The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:02 - 00:00:24:20
Kevin
Are you a CEO or senior leader looking to improve? And do you aspire to the C-suite and want to improve your odds for success both now and in the future? Or are you just. Or do you just want to build the right mindset regardless of your leadership role? Whichever those of those apply to you, you are in the right place.

00:00:25:04 - 00:00:44:07
Kevin
Welcome to another live episode of the Remarkable Leadership podcast. If you're here live, we are so glad that you're here. And as I said to you before we started this recording, tell us hello and where you're coming from today. And while you're here, we want you to imagine that you're joining my guest and I, who I'll introduce in a second.

00:00:44:21 - 00:01:01:01
Kevin
And I for a cup of coffee. Just share your questions, your comments and your ideas. That will all make for a better conversation and eventually a better podcast episode, too. Now, if you aren't here, live and you're listening to this in the podcast, you could be here live in the future. Not for this one, but for future ones.

00:01:01:09 - 00:01:31:06
Kevin
And you can get all future live episodes and therefore interact with us and see these sooner, like a lot sooner. In this particular case, by joining our Facebook or LinkedIn groups, you can simply go to remarkable podcast dot com slash Facebook or remarkable podcast dot com slash LinkedIn. Today's episode is brought to you by the newest podcast from our organization, The Long Distance Work Life Podcast, hosted by Wayne Turmel, my coauthor of both The Long Distance Leader in the Long Distance Teammate and co-hosted by Marisa Eikenberry.

00:01:31:09 - 00:01:51:16
Kevin
Yes, she's my daughter in law. They will bring you the latest in tools, ideas and insights to help you succeed in the ever evolving future of work. You can subscribe from wherever you get your podcasts or you're listening now or at longdistanceworklife.com. So with all of that taken care of, I'm going to bring in my guest.

00:01:51:21 - 00:02:16:21
Kevin
He's here actually. I never had him leave. I think I screwed that up. Everybody thinks I've been sitting here patiently waiting for me to introduce introduce him. So let me do that, everybody. Our guest today is Vik Malhotra. He is the senior partner in McKinsey's New York office and is the longest tenured member of the firm. He served on its board of directors for 13 years, its operating committee for six, and on its senior partner committee for five.

00:02:17:10 - 00:02:40:08
Kevin
He was also the managing partner for the Americas and currently chairs the firm's professional standards Committee. Throughout his career, he has spent extensive time counseling CEOs and boards. He's also active with major nonprofits outside of McKinsey. He serves as the chairman of the board of the Wharton Graduate School, the University of Pennsylvania, and is the trustee in the New York City Partnership, trustee emeritus of the Asia Society, and many more.

00:02:40:09 - 00:02:51:14
Kevin
He's also the coauthor of a new book. That's why he's here today. CEO Excellence: Six Mindsets that Distinguish the Best Leaders From The Rest. And Vik, I'm so glad that you're here. Thanks for being here.

00:02:52:11 - 00:02:57:07
Vikram
Well, thank you, Kevin. And I appreciate your very generous introduction. That was very nice of you. Thank you.

00:02:57:13 - 00:03:29:18
Kevin
Let's see. We've got people here from Michigan and Florida and Texas and Seattle, Moore, Michigan and Montreal and Poland. You get the prize for the furthest so far. Elmer. And we've got Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and I'm sure we've got many more. So we're glad that all of you were here. Vik, I want to dove in with a question that I ask a lot of people here, because I think it's, you know, I can introduce you and you can have a sense of that.

00:03:30:05 - 00:03:45:19
Kevin
Right. And everyone can have a sense of who you are from that. But I think it's really interesting to learn a little bit more about your journey. So we don't need the full, detailed bio, but sort of you didn't probably wake up when you were 11 and say, Hey, I want to be the longest tenured employee at McKinsey.

00:03:46:19 - 00:03:55:00
Kevin
Right. So thoughts and what sort of gets you to this point as you sort of are moving into the later stages of your career?

00:03:55:17 - 00:04:17:07
Vikram
Well, you know, I came to McKinsey very accidentally. I grew up in India. I lived on the island of Cyprus for a number of years, was educated, went to college in London, worked in London. I was I don't tell many people this, so I don't get how they were to cover the years up. I was a boring accountant.

