Challenges of the C-Suite with Dorie Clark, Episode #4

Hey, Dorie, how are you?

CB, I'm great. It's so good to get to talk with you and to be here.

Well, I'm so excited, Dorie. I've wanted to interview you ever since I met you in London at the Thinkers50 where you won the award. And I am like so proud. Go women, you know? And, uh, I, I tried to talk to you then, but you were so nervous, it wasn't funny. It was great, it was so great.

Oh, thank you. Well, it's been, it's been so fun getting to know you in the months since.

Oh, thank you. So, Dorie, I want you to tell people about you and about your work. And like, I should have all your books in front of us right now, but the camera is not big enough.

I have one prop on my wall, actually. Let's see if I can figure out which. There we go. No. Okay. Move my head the right way. This is actually my first book, a poster for Reinventing You. So I've got at least one prop there.

Okay.

Yes. But I'm happy to talk about my background. Basically, my deal these days, I teach for the Fuqua School of Business at Duke. I also do some teaching at Columbia Columbia Business School, and I write business and career books. Reinventing You was the first one, then Stand Out. My most recent is Entrepreneurial You. And broadly speaking, what I really try to do in my work is help people and companies in this very noisy, very frenetic modern world find a way to be able to get their message to stand out and to be heard. There's a lot of noise out there, and I want to help good, talented people figure out how they can actually contribute to the conversation and, and be able to make a difference.

Well, forgive me, allergies. I know you're also teaching on LinkedIn, right? Because I've seen some of your platforms.

I do. I have, I think now 18 courses on LinkedIn Learning as well, which is, which has been a great way to reach a lot of people.

Yeah, I mean, you know, talk about somebody who knows how to market herself. It's just amazing. I'm trying to follow in your footsteps, but, uh, you know, I'm gonna need some coaching. I'm gonna tap into you.

Sounds good.

So basically, I saw that what you do— and let's talk a little bit more detail about how you do it— is that you take people like me who are unknown and help them become thought leaders?

Well, I certainly wouldn't say you're unknown, CB, because you are doing fantastic work. But in general, you are not wrong. Leaving aside the work that I do around corporate consulting and executive coaching, the work that I do for individuals, primarily they are folks who are solopreneurs. They may be consultants, they may be coaches, they may be authors, and they are smart people. They have great ideas. You know, I'm not, I'm not working with the kind of, uh, you know, oh, make money fast on the internet type thing. Uh, I'm working with, with people that are probably a lot like folks that you and I know, uh, plenty of. You know, they are, they are really good at at what they do. But there is, as we've all discovered, a big difference between being really good at what you do and being well known for that thing. And I have really devoted the last decade of my life to trying to crack the code on how people in this modern society do get well known for their ideas and help them break through and get, get known for it.

Gosh, I could see where you are so valuable in the work that you do to so many populations. But I'm going to go there, particularly the Black population.

Mm.

They have— people like myself have so many good ideas, and we just don't know how to break through the noise, as you say. So I'm going to ask you to disclose 3 tips to give us. to become known as thought leaders in our field?

I can, I can see you and raise you, CB.

Okay.

Because in addition to 3 tips, what I actually most want to share as a starting point, we can go into depth about any of these things or flesh them out. But I actually over, over time, it took me, you know, a good 5 or 6 years of really rolling up my sleeves to get enough data to be able to figure this out. But what I came to realize, and I published about this in the Harvard Business Review back in 2017, is that fundamentally, when it comes to becoming a recognized expert in your field, there are 3 key components. There are 3 levers that we have to wrap our arms around and be able to do well. And actually, a problem that I see with a lot of professionals, and often there are people who are like, oh, but I've tried everything. I keep working, I keep doing this. And the problem often Is that you really need to do all 3 of them. And instead what they're doing is they're doing one thing a lot, and that is good, but that is not sufficient. So the 3 things are content creation, social proof, and network. And to explain very briefly what I mean about this content creation, this is, there's lots of ways you can do it, but it's basically sharing your ideas publicly. Because it becomes, as you can imagine, right, very hard to be a thought leader if people don't know what your thoughts are.

