In this rapid‑fire "6 questions in 7 minutes" interview, Professor Pete Alexander talks with Scott Jeffrey Miller, Executive Vice President of Thought Leadership at FranklinCovey. Miller describes his role as an author, podcast host, and radio personality, and explains why he finds the leadership development industry rewarding: watching leaders evolve from mediocre to inspiring. He frames work‑life balance as seasonal, noting periods of high demand (e.g., manuscript deadlines) followed by calmer stretches, and suggests managing balance by recognizing these cycles rather than trying to maintain a constant daily equilibrium. Miller recommends Liz Wiseman, author of Multipliers, as a guest who can teach leaders to become talent amplifiers rather than diminishers. His core advice to leaders is to distinguish efficiency from effectiveness—while efficiency (speed) is valuable, relationships require an effectiveness mindset, slowing down to foster collaboration and trust. He shares his first job washing bakery pans, highlighting the discipline, work ethic, and financial responsibility it taught him, lessons he now passes to his three sons. The episode closes with Miller’s online contact points (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and a Google search).
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This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.
My name is Scott Jeffrey Miller, and I serve as the Executive Vice President of Thought Leadership for the FranklinCovey Company. I'm an author, a podcast host, and host a radio program on iHeartRadio.
Scott, it's great to have you on the show. Question number 2: What's the best thing about working in your industry?
So I'm in the leadership development industry. So for us, it's about, you know, watching leaders transform their skills from perhaps being mediocre or bad leaders to being inspiring leaders leaving a legacy. So it's great to see people mature into skills that are probably not always innate for people but can grow and build to impact others around them.
Oh, that's so impactful. I love it. Question number 3. I hear from other business leaders that staying in a good work-life balance for them and their team members is a challenge. What's your thoughts?
You know, for me, work-life balance is kind of like seasons. Seasons come and seasons go. And so for me, there are seasons when I'm out of balance and then perhaps I come back into balance. I don't know that it's, you know, day in, day out. There are probably 3 or 4 week or 5 week stretches where I'm out of balance. I'm writing a manuscript due to a publisher. There's a deadline., and then I kind of come down off that, kind of like peaks and troughs. So for me, it's mindful of when are you— when is your season longer than the 3 or 4 months that Mother Nature planned it to be, right? You're always going to be in or out of balance kind of seasonally, and you have to kind of sometimes snap yourself back into the next season.
Mm-hmm. And I would assume then that if you took a full year of 4 seasons, that it would balance out hopefully over that year?
Yeah, I think everybody's different, right? For me, I tend to probably go into 3 or 4-month seasons of being in balance and out of balance. I tend to write about 2 to 3 books a year. They take 5 or 6 months to write. I have a column for Inc Magazine I do every morning. So I just recognize that there's times I'm gonna be in balance, there's times when I'm gonna be out of balance, and I just try to keep the equilibrium about even, about half in, about half out. And for me, like I said, it kinda comes in 3 or 4 wave months. For some, it might come in 3 or 4 weeks. You're kinda in and you're kinda out. I find that's a better way to manage it than trying to manage your, you know, 12 hours in the day, am I having life balance or in or out? I think it's unrealistic, especially kind of in the new economy, in the new world we're in.
Mm-hmm. I couldn't agree more. Question number 4: What other successful business leaders like yourself should be on my podcast?
You know, I'm a big fan of Liz Wiseman. Liz Wiseman wrote a book called Multipliers, and the concept of this book was really around how all of us are accidental diminishers, not because we're bad people, but because we're people. And our job is to become a multiplier of talent, right? Your job is to be the genius maker of others, not the genius. I'm happy to set you up with contact information to Liz Wiseman.
Perfect. Thank you for that referral. Question number 5. What insight or advice would you give to other business leaders?
You know, I think a lot of business owners and business leaders, they're like me. They confuse this idea of being efficient and being effective. The founder of our company, Dr. Stephen R. Covey, wrote the book, of course, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. 30 years, 40 million copies. He did not write the book The 7 Habits of Highly Efficient People. Now, that isn't to say that efficient people are bad, right? I'm a very efficient person. I tend to rake the yard fast, take the garbage out fast. I text fast, I post fast. Being efficient has been a really valuable contributor to my success in life. My problem is I tend to take that efficiency mindset and I move it into my relationships. You can't be efficient with people. You have to be effective with people. Dr. Covey said, with people, slow is fast and fast is slow. So I think there is a large part of the population that have built their success by being very productive and very efficient, and they should keep doing that. And they should be mindful that when you're working with relationships, which are every organization's most valuable asset, beyond people, it's how people work together, complement each other, forgive each other, pre-forgive each other. You need to slow down and move out of an efficiency mindset into an effectiveness mindset.
That is so interesting. I absolutely love that insight. Thank you.
It's a struggle. It's a struggle, especially for people like me that have efficiency as their kind of go-to. Their go-to strength, right? We have to be cognizant to recognize how I wash the car is not how I should conduct this meeting, right? How I send a text is not how I should have this high-courage conversation giving feedback to somebody on their blind spots. Time to be efficient and a time to be effective.
And so you have to have the flexibility of knowing what to do.
That's right.
Yeah, that's great. And question number 6: Please tell me about your first job.
My first job was washing pans in a bakery. So I used to go in after high school every day in like my penny loafers and my khakis. I was the student body president in high school. I would get on my moped and drive to the Swiss Alpine Bakery, and every day from 3:30 to 5:30, Monday through Friday, I would have a stack of like 8 feet high, 8 feet high of these giant bakery pans. My job was to wash them, dry them, and stack them for the night shift. Then I came back every Saturday from 5 AM to 1 PM in high school, mopped the floors, scraped the floors, washed the windows. I was eating some croissants and petit fours along the way, sneaking a few things here and there, but my first real job was working in a bakery and it turned into a 6-year full-time ride all the way through college.
Wow. Yeah, it gives me memories of when I was a busboy too and doing, you know, it seemed like the dishes would never stop coming.
Yeah, I know.
Oh my gosh. You know, you learn, you learn from that just as sure.
I learned discipline. I learned the work ethic. I learned the value of earning a dollar I earned to manage my paycheck and not blow it Saturday by noon. And it's— I hope it's a skill that I'll transfer to the 3 boys that my wife and I have who are, you know, 6, 8, and 10. They're far away from that, but, you know, not so far, maybe 4 or 5 years for the oldest.
Yeah, absolutely. And gives them some responsibilities. So it's great. Definitely. Scott, I can't thank you enough for being on the show. How can people find you?
My wife says it's hard not to find me these days. That isn't a compliment. So you can connect to me or follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. Just Google Scott Miller at Franklin Covey and I'll bet you I pop up.
Perfect. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. For more insights and ideas, please go to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or iTunes and search for the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.
