Why Every AEC Firm Needs a Leadership and Specialist Pipeline | Kent Jonasen of LPI

Hello and welcome to the Smarter by Design podcast. I'm your host, Christopher Parsons, founder and CEO of Knowledge Architecture. And on today's episode, we're talking with Kent Jonasson, CEO of the Leadership Pipeline Institute, co-author of the third edition of The Leadership Pipeline, as well as the author of The Specialist Pipeline. Our topic: why every AEC firm needs a leadership and specialist pipeline. So Kent's work starts from this very deceptively simple premise. That leadership is not leadership. In other words, every time you transition from leading yourself to leading others, to leading leaders, to leading functions, and eventually leading an entire business, it's fundamentally a different job that requires different skills, different values, different priorities. But this conversation goes far beyond leadership development. Many organizations unintentionally build systems where leadership becomes the only visible path for growth, recognition, and advancement, which means that the specialists, your deep technical experts and practitioners and strategists, well, they oftentimes feel forced towards management roles simply to continue progressing in their careers. Over time, as many of you know, this creates frustration, weak leadership transitions, misalignment between roles and expectations, and eventually the gradual loss of highly valuable expertise. Kent and I explored in order to remedy this challenge, why organizations need both leadership pipelines and specialist pipelines working together. You know, along the way, we connect these ideas directly to AEC firms where specialized expertise is often the core engine of competitive advantage, from healthcare planners to sustainability experts, to, technical design experts. Many AEC firms are wrestling with how to scale expertise, how to accelerate learning and reduce dependency on a shrinking number of senior experts, including the one and onlys in your firms. It was a fascinating conversation. I could have talked to Kent for hours. We had to hang up at some point, but my goodness, what a, what a fun, interesting topic. And I hope you guys enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Okay, so Kent Jonason on why every AEC firm needs a leadership and specialist pipeline. Here we go.

You know, the train will come on time.

We just— Kent, you are the co-founder and global CEO of the Leadership Pipeline Institute, which describes itself as the official research institute and global provider of solutions based on the Pipeline books. So you sit at the intersection of leadership development, talent, succession, organizational capability, and many people know you for your book, The Leadership Pipeline, and from your organization's book, which is now in its third edition. And so it gives— what I've liked about it, I was introduced first by one client and then a second client, and then a third client told me about that book. And it helps firms think systematically about leadership transition and what it means to take on each of those new roles in leadership. But you've written a follow-up book called The Specialist Pipeline, and that's what we want to dig in today, talking about winning the war for specialist talent. And for our industry, for architecture, engineering, construction, these firms are full of deep specialists there. Healthcare experts and sustainability experts and lab planners and data center experts and bridge engineers. I can keep going on and on and on, like hyper-specialized. And so the challenge that we face in our industry is scaling that specialist capability fast enough to reduce dependency on a small number of experts, right? We've got a bunch of folks retiring. We want to accelerate the development of the next generation. We want to preserve quality and just stay competitive in this really fast-moving environment. So I'd love to kind of start, if we could, with the Leadership Pipeline Institute and kind of who you are and just give us grounding. Why are you writing about the leadership? Why are you writing about specialist pipelines?

Sure. Yeah. Well, I got exposed to the leadership pipeline concept back in 2004. So that's 22 years ago. I was at that time deputy head of human resources in a large international container carrier company, Maersk. And we had all kinds of leadership development initiatives. We had leadership competence models and so on. Everything you want to have, but it was hard for us to measure real impact on what we did. Behavioral change. That was hard for us. And we were not happy about that because we actually had solid funding in our company. Compared to other human resource functions, we were well off in terms of business support to what we did. We came across the leadership pipeline concept. And when we grasp it, when we start translating it into our reality together with one of the authors, it actually turned out to be a huge success moving that into the company, implementing it in terms of a framework and in terms of our development strategy, how we develop leaders. And it was those 4 years implementing that in Maersk, or spearheading the implementation anyway, But hands-on, that inspired me to reach out to one of the authors of the Leadership Pipeline book and then start up this company. So back to your question, that's where it came from, the Leadership Pipeline idea.

So you like the author's book so much that you thought that there should be a company around it to help deliver the message to more companies. Is that right?

Yeah. Well, actually, Merck at that time was about 100,000 people and 50,000 leaders. We were looking for an external provider where we could just plug and play the leadership pipeline. But the 3 authors, they were executive consultants so that they didn't have a company that could support developing 15,000 leaders. They did executive work, design work, and so on. And my idea was then when I started working with it, we had to develop our own solutions attached to the pipeline. The business idea was just, all right, I think that the leadership pipeline concept, that's an evergreen. Fine. And the other thing is, wow, if I could have had a white label solution that I could just plug and play and customize instead of building everything from scratch, that would've been very attractive for us at that time as a company. So I had the idea it must be attractive for everybody else too. That's how the idea was found for this company.

Yeah. That's a classic entrepreneurial story. Yes. Yeah. Uh, can you just at a 50,000-foot level for people that haven't read The Leadership Pipeline and aren't familiar with it, What is the leadership pipeline?

So really the leadership pipeline, if you understand two things, then you appreciate the entire pipeline. So it's a 280-page book, but there are only two things you need to appreciate, then you get it all. One thing is leadership is not leadership. The other thing is whenever people move from one leadership role to another, they go through a transition. They need to go through a transition, not just in skills, but in skills, time application, and work values. So let's take number 1. How often have we heard somebody ask the question, is she a good leader? Is he a good leader? Are they a good leader? But that's a total wrong question. And that's where everything goes wrong in any company. That's when you ask that question because you're implying that leadership is leadership. But the leadership work to be done in a leading others role versus a leading leader role versus a leader of a function versus a business leader versus an enterprise leader, and whatever leadership levels you have is fundamentally different. It's like, it's like two different jobs. It's like going from leading others to leading leaders. It's like going from operations to sales. Of course you bring some experience, you bring some experience, but it's a totally new job. This is where many companies, they, this is our, the key reason for many companies finding us interesting. That's when we share these simple stories about what happens in a company when you just talk about leadership as leadership. And all of a sudden they see themselves, all the challenges they have in development, in succession planning, in leader-led development. They just see it coming out. Or if they've had a title-based approach to leadership, then it goes wrong too. So that's one thing you have to appreciate. Leadership is not leadership. The work to be done for leading others, leading leaders, functional leader and so on, is fundamentally different. Now, when people then move from one role to another, first from employee to leading others, then to leading leaders, you need to support them in adjusting their skills, time application, and work values.

Your skills, your time, what was the second one?

Time application.

Time application. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. And let's spend a couple of minutes on this because it's basically the same. I mean, when we start talking about specialist pipeline, it's not just the follow-up book, it's pretty much the twin book. Anyway, the transition. So skills, everybody can appreciate. Oh, I need new skills. Okay, great. But more important, the time application. There are things you need to stop doing, start doing, and continue doing. And most often it's the stop doing that's tricky for people because the things you have to stop doing are the things you like doing. Those are the things that have brought you success. It's probably the things that cost you to get your promotion. Now I have to stop doing it. Or at least do less of it.

Yeah. As an example, Kent, like, what's something that you commonly see when someone moves from employee to leading others that they just won't let go of?

Well, for instance, you can see a sales manager. Sales managers are quite typical here. So sales managers, salesperson becoming sales manager, they tend to stick to their clients. They don't want to let go of their clients. Really, your role is now to make your best client somebody else's best clients. But how do you convince a salesperson about that? And even if they keep clients, that's also fine. But start bringing your team members. Don't go out with your best buddy friends in the different client company. No, you have to at least bring somebody so they can learn from you in those meetings. And you have to bring somebody so you can give them feedback on how they behave. Right. The leading, the leading others should never do this alone. But okay, keep some clients, but bring people. But you know, I got my old group of clients. We used to do this, we used to do that. We have known each other for 4 years. Yeah, but now you're a team leader. You could have said no.

Yeah, no, a very close friend of mine did exactly the thing you're saying. They went from the best salesperson to becoming the sales manager, and they hated it because they thought, I'm still going to be selling, but now I get more money and I get more responsibility. But ultimately, they didn't want to do that job, and they went back down to becoming a sales leader again because they realized that transition wasn't for them, right?

Sure. Micromanagement, the same. I'm used to being in control of all my output. When I become a team leader, I'm not in control of all output because there are other people delivering output. But to stay in control, I start micromanaging.

Versus finding success through others is what you have to learn how to do.

Yeah. And not that because I'm a bad person. I'm just a human being. You know, so leading others to leading leaders, that's also a terrible situation because down here, even if you became a good enough leading others, a good leading others down here, you learn how to coach your specialist, develop your specialist, assess performance. But when you become a leader of leaders, you have to start selecting leaders, developing leaders, assessing performance of leaders. So you see, a specialist by heart and mind can actually go far as a team leader as long as they lead specialists. But if you promote them into the next level, everything falls apart because what they do good enough here, they're not supposed to do up here at the leading leaders level. So, and this is the challenge when you, when you're not differentiating. And then my question, you're gonna ask the company, you see a lot of companies, you see a lot of executives, try and ask them when you got your first leading leaders role, who set leading leaders, right? When you became leading from leading leaders from leading us, when you got that job, who sat down with you and told you, okay, this is a totally new job. This is what you have to stop doing. This is what you have to start doing. This is what you need to continue doing. By the way, here are the new skills you need. Here, the time application. This is what you need to value to be successful. And everybody will say no one.

No one.

