Introducing The 100 CEO Project

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TRANSCRIPT

[Music]

Laurie Pillow: Welcome to the 100 CEO Project podcast. We’re looking for CEOs who've made bold moves, brave comebacks and big impact in 2020. If that's you, we want to hear your story. The year 2020, has disrupted business, rattled our definition of normal and called for change. CEOs’ responses to these ups and downs have created a new narrative around leadership. And that's what this podcast is about: successes that moved the needle, powerful insights and stories that move the heart.

Andrea Spirov: Hi, Laurie.

LP: Hi, Andrea.

AS: And welcome, everyone to our first episode of the 100 CEO Project podcast. I'm Andrea Spirov.

LP: And I’m Laurie Pillow.

AS: So the intention of this first episode was really just to welcome everybody. Laurie and I are both former journalists, and also business founders now working in the area of business communications. And we had this idea over the summer about talking to CEOs, because there's, it's been a crazy year, right?

LP: Completely. So how has your year treated you?

AS: Well, I had a products business that I pretty much had to put on the shelf. And then my other business, my consulting business, turned in a direction that I'm thrilled about and deeply committed to which I think I wouldn't have hit that pause button and really shifted over into the impact sector if this hadn't happened. So it’s been a bit of a silver lining. What about you?

LP: Yeah, I came back to the United States this year, after years and years of working in international development, in communications. So what is not working very strongly in that sector right now, or not a lot of businesses, if you will, for consultants is a perfect segue for me to bring all of those skills into businesses that want to focus on social sector.

AS: Amazing. But it's been quite a year and plenty of businesses are struggling. So I was looking at the US Census Bureau that does a small business survey. So one in 20 businesses is expected to close in the next six months. And so we're at October 21, recording this episode. Revenues are only increasing week on week for nine percent of small businesses. And then large companies are firming up their dominance. So the report is saying that those who are at least 16 years old account for around 75% of all workers in the US, a number I really wasn't aware of.

LP: Right, it's a beast. I mean, in some of the some of the leaders are out there saying that this could actually this crisis, or the consequences could move all the way into 2022.

AS: I've heard that as well. That's pretty much what's coming out, especially airlines and travel that I think travel is picking up. But the virus is also picking up. So I think that could turn around and shut things down again at any minute. Nobody really knows. That's the main thing. And so there's a big conversation that's happening right now. So how will things shape up with the global recovery? And within the United States, we have massive unemployment. And so many of these workers won't get their jobs back, they're going to need to be re-skilled. So with the election looming, everyone wants to know, will the government take on a larger role in this and when you look at the economics, I think it's businesses because they have human resources, they have the ability to take on investment dollars and their relationship to stakeholders around the world, who have a very large role to play in shaping what will happen. So they're really going to be key to just seeing what happens with the recovery.

LP: Right. And then we say, who leads these companies, right?

AS: Right. These CEOs have tremendous power through their entities, and then the people they employ as well to drive the change. And this is going to shape our world for the next few decades. So the ability for CEOs to lead powerfully and strategically is more important than ever. And that's really where we started having this conversation to shape up the podcast.

LP: For sure. So before we move into this any deeper, I think it's critical that we create some sort of working definition around what is a leader, and I can't think of anybody better to draw from then Brene Brown, who, if you haven't heard about her, she's a research professor at the University of Houston. More specifically, she's just completing a 10 year research project on leadership. And it's trying to find out what are those things inside of human beings that allow them to be good leaders. So before I get into all that, I just want to use her definition of a leader. And she says the leader is anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential. I can't wait.

AS: Very, very well said, of course, Brene Brown never disappoints. And I was actually just listening, I'm participating in the SOCAP conference this year, the social capital conference. And I was just listening like right before we got on the call to Darren Walker, who's president of the Ford Foundation. And he literally said that he thinks that we have a “crisis of leadership.” So it's up to the individual to work on themselves before they can go out and make this broader change that we need to see. He was saying it's a lack of principled - I’m reading, because I want to get his words right - “principled, consistent leadership that inspires and lifts us up to make us better.” So this is what we want to see from people looking within so they can lead without.