So great point.

We gotta, we gotta get them out there. It could be articles, it could be podcasts, it could be video live streams like this, but, uh, but you need to do it. Social proof is the second one. This is basically how do people know you're credible. And again, there's a lot of different ways that we can do it, but it's very important. You might see if you if you go onto the websites of people that you respect, you will probably see things for many of them on their website. Oh, I have consulted for this famous company and this famous company and this famous company. That's social proof. That's basically saying, oh, okay. You know, it's it's telegraphing people. You don't need to worry if I'm credible because Google and Microsoft and you know Merck. have all said I'm credible. So it's just enabling people to relax and say, oh, good. Okay, well, then I'll listen up. Right. It could be the form of what companies you've worked for. It could be what publications you've been— you've quoted in. It could be publications you've written for. It could be that you've written books, etc. And then the final piece is your network, because the truth is you can create a lot of content. You can be very credible. But if no one knows who you are, if you're doing all of this like in a cave, It's not going to be helpful. You need people that can help you amplify your voice and introduce you to other people. And so your network becomes very valuable with that. Those are the components that make someone a recognized expert.

That is fabulous and very short and very, very precise. Thank you. I so much agree. You know, it's kind of like you feel like you're swimming upstream without a paddle. And you just broke it down so that we could have not just a paddle, but a jagunda paddle to get there.

Well, it's really hard to be successful if you don't know how people become successful. And yet for almost all of us, you know, like you think about people you and I know, they've worked so hard. They've gotten master's degrees. They've gotten doctorates. They've worked in their corporate jobs for a long time. They are very, very good at what they do. But when, when have they ever taken a course or somehow been instructed in how to get their ideas better known? That's not, that's not a thing. And so they have to muddle through that process. And it often is frustrating. It takes too much time. It makes them question themselves. And, and, you know, frankly, it's a waste of time because they could be out changing lives and helping people. And instead it's like, Should I write this blog post and where do I send it? And it's like, come on. I want to help accelerate the process for people so they can get to the good stuff, which is actually making an impact with their ideas.

That's so wonderful. And I forgot to mention at the beginning that this is Challenges of the C-Suite.

Yes.

Brought to you by the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches. So one of the things I hear a lot, and the coaches that are members of ACEC for short, are quite brilliant because our whole platform was— this is for master-level coaches, right? So, and it's for master-level coaches who want to go another step up, which is being an enterprise-wide business partner, enterprise-wide business partner. And what I hear, because many of them have written books and/or they've tried LinkedIn— and notice I'm using the word or, to your point— And I— and they say to me, CB, you know, your whole idea of writing a book or writing articles, I've tried it and it doesn't work. And my background is marketing, uh, you know, coming from Pace University into corporate America, into places like General Foods in marketing and branding. I say to them, listen, you have to understand one component at a time Does not make you successful.

That's right. I tried a diet, CB. I had a salad once.

It sounds like my diet. Exactly, exactly. And I say to— and I see such easy fixes. We have somebody who just wrote a phenomenal book And he has been— he has developed his own podcast, and he's interviewing people on the podcast. And you see in his background, way in the background, and he's not known as being a writer like you are, the book. And I said, why don't you bring it forward so that when you are interviewing people, people see the book? So he took the book from the background and he put it on his desk. Problem is, you still can't see it. I said to him, "Hey, here's an idea. Get a banner, a desk banner, pull it up, and put it in front of the camera next to you." His response: "I don't have time to do that. I'm busy with my podcast." He's gonna kill me when he listens to this.

Oh my goodness!

I said to him. My dear, I will get Carla, our designer, to design the banner, and I will buy the banner for you so that you can put it up. And the sad part of this is he spent untold money to get advice on how to publish and market his book, and simple Things as small as that, noticing your book when you're talking to a lot of people and it's going to go out over social wires, was missed.

