person in the Mirror - May 8, 2012

ladies and gentlemen good evening I'm Krusty Canberra the director of the Kansas City Public Library it is a pleasure to welcome you here to the library tonight here Robert Kaplan a native son who's made good and done good I also want to thank a sponsor who wishes to remain unknown a great philanthropist of Kansas City who sponsored our reception and I mentioned that even though she wishes it wishes to remain unknown to point out that we have many needs at the Kansas City Public Library for support and it was it was very nice of this person to to support our reception tonight and it's why it's a particularly nice reception so thank you but tonight we have a great program and as I said we have a native son I grew up in Prairie Village went to Shawnee Mission which tells you that that you you know you can't Kansas Citians can get out and about because he's gone on to to a great career he was a he was a partner at peat Marwick and and and Mitchell here in Kansas City went to work for a small boutique investment house called Goldman Sachs a small joke there and I became that the co ahead of their investment banking division I was head of their corporate finance department head of their asia-pacific investment banking and obviously had a very distinguished career in investment banking but he's done a lot more than that he is teaching currently at the Harvard Business School that's a small boutique University in Boston and he's co-chaired the founding co-chair the Harvard neuro Discovery Center Advisory Board co-chairman of the board a project of on ALS he's been on board of the Harvard Medical School the Jewish Theological Seminary the governor of Kansas the then governor of Kansas now the head of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius appointed him a member of the Kansas Health Care Policy Authority board he's been on the board of State Street Corporation which is of course one of Kansas City's biggest employers and proved that knows how to clean up in this business he was a 15 year board member of Bed Bath & Beyond sorry for that joke in in his excellent book what to ask the person in the mirror about leadership I find as someone as someone who's tried out a few forms of leadership myself that the good news is that you can expect to spend a large part of your time to quote Robert Kaplan confused discouraged and unsure I've spent the last 12 years actually in that state which means that when I finally get to diagnosis regrouping and moving forward the next the next stage I will have had a lot of experience he talks about asking the right questions and I think in my own experience in in leadership that's exactly yeah that's the the core inquiry and and asking questions you don't know all the answers and and and so so finding out the the right questions is how ultimately to find out the the right answers and then he talks about vision and he uses as one of his examples of vision Ewing Kauffman Ewing Kauffman when he bought the Royals announced in Kansas City that in nineteen nineteen seventy said 1969 that within five years we would have a championship team well it took a little bit longer it took us ten years to get into the championships in fifteen years to win one and but but that kind of vision is that kind of vision that kind of commitment is exactly right and what Robert Kaplan's excellent book is about and so we're bringing him back to Kansas City next time to become an advisor to the current management of the Royals ladies and gentleman Robert Kaplan Thank You frogs we are associated and and also and thank you to the anonymous donor of the reception tonight her also appreciate that and it's great to be here in Kansas City so I grew up here I went to the University Kansas as was mentioned I worked at peat Marwick at the Commerce building just not that far from here but I spent most of my professional career at Goldman Sachs that dreaded firm that so highly talked about right now but I ran businesses there for 22 years and my last job was vice chairman of the firm and I oversaw all the client businesses investment banking globally and investment management globally so I took a leave of absence in the fall of 2005 and to be an instructor at Harvard Business School left my office at the firm and it's an arrangement I worked out with my boss at the time who was the CEO the firm that I would come back after three months and I and I decided to go ahead if I ever had the guts to leave and get out of Wall Street I decided this was a great time to do it this is back in 2005 and I stayed there as an instructor thinking I might run another business and what happened in you remember in 2007 and eight during the financial crisis the endowment of Harvard as was been well reported had its problems and so the president University asked me to go there and help fix it and work through it for three months but I wound up living there for about a year and a half and running it for a year and a half and so that was my detour and I went back to teach and now I'ma be actually been I'm now a professor there and have now have a permanent appointment to be a professor and and so I've turned out I didn't expect to be an academic I didn't expect certainly didn't expect to write a book I did not expect to teach but it's turned out to be a fabulous thing for me to do except I had to relearn a whole new or new learn a new a whole new set of skills but I work with as many companies today as I ever have in some more but I work with them much more now on strategy leadership issues and and other sensitive topics that they don't have it where people running businesses have nobody to talk to and I spend most of my days talking to people about those kinds of issues now and I teach a leader I teach three leadership classes one is a first year required leadership at Harvard Business School called lead and then I teach a spring course called leadership and corporate accountability which is about governance ethics also required course for all first years and then I teach the third course called the authentic leader which is the most touchy-feely course probably at Harvard Business School which is about self-discovery and this this course was innovated by and and come up with by the former CEO of Medtronic in Minneapolis