Episode 35: Kevin Roberts on Leadership, Decision-making, and Focused Action

Informing your decisions with intelligence, analysis and insight brought to you by the team@oodaloop.com welcome to Oodacast. I'm Matt Devoe, CEO of OODA LLC and today we're joined by Kevin Roberts. I am incredibly happy for Kevin to join us because his book was one of my favorite books of 2017. The book 64 Leadership in a Crazy World. Interestingly, I went back and reviewed my Amazon history associated with this and I don't know how I discovered it, but I ordered it on September 15th and then two days after I received it I went and ordered two more copies to give away and then three weeks after that I went and ordered 10 copies to give to the leadership team I was working with at Accenture. And that put it on my top 10 list for 2017 and my top 10 list of all time. I think it's a little too early to decide. Still hope to have many more years of reading, but thus far it is there. So. So Kevin, thanks for joining us. I found the book very insightful. Looking forward to good discussion. Love to just hear a little bit of your background with regards to your career progression up to and writing the book.

Matt, thanks. It's. Yeah, well, I didn't know the story about all the books, so thank you very. Thank you very much. Turned out it was Bloomberg's book of the year and I guess it couldn't have been more prescient when you think about the craziness that's going on all around us now and the challenges that we're all facing as leaders. Whether you're in government, whether you're in the private sector, whether you're in a startup, boy oh boy. I mean, this has turned into a Vuca world or a super Vuca world that's volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous in every extreme. So I think the book's been very helpful as a guide and a framework for a lot of the work I'm doing now. I was born in the uk, right, got my kicked out of school when I was 16 and stumbled luckily into the middle of the swinging 60s where I was fortunate enough to bump into Mary Quant, who was the fashion leader, invented the miniskirt, tights and so on. She got into a cosmetics business. She wanted to have a drive globally. I had studied French and Spanish at school. She was just generous enough, we're friends to this day, to take a chance and make me a brand manager for her cosmetics brand. I didn't know anything about brands, didn't know anything about managers. So it was A real fast track learning curve. But, but in the 60s you could do that stuff, right? It was about youth, it was about new ideas, it was about revolution. And if you were doing it in London, you know, you're at the heart of it. The Beatles were there, the Stones were there, the whole English invasion was there. The fashion scene was there, the movie scene was there. You know, Michael Caine was doing brilliant stuff. So being in being lucky, I guess luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And so I just happened to be in the right place and I wasn't prepared, but I soon got prepared from there. I went to Gillette and then realized I was headhunted by Gillette to try and get them out of their male shaving domination into female toiletries and female shampoos. They looked around at what was successful. They saw Mary Quant booming. I was kind of there. I kept trying to tell them, this is all down to Mary. And she keeps telling us what the colors are going to be and we just implement. But anyway, so they gave me the task. So I ran their new product thing at the age of, I don't know, 22. Again, didn't know anything about much really. One thing I figured out when I was 25, three years later was that this was, you know, I didn't really have imposter syndrome. I was the real imposter, right? And I was going to get caught out. I mean, this, this luck, I just didn't, I didn't really bank on that. I didn't want to go and do an mba, but I figured that everybody coming out now after me would be ahead of me. They would know more, they would have learned more, they would have been more disciplined, they would have been academically smarter. All I had was experience and good timing, some good connections by then. So I decided that the best way I could get a marketing MBA was to join Procter and Gamble because they were the best at the time. They were the number one marketing company and the leaders in the business and they were aligned to the stuff I'd been doing at Mary Quant and Gillette. You know, their target markets were similar in terms of female and so on. The problem I had is that P and G have got a long held policy that they never hire from the outside and they only hire from business schools and from within. So that was the challenge. So I was lucky enough to contact some guys on their international sign who were based in Geneva in Switzerland and was able to convince them that at the age of 25, it was like I was A starter. You know, I didn't know much. I was fresh. And my business school experience was called the World with Gillette and Mary Kwan. And they were generous enough to sort of believe that. And they brought me over for two days and interviewed me. Sixteen people interviewed me