00:04:17:08 - 00:04:37:19
Vikram
With all due respect to any accountants out there, and I was looking for a change in in career. And someone told me back in the eighties, someone told me about this thing called the business school in the United States. So I came. I applied. I had no idea what business schools were. I went I went to what turned out to be a fabulous one at Wharton, at the University of Pennsylvania.

00:04:38:18 - 00:04:57:02
Vikram
And McKinsey recruited me out of there, and here I am. And it's been a it's been a fun journey. But having lived all over the world prior to landing in New York City, I've now lived here now for 36 years, which is pretty amazing to me. So that's just a little bit of the journey to to this point.

00:04:57:10 - 00:05:19:12
Kevin
Awesome. So so Vik, you've co-written with a couple of your colleagues at McKinsey, this really great new book called CEO Excellence. And so I'm going to open with this question, and it probably gives you the chance to talk a little bit about how you got to the people that led you to the book. But is it possible for us to determine CEO excellence or I guess in this case, how did you guys go about doing that for this book?

00:05:20:14 - 00:05:45:11
Vikram
Yes. So we had McKinsey have always done a lot of research in terms of what we eat and makes for excellent leaders and excellent CEOs. For a while. We have a 20 year database on CEO performance numerically and also including some qualitative measures that we have. And my two quarters and I came together and said, gee, you know, we've seen a lot of books written by on leadership.

00:05:45:22 - 00:06:04:09
Vikram
We've seen a lot of books written by CEOs on their own leadership, but we've never seen much that really looks across the CEO universities for CEOs. What are some of the things that really stand out in terms of the leadership? So we actually set down this path of looking at all of our research and saying, can we just find a way to publish it?

00:06:04:21 - 00:06:11:19
Vikram
And then we thought to ourselves, Well, that's going to be pretty boring. Who's going to want to see a lot of facts and statistics, you know, on CEO?

00:06:11:19 - 00:06:13:15
Kevin
You guys are good at that. I'm just saying. Well.

00:06:14:07 - 00:06:36:18
Vikram
We are. But, you know, we were looking for a little bit of broader appeal here and we kind of didn't didn't quite see that. So we thought to ourselves, well, let's let's go interview some great CEOs. Now, we did use an analytical lens to define that, because we essentially looked at this last call it 25 years, this century and said, we want to look at all the CEOs in that period of time.

00:06:36:18 - 00:07:01:19
Vikram
And they were roughly a Fortune 1000 and bigger, probably about 3500 CEOs or so. But we said we wanted people with six years of ten year or more and for the most part, top quintile performance in their sector as defined by shareholder return. And that quickly narrowed the group from 3500 to 200 people, if you can imagine. So we got down to 200.

00:07:01:22 - 00:07:14:20
Vikram
We reached out to about 90 of them. 67 of them graciously agreed to be interviewed, many for multiple hours. We were very fortunate to have lots and lots of great people, spend real quality time with us to share their insights. So that's how we came to the book.

00:07:15:09 - 00:07:32:11
Kevin
And as it turns out, in the back of the book, when you all get your copy and here it is again, I'll show it to you again when you get your copy, there's that you can. They're very transparent about who they talk to. Obviously, if you read the book, there's lots of stories about all the folks. Some of the names will be names you recognize, some will be those that you don't doesn't really change the point.

00:07:33:04 - 00:07:54:07
Kevin
One of the things that that you talk about early in the book and I think, well, let me just step back and say, if you're listening to this podcast and you've listened before or if you're joining us and you say, Kevin, you don't usually talk about CEOs necessarily. When I got the book, Vik, I said, you know, CEOs themselves isn't certainly isn't our only audience.

00:07:54:23 - 00:08:09:10
Kevin
So we're certainly going to talk today, everybody, about what they've learned about CEOs. And I'm confident and we'll talk about it before we're done, how we translate that to any of us as leaders. And I think nearly all of this, with a few exceptions, applies to all of us.

00:08:11:08 - 00:08:26:16
Vikram
Sorry to interrupt not to interrupt you there, Kevin, but absolutely. I think at the end of the day, this is a book about leadership. It is less a book about CEO leadership. It's geared in the lessons learned from excellent CEOs. But I think very, very applicable. And we can come back and talk about that.