It's, it's so true. So often it is just really small tweaks, really small things that can have an enormous difference. And, you know, for all of us, we're, you know, we're on a continual learning curve, and we look at things that we, that we missed or that we didn't do, and we say, oh, how could I have been so stupid? But, you know, I mean, I will give you an example, CB. And, you know, as a, as an executive coach, you can probably relate to this as well. I, you know, the engagements that I have with clients typically are in 6-month increments. And, you know, that's great. And so I would typically come, you know, it's getting to the end of the 6 months.

Okay.

So, you know, would you like to renew? What would you like to do? And anyway, I suddenly realized that something that I could do, especially, you know, I wouldn't necessarily do this right up front because I want to test things out with a person to see if it's working, if I like working with them and vice versa. But for these folks, you know, I have clients that have renewed for years and I thought, you know what, I should just have them renew for a year at a time. And so this summer, I literally have now in the past week, because a lot of people are on a July schedule. I have gotten 3 clients who normally just under the normal course of business would have been a 6-month renewal. And I gave them a small discount if they renewed for the year upfront. And so now I have like, you know, tens of thousands of dollars just, you know, coming in that are guaranteed now that are going to be in my pocket because the benefit is, you know, they're paying in advance in exchange for this discounted rate. And it is because I made that small tweak to offering them that option.

I love it. I love it. I'm so happy to hear this. When I was coaching— so now I only coach other coaches. But when I was coaching, I said this hourly rate thing is absurd. You know, what's going on with that? Even 6 months or 9 months or a year. And so what I started doing was retainer-based Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

I said, okay, you're going to get this great discount, but you have to pay it every month, whether you use me or not. And for that, I will give you 24/7 access and a great discount. And it— I had clients for 15 years.

Absolutely.

Fantastic. I watched them make more money than I was making. So I think, you know, for coaches, we really need to— it's great that we have this servant leadership mindset, but we need to cover that and bake that in business. You know, let's—

Absolutely.

Show me the money. And I don't mean that in a sort of ridiculous kind of approach. I just mean that there's— you're giving people incredible advice, you're helping them. in business and in life, and, and you're not making any money, you're struggling yourself. That's an equation I don't understand.

Well, honestly, it's— I, I feel like it's a heavy lift to ask a successful business person to respect you if you, if you can't figure out how to earn money for yourself. You have to be convinced that your advice is actually worth that money, and you have to be able to successfully show that. Otherwise What standing do you have to be in the room? We need to step up to that.

Yes, I totally agree. And with that, I'm gonna— I don't think it's a switch, but I think it's a continuation. I want to ask you about C-suite executives that you work with. Now, they've learned to stand in the room, stand up to be counted. But we all know that we all have ghost sabotage, restrictions in our growth, even though we hate to admit it, restrictions in our reach to people. What do you consider to be the top 3 sabotages that take place with people who are leading major companies and mid-sized companies? And what do they do to fix it? So let's start with number one.

Yeah, certainly. Well, I will, I will say that the coaching work that I do inside corporations typically has a particular lens, you could say. I mean, in general, of course, when you're doing coaching, you have to be a little bit of a utility infielder and deal with a lot of different questions. But in general, when people bring me in, the sort of special sauce that I have is that I have a strong background in communications and marketing. And so a lot of the work that I do with executives is around how they are communicating. Either in an external sense to stakeholders, you know, really getting their messaging clear, whether that's the board, whether that's customers, etc., or sometimes in an internal sense. It just, you know, how are you communicating effectively to your employees and making sure everybody is on the same page and that your message is really getting through? So a lot of the issues that I work with clients on, I mean, One of them that I can think of that is, that is not uncommon is, so for many of these executives, the way that they have been successful is often they are very hard-charging people. They're very results-driven people. And that is awesome. That is a great thing that should be preserved and protected. And yet also, like just about everything else in life, it can be taken too far. And so sometimes there may be issues where you develop a reputation that all you do is crack heads or all you do is yell at people. And if that's not terribly motivating for the people under you. And so I will often work with executives to help them figure out what is the sweet spot so that they can mitigate that. They can keep the results orientation, but not do it in a way that is upsetting to the people around them or makes them feel like, oh God, he thinks I'm an idiot or whatever.