and they all had veto rights, 16 of them. And I just had a ball and a blast and they offered me a job. And of course I had to start at the very bottom, go in as a brand assistant, reduce my salary by 75%. I didn't care about all that canned stuff. Eight years. I had a great, great learning experience, became a general manager at the age of 32 with Proctor. And then, like many of my generation, was headhunted by PepsiCo to fight the cola wars by Roger Enrico. So I went to Pepsi as president of the Middle east, which was their second biggest business after the US Largely because Coca Cola was not sold at that time in the Middle East. So Pepsi had about 110% market share. So I learned how to enjoy that. Then after five years, came back to PepsiCo Canada and ran the Canadian business at the height of the cola wars with Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Pepsi taste test, Pepsi Challenge, all this kind of guerrilla warfare, which was real fun. I mean, you're in the business of selling soft drinks. It's kind of one of the most fun wars businesses you can do. And then Pepsi offered me opportunities in Wichita and in Louisville to run KFC and Pizza Hut. And the family really didn't want to move from Toronto to Wichita or Louisville. So we said we probably didn't want to do that. They said, well, you're going to have to, because you're one of our top 15 guys. And we've got to get you ready for corporate. So you've got to get out of soft drinks and into either the restaurant business, Yum Brands, as it became, or Frito Lay in Dallas instead, was headhunted out of nowhere to go to New Zealand and to run the biggest company that had just been formed by a merger of lion, which was the biggest brewer, had 54% of the beer market, owned a bunch of pubs, vertically integrated into wines and spirits and can making and so on. And it just merged with the biggest retailer that had all the supermarkets and all the general merchandise stores like Kmart. And the job was to go there as CEO to figure out whether we should become a beer company or whether we should become a retailer, whether we should go into Australasia or just vertically deeper into New Zealand or whether we should go into Asia. So I ran that for eight years and we chose beer and we bought all the breweries from Alan Bond in Australia. We became number one in New Zealand, number two in Australia with a 45 share behind Foster's. We opened a big modern brewery in China and then we sold, quadrupled the value of the company and sold it to Kirin, you know, the Japanese guys, which time I had a bunch of opportunities, you know, to look at companies as diverse as Nike, as Fonterra, the biggest dairy company in New Zealand, and was offered this amazing opportunity to join Saatchi and Saatchi, which at that time was one of the, maybe not the biggest agency in the world, but the most famous and the most awarded. The brothers who founded the company, Maurice and Charles, decided to pursue other ventures. They'd made some big investments and the market turned against them. So the company was in trouble. Active shareholders, activist shareholders, and the brothers came to an impasse. Despite never having worked in advertising per se, I'd worked in marketing and Saatchi's biggest client was Procter and Gamble where I'd worked for eight years. So the company asked me to join saatchi as worldwide CEO, ultimately chairman and CEO, which I did. I was going to do for five years and I did for 17 and really massively enjoyed it. We sold Saatchi and Saatchi. We listed the company when I joined in year one at £1 10 and we sold it two years later for £5 to Publicist Group. I stayed at PublicisGroup running Saatchi for that time, then became head coach for the Total organization. Then we came to a natural end after 20 years there and I was able to follow my deep love, which is entrepreneurship. My own company with leadership and marketing and creativity at the core. So it's been a, it's all been about Matt making happy choices. Making happy choices. I was turned on Saatchi. I'd worked with them obviously as a client because of their dream, their purpose, which was to be revered as a hothouse for world changing creative ideas. And I thought that was a really great way to spend some time to work at a hot house for creative ideas that would change worlds. So that's about it. And I've written about five books on the way Love marks, which was biggest selling marketing book, you know, 300,000 copies and future beyond brands and 64 shots. So now I'm working, doing a lot of big global stuff. Four or five major global clients ranging from Creative Freemantle, the TV company that produces America's Got Talent, pop Idol and stuff. One of the biggest insurance companies in the world, aia, the Vitality People. Big winemaker in Portugal, the P and G distributor network in the Middle East. We do all that leadership. And I do a lot of stuff on the personal coaching side at CEO level.

Excellent. Thanks. And that's great background. When you hit that five year mark at Saatchi and Saatchi, did you do an evaluation or were you having so much fun that 17 years, you know, really look like five years to you?

