The Power of Discipline and Candor in Executive Leadership | Des Hague | 670

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, uh, my guest is Des Haig. He's an acclaimed executive leader known for his exceptional ability to lead global brands and deliver outstanding results. He advises startups and nonprofits and some private equity firms. He was the CEO of Centerplate, which is a huge hospitality business. He's worked with such brands as IHOP, 7-Eleven, Maytag, PepsiCo, and is the author of two books. One is Think Your Way to the Top, and the other is 15 Minutes of Shame. So welcome aboard, Des. How are you today?

Thank you. And that was a great introduction. You should be my press agent from now on. Thanks, Peter. Ife is great.

I just, I just make up what they send me. I'm with you. So I want to get a sense. So, you know, on the one hand, here's the story of, of an executive, primarily hospitality-related things in terms of IHOPs and PepsiCo and Centerplate, et cetera. And then you've, you've delved in and out of thought leadership over the years in terms of the two books. So why, like, you're obviously busy or as busy as you'd like to be, whatever that means. What called you to invest time and energy and effort and brain cells into thought leadership?

It's a great question, and I think I should ask my shrink that, but the reality is this. I don't believe you can really get to the pinnacle of business if you can lead companies, if you're into, you know, sports or whatever else. I think a lot of your time is spent personally on development. So I don't see it as a departure. I see it as more doubling down. I think about when the wall came down in '89 and I'm sent over by PepsiCo into Poland, parachuted in, and I developed a 4-step process right back there in my early 20s. The number 1 being it's all about the talent, Peter. It's all about the people. If you got the right people, you got the right talent, great things happen.

So it sounds like from, from your take, and I, and I get that it's really an extension of what it takes to be a, a, a great leader is to have a perspective, models, methods, frameworks. I, I think of it as sort of what was the operating system that helped you be successful as a leader in the organizations that you led? Is that, is that a fair— Yeah.

And I think it underpins always with people and how'd you have to, you know, how do you motivate? How'd you optimize? How'd you get the right people on the bus, on the right seat with the right mentality? With the right clarity, with the right tool.

But then it takes focused time to write the book, or in your case, the books. Yeah. Right. You have to say, you know, it's one thing to model that leadership and believe in personal development and leadership development when, when you're in the, in the seat, right? When, when you're doing it and, and you're the role model of, you know, with folks like, uh, companies like IHOP, you know, thousands of people. But then you have to carve out the time and the energy and there's opportunity cost and whatever. To say, you know, I'm going to put this in a book. So what, what, what was behind that?

Well, I think it's all about where, where, first of all, it's about focus. And I always come back to, you can do anything, but you can't do everything. So I look at it and say, okay, what, you know, how do I want to represent? How do I want to lift people up? I don't think you can lift people up without really helping them develop, grow, stretch them. And it just became a natural extension. And so I wrote these two books, and by the way, I'm writing my third book now and a screenplay, and I'm on multiple boards and running an enterprise. I come back to, it's about prioritizing, having a plan. And quite candidly, Peter, if you look at the world today, the average person spends 6 hours on social media. I don't spend 6 hours on social media. I spend about 15 to 30 minutes a day, so I've got 5 and a half hours to do the things that other people think are too much. I don't doomscroll. I'm right. I'm, I'm regimented.

I would argue that if it was 10 years ago, so it wouldn't be social media that we're doomscrolling on. People are watching television or stream, you know, there's lots of, you know, everybody that says they don't have time. And when you actually drill down into that, yeah, there are some people that are laboring away 18 hours a day, but you don't have time to do the other things if you're sitting there eating Pringles and watching whatever's on Netflix this week.

No, I think that's a great statement. And to me it's about sacrifice. And I think that's the mis— people misunderstand what sacrifice means. Does it mean walking around like a Franciscan monk whipping yourself? Yeah, but I look at it and say, I have to say, if I want to achieve something, there's certain things that I'm not going to be able to do that I used to like to do. Or, you know, if I do that, then what I want becomes the sacrifice.

So it's trade-offs and priorities, right?

And so, you know, again, you can't boil the ocean. I boil a saucepan. My saucepan is my life. And prioritize effectively.

Well, there's, there's definitely a, this growth mindset, this lifelong learning perspective as well that you embrace, right? Because even though some of the businesses that you were in, you know, if we look at IHOP or PepsiCo or, or some of these other ones, they're not necessarily the most cutting edge as it relates to, you know, AI or tech or whatever. But it doesn't mean you, you can continue to do what you've always done. If you think about how COVID has revolutionized hospitality and the restaurant business and all that. And then the technology's embraced. It used to be, you know, put heat to meat was the old mantra in those businesses. Very, very different now.

No, and I think that's why I think when I think about kind of the special trades, one of the things that deserves its own kind of three-letter moniker is NSL, never stop learning. And Be a student. Every day is a day to become more advanced. And that goes into doing whatever it takes. I feel that today there's a challenge about mediocrity.

Yes.

And there's a new— the new goal seems to be mediocrity. This is the standard.