No one. And by the way, myself inclusive. I got this book in 2004, as I said, It was my head of talent reporting to me coming back from a conference in the US saying to me, hey, Kent, I think you should read this chapter about being a leading leader. Everything I could do wrong, I was doing wrong. And all the consequences were described in this little chapter of 20 pages. But I looked at it and said, if just somebody have told me that, then at least half of it I could get right. I'm not perfect. Maybe I could even get to 75%.. But half of it, if just somebody had told me, hey Ken, by the way, it's a different job you're going into. In my mind, I'm just leading more people. So it was not a new job. I was just leading more people.

So you saw it as scaling but not transitioning in your mind.

Yeah. So if you can appreciate, never ask the question, is she a good leader? But ask the question, is she good leading others? Is she good leading leaders? Is he a good functional leader? Then you have come far. And if you can then appreciate that when people make this move, they fundamentally need to change how they, what they work, their value, what they like doing. They have to change that and adjust that. Otherwise, they're not gonna like their job.

So they have to change the skills, you said, change the time, how they spend their time, but then also they have to learn the work values pieces, what they like or what, what they val— how they determine their value and their, is that what that means?

What they value doing, what they simply value doing. Yeah. What do you like doing? So if you can't change that, when you become this sales leader, a good day for you in the job is not when you close a deal. A good, the best day on your job is when somebody else closes a deal. But if you can't make that transition in how you value things, then you're never going to be successful leading others. On the other hand, if you can change that, guess what? Then you'll have, then you'll spend tons of time on developing people, selecting people, Assessing performance, all the people stuff. You'll spend a lot of time on that because you value, truly value when it's your direct reports who are successful in closing a deal. But it's just a simple example. The same thing, leading leaders, they have to value leading through another layer. They have to value not being out in the frontline. Instead of missing being out in the frontline, they have to value, wow, I'm not in this hectic frontline anymore. Now I can step up and lead through 4 other team leaders. But most leading leaders, they feel frustrated sitting there because they're taking away from the real action.

They miss being on the court playing. They miss being an athlete actually playing, right? Now they're layers back in the management of the team, right? And not in the action. Yeah. So you said a good day for a sale leading others in the sales example is somebody on my team closes a deal. What's a really good day for somebody leading leaders? What does that look like?

Yeah. Here we go. So leading leaders coming home from work and then the spouse will ask, so did you have a good day in the job today? And this leading leader's response, yeah, you know what? I was part of two significant decisions today and there's a good chance that one of them can get me fired. Can you feel it? That's a good day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Most leading leaders cannot feel that. Trust me when I'm talking to them. They say, what? Say, yeah, but think about it. You know that you are part of making decisions. Yes, yes, of course. But why would you ever be part of making a decision where there's no risk, where there's no uncertainty? You can delegate that to other people. Oh yeah. So a good day for you, that's when you are only part of decision where there's a risk. I was just stretching that risk a bit, right? But the core point is, Rule of thumb for delegation is for leading leaders, delegate all decisions where you're quite certain what the answer is. Then let somebody else decide there. You should be part of decision where there's an uncertainty, where there's a risk that we could be wrong. That's where you step in and become part of the decision-making. But if you don't really enjoy that and love that, if you prefer the other types of decisions where you know you're right, Then you will end up delaying decisions that are tricky.

Because you don't want to take the risk. So you're the wrong person for the job because you're not comfortable with putting your name on a risky decision.

True. You may even want to delay it until circumstances make the decision for you, right? And so on. And this is what slows down execution in a company. So the leading leaders, they play a key role in speeding up or slowing down execution. In a company. So one thing is the leading leaders themselves, but another thing when the company start looking at why would we as a company need a leadership pipeline? That's because it's also a performance pipeline. It's also an execution pipeline. It's about how do we get things done at the different layers in the company? How do we touch each other but without overlapping each other? And how do people understand what is my role in getting things done and executing the strategy? That's the key to success for our company here. But anyway, you ask, what is the leadership pipeline all about? It's about appreciating that leadership is not leadership. And there's a transition to be made in both work values, time and dedication skills, and work values being the most important.

Work values of the three, that's the most important one because that's your mindset of what you, that will determine the other, how you, what you value is how you spend your time, right? And the skills you develop.

Yes. You can go out and interview 10, let's say that you talk to an HR person in a company and you say, hey, could I talk to 10 leaders that you say they're not really coaching leaders? Can I talk to these 10 leaders? Yeah, yeah, here you are. Then you get 10 leaders, right? Then you're going to ask them, hey, do you think it's important to coach? Yes. Do you know what coaching is? Yes, yes, that's asking questions instead of providing answers. And now you start wondering, why did this HR person send them to me? I asked for somebody who didn't coach, yet they have the skills. They know what it is, but they're not using the skills because they don't find value in asking questions. They find value in answering questions. They don't find joy in asking clever questions. They find joy in knowing better, knowing more, hence being able to answer the question. That's what makes them feel, wow, now I know why I'm the leader. So that's why work values are more important than skills. Because you may have the skills, but if you have not adjusted your work ways, you're likely not going to use the skills.

It feels like if this— so thank you for that, because now I'm imagining being Kent back in Maersk, like, coming across this book, and I'm guessing some of the things that went through your head were, one, this is a diagnostic. Like, I now understand, I can see people in this pipeline and understand why things aren't working, because that person in that role doesn't value the thing, therefore doesn't spend their time not building the skills. So there's kind of like, it feels like a realignment that happens once you can see this model. But then I would also think it, tell me if I'm off base here, but like going forward, it gives you language to talk to somebody who wants to now lead others or someone who wants to lead leaders and be able to say, this is what you're gonna have to value. This is what you're gonna have to start. This is what you're gonna have to stop. Are you sure you want this job? And also reflecting, am I sure this person can do this job? Is that, am I close?

Yeah, yeah, no, no, you're putting the words very well here. The thing is, could you envision a company without a finance architecture, without a finance ledger, without a cost budget process, without a capital allocation process, without exchange rates, currency exchange rates? Of course we couldn't. We have known for whatever, 50 years, we need ERP systems. Why? Because it allows us to talk about money in the same way. Now what the leadership pipeline does, it provides you with this talent ledger. Later on we talk about specialists. When you combine these two, you have a talent ledger. So now you have a common way of talking about things. Think about it. If you called one of your colleagues somewhere in your company and asked, hey, I'm looking for leading authors for a role over here. Would you have anybody who are ready for that? Then you say, yeah, I have 2 people. Can I trust you? Not that you're lying to me, but do we have the same exchange rate? Yeah, in finance it's nice having currency exchange rate. Then you know what a dollar, Canadian dollar versus a US dollar versus a euro. But do you know what a leader versus a leader is? A leading horse versus leading horse. Do we have the same way of assessing what does good look like? Now this is what the leadership pipeline provides you with. It's this people leadership ledger here. So now you have a clear portrait, a performance portrait for each leadership layer in the organization. That's what it provides you with.

So I love that. And it makes me go back to the very first thing you said, which was when you were in-house in HR, you had a bunch of budget, you were doing things, you had support, and yet you had no way to measure if you were being successful. So given that you had budget, you support, you had programs, like Why, what was the problem? Like, why did you feel like you needed to make a change?

Yeah. So it was, it was two things, two main things. First of all, we were growing significantly year by year at that time in Maersk. And we were, in spite of all this support to development and so on, then we were unable, at least we struggled developing a sufficient number of qualified leaders to keep up with the business growth. We struggled in that. Most often when we were looking at new positions, we didn't have 3 candidates, we had 1 candidate. And we had been looking for that candidate. We managed to always fill our jobs. We didn't use search companies much, but it was 1 candidate every time. And that's not good enough. I think an HR function should also be measured of always having 3 candidates ready or at least—

3 internally developed candidates is what you're saying.

Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. If you want to go external, do, but do it by choice, not by need. That's a relevant KPI for an HR function, I think. Anyway, we put that on ourselves. The other thing was all that training. When we then looked at performance reviews on leadership, we had a distinct leadership performance review alongside the business objectives performance review. But when we looked there, it's not like we could see, oh, these people have been in our training programs and they perform better than those who have not been in the training program. So we couldn't get, we couldn't get a causality between sending people to training and then they would end up performing better as leaders. And that tells us something about the leadership programs are not working, in my opinion anyway, because then people going to the training should statistically improve more than the rest over time. So we couldn't see that when we looked into it and measured it. So something was not working. Anyway, the programs were highly popular, great scores, high NPS scores and all that stuff. And there were, there were many good things in them, but the outcome was not there. And that's what, what I, together with a couple of people in our corporate HR function, we said, okay, we put some pride in trying to change this. And then we worked on that, but we didn't come up with a solution. And then by chance, this book ended up on my table. And that turned out to be the one thing where I would say it's not like we stopped everything we did. But it's like we got these fundamental transition programs in place, and by helping people making the true transition, it actually increased the value of all the other training because they had been trained in a lot of things, but they didn't use it. They didn't apply it in everyday life sufficiently anyway.

And so when you say leadership is not leadership, I'm inferring that those programs you're talking about were a little bit more one-size-fits-all. So somebody is going to learn how to lead leaders given the same materials in some ways than somebody leading others pre-reading the book and kind of making this switch.

