Leadership in Chaos: Why Old Playbooks No Longer Work with Julie Peck

You're listening to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most with Outfluencer, Dr. Wayne Pernell. Welcome to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most. I'm Dr. P, Dr. Wayne Pernell, your host, guide, and coach on this journey. Albert Einstein reportedly said that genius is making complex ideas simple. Joining me today is a woman who, by that definition, is an absolute genius. Julie Peck is a transformational CEO who has led and scaled 6 companies across SaaS, fintech, HR tech, and data-driven businesses. She's built her career stepping into complexity into the hot mess and turning into something clear, valuable, and powerful. Most recently, she led Talent Neuron at the intersection of workforce intelligence, AI, and business strategy, helping organizations turn uncertainty about people and talent into real financial insight. And now she's stepping into her next chapter, bringing with her deep perspective on leadership transformation and what it really takes to navigate a world where rule books are being rewritten. Julie believes that transformation isn't about technology, it's about people, that chaos isn't a threat, it's an invitation, and that the crucible moments in life, the ones that knock us off track, are the very things that forge both success and wholeness. It's why I wanted her on the show. There's so much to talk about today. We're going to talk about leadership under pressure, identity at scale, and how to move forward when the path isn't clear but the desire is. Julie, welcome to One Sharp Sword.

Thank you, and thanks for having me on your podcast. I really appreciate the, the platform.

Yeah, it's great. I mean, you're, you're into so much these days. It's so great to have you here. Um, let's start with the hot mess comment. So just for context, Julie and I have had a few calls where we've gotten to know each other, and with Every call, I just get so excited about the stuff that she brings and talks about. So I wanted to bring that to our audience, our One Sharp Sword audience. You said that, uh, you're good, or great actually, at taking something that's a hot mess and turning it into something magical. And that just kind of resonated with me. What do you think that you see that others miss in, in moments of chaos?

Well, first I wanna, I wanna quickly make a slight disclaimer, and that is I am not saying that any of the businesses that I have run were a hot mess. Uh, like, I don't wanna insult them that way. There was—

fair enough.

Like, there has always been a combination of things that need to be addressed and, and really hidden opportunities. Like, gems and, and diamonds in the mine that you find out. But, but I think, um, any— look, look, the reality is, at least in my perspective, when you're talking about organizations, I don't even know how small an organization could be, like maybe 10 people, before you start to see messiness. Because people are people, personalities, agendas, backgrounds, you know, all that stuff. They get messy in numbers.

Yeah.

And the bigger the group of people, the messier it is, the more complex it is. The same is true of technology. Technology is cool. You know, I'm an early adopter, big fan of technology. I always have been. I've led software businesses, technology businesses, big data businesses, and most recently AI-driven businesses. And Technology is powerful, but it's anybody who's actually led any kind of tech environment knows that a couple clicks down, it's also pretty messy. You're also sometimes dealing with, you know, 10 years of code, 3.5 million lines of code that no one's touched. 2.5 million of them in years. And like, you know, when you're trying to navigate through innovation and moving faster and all that, it does get messy.

We'd love to innovate, but our stuff is on a legacy mainframe. It's like, no.

Yeah. And frankly, even these days when everybody's so enamored with LLMs and AI, and don't get me wrong, I am too. I'm having a really great time with building agents and understanding what role LLMs can play, not only in business, but how a business runs, but also in its products. But frankly, also in my life. I've been using my LLMs, whether it's Claude or ChatGPT or whatever, to help me plan my retirement. Scary how well those LLMs are getting to know me. But, you know, it's just something to kick around. It's like a sounding board. But the reality is, you know, especially with agentic AI these days, It's not that hard to build an agent. In fact, it's so wildly easy. Anyone can do it, whether they have a technology background or not. But what's hard is when you want to try and integrate an agent or integrate some AI technology into your very inflexible legacy systems and sometimes into your very inflexible governance frameworks. So I think right now, bigger companies, large public companies, for example, are having a really hard time at the intersection of possibilities with AI and also to some degree, a mandate to start leveraging it to move faster, to be more innovative, to get ahead of the competition, or at least very much not fall very much behind. But they have these very, very established legacy constructs that are inevitably just architected to get in the way of embracing things. Those constructs could be technology, could be your technological frameworks, your architecture, your tech stack, the way your data lives inside your businesses, the silos of those data, how how clean it is, which nobody's data is clean, just the way it works. But also your governance and your risk tolerance infrastructure is, is very much in the way of being able to like just embrace something that's still not completely understood and just go with it. And so I think that's like where we are in the intersection of how organizations are trying to navigate what's going on lately. And it's the part that's like super fascinating to me, uh, because it does require an organization and the individuals who are running it to take some version of a leap of faith, right?

Right.

And the, and the bigger your company and the more public it is, the more likely you are to shy away or fully reject leaps of faith because inherently those come with risks.

Always, right? A leap of faith is a risk. And I talk about imagination, right? So we use imagination either to project forward into worry and fear or into best possible outcome, right? And that's at a personal level and at an organizational level. Uh, and I think it's an interesting thing because you also talk about culture. So here's where I think new concepts actually affect culture. The other thing, you know, you mentioned govern— governance and risk tolerance. I I don't think we globally have in the past been thinking that way. And now with AI coming into pretty much every organization and our homes, we need to be thinking more about what governance do we have, who's doing the governance, and what is our risk tolerance for AI? So there's a couple different paths to go down, Julie. One is, wow, let's talk about how kind of this leap of faith affects culture and/or how culture affects the leap of faith. And what do we know? What do we need to know about governance and risk tolerance, risk mitigation along the way?