Because sometimes you go somewhere and you have an experience, whether that's in hospitality or hotels or retail or whatever, and you walk away with that going, wow, that was better than I usually get. And then when you deconstruct it in your mind, you're saying, actually, it was quite mediocre. But the bar is so low that for someone to, when you walk into a retail store today, to actually not be on their phone and greet you and make a little bit of eye contact and ask to be helpful. That's, that's not, that wasn't even table stakes, right? That's just somewhere between etiquette and, and manners and the way things are done. And now, and maybe this is me being a grumpy old dude, you know, I feel like sometimes I walk into, whether it's a, a, a car dealership or hospitality restaurant, and I'm disturbing the people that are working there. You know, little old me that's trying to throw money at them. I, I was, I was at a restaurant that, you know, the other night and I'm waiting and waiting and waiting at the bar to buy a bottle of wine because the reservation that we had, they're running a half an hour late. So I'm already annoyed. And I got so frustrated that I, you know, had to go to the maitre d' and say, you know, I've been waiting here 20 minutes. To spend $100 on a bottle of wine. What's wrong with this picture?

No, I think Peter is spot on, and it's not being the grumpy old man or the grumpy old human. I mean, the reality is I think we're breeding in a level of entitlement. I do not believe that equity has helped us at all. It should be equality of options and then equality of outcomes. You don't have a normal table stake balanced, you know, game. The winner takes all and the hardest one wins. And And I think it's led us to victimhood where you see this playing out live. I mean, yeah, I ran 200,000 employees at Safeway and we didn't all have our iPhones glued to our back pockets walking around. I work in businesses today and it's the norm. I'm sorry, if it's an emergency, somebody's going to call the store and say, I need to speak to X, Y, and Z. You don't have to have that lifeline connection. And I think technology is fantastic. I love it. I actually did a project back in 1995 with Mick, uh, with Wickbread, uh, talk about Y2K. If you remember that Y2K mob. And now it's like we don't think we can breathe and inhale and exhale without our cell phone being in our pockets. And that's not—

I love that point you made that emergencies existed prior to cell phones, right? So there's a big rigmarole right now. I live in New York where, you know, they're, they're banning the kids from having the cell phones in the classroom because these teachers can't compete with the, with, with the screen. You know, and the pushback from a lot of the parents is, oh, but if there's an emergency, there's an emergency. I'm like, I went to public school in New York City. I, I don't remember. I mean, I do remember other people, but like in all my years and 12 years of public school, never once did my parents have to run to the school because of an emergency. Now, if they needed to, there was a means by which they could do that. Right?

Right. If there's a horrible incident happening, having a cell phone's not going to get your parent there or your grandparents there any faster to help. So take away the phones from our children's education would be a great start. Plus it would help them do the one thing that's really required from a great student: focus.

Yeah, I think that focus piece is critical. If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. Forward slash podcast. I want to touch just for a moment on, on the, the 15 Minutes of Shame. So you wrote another book called 15 Minutes of Shame. We're not going to get into the incident and all that, but the lens that I want to talk about that through is this incident happened. It, it, it was a horrible incident, right? And you, the spotlight was on you in a negative way. There was really no way to come out of that and say, I didn't do it, or what was done was done. But how you chose to deal with that now and after, speak to that a little bit.

Yeah, well, I'm Irish, Peter, so, you know, you could say we just keep going and we don't understand. I won't get into the whole drinking thing and the stereotypes, but I think the reality is, hey, you know, I don't want to even belittle this as well, or minimize this is the right word. That in my professional career, losing my temper, no matter if I was hurt, fingers dislocated, whatever, I should have counted to 10. I knew I should have counted to 10. I know I've got a fiery temper and I still overdisciplined.

Right.

It's the disappointment. And you have two choices to make, just like in adversity. It's either going to make you or break you. If you think it will or it won't, you're right. So choose wisely. And you can either decide to die on that issue as if that's your worst. If losing my temper with an animal is the worst thing that I ever do in my life, and I know it's not, then I'll be okay. I'm not happy with it. Obviously, it wasn't my finest moment, but that is not a defining moment. And I think that's critically important when people are And by the way, Peter, nobody will get this unless they've really been under the microphone, under the spotlight of media rage. If they haven't had a million—

stay there a minute. I think it's a combination. I think you're right of the media rage. I think it's 3 things. There's the media rage. Yep. That we always have to assume we're always on.

Yeah.

Right. I know, you know, even now if I have a conversation with a friend, about a purple sweater, the next thing I know, my laptop, purple sweaters are popping up. Like, right. It's always on whether we're aware of it or not. And then when you're in a leadership position, right? I don't wanna say that there's a bullseye on your back. That's not fair. But you have to be held to a higher, okay. You, you know, you, you can't have a bad day in public. Now behind closed doors, you can have a crappy day and be in a miserable mood and be grumpy and do certain things you can do, certain things you can't do, whatever. But when something's caught in public and you're a quasi-public figure and, you know, that's the world we live in, right?