Are they aware that they're doing this?

I certainly sometimes, yeah. I mean, I think that it is, uh, it becomes, it becomes clear over time when you have enough people kind of running out of the room and crying, or you have enough people who, uh, you know, who are, who are complaining about it. Um, but I think the problem often often is it's not that they don't know they're doing it, it's that they're not sure what else to do. And they're worried that if they take their foot off the accelerator, then it's, it's going to be license for everybody to just eat bonbons all day.

Mm-hmm.

And so, and so they, they want to, they want to keep what they feel like is working. And, and it's hard. I think it's hard to distinguish sometimes, well, what's the part that's important and necessary and good and really does drive people? And then what's the part that may be, in the minds of some at least, going a little bit too far?

Do you find— this is a tough question because I can relate to what you're talking about. I, you know, I'm a high introvert. And so communicating with people is a challenge for me, believe it or not, you know. And I find that after I'm in a conversation, I have to go down, go and rest, because it just takes so much out of me. And what I found was, is that I was talking to people in a very hard-charging manner. And I had to learn that you could communicate the same message with a smile and tweak those words, right? But I also had trouble figuring out whether or not people were responding to me because I was in that manner because I was a woman, I was Black, I was smart, and to me— and an introvert. And to me, It made sense just to say it like it is. And I didn't understand any other way. And I'm an Army brat to top it off. And so I remember my first day at General Foods when, when people spoke to my manager and they said, she doesn't communicate. And I thought, what are you talking about? I'm very clear in what I'm saying. And what I found out a year later, it was because I didn't say good morning to people when I was walking down the hall. Hmm. Now to me, that's—

somebody's a New Yorker.

I forgot to add that in too. Originally from the Bronx, no less.

Good morning.

What do you want? So if somebody at the C-suite wants to self-correct, and they have all those questions, and they don't know there's a Dori Clark, how do they begin to understand the effects that they're having on not only their staff, but to the outside consumer that may be purchasing their product?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, I think that One of the things that can be useful, I mean, so often, understandably, right, leaders are concerned. They, they, everybody wants to make good changes, right? But knowing what is a good change versus a change that will diminish your effectiveness or a change that will somehow warp your personality so that you feel like you're not you, that's not a change they want to make.

Yeah.

And so I think that, you know, you can tell them a million times like, oh, this isn't working, this isn't resonating or whatever. But I think that, that ultimately, you know, certainly coaches can be helpful because they are the folks that can deliver messages with the difficult messages with love. I think that's an important balance. But in general, what I think is a useful question to ask yourself is, okay, Who, who has been successful here, you know, in this, in this circumstance? And, and what were they like? How did they do it? And the answer is not, uh, almost assuredly that you're gonna do exactly what they did because they're a different person. They come from a different background. You know, they might be from Minnesota and not from the Bronx, and so they're gonna have their Minnesota way of doing it or whatever. And so it would be weird for you to suddenly You know, pretend that you're an extra from Fargo. Like, that's not, that's not gonna fly. But I think that it is useful. It's hard for people to do, but it, but if you can, it's useful to sort of step back and say, okay, well, I'm not literally gonna emulate them, but what is it about their approach that, that was successful here? What were the pieces? You know, I can't make myself be from Minnesota. But it seems like people appreciated that this person seemed friendly or seemed like they were conveying care. OK, I'm not going to do it the way he did it. But how— what are the ways that I can convey care if that is a value that is important in the organization?

Great advice. OK, here's another one for you. And I can't remember the principle of this. But, and it may be a bit old school because I think that I'm seeing change, it's women against women.

Hmm.

I, you know, when I was in the corporate space, the enemy that you had was another woman. And it was that we were labeled that we could not communicate like a man. Otherwise, we were called all kinds of negative names. And so therefore, we tended not to support each other. I'm seeing a shift in that with the younger generation, particularly the millennial generation. As I see on Facebook, there's all these groups to support other women. Do you feel that that breakdown from my generation, which is now women at the top has caused a disruption in their ability to lead?

