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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."

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Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12  https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12

Ryan Petersen is the CEO and Founder of Flexport. Prior to starting Flexport to fix the user experience in global trade, Ryan was co-founder and CEO of ImportGenius.com, a data-as-a-service business for global shipping. Flexport hit a $3.2 Billion valuation after $1 billion investment led by SoftBank.

Notes:

• Excellence =
  • Curiosity - "It's a more fun way to live."
  • Learners
  • Appreciative
  • Have fun
  • "It doesn't have to be boring."
• The importance of writing as a leader:
  • "I write a lot of essays. Some are published. Some aren't."
• Communication:
  • "It's a huge part of the job of a leader."
  • For investor updates... "It's good practice."
    • Try to use humor, learn something new, don't be boring, get people "pumped up"
• Raising money from investors:
  • "It's like your love life. You have to earn it. There are no shortcuts. You need to have a business that doesn't need them."
    • "We built a track record over the 15 years prior to raising money."
  • Masayoshi Son is the CEO of Softbank. He is a Japanese billionaire technology entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. Ryan met with him and earned a $1 Billion investment... Making Flexport worth $3.2 Billion.
  • Flexport became the fastest growing company in Silicon Valley.
  • Ryan wrote an essay about raising a lot of money so that they could ride out a "100 year storm."
  • How was he able to raise so much?
    • "Don't do an auction. I said, 'I'm only talking to you.' Create a win-win. See the world through their eyes."
  • Masa had written a 300 year vision. Ryan said, "The audacity to have a 300 year vision, it just resonated with me."
    • "One of our core values is to play the long game."
• Flexport enables all parties to move large product around the world. It was born out of Ryan discovering the pain of shipping.
• There is a lack of technology with freight forwarders. There was no culture of customer satisfaction.
  • There was high friction - "We counted 984 steps to get a product shipped."
• Paul Graham, one of the greatest investors of all time and founder of Y-Combinator said this about Ryan Petersen:
  • Ryan is what I call an armor-piercing shell: a founder who keeps going through obstacles that would make other people give up. But he's not just determined. He sees things other people don't see. The freight business is both huge and very backward, and yet who of all the thousands of people starting startups noticed? Ryan Petersen."
• By 2016, Flexport was serving 700 clients across 64 countries. Tech Crunch described it as the unsexiest trillion-dollar startup.
  • Flexport has grown to 1,800 employees across 14 offices and 6 warehouses, and 10,000 clients.
• His goal:
  • "Drive velocity: You need speed in the right direction. Velocity is the key to success. That's culture ultimately."
• The two forms of bureaucracy:
  • Too many rules, order
  • No rules, no process, chaos
• Need to find the balance between the two
• "Transparency helps get people aligned."
• Doing an open Slack Q&A with all employees -- Helps with transparency.
• What Ryan looks for when hiring a leader? And why Ryan admires Parker Conrad from Zenefits:
  • He's "hungry, curious, has a chip on his shoulder, determined, ambitious, and solves complex problems."
• The profession of sales:
  • It's "one of the most misunderstood professions. It's part of all jobs. You have to persuade, create value."
  • "Sales is about creating value for others. Create win-wins. So much is repeat games. Almost nothing is a one time transaction."
• Obsession with company culture:
  • "When I reach out to top execs, they always take the call if I'm asking about culture."
• The secret to the tech industry:
  • Everyone is willing to share tools, mindset, and lessons learned with one another. It's "normal to pick up the phone and ask."
• How did becoming a dad change him?
  • "It's exhausting. Babies are fragile."
• Generalists vs. Specialists?
  • The world needs more generalists. "Generalists are under-valued. Leaders need to be well-rounded and cross over into multiple disciplines."
• Has has Ryan learned to speak 6 languages?
  • Read books, make flash cards, read the newspaper, hire a tutor... "You have to experience pain to learn. You have to like the pain."
• Life/Career Advice:
  • Get out of student debt
  • Read books. Your life will be different in 5 years based on the books you read. "Most people don't read books."
  • Success compounds - Add up a lot of little wins

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more...

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12

Dustyn Kim is the Chief Revenue Officer at Artsy. Artsy is used by art lovers and collectors to discover, learn about, and buy art. Prior to working at Artsy, Dustyn was a senior executive at LexisNexis. While at LexisNexis, she was my boss! She is a rare combination of highly respected, extremely well-liked, and typically the smartest person of every room she walks in. I loved working for her.