Yeah. And, you know, now, now knowing better, I can still feel bad about telling the story from then, right? Even now, because we had programs based on titles, manager program, general manager program, director program, VP program. But guess what? Our title structure was based on a salary benchmark system. Zuschinger, Mercer, Hay, and so on. These are job grading systems that are used for salary benchmarking. But it gives these grades and it's so easy to attach a title to grades. And then it's so easy to attach training to a title. But guess what? Mercer and Hay, they have developed great salary benchmarking systems, but they have never claimed they're going to translate into great development leadership development systems. They've never trained that. But that's just what many HR functions, including us at that time, what we did because it seemed right. It was easy to explain. But the problem is on this director program, there would both be individual contributors, leading others, leading leaders, and maybe, you know, an organizational manager. And when you start mixing so many leadership layers, then you have to chunk up to make it relevant to everybody. You cannot train them in their exact job because we have different jobs. So you chunk up and you make the training more general, high level. You make it case-based and simulations instead of really training people in the job to be done. Yes. And so that's what we did. High-rated programs, but the impact was not there. And that's what you can do when you start saying, no, let's take 20 leading others, let's take 20 leading leaders and then train them in the job to be done.

Because they have those same, we can start with values, right? And then you can work all the way backward cuz it's the same for everybody versus a mixed group. I love that.

Excellent.

Exactly. Let's talk about then the leap into the specialist pipeline and where that came, where the kind of, I love, first of all, thank you for being willing to talk about some of the things that you weren't doing well and, and things that you improved. I think that's really help. I don't think you were alone in doing some of the things, obviously you built a company around it. And so I love that the seed of the idea for the company came from this experience. I'm wondering if you have a similar seed for the idea for the specialist pipeline.

Yeah, that's an equally terrible experience. Yeah, guess what? No, you know what? 2004, I get exposed to the leadership pipeline book. We get excited. We do our work together with one of the co-authors at that time. And everything is ready to go to executive decision in 2005. Hey, let's roll out the leadership pipeline concept and these programs and so on and so on. But at that time, as I said, Musk was a container container carrier company. Basically, Maersk was a conglomerate. There was also something called Maersk Oil and Gas. There was something called Maersk Contractors. There was some, and then multiple other companies. It was a true conglomerate. And then the two CEOs, the CEO from Contractors, Contractors, they're renting out drilling rigs. So in the oil industry too, they said, all right, pretty much using these words, now we again launch A big initiative for leaders. What about our specialists? That was in 2004. And Christopher, think about it. Many companies, they're not even saying that today. They said that in 2004. At that time, it was very annoying for my agenda. Today I can appreciate that they were way ahead of their time. And I really appreciate their thinking.

And so it was annoying because you're like, hold on, I'm still trying to get this leaders thing right. What are you talking about, specialists?

Yeah, sure. But they said that and it was discussed and we were sent out, we were sent out and said, look, you have to come up with some kind of solution for specialists too before we launch this leadership thing.

Was it similar, what you said about leaders, right? Is it was hard to fill roles internally and it was hard to know if training was working. Was that their concern about specialists? That it was hard to fill roles and training wasn't working, or was it different?

It was the same, but they were even more bold. So listen here, two stories. One story, as one of them said, look, Kent, they said, look, Kent, I remember like yesterday sitting at that meeting because we were pretty much thrown back one year and it took a year before we could then move on with the other project. Anyway, so they said, look, Kent, any leader pretty much who leave my company, I can replace them tomorrow. And if I can't, then I can just merge two departments. The business goes on. But I can name, I'm a CEO, but I can name frontline experts and specialists in our business. If they don't come to work tomorrow, the project stops. So you have to understand they are a bit more important to me. And then in another business unit, they said, oh, that's a good point actually, because if we took one of our big countries, Netherlands, then if the country manager didn't come to work tomorrow, the business would just continue. And now there was a discussion, how long could he, could this person stay away? 6 months. And the business would continue.

It would just have momentum in like systems and all that kind of thing.

Yeah. And containers are booked and the schedule for vessels are already in place. So, you know, business is moving and there's a management team taking care of things and so on. Fine. They don't do a new strategy. But business would keep moving. And then he said, but at the same time, this person who is responsible for stacking the containers on the carriers, if that person didn't come to work all of a sudden one day, then nothing would happen. Everything would stop. And that's very costly, having carriers just waiting to be, to be loaded. Okay. So they could see the same point. And they also chipped in, by the way, and said, yeah, we have this senior specialist in ship paint. And then he started talking about his impact on— if he could be part of developing and improving the ship paint, then maybe the vessels could be in water one more year without being taken out for repair and maintenance and so on. And that's millions and millions of dollars you save there. If you can get a better paint, then you can lower the friction in the water, then you can save fuel. Mm-hmm. Billions of dollars. So they all of a sudden agreed, "Ooh, these specialists are important. So Ken, go back and come up with something." Now anyway, we went back, our team, and after having, you know, showed our wounds, we started the work. And our first take was, what if we could just do a specialist pipeline? But we didn't know if we could, of course. So we went out and interviewed both specialists and executives and so on. And it actually, I learned so much about specialists at that time. And I got really excited about specialists at that time. So we came up with a model for how could you actually have a specialist pipeline and a leadership pipeline and so on. Guess what happened then? Then we came up for decision and the decision was we start with the leadership pipeline. And I never heard back on the specialist pipeline.

Because it just over— it just took too much time or it was too—

No, it was done. It was really also, Yeah. But then again, even though it was an insightful decision, let's look into the special— but then when the decision was, should we do both? No, let's start with one thing. And then let's start with the leadership. And then the next 2 years when I was there, I didn't hear back. Nobody called me and said, okay, now it's time for specialist. Then it was just, then it just moved on. And that's what often happens. So it's an example again. But anyway, I left Maersk in 2008 to start up this company.

Yep.

When we got into, of course, the two, two first year, two, three first year were quite tough because of the debt crunch in 2008. I started up this company in May 2008 and in September everything stopped in the market.

Yeah.

When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.

So we started in February 2009, so I understand your story quite personally.

I know about that.

Yeah.

So no, so anyway, then in 2014, '15. Some of our leadership pipeline clients, they started bringing up, what are we doing? What are we gonna do with the specialists? And they talked to us about it because we were successful with what we did on leaders and they couldn't actually find other vendors who had some great concept and so on. And I said, well, we don't have a concept. We have some thoughts of course, because it's not like I forgot what I learned in Mørsk, right? So I said, but then I, we teamed up actually with 6 companies. 6 large international companies and said, look, we don't have what you're asking for, but we can develop it. And then I want to write a book about it, especially pipeline book. And they said, yeah, but we can't wait 5 years. So we need to be part, then you need to take, we can test it out as we go along because right now we have nothing. So whatever you come up with is probably better than what we don't have. And so we had the opportunities to start working with companies even though they knew We have not tested these training programs. We have not tested this framework other places, whereas that's what our clients would expect on the leadership pipeline, that we come with solid experience, right?

And we didn't have— Can I stop you there for a second? So is the reason, because you had an idea for a specialist pipeline, there was the leadership thing, that's what you executed at Merck, then you started the company and you were doing leadership from 2008 to 2014, 2015. Did at some point your mind say, let's bring the specialist thing back? You're like, no, there's a market. People are coming to us for leadership. That seems very obvious. Nobody's asking about specialist. What can you talk about that a little bit? Because it seems like you had an insight that you just put on the shelf for almost 10 years.

Yes, I did. I did. Because we started our leadership pipeline and that's, that took off and that's where we built a quick, solid business and so on. But then our clients they started discussing with us what could we do for the specialists. Yeah. So it was the clients who started asking us and then eventually, eventually I said, all right, let's give it a shot.

What was you, why were you hesitant?

When you run a business, you have a business model, you have a product. Now adding specialist pipeline, that's a completely different production line. It's like in the old days, we're producing wind turbines when they were smaller, you could produce 2 megawatt or 4 megawatt.. But it's actually two different things. It's not like it's the same. You need different factories and so on. So you need a different production line. It's not one day you do four, one day you do two. That's not how it works. So you build up a parallel business. And why do that? There's a billion-dollar market for the leadership pipeline. Why then start focusing on another product? Because you're really, you're stretching your resources and your time. So that was my hesitation. That was from a pure running a business perspective.

So why do it?

Ja, there are two things to it. First of all, discussing it in our company, we got convinced that we would actually stand stronger by having this twin product. Because many companies were already doing a lot in leadership arena. Many companies already work with leadership pipeline, just not with us, because the book came out already in 2001. So it was already adapted by a lot of companies on their own. Or with help from other consulting companies. So they didn't need, they didn't feel at least they needed us for that. So our way into these companies would be through the specialist pipeline. And our business ideas then, when they then see how we work with specialist pipeline, they realize we don't really harvest the leadership pipeline and then they're gonna work with us on that too. That became the business idea. And then the professional side, at that time I was not part of the leadership pipeline group personally. I was only invited into that in 2020 or something like that.

The third edition.

Yeah, the third edition. So this was also, this was my opportunity of taking some of my knowledge and broaden it out to people. I remember Stephen Drodda, he said to me, first time I met him, Stephen Drodda, one of the co-authors of Leadership Pipeline book. He said to me, Ken, when I wrote that book together with the two other, when I wrote it, I thought if just one person would buy it and really get something out of it, then I'm all happy. Hmm. I was inspired by that thinking that writing a book is really about taking a lot of your own knowledge, putting it in a book, and then other people would get access to that knowledge and they can get a better life, a better career, create a better life for specialists. In this case, in the company, I got, yeah, I got consumed by that idea. So there was the professional perspective why I ended up as a CEO saying, yes, let's spend time on this. And then there was also the commercial aspect of it.