I signed a contract when we sold the company to Publicis that I would stay for an extra five years. And that was the only commitment I would make. So I wouldn't do the deal with them if. If my people had to sign on because I said my people have suffered for quite a while and they have the right now to make the money and freedom. But I understand that you're not going to pay all this money. It was $2 billion, whatever, for the company, and I just disappear overnight. So I get that. So I'll sign on for another five years after two years and join the publicist board and have complete freedom and autonomy. And I didn't think they would deliver that. And Maurice Levy did deliver that. He gave me freedom, he gave me autonomy, he gave me complete support and encouragement and help, and he supported Sachi all the way through. And two years in, they came back and said, look, we'd like to up this for another five years. So they sliced and diced me pretty smartly, getting me every sort of two to three years to renew for an extra five. And before I knew it, without knowing, I'd signed, you know, kind of for another 12 to 15. And in hindsight, I did stay there five years too long. I should have left after 12. Okay. I always thought CEO should stay enrolled for seven, as I think President should have one term the French system for seven, instead of this constant reelection fiasco every two. After two years and. But the advertising business was changing so fast and moving so fast in terms of technology, in terms of audience and so on. The creative part of the business was so stimulating that I stayed excited. And really importantly, I did a deal with the board that for 30 days a year I could do my own business. And so for 30 years I built up Red Rose starting in 1996. And so I've been running my leadership practice actually for sort of 20 odd years. And I allow, and they were gracious enough for me to allow my people the opportunity to take 10 to 16 days away from the business every year to get Experience either to rest or to learn something or to experiment. Because I've always thought that entrepreneurship was a real hell of a learning experience, you know, as long as you could fail fast, learn fast, fix fast. And so that was a real breathing space for me. And I used those 30 days to build up my leadership skills and to build up my relationships and to build up my client base. I've been working with Fremantle, for instance, since 2004. Right. So yes, that was a big plus, smart thing for a big company to do.

Yeah, excellent. I'd love to ask you some questions around concepts in the book that resonated with me. The first is you talk about this not being able to control things in a Vuca world and no plan lasting more than 24 hours. I actually, for the past decade have used a similar slide series where I show the famous quote, no plan survives contact with the enemy, contrasted with Mike Tyson's quote of everybody has a plan till they get punched in the mouth. I'd love for you to expound on that, especially kind of the 24 hour window. You know, in your experience, why is it that, you know, the planning process is subject to such a short duration?

I think I've spent a lot of time working over the years on leadership with the military and with special forces in various countries and the two systems, Right. You know, the standing armies are very strategic, very long term and, you know, very focused on logistics and operations. And there are certain times when that kind of stuff is very important. But at the speed now at which the world moves, that top down, that strategy model that was so, you know, powerful for Harold Jeanine and for these guys, for Jack Welch and so on, was so appropriate for the speed at which the world and competition and consumers move then. But now, given technology, social networks, decision making, you talk to the SEALs, you talk to Delta Force, you talk to the SAS and they're driven by adapt, improvise, overcome, adapt, improvise, overcome. And that's the mindset. We were talking off camera before about the whole OODA of observe, orient, decide, act. And I wasn't aware of that at the time. And we came up with almost identical thing which was a assess, decide, execute. And when we started researching that, at that time, leadership groups spent 50% of the time on assessing, 30% on deciding and 20% executing. Right? So deciding was all Toyota, you know, Ginchi, Gibutsu and Kaizen and continuous improvements, test markets, you know, best practice. And you would assess, assess, assess research till your eyes were watering. And then on decide, the consensus Management thing was keen, you know, the whole Rasci thing. Who do you inform, who do you consult? Let's talk to the functions, let's talk to the markets, let's be inclusive. And then when you are completely exhausted by Friday morning, you might put some time against execution. Okay. That model was so strategy based, right? That sort of. Nothing much got done. Now if you look at the world that we're in, you and I are operating in, you spend 20% of the time assessing, 10% deciding and 70% executing. And I think that's how the guy that inspired your HUDA branding, that's how he spent his life on the plane, right? 70% of that time was in shooting down the opponent. And I think that's the world we're in now. You better get that. Assess, decide, execute, inverted. Start with the consumer, start with the customer, start with the situation. And empower everyone in your team to have the right decision making skills, to have the right purpose, to have the right framework to act. Because we ain't got time to kick it up to headquarters. You know, I mean, I was a big. Had a fantastic dinner one night out in a ranch in Colorado with Stormin Norman. With Norman Schwarzkopf Pry. And we were talking about how he managed the conflict with Saddam in Kuwait when he had a bunch of real big shots that he had to talk to every night, you know, ranging from Cheney through to Rumsfeld through to President Bush. And Schwarzkopf just said, listen, when given command, take charge and do what's right. And he said, then at 5:45, explain it or not to the three bosses, listen to them hang up and then repeat, when given command, take charge and do what's right.

Do you think that the kind of overwhelming access to data caused a little bit of decision paralysis? And I experienced this personally consulting with some of the state's governors around COVID 19. And they kept wanting to wait another day's worth of data, another day's worth of data. And I kept saying, you have to compress your OODA loop. You need to make a decision now. You need to say yes or no. And I noticed that was also a theme in your book where you basically said a leader must decide. They have to make the decision. Yes or no.

Can.