Yeah, I mean, listen, I mean, risk— the risk is real. So it's not imagined and it's not conjured, it's real. But there's risk in doing nothing. There's risk in doing too little too late. There's risk in jumping in without educating yourself first. So it's not so much about if you decide to engage in certain levels of risk. It's about which kind do you want? Because we are in a world where you can, you cannot, you can't risk mitigate your way into greatness anymore.

You just have to.

Yeah, you have to. I used to say a long time ago, you can't save your way to greatness. Like there was a time and just for background, the 6 businesses I've run and grown and transformed, 3 of them were inside of big public company, standalone business, and, and 3 of them were, have, were in the private equity space. And, and so the, the different risk profiles in those environments are like diametrically opposed. Um, in big corporate, the name of the game is don't mess anything up. Like, you know what I mean? Like, so, which means by the very nature of that concept, you take small steps and you take them kind of slowly.

And, um, can we afford to though? Like, can we afford to take, to take them slowly? I mean, things are moving so fast right now, and so, right, don't, don't we need to be moving faster and learning faster, like, what works, what doesn't?

Yeah, but the, but the reality is the, these, these large public companies, and the bigger they are, the more this is true, are hard-coded in kind of the way that they operate and also the way that they, you know, manage, manage risks. And there's, there's never none. There's always risks of everything. And, uh, I'm not sure that the risks that companies, modern companies are facing are any better or worse or bigger or smaller than they ever have been, but they are different. And so I think one of the things that I think about a lot these days is how different it has been for me to get the buy-in to lean into something new in a big company versus a small company. In a small company, I'm running it. And so, so my job is to figure out how to get the people in my organization who really report to me to embrace the discomfort of trying out something new and possibly failing or failing a few times until you succeed. My job in that situation is to make them believe, to give them a deep belief that failure is part of the path to success and that when we fail and we go, that didn't work at all, that was a disaster, let's back up and try something differently, then that's going to be considered, at least in my mind and the way I think about performance, as a win. As long as we take what we learn from it and move it to the next thing.

I love this. I just want to pause for a second for I always pull out little leadership moments that our audience can use, and I just, I want these to really land. First of all, the quote that you gave is, is phenomenal. You can't risk mitigate your way to success, right? That this is about getting out of your comfort zone. And, and when I work with individuals, it's the same as when, you know, we work with organizations. You work with organizations in a, in a very particular way. I approach them in very particular way. And, and what I appreciate is that there's so much overlap in the, in the idea of you've got to move out of your comfort zone in order to grow, right? That, that's, that's really what, what you're saying is you can't, you can't go, uh, and wrap yourself or your organization in bubble wrap and go, I'm, I'm safely successful. The other thing—

well, sorry, go ahead.

No, please.

Yeah, that safety thing is such a thing. And what I mean by that is there's organizational safety, there's policy safety, there's all that stuff, right? But I think that this all comes down to— it will always, always has and always will come down to people.

Yes, I was just gonna ask you. I was just— I was— this is perfect flow.

There are no companies. There are no companies. There are no nonprofits. There are no universities. There are no org— there are no government structures that aren't just a collection of people trying to do something together. That's all it is. And so, so at the end of the day, organizational risk tolerance is really just, and the aggregate of individual human risk tolerance turned into policy. And so, you know, so, and I, and you and I talked about this before, um, and, and you mentioned it in your intro to me, and that was this idea of the playbooks, the playbooks not necessarily working anymore. And some of them do and some of them don't. But what I'm saying, and in the world I'm coming from, which is the, you know, private equity, fast-growing kind of middle market companies, that PE space has had the investors, the PE sponsors, and the companies have all been rinsing and repeating on some pretty well-known, very well-established playbooks for the last 15 years-ish. And those playbooks were like someone first forged, like, what, how do you, how do you get successful at buying companies, tripling the value, and then selling companies, you know, over and over again?

Oh, piece of cake.

Well, maybe it wasn't 15 or 20 years ago, but, but over the last 15 years, that playbook has become very well known. And the same is true of big public companies. Their, their playbooks are different, but, but everybody kind of knows how you do it, right? Okay, well, guess what? Those playbooks are breaking down now. Not just because AI— I mean, I don't want to blame everything on AI because it's not, but AI is moving quickly. The, the possibilities, the capabilities of the actual technology itself are moving faster than the human the human layer's ability to figure out what to do with that.

Right.

Well, that is cool, but also terrifying.

Right.