And you take a little bit of joy from putting some risk into the business.

You know, fair enough. I didn't feel that when I got 6 companies to sign up immediately.

Yeah.

I didn't really feel there was, the only risk I had was the opportunity. Risk in terms of spending time on A instead of spending time on B.

Yes, exactly. So, yeah. So I'm guessing, because when you were describing the way that you did the title-based training, you kind of described a scenario like a director that might be an individual contributor, it might be somebody leading others, it might be somebody leading leaders. And so my thinking is, is part of the reason your clients pulled you into this because they had similar challenges and they're like, okay, well, we know what to do with the leaders that are in this room, but what do we do about that director individual contributor, like how do we develop them? Is that part of it? Because it was like you're only solving half the problem with the leadership pipeline.

Yeah. I think the challenge that companies faced that I got exposed to in the first place and also now later on, the challenge they face is that specialists and experts, they feel alienated. That's one thing. Why are they alienated? Because leaders get it all. Leaders get training, leaders get bigger titles, leaders go to offsites. There's an annual executive leadership summit. There are all kinds of things for leaders. They feel alienated in, in, in that, from that perspective. So that is what it is. Now, some of those specialists, they just stay alienated, but other of them, they decide, I don't want to be alienated, so I'm going to pursue a leadership role. That may not be good, not for them, not for the company, not for the team that they're going to lead. But it's the only way they see a possible career in the company. That's by pursuing either a project manager role or a formal people manager role in the company. That's the only career path they can see in the company. So that's what they're going to do. So what the companies reacted to, another thing is that they felt Many specialists would in exit interviews say, well, it's just that I— why are you leaving? Because I don't feel I develop here in the company. Okay, but you're leaving for another job that is the same as this you have in this company. Yeah, but it's in another company. So at least I've learned something from that. But that's a very bad reason for companies to lose a person, right?

If you lose the person that's stacking the containers for that reason, that's a big problem.

If at least they have gotten double salary, okay, fair enough, we can't pay that. So good luck. This job, but going to that, pretty much the same salary, pretty much the same job, just in a different place. Come on, stay here now, you know. So the company, the companies are experiencing these challenges. And then I want to supplement it with the, one of the stories also outlined in the Specialist Pipeline book. So as part of the research I did where I spoke to hundreds of specialists in connection writing the book, one of the questions I always asked One of them I always ask was, so think back on last time you got a new title. Okay. Yes, I got it. Fine. What was different in your job the day before and the day after? Nothing. And here's the point. What does it mean making a career? Because many companies actually said, but we have a career, we have a title framework for the specialist. Yeah, but you don't have a career just because you get new titles. Making a career, that's getting an adjusted job, a new job, a revised job, a more stretched job, getting exposed to whatever it is. That's making a career. So making a career is not just getting new titles. Well, they may be happy the day they get them, but then the day after, you know, I now got a new title and then what? So that's my point. When you create a career, In the leadership pipeline, it's very clear. Individual contributors, they become a leading artist, new job. Leading leaders, new job. Functional leader, new job. It's very visible to everybody, whoa, this is a new job. But if you don't have something similar on the specialist side, then on their title structure, they don't look at that as being a new job. So that's what's missing on the specialist pipeline side. That's what's missing. What was missing in a way. And that's what we were asked about. Can we do something like that? And we said, maybe. So, because we didn't want to create an artificial pipeline that by design upfront had to match the leadership pipeline thinking. Because it was there. But another interesting story, I was sitting in a company where we had implemented the leadership pipeline. And then at a lunch with about 15, whatever, HR VPs, one of them asked me, hey, do you have something that can help matrix managers? And you know, as a good consultant back in 2011, just on the back of the dip crimes, you say yes. And then you ask, so what is a matrix manager for you? And then it turned out a matrix manager in this company, was somebody who was product responsible. They had 200 people. It was a 30,000 people company. They had 200 people who owned certain products. They had many products. So they owned a portfolio of products. And they were supposed to drive the success of this product across geographies, across the value chain, across whatever. And I said, okay, so they're sitting there alone. But that's more like a specialist role, isn't it? An expert role, it's not a leadership role. No, that's right, he said, but we cannot attract people to the job if we don't call it matrix leader or matrix manager. So here you see them.

So they have 200 people in that product team, but they don't directly lead them, you're saying?

No, those 200 people are not people managers. They own a product portfolio that they have to take care of and push the success of across the world.

Yeah.

But the point is that they are probably knowledge experts or knowledge leaders or something in between. If we take the leadership specialist pipeline terminology, but they couldn't call it that because it was so unattractive in this company to pursue a specialist career that even though it's a very attractive job in many ways for some people, then they wouldn't take it if it was associated with being a specialist.

So it's like respect, pay, all those kind of things just don't compete.

Yeah. Yeah. I would say respect because pay moving in there from a leadership role, you could maintain your salary and so on. So it was more the respect. And if you make a drawing of the leadership pipeline, how cool is it to move from leading leaders to individual contributors?

Yeah.

Visually, it's not cool.

Because you're going backwards.

Yeah. Downwards even. Yeah.

Downwards.

Yeah. But if you then make this drawing of the two pipelines next to each other, then it becomes visible to you that, whoa, moving from a leading others role into a knowledge leader role, that can be a promotion in terms of impact.

Interesting.

In terms of complexity, in terms of— but if you don't have this drawing, then visually it's not attractive to move from a people manager role to a specialist role. Right. And I want to then go back to your very first words in our conversation here, this thing about making that attractive for specialists, and we need to groom specialists and the specialist pipeline. What we have experienced, definitely in Europe, what we have experienced is, so people, they stay and have to stay in the workforce longer and longer. Okay.

Right.

But there are so many people, when they get to the mid-50s, they may have been people managers for many years. And of course, I can't put everybody into one box, but when they get to the mid-50s, I've been a PIM manager for 20 years. I actually like the company I'm in. I actually like my colleagues. I also like what I'm doing. But I've had enough of leading other people because having these conversations about non-performance, having these conversations about salary and time, all these HR stuff, I'm done with that. If I could just do what I'm good at, but for them to move over to a specialist role, then you need to make it very, very explicit, attractive to do so. Because what we have experienced in our work has been that people who then do it at that age, they do it by moving to another company.

Why?

Because then it's not a visible demotion. But inside their own company, they feel that it's a visible demotion if they did it. People will start talking about, no, what went wrong? Since they are in a specialist role now, something must have gone wrong. Maybe they were not a good leader after all. That's the conversation you can easily get into, or at least being afraid getting into. But if you move to another company, you don't have that conversation because you have never been a people manager there. But I don't want to lose this talent at this cost. No, but if you don't want to lose the talent on that account, then you need to make it attractive being a specialist.

Cool. Let's talk about that then. Let's talk about the steps up the specialist pipeline so we can start figuring out how the two things come together.

Yeah.

Yeah. So what's the equivalent of an individual? Is it individual contributor at the bottom? Then it goes to being a knowledge expert. What are the different levels?

So, and here's an important story I would like to share, a story that impacted me a lot and that I've used in many companies who are going down the wrong street. When we started working on this specialist pipeline thing in Maersk, I was in Maersk on a guest talking to the chief operating officer. And naive as I was and unknowledgeable about specialists and so on as I was, I started talking about specialists that they had a lot of PhDs. So I said, so they come in as PhDs and then there are specialists and then, then he stopped and said, Ken, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. You don't get it. You're not a specialist just because you have a PhD. I said, okay, but he, he's, yeah, yeah, he knows a lot about, he knows something about something, but then he starts working in our company. And when he starts there, that's when he starts learning about real life and how to apply that PhD knowledge and so on. So the first 2 years, a PhD in our organization coming directly from university, they are not a go-to person. They do work and they do important work and we pay them well, but they're not go-to people. It's not like other people come to them and ask, hey, hey, can you help me here? Can you support me here? Because they don't have the bandwidth to support other people. They're still getting their hands around their own domain of expertise. And then can, after a couple of years, some of them will become go-to people because they develop a sufficient knowledge and understanding of their domain of expertise and how it's applied across the company. And also they are somewhere that people like to come to. So they become go-to people. I say this is the first specialist level. He pretty much drew the specialist pipeline for me. Yeah. So the story he told me about specialist journeys and how it works, it's 80% of what you find in the book. He really inspired this. Of course, I didn't know that at that time because at that time it was one story. But when I then started, when I then started testing that story up against hundreds and hundreds of other specialist careers, then it became visible. And here's the point. When are you a specialist? Most companies, 70, 70, 70% of all the people are employees, professionals, associates, whatever we want to call it. They're not people managers, but they're also not specialists. The worst mistake you can make if you want to make it attractive to be a specialist. That's when you say either you are a people manager or you are a specialist. Because then you have diluted the entire term specialist. Because apparently you are a specialist as long as you're just not a people manager. Of course you're not. You have to deserve your right to be named a specialist. And this is actually a tricky point for many organizations we have worked with because, oh, but then we have to go out and change that. We have said this for 10 years. Yeah. You wanna make it attractive being a specialist. And by the way, it's not true. You're not a specialist just because you're not a people manager. You're an employee or whatever you wanna call it. So the first step in the specialist career, that's when you get your hands around the domain of expertise, where you start supporting other people. What could that be? We could take an obvious example and that would be in human resources, you have recruiters. People who are spending most time on recruiting, doing interviews, all kinds of things. And there may be a little team or a country-based team or a state-based team or something taking care of a certain geography of the business. Inside that team of 4 recruiters, one of them turns out to be smarter than the 3 others. One of them turns out to have a deeper understanding of this process. One of them turns out to really dive into it and grasp our, all our tools and processes. And one day, one day the people manager, the team leader goes down to that person and say, hey Christopher, I'd like to make you a knowledge expert. And you say, okay, what does that entail? Well, that means that besides doing recruitment as you do today, then we need to take out some of your time and you need to spend that time supporting the other team members. So I'm still the people manager, but from a pure technical perspective, you need to support your colleagues. You become the go-to person for them. When they're in doubt on how to interpretate a psychometric profile, then they come to you. When they are in doubt about how to apply a certain recruitment tool or process, they come to you, not me. I can now spend more time on people leadership because I've put some of the technical leadership down on you. This is how you use specialists at the lower level. You make them go-to people for the nearby colleagues and peers and so on.