Can't delay it. I would love your insight on that.

I was fortunate enough to speak to a guy who I three times, because we were on. We did a World Business Forum together in Milan. We did an event together in New York and we were in the green room together and we went out for a meal together. And that was Colin Powell. And I think there was a moment in time where he would have been an outstanding President of the United States. But his wife Alma didn't really want the family to pursue that. I think, you know, she was conscious of what that might mean in this era. And of course he was driven by duty to the country and so on, but anyway, we weren't fortunate enough to get him. And one of the things that he said to me was never let the facts get in the way of the right decision. Never let the facts get in the way of the right decision. And that was so powerful really to me because we're drowning in data. We're drowning it. And you look at the, in New Zealand, Jacinda Arden, 40 year old female, very caring, inexperienced, politically listen to a great guy, Broomfield listened to terrific advice from science and acted, man, she acted straight out. Boom, bang, you know, finite. Musica. Right, right. End of virus. Okay, Never mind the data, never mind all this, Never mind what the UK are doing or not doing. Never mind the political implications. I got all this. My job, my instinct is to protect the health and safety of my people. And I will not be distracted. I will not be distracted. Of course closing New Zealand's borders will be disastrous for our economy, because I understand that. And in the meantime, listen to me. Job number one is to protect the health and safety of my citizens. And arguably she's done one of the sort of top five jobs in the world on that now, whether she's the right person next month to win an election. You know, I think the strategy that we've been promoting is survive, revive, thrive, survive. And that's not linear, it's a circular thing because things change so fast. So you've got to be focusing whatever strategic thoughts you have into those three buckets. How do we survive? How do we conserve cash, look after our people and our customers? How, how do we revive the business safely and then how do we win again? Right. Survive, revive, thrive. And when you look at the world that way and don't get distracted, you have to make some moral calls constantly that the data is the data is the data is the data. And I don't know how you're finding it in the US but kind of, I don't believe anybody now. They've all, they're just. I don't believe the media, I don't believe the politicians, I don't believe the governors, I don't believe the mayors, I don't believe the sheriffs, I don't Know who to believe. Right. So try and look at, assess yourself, decide, then execute it with full vigor.

Do you think we're getting better at the data, providing an accurate picture, especially as it relates to us? You know, there's a lot of attention being paid right now to the documentary, the Social Dilemma, that talks about how we're being manipulated online. But I contrast that with in your book. You talk about the data reads the lines, but the people live between them. Do you think that the data is providing these types of deep insights that are able to manipulate people, or is that just kind of the thinking of the day? That's not the reality.

No, it's not the reality. Every insight. I used to spend 20 years of my life looking at insights, and they all had one thing in common, Matt. They were never insightful. Right. You don't need insight, you need revelations. Revelations. And Jacinda had a revelation, right, in terms of what she had to do to keep New Zealand safe. The data, all the data was telling you to do the stuff that everybody else had been messing about doing. Yeah. I think great sport and great sportsmen all play between the lines. Everybody's got an assigned position, everybody's got assigned roles and responsibilities. But the magicians are the ones in baseball, in football and soccer, who play between the lines. In war, play between the lines where the data doesn't go, where the stats don't go.

Is there an example. We talked about New Zealand response to Covid. Is there an example from your experience in business that kind of highlights that between the line success or the achieving that revelation?

Yeah, I think it's called Steve Jobs and Apple. Right. I mean, all the data that he had at Pixar, all the data he had at Apple would, you know, at that time, we were working with Sony and they had fantastic leadership and they had developed. They were probably the most innovative consumer products company in the world. And they'd done the Walkman and all that. And we were looking. They had over 180, if I remember correctly, product innovations on the Walkman. Right. Product. Product. Product. And Steve Jobs had in his mind a billion songs in the cloud, whatever the cloud is, Right. Streaming on subscription. And of course, he first came with the ipod. Right. Which got us into 30,000 and now Spotify are into 60 million. But they were reading between the lines. Jobs did no research on music, he did research on people. And people just said, we want bespoke, we want mobility and we want choice, all right? So it isn't going to be. And he had nothing to do with music. Right. That's playing between the lines. Tim Cook does not play between the lines. He's a wonderful CEO, terrific leader, doing great at building shareholder value. But he plays in position, which is a fair enough strategy, right?

Sure.

But I think it's the Jim Collins thing. It's right good and great. I think Tim Cook and Apple are a good investment. Good company.

Good.

You know, but with Steve, he built great teams who built great products because he operated between the lines.

