The Power of Peer-to-Peer Leadership | Ken Banta | 671

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, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Ken Banta. Ken is, he's the founder and CEO of the Vanguard Network and focuses on developing high-performance leaders, building high-performance organizations. And he's an advisor to leadership and executive teams, and he's been involved in over 11 global mergers, which I'm sure that in and of itself is a, is lots of stories in there. But welcome aboard today, Ken.

How are you? Well, thanks, Peter, and thank you for having me.

My pleasure. So how did, how did all this happen? You know, like, how did, tell me a little bit about your journey, your path vis-à-vis thought leadership.

Yeah, well, so I, I started out, actually, uh, doing graduate work at Oxford University, uh, as a Rhodes Scholar, as it happens. And from there I got recruited to work for Time Magazine and I kind of serendipitously ended up, uh, covering Eastern Europe for them before all the revolutions began. I think they thought they were sending me to a sort of quiet backwater and, um, the minute I got there it, it went crazy. And so I was really lucky to be part of a, you know, unique time in history. And I covered that for, uh, almost, uh, more than 5 years. Then I was with them and then I went into consulting for a while in public affairs. I'd say both those things kind of developed a sense of being able to get to the heart of things fairly quickly to be able to analyze situations. I then got recruited in to be the head of corporate affairs for what turned out to be a train wreck of a merger between Pharmacia Corporation of Sweden and company of the US, a big disaster. Happened to land with a really phenomenal CEO, Fred Hassan, and really spent the next 15 years, I guess, practically working with him and a team of other people turning things around. And so those mergers, acquisitions, transformations that you mentioned were all on that watch. And I think, you know, the two big things that came out of that work, Peter, were first of all, an appreciation for what, you know, really good leadership can do. And also how to get change to happen in organizations. And obviously the two things are connected. And so that really led the way to Vanguard, the group that we have today. Several of those people I worked with, including Fred, had said, well, you know, you've had so much experience in this area, why don't you consider putting it to work with others? And that's really what we did from 2014 onward to today.

Yeah. So in terms of the Vanguard Network, it's really a community. Is that a, is that a fair statement?

Yeah, I think it's, you know what, I think sets it apart from most conferences and other types of activities is it's a membership organization and also it's totally devoted to leadership. So it's not about anything else, which becomes more and more important the higher up you go. It's somewhat of a neglected topic though. Everyone talks about it, but no one really gets deep into how you do it. And so our work is entirely focused on that. And it's not, not really a didactic type of thing with lecturers and podiums. We have, uh, it's really peer-to-peer. So we have something coming up on, on Monday with some of our network of, uh, GCO CEOs in the life sciences space. And, uh, it'll be 6, uh, sessions of them really leading the discussion about what matters to them. Uh, we make it happen. Yeah. Hey, Robert, they're it.

So stay there for a minute because what I'm thinking about as, as you're talking is lots of thought leaders wonder. Well, what is the mode? What's a good modality? What's a format? What's a good vehicle for my stuff? And there are the obvious answers. I should write a book. I should be a keynoter. I could do a workshop. And I think that they often either aren't aware of or don't think about or whatever the power of using the core intellectual property, the thought leadership you have as the foundation of a peer-to-peer network. It's not a new idea, right? To, to do that. But I think people underestimate the value, you know, in terms of You know, what are, what are people looking for? There are times I want to be taught and I want to take in some information and say, okay, I got that, check the box. Don't really need so much more. But what I find in, in, in my experience is peer-to-peer groups, especially when they're aligned to a certain type of thought leadership, really are there to support one. You know, the burden isn't on Ken to say, uh-oh, I've got a meeting next week. What will I teach them? You're, it's a facilitated process. Right. And there's an expectation of the other members that they're there to support one another and help one another and all those sort of things. Can, can you talk about some of the transformative experiences that some of the members have as a result of being in, in a group like this?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, so first of all, I think that's exactly right. And, uh, I'd say that the feedback we get about the Vanguard Network is that not only is it peer-to-peer, but it's done in such a way that it is sort of genuinely a conversation among leaders and not a kind of peroration by somebody who pretends to be having a conversation, but it's really about them. And, you know, we all know that type where the, you know, the question takes longer than the, uh, than the response because they have so much to say about it. Uh, so what we really do is make sure that the members are the ones who are the stars of the show. Some concrete things, you know, that come out of it, uh, one of our, uh, GC leaders, a very, very impressive guy, multiple GC over multiple companies. I asked him that question, what do you get out of this? And he said, it's really two things very often. One thing is the, um, that I learned something, you know, a new one or two new things from my peers, which he said, you know, by the time you've been doing what I'm doing for as long as I had, to get even one new thing out of a week is remarkable. And he said, finding two in 5 hours with this organization is astonishing. And then the second thing he said is you really can't underestimate how valuable it is for people in my position to have a recognition that others have the same problem I have, or they're grabbed, or they don't have an answer to a certain thing. He said, you can't, I can't tell you how many times I go to in front of my board or to the CEO and they're saying, well, why, why can't we solve that? Why, why isn't there an instant answer? And he said, it's incredibly valuable to be able to say on this particular one, Mr. Board Chair, 7 other GCs have the same problem we're having here. So my feeling is that we don't want to presume we know more than all of them. And so, and I think he uses this.