And so, so speed has become an increasing challenge. But the other thing is in private equity space, money is a challenge. For 15 years or so, money was free, almost free, meaning you could you could borrow, uh, you could take out leverage for almost zero, right? Which means if you're a PE firm and you have a $3 billion fund, instead of buying $3 billion worth of companies, and you can buy $4 billion worth of companies or $4.5 billion and use debt for some of it, and, and the, and the portfolio companies service the debt, then you just pay off the debt at the end and, and your, your investors get, get like a lot more return without diluting the equity. And that, that's been a big piece of the formula. And, and money isn't free anymore. So that part of the formula, that part of the playbook is breaking down. The market has not been particularly exit-friendly since 2021, arguably first half of 2022. So now we're 2026. So it's 5, 4 and a half, 5 years later. And the market has been tumultuous and it's been challenging for lots of different geopolitical reasons and whatever. So, so value creation has been harder for these, for these fast-growing companies. Profitability, you know, top and bottom line health, you know, matter more now than they used to. Used to be growth at any cost. Now it's like, no, it's profitable growth, which means you got to do different things to companies. So that's difference in the playbook. And then you may have to hold them for longer period of time. Hold periods are longer, not, not 3 to 5 years, but now 5 to 7. Sometimes 8, all that stuff. That's changing, changing what, how you get to success and also how you build value during that period of time. Public companies are having the same issue. They've now got to figure out how to move forward faster. They've got to figure out how to embrace technology and they've got 300,000 employees or 30,000 or whatever it is to try and like, you know, shift their mindset and the way they operate. And what I'm saying is that everybody comes into their job and into their career and into their next thing with a series of playbooks. And in fact, that's the currency of an executive like me. It's the currency with which you kind of get your next gig is I got playbooks. I got playbooks. Been there, done that. I've done this 6 times. I've done this 4 times. I've done this. I've done turnarounds. I've done transformations. I've done market expansions. I've done new product innovation. I've done I've moved up market and down market and I've, you know, transformed sales organizations, you name it. Dozens of playbooks for all of the plays you run when you're transforming or increasing the value of a company, public or private, doesn't matter.

Yeah.

A lot of those playbooks are becoming quickly obsolete either because of AI. Either the methods that they suggest are still decent, but the speed with which you are used to applying them is much faster now. So you can't just follow that playbook, or the concepts are starting to break down and not work anymore. But we as executives, as leaders, as whatever, cling to these playbooks. And so I'm going— I'm making a very circuitous trip to make a point. We cling to playbooks, not necessarily because they're still working anymore, but because they have become this— the security blanket, the little, you know, the binky for all of us in times that feel very chaotic and very confusing and changing every 3 weeks and all that. We cling to these playbooks because we as executives know them. They're a safety. They're our teddy bears, right?

In psychology, it's called a transitional object.

Okay, transitional object. I call it a teddy bear. What I'm saying is we're clinging to them because it's known to us. It's our own pacifier. And the reality is, and so this is when we were really leaning into really new stuff. At Talent Neuron, for example, which is the last company I transformed over the last 3 years, I had to really work with leadership and say, we should first acknowledge that we're clinging to, this is how I've always done it and I know it works. Not because we really firmly believe it's going to work again now, but because It gives us comfort. And let's figure out how we can— I hate this phrase because it's so passé, but lean in to the chaos and just say, like, what if we just stop clinging to the playbooks and literally just live in what's happening right now? And if that means We have to reassess our roadmap priorities every 6 weeks rather than every 6 months because the world of possibilities is changing so fast that if we just keep our head down and say we're going to do this thing that we decided we were going to do and we're going to do it this way in the product roadmap or whatever, we decided it a year ago. And so here we are, the next quarter stuff without picking our head up and say, is this still the thing? And in— is this still the right thing? And if not, is it because there's something out there now that wasn't there 2 months ago that would allow us to leapfrog this idea and do something different rather than just keeping our heads down and spending time doing the old thing that by the time we bring it to market, whatever that might be, It's already, it's already outdated. And that is the thing that people are wrestling with is, is that very thing, like, how do I, how do I have any semblance of order in my mind, in my team, in my company, while also riding this wave of tremendous speed and continuously evolving possibilities? And that doesn't have a playbook right now.

I, I think that is the playbook, right? The, the playbook is to be in that moment. I think that that's— I, I love everything you just said because we have to be in a place of getting rid of the old. We have to be in a place of the now, which most people aren't used to living in. And, uh, right, it's like, yeah, right.

Um, well, and I, I read an article I honestly don't know where anymore. It was, it was probably 2 months ago, but I read an article that said the, the model of the, the most successful CEOs, uh, is changing, whether it's deliberately or just as a byproduct of everything that's going on. And that is, it used to be the rinse and repeat CEO who had been there, done that. I've been in 6 rodeos, I've been in 5 rodeos, I've had 3 exits. I've, you know, it, they, the, the comfort of we want someone who's been there, done that over and over and over again, which, which is a new, another way of saying we want a CEO who has playbooks. Yeah, playbooks, right? That, that is, I mean, honestly, when I was moving out of big companies, big public companies into private equity, I'm like, I got a lot of pushback because they're like, hey, listen, we like PE CEOs who've been there, done that multiple times, had exits and blah, blah, blah. And like, I don't really know what your skills or your capabilities are, but I know you haven't done that. And so, like, I had the wrong playbooks according to them. And I'm like, I know, but I know what I'm doing and I know what I can do. And it took a while to convince my way in. And now everyone's like, oh, you're totally PE. I'm like, okay. But, but what they're saying is now the CEOs that are getting the most amazing results in terms of growth and value creation are in fact the inexperienced CEOs, the ones that have never been a CEO before and don't have any playbooks with them. They don't walk in the door with a tome of like, I'm going to use, you know, chapter 6, you know, section 9 for this, right? They don't have it. So they're young and they're energetic and they're smart and, and they are curious and they are aware, but they don't have any playbooks. And what they're doing is by just by default having to lean into the set of circumstances that they face every single minute and every single day and figuring it out as they go. And that level of being connected to what's happening in the world to being responsive and imaginative while you're actually also making decisions, I think, is the new model for success. And yet all of us experienced executives are still— I almost feel like I could draw a cartoon about it where we are sitting in a corner rocking back and forth with like volumes of playbooks, like, you know, it's going to be okay. And I'm like, just throw them away. Just throw them away. They're not going to go away. They're all in the back of our heads anyway. And there are moments and times and situations where the thing you did before is exactly the right thing now. But if you're clinging to them too, too, um, tightly, um, and waiting for this wave to pass on over you, uh, I think it's, it, it's going to be a struggle.