bill George who's become a great friend and I met through the because he's on the board of Goldman Sachs and that's how I met him and so we teach that together and I'm writing a second book right now called reaching your potential which is really based on what I've been doing with people the last 15 years in that area trying to understand themselves and reach their potential but the reason I wrote this book even though I didn't intend to I first wrote an article in Harvard Business Review about four years ago on this subject and and on both subjects what tasks the person the mirror and reaching your potential and I thought okay I said everything I had to say and I'm certainly not capable of writing a book and I don't want to write a book but after going through the last five or six years and all the pain and suffering I had my own pain and suffering in my own career but after having seen all the pain and suffering and confusion of the last five or six years I decided you know what maybe it doesn't make sense to write a book about some of these experiences so that's what I put in this book and what I've learned is and by the way I'm going to talk for about 20-30 minutes and then we've talked about anything you want to talk about including stock market which is I spent half my life on but but what I've learned from the last five or six years and in my own career over 22 years of Goldman Sachs is leadership really isn't about having all the answers and it took me about 15 years of getting my brains beat in before I they realize that and and I finally realized that unless I start asking questions I'm gonna be in a lot of trouble I and I'll explain that in a moment and the most important thing that I've learned I'd say over the last 2025 years is not how to answer a question it's how instead how to frame a question and that took me a very very very long time to learn how to do when I say how to frame a question how to figure out what's the burning issue here what's bothering me what's the problem in this business how to frame it and then how to ask it in a way that we can have a discussion and get from here to here to a solution and that any of you run businesses know exactly what I'm talking about but the problem I've found is a lot of if I did if I did a poll here and asked each of you to define what leadership is of a hundred people I'd get a hundred different answers none of us know none of us know and the truth is we all have our own conceptions based on our own backgrounds idiosyncrasies and watching others what we think a leader does we think it's what we see on television we think it's these perfect people who are very charming and they seem to always know never uh-uh doesn't work that way and I know what a lot of these leaders have been advisor to many of these leaders and it turns out that the great leaders are people who have the wherewithal to stop reflect step back and ask questions when they're in trouble and there every leader I've ever met is in trouble at some point or feels like doing a lousy job or can't understand why they're no good at their job and everybody else has it so much easier than they do haven't met one yet and I've worked with a lot of the great well people I think extremely highly of who've run great companies and so what I've learned is what makes this between a good leader or a mediocre leader and a great leader is the ability to step back and ask a question and be confident enough to ask a question so what I'm going to do is I'm going to zip through here and literally zip and I'm going to go through four or five examples there's only seven or eight questions in this book okay and I'm gonna end there and if you were expecting a sophisticated presentation about a highfalutin very sophisticated questions yang gonna get it here because these are brutally brutally basic and if you could answer or if you could ask them regularly and frame them you would be super man or woman seriously it is hard to do this despite how basic it is and that and I'm going to go it's go through what I mean and here's the first one and I took these pictures off Google and it turns out anybody can do it and so as my nephew in the back has explained to me but I have to take me a while to get that too but here's the the fundamental the the most important question if you're running an operation or you're running an enterprise of any kind nonprofit the most important thing is is what's your vision now I used to he remember you remember when George the first George Bush was president so he rolled up and they ceased talking jokingly about the vision thing I must admit when I heard that I never knew what they're talking about and and I and I worked in a business where the CEO used to be pressed by everybody saying what's your vision and he had to come up with a vision and all I ever thought when I heard that was I'm glad I'm not CEO you know because I don't know what they're talking about Circe I don't know what they're talking about what is a vision I haven't a clue what it is it took me a number of years to figure it out when I got in a job and here's what it is and by the way everyone in this room has a vision for what you're doing you may not think you do but I assure you and if I was going to be obnoxious I'd get you which I won't be I would get you to take out a pen and write down your vision but let me explain what it is a vision is your aspiration your dream everyone in this room has a dream and if you're running any kind of enterprise or you're running your family you have a dream you know Martin Luther King described a dream Ewing Kauffman as crosby said he had a dream Oh of you Crosby has a dream for this library I am sure of that an aspiration what do I what is the dream it's how I'm going how am I going to add value to others how do I add value in this business or this nonprofit how does the library add value how are we gonna add value or to my family second it has to be realistic based on what distinctive competence what is it that we do well and I got to tell you every business or a leader that is successful for a sustainable period of time is able to articulate a clear vision a clear aspiration about what they're trying to do which is again two things impact on others how we're going to make a positive impact on others if