Well, I think that in the circumstances where women may be undercutting other women, that's kind of the clue, right? That's the evidence at the tail end of the process. And that's a terrible thing. But it's not, it's not the problem per se. It's the symptom of the problem. And what I think the actual problem is, was that there was, I, I, you know, certainly an ethos in the corporate world, but also one that got internalized in many women's heads that there's only allowed to be one. And whenever you are playing a zero-sum game, Well, the whole point of a zero-sum game is that you're gonna, you're gonna crush all your competitors. You know, if, if their success means you're gonna be less successful, unless you're an idiot, you are going to want to stop them from being successful.

Right.

And so I think that the real shift that, that I, I think hopefully, um, you know, most women have made, and I think that we all need to make, is, uh, just in terms of being an effective leader is to understand that, you know, yes, it's possible that, you know, if you're Coke and Pepsi, that that's a zero-sum game. Although even that's debatable as people move into new product categories. But certainly within your own organization, we need to be thinking about how to expand the pie and how to help other people. Because if you— I mean, you know, the truth is, I work, you know, like you, CB, I work with a lot of coaches and consultants. I have an online course and community called the Recognized Expert Community. And one of the values that we really proactively espouse there is that, you know, what, what people in the community do is they help each other. And there, there is to be no competitiveness because the truth is, you know what, CB? If you start writing for Harvard Business Review, guess what? That makes it more likely you can introduce me to an editor there. So yeah, I want you to write for them, or, you know, whatever. Oh, if you're in the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches, it's not like, well, screw you, CB. It's, oh, CB, gosh, do you think you could nominate me? And that is how we rise. You know, all, all the tide is lifting the boats. Yes.

Yeah, I so agree. So could you go out on a platform and speak about that? Because I have seen that in the MG100. I'd like to see it even more, but I have seen women really reaching out. First of all, I'm getting to understand other women and the platform that they have, and then trying to help those women. Okay, so we've got communication. What other major area do you see is a holdback? for the C-suite?

Yeah. So I think that, that one of the other big challenges that C-suite leaders have is, especially these days, is really being able to prioritize in so-called VUCA situations.

Yes.

It's, you know, it's— so for many of you may know the term. For those who don't, it is Volatile. See, this is my quiz. We'll see if I can get it right. Volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, which is basically like everything today. Everything today.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

So, you know, we, we all are sort of swimming in the morass of all of this. But, but unfortunately, it falls to the C-suite. I mean, they are, you know, they are where the buck stops. And in a situation where basically No one knows anything and it could change in a moment's notice. I mean, you think about in the US right now, like the rollbacks of the reopenings, right? Everybody's planning for the reopening and then it's like, oh, psych, nope, we're not doing that.

Oh, yeah.

Well, you know, everything can change. And so how do you prioritize? How do you triage? And how do you respond in a nimble way to a situation that is just so dynamic? So extraordinarily fast-moving.

Yeah, how do you?

Very good question. Well, my, my favorite mantra right now, basically since the start of the pandemic, has been preserving optionality. That is what I am focused on like a hawk.

Whoa, that's a lot. Tell us about it.

Yeah, let's unpack it.

I mean, I've got it, but I, I just love it. I love it. Let's talk about it.

Yes. Well, so under some circumstances, you know, when you, when, when you are in a more certain environment, when things are not quite so crazy, and if you, if you get a winning hand, the goal for that is like you go all in. You're like, I have a winning hand, let's max this out, right? That makes, that makes sense. But the problem with the pandemic world is that you might think you have a winning hand, but that winning hand is going to last like, what, like 45 minutes? And then suddenly it's like, oh no, it's a losing hand. And, you know, and when things are changing so rapidly, it becomes a strategic liability for you to go all in on anything.

Oh my God. Perfect. Perfect words. Yes.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Thank you.

I appreciate that enthusiastic endorsement.

Thanks. Because I have to tell you, um, as I talked to the coaches in ACEC, they're saying to me, so what do we do now? And my answer is pivot. Well, what does that mean? How does that mean? You know, I have this product, I have this service, I have this expertise. And I almost want to say to them, throw it all out and listen to what's needed.