Yeah. So 8 could be transparent and vulnerable because it's probably not a good idea for a GC to be running around, you know, back at the office saying, I don't know, I'm not sure. I've never seen that before. Like even if it's true.

Yep. You know, you maybe don't want to be out there on a limb on your own.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One of the other things I think is beneficial to these sort of communities, these peer-to-peer groups, these masterminds, call them what you will. Is it also gives the thought leader consistent fodder for creating new thought leadership. Like, wow, you might be like, you know, everybody's AI today, so maybe GCs are having a struggle with how to deal with AI or whatever it is. It gives you a tap into what's really going on in the real world today that you can think about and go, wow, that question that, you know, Sam asked last week, that's really interesting. I'm gonna write an article about that, or it leads me to think about a different way to use my thought leadership. So I think it's kind of a cool ecosystem there. Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I use this ecosystem of people or leverage it myself in the things I post on LinkedIn. I just finished a book called Seeing Around Corners, which is a compendium of points of view from many of our members. But you know, it's kind of collated by me. So the implication, which is correct. That I chose them. I mean, these are not just random thoughts. These are thoughts I think were really relevant. So it's a kind of a second-level thought leadership, if you like. And then, you know, we have a number of genuine sort of thought leadership types, you know, people who are expert in their realm joining some of these meetings, but they join in a certain way. They never give a speech. They never give a presentation. They're there just like you. They may be sitting near the front of the room to kind of start a conversation. But they don't have a bunch of papers they're reading from. They do not get to present PowerPoint slides. So it really changes the dynamic. They become part of the, part of the room, but they become a part of the room that has a particular area of knowledge. And, um, I'll give you one, one example. Um, Debevoise Plimpton are partners of ours. So they're there on a regular basis. They're never lecturing on anything. What they're doing is they're often giving a case study. They're leading a discussion around a particular type of problem. And what I said to the group is that, you know, everyone in this room is probably an N of 1 on most problems, like a cyberattack or an AI problem or a CEO that went over, you know, went off the road. They've seen 10, 20, 100 of those. And so when, for example, Mark Goodman, the head of their healthcare practice, is talking about something, he's giving you the benefit of, you know, the 10, the 20, the 30 experiences, but he's not doing it in a lecturing way. He's doing it in response to a question. Someone says to Mark, In your experience, uh, what did you find was the biggest mistake people made in this particular situation of, for example, uh, maybe a big mistake with the FDA, serious error in judgment and how to approach the FDA, possible ethical lapse and how they did things. He'd say, well, you know, I've seen about 10 or 15 of these. And so my feeling is, right, you know, the thing that I see happening again and again is, you know, denial or a demand that the, you know, to correct the FDA. And he's saying, you know, that certain things work, certain things don't. So that's the kind of thing he brings to the party, but he's not bringing it in to the party in a, in a lecturing sort of way.

And he doesn't have an agenda. 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/podcast. So I, I, I wanna test this idea that I've had with you. Yep. If I might. So I think, again, I'm talking about sort of these peer-to-peer groups, these masterminds, et cetera. That there's 3 primary value props that they offer to the members. Why am I spending my time and the firm's money here? Right?

Yeah.