we run if it avis Car Rental or if it's this library or if it's Goldman's you name it and when businesses get away from that and they start thinking it's about them or how to make money as we've seen for the financial crisis that's when they get in a lot of trouble how do you add value to others if you add value to others and you build a distinctive competence you'll figure out a way to make money okay this is also true okay so this is also true if you're president United States you have to articulate a vision for the country and whether we think about it or not we know it when a leaders not articulating a clear vision Barak Obama I will just say it I voted for him so I can say what I'm about to say he was a vision in my opinion a visionary candidate and you would say what was the vision to me the vision was not it wasn't he said change it was unification there's no black America there's no white America there's no rich America there's no poor America there's just the United States of America remember that speech most famous speech he ever gave we'd forget it now it was about unification we can pull together and solve our problems if you ask me now what's his vision as president and I've been there to Washington to visit and I visited there and said and I've written some things for them I don't know what their vision is I really don't I've seen some trial balloons latest one is an economy built to last you heard that one recently what's their vision for the country and when you don't articulate a vision even as president nighted states other people attribute a vision to you he's a socialist he's uh you know because people don't know what you want this is true for every leader if you're running a small business big business President of the United States and so the number one thing I try to do with business leaders and anybody trying to do an enterprise is say what's the vision and people come to me with problems literally every day and they always they never come to me to say I'm having trouble with my vision the hallways having problems and say I'm having trouble with I think I need to fire five of my people because they we can't agree or I think I think I'm a lousy manager because I'm having this this and this and this problem and the normal L ask what's the vision for your business and this is what and I'll say what's the vision well and they'll show me their annual report and here that's not the vision what's how you gonna add value based on what distinctive competence and sometimes ironically very successful leaders can't clearly articulate it or they could five and ten years ago but the world changed and that's the problem with visions they must be updated okay now why is this so important if you're a leader you've got to not only be able to write yours down that's step one but you've got to over communicate it it's not enough to have one you've got to express it you got an organization with people think think how powerful it is think of the great companies and great organizations out there they have a leader that articulates a very clear vision that is well understood people talk about Jack Welch and they say good things and bad things but I'll tell you one thing that I am certain about about Jack Welch talk about a clear vision clear as a bell and he changed it every four or five years but very clear on what they were trying to do and he communicated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again now some people say to me well how often you want me to communicate this well and and I'll get to this in a moment because I'm talking about priorities and I normally say you should you you should communicate it enough so that your people begin to mock you and I say that kiddingly but I'm really not kidding they need to know they got it we got it we got it like we got it okay but the power of articulating a clear vision is it tells people what you want and when you're not there which you almost never are when they're out with a customer or a client or whatever they have a general idea but they don't know what to do they think okay what is our vision what are we trying to do we're trying to add this kind of value to clients based on this distinctive competence therefore in this situation I probably I don't know what to do but I probably should do this okay there's a client want the customer wants to return a good they bought I don't know what we have policies but I don't know if I should take this back in this case but they understand here's what we're trying to do to add value to customers okay I'll take it back I'm making I'm gonna make a decision but it's a powerful thing and it's the reason many businesses get in trouble and some people I teach every owner president class at Harvard Business School so I teach MBAs but I teach executives we get about a thousand a year and there's always a few executives that raise their hand on this vision thing and they say money that's the vision what a stupid question it's to make money and I'll say okay that's fine here's the issue people in an organization including the leader need a reason to jump out of bed in the morning and my experience is money get you to jump out of bed maybe once a couple of times you have to keep reminding yourself I'm making a lot of money we're making but no people run out of gas they run out of steam if it's money if it's about how to value out add value to somebody else we're going to be the best we're gonna be number one we're gonna be the highest quality you know that gets people excited you know I teach at Harvard Business School I want to be the best professor at Harvard it's not going to happen but I want to be the but I'd like it to be I'm working at it I want to be the best professor there when I was at Goldman Sachs I want everything I want put ourselves in the shoes of the client and I want to decide what you would do if you were the client and that's the advice we oughtta give every single and people get that and that gets people excited and and so this woods helps build a sustainable business we'll come back to Goldman Sachs because some of us will what happened to Goldman Sachs so they don't seem to say that about it but we'll talk about that later okay vision is not enough though so you start with a vision second thing you got to do you got