Is that person building tools also and process, or is that a higher level up?

That would normally be a higher level up. They are doing continuous improvement and they make sure that, let's say that you work in a certain geography or you work in a certain part of the business, you need to find a way of applying company tools in a clever way. So if you, for instance, if you have a tool in your company that requires strong internet access when you assist people, well, there will be certain countries in the world where you cannot be sure that there's power all the time. So if you operate in those countries, you need to find different ways of applying those tools, right? But you don't even want new tools, but you apply them clever wherever you work. You do continuous improvement, you feedback to a corporate that, hey, there's something here not working. There's something here I believe could be better.

They would involve you in pilots of testing new things to see if it's gonna work, perhaps that kind of thing. Yep.

Yeah. But exactly because as you, as you allude to the next level, the knowledge leader, if you had a knowledge leader inside the same thing, for instance, in this case within your resources and recruiting, that would be the person who actually designed the recruitment processes. This would be the person that selects and figure out What assessment tools should we be using? That's what they do. This is also the person that is responsible for pushing these tools out in the organization and getting people to embrace and apply those tools the right way. But that would be a knowledge leader who would be doing that.

So can we go back to our sales example? So you've got this person, let's call her Denise. She goes from being a really great salesperson And then she's like, my options without a specialist pipeline are to become the sales leader, right? So now I have to lead others. Or in the specialist pipeline, I could become like a sales specialist. So I could start being the mentor and the go-to person for other salespeople, but not be responsible for care and feeding and employee reviews, that kind of thing. But then over time I could then be like, well, I'm gonna develop our sales playbook. I'm going to develop our sales training. I'm going to do all of that kind of intellectual development.

Yeah, we can use sales as a very good example, right? There's a sales process, there are sales tools, there's a pipeline system that you use, and sales pipeline system. This is the go-to person. So when new people are hired to the sales team, the people manually say, by the way, if you have any questions about X, Y, and Z, you go to Christopher, you go to Denise in this case, right? And ask her, not me, I'm your people manager, but any technical questions about our sales tools and processes go to Denise. And Denise's performance is also measured not only on her own ability to apply these tools, but also how well her colleagues are applying them. And this truly marks a new job because moving from being a salesperson to being a knowledge expert means now you're not just held accountable for your own sales, you're also held accountable for other people applying the sales tool correct. And this truly marks a new job. And that's my point in giving people a new title, it's just a new title. Here I'm changing the job fundamentally. You now create results through other people.

Okay.

Because you're held accountable for other people doing things right. And some specialists will of course say, what? But it's not my fault if they don't ask me. Yes, it is. Hmm. What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to market yourself in the team. You have to make yourself available. You have to make it attractive for people to come to you. So, and this is, by the way, when we train knowledge leader, this is one of the most provocative sessions we have. They really feel, no, it must be people coming to me. And we say, no, you must make yourself attractive for people. And you can't just sit there and be frustrated that people don't come to you. Do something about it.

How does a knowledge leader make themselves more attractive to have people come to them? Yeah.

So knowledge leaders, they actually, they normally work across the organization, not just with their immediate peers. If you have a knowledge leader in sales processes, for instance, or take a knowledge leader in safety, they develop the safety processes, they develop the training, and they do all kinds of things there. But the knowledge leader in safety is going to be measured not just on the quality of the products they develop,. But actually on whether people are using it, whether people are taking this safety training, whether they're passing the safety training. And of course the knowledge leader would say, but how can you hold me accountable for people doing what they're supposed to do? I say, well, if you're an honest leader, that's what it's all about. That's not just about the activity, it's about the result of the activity that you held accountable for. So the knowledge leader have to get out and build alliances in the organization. They have to make sure that in each of the 5 regions, I need to find a counterpart there that I work through because I cannot be out there. So I work through counterparts on each of the drilling rigs. I work through a person there because I'm not on the drilling rig. I've just developed the processes and the tools. And now there's a dedicated person on each drilling rig in our company that has to make sure that it's implemented and caretaken. For every day and so on. So I need to build relationships because I need people to dedicate time to what's important for me. So I need to be good at building trust. I need to be good at building relationships. I need to be good at, and here's by the way, one of the work values that's important. They need to value not being the one getting praised for the success. Because when you work through influencing other people, You need to give the credit to all these people. That's how you win them over. That's by, but then you cannot take the credit afterwards. Yeah. You need to always give the credit to those people that are doing things for you that they didn't have to do. They could also have done something else. But you need to value that because if you too much value that it's you who are being praised for things, then you cannot win people over and get them to work for you because you're only influencing them. You don't lead them. You don't have any power. You need to get things done through influence. This is a key thing for knowledge leaders. And this is a big deal when we train knowledge leader and how to step into their job. Before I said what is the bigger deal on the knowledge expert? This is the bigger deal on the knowledge leader. Because they say, but Kent, you tell me that I'm being, should be held accountable for things that I'm not in control of. Yeah. What's the nature of being a knowledge leader? I said, but would you rather only be held accountable for small detailed things that you could be held accountable for? And then they say, no, no, the other job is more exciting, isn't it? Because now you're influencing results throughout the organization and not just within your tiny little area. And of course, this is what makes this job interesting. But it comes with different accountabilities. And it's a tricky job. It's a big job being a knowledge leader. Like it's a big job being leading leaders.

Can you help me square the circle? So we have Denise who decided to, instead of leading others in sales and become the sales manager, she became a knowledge leader. Yeah. And then let's say Kent actually takes the job. He actually wants to become a sales manager. So he's responsible for leading others in sales. Both of them are accountable for the people on the sales team's performance. So how does that work? Which part is, are you responsible for as the sales manager who's leading others? And which part is Denise responsible for? Who's the knowledge leader?

Yeah. So we have a team leader. There are 4 salespeople and one of these salespeople, I have, that Denise, she's now a knowledge expert.

Okay.

She's not a knowledge leader because then she would probably be sitting in corporate sales function and not out in the sales team.

Okay.

But let's take the sales team here, right? The leading, the leading role is the team leader of a team is held accountable for the consolidated result of the team.

Okay. So like whatever the profit revenue target, whatever the thing is, that's holistically, did they hit their number?

Yeah. Now the team leader then says to Denise that besides you doing sales yourself, then you need to spend 20% of your time on supporting 3 other people. Of course, then I lower, I lower the sales revenue number for you because you have less time. But then I add this part instead. Whereas the other 3 are only held accountable for certain sales revenue. So my role is just to increase sales in this team. And I have decided as a team leader, I can increase sales even better if I take some of the functional support and training and push that down to a person. And by the way, I know that Denise will find this attractive because she's looking for a career opportunity. She wants to grow, but I cannot grow her inside this team. Because that's my job then, but that's not me who make that decision. But I can grow her by creating this knowledge expert role. Then I grow her. Later on, she might still prefer a team leader role or she may prefer a specialist career.

Right.

But here's the point, Christopher, and that's actually important. This is a key thing about the specialist pipeline. It allows leader dynamically to grow specialist in everyday life. Even without getting permissions from somebody, without having a budget, they can look into their own team, their own organization, and say, hmm, maybe we should organize ourselves this way so we have some knowledge experts and so on. They can do that if they want to, and if they believe it adds value, of course, right? And now Denise, when she's promoted into a sales, a knowledge leader in sales, then she's probably taken out of this team and then she's put into the corporate sales function. Right. Now she will be developing sales processes. She will be deciding what kind of a sales pipeline system should we use and so on. But here's the thing, we want to do corporate analysis on sales activities, but that requires people to correct input out in the frontline. Right. So Denise is now accountable for not just implementing, not just deciding on tools, but also that they're being used.

Yeah.

So she has to get out there and convince people and sell the idea.

All the different sales managers, she has to persuade them to use the CRM or follow the new playbook or whatever the thing is.

So she has to understand how to drive change. She has to understand stakeholder management. So on the one hand, she needs a deep expertise in sales, but she needs a broad expertise, a T-profile. She needs a broad expertise in terms of How do I get things done across the organization? And knowledge leaders will normally end up spending half of their time just getting things done. That's why some knowledge experts say no thank you to a knowledge leader.

Because they have to let go of some of the— at this point, she's not selling anymore, right? She's gone to the corporate sales function. So she's not doing that thing that brought her joy in the first place. So she's now like, I'm going to have joy by improving the way we sell organizationally. In our processes and all of those kind of things.