00:08:27:02 - 00:08:46:15
Kevin
Yeah, absolutely. So but there's one of the things, you know, I think a lot of times those who aren't in the C-suite haven't worked with people in the C-suite like you and I have. We people say, well, they got there. They're obviously very successful to get there. So like, is there a proven process to sort of create or guarantee CEO success?

00:08:46:15 - 00:08:57:23
Kevin
I mean, you quickly went when you started taking a couple of quick slices, you cut 3500 to 200 pretty quickly, like, what do we know about how to do this for future CEOs?

00:08:58:12 - 00:09:20:18
Vikram
Yeah. So there were there were three things that really stood out. Item one was, would you would you would you find would be six of these CEOs, by the way, with what we did do as part of this book was defined the six responsible arrows of CEOs. This is true of all CEOs, regardless of whether you remarkable or not.

00:09:21:02 - 00:09:21:05
Kevin
Right.

00:09:21:13 - 00:09:45:06
Vikram
All CEOs have have these six roles right. But the three things that stood out was the first thing was all of the excellent CEOs could do all six of these things really well. My concept likes to liken these CEOs to the best decathlete in the world. He often says to me, Vic, you've never heard of Ashton Eaton, have you?

00:09:45:06 - 00:10:10:02
Vikram
Ashton Eaton turns out to be truly one of the world's most forgotten, remarkable athletes, perhaps even in many ways, the very best athlete the world's ever, ever seen, because he's been so good at so many disciplines at the same time. So my coauthor likes to say The best athletes is what great CEOs are. They can spin all six of these roles at the same time as opposed to, you know, you're the Michael Jordan of your sport.

00:10:10:02 - 00:10:28:22
Vikram
You can do one thing with Serena Williams of your sport and you can do one thing really well. These six CEOs of these these CEOs can spin six responsibilities and do them all at very high levels all the time. So that's the one thing that really stood out. The second is they are remarkable integrators. They are remarkable integrators.

00:10:28:22 - 00:10:57:15
Vikram
Satya Nadella, who's the CEO of Microsoft, said to us in our interview, he said, You know, when you kind of think about it, it's an information asymmetry problem. As a CEO, you see more than anyone in your organization sees. And you certainly see more than the ten or 12 people on the board that you report to. So you you your level of integration is there's a huge premium on the level of integration, bringing it all together because of this information to symmetry problem.

00:10:57:15 - 00:11:20:18
Vikram
So that's the second thing you see is these CEOs are great integrators. And then the final piece, which is really what the book is anchored on, is this these CEOs along these six responsibilities have these six amazing mindsets. And a lot of the book is dedicated to these mindsets. And these mindsets really separate, truly excellent CEOs, in my view, from the rest.

00:11:20:18 - 00:11:24:00
Vikram
And we can dig into any of the mindsets as and when you choose.

00:11:24:10 - 00:11:42:23
Kevin
Well, yeah, so we don't have time in this venue to really dove deeply into all six. Right. And in fact, you all need copy the book. So we are talking to Vik Malhotra, the coauthor of the book CEO Excellence. And so you're going to want to get a copy. And if you aren't already convinced, you will be before we're done.

00:11:43:05 - 00:11:59:20
Kevin
So we don't have time to talk about all six that. But why don't you give us two or three to give people a flavor and then maybe tell us a story from one of those 67 CEOs that might help to illustrate one of those.

00:12:00:16 - 00:12:30:07
Vikram
Absolutely. So one of the responsibilities of the CEO is to set the direction of the company. Right. And in setting the direction of the company, the mindset that we call out is B board, is B board. Too many CEOs come in, follow in well running organizations. They follow other successful CEOs. And their inclination is to try and take the company to the next level.

00:12:30:07 - 00:13:03:11
Vikram
But in essence, what they end up being is fairly incremental in what they do. And what we saw with these excellent CEOs was they were bored. They were very, very bold. They were bored and reimagining the vision of the company and where you might take it. They were bored in terms of the moves that they made, in terms of programmatic M&A, for example, they were bored in this segment and customer strategies and they were bored and how they thought about resource allocation and how they allocated against important opportunities, capital dollars or expense dollars or talent.