Yep, absolutely. I mean, the best thing that we can do, you know, this goes back to preserving optionality, is you say, you know what, let's test it. Let's see. Oh, well, this seems to be working. Okay, let's, let's put in a chip. Okay, this is good. Let's put in 5 chips. Still, still work. Okay, maybe, maybe 10 chips. You do not slide all your chips onto the table. Not right now. Not yet. You need to keep looking, keep iterating, and keep checking because things— when things are moving rapidly, you just, you don't want to be caught flat-footed because, oh, well, we went all in on this thing that was relevant last week, but it's totally not relevant now.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I get accused all the time in ACEC and you keep changing things. We can't catch up.

You're just ahead of the curve, CB.

That's the way the world is. Let, you know, let's, let's catch up to the world and leave the others behind because you'll be ahead of the game.

Yeah, totally.

And, and so they say to me, where do you start? And I explained to them that, you know what, I graduated from the New School. The New School was the most fascinating motivating, inspiring academic experience that anybody in the world could have.

Wow, you were such a New Yorker. The New School and Pace. Wow.

And partially School of Design.

Running the boards here. Wow.

Chairman of the board. And so I developed 2 mantras: leap first and then figure out where you're going to land. And the answer is the beginning of the question.

Those are like Zen koans. I like them. Break them down for me, CB.

You got it. You got it. And people look at me. So I pulled out the answer is the beginning of the question in a meeting with Rhett and a bunch of advertising and marketing folks. And there was silence. You could hear a pin drop. And they said to me, okay, and? And I said, you just got the and.

Yes!

I was so tickled with myself.

It's so nice when you can freak people out in a good way.

And people are still talking about that. Stop, take it apart, and Just, you know, it'll come to you. Don't rush to get to the answer.

It'll come to you. It's, it's so good. I feel like one of my favorite advertising campaigns of all time— I feel like it's so clever. I feel like, I feel like the rest of the world doesn't appreciate it as much as I appreciate it, but I think it's so clever— is, um, I'm not actually even sure if they're still using it, but, but a few years ago, the United Church of Christ had a advertising campaign, and they put banners all over UCC churches, and their logo was a comma. Why is their logo a comma? It's because their, their tagline is, never put a period where God has put a comma.

I— oh my God, you have to write that one down for me.

Yes, I was like, oh, that is so smart.

That is awesome.

Yeah.

And you know, oh my God, that's so great. Rhett and his partner are developing a campaign— well, actually more his partner, Ray— and it's about the Black Lives Matter. And they asked me to get involved in it, and I said, yeah, I'm there, right? And what they're doing is they are doing almost the same thing, but with an ampersand. Oh, so and replaces the word or. So it's not black or white, it's black and white.

Yep.

And they have this cool logo. I mean, not the logo, but you know, I come from design.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can appreciate a good logo.

It's black and white. It is so powerful. Yes, I'm so excited about it.

Mm-hmm.

And it has actually encouraged me. And, you know, you and I have to talk because I looked at the whole Black Lives Matter campaign and I needed to figure out what I could do to help bring about change versus just sitting there and saying, oh yeah, it's your job. Right. And so I've started a new campaign, a new movement, a new project. It's called Workplace Racial Equality.

Mm-hmm.

The website is up. The LinkedIn group is formed. It's on Twitter. It's on Facebook. It happened over a weekend.

You are taking action.

Wow.

Wow. That is good.

Taking a page from Dori Clark. Actually, I'm taking 10 pages from Dori Clark.

Well, I admire people who, who don't just talk but get things done. That is nice.

Well, our goal, my goal is to really help coaches in translating the language so that companies can really take action. So the goal is to take intent, and this is our tagline, move intent to action.

Oh, that's nice too. Yes. Very good.

Very good. And to really have an open forum and a training program where people could communicate, which is your neck of the woods, so that they can communicate raw, live, and get answers. So I will be looking to you, Dori Clark. Hey, Dori, it's been wonderful talking to you. I'd love for you to come back again.

Thank you, CB.