Yeah. Yeah. And some find that very attractive, others do not. But that's the same. Some would like to be a leading OS and then move to leading leaders, but most leading OS don't want to become leading leaders. So that's how, so there's nothing wrong with that. But that's the nature of the game here, right? Then a knowledge principal, the higher level, what makes the difference there? I have not come across, I've not I have not yet come across a knowledge principle in a sales function. So I need to jump into another function. We can shift. Let me go back to safety. Let me go back to safety. I know that many of your colleagues would probably appreciate the safety function. Absolutely. So I give you an example. We work with a drilling company again. So drilling company, they rent out drilling rigs. It was not in Maersk, it was another company. We worked with them and they said, hmm, we would like to have a knowledge principle in the safety The first question is from my side, okay, but is it a strategic position? And they say, yes, it is. And here's the point, Kent. We can win market shares if we do better on safety than our competitors. Then we can win market shares. Because if we can increase the threshold for how well your safety numbers could be, for instance, lost-time accidents, That's how it could be measured, right? Lost time accidents or incidents, whatever you call it. And we could actually influence the industry. And then our buyers of our services, they would start increasing their demand on, on the numbers. And then our competitors would be in trouble. So they set out on a journey, say, over the next 3 years, we want to improve our lost time accident numbers and a couple of other safety numbers. So we are, we are number one in our industry, number one or two. And when we're done with that, then we're going to start influence the industry through different organizations, through this, through that, and so on, so that we bring our competitors in trouble. Now this is really a, this is really a solid strategy, right? But this is an example, this is an example on in safe You can actually— safety could become a competitive edge. Yeah. So to be a Nolz principle, you have to represent something that could become a competitive edge for the company. Maybe it never will because you don't know what your competitors are doing. Maybe they're trying to do the same thing and then you end up even 3 years later. But you make bets, you make bets as a company and say, this is where we want to be better than everybody else. And then you invest and da da da da da, and then some of it will materialize hopefully over time. And this is where knowledge principles, they play a key role here. And you'll find them in many different, in all kind. I haven't seen them in sales, as I said, but I've seen them in most functions. I've seen people can rise the way all the way up to a knowledge principle and so on.

But the bet, just to jump in. So the bet is if we don't make any changes, We're at a level 4 in terms of sales. In order to get to a level 7, to create a differentiation, that means creating and disseminating new knowledge that we don't have today because clearly we don't know how to be a level 7 because we aren't. Or, I mean, there could be other reasons, but let's just say it's that. Let's just say it's like we don't have the capabilities to have that kind of quality and safety. So it needs a principal-level person because it's a strategic objective to make sure we develop the organization.

And I did one meet a knowledge leader in sales, in the sales function, who strived to be a knowledge principal. And one of the things that he said to me back then was that the way our sales process, we make that stronger than everybody else. And I said, okay, can you give me an example? And he said, yes, for instance, when we are part of tenders, this was inside renewable energy, When we are part of tenders, we bring 20 people together. They work maybe 2 months on this tender together and put in all the resources. We send in the tender and then we win or we lose. Okay, guess what, Ken? If we lose, then we get together and then we really discuss why did we lose. Yeah, but now it gets better, Ken. And this is where we do something that I know our competitors are not doing. When we win, we also get together and discuss why did we win. And his point was we can learn as much from why we won as from why we lost. Because then we need to do more of those things in the future. And don't forget doing these things that caused us to win. And he said, I'm coming, I've been in other companies, I know they're not doing that. So he said, that's one example. And of course it doesn't make me, it doesn't give us a competitive edge alone. But I'm trying to do all these small things in our sales process that can make us even better than our competitors. In the sales process. But you see, it's a specialist who very purposeful sit down and say, I want to do something better than our competitors. It's not just by chance or by seniority. Well done, you've been many years and you know a lot, you have a very deep knowledge. So now you can become a knowledge principal. No, it's about having a deep knowledge, but it's also about am I able to use that knowledge all the way into How can I build a competitive edge?

Yeah, I love it.

That's the Wallace Principle level. Now that's what the book outlines. Of course, when we work with clients, they have to customize this to themselves and decide, are we 3 levels, are we 4 levels, are we 2 levels, and so on. I have to say though, after having worked with it now since the book, book came out 3 years ago in many companies, it does seem that these 3 levels work very well. And then, of course, you can stretch one level a little up, a little down inside the company in terms of when do you break in to what level and so on. Yeah.

Do you have to have— so, can you have— what happens if there's not a knowledge principle in a function? If there's not a knowledge principle in safety, if there's not one in sales, you would still have knowledge leaders and knowledge experts, but they would report up to somebody that is in a different— like, how does that work?

Yeah. Especially if they don't report to each other because then they would be big vendors.

Okay.

So a knowledge leader doesn't have any reports.

Right.

Right. Because remember, Denise, when she moved into the safe knowledge leader role, she was pulled into corporate. Sure.

But who does Denise report to as a knowledge leader?

She probably reports into maybe the chief commercial officer.

Okay. Or CMO.

Or maybe, yeah. The head of sales, and then she's just responsible for the sales processes and tools. Others are responsible for maybe strategic client management. Others are responsible for whatever. So she may either report straight into the chief commercial officer. That's not that often for a knowledge leader. A knowledge principal could do so. But then the chief commercial officers may have, you know, 5 people below them, and then she reports into one of them.

But the head of sales, though, is a leading leaders person. Right. And so they don't, so they do have direct reports. And so, but they don't need a, they just don't need a knowledge principal in this fictitious company. That's fine. Like a knowledge leader is enough in this example, maybe. Yeah.

Okay. Because the company, the company has to decide what, how do we want to compete in the market? And each function has to decide, do we want to put a bid in our function on building something unique?

Here.

And also, if you have it within a function, it's not just, oh, she's a knowledge principal in sales. No, she's probably a knowledge principal in sales processes or sales tools and so on, because sales is a broad thing. If you took human, if you took human resources, there's actually quite an interesting example, I think. In human resources, you could be a knowledge principal, but they could have a knowledge principal in multiple different things. It could be talent management, leadership development. Now I work with a bank They promoted somebody into a knowledge principal role in diversity. And their logic was, now we have looked in the market, maybe together with McKinsey or Boston or whoever. So they had done a strategy. And part of that strategy is figuring out who are our most profitable clients and what is that client picture going to look like in the future? What they figured out, this is 8 years ago, what they figured out was that private banking clients are where we make the most money. Okay, fine. So we want more of those. What they also figured out was the fastest growing group of people, that was actually wealthy single women. Wealthy single women. So they said, okay, so that means that we should expect to have more and more and more women, single women as clients here. But are we sure that our bank is organized the right way. What does that mean? They looked at top 200 managers and said, but among the 200 managers, 80%, 80 or 82% are men. So female, male, if you go down to only two distances, that can be more. But if you just took these two here, right? 82, a male population. But are we sure we're gonna make the right decisions in the bank if we want to attract more of a group of people over here who are not males or females? And they said, we don't know, but we think maybe we should have a better balance, men, women. Again, just to pick out only two, that could be more, just to pick on two. There needs to be a better balance here. Otherwise we are concerned we're going to make the wrong decisions. And then we can attract this client base. So they said, diversity is important. So when they moved into the diversity agenda, it was not due to political reasons or to look nice or operate the right way. It was not about that. It was a pure business reason. They said, whoa, we need a better balance diversity-wise in our top 200 executives. Then they promoted somebody to the knowledge leader role and say, you need to drive this agenda. And they report, she reported directly to the chief HR officer. And not only that, she was present on board meetings every time. She often was called directly up to the CEO because this was a strategic critical move they were making here. So, but you see, she was not a knowledge principal in human resources. She was a knowledge principal in diversity.

Yeah.

It just happens she'd been working in the human resource function. There can be knowledge principals in all functions, but it has to be an active decision that we need one, we want one. It's not just there. Yeah.

So in our space, in professional services, writ large, but like in, in architecture engineering, you oftentimes find principals at kind of market sector levels, and then you find principals with disciplines. So it could be structural engineering or architecture or something like that. How do you see that? But, but a lot of times it feels like that, and we have a seller-doer model here, right? Where the client wants to meet with the most, the knowledge expert, but it's also the person that's doing business development, and it's also the person who's overseeing the projects. How have you seen professional services organizations try and tease apart that kind of leading leaders, leading others from the knowledge principal role in a way that makes sense for them?

Yeah, the most common thing that I have seen is that you create these center of excellence areas in that, we call it center of excellence, and this is where you place these knowledge leaders, knowledge principals, you know, whatever, you place them there. And then they are available to the commercial team.

Right. But they don't have that day-to-day billable pressure of selling work and getting their time cards in and being 90% utilized because they're in a center of excellence trying to raise the boat for others. Is that right? Or not necessarily?

Some of them, they will normally still have these 80% that are seen most companies. So they have, they need to be on projects. But in this case, they then have to dedicate time to both maintain their domain of expertise, but also being available to the salespeople. And this is where they get, this is where they get stretched, right? Because salespeople bring them all the time, but it doesn't add to their, to their billable hour thing, right? But I think everybody in project organizations, they tend to be stretched due to this billable hour thing. There's a good reason for having these numbers and KPIs and billable hours. So there's nothing wrong with that, but it's just the nature of the game. You get stretched in that. The one thing that we often see compromised in this case here, that is that they don't find time to maintain their domain of expertise. And that's actually a problem for the company because they have a knowledge principle today, but do they also 2 years from now?

Is that because— so do they lose that domain because they aren't working on enough projects or because they aren't doing enough continuous education and learning and research and blue sky thinking? Like, where does that happen?

Yeah, it's the latter.

It's the latter. They're too billable.