to break it down into specific priorities and I mean specific tasks we need to be great at to achieve the vision okay so for example in the firm I was in if we really want to if you really want to be great at adding value to clients and put yourself in the shoes of the client decide what you would do if you were them it's not enough to do that you have to have great product expertise you have to have build strong relationships with them which means you have to understand their needs for example those are two I would call those priorities third thing we need to attract and retain superb people because clients don't want to really take advice from people they don't think highly of so those are three big priorities I got them on my wall and I'm and everything I do is focused on trying to focus and deliver those priorities now it's not that I don't have ten other things on my to-do list but the reason I mention this most people have things they're trying to do but they have they might have seven or eight or nine or ten and here's the issue if you have ten priorities I would argue that's the same as having zero you have no priorities priorities means you have to choose the top three or four now some people say gee maybe should be able to choose six or seven I don't think so I just wrote a case on and I used to cover Macy's for many years Macy's the department store and I wrote a case on Terry longer and I spent a lot of time with Terry longer and Macy's was kind of a sleepy and I could just say this and he would say at a sleepy department store for many years it is now run I think I'm amazed how well Terry longer and runs Macy's today but he's he doesn't even have three priorities we've talked about he's got one or two and why does he because got 400,000 employees I got nine hundred stores and they can't do anything in that kind of scale unless you pick one or two things because the organization can't implement more than one or two priorities and then they by the way he calls himself chief customer officer not chief executive officer so that tells you a lot about what they're trying to do but I would say to you what I try to do a lot with business people or if you're trying to run an enterprise yourself or if you're running just a small a business or you're covering customers can you pick your top three priorities that's a question these are all questions what's your vision how do you gonna add value what is your distinctive competence second question what are your top three priorities the top three now some people can answer like that and some people may have to go back for three months and interview customers interview their people think about changes in the industry and say you know what these used to be our three priorities but these aren't the right three priorities anymore the world has changed or our customer needs have changed and I work a lot in the technology industry and biotech you talk about where priorities need to change they change a lot because the world is changing and competitive and the dependent of changes if you did nothing from this talk and we just stopped here and all you did if you're running a business or an enterprise or even your own personal portfolio said what's my vision and what are my top three priorities and and I'm gonna focus on those three priorities you would immediately I would argue go from being this level of leader to this level of leader and we don't even need to talk anymore that's enough okay but and by the way those are simple things everybody here could do them but it's I found this one is really hard because you have to choose for example I can't be lowest cost lowest price highest quality fastest delivery best servus why does the and no those things don't go together got to choose which do you want to be you have to choose and this is where people when they actually go to write these down this way I'm a big fan write it down they realize they don't know because it forces them to make a trade-off would I rather be I want to attract and retain great people but I can't pay we've got to be very careful on how much we pay all right fine which is it gonna you know you have to make these choices all right now there's one other thing once you've did that on the on the priorities same thing do you over communicate them can you write them down you got to over communicate them so your people could repeat them back think how powerful this is if you're managing people if they could repeat back to you your vision and this includes your assistant by the way your assistant ought to know your vision and priorities what a waste if he or she doesn't and if you can do that though all of a sudden you've that's a powerful thing if your customers know your vision and priorities think what a powerful thing that is enormous ly powerful then there's a third thing how do you spend your time now we get to people always say to me yeah I was trouble its struggle with how to manage my time any advice on how I should manage my time yes I do pick you I had you have one piece of advice pick your top three priorities it's not that people all of us are incapable of managing our time although some of us are a little ad D including me but it's that we haven't decided what our three or four top priorities are and I would argue you need to have a goal of 70% of your time should be spent on your top three or four priorities simple as that that is brutally hard to do why because people are coming at you all the time asking for your time and the right answer most of the time is no you know the answer most of the time is no and most of us don't say no because we haven't decided what our top priorities are and we don't and we don't want to say no and also it's very flattering when somebody comes and asks for your time but here's the problem and what I say to exact it is in particular is pretend it's money pretend I substituted the word money for time okay so pick a large sum of money that you thinks of to you that is big and instead of saying time I said how do you spend your money would you really say oh I don't know I would you would you do - how'd you spend your time today or this week I don't know I don't have that I don't remember well you just spent a big chunk of time substitute money uh why don't we remember I know somebody