00:13:03:11 - 00:13:32:16
Vikram
Right? So that was one money, one one responsibility and one mindset. A second responsibility is organizational alignment. And the mindset here was really treat the soft stuff as the hard stuff. So they think about culture and talent, just like they think about budgeting and delivery of financial numbers, which is they put measurements against it, they put metrics against it, they they measure it.

00:13:32:16 - 00:13:59:13
Vikram
They they role model it. They hold themselves and others accountable for it. So they treat the soft stuff as the hard stuff and then they are amazing. Just a third responsibility and I'll stop there and then we'll be happy to go into some examples. Tick, tick, top team alignment. The the mindset there is really understand the team psychology so that your focus here is on creating not a team of stars but a star team.

00:13:59:18 - 00:14:08:16
Vikram
And they're very focused on how you create a star. So those just give you a flavor of some of the responsibilities and how it translates into mindset.

00:14:09:05 - 00:14:31:20
Kevin
Well, I'm really glad that you picked that third one, because I think that while all of the six mindsets certainly apply to any of us as leaders, the context is different, perhaps, and and that sort of thing. But I think each of them apply. And I thought, especially in that section of the book, it was really clear how that would be true for us at all levels.

00:14:31:20 - 00:14:50:04
Kevin
And in working with leaders for many years as well, I see that often that is and that's a challenge that people have a hard time with that. So maybe do you have an example? Let's talk it. Let's stay in that one in that area around understanding and thinking about team psychology. Maybe an example from the book or even maybe one that's not that you want to share with us.

00:14:51:06 - 00:15:21:06
Vikram
Yeah, absolutely. I would. If you if you if you kind of look at Brad Smith, who is the former CEO of Intuit, he did three he did three remarkable things in that whole area of team psychology. The first was the absolute conviction that the team is not a team if it's a team of stars, but it's a team if it's a starting.

00:15:21:11 - 00:15:42:14
Vikram
Right. And you know what, Brad would say to us is, look, you know, you cannot have a person on the team who is you cannot have a person on the team who has basically outstanding and what they do outstanding in their business unit or in their function. But they can't get along and can't work with others. It just doesn't work.

00:15:42:22 - 00:16:11:21
Vikram
Right. You got to kind of bring them together and you got to make them all work together. So he was big on this notion of you create a star team, not a team of stars. He was also big on the notion of you have to coach players. So one of the things he said, what's one of the things he actually said to us, which I thought was really interesting, was, you know, I kind of lived under the impression that great CEOs, Exxon, all the C players and the B players and even the B plus players, and they're just looking to get a bunch of eight players on their team.

00:16:12:11 - 00:16:35:20
Vikram
Not true what Brad Pitt says. Yes, you got to exit the C players. You maybe you go to exit the B players, but your job is to coach the people, B-plus players to become A-minus players. And it's your job to coach the A-minus players to become eight players. So a real focus on that coaching equation there. Right. And the final piece around really bringing the team together was you got to create process around it.

00:16:36:03 - 00:16:52:19
Vikram
So you've got to have an operating rhythm in terms of how often they come together, the time they spend together, the off sites they spend together, how they get to know each other. So if you don't have process around it, if you don't have operating rhythm around it, you can't get the team to really function as a team.

00:16:52:19 - 00:17:13:12
Kevin
So that was yeah, that's a great one. And, and I'm glad that you brought the operating rhythm piece up because I think that's really, really important and also often forgotten or doesn't take sort of the level of gets a level of attention that it ought to get. But you're really doing something here in this conversation that I think the book does a great job of.

00:17:13:12 - 00:17:31:09
Kevin
And I just like you talk about it in general. It's it's everyone will say, well, mindset is important, but what you're you're talking a lot about is how do you translate? And you just did it in the example of a translating mindset into practice. So here's what I, here's how I'm thinking, here's how I'm turning that into practice.

00:17:31:14 - 00:17:45:21
Kevin
So can you just talk about that sort of reality of of how what what does that mean to you when you say go from mindset to practice and sort of how do we do that?