Yeah, yeah, they're billable 80 hours and the salespeople are just pulling them out and it's hard to say no. And it's always a very important deal. Which it is. So it's hard to say no. And they always have to— okay, but then I have to cancel this conference on Friday, you know. So it always gets canceled. So they don't go there. And to be a knowledge principal also means that you have to invest a lot of time in things that you don't know if it's ever going to make an impact. You will go to conferences about things that are not directly relevant to you,, but it's adjacent relevant, maybe adjacent, because real innovation comes when you cross different domains of expertise. But then you need to get out and meet people who represent different domains of, of expertise.

Right, right.

Yeah. I have an interesting story in the book about a British hospital. It's a person, he's responsible in the area of premature born kids. And what happens there is you have a small room with 12 people in the room, and then normally the woman, she would come in and give birth under critical circumstances. It's normally not planned when you do these things, premature birth. It's always that something happened and then you do it, right? So there's two lives at risk, the mother, the child, and everything has to happen in 15 minutes and so on, right? Yeah. So to fast forward, this person tried to go to all places to get inspiration. How can we improve? Not that they had many casualties, but just to get better and better. And you— where can I go? In other hospitals I couldn't learn. We do the same way. Continental Europe, we do it the same way. Finally, he ended up at Formula 1 in Monaco. Did you see that coming?

No, I did not.

No, but have you seen them when they change tires?

And the pit crew? It makes sense now that you say it.

12 people, whether it's 12 or 14, a lot of people. Yep. If they do it wrong, somebody's going to be hurt, and they can hurt themselves, by the way. The doctors can, after all, not get hurt in the surgery room. They can get hurt. And think about it, if you take this Formula 1 team, now there are whatever, 12 people working down here, but there's another— not, I'm not an expert in Formula 1, but there's another 20 people sitting up there monitoring with cameras hundreds of cameras, what's going on down there, because they need to improve 0.001 second to get the world record. Yeah. And they do that, they evaluate after a race, what can we do different, and so on. They invent things. So they actually, they offered this hospital to pro bono come out and set up their team around. So they glass walls, then they put their people around and they ask these women giving birth, are you okay with having a 50 people sitting there looking at it.

50 people from F1 looking at you.

And those who volunteered find that they did it. And after that, the Formula 1 team could go in and say, look, you need to make different color drawings on the floor because you're running around in there. You can only, you can only walk there. You can only walk there. You should stay within the blue. You don't have to move into the red area. So why are you doing that? I don't know. But you You know, yeah, people walk around, don't walk around, stay within the blue area, you stay in the yellow area. So, and they changed the small things they used to do, whatever they do. Oh no, you have to put it like this on the table because you always grab it like this with your hand. So if it's turned a little, then it takes too long time.

Yeah.

So they went in and did that proposal, but it's an example.

Yes.

But who gets allowed and finds time to go to Formula 1? Of all the knowledge principles, you know, nobody gets that. But that's where they had a huge breakthrough. So how they did things like, so by the way, it was a long story, but I think sometimes things are better illustrated with a storyline, right? So companies, if you want a competitive edge, you need to invest in either maintaining it or developing it. It seldom comes by chance. Yeah, it's better to create it by purpose. But then you need to purposefully invest time and money. You need to promote people into this knowledge principal role and give them the responsibility. You need to work on this the next 1, 2, 3 years, and then hopefully you get better than everybody else.

And you need to protect their hours and all those kind of things. Yeah, because they're pulled not only in the billable work, but then there's the kind of getting pulled into the sales, like you said, the development. And then there's also the innovation, right? And so it's like, help them not be pulled too thin.

Yeah.

And you're shortchanging your future by over-optimizing for the present. Yeah, it's a tricky puzzle.

But here's the thing. One of the reasons for this happening the wrong way and not the right way, that's because you don't have the specialist pipeline. You don't have a structured way of having this conversation. Because if these people are not considered, these knowledge principles who are supposed to develop competitive edge or maintain a competitive edge, then they are just billable hour assets. Whereas if we think about this from a strategic perspective, these companies, these professional services companies, they would all agree it's all about having and building competitive edges. They would agree to that. But if they don't have a, a strategic systematic way of doing that, then it normally starts happening by chance. Mm-hmm. This offers at least one leg on a four-legged chair to be more purposeful in building, uh, competuators. It doesn't solve it, but it offers one leg of a four-legged chair.

What you just— this is why I was attracted to your work. And the second I heard of this book, I bought it instantly and wanted it. And before we even had the podcast, knew we were going to do it, I'm like, if we do it, I would like to bring Kent on because what you just said— so we named the podcast Smarter by Design. It's exactly what you're saying. Right. This is a design. This is a business design opportunity and not relying on chance. I think that's great. I want to ask you kind of a few more things before we wrap up. I want to go all the way back to your, to your container stackers and the ship painters that you mentioned. Who are these? If you, if they weren't to show up on Monday, the company would be in trouble. One might call that critical knowledge. There's a couple of different words that people use to describe that. What does a firm that has gone down the specialist pipeline, how is that better having gone through the specialist pipeline? Like, what do you do with the ship stacker or the crate stacker?

Yeah, it wasn't done back then. So I don't have a real life example from that stacker. So I would actually, if it's okay with you, I'd like to share a real life example, uh, um, from, and that's, so again, you have a large manufacturing company. They have a CTO. This company has worked with specialist pipelines for about 8 years or something like that. So it's fairly anchored in the organization. Nothing is never 100%, but it's fairly anchored. So the CTO, this is a 30,000-people company. The CTO reports directly to the CEO. The CTO has 8 direct reports. 4 of them are knowledge principals, meaning individual contributors, knowledge principals. And 4 of them are leading leaders. He has a total organization of about, I think it's 380 people, something like that, between 350 and 400. Think about it. In such a big organization, normally you see that all the direct reports are then leaders and then they manage. Not in his part. He said, no, no, no, no, no. I need the knowledge principals. To report directly to me and be in our management team. They represent the future of this company. I cannot put them down reporting through multiple other layers. They need to be part of the management team.

And because their knowledge is so critical to our strategy.

Yes.

Yeah.

But yet now comes the point because then one day by chance I ran into him during a lunch break when I was doing something in the company. And then he said, hey, can you have 5 minutes? And he said, yeah, sure. You know, I have this and this person, one of these 4 knowledge principles. I have a chance here because, you know, I need these 4 people up here, but I have to keep paving the road for him. He's not, he's thinking, okay, I'm done with my part. I said, no, you're not done with your part. It's not about your part. It's about you integrating with all the other functions in the company.. But you have to do that on your own. Yeah, but there's resistance and it's not easy. No, but I cannot run around and pave the road for you. So people at this level can't, I can have them reporting to me, but they have to be able to work very independently. And they need executive presence and they need to know how to get things done. And they need to value that they're not done when they're done, they're done when the company's done. But he doesn't get it. What can I do for this guy? Because I really think I would like him to be at this level. But if he doesn't improve, I need to put him under another leader. So here's the point to this little story. Because he purposefully worked with the specialist pipeline, then he can distinguish and he can say, okay, I have these 4 people, knowledge principal, they can be here, but I need to hold them accountable. I cannot be pulled down to do their work. They need to do their work.

I can't be a CTO, a CEO, and a knowledge principal. And not, yeah, right, right. No.

So he's the CTO and, and, yeah, and that's the point here in the knowledge, in the knowledge, in the specialist pipeline. If you train people to step up in their role, then you can actually elevate them hierarchically. Because today in many companies, the specialists are actually hierarchically pushed down. So their real impact is not really mirrored by where they, to who they report to. They could be elevated up, but many leaders don't do it because they feel, yeah, but if I have him reporting to me, I need to spend too much time. If I have her reporting to me, I need to spend too much time on them. I need to have one-on-ones twice a week because they're individual contributors. No, they're knowledge leaders. You need to meet with them every 2 weeks, but you need to train them, of course, to be able to operate independently. And you need to hold them accountable for doing so. But if you don't have these two mechanisms, training them to do so and make it visible, you're supposed to do so. If you don't have these two mechanisms with real transition programs and specialist portraits, then you can't do this. And if you're back to Ken, what are you actually doing in leadership pipeline? We only do two things. We have specialized in helping companies designing the leadership and the specialist portraits. And then the transition programs that helps people step up. And this is why working with the specialist pipeline is much more than, oh, then we finally have some training for the specialist when you also have that. But it's the strategic impact it can have over time on how you organize yourself, how you run your business, you know, where are people located in the hierarchy and so on. But it takes this focus, otherwise they keep being pushed down. In, in the hierarchy, right?

So when you get brought in to do consulting work, well, I guess you do training, so you can do some training to say like, this is the tools, we customize the training for you. But ultimately, at some point, you have to take their org structure, the way that they make decisions, map it to the specialist pipeline, customize it to their language, and help them define what does it mean to be accountable as knowledge principal? What is our— what are the different values that we need you to have? What are the How do we want to spend your time? What are the skills? Like, that's what implementation looks like for you working with clients?