So this is interesting, Julie, because what you're talking about is we have a certain way of doing it, which is a very specific system or process, and that's what I bring with me, versus I'm good at looking at systems and processes and projecting into the future and looking then at what is needed and creating anew. And that's really what you've just said in your own way, is that that is the new demand of new CEOs, that you need to be able to say, sure, I've got an idea about what systems and processes have worked. Let's take a look at the current and build into the new. I love everything about that because that's how you build yourself, right? Who do you want to be, right? Who do you want to be? And so to project that into the organization, Who do you want to be as an organization? And now you have somebody that's leading it.

But like, but the issue is like you have an organization of people, like I said, it could be 10, it could be 10,000, it could be 300,000. The, the unlock, I think, comes from really driving a belief within your organization that they can, they can engage with what feels like chaos. It may not be chaos, but might feel like chaos, and try stuff, mess it up from time to time, go back and try it again and get it right, and, uh, and, and be, be considered successful, right? Like, the reason people run away from situations that feel chaotic as they don't feel confident they'll be successful in that situation. You have certain people, certain people who are wired for that kind of combat. We— and I like, sometimes they're in, they're in the military and they have to go into situations that are completely unknown and they don't know, and they're happening fast and all that. You have people who, who are triage experts in the ER and they don't know, they don't know what they're gonna see next and they don't know how much of it. And they, they're just wired to be able to like absorb all that and operate really well within it. But most of us are not wired that way. So how do you get the most of us who are, who are wired for, I understand this, it's orderly, I know what comes first and then what comes second and what comes third. How do you get the rest of us to wrap their head around operating in an environment that at the very least is changing really quickly.

So two questions. One, do you believe in your ability to figure things out? And, and I believe you do, because that's right, that's what gets you through from, I don't know, show me the way, show me the process. Um, and do you believe that that is a skill that can be transferred and/or a value that can be engendered in an organization?

So, so for leadership, I think it requires first a, a fairly high degree of courage. I don't really know if you can make someone who isn't courageous courageous. Like, I think you can, you can bring out the courage that people inherently have by making them feel like you got their back, right? But I— there are still, you know, there's all these archetypes out there, and there's still those that are like, I need order, I can't, I don't. So you're not going to get it from everyone. You need like the 80/20 rule. You, you need 80% of those that are driving the bus to have a certain increasingly high degree of courage every minute of every day and in the, in the long run and in the short run. And then you also need to work really hard to create a safe space that gives organizational courage to try stuff and probably fail at the, at the beginning. And, and so that is about the reward system. It is a, it is about how, how, how well and how authentically and how publicly do you actually celebrate people or teams or leaders or, or individual contributors who tried something, didn't work, they backed up, tried it again, and actually got a successful outcome. If those if those things that are happening are quiet and not celebrated, and the only things that are celebrated are the successful outcomes, people will not realize how much value there is in the failure in between the successful outcome and the, I don't know, I guess I'm going to try it. So, so I, I spend a lot of time really deeply and loudly celebrating people who screwed something up.

Yeah, I think communicating all along the way is so important. And you've— so you at one point told me, I don't have a plan, I have desires. Does that fit right here? It's sort of like, I know what I want, I want it to look like this, you know, it's sort of like— and you don't need the step-by-step plan, you need to— because things are moving so fast, you need to be able to say You know, what's available to me now? How do I integrate what's available to move closer to my desires? Is, is that— am I on track, or did I pull that out of, uh, context for you?

Well, listen, I, I kind of, uh, I, I toggle between having a plan and having a desire or having a vision.

I think that's great. I think that's, that's a, a, uh, yeah, it's a great way of framing it. Um, good. Yeah, please.

Yeah. And, and because, okay, first of all, I'm usually surrounded by people who like plans. Awesome. So, so I feel always covered, you know, by that. Like, but there's always some people who are like, gotta have a plan. And I'm like, excellent, great idea. And so when that is the case, when I have a lot of the folks around me and my team who like to anchor things in a plan, that I tend to zoom out further and say, I'm just going to just take stock of what's happening in the company, you know, in the market and in the world. And I feel like I zoom out to play a role that says, is the plan still the right plan based on what I'm seeing, right? However, if I'm surrounded by a situation or I'm in a situation where nobody has a plan, I go pretty hard to the hoop on let's get a plan.

Great.

So it's just one of those things where it's this balance between you got to have a plan so you know what you're supposed to do and whether or not you're doing it right and what you're trying to accomplish, what the outcome looks like, when you expect the outcome. Like, you can't I mean, you can run your life in a way that doesn't have a plan like that, but I don't know, you can't run a business.

No, exactly. Yeah.

On the other hand, if you're clinging to a plan, uh, as though it is a forever, you know, uh, like etched in stone, you know, infrastructure for everything you do from for the next 3 years, you are going to miss, uh, you're going to miss the signals that say the plan that you thought was the plan 6 months ago may not be the full plan now because the world is changing so fast around us. So you got to like be able to zoom out, zoom in, zoom out and zoom in. But when you zoom out, you, you can't get lost in the overwhelming nature of just how many dimensions are in flux. It's like every dimension.