Notes:

• Excellence = Authenticity and team building. "A leader should be focused on building great teams."
• What Dustyn learned from one of her favorite bosses, Kumsal Bayazit (the CEO of Elsevier)
  • "She was inspiring and very human. Work and life go hand in hand."
• "When I got a senior leadership role, I didn't want a command and control organization."
• What she learned from Sebastian at Artsy:
  • "He said to me, 'I advise, you decide.' That empowered me and gave me ownership of my decisions."
  • It's critical to empower others
• What are must-have qualities in a leader?
  • Empathy - EQ + IQ
  • Communication skill - Set the vision and communicate that effectively to you team
  • Collaboration - Lead through influence. Cross team collaboration is key to getting things done.
• How to collaborate better?
  • "Map out the key people you need to know and understand their goals."
• Starting early:
  • "When I was 15, my dad woke me up and told me he was taking me to Wall Street for my first internship."
• How to lead as a parent for you children?
  • "I try to introduce them to as much as possible."
  • "My job is to help you figure out what you love doing, but you have to show up and do the work."
• Advice for women leaders?
  • "I don't love the advice from Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In." It's really hard to have a full time job and travel a lot if you want to build a family. It's okay to slow down at times for your family.
  • "Kumsal wanted me to go for a big promotion when I had just given birth to Mason. I didn't want to travel the world and be gone all the time. It's okay to not go for the big job all the time."
• Advice for new managers:
  • Avoid the desire to micro manage
  • Know that there are lots of different paths to success
  • Don't expect to know everything
  • A lot of new managers are too nice
    • You need to give feedback
• How to be both respected and liked?
  • Focus on the challenge at hand - "What's the plan? What's the goal?"
  • "Then build the narrative and ask the team, what do you think?"
• "It didn't work for me to try and act like a guy. I had to be myself."
• Confidence is very important. That comes from being prepared and knowing your stuff.
• A tangible takeaway for how to find your voice in a meeting:
  • "In meetings, when I was younger, I would turn bright red when speaking. A trick I had to implement was, 'say something very early in the meeting.' Just so that too much time passes without me saying anything."
• Career/Life Advice:
  • Stand out -- Be excellent at your current role. Make sure others know they can count on you to do great work.
  • Speak up -- Don't expect others to read your mind. TELL THEM what you want in your career. Make sure people know what you want to do. Give them the opportunity to help you get there...
  • Have a goal, but be flexible on your path to achieving it

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more...

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12

https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12

Adam Bryant interviewed more than 500 CEOs for “Corner Office,” a series on leadership that he created in 2009. Adam is the author of three books based on the themes that have emerged from his interviews and consulting work. His new book is THE CEO Test: Master the Challenges that Make or Break All Leaders.

Notes:

• Interview style - Instead of asking them about strategies and industry trends, Adam focuses on timeless questions (how they were influenced by parents, lessons from early years in their careers, what they look for when making bets on people to invest in) about the important leadership lessons that CEOs had learned…
• Some questions he likes to ask:
  • How do you hire? What questions do you ask?
  • Describe yourself in one word...
  • Work to get around the polished façade
  • What animal would you be and why?
  • Tony Hsieh would ask, "On a scale of 1-10, how weird are you?"
• Some additional interviewing tactics:
  • The CEO has the interviewee drive his or her car. Monitors how they react in a different vehicle, in a new city
  • Sharing meals
  • "Put the mosaic of what a person is like as a human being" -- not just interviewing for a job
• The Dinner Party game:
  • "If you could only ask a job candidate one question, what would you ask?"
• Learn about failure - Id you desire humility, learn about their failures, learnings, and lessons of life
• Ownership - The 3 most beautiful words: "I'm on it."
• Every employee needs to write a playbook to how they'd do the job... They need to take ownership.
• If you were an animal, what would you be?
  • Adam: "A Hawk. Hover at high altitude, when they figure out what they want, they go get it."
• Question: What qualities of your parents do you like the most and the least?
  • Ask that if you really want to go deep -- This forces the candidate to get real. "We're fooling ourselves if we think we can escape our parents."
• Process to ask questions:
  • Think, "I want to cut a record with you." -- Have the desire to make something new with the person.
• His premise at the New York Times: "What if I sat down with CEOs and never asked them about their companies?"
• Questions: What were you like as a kid? What were your parents like? How have your parents impacted your leadership style? What drives you?
  • "I like to see them in the moment of learning about themselves."
  • "Eye contact is the 5 G of communication."
• Two tracking - Know where to go next AND listen intently
• Sustaining Excellence:
  • Feedback look must be strong - They must be open to it
  • Recognize patterns
  • Take action
  • Learn new things
  • Be self-aware
  • Be humble
  • Need to ask, "What does this moment need?"
• "What is the gooey center of that candy?" A leader needs to know that about their business.
• Life advice:
  • "Play in traffic." You have to get out there and meet people and do things. Build relationships. Those help with the pivot points of your career and life.
  • Always be prepared to learn the most important lesson of your life...