00:17:46:09 - 00:18:14:01
Vikram
Yeah, I'm I'm going to try and illustrated through a couple of examples if for me please Kevin. So let's stick the earlier mindset I was talking about set direction and be bored. Okay. Well, to be bold, you've got to actually translate into action. So the example I'm going to use here is a James Bond guide, MasterCard. So when AJ Munger takes over MasterCard, the whole mantra is Beat Visa, beat American Express.

00:18:14:01 - 00:18:38:16
Vikram
Be the best payments company in the world that you can beat. He actually looked around and bear in mind, this was 2010 or 2011, not 2022. He looked around and he said, We're talking about beating people who are operating in 10% of the market. 90% of all transactions are still in cash. Right. And so he reframed the opportunity is kill, kill, cash, kill cash.

00:18:39:07 - 00:19:01:13
Vikram
And once you do that, then that starts translating into, okay, if I'm going to do that now, go to invest deeply behind what was then a pretty nascent debit card business. I've got to invest deeply behind the debit card business. I've got to disproportionally put put money against that. I've got to be willing to cannibalize some of my credit card revenues, which are higher margin than debit card.

00:19:01:19 - 00:19:27:15
Vikram
To go down that journey, I'm going to have to take some hits in my earnings, but eventually it's all going to pay off and it did slash it. Right. So that would be an example that in that in that arena, another wonderful area that I love is is is this whole area of of culture because what many of these great CEOs do is they pick one element of culture and say, we're really going to transform the company on that cultural dimension.

00:19:28:00 - 00:19:53:23
Vikram
So here the mindset was if your goal was to treat the soft stuff as the hard stuff, Sadiq Khan's Hirai at Sony, he comes in and his strategy geared in this notion of condo condo in Japanese, loosely translated, is the wow factor. And what he wanted to do was bring back the wow factor to electronic Arts and Dubai and do music and entertainment and the whole lot.

00:19:54:13 - 00:20:19:12
Vikram
And what that really meant was higher quality products, better customer experience. And then he starts translating that, he starts measuring it and monitoring it and really making it come to life because he's putting some hard metrics against it and his role modeling it and he's talking about it all the time. So just a couple of examples about how people took big concepts but eventually made it real for the company.

00:20:20:01 - 00:20:37:10
Kevin
For everybody. Right. And so some of us might be listening to say, well, yeah, but I'm not leading Sony, I'm not leading Microsoft, I'm not leading into it. And yet all of that stuff applies if we're leading our team and that's driving that into practices. So, you know, the book, the book just came out as we're having this conversation.

00:20:37:10 - 00:20:57:00
Kevin
It's been out a couple of weeks for those who are listening to our podcast later in the middle of March of 2022. And one of the things that you did as you did some of your metrics, you you measured metrics through 2019 because you didn't want to worry about what the pandemic did or didn't do to to some of your analysis.

00:20:58:00 - 00:21:22:16
Kevin
But now we're in 2022, and the pandemic, we think, is hopefully almost over. But the world of work has changed forever completely. And so my question for you would be how how would you what do you think about the level of nuance now? Like if we were to look at this stuff again in five years, like which of us do it this way?

00:21:22:22 - 00:21:28:09
Kevin
Which of the mindsets do you think become perhaps even more important now as the world of work is changing?

00:21:29:03 - 00:21:39:06
Vikram
Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's it's a great question. Now, even though the metrics only ran through 2019, fortunately, most of these interviews were done in 2021. So we were in the heart of the pandemic.

00:21:39:06 - 00:21:40:10
Kevin
Right, right, right, right.

00:21:40:10 - 00:22:04:22
Vikram
While the interviews were going on. Look, I think the single biggest change that has occurred and will well, maybe two big piece of change, one very big piece of change that has occurred relative to ten years ago and I think will continue to change dramatically is this whole area of connecting with stakeholders and the time and energy that CEOs have to spend again.

00:22:04:22 - 00:22:43:01
Vikram
So it used to be that they used to spend about 10% of their time there. Today they're spending up to 30% of their time there, some of them even up to 50% of the time that now some of this is planned interactions, interactions with regulators and trade unions and investors and analysts and all of that stuff. But as we can tell for a number of CEOs, given all the pressures of social media and given all the turbulence in the world, a lot of these a lot of this is unplanned time that they're spending, which which relates to everything from social unrest to war due to the pandemic.