And the other inspiration for this piece was also over the summer, McKinsey put out a report called The CEO Moment: Leadership For A New Era. And it talked about four shifts that happened for CEOs in 2020. So the first was a 10x in acceleration of new technology adoption that was driven by changes in both mindset and priorities. So a shift in their focus.

LP: Mm hmm. The second one, was an elevation in the CEOs “to be” lists, and making that be at the same level as their “to do” lists. So for one thing, what does that mean? It means expectations changed, means they had to, or have to, show up differently as leaders. And for a lot of leaders, what that translates into is being, quote, more human. So bringing more of oneself to the role, and becoming a rock for others, and then this lead to go ahead take the third

AS: Better engagement with their stakeholders. So there's this radical shift happening right now from shareholder to stakeholder primacy. So both the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement kind of pulled this idea down from organizations like the US Business Roundtable, and put it in action in companies. The idea is that profitability can't come sustainably at the expense of all your stakeholder groups. So that could be employees, suppliers, but even society and the environment, it's just been going on for too long, people who are pursuing profits at the expense of other things. And because that hasn't, the negative impact isn't always measured. They're starting to measure it. In fact, Harvard right now has a huge project happening, where they're looking at some of these larger companies that are huge polluters. So they're scoring really high on the environmental, social and governance or ESG metrics, but then they haven't reported any of the negative impact. So some of the negative impact is actually outweighing the positive things that they're claiming that they're doing. So we're really going to, I think, over the next five years, we're really going to be getting more and more information, consumers are going to be getting more information about the products that they're buying, the places they work, and we all have this chance to vote, right. So this played out also in the pandemic, so CEOs had to make decisions, it was suddenly up to them to decide, well, is it safe for my employees to return to work, they had to look at the environmental impact of their own companies, and then also how Diversity, Equity and Inclusion really showed up in their workplaces. So, huge, huge conversations happening this year that had never really happened at this scale before.

LP: For sure. And then we look at the last point that was brought up by this McKinsey report. And again, we're coming back into the humanness of being a CEO. And the last point says, basically, that it's going to be necessary to harness the full power of being the CEO, and the peer network of CEOs. So they’ve gotta start connecting with each other and sharing and learning from each other. And I think a key word that we're gonna see this year is not so much collaboration, right. But it's cooperation.

AS: So critical. So we created this podcast to address that fourth shift in the report. Because I think well, CEOs have expanded their connections. So they've reached out to more of their peers in 2020. Those networks were probably in place already before the year started. And we've seen also a little uptick in new business formation, which means we have more CEOs joining the club, and will likely see more as startups are created out of necessity.

LP: Yeah, so we think that most people are perhaps expecting more pandemics, more upheaval, especially the probability that the uncertainties around COVID-19, or, like I said earlier, they're gonna persist into 2022. So we want to open up a microphone to those who are leading the companies. Right.

AS: Absolutely. We want to hear from more CEOs, a variety of CEOs, large companies, small companies, and different industries, just to learn what people have been dealing with how they brought their humanity to the picture. It’s because really, as a leader, I mean, it's a challenge, right? No MBA program prepared people for this year. And I think when there is a boom time, leadership might seem - it's never easy, but it must seem easier. Right?

LP: So basically, what we're asking for is that these leaders come forth, that they step up, that they lend their insights. And especially that they they ask the hard questions that they respond to the hard questions, and that they share all of the stuff that they've learned, if you will, through a personal lens. And that takes me back to one of my favorite topics, which is story. Right? So, you know, you're sitting here wondering, okay, yeah, we're gonna talk about business. And we're going to hear from CEOs. Yes, yes. And yes. So of course, you're going to get apps, actionable tips and insights. But most important, you're going to get it through their personal stories. And so, you know, what's the value of looking at company’s challenges through the lens of the CEO? And why stories? Basically, why not just measure the health and success of a company by the hard facts, right, spreadsheets and KPIs. So just a little bias here, go ahead.

