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product. Hi, this is

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Mark Devine and welcome to the Mark Devine show.

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On this show, I explore what it's like to be fearless through the lens of

0:58

some of the most inspirational, courageous and

1:00

compassionate leaders around the world. Martial

1:03

arts grandmasters, military leaders, SEALs,

1:05

high-powered CEOs, and those who

1:07

write books about their experiences, such

1:10

as my guest today, David Dotson, who's

1:13

on the faculty at the Stanford's Graduate Business

1:15

School. He guides students through the world of

1:17

martial arts and the world of business.

1:19

At Stanford's Graduate Business School, he guides

1:21

students in tactical execution. Teaches

1:24

one of the most sought after courses at Stanford. The

1:27

economist listed his course as one of the three hottest

1:29

courses. And he's the

1:31

recipient of the MSX Teaching Excellence

1:33

Award. His success in the

1:35

classroom follows vast experience in the trenches,

1:37

beginning at McKinsey & Company as

1:39

a consultant, then as a

1:41

serial entrepreneur, where he started and or

1:43

acquired six different companies and ran them

1:46

as CEO or executive chairman. Since

1:48

then, he's served as a board member on more than 40

1:50

public and private companies and have been an active investor in

1:53

over 150. Dave is

1:55

a frequent commentator on CNBC and Fox News.

1:58

It's been published in New York Times, Boston Globe. Fortune

2:00

magazine Forbes CNN Business Insider Denver

2:02

Post and others and we'll be

2:04

talking today about his new book

2:07

the managers handbook how to

2:09

apply those lessons in real life will be the

2:11

focus of our conversation David thanks so much for

2:13

joining me

2:16

today David thanks

2:18

so much for joining me on the Mark Devon show I'm

2:20

super stoked to meet you appreciate your time today sir no

2:22

it's an honor to be on your show I've followed

2:25

some of your podcasts and your your

2:27

program and I think it's fascinating what you're doing just

2:29

to bring in the whole experience for

2:31

the military into the business and corporate world so

2:33

I found it fascinating and I was thrilled to

2:35

be on your show yeah I appreciate that I

2:38

want to get into like the meat of your

2:40

work and the book that you've recently come out

2:42

with the manager's handbook but before that

2:44

I'm most interested in is like who you

2:46

are like what where are you from what were

2:49

some of the driving forces in your life

2:51

that kind of steered you in the direction

2:53

that puts you where you are today I

2:55

grew up in a really rural part of

2:58

Colorado the closest town to me had

3:00

a population 350 and everybody was divided between

3:04

farmers or ranchers and

3:06

my dad was in the farm equipment business

3:08

and he had a small manufacturing company that

3:10

manufactured farm equipment being in an environment

3:12

where most of the people are living off

3:15

agriculture whether it's farming or ranching and

3:18

my dad in the manufacturing sector gave

3:20

me a love for being in business

3:22

and a love for being a business person but

3:24

also just kind of this sense of work ethic

3:27

that I think is at least

3:29

at the time I thought was quite unique to

3:31

people who live off the land but

3:33

then what happened mark is that in my

3:35

junior year in high school so I was

3:37

couple years from going off to college two

3:40

things happened that devastated my dad's business

3:42

and I mean devastated it what

3:45

was a spike in interest rates and

3:47

the second was change in

3:49

federal policy agriculture policy and

3:52

it effectively bankrupted my father at

3:54

one point I mean he's a pretty thriving business sir I

3:57

left that experience wanting to

3:59

be in business like my dad. I

4:02

thought he was a terrific business person, but

4:04

not wanting to have my destiny

4:06

in the hands of somebody else.

4:09

I understood that there's external forces that are going to –

4:11

sometimes you got a little bit of a headwind, sometimes you

4:13

got a little bit of a tailwind, but

4:15

where external forces can really actually define whether

4:17

you win or lose. The second

4:19

was that when I went off to college, we didn't

4:21

have any money because of the situation I just described.

4:24

So I would take my classes in the morning and

4:26

then I would borrow my roommate's car and I would

4:28

drive down to San Jose. I was going to Stanford

4:31

and I would work at a slaughterhouse. I worked

4:33

in the slaughterhouse because it paid a lot of money

4:36

and I needed the money. What

4:38

I realized later, I didn't realize at

4:40

the time, is that I

4:42

needed to understand what it was like to

4:44

have a job and not a particularly

4:46

good job because you just need the

4:48

money. That was probably the

4:51

second thing that's really influenced my life. Then

4:53

the third is I've had some terrific mentors

4:55

along the way, most notably Irv Grossbeck who

4:57

wrote the introduction to the book, The Manager's

4:59

Handbook. So I would say that those are

5:01

sort of the three kind of forces that propelled me

5:03

and how they all kind of came together is

5:05

I wrote a book about management

5:08

that is not about the internet

5:10

or anything fancy. It's about basic

5:12

skills that apply to anybody who's

5:14

managing. But also, there's a

5:16

sort of democratization in my book which

5:18

is that I wanted to

5:20

be in businesses where I was in control,

5:23

which meant that success or failure really depended

5:25

upon my ability to execute. When

5:28

I started on this three-year research journey

5:30

to figure out why some people were just so

5:32

much better at getting things done than others, it

5:35

wasn't that they had x-ray vision or they could see

5:38

things that the rest of us couldn't see. It

5:40

was that they were incredible executors. The

5:42

first big epiphany I had was

5:44

Sam Walton actually. In 1962 when

5:46

he opened up that first store, he

5:48

was literally surrounded by

5:51

K-Mart, JCPenney's, Sears and

5:53

Target. He annihilated them.