Yes, that's— it's really great. Zoom out, zoom in. It's like walking the line between and deliberately stepping into operational for the plan, strategic for the zoom out kind of bigger vision. Zoom in, operational for the plan, zoom out, strategic for the bigger vision. Are we still headed in the right direction? And that is a specific talent. Uh, for leadership.

And yeah, you know, and I think there are those that are zoomed out for too long, and I'm not sure what— so when you zoom out for too long, you forget what you're out there observing, right? And you become almost like isolated out, out, out there. I almost feel like it's— you're in the Milky Way and you need to come back down and put your feet on the ground, and then So you lose, you lose connection to what's happening on the ground if you're zoomed in too for too long. And you could call that being in the weeds or whatever it is. You do not know what's happening with the forces that are ultimately either currently or will be pushing on your, you know, your so-called plan. So you, it's, it's about altitude shifting, but it's also about purposeful timeframes, meaning you gotta fit, understand when you need to zoom out and how far and why you're doing that, what you're trying, what you're, what perspective you're trying to collect while you're there. And then how do you take that and, and bring it back to your zoom in? And what, at what altitude do you zoom in? And how long do you stay there? And that is an experiential thing. I don't know how— I don't know how to teach that other than, you know, you live a life and you, you spend time going like, I was zoomed in too long for that, and I'm out too. Like, you kind of calibrate it over time. And I think if you become really conscious of this—

that's the key—

altitude shifting and like when you have to be where in terms of the million-mile view and the 10-foot view and everywhere in between, then you can be more deliberate about it. If you don't know you're doing it, like, then it's probably not super planful. Yeah.

I would start with be deliberate, right? Be deliberate. I am going to take time to zoom in. And then what? Right? Give yourself a timeframe, I think.

Yeah. And, and there are different— so, so in the, in the process of like a transforming a business, like from one thing to another, or, you know, I've had to do some turnarounds, whether they were profitability turnarounds or what value prop turnarounds or whatever. So you go in and you're like rebuilding your executive team, your leadership team, you're rebuilding your, your leadership, you're rebuilding some stuff there. And you, um, you're, you're in a certain altitude for quite a long time in the beginning because You've got to construct your vessel a little bit. And then there's usually a point at which I've now brought the new leadership team in and they're getting their feet under them and they understand the business. And there I can start to see them starting to work together. And I'm not doing as much relationship building and team storming and norming and all of that stuff. I'm not doing as much like, hey, let's dig into this and help me understand how this works, and like, why can't it work this other way? Then I, I— there's like a day where I'm like, guys, you guys got things under control in— at the 10,000-foot down to the 1-foot level. It's time for me to take a few steps back and start to look at how the world has been evolving. I'm going to go on a mission. I'm going to go on sortie, as they used to say in— or they say in the, um, in the military. I'm going to go out on a recon mission I'm going to come back with new data that, and what I'm looking for is, is this still the direction we should be going in? And are we going too slow, too fast? Are we 5 degrees off? That we were on, right on the line a month ago, 6 months ago, whatever it was. But now, we might need to, you know, we might need to move left or right 10 degrees.

That's scary for a lot of teams, you know, oh gosh, every time our leader goes off and does that, he, she, they come back and there's all this change. And so don't go, we don't need more change. And the truth is now every organization needs change. It's got to be the way.

It's just that it's weird because the The cycle times are faster. And so, yes, like, there was like, there's, for a long time there were, there, I mean, decades, there have been stories about when Bill Gates was running Microsoft and he would go off for, I don't know where, I don't remember what it was, a week, for example. He would go off to some isolated place and he would read a hun— like tons of books, like all these books he was going to read about what, you know, what's going on. And he was isolated for that period of time and he would come back with a newly informed perspective, whatever that might mean. And I'm quite sure it comes back as, guys, we need to make a pivot. Or I've been thinking, like, you know, whenever the CEO goes, I've been thinking that everyone goes, oh no.

Oh no.

Right. But he would come back and it would inevitably inform some kind of directional wind. Whatever that was. It was, it could be a hard right turn, could be a drift to the right. It, you know, it doesn't matter, but, or in just a new perspective that makes its way into the way the company is operating. But, but I would bet that if Bill Gates was still running Microsoft, he can't go off for a month or a week and, and, you know, read these books and come back. He's, it's, it's, it more like might be an afternoon simultaneous, simultaneous.

It's like, yeah, I was reading this morning in my quiet hour.

Right?

That, that's the way it works.

I used to have— so I used to work for a CEO who— he's still a CEO, so if he listens to this, don't be, don't be insulted. You'll recognize who you are. But he used to send out a note, and it was called Notes from the Boat, because he had a boat, and he would go off on some weekend, or he'd be out on his boat on the weekend, and he'd be like contemplating things. This is— was his zooming out time. And he would come back energized. He would send out to his leaders, leadership team, like notes from the boat. And we're always like, oh no, what new like ideas is coming here? But that whole thing about like, I need some quiet time to really think about like the forces pushing on all of us, whether they're forces inside the company, cultural forces or employee morale or whatever it is. Or forces pushing on us from the outside. You have to be constantly aware of both.

Yes, yes.

And so, and I think that's always been true. I just think the velocity is sped up.

Oh yeah, I think you're right. So here's, here's the question. If you were to sit down with a leader who said that they were overwhelmed or stressed out or uncertain. It's like, all this is happening and, and I don't know what to do first, right? If you, if you had a leader who said that, what would your first few moves be?