came in they asked for some of that he gave it to him I maybe I should enough I don't think you'd say that no you would not say that at all you would analyze it you would scrutinize it you would write and the irony is your time is more valuable for most people if you're a leader then your money so what the heck are you doing spending your time this way and so when you say that to people they realize it's the most valuable asset you have as a leader he's your time it is and in it and by the way it's gone once you spend it's like airplane seats once the flight takes off it's gone you ain't going to get it back and you've got to learn to use it and by the way your people the time of your people if you haven't articulated a clear vision with clear priorities they don't know what they're supposed to do and I assure you they're wasting their time so do that ask this question for yourself and it's a good exercise do it for your people most meetings in business are a waste of time okay they are the terrible okay whatever except use this meeting to articulate your vision spend five minutes it doesn't take more than that what are the vision here that just remind people here's our vision here the top three priorities and get them to do this assignment that is not a waste of time and that's something that's a good use I think in these means okay now I'm going to go through a couple others and we're going to talk about questions once you've done those three things then we get then you're ready to coach people okay and so there's the obvious part of business where you lay out a vision and priorities and you coach people against the vision and the priorities okay but you could see if you're not clear on the vision and priorities ie they don't know what you want it's pretty tough for them to do what you want if they don't know what you want and so a lot of coaching is really trying to say to people we said we want to do this and you coach people against skills they need to develop and actions they need to take to achieve the vision and priorities it's not an amorphous you need to improve these skills it's relative to the key tasks that we're trying to do well okay and that's why plot of people who were in business are lousy coaches is a they don't make it skill based their discussion and they don't relate it back to the vision and the priorities they're not specific and they're it's not specific and actionable so that so we can work with people and we do work with people in the firm I was in we worked people on coaching that's one issue let me get to the second issue the bigger issue is and I just did I just did a thing for all the university Dean's that as I did a training thing for all university days we had a room there and I asked how many of you are a coach and most of the hands went up then I asked how many of you have a coach none of the hands go up so I figured I didn't ask it not happens sometimes in a skit clearly I'm learning so I say okay I didn't ask that right how many of you do not have a coach all the hands go up and for those of you who are leaders how many of you here have a coach and how many of you here do not have a coach okay and some of you may not think you're supposed to have a coach or you've been fine but for business people it's amazing how many leaders will say I don't have a coach and this is one thing I have to work with people on there's one thing there's a misconception about what coaching is there's a difference between coaching and mentoring right they tend to get used interchangeably they're not the same mentoring means I come and tell you a story you give me advice based on the story your advice is only as good as the story if I have blind spots which I do all of us do you're gonna tell me you're gonna give me advice but there's a problem with the way I tell you the story because I don't may not see myself clearly and this is why people are so shocked at the end of the year and I've seen this with a number of leaders where my mentor tells me I'm doing a great job at this my mentor disagrees with you I don't agree with this feedback I'm getting well the mentor has no idea because the mentor doesn't observe you coaching requires observation direct observation that's the difference in coaching and mentoring it's not about responding to a story you need to get coaching from people who actually observe you so then the question comes who observes you if you're very senior it's not there's nobody above you it's certainly not people on your board they see you in the board meeting I'm sure you're very charming in those people who are CEOs here are very charming and board meetings but the people who observe you or your subordinates and what you have to get people to do is get in the habit of getting coaching from their subordinates and a lot of them say to me I can't do that unless was to do that you don't do that that's some very awkward I mean that's an unrealistic suggestion no you had the bet that's what outstanding leaders do they get advice from their subordinates I did it for years you have to sit with them one on one though and you have to ask can you give me one thing I need to improve on and they will eventually give it to you it will be that reluctantly it will be devastating it'll be devastating because you'll know it's true it's it's pretty fundamental you'll know everybody thinks it after they leave and they'll regret the second they tell you okay you'll call home and you'll say am I really like this and they'll say on the other end yeah that does sound like you and you'll know that you need to work on it but the biggest fear that leaders have and we talked about this in presidents you know the bubble the biggest danger that leaders have and I talk to them about constantly is isolation for those of you who are leaders it's the biggest danger you have especially if you're an entrepreneur okay you are isolated people do not they're thinking that believe me they know your strengths and weaknesses and they know the problems with the business and they're dying to tell you or they're dying to tell their friends or if you ever go by a restaurant here downtown if your office is downtown and some of the people who work for you or sitting there laughing you know they haven't dinner they're gonna drink and they're laughing