No, I mean, you're right. And I think that's why you cannot say, you know, this is too fat. My incident happened in an era which wasn't as hyper-micro fishbowl as today. This is even a worse environment. It's tight and it's even, it's more difficult. But, you know, you, you're on, you're on, you're on stage and you need to represent and, you know, but The fact of the matter is we're human, we make mistakes. What I did was a boneheaded, stupid thing. Yep. If I could take it back, I would, but you can't. So you gotta, so your question was, well, what'd you do? Well, you can either die with that issue and go into the, uh, the, the forest and hide for the rest of your life, or you can say, I'm gonna use that to become a better person and, and, and drive forward.

Hold on a minute, because you could have waited for the tides to go away and the dust to settle a little bit, because eventually with the media, everybody sort of forgets and, you know, it wasn't like you, you, you did something so horrific that would be, you know, you're gonna be in prison the rest of your life, but you chose to share the story, share the lessons, share the learnings in a book.

Right.

So was that more about therapeutic, a forcing mechanism, or what are you hoping other people would learn from reading that book?

'Cause it's pretty—

just facts, I would say.

My, my key message was It's never over. You know, I, Peter, I see people, you know, committing suicide, you know, 22 military people are committing suicide a day.

Yeah.

Thousands of people are committing, I mean, I look on, there's a lady on LinkedIn who posts these things and I'd give her a shout out if I could call the center. She's a kind, beautiful lady and She lays these pictures out of a 24-year-old with a great smile, committed suicide 4 months after that, or a 37-year-old. It doesn't matter who it is. It's an equal opportunity curse. And I don't want anybody to feel that their life is not valuable. Luckily, Peter, in my 30s, I had enough in my war chest to never work again.

But that's—

people aren't always as fortunate as that. And you are a human being. You do a bad thing, doesn't mean you're a bad person. And there's obviously, there's graduations of that, as I've said. I mean, I got a misdemeanor, a speeding ticket fine. It was, that was it. But it hurt my career immensely. And I just said, you know, judge less if you're going to, you know, the challenge to us all is how do we all become better? No, how do we become more belligerent about somebody who makes a mistake? So my challenge and the reason for the writing the book was it's never over. It was a little bit therapeutic at the same time, but it's about you can overcome, right? You know, you can, you can make, you know, and there's a book I love, In Search of Meaning by Viktor Frankl. If you've got a why, you can cope with almost any how. And I think about it, it's humbling. No matter what I went through 13, 14 years ago, that was somebody else's best day. Yeah. You know, context, you know, put things into perspective. And, you know, if there's a message out there, it's if you've got a will to get through, you can. You're never defined. You can continue to grow. You do bad things. I did a boneheaded thing. You have to atone for that, but you know, I don't know if it needs to be that atoning today.

So even that atoning today, I think in many instances there's a lack of accountability, responsibility. Let me hide for 2, 3 days and this too shall pass. But I think regardless of what the it is saying, I did that. I own that. I'm not proud of that. And then maybe you get into some of the whys and some of the background, whatever. But there is a bit of a reluctance to say, yeah, I screwed up. I screwed up big time. Like that was not my finest hour. That was not something I'm proud of. And that's, you know, whatever the case may be.

Yeah. And great point, Peter. But I would tell you truthfully, 'cause I live this, so it's my own lived experience and I won't go into any word salads, but But the reality is you can apologize till the cows come home. And it's like the Taylor Swift song, haters are going to hate, you know, and they just hate. I mean, you said, oh, well, you know, can you imagine this incident happens? You forced to resign. You kind of, you know, it's a tough period of time, dark period of time. And, uh, and then you get death threats for the next 10 years.

What?

I mean, if you get a death threat for that, you know, you've gotta, you gotta go through the graduations of punishment. If somebody says it wasn't causing cruelty, it caused distress, which is at a different level. It's like, you know, that's not cruelty. There's distress. What world do we want to live in where it's like a puritan, you know, a tyrannical kind of empires is there's a lot of people—

my point on the accountability is I think it's a step because most people first deny, well, there's nothing wrong with what I did. People do bad things all the time. And why are we talking about that? And it has nothing to do with how I function as a CEO. You know, they sort of smokescreen it. So all I was saying was just, it's not even about apologizing. I think it's about recognizing and owning your own stuff for your own development.

Yeah, no, quite candidly, I should have— as I said to you, you know, there's always a good thing about when you— when somebody upsets you or somebody hurts you, as long as you're not getting beat up by thugs and you're getting mugged, I think there's a point where you just go into yourself and think a little bit about what your response should be. And if we all were more mindful I know in my case, that outcome would have never happened. Yeah, I had a couple of dislocated fingers. Yeah, I was in a lot of pain, but come on, step back.

Yeah.

You know, but that's the thing. When you're hurt, you flash. And just learning that flash. And that flash has helped me in my life from being, you know, abused and other things. I'm not getting— it's not excusing, but it was my safety mechanism. That failed epically in this situation. Done great for me in the past. Yep. Right place, right time.

Exactly. So I appreciate your sharing, your transparency, your candor, your courage. And I thank you for coming on and talking about sort of the growth mindset, the lifelong learning, and your commitment to thought leadership and such. So appreciate your time today, Des.

Thanks, Peter. And I would say that, you know, also we uncovered my boneheadedness, which is something that you, we, I hope we all can learn from, learn from my mistakes to make you better.

Well said. Thank you so much. Have a, have a great one. Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. At thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.