So I tell this story all the time, and I don't remember who first told it to me, or I, I don't remember, but I But they talked me through. So this is the first time I became like the head of a business, you know, and I was like, it's, it's an adjustment when I, like, I was the chief product and strategy officer and then I became the CEO or GM of the business. So, you know, and, and the thing is that once you move from one seat to another, even though it's one, only one seat off, you know, all all of the problems of the business become your problems, not just the stuff that was in your functional silo, if you will, or whatever it was. And it feels, it can feel very overwhelming. Like you feel like you have to solve everything. And so someone I was talking to who at the time was much more experienced than me said, you know, when you are an individual employee, an individual contributor, you have your daily tasks to do, your inbox and your outbox, and you have 50 pieces of work to do in that day, whatever it is, right? There's some quantity of work you have to do as an individual contributor. And you come in in the morning and you do your 50 things. And at the end of the day, your outbox is empty and your inbox is empty and your outbox is full and you feel like you were successful.

What ideal world is this?

You got it all put in a box. You got it all put in a box and you're like, yay. And in fact, you get rewarded for that. And so, and right. And then you become like a people manager, like you're managing a small team. You're like a supervisor. And now what you're doing is you've got 7 or 8 or 10 or 12 people or whatever who all have an inbox and an outbox. And you're just making sure they can all get everything from the inbox to the outbox. And if somebody has a problem, they're like, I'm stuck. You go and help them solve it and they go, got it, thank you, or whatever. And you, you solve a few issues in your small team that has to do with the work that you are doing and, and whatever. And it's, it can be solved in a few minutes or a few hours usually. And you, and you go home as a supervisor thinking like, stuff came up, solved it, got it all back in the box. I feel good today, right? So some days you, you don't feel good, but that's success, right? Then you start leading leaders, and now they've got the stuff that's coming up to them, and you got— you got their stuff coming to you. And now there starts to be more things than you can get put back in the box every day. And so you have to start making choices about where you're going to spend your time. And recognizing like, if this doesn't get back in a box, like kind of right now, we're, we're in trouble. This can wait. So you start really like deciding whether, you know, something is a, an immediate thing or something could just can persist and all that. By the time you're a CEO, there's hundreds and thousands of these things. And it, and it, and it feels like you are in a windstorm where there are razor blades flying around and they're cutting you, you know, sometimes kind of deeply, sometimes they're just nicking you or whatever they're cut— and then there's hatchets that are also thrown in there and they're coming at you. And then the trick is not to clear the air of all of those things. The, the skill is to be in control of your emotions enough and have a tough enough skin to withstand the, the cut, the cuts and the scrapes of the small razor blades that are flying by, and really see the hatchets before they, they come and plant theirself. I mean, it's a kind of a violent metaphor, but, but I feel like it is a real visceral one because, um, people do feel like they get cut up all, all day long Yeah, and, and I'm like, yeah, but those aren't going to kill you, right? You gotta— you, you can't get distracted by those things to the degree where you don't see the hatchet coming at you. And you've got to figure out what's a hatchet and what's not and what's a mosquito bite and, and address it. And you got to go to bed every night knowing that the, the things flinging through the air at you will never be gone. And you just have to have a certain amount of comfort with the inherent imperfection of the way life is and the way people are and the way businesses are. And frankly, the way technology is, it's all messy. That's, oh, that's part of the whole hot mess. It's everything is messy.

Isn't that great?

You can't get everything put back in a box anymore.

And you just gotta, that's good news, I think. And I think, you know, the, maybe that's the theme out of all of this is that, you know, Things are messy, and we don't— we— I think we're redesigning or redefining what the box is. You know, in the, in the, in the martial arts, um, and in sort of Zen philosophy, there's a concept called fudoshin, which is your mind like a mountain. And it's like the fog comes in and it clears, the storms come through and they clear, and the sun comes out and things bloom, and the mountain is, is still there, right? It's like, it's like not immovable in that way, not, not like it's, uh, inflexible, but more like it's stable, that the things around it don't affect it. And what you've just described is this whirlwind of blades and hatchets and And it's like, yeah, you can't— as a CEO, you can't afford to take that personally.

No, you can't take it personally. And but you also have to realize that everyone around you is taking it personally, right?

Yeah. And that's the leadership piece, though, I think, is that where you say, I have empathy, I just don't need to take your thing personally, right? It's like, if it affects you, that's great. Please heal. And at the same time, we need to stay slightly unflappable in the midst of all this tumult that's happening.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think our job as executives, whether we're the CEO or something else, is, is to provide steadiness.

Yes.

And I don't mean stuckness. I mean steadiness, um, and, and confidence and, and belief in the midst of a lot of unforeseen things, um, and sometimes hard things and sometimes exciting things and sometimes scary things. But I think it's an emotional stability that is not closedness.

Um, right.

Frankly, I will say it's— say, I mean, it's taken me decades to figure out how to remain open and steady at the same time, because you got to let a lot of stuff in that, yeah, that wants to destabilize a human being.

Yeah.

But so you can either close everything off and stay steady, but that's not the right formula, or you can figure out how to consciously remain open to all the things that are flying around and still remain steady. And I think that is a skill that can be learned if there's a certain awareness to it. But it is also an incredibly valuable attribute to a leader in chaotic times.