about some you wonder what they're laughing about telling stories about you and the business crew you know when you do this this and this and your job is to ask and if you do it it's an impressive thing to people it doesn't make you look weak it makes the leader look strong and this is a criticism we make of leaders all the time jido why isn't he surrounded by more businesspeople why doesn't he ask advise he doesn't listen you know you've got to do that and what happens I found is when you train your young people to give you advice they come in unsolicited and they warn you about things you're about to screw up okay and it saves you from making big mistakes okay so you get the idea what this is about all I'm trying to get leaders to do do you articulate a vision what is it do you what are your top three priorities and keep these questions on your wall how do I spend my time does it match my top priorities am i getting coaching when's the last time I got coaching and normally the way problems for leaders manifest themselves is basically as a dull headache you got a problem you feel lousy the business is doing lousy or it's not doing as well and you don't unfortunately on businesses once it shows up in the results you're way late okay sometimes it's too late by that point to fix it and so but you can tell something's wrong and so this is a little bit almost a dashboard or checklist of questions to say when's the last time I saw it from some of my subordinates get out there you know and ask these questions and it helps keep people out of trouble now let me just as if through with the other questions or i'ma stop so we can ask questions I talk a lot about succession planning in big companies and even small companies this is a big deal and it's not because you it's not because you know when we talk about Warren Buffett there's a constant discussion of does he have a successor that's a good thing it's a good exercise but for me it's important as you build the business you need to pick people you don't have to anoint them or tell them who could take your place because the reason I want people to do it is because you'll build a stronger business it gives you people to delegate to when you have a mismatch between your time and your priorities who do you delegate to those things that you shouldn't be spending time on delegate them to your subordinates test people out if you don't do these things and I'm not going to talk about this tonight I've never met anybody who is about and that could thinks they're a bottleneck okay then nobody thinks they're a bottleneck but if you're not clear on your vision and priorities and you don't coach people I'm certain you're a bottleneck because people cannot possibly make a decision on their own because they don't know what you want they've got to check with you and you're creating and by the way some people who run businesses love it that way because it makes them feel important you know it's an insecurity thing and that's a whole other discussion but it means you're a bottleneck and in this day and age as we know you can't where you got to run businesses lean and you can't have more people you know there's it's a cost to having more people than you need there's a whole series of questions on this I won't go through it tonight this is the big one the last one though that does get people in trouble and I call it evaluation but the basely for years I've been doing class twenty years with businesses and and working in my own business and others you got to look at your enterprise by the way this is true in the way you manage your personal finances the way you manage your anything you do given how the world has changed does it still make sense this is the hardest question I found for leaders to answer because it requires getting some perspective and the best way I know how to answer it is pretend it's a mental device pretend you have a clean sheet of paper we're starting from scratch is this really the way you'd invest your money really really is this given based on your vision and your top priorities is this really what you would do is this really the way you would run this company is this the really the type of people do we have the right kind of people in this company or we even seated in the right way why are we doing things this way is because we've always done them but does it still make sense the leaders got to ask this question I work with lots of leaders and they say to me Rob I cannot ask that question in this business it will freak people out it will scare them and what I learn from meeting people in their firm or their company is the opposite what's freaking your people out is they're afraid you're not asking this question believe me they're on the front lines they know things are screwed up their fear is that you don't know and that you're afraid to make changes so we so the business can get back on track leaders think the people are afraid for them to inquire because they don't want to change things it's the opposite believe me you're young people if you run a business they want they praying that you're asking these questions because they want to work here for the next 15 20 years and they're afraid that you're not asking that these questions that you're isolated and the questions that you end up in business normally are we recruiting the right people does the compensation still make sense we want to promote teamwork in this business do we pay for teamwork a lot of people don't they pay just for production but we want more teamwork well maybe you need to think about the compensation are you promoting the right people are you promoting people based on the things you believe in or we're promoting people the way we always did it just doesn't fit the business anymore all these factors leader has at their disposal and people are hate to ask this question it's a very traumatic thing me and I found even for myself you the business and I built several at my firm and then you're so close to it I can't stand to change it I'm comfortable so what I used to do is take some of those successors take three or four up-and-coming young people give them this assignment it was painful the first time I did it but I basically said you go look if we're running this business with a clean sheet of paper how would we do