And give us some examples, some real live examples. Actually, turning the wheel back, give us a live example of how you've helped one of your clients move from A to Z.

Oh my goodness. Well, there's, there's a, there's a lot of great, uh, examples that one could choose, but, uh, one, uh, one gentleman actually who, uh, who is a longtime client of mine. When we first started working together, which was about 5 years ago, I, I, you know, I, in getting ready to work with him and talk with him, I was looking through all his stuff and he had so many smart things. You know, he had written a ton. He'd written all kinds of blogs and newsletters and things like that. It was so good. It was so smart. And I realized something, you know, and he had come to me. He's like, well, I'm really frustrated because I feel like I'm doing all this stuff and I'm not getting heard. And sometimes it can be, you know, for all of us, right? It's a little hard to sort of see what might be obvious to other people. All the stuff he was writing, it was for his, his company's newsletter. It was for his company's website. I said, if people already know you, they're going to be very impressed. But if they don't already know you, they're literally never going to find you. And so we embarked on a campaign. I was like, okay, mission one is we've got to enhance your discoverability. So we embarked on a campaign to help him start writing for high-profile publications, because I knew that if he started writing for places that like people actually read and that people would actually see, they'd be like, wow, this guy's so smart. And in fact, that is what happened. But it was really, you know, a process because he was, he was just used to, you know, sort of doing things in a kind of a, I'll say, a comfortable way for his own audience. And I think it took a lot of courage for him to, uh, to sort of put himself out there in a more public way, but it became very important and very meaningful. And in fact, over the past 5 years has become a major revenue source for him because people were discovering him and reaching out and, you know, oh, will you give this speech? Will you do this consulting project, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, I think that it sometimes is understanding. how and where we need to share our ideas. Of course, there's lots of specifics because every publication has their own sort of house style that you have to adapt a little bit to. But that was a really important step in terms of the process, saying, you know what, I'm going to play on a bigger stage.

You know, Dori, as I listen to you, it occurs to me that one of the things that our C-suite leaders do is they don't get out in front of the public enough. And so therefore, it goes back to your comment about credibility. When there's a crisis or a storm of crises like we're going through now, they don't have the experience of communicating to the public about the position of their company, what they're doing, I have seen the past couple of months atrocious, atrocious forms of communication, you know.

Yeah.

You know, you're coming out with something that you think is going to work and you've had no previous experience, you've had no coaching from a Dori Clark, and it sounds frankly absurd. You know, if a company is known for Not caring about their employees. Where, for example, in the meatpacking area, the pork industry got hit hard because so many of their employees came down with COVID-19. And for a either the head of those organizations not to say anything, or to make a stupid statement like we care about our employees. When in fact you did nothing to prevent the spread of this in your office, in your factory, in wherever you produce. I mean, have people like you, crisis management people on staff, so that when there's something that happens, you know how to respond and you can respond quickly. How cool would it have been for them to say, You know what? We didn't pay close enough attention. And this is what we're doing now.

Yeah, it's— it makes a world of good sense. And it's always so interesting because, you know, after the fact, everyone's like, yeah, of course, of course. And in the moment, I mean, these are not stupid people. You don't get to be a C-suite leader by being an idiot, right? They're very, very intelligent people. But in the moment, human nature comes out, you know, unless, you know, this is, this is why checklists have proven to be so important for flights. Now for medical procedures, you know, there's increasingly growing movement around that because in moments of high stress, we cannot rely on our instincts. Our Our hormones hijack us, our amygdala hijacks us, and we are not thinking clearly enough to be able to formulate really good plans. And so, having procedures in place, I mean, one of the best things that any company can do is to come up with crisis plans in advance. You know, it seems so basic, right? Like, if you're an oil and gas company, guess what? I'm sorry to say, you will have a spill. That's gonna happen. And to not actually have war-gamed that out, like, well, what would we say? And who would we call? And what would we do then? Like, you need to have that. And for almost any company, the actual crises you might have, a good 90% of them are fairly predictable. Now, it's possible that there's going to be some random, complete bolt from the blue. But I don't know, uh, sexual harassment. Yeah, that— it's a large enough company, that's probably gonna happen. Uh, somebody doing a fine, you know, some kind of financial impropriety, that will probably happen depending on your industry. Uh, you know, whatever, whatever it is. If it's, uh, if it's a transportation industry, you know, it's airplanes. Okay, you know what, Boeing, you're probably gonna have some kind of a defective part At some point. So it is, it is absolute malpractice not to war game it in advance. And yet so many leaders somehow view themselves as being exempt from that, or, oh, it won't happen, or it won't happen on my watch, or I'll know what to do. And it really, it really is like, like anything else when it comes to human psychology, like dieting or whatever. If, if you know you're going to be in trouble, don't buy the chips. Don't have the chips in your house. The best way to lose weight is not to have the willpower to not eat the chips. The best way to lose weight is never to buy the chips.