Definitely. I think that comes from values and vision. And the core out of that is discernment. It's like, does this thing that's flying around, does it look like it matches the values and/or the vision in this way? Does it fit or should that be excluded? And it's like, okay, next, okay, next, okay, next. I think part of what a leader does is just to process that faster and faster and faster. And it's less decision-making versus pattern recognition at some point. Where you go, yeah, this fits with where we're headed, or, you know, this is a distraction. It might be worth looking into, not mine to look into. Maybe assign it, or maybe just let it go.

Maybe let it go. I mean, you know, so part of, part of like executing in a focused way is to also have the discipline to say no to stuff. But, you know, Um, but pick your head up and know why you're saying no, not just because, well, because this was a plan. It's, it's very difficult time these days because you're, you're, you're living in conflict. Like, focus, but be aware that you might need to change direction, but focus and say no to stuff except if it's a good idea, and then maybe you need to shift. That's just the way it is. And that's what I mean about, about we have to be willing to like at least loosen the grip on our 30 years' worth of playbooks because they may or may not be, or may partially be the right thing for what's going on right now. And if we cling to them, and I almost feel executives today that I talk to clinging to them, knowing in there, somewhere in there that it's not working, but that it's what I have, it's what I know. And so I'm going to keep clinging to it. So You know, and, and like you said, you said it really perfectly, which is, um, if you have a clear vision and you have kind of a clear set of values and you have a clear purpose and all that, um, there were— there are certain things that are just going to intuitively not feel the— like the right thing. And this is true in life too. And I used to say, yes it is. Yeah, this, I used to say, like, in my own journey to, to being a CEO, um, a long time ago when I was in my early 20s, mid-20s, um, I was really far from being a CEO. I was, I was working in banking and I was, I was a graphic designer and illustrator on the side. And I was, when I was working in banking, I mean, I was in customer service. It wasn't, it wasn't a brilliant job. It wasn't a brilliant job, but I said to— I— someone did an exercise with me. They said, what does your life look like 15 years from now? And they said the, the time frame of 15 years is, is an important one because it's so far out. You really have to imagine, like, if I'm 35, we're talking about what does your life look like when you're 50, right? Right? And so you can't, you can't just incrementalize your way into like, what does my life look like when I'm 50? If you said, what do you, where do you want to be 5 years from now? People then start to start from where they are and they kind of go out from there like, well, I don't know, I'll probably get one more job and two more jobs. And right, you incrementalize your way into, well, what does 5 years look like? And so this idea of thinking really far in the future and not describing what job you have, but rather describing what your life is like. And so this, this person who was in a— she was a professor, she was an organizational management professor. She took us through this exercise and she said, what does your life look like when you're 15 years from now? And so when I was doing it, I think 15 years out was probably 40-something, 42 or 43 or whatever. And I was like, I don't know, that's like a really— that feels like forever from now. And she was like, well, are you, are you married in your, in your picture? I'm like, I think I am, but I wasn't at the time. Do you have kids? How many kids? Is it a lot? Do, do you, do you not have kids? Do you live in a city? Can you, are you picturing that you live in a cabin on a lake, or you live in an apartment in a city? Do you, you know, are you like, you're just describing these things that are actually super fun to think about, right? In your life, but they imply certain things too. Like if you go, oh, I'm living in an apartment in New York City, okay, and is it a kind of apartment? Describe the apartment. You're like, well, it's glass, floor-to-ceiling glass and soaring ceilings, and I have a beautiful view of Central Park, and you know, and all that. And so that implies somehow you are incredibly successful You're gonna have an apartment like that, right? And so it implies certain conditions of your life that you, you visualize, like, that's me, that's gonna be me. And I remember, um, when I was doing this exercise and we started talking about work, like, okay, well, what do you do for a living? I'm like, I'm not sure. But she was like, well, is it— are you in an office? Are you in a hospital? Are you in a classroom. I'm like, no, I'm in an office, in a— like in a business. And it's kind of a nice office. Like, I— like, I can see offices. I have an office of my own. And I'm picturing someone coming in. This was so, so silly when I was like 27 or whatever. Someone coming in and they have a stack of papers and I have to sign them. I'm like, so somehow my signature is meaningful. Right? So I must have some authority. It's a lot of papers, so I don't know, I must have a lot of authority or whatever. Like, there's these things that had nothing to do with what is your job.

Yeah.

And through this, like, visualization and getting extremely specific, you know, I kind of had decided that I was going to be some kind of an executive in a business and, uh, you know, I was going to be fairly successful and, and what I had some level of authority that, that needed to be applied. And that can come out in a lot of different ways. But then, but then as I made decisions in the earlier part of my, my, my career, there were just certain decisions that were presented to me that just did not feel consistent with that picture of the future. And whether I knew I was making the decision or not at the moment, like, your gut just, like, just pushes you in one direction or another at all of these different little tiny and sometimes big crossroads in your life. And just some feel authentically right and some feel like not right. And whether you can put your finger on it or not, it has something to do with how you visualized your end state and stuff just starts to feel intuitively towards that or, or away from that, even subconsciously. And the same is true for a company. If you're clear enough about the vision, there are certain things that just intuitively feel like they're way off base or a distraction and, and other things that feel like an interesting new nuance in the direction that you wanna go in. I, I know, I know it's like a long description, but it is.