00:22:43:01 - 00:23:07:05
Vikram
Right. So you have you have lots and lots of things that create demands on you and unexpected and quick ways that you have. No there's no way you can plan for it, but you've got to kind of react and be alive in the moment. Right. That's very specific to the CEO. The other piece that you've rightly pointed out that has changed dramatically is, is the nature of work and what will the post-pandemic work part?

00:23:07:05 - 00:23:27:14
Vikram
I mean, what will mean in terms of remote work? What do it mean in terms of behaviors in the workplace? And I think most of these CEOs, even the excellent ones, would say it's a work in progress. We just don't know. We just don't know. Well, they're all experimenting. They're all trying different things. They're all trying to think about a mix of in-person versus remote.

00:23:27:14 - 00:23:47:22
Vikram
How does it apply to certain teams with other teams, even when you're in-person, how do you change your behaviors in terms of how you actually work in your workspace? How do you use your workspaces differently, that all the best are all in some version of experimentation at this point and all still to be sorted out. And they being a lot of attention to it.

00:23:48:11 - 00:24:20:15
Kevin
Well, and I think that goes back to your your first point, which was spending more time with connecting with stakeholders and of course, their employees or one of those stakeholders. And so, you know, even though you framed that a little bit around all of the other issues in our world in the and the rapid change in our world, I think that applies very much to yes, if the workplace is different than the need for them to stay connected inside of inside the organization is will be different than it's ever been before.

00:24:20:17 - 00:24:43:01
Kevin
And I think I think you're you're right in terms of how that will play out is still to be determined. And by the way, we now have people telling us hello from the Maldives, Maldives and from Brazil. So we've got people everywhere listening in now. And we're so glad that all of you are here. So if any of you have a question for Vik and I that you want to share, feel free to do that as we continue this conversation.

00:24:44:03 - 00:25:14:23
Kevin
So I said we would come back to this idea, Vik, that while the book says CEO excellence on it and the example and the research comes from talking with truly excellent on many dimensions CEOs you said it's really a leadership book to which I would agree as a reader, what are the what are the lessons here for non CEOs like what are a couple of things that you would highlight for non CEOs for us to be thinking about.

00:25:14:23 - 00:25:38:17
Vikram
Yeah. Yeah. So of the of of all the things that I that are in the book, you know, I really kind of look at all pieces around engaging with the board and maybe some of the stuff that the CEO has to do with connecting with stakeholders externally as sort of the stuff that's due to come in due course, but much of the rest of it applies.

00:25:38:17 - 00:26:16:00
Vikram
So for example, this whole notion of set the direction and the board, we can do that no matter what leadership role we're in, that that mindset of boldness, the mindset of how do you think and get into all the aspects of the vision, the boldness in your actions, resource allocation, all of that plays through this whole notion of aligning the organization, not no matter how big or small your team is, some of the things that many of these great CEOs do from a cultural point of view, how they think about talent, how they think about how they deploy their key, key talent and resources in good ways.

00:26:16:11 - 00:26:48:03
Vikram
All of that applies. Certainly, the team psychology piece that you and I talked about, again, no matter how big or small a team absolutely applies, but perhaps the biggest piece that applies is is one we haven't touched upon yet, which is your personal operating model. I mean, one of the things you learn from these great CEOs is the amazing when it comes to time management and how they manage, how they manage the calendar and the tips and tricks that they use for managing their calendar, how they manage the energy.

00:26:48:17 - 00:27:11:15
Vikram
Right, how they manage their energy. That's another big part of their own operating model that comes into play, which really ends up being a series of sprints rather than either a sprint or a marathon. It's just a series spent with a lot of recovery in between. And then frankly, how they manage their leadership style, right? That they tend to be more servant leader in their orientation rather than top down dictatorial.

00:27:12:10 - 00:27:21:08
Vikram
And I think kind of their behaviors, how they live, their authentic self. There's some real learnings in there that I think are applicable to every, each and every one of us.

00:27:21:18 - 00:27:43:07
Kevin
Yeah, I would agree with that 100%. We've got to we have a question that came in and it's interesting, this question that came in, I'm going to put it up here to second and the questions being asked to two people who do this. So here is the question how important is it for CEOs to invest in a coach?