AS: Well, no numbers and fact, sheets don't communicate the whole story. And raw data is not that inspiring, actually, again, at the conference, the breakfast, the gender lens breakfast this morning was talking about how there's, there's a lot of data there about female founders not getting a lot of investment, you know, 2%, or something compared VC or any institutional capital or any capital at all. And what they were saying is there's all the data is there. But we don't need more data. What we need is better analysis, better, as you're saying better stories coming out of the data to present, projective models about what will happen if we take these actions because there is no precedent. So it's what the data means to our life that makes it really compelling and necessary. And that's where we really want to focus these conversations.

LP: Totally. And of course, I have to come back and make one more quote one more reference to Brene Brown, and I absolutely love this. So as a, what they call a grounded researcher. Everything that she does is based around these hard facts, but in the context of story, right. And so she says, Brene Brown says that “stories are data with a soul.” What more to say it's like, okay, case, closed, let's move on.

AS: Absolutely. I mean, she's, she's tremendous. She spent the last two decades studying courage and vulnerability, shame, empathy, which are emotions that we all experience for better or worse. But you were talking about that 10 years long study that she did on leadership. And you were saying, were you saying like, I think you were saying that courage is teachable?

LP: Yeah, yeah. Or that's what she says. And she says that, you know, actually, courage is something that leaders need. This is the thing that rose to the top of her of her study is that what do leaders really need, you know, amongst a bazillion other things, but courage. So once she says it's teachable, and two, she says it's comprised of four skill sets. So I'm going to rattle off…but, you know, rumbling as she calls it, rumbling with vulnerability, living into our values. And I think that's a monster thing when it comes to culture inside of companies right now. Yeah, breathing trust, and then learning to reset after you've had failures. So you know, we can redefine that as resilience.

AS: Those are really key I'm and we've already had some conversations with some of the people that we are going to be presenting on the show, and these topics are already coming up. And they're amazing. And just hearing the CEOs talk about them. I mean CEO is such an ivory tower title. And I think, even, you know, another reminds me of another podcast, I was listening to where they're, they were saying, you know, you you're just seen as different by your employees, you're not one of the bunch. You are also seen differently by your shareholders, you have a tremendous responsibility to people. And so that can be very isolating for these leaders, any leaders, but I think in a company, I mean, you're, there's so many things going around, and everyone's very quick to criticize, but it's a really important role. So we want each episode to feel like having a coffee. And we're bringing you some of the brightest and most courageous CEOs that we've been able to find and we're still looking for more because 100 is a big number. So we are still working on them. So please submit your submit to the application form if you'd like to be on the show. We want candid conversations with leaders that are going to reshape cultural boundaries and disrupt in the service of positive change. So exciting.

LP: So do you want to, for those who are listening and who have not yet submitted their application to be a guest on the 100 CEO Project, you want to rattle off these five things that we're interested in? exploring? Let's do quick. All right.

AS: All right. First, we're going to talk about challenges that you've overcome in 2020. How have they affected you both personally and as a leader?

LP: Yep. The second thing that we might be looking for is a training for fellow CEOs. For example, can you educate us on a particular leadership skill that has helped you navigate the ups and downs,

AS: Our third bucket is unexpected wins. So share the silver lining moments that arose from the events of 2020.

LP: Our fourth bucket is the ongoing challenges that your company is facing. So for example, what tools and strategy are you using to help guide your company through the turbulence?

AS: And fifth, we are looking for insight into how you make decisions about the future because what comes next is more top of mind than ever before.

LP: Yep. So I don't know about you under you. But I think that we've given a good little intro. We haven't kept them too long. In the case of they got some other things to do. What's next episode one, right?

AS: Episode One, we will see you there

LP: You guys. Thanks for tuning in. And we'll see you soon. Hey, guys, we hope you've enjoyed today's episode. And if you did, please share it with your friends and colleagues who also have to navigate this leadership stuff. As you can see, this project is about to be a mini masterclass in every episode, best part, it's free. So if you like it, please do us a favor and take a screenshot, share it on social with the hashtag #100CEO, that's #100CEO. That way we can say thanks and share it in our stories. And finally, if you've got some insights you'd like to share and you're a CEO, we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at 100CEOProject.com or on LinkedIn at the 100 CEO Project. Until next time, keep leading by example.

Hosted by: Laurie Pillow, Andrea Spirov

Writing and research: Laurie Pillow, Andrea Spirov

Produced by: Laurie Pillow