it and no sacred cows go off for a month in addition your j-job come back with recommendations I may not agree with everything you recommend but I want to hear it and invariably you'll get fabulous recommendations and some of the best changes that got me from being kept me from being killed and allowed me to continue my career came from these little task forces are created basically let's look at it with a clean sheet of paper but this could apply to you in anything you're doing you've got to ask this question got to ask this question I won't go through role models that was a good little picture I think anyhow so role model but this is a big thing for people who get promoted up and they forget they go from being a junior person to a senior person and they they realize they have to people are watching you they're all as a leader you know as a parent people are watching you they're watching every move you make as a leader they're watching every move you make you know I don't they don't look like they're watching because never even looking at you but they're watching every move you make they're particularly watching what you do when you're under pressure and within particular they particularly watch you closely when you make a mistake they want to see how you react when you screw up you blame someone else do you act like you weren't involved do you like that you like to stack you know like I don't even know how that happened you act like you didn't weren't even there you know you're talking to third person all of a sudden like you weren't even involved they watch that they notice it and they will mimic you and if you behave in a way that is uncooperative or you blame others they'll learn that the bill they learned the lesson alright they learn to cover their Fannie's because that's what you do and so I've seen cultures of companies where you do everything right except the leader under pressure 99% of the time the leader does all the right things but irrelevant people care about what you do under pressure when you've screwed up better yet when they've screwed up and you have to take the hit for it we're gonna do you're gonna stand up maybe cover for them or no or do you run for the cut run for the hills means a lot to your people so I talked to a lot two leaders and I can do this because Harvard Business School is like Switzerland you know I talked to leaders who run companies about what creates pressure for them and why can't they stand up under pressure and this is a deeper conversation which has to do with their own idiosyncrasies anxieties and securities but it comes out when you're a leader all right I won't go through this so let me stop there you get the idea but you know leadership is not about having all the answers it's about asking the right questions and the corollary to all this and this is the next book I'm writing right now is so I wrote this book and it's about all the things you should do as a leader lots of people who've run businesses have read it great all good there's one little problem that it doesn't address why can't I do it okay and what I mean by why can't I do it okay you want me to coach people I just can't confront people I can't I don't know why I can't I just can't okay and so one of the things we work a lot at Harvard in this class the authentic leader is okay we've already taught you all the skills you need to do that's a big that's a huge job to teach leaders and for all of us as leaders to learn the skills then why am i afraid why am I so scared you know why why can't I make that move that I know I'd be good for me to make why can't I do it and this borders on psychiatry or psychology without a license but it's then it's the second thing which we can talk more about you've got to understand yourself to be a leader the most important person you're gonna manage is you and that means you have to understand your life story as silly as that sounds like my life story my life story don't talk to me about my life story really do you could you write down your own life story just this the facts and what is the failure narrative out of that story there's a spin on every story so there's the out of every story in your life there's a there's a signifi crosby told mine Rob left Kansas and became this and then you got this and this and this my mom is sitting there and she's going yeah that's it's it's great and that's the hero's story so then there could be there's but the problem is that's not the story in my head and it's not the story in your head as a leader you got another story in your head or variations of it which I'd call the failure or a self-doubt story you know there was that time when I tried out for the baseball team when I was 12 I mean I did I never forgot that and I never didn't make the team and then I had this traumatic experience then I was kind of awkward as a kid my clothes were too big I sweated a lot when I went to parties you know talking to girls I'm sweaty you ever see those sweaty kids I used to ask my dad you know why do I switch these it's healthy to sweat but you know I'd say but it's it's it's very awkward dad and so there's all these things in your story that gets you to and when you get they don't come out until later when it's time you're on the big stage I used to have a petrified to talk in front of a thousand people and I had to do it a lot so I turned down getting promoted to head of Investment Banking twice and told my boss who was Hank Paulson was about ready to kill me and so the way they promoted me to head of Investment Banking is they just brought me in one day and they said congratulations you're a head of Investment Banking they learned don't even ask this knucklehead just tell him because I was afraid I couldn't say it I was afraid to speak in front of a group of a thousand people I know if I had a bank he not have to do that I didn't want to do it was scared to even know why okay the point of this is to be a leader you got to understand yourself a little bit it's worth spending time on that so let me stop that's a little snippet let's go to questions you

Channel: The Kansas City Public Library

Views: 19,208

Keywords: Robert Kaplan, author, business, leadership, Kansas City Public Library

Id: kvSg3HkB94k

Length: 45min 43sec (2743 seconds)

Published: Thu May 17 2012