It is very much, and the key to success for us and maybe also all the consultants, but definitely is we have to work with the company where it is. We cannot come in with all our high-flying ideas and thoughts. Mm-hmm. But we can do that in a value proposition speech. Mm-hmm. But after that, it normally starts with, okay, let's get the basics to work here. Let, Today you're organized the way you are. Now we build it around that. Mm-hmm. But then when they get more comfortable with things, that's when they can start elevating things. That's when they can, that's when they can start really harvesting from the investment they have made in building, in building this concept into the organization, right? But we always start working with companies the way we are. We don't decide whether they need knowledge principles. They decide whether they need knowledge, right? But we introduced to them how to think about it and so on. And therefore the specialist pipeline concept will support a company in doing this strategic capability building and saying, one thing, this is where you are today. Now we have met your organization. Where do you want to be 3 years from now? Where do you need to be? And if you want to move from here to here, then think about how long time does it take to develop a knowledge expert into a knowledge leader. And they're going to say, well, at least 3 years. Yeah, think about that. When do you need to start? Tomorrow. Yeah, or yesterday.

So the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the next best time is today, right? Yeah.

No, one of the most strategic decisions you make, those are pivotal decisions because it takes so long. If you go back to my money analogy where I said this thing about having a financial ledger, a ledger. Yeah. Money is so easy. You, you call a bank or you have a credit line, then you take $10 million, you withdraw them from the credit line, put them into the company, but they work effectively from day one. From the moment they're inside the company, they work effectively, the money. But people, it takes time before they work effectively. And if you then want to develop them to another job, then it's going to take another whatever, whether it's 1, 2, or 3 years. Yeah, it's such a strategic piece of work. And that's, you know, okay, now I get excited. This is what keeps me excited about doing what I do because I know when I'm sitting with these organizations, I'm opening up a door for them to see, whoa, this, we are not appreciating how strategic it is. And the reason we keep failing, the reason we keep not getting the results we want, that's because we don't have these basic frameworks in place that can help us. Having strategic conversations about leaders and specialists. And this is what makes me feel I'm making a difference when I'm sitting there with these companies. This is my worst value, I would say. When I hear an executive saying, hey, but then we can also use this for strategic workforce planning, I say, yes.

You did it. If you had your, and maybe the answer to this is it depends, but if you had your choice, Would a company work on leadership pipeline, then specialist pipeline, work on them both at the same time? What do you think the optimal way for a company to think about this is?

Yeah, I always say to companies, it's about finding a sweet spot. A sweet spot in terms of what is it, what is the easiest things to get implemented quickly so you get a win. The thing about change is about getting quick wins. And some companies will say, okay, we have a huge engagement problem. Should we just do something about our leading others? Other companies will say, we actually have a frontline leader program. You may feel that yours is better, Ken, but you know, we have a frontline leader program, but we have never thought about leading leaders as a species. Let's do something there. And you know, other companies would say, no, now it's finally time. It's in the specialist area where people are screaming for a solution. We also need all the other stuff. So I normally say to companies, let's talk about what your sweet spot is. What is your sweet spot?

Both in terms of the biggest need, but then also the thing that where you can move in, like you're likely to be able to move the needle. Is that also broken in within, maybe you would just start with a function, like start with mechanical engineering or start with healthcare or something like that versus try and build an architecture for the whole company all at once?

Yes, actually, especially this pipeline, contrary to leadership pipeline, especially pipeline often starts having a home in a function. Okay. Yeah, we have some time. I'll get to why, because that's actually a very, it's a, that's a very important point to your question. So thank you for asking this question. Sure. First of all, especially this pipeline often starts in a function. There's a functional head who says, I need this. And they always, they have budgets.

Someone hands them your book.

Yeah, I need this. And then they start. But what we then do when we work with that function, we don't go in and design a functional approach to this. We design an approach that can afterwards be spread out for the rest of the company. When other functions are mature and start building interest, then you can just scale it into them too. And we always say that to the functional manager, look, We don't want to sit here, build a little solution for you, charge you $50,000, $70,000, and then we move to the next function, do the same. We, we create a solution that is good for you, but can also be scaled in the rest of the business. That's also in your interest, right? But it often starts in one function and it's mechanical engineering, it's R&D, supply chain. Those are the, maybe the three most normal functions that it starts. So that's how that starts. But here's why. And now we're back to why specialists in general are somewhat alienated in companies. Leadership normally starts in corporate and then it's spread out. Why is that? Because all these companies with whatever, 3,000 or 4,000 or more employees, they have a head of leadership development. Now my question to you is, Do they also have a head of specialist development? No. Why not? Yeah, because it's not considered equally important. It's because if it was, it would be there.

Yeah, interesting.

But in all fairness, because now I'm being a little harsh, sure, 20 years from now they do, because then the specialist pipeline book and deviations of that book, uh, then it would be totally normal because 50 years ago all companies didn't have a head of leadership development. That's true. 50 years ago leadership development would be considered a cost. Today I would say 50% of the companies we work with, they don't consider it a cost. They consider it a necessity to run a business. 50% still consider it a cost. So same thing with business pipeline, you know, 20, 25 years from now, then you start having that anchor somewhere else. And just to give an example, today, thousands of people end up on our website because they search in Google or chat for leadership pipeline. But people don't search for specialist pipeline because they don't know it exists. It has to mature. It's an educational process of companies, right?

Actually, that leads me— I have two final questions for you. The first one is, the book came out a few years ago, first edition. And I think every author that I've ever talked to, one of their trepidations of writing the book is, but once the book is written, it's published, and then I've learned something a week afterwards and I want to rewrite or change something. And, and I'm curious, like what you've learned since you published the book, that if you were to do a second edition or maybe you're already working on one, what would you revise, add to the book?

What would you change?

And what are the big things?

Yeah. So first of all, it's a very good point. I spent 6 years on the research and then another 2 years on finalizing the book, partly because I'm running a company as a CEO on the side. Okay, fine. But mostly because I want to write a book that doesn't have a 1-year life but has a 10-year life. And how can it have that? Take the Leadership Pipeline book. If I was writing a leadership book about a certain leadership concept, then it could die tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow that concept was not important, whatever it was. But the Leadership Pipeline book doesn't do that. It writes about the work to be done. And guess what? 50 years ago, a leading artist selected direct reports. They developed direct reports. They were driving engagement. They were delegating. They were setting direction. And they're also going to do that 25 years from now.

Yeah, it's enduring.

Yeah. Yeah. These two books are focused on the work to be done. And this is first of all what keeps the books alive. But it's also why it's good for a company because you implement this, you don't have to change it every 2 years or every 3 years because the work to be done doesn't change, right? There are all fancy, other fancy stuff changes, but not the work to be done. The context you do the work in might change, but not the work to be done.

Right. You might implement radical candor or how to do difficult conversations, but that's a way to do the work that's not changing differently.

And then it's business goals instead of business objectives. Then it's KPIs instead of goals. Rooms. Then it's an EdCom model. Then it's different models and things you like, but the work to be done doesn't change. I had a funny question the other day. I was doing an executive session for some 40 people in a defense company. Then one of them asked me after 3 hours, he said, okay, so what about the generational thing? You know, I'm 55, he said, but I have leaders in my part that are 27 and so on. And I often get challenged about this generational thing. But you have one model. Is it different depending on that? I said, look, next time when you sit with this leadership portrait for the Lean Ones, then anybody 27 years old, 24, 32, can of course say to you, hey, yeah, but you know, I belong to a different generation. And then you can say to the person, good for you, but this is still the job to be done. You can be Generation X, Set why. But as a leading artist in my department, you're supposed to select good people, develop people, assess performance, set direction, drive engagement, build the team. This is the work to be done. So it's generational nurture and it's cultural nurture. Because I know for certain working in the whole world that the way you lead, your leadership style has to be different. Even in US across states, across whatever it is, right? But also obviously China, Denmark, France, Germany, and so on. The leadership style is different, but the work to be done is the same.

Yeah.

The leading others is supposed to do the same work, but you need to do it in different ways. Of course, depending on the culture you work in, also depending on how experienced your team is, but the work to be done is still the same. And that's why it's a very powerful infrastructure. To have in your company.

That makes a lot of sense. I love that.

Now, back to your question, what would you do differently?

What would you do differently? Thank you, thank you for helping me do my job.

Yeah, so right now, nothing. But we keep doing, we, we keep doing research on this, and then let's see, 5, 6, 7 years down the road. But there's no chance that there'll be a new Business Pipeline book from my side anyway 3 years from Yeah, that's great.

How— so if people want to learn more, obviously they can go to your website, they can read the two books, Leadership Pipeline, Specialist Pipeline. What else? Like if I'm a CEO of an architecture engineering firm or a COO, and I think this could— or I'm a functional leader in one of those teams, what's, what's the best way to, to get started with your and engage with your company and your ideas?

So if they want to engage with us, then they just reach out to us via our website if they want to do that. If they want to do it on their own and say, let's give it a shot on our own and then maybe later on get some support, then I would say then it is about identifying somebody inside the organization function who can become the, the Nils leader in the specialist pipeline, meaning that they start diving into that because there are— the book itself is very operational.. So it actually provides a lot of operational help inside the book. And you'll also find resources on our YouTube channel and especially on, on our YouTube channel, you'll find resources more than the website that can also help you further. So we do author talks frequently that you can get invited to and so on. Mm-hmm. So we have a business. So yes, we like people calling us, wanting to work with us, but, but from a brand perspective, we also need a lot of companies working with this concept without involving us because otherwise we can never broaden it out to all those people who deserve experiencing the value of it.

Well said. That's very generous of you to think of it that way. And you're very generous of you to spend the time you spent with us and our community and our listeners. So, um, I'll thank you on behalf of them. This was wonderful and I hope very useful and eye-opening for a lot of people.

Totally. I get totally excited when I talk about this. So thank you very much for inviting me.

That's evident. All right. Thank you, Kent.

Thank you.

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