00:27:43:07 - 00:27:52:20
Kevin
So you might get a biased answer here from the two of us. But but, no, I think it's it's a it's a valuable question. And then we could probably extended beyond just CEOs. But what's your take on that?

00:27:53:00 - 00:28:21:16
Vikram
Because I think the short answer is very important. And, you know, and I think I have good news to report on this, which is, you know, for the most part, every one of these CEOs, not not everyone, but many of them, they had some version of a coach. Now, it may not always be of the perfect definition of the kind of coach that that links in here, in the way that we normally think about coaches.

00:28:22:04 - 00:28:50:18
Vikram
But they they always had a small group of people. They relied on some of it. It was, you know, your kind of traditional coach for others, there might be someone within the organization who's a confidant, a consiglieri, if you like. For others, they leaned on someone externally, a lawyer, a banker, a consultant, a friend. By the way, interesting how many of them actually took the counsel of their spouse or partner as someone who give them advice?

00:28:51:00 - 00:29:03:12
Vikram
So they get the they get their advice from a small group. And many of them have coaches. And in the way that you traditionally think of and I think getting that input is incredibly important for them. Incredibly important.

00:29:04:03 - 00:29:27:05
Kevin
You know, I've said for a long time that being a leader at any level is sort of sort of a lonely thing because so many people that are around you don't understand that situation. And the higher you go, the more true that becomes, right? So yeah, and there's a whole lot of people that don't really understand all of the stuff, all of that integration that we were talking about and all and, and the nature of all six of those roles as we were talking about.

00:29:27:18 - 00:29:55:22
Kevin
I think that's absolutely true. So if someone who is watching or listening is saying, well, you know, that's the trajectory I'm on, right? I'm headed for the C-suite. Either I've been told that or I that's just where I'm headed, right? That's where I want to be headed. Or even if I'm just wanting to be a better leader. What would be your advice to David before we start to change course and finish this conversation up?

00:29:55:22 - 00:30:01:16
Kevin
What would be your advice then? Where should they start? What would you do? What would you encourage people to do today?

00:30:03:09 - 00:30:04:23
Vikram
You mean other than read the book?

00:30:05:07 - 00:30:13:00
Kevin
Well, of course they should all of course read the book. Here we go. Well done, my friend. Um.

00:30:13:18 - 00:30:49:03
Vikram
Look, I think I. I think the way that you start is by adopting some version of these mindsets. Not all of them, but perhaps some version of them. And I would particularly call out this mindset, particularly on whatever arena you're in, learn how to be bold, right? As Satya Nadella tells us. Interesting story that came back to the CEO of Microsoft when when he took over from Steve Ballmer, he was Ballmer said to him, you can if you're incremental, you'll be gone in a couple of years.

00:30:49:12 - 00:31:05:12
Vikram
If you're bold and you get it wrong, you'll be gone in a couple of years. You may as well be bold and get it right. So the more practice you can have it being bold and getting it right. And you know, the boldness does come with you got to make the right trade offs from a risk point of view and a resource allocation point of view and all of that stuff.

00:31:05:12 - 00:31:27:19
Vikram
Right? So I don't mean to imply boldness means go crazy, right? But I think the more you can kind of work on this mindset of being bold, I think the more you can work in this mindset of solving for the team psychology and creating top team alignment. The more you can work on your own operating model around, do only what you can do in managing your time and energy.

00:31:28:03 - 00:31:35:13
Vikram
I think those three mindsets of the six are a great starting point for anyone in any walk of life, no matter way. They are.

00:31:35:23 - 00:31:55:13
Kevin
Perfect. I love that. So I do want to shift before we finish and ask you, of course, things that sort of take us away. If you will, from the the the important and serious nature of what we've been talking about. And I'm just going to ask you, like, Vic, what do you do for fun?

00:31:55:13 - 00:31:58:16
Vikram
Well, I.

00:31:58:22 - 00:32:00:19
Kevin
Just have supposed to be a hard question.