Do you think you fell short? I mean, I know another theme in the book is you say that great leaders build other leaders. They don't build teams. So did Steve Jobs fail with regards to not building a leader that's able to operate between the lines as he was?

I don't think he failed because I think he built a great leader who was not in his image, which I think is really brave. And I think he bought a guy that was complementary to to him and gave him the freedom to play between the lines. I think he hoped that Jonathan I've would deliver that for Tim Cook. I don't know what was in his head, but I know there's been view that he didn't fail to create sustainability in terms of leadership, but he actually did. And I think he actually did it braver by recreating it. Not in his own model. Yeah. But I do think he was hoping that Jonathan I've would step up and do that. I may be wrong.

Yeah. Of course he's leaving the company. I think at this point.

Right. Big.

I guess it becomes a question of did Jonathan I've create leaders kind of in his image that can carry that on.

There you go. There you go.

Still a big believer in Apple. I bought stock back when the first ipod was launched and have not sold it to date. I mean, it's performed extraordinarily well and they've continued to excite and please me as a consumer, certainly with all the different products that I've bought.

I couldn't agree with you more. We typically do a lot of. We do a thing on. One of the most important things culturally is to define what you are. What is your communal noun? Are you a family? Are you a team? Are you a machine? Are you a tribe? Are you a community? What the hell are you? And there's no doubt that Apple is and remains a cult, but a cult in the most positive way. Right. Because we all have the. I have nothing that is an apple and I have nothing that isn't white. Right. And I believe in them blindly and they Never. And even when they disappoint me because I love them as well as respect them, I forgive them instantly.

No.

And I'm sure Samsung's phone is better technically. Could well be. I don't know, I've never even picked one up. But I'm not criticizing it at all. It's just the book I wrote on lovemarks. The idea of a lovemark is you create loyalty beyond reason, beyond price, beyond benefit, beyond attribute, and that's what Apple have done. You, you've just described you're loyal beyond reason. You'll convince yourself it's for technical or functional reasons if you want to, and you do respect all that, but you love them and you love being part of that. And I do, too.

Yeah, Definitely developed an affinity for the company and I think that, you know, buying stock early on gave me an even more of an affinity because I felt like I was part of the team. Right. You're an early believer and you're along for the ride, so.

Well, you must have made some money on that, Matt.

I did. I often joke, though, if I made enough money to cover all of the money I was spent on Apple products in the family because I always get the latest phone, I get the latest laptop, I'm an upgrade junkie for certain. I want the new.

Guilty, your honor. Guilty.

I didn't want to talk about one thing. When I work with entrepreneurs in building companies, I talk a lot about entrepreneurial focus. And I notice that focus is also an element or thematic that you look at as well. I'd love for you to give your viewpoint on the importance of focus.

Everything starts with purpose, right? Every startup should start with a purpose on the page. It should create an inspirational dream. It should. There you go. It should create the set of beliefs just on one page. Not a vision statement, not all this corporate nonsense that goes on the bathroom walls or on your screen. A real purpose. Who are you? Why are you? What are you? Right on one page, okay? And you've got to have a blistering focus and that, you know. So when Team New Zealand won the America's cup yachting against the giants from Italy, against Oracle, against all these things, the focus of every single person I was on their board was make the boat go faster, Punto. Whether you're a sponsor, make the boat. So for instance, they were asking Toyota to become a sponsor, and the CEO of Toyota said, okay, yeah, what do you need from me? We're prepared to pay 80 million bucks. And Russell Coutts, the skipper of Team New Zealand, said, yeah, okay, that's really great, but frankly, we don't really care about that. What we want is we want 30 of your engineers working on our boat for the next three years to make the boat go faster. And the Toyota guy said, what? And he said, yeah, and the money's good. Thanks. We're not saying no to that, but we want the people to make the boat go faster. Okay? We had a cleaner, Rosie, right? She cleaned the decks of the boats. And we're walking past the boat one day and it's come back from a trial run. And she goes, Mr. Kevin, Mr. Kevin. And I said, yeah, Rosie, how are you? You know, yada, yada. Can I ask you something? And I was with these kind of sponsors that I was trying to sell, so I was sort of in a hurry and everything, but I said, yeah, no, no, okay, yeah, sure. Well, she said, well, you know, have you seen the deck on the boat? Right? It's got all these dimples on the deck, right, to help you stay on your feet. And I said, yeah, yeah, Rosie, yeah. It's to help people stand up. She says, yeah, I know that, Mr. Kevin, but can you see all in here? This all dirt in between the dimples? And I clean them and clean and scrub and scrub. But when they come back, it's all in there. And you know what, Mr. Kevin? That dirt weighs something. And I thought, wow, man. So I said, okay. I had no idea what to do with that. But I went and talked to the engineers. The engineers, guess what? They just gave everybody then a pair of shoes that had the dimples on, and they got rid of all the dimples on the deck. To have a completely flat deck, put dimples on the shoes, shaved five seconds off our time. It's only five seconds. We won the final by 3.4. And that came from a cleaner. That's what focuses make the boat go faster. The focus for Steve Jobs at Apple was think different. And everybody at Steve did the great days of Nike when Phil Knight was there and then carried on by Mark Parker, of course, was just Duet. That was the focus. It wasn't an ad line. It was a focus of the company. One of the focuses of this big insurance company I'm working for, for all their people, is be the difference. Be the difference. That's the focus for everyone. Don't just do the yards. Don't just get things done. You got to make things happen. That's what leadership is, right? Management's getting things done. But leaders make things happen. So focus, power of three. That I use focus, commitment, discipline. Focus, commitment, discipline, focus. Get it in a sentence that starts with a verb. Look at it at 5 o' clock every day. Be committed to that. Do not be distracted. Get rid of all the bureaucratic hierarchical nonsense, the busyness of business. Get rid of all that nonsense. Focus, commitment, discipline. Right. Roberto Goizuera used to talk about it when we were in the middle of the Kohler was and he blinked, but he was big on to meet, beat, repeat, meet, beat, repeat. Right. That's what you got to do if you're running a big company. You got to meet the target, the focus. You got to beat it and you got to do it again.