Content, right? That's probably why I would justify it on a budget or if I had to justify it to my boss. There's great information here. There's great learning here, whatever. The next is community, right? And I say, oh, and it's a, uh, I'm getting this content in a community of, not necessarily like-minded, but senior level folks that sit in my seat. Right. But the third, which is the value prop to the individual that they might articulate to justify the investment, is the connections, right? The connections that they're making that will last beyond potentially the current role, friendships. I don't want to call it networking because I think that dilutes what it really is, but they, they have their own friendships that they can do business with. Maybe they recruit one another. Maybe they get on each other's boards, whatever it is. Is that a fair sort of recap this, this content and community and connections?

Yeah, I think that's right. And, uh, it captures some of those things I think I was describing, you know, uh, as values. Those are good buckets to put them in and they, you know, they're Venn diagrams, so they all kind of come together because the one wouldn't happen without the other. And, uh, no one of them is sufficient perhaps, but all three make a really high, uh, you know, high value proposition because, you know, the main problem for, uh, these people is time. Well, it's not their main problem, but it's their main limitation. Their biggest problem is the problem, but they limit it back to time. And so, uh, this is a, in some ways, a very high return, high impact use of their, their time. Uh, and I do think that part of, uh, call it a network or friendships or associations with people is, uh, maybe the highest value piece, although it's probably not the one you put on the explanation why they should fund it.

Exactly.

But, uh, but it's definitely valuable. And who knows, maybe some of them actually do put that down. I never see the, I never see the rationale of how they got this thing through accounting. But, you know, one aspect of that, a good example, a tangible example is that one example is that a, a very senior GC of one of the big insurance companies actually spent an entire session at one of our forums a year ago going through a blow-by-blow account of what happened in the cyberattack they experienced. And she pulled no punches. It was, you know, here are the 6 mistakes I made. Here's where the CEO let us all down. This is where my, you know, IT team didn't really—

you're not going to read that in the journal, right? That's not— this—

to read it. No, you're not going to read it anywhere else. But it had, you know, 20 other GCs on the edge of their seats. And, uh, but in a very, you know, kind of conversational fashion. She wasn't giving a speech about this. She was talking about it and various other GCs were saying, so why did you think that was a mistake, that thing you did? And she said, well, I didn't think it was at the time, obviously, but now I realize that it was, and here's why. And so It was that kind of dialogue, and I can pretty surely say that, you know, most of the GCs in the room took away something about how they would handle something like that in the future that they didn't know before. Another really funny—

I wanna stay on that for a bit because that's, you know, that goes in the unknown unknown, right? That's probably not even a question that they knew they should ask of, if I have a cyberattack or when there's a cyberattack on my entity, what are the 3 things I shouldn't do? Whatever, right? Like it's not, something they're thinking about, they're thinking about what should they do or what can they do to prevent it or whatever. But hearing from someone that was sort of a victim of that and how they dealt with it and how they were transparent enough to say, hey, here's, here's what I would do different differently next time, or here's what you should not do if you're in that seat when that happens.

Yeah. And also it was a study in, uh, what I would call executive presence as well, because this, uh, GC was so forthright, so sort of straightforward about this that, as you know, it takes a lot of self-awareness and capability to narrate a disaster scenario as if you were talking about the weather. And, you know, in a very, very open way. Another interesting one was two GCs were having dinner at one of our sessions after one of our sessions, and one of them was leaving his role and the other one, who's a very storied GC, had— I think at that point he had 7 GC seats under his belt. To talking about this move. And by the end of the evening, let's call him Dave, said to Jack, let's call him Jack, Dave, maybe you'd be interested in this role then, and that would save us all a lot of trouble. And Dave said, well, you know, actually, I think I might like to do that. And so I, they probably went through a lot of HR hoopla, but essentially they cut that deal at dinner. And that would never have happened without having gotten together in the kind of community that you're describing.

Well, that's because of the, the trust that's built, the rapport that's built, et cetera, right? Yeah. Where you take a deal to sort of third base after having made the investment of being in these groups together and sharing stories, whatever, you know, and getting to know one another. Any thoughts or advice that you would have for someone that's thinking about diving into this world of thought leadership? Although it wasn't necessarily your intent, that's where you've landed. Any thoughts to others that are out there that are thinking about how I might do this?

Well, I think kind of leading in the direction you were indicating, Peter, that simply sort of didactic thought leadership is still there, but I don't think it's as compelling as it could be. You know, getting on a podium and telling a bunch of insurers what they should think about the future. But I think real thought leadership more and more is figuring out ways to create conversations and dialogue among people and create, yeah, networks or groups of like-minded people around that. It's that sort of, I guess, you know, one way I think of it is, you know, there's old-fashioned leadership by command and control, and then there's new leadership, which is through influence and persuasion. And so I think that thought leadership, you know, good thought leadership, effective thought leadership today involves certain amount of persuasion and leading from behind, doing other things that are not in your face. And, you know, I think we do those things pretty well at Vanguard. You know, it's not enough to just say, well, put a bunch of senior people in the room at small tables and magic will happen. It won't.