00:32:01:16 - 00:32:19:15
Vikram
So I I'm trying to think of all the many things I like to do for fun. So so I'm a I'm a travel fiend, not as much as my coauthor, Scott Geller, who's been to every single country in the world, by the way. So if you want an interesting man, there he is. But but I love exotic travel.

00:32:20:10 - 00:32:42:00
Vikram
The pandemic has been a real blow to the heart because I would be in five, eight different countries a year, just kind of absorbing the culture and understanding the places. And so so I love to travel and, you know, I love playing golf. That's probably comes with my age. But I have I've certainly in my older, older age just absorbed golf.

00:32:42:00 - 00:32:47:09
Vikram
So in the summer, you're more likely to see me out on the golf course and talking about my book for sure.

00:32:47:09 - 00:33:02:20
Kevin
All right. Well, I'm glad we got you now, then. So, so, so speaking of books, if we were speaking about a book other than yours, the question would be like, what are you reading right now? What's something that you've read recently that people might find interesting?

00:33:03:07 - 00:33:34:00
Vikram
Yeah, well, I'm going to give you a pretty boring answer here, Kevin, and I'll apologize ahead of time. But I went back to a book that three of my colleagues wrote called Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick. And I was interesting as we did all this work, I had read this book, of course, when it first came out about three years ago when we did all this work, one of the causes said, you know, a lot of the things you're talking about great CEOs doing, we wrote about back in 2016 or 17 or whenever they published the book.

00:33:34:00 - 00:33:47:12
Vikram
So I figured I owed it to them to go back and read it. And they were right. They have some very interesting lessons and it kind of marries well with the book. So I'm sorry, it's a bit of a boring answer, but if I'm honest with you, that is what I have been reading recently.

00:33:47:19 - 00:34:04:19
Kevin
There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that at all. So now the question you've been wanting me to ask really from the beginning, and that is where can people learn more about you, the work? Where can people get the book? Anything, anything you want to say about that? I'll hold the book up while you do that.

00:34:05:08 - 00:34:31:11
Vikram
Okay, wonderful. Well, I might give you two quick tips on this one. Firstly, if you go to McKinsey dot com, there is a whole section dedicated to the book and in particular it's got six or seven videos that give you a little bit of kind of author talks, if you like, on the on the book. Each of the authors also have their own little author talks about themselves, their families and the like.

00:34:31:21 - 00:34:47:08
Vikram
So McKinsey dot com is really an area you can go to and by the way right from the from the page about the book you've got links to five different sites if you actually want to go buy the book, of course. Otherwise you can just go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and the like. And there it is.

00:34:47:11 - 00:35:00:17
Vikram
There it is. But McKinsey dot com going to the see excellence book page will give you an awful lot more on the book and some I think quite nicely nicely produced videos that'll help to perfect book.

00:35:00:17 - 00:35:16:02
Kevin
Thank you so much before before I let you go and before I let all the rest of you go and I have the question that I ask all of you who are watching or listening every single week, and that now the most important question of all now what what are you going to do with this? Well, there are plenty things that you've got today.

00:35:16:13 - 00:35:35:06
Kevin
You heard about six mindsets. I think we get to all six. Before we were done, we talked about the idea of how do you move from mindset to practice. Maybe maybe the lesson for you is very simply about how do I work on being bolder? Maybe that's the single mindset we talked about the most, but it's any number of things.

00:35:35:06 - 00:35:59:09
Kevin
Maybe it's thinking about how do you apply and think about culture in your team, regardless whether we're talking about macro like a CEO or micro culture like an individual leader, there are plenty of things here for us to act on. It's not my job to tell you which one it is, but it is my job to remind you that if you don't take action, none of it at the end of the day will matter at all.

00:36:00:12 - 00:36:06:07
Kevin
Nick, thanks so much for being here. It was such a pleasure to have you. I've been looking forward to it. I loved the book and it was a pleasure to have you.

00:36:06:20 - 00:36:10:16
Vikram
Well, Kevin, thank you. I really, really appreciate your time and thanks for having me on the show.

00:36:11:06 - 00:36:30:15
Kevin
Everybody will you know, if you've ever been here before, you know, we'll be back every week with another episode of the Remarkable Leadership podcast. I hope you'll join us then and tell a friend and have them join us as well. Thanks, everybody.