I love this story with regards to shaving the five seconds because it kind of demonstrates that the focus was known throughout everybody that was involved with the project. Right. So similar to when you talk about this story in your book with JFK running into the janitor at NASA and asking him what does he do here? And he says he's putting a person on the moon or putting a man on the moon. To have that level of depth of focus and purpose, I think definitely drives organizations towards greatness.

And that's why you've got to get it on a page full of people talk, not in a book or a Strat document or anything like that. It's got to be a conversation that people can co create and that can, they can understand and they can just repeat when they take it home. But at five o' clock every day, all every employee had to do at NASA was to say what did I do to help someone get to the moon today? And if the answer was you just sign a lot of boring meetings that didn't do anything, probably wasn't a good day. True.

You also talk about the importance of expanding your frame of reference. Can you kind of give an example of that in your career where you went and sought to expand the frame of reference? It was beneficial to your company or your clients.

Yeah, I mean, I think the whole. I thought in the year 2000 that brands were dead and that were being commodified and that P and G would soon be out of business and therefore so would Saatchi and Saatchi. And the world would be dominated by Amazon, Walmart, Target and OWN label. And if brands just continued to act within the framework of Philip Kotler and the marketing that was around then, that is with very little emotional engagement, we'd all be out of business and retailers and Naomi Klein and OWN label would win. So we reframed that to the future beyond brands created love marks and said that you could, you started life perhaps as a commodity. You could then become. So we looked at things on love and respect, right? How much respect you have, how much love strong brands have tons of respect, but no love. People would change in and out. They would move to, on label, they would be to innovation, would be price driven commodities. You could, every bank became a commodity, right? Airlines have now become commodities. Okay, the branding's awful. Then you think about fads. So it was commodity fad brand or Lovemark. Lovemark has high love and high respect. So you will never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever leave Apple because they have for you become irresistible. And that's all emotional. It's not product, it's not even design. You like all that. You like the product, you like the design, but you love being part of the Apple cult, community, tribe and family. So we reframed brands out of a category that was declining. Crazy. You'll remember, you know, the days of when retailer was going to take over, right? And we gave power back to consumers. And for the first 10 years, people frankly just abused me by using the word love, right? It was all too emotional and too soft and too pansy. Now it's right in the vernacular, you know, but you know, we used to love New York. We don't know we used to love the usa. We probably don't. We find that difficult now. We find it difficult for have others to fall in love with us. And we need to get that back. Need to get back because America was, you know, the land of hope and dreams. But even now, if you listen to Springsteen, he's, he's kind of sadder about it all. And we need to bring that magic back. The world needs a USA to fall back in love with. I think that's a refrain.

I think another exemplar of a brand, you know, for me that I developed an affinity for was Virgin America. Just because the expansion of flying with them was so great. You know, from the lighting to the courtesy to the comfort that I gave up, the benefit of, you know, flying to the west coast ununited and the status and the miles associated with that. Just because I enjoyed the Virgin America experience so much better.