You are, you are singing my song. I, in my first book, I talk about the envisioned positive outcome, and when I do work with people, I, I talk about the life balance wheel. What do you want? Like, what does it look like for you a few years out, you know? And where do you need to do some work? Um, personal relationships, health, finance, professional, spiritual, social, um, uh, avocational— what do you do for fun— and then philanthropy. And I think, I think the exercise that you just described, that if any one of our listeners, viewers would do that for themselves 15 years out, especially now, I think it's, it's so valuable. What you just described is so important because if you can put yourself in that place of, I don't know, like the world is moving so fast. I don't know, 15 years, so far away. It's, it's a beautiful exercise. It's really like, I'm, I was smiling the entire time you were describing it.

Gen Zers and, and the, I don't, I don't like, correct, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't, I don't know all the generations anymore, like below Millennial. I don't know where the cutoffs are, but Gen Zers would call this manifesting. Right? But the funny thing about manifesting, as you hear about it on social media, is it's not just about the visualization. I heard on NPR the other day that someone was talking, and they were saying that manifestation is actually the combination of clarity of vision and action.

Yes.

So it's not just clarity of the vision. It—

no, but that's where—

oh, I imagined it and it happened. Like, you actually have to take action.

Now we're taking— now we're going down a different path, which I also love, uh, where the manifestors from a few decades ago got it wrong was, I will sit here and I will manifest. And it's like, no, no, you sit here, you get clear about your vision, and then you take your best next step so that you can see the opportunities for your best next step after that. And then the opportunities show up for the best next step after that. It does demand action. Absolutely. Yes.

But then translating that whole concept to an organization of many people, a lot of times across the world, especially remotely and all that, right? That then comes down to a really intense and consistent and very clear level of communication of that vision so that so that everybody else starts to develop that gut instinct that says, that's, that's probably not on base, it's probably over here. If you just manifest a vision as the CEO or whatever, it doesn't matter who you are, and you don't tell anybody clearly about it or often enough or whatever, then you got a lot of people who have no idea whether something feels right or doesn't feel right.

Yeah, there's a, there's a great quote, and I think it's by Kuzuz and Posner and I could be wrong, and it's the difference between a vision and a hallucination is how many people see it.

That's a great one, right?

Isn't it great? It's like, you've got to be— if you have a vision for your organization and/or your life, you've got to let people know.

Yeah.

So let's— let me ask you this.

A lot is, is the communication, the frequency and the clarity of communication. I think we forget how often and how clearly we need to tell that story over and over and over again, even to ourselves, to lock it in.

Our subconscious is going to test us, and where we fail in our commitments to ourself, the subconscious goes, oh yeah, safety, the old rule books, right? Versus, ah no, I am deliberately moving into the unknown and teaching my subconscious that that is safe. Step step by step. That's, that's the key. Let me, let me ask you this as we're coming toward the end of our time together on this podcast. What, uh, what didn't I ask you? What were you hoping to, uh, to talk about that maybe we didn't get into?

Um, and I don't know, I feel like we, I feel like we butterflied around quite a lot to a lot of different flowers.

We did. We, we got to a lot on just in a very short time. Um, if people want to reach out to you and find out more about you, um, I know you've got a book you're working on. Like, should people connect with you on LinkedIn? How, how do they—

Yeah, definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm, I'm a— I, I don't know what my LinkedIn handle is, but maybe we can put it somewhere in the, in the notes.

Sure, Julie Peck will be in our, in our show notes. I'll, I'll figure out how to, how to link that.

Yeah, and, and right now, you know, I, I've just transitioned out of Talonurin after a what I would consider a very successful 3-year transformation and reinvention of that business. And, um, I'm in my own transition trying to figure out, well, like, how can I apply the things I can bring to the table next? And so this— every time I make a transition between one company and another, one role and another, there's just a not a very long time couple months where I get to be a butterfly and I get to visit a lot of flowers and, um, learn a lot of things and have a lot of really great conversations that don't have to lead to anything. And I find that to be so, um, so enriching that sometimes I wonder whether I should just not go back to work and just be a butterfly for this rest of my life. But, uh, my manifest Manifesting Vision says I, I probably do have to land somewhere eventually for the next, you know, 5 years and, and stuff. But in the meantime, uh, I'm, I'm just— I love having discussions about how the world is evolving for us as people, for, for women, um, and for businesses.

Yeah, that's great. And you're a creator at heart, so there's You will do some flitting, but you're definitely going to be doing, doing some creating and guiding and, and lifting as you lead. You know, that's, that's the whole thing. That's great. I just looked it up for you. So, uh, LinkedIn, linkedin.com/in/juliepeckceo. So that's how to find you, right? Julie Peck CEO is all one word. If you're searching on LinkedIn, that's how to connect. I've so appreciated this. It's been great to have you.

Yeah, thank you for, um, finding me and reaching out. Also, thank you for your book.

Oh, very good. Dynamic Transitions. I hope you've enjoyed it. Thank you. Yeah, that's great. Uh, cool. Well, Julie Peck, the amazing, remarkable, uh, wonderful, heart-centered, and forward-thinking Julie Peck has been my guest today. This is One Sharp Sword: Cutting Through to What Matters Most. I'm your host, Dr. P, Dr. Wayne Pernell, and we will see you here next time. If you like this, please do like it. If you loved it and liked it enough, like, leave a comment, share it. We would love to grow this audience even more. So again, thanks for being here, and we'll see you here next time.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to One Sharp Sword, cutting through to what matters most with Outfluencer Dr. Wayne Pernell. For more information, please go to onesharpsword.com.