I have to tell my husband about that in terms of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Uh, we had that discussion this morning and he said, but I now have the light version.

And so that means he can have And eat the whole container.

I said, how about we just try a month of not having Häagen-Dazs in the house? He's gonna go and buy another brand.

I know. Literal, literal.

Exactly.

Ben and Jerry's was okay.

Yeah, exactly. But you know, you have a really good point because I remember— this might tell my age— But I remember the Tylenol scare.

Yeah.

And I was so impressed with how they handled that. I went out and bought stock in the company. I mean, I was like, that's, that's the way to run a company.

I mean, it's, it's stunning to me, CB, that has been a case study for 40 years because pretty almost, almost entirely since then, everybody else besides Tylenol has screwed up.

Yeah, well, I was gonna ask you that. That was gonna be my next question.

Do these—

let me behave myself. Does anybody read those case studies anymore? Why, why do we have to go through such— I'm gonna use a New York term— mishegas, when somebody else has been through it and you can learn?

Yeah, yeah.

Getting in the way of that learning process.

I think, I think so often just people, people always say, well, you know, not me. It's going to be different for me. You know, it's, oh, you know, well, I know, I know smoking might cause cancer in general, but I'm going to be fine.

Wink wink. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Well, oh my God, this has been an amazing conversation because I often wonder why it is that those people up at the top just don't pay attention to what happened to their predecessors and leave themselves wide open to the next big Enron, Tyco, Johnson Johnson, whatever it is. I, you know, not having You know, it's kind of like when you go into a factory that's producing something that may be toxic, and they all have these containers on the side of the wall. Rinse your eye out with this if something happens. Why can't C-suite people have that safety net on their wall to say that checklist? If this happens, this is what you do. You go out this exit. You don't get in the elevator.

Totally. Totally. Yeah. Pre-planning can cure a myriad of ills. In fact, probably almost, almost all ills can be cured from, from pre-planning. We just need to have the will to do it. And, and I think that that is one of the keys. I mean, I teach a course on this actually at at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business on leadership communications. And we talk a lot about crisis management. So it's a drum I've been beating for a while. But I appreciate the chance to come on your show and to talk about it because I do think it is so critical and can make such a big difference for companies.

I totally agree. Hey, Laurie, thank you so much for your wisdom, your humor, just being you, and for really helping us small business people excel in the communication that we want to have, because I believe our future is with us, and you're making it possible for us to be heard. So thank you, and I hope you'll come back on.

Absolutely. Thanks, CB. So great talking with you.

Great. And this is Dori Clark. Dori, give them the name of your company, give them the website, give them something to reach you.

Thank you, thank you. Well, I— the best place to reach me is dorieclarke.com. And my most recent book is this little friend, Entrepreneurial You, which came out a few years ago from Harvard Business Review Press. So I invite people to go to dorieclarke.com. You can actually get the Entrepreneurial You self-assessment there and stay in touch.

Great. Thank you. And by the way, if you link with her and get her emails, She comes out with great newsletters every week that are just filled with wisdom. So thank you. And so this is CB Bowman saying thank you for joining us and tune in for our next livestream chat with wonderful people like Dorie Clark, where we all always have fun and learn at the same thing. Go for success. Goodbye now. I have