Branson created a lovemark with Virgin. I mean, the way their lounges, the way you sit on, if you ever did the transatlantic flight from New York or LA to London on Virginia, it was just democratically fun, right? And everything about it was emotional and engaging and involving. Whereas British Airways sunk from being the world's favorite Airline to being just a brand and frankly now just a commodity.

Absolutely. You also talk a lot about the importance of storytelling and kind of changing the narrative and the language. I would love for you to kind of expand upon that for the watchers. What do you mean by, you know, that revolution is controlled through language?

Yeah, revolution starts with language. Right. Every revolution starts with language. You know, Winston Churchill knew that very well. Mahatma Gandhi knew that very well. Mandela knew that very well. JFK knew that very well. The current presidential candidates have got no grasp of language, either of them. Right. They don't know how to use it. They're simply confrontational or threatening or diversive or whatever. They're not using language to romance us. They're using it as a bludgeon. And we don't really want to be bludgeoned by language. We want to be moved by language. Right. And I think that at the heart of today and tomorrow's companies will be those people that can emotionally engage. We won't be using the mass media bludgeoning of the heavy network TV commercials anymore. We're gonna have to be engaging in conversations, in stories. And actually, I think storytelling. I've been using the wrong word. And it was Rolf Jensen, who was the CEO of the Institute of the Future in Copenhagen, who said, the storytellers will be the heroes of the 21st century. And I think he was right at the time, but now I think we got it a little bit wrong. And actually, story sharers will be the heroes, because people now don't want to be told a story. They want to be in the story. I mean, hence the rise of Twitter, hence the rise of Facebook, Instagram. They want to be the story. And brands have got to learn to give up control of the narrative and to share that narrative and to open up that narrative and to share their stories. And I think that's the leadership and the marketing challenge. Ditto. From a leadership point of view, command and control is not going to work. A millennial is never going to work there. The whole new generations are just not going to come to work in a command and control environment. They want personalized work. They want to be able to choose right. And so they want to have language, a way of conversing. I mean, if you try and run a football team, a soccer team, right. In England, I'm a Manchester City fan, and we have, I don't know, 16 different nationalities in the academy. We still have some people who don't speak English. We have a lot of kids who've really sort of Sacrificed their education to play football from the year four and a half. Right. We have people signed up at four and a half. These guys communicate on their mobile and on their iPads through pictures. You can't sit them in front of a conference room and give them a rah rah corporate speech they don't understand. Right. You got to show them a picture and show them three words. Right. So at Manchester City, if you lose the ball, there's, you know, big technical things, but actually everybody is instinctively taught from the age of four and a half that as soon as you lose the ball, you have five seconds to react, recover, regain. Five seconds you have to react. Don't feel sorry for yourself, don't feel mad, don't argue with the referee, don't claim anything. You haven't got time for that. React, boom, recover, get back in position. Because when you've lost the ball, your body's in the wrong position, you will be not balanced. Boom. And then you've got to regain the ball and you have to do that in five seconds otherwise the moment's gone. Right. So they can remember those three words but you try and give them a sentence there. It's not, you know, in the heat of battle for a non native English speaker, it's not going to be super easy. Right. So yeah, I think revolution language begins with revolution begins with language. And I think that story sharing is the biggest challenge for companies, big or small. How do we share our stories genuinely to get engagement and contribution from our employees, from our customers and from our audience?

I love that sports analogy. My 12 year old is a hockey goalie and his goalie coach tells him that by the time he's 18, 98% of the other goalies will be able to make the save from the correct position. And it all becomes a battle with regards to who can recover and get to that position the quickest.

Well, that's terrific to be coaching that in at that age because that's going to become for him ingrained. Right. And he shared it with you.

Yeah, yeah. Well, he's an OODA Loop fan, so you know, he already relates goaltending to.

OODA Loops, so that's smart. Okay, so give him, give him The Manchester City 3. React, recover, regain.

I definitely will. Definitely will.

I know that.

I love the discussion as well too about, you know, our inability to, to see the future and then we kind of have to hack our way into it. Can you expound on that a little bit? What does it mean to hack your way into the future?