I mean, it needs to be curated. I love what you said about the dialogue because I think there's a time and place for monologue, right? This is the world-renowned expert on something, something, something. Sit down, shut up, listen to what they have to say. That's like, this is a moment in time where you're gonna have this person in the room. But for most of us, most of the time, dialogue is a better means of communicating and learning and processing than, uh, monologue. And I think you, people don't sort of understand that and think, well, I'm the expert. I always live in sort of this monologue. I speak and, you know, it's like the old EF Hutton commercials and everybody stops and listens. Not so much. And I, and I love your group as a group of really high-level, experienced, top-notch folks that in their own right individually could be going out doing monologues all the time. But get them in a room and they might all think they're the smartest person in the room, but at the end of the day, you want to be in a room with smart people.

Yeah. Let's just say you're one of the smartest. Uh, and so the, uh, but you know, I have in my own mind what I call the, uh, the iPhone quotient. And by that I mean it's the percentage of time that people are not on their iPhone, uh, in a meeting. And, you know, I'm pretty pleased with what I see, you know, with our sessions. And it's nothing to do with me. It's with the quality of the discussion that these individuals are having. But also it's interesting, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of pure, I wouldn't call it pressure, pure leadership, right? If you're sitting at a table with 4 other general counsels and you're on your iPhone, it really is sending a message that you don't want to send about how important they are and whether you think they have anything useful to say. And you don't want them doing that with you either. And so that's the, that's the sort of, uh, stick aspect of it, the carrot part of it is that, uh, I think there's a genuine feeling that, you know, actually that stuff can wait. This is really worthwhile. You know, as we all know, most of us go to conferences, unfortunately with a pretty bad attitude, which is this is probably not going to be tremendously interesting. I'm going to, you know, look up from time to time and listen to what might be interesting, but I've got work to do here. And then you save social time for the water cooler and the drinks party. And, uh, the other 5 hours are kind of a limbo. And so I find we're, we're, we're 5 hours of people off their iPhone.

Well, I love what you said earlier about, you know, the scarcest resource these, these folks have is time. So they're giving of their time, but then underneath that, sometimes we think we're giving our time, but we're not really present. So I like that iPhone test of, yeah, okay, I've carved out 2 hours of my day to be here, but dot, dot, dot, I'm checking emails. I'm just, you know, all these other things to actually be in the moment and be present. Particularly in a group of, you know, really smart people that I admire, that I respect, that I want to hear what they have to say. That's the— I don't think there's a better version of the standing applause, or call it what you will, than you can give today.

Yeah. And that's where, you know, looking back, I think perhaps the experience I had as a journalist with Time comes into play in the sense that I have a pretty good bullshit-o-meter. So I really I kind of avoid or I discourage things that are really, if not stupid, at least time-consuming or, you know, bravado-type stuff. And also, it's not just me leading sessions, but we have a practice of leading these sessions in a very journalistic manner. So, you know, there's no big wind-up. There's a lot of provocative but not nasty questions. And then we, you know, it's very easy to end up in a dialogue like you and me perhaps at the front of the room just talking away about what we're interested in. But we have a practice of making sure that, you know, we look out in the room, we say, Lucy, that, that looked like it was a really interesting point for you. Why?

Oh, I love that. I love it.

But you, you do need a certain kind of mindset to do that. Yeah. And to realize that you're, if you do it in the right way, you're not putting someone on the spot. You're recognizing how interesting they are. And, uh, or we'll say things like, you know, Peter, um, we'd like to come to you in about 5 minutes on this, cuz I sense that you're really interested in it. Gives you a chance to collect your thoughts. You're not a deer in the headlights. You were interested, but maybe you would feel a bit, a bit put upon if we just said, well, sure, point of view. So there's a, you know, I guess it's the usual story. It's like, you know, ballet is supposed to look very easy. Well, you know, we know that it's not.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. This has been great. I appreciate your time, Ken, and I appreciate your time. Thank you for spending some time with me today.

That was terrific. Thanks again, Peter.

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