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more...

Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com

Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12 https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12

Jeff Immelt served as CEO of GE for 16 years. He has been named one of the “World’s Best CEOs” three times by Barron’s. During his tenure as CEO, GE was named “America’s Most Admired Company” by Fortune magazine and one of “The World’s Most Respected Companies” in polls by Barron’s and the Financial Times. 

Notes:

• Raised in Cincinnati, OH by his father Joe and mother Donna. Both of his parents grew up in the depression. Growing up Jeff said, “I remember when my dad had a great boss, he was motivated, and when he had a lousy boss, he was neither challenged nor happy. The worst kind of boss he always used to say, was one who criticized all day long but never offered solutions.”
• GE was founded on April 15, 1892, by one of the greatest inventors in history, Thomas Edison. For most of the 20th century, GE had more patents than any other corporation.
• Jack Welch, deemphasized technology and innovation, and instead focused on management techniques like six sigma. Six Sigma is a data-driven methodology invented by a Motorola engineer named Bill Smith in 1980. It trains managers to be experts (called Black Belts) in improving business processes to reduce product defects.
• Jeff's first day as CEO of GE was September 10, 2001. On his first day, he introduced himself, via simulcast, to GE’s 300,000 employees.
• His second day as CEO was 9/11/2001. "Good leaders absorb fear. They give people a plan. You have to hold two thoughts at the same time."
• By the end of his first week as CEO, GE’s shares had dropped 20%, decreasing the company’s market capitalization by $80 billion.
• Leaders learn everyday — “I’ve always believed an important determinant of success could be found in how one answered 3 questions:
  • How fast can you learn?
  • How much can you take?
  • What will you give to those around to you?”
• The trifecta: “In your career, you meet only a handful of leaders who have the trifecta of being able to innovate, execute, and develop talent. Omar Ishrak had that."
• Jeff was the ultimate grinder, a true believer of GE, he got the “meatball” (the GE logo) tattooed on the left hip. The GE story is extremely personal for Jeff. 
• Why the "Success Theater" story about Jeff is wrong. "For seven years, 10 times per year, I had a leader from GE flown to my house with their spouse. We'd serve them dinner and then I'd spend 6+ hours with the leader asking them questions, learning about them, and saying, 'Tell me something I don't know.'"
• What Jeff learned from playing football in college at Dartmouth:
  • "When the best player is not caring about the team, nobody will get in line." The story of Harry Wilson (Russell Wilson's father, Jeff's teammate in college) and Reggie Williams.
  • "Football teams are self policing. It's a series of peer relationships. Failure is not definitive. You have to always think about the next play."
• "The best people get 100% of the work done in 80% of the time. That leaves them more time to push boundaries."
• How did Jeff get picked to be Jack Welch's successor?
  • "I was a good peer. Your peers are who promote you. Those relationships have to be earned."
• What was a Jack Welch Quarterly Business Review like?
  • "Jack was a screamer. He was spontaneous. He would like at page 7 and then jump to page 17 and ask questions."
• Front line obsession - "You have to have a passion for understanding how people work."
• Front line managers - "I told them they are more important than me. That have direct access to the customer."
• The profession of sales: why it's noble
  • Amazing sense of urgency - Never waste a minute or let it pass
  • See the company through the customers eyes - "The salesforce sets the culture... I was persistent, dogged..."
• Good leaders are systems thinkers:
  • Keep your head up and stay engaged at the same time
  • Read books, ask question... "You must be curious."
• Sustain excellence: Must be a learner. "Fred Smith (CEO of FedEX) is my leadership hero."
• Heart broken over GE: "You can still progress as a human being even when you have a broken heart. You have to keep trying. Even when the efforts don't seem to be working for you."
  • "There's value in a human being in just keep moving. Don't hide. Don't disappear."
• When you are on top, it is easy to be long on friends. When you hit bottom, there are a select few who reach out. For me, those standouts included American Express’s Ken Chenault, Delta Airlines' Richard Anderson, and especially Cisco’s John Chambers.
• Apply to be part of my Leadership Circle