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of stuff going on right now. You must be reading all. The future of work, the future of the office. It's so grandiose and it's all gobbledygook, right? Because all, you know, and there's all this talk of the new normal, right? Man alike, these guys are dreaming, right? There will be no new normal. We will only have the new abnormal, the world. First of all, we have to have a vaccine, okay? Let's assume that's quarter one next year, right? When the world will reopen. Then we're gonna have the biggest mental health crisis we've ever. You know, four out of ten Americans are now suffering somewhere from mental health problems ranging from anxiety, isolation, depression, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay? We're going to have a backlog of health problems for surgeries that should have taken place and haven't. And that's going to be socially difficult. We've got a whole morass of social problems facing us, particularly in the US today. We've got the rise and rise of nationalism and populism. You've got the dawn of the Chinese era, right? The American age is being driven to a close through political ineptitude, right? And we've got to be, we've got to be really alert to do something about that. And then on top of that, you've got our worst ever global recession that you and I have ever seen and unemployment that is going to attack the weak and the young and the old, right? So in that confluence of stuff to be sitting down here yammering on about the future of A, B, C, D, E and E with any intellectual or academic authority I think harbors on dangerous and arrogant, right? I think what we've got to do is prepare our people, our colleagues, our customers for the new abnormal. Adapt, improvise, overcome, and to relish and drive change. Not to react against it, not to defend against it, not to think. We're going to go back to work. We're not going to go back to anything. I think for me, we're going to hack our way through the jungle into a new way forward. We're going to be progressive and it's going to be fail fast, learn fast, fix fast. Excellent.

So, you know, one of the things I loved about the book, 64 shots, the play in the titles, you actually identify kind of 64 icons that were influential for you. You know, one of my favorite questions, as we kind of close out the the hour of generosity, you know, sharing your wisdom, who are you looking to today for inspiration or what are you reading that is resonating with you?

You know, so the reading thing, I think it's my age. I'm reading Roger angel and the Best of Roger angel is 100 years old this month. The greatest, I think, American essayist of all time. Obviously not just because of baseball. The article that he wrote when he was 94 years old on what it felt like to be 94 years old in the New Yorker is the classic of all time. And I've just been rereading that because a friend of mine who's 18 Canada, sent it to me. And I've sent it around all my mates, old and young, and it's just marvelous. I've gone back into Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker was my hero growing old, and he knew more about management and leadership than anybody. I'm a speaker at the Drucker Forum every year in Vienna at the end of October, which is driven by his leadership stuff. And when you go back to the future, pretty much he got it all right. Same applies to Harold Jeanine. You know, I mean, I'm reading a lot of what he wrote about facts and his disciplines. The way he did stuff when he built this great AT&T conglomerate is not. It's not the how that matters, it's the what. So my inspiration is currently on looking backwards, drawing inspiration from the past. So I think if you can connect past, present and future, okay. It's kind of interesting if you just forget the past. I think you're. I don't know, I think you're missing something. Yeah. So that's what's inspiring me. The same thing really applies on the political front. I mean, it's very hard to look at the world today, to look at the UK to look at the US to look at France, to look anywhere in Latin America, to look at Russia or China, and to find political leadership irrespective of political party that was represented by, you know, Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair, JFK or Ronald Reagan or, you know, leadership that we had or a Colin Powell, irrespective of where we happen to label them as red, blue, left or right, which I think are completely stupid and outdated labels now. I mean, probably everybody's economically sort of slightly right of center and socially left of center, I would imagine. I don't know. But the labels and the party systems, I think are a relic of the past. The electoral system. These things don't work. So it's pretty hard, I think. I look for inspiration from Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, sorry, we lost Leonard Cohen and John Prine. But I think, you know, Dylan and Springsteen are probably the two greatest story sharers and tellers of my lifetime.

Yeah.

And I'm constantly inspired by looking back at what Mary Quant did to revolutionize creativity. I mean, my first three bosses were all, were all women. And I learned from them all about connectivity, collaboration, creativity. And I think Mary in many ways set an environment for that kind of creative expression.

Has she written a book or is there a book about that journey?

Yeah, Quantum Quant.

Okay.

Quantum Quant. And she did a great exhibit or the Victoria Albert exhibitor work. She's not a big theorist or big speaker. She's just genius. Steve jobstyle.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for taking the hour to chat with us. I greatly appreciate it. I'm glad that the ooda, you know, in my email address was enough to hook you to have a conversation. And thank you for the book. You know, it caught me at a great time. It resonated, you know, with me. And I've given away and continue to give away copies over the years to folks. So do appreciate you taking the time to put that wisdom into written form to share with us as well.

Matt, I always look for magic moments, right? You got to have two or three magic moments in your day. And when you told me that your 12 year old son was an OODA fan, that's a real magic moment. It's a wonderful thing to have said and shared. It made me feel real good.

Excellent. Well, thanks again so much.

Cheers.

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