5:56

He didn't invent anything, but he

5:58

consistently out executed it. And then

6:00

I looked at people like Jeff Bezos

6:02

and Steve Jobs and so forth and

6:04

over and over again I realized wait

6:07

a minute what really happened here is

6:09

they just out executed their competitors. They

6:11

didn't veg anything Do you think in

6:13

today's like incredibly interconnected world that any

6:15

company can be safe from

6:17

external shocks? External forces like

6:19

you described. Oh, yeah, I really do I

6:22

mean, there are definitely companies that

6:24

have big influences from government policy,

6:27

for example, their Businesses

6:29

in the health care sector that live and die

6:31

on what happens in Washington DC But for most

6:33

businesses that's not the case and I don't mean

6:35

to imply that if you have a lumber yard

6:37

and interest rates go up That might affect your

6:40

business a little bit But that's not what happened

6:42

to my dad's business My dad's business was devastated

6:44

by a stroke of the pen interest rates and

6:46

a stroke of the pen COVID, you know That

6:48

was a once in a lifetime ex-injency

6:52

That probably is not what you're talking about where

6:54

you have something that you know So rare that

6:56

it takes out half the economy or third

6:58

of your country. Yeah, not at all I

7:00

don't think you can solve for those kind

7:02

of black swan effects that are that are

7:04

so unlikely to happen But you can stay

7:06

out of businesses that are deeply influenced by

7:08

forces that are there just in your control

7:10

Yeah, in particular government policy and regulation. That

7:12

is a big one, right? That's a big

7:14

one. That's fascinating So

7:17

you got your undergrad? Did you get your MBA

7:19

and graduate work at Stanford as well? What I

7:21

did when I graduated is I took a job

7:23

at McKinsey and company Right and I worked in

7:25

the energy sector in Texas for a couple of

7:27

years But always with the mind that I was

7:29

gonna go back and get my MBA at Stanford

7:32

because I got it's time They had a program

7:34

called pre-admit so they would admit you in your

7:36

you know Final year in college and you could

7:38

defer so I defer it for two years But

7:40

I always knew I was going to go back

7:42

and the kids he was a really great Boot

7:45

camp for me and I feel insecure saying boot

7:47

camp to a guy who actually went to boot

7:49

camp I never went to boot camp,

7:51

but it's big but it one respected. I think

7:53

there is a parallel which is that it made

7:55

me grow Up. I remember a lot

7:57

of my friends peers from Colgate did a similar

7:59

thing thing. Their boot camp was

8:01

like Morgan Stanley. I

8:04

went to Cooper's and Librin. I was in CPA before

8:07

I joined the Seals. I

8:09

think I'm the only weirdo. I did it that way.

8:11

It does seem a little backwards. I'm

8:15

a backwards kind of guy. You're busting your

8:17

butt. Those are long, long hours and you're seeing

8:19

a lot of different industries. They put you through

8:21

the wringer in those two years. I could see

8:23

that being a real growth deal. Well, they do.

8:26

The firms changed a lot in the last 40

8:28

years. The standard of excellence was

8:33

extraordinary. The rules around ethics and how

8:35

you behave was so honorable. I just

8:37

got a lot of values there, but

8:40

I never ever wanted to stay there

8:42

and make a career there. I

8:44

always wanted to be back in business for myself.

8:47

When I went back to business

8:49

school at Samford, I was always towards being

8:51

in business for myself, which is what I

8:53

did for many, many, many years before I

8:55

shifted over to investing and teaching at Samford.

8:57

I went back obviously at Samford to teach.

9:00

Tell us about your entrepreneurial career.

9:02

What were some of the highs and lows and lessons from

9:04

that? I had some huge successes

9:07

and I had some complete flop. First of

9:09

all, as maybe a much better investor, it

9:11

might feel a little tongue in cheek when

9:13

people say, oh, you learn more from your

9:15

failures. Well, you do. You learn more from

9:17

your failures than your successes. There's actually kind

9:20

of a cognitive reason for that, which is

9:22

that when you have a success, you

9:24

tend to be less introspective on why

9:26

that happened. You might modestly

9:28

say you're lucky or think

9:31

it's all about you, but when

9:33

you have a failure and you're really kicked

9:35

in the jaw, if you're smart, you

9:37

undergo a very serious sort

9:40

of deep response on what happened or a postmortem.

9:42

I think that's one of the reasons why people

9:44

do learn more from their failures and their successes.

9:46

I certainly did. I was CEO

9:48

of five different companies. It

9:51

continues to be a pretty large, thriving

9:53

nonprofit that operates in seven countries. Were

9:55

these companies that you were hired or

9:57

did you start any of them? Actually,

10:01

two were effectively startups. One

10:03

was for the grand up, the other was we

10:05

bought one teeny, teeny company and then built it

10:07

from there, just for our told. And the other two

10:09

were companies that I bought, I didn't have any money.

10:12

That was probably clear since I worked in the solder

10:14

house. Then I pulled a group of

10:16

investors together to help buy the company. So they

10:18

put the capital together and then I did all

10:20

the sweat equity. And I had

10:22

the Teamsters reporting to me at one point,

10:25

not reporting to me, but I had Teamsters

10:27

and I had the IDW so I dealt

10:29

with unions. A lot of those companies were

10:32

trucks and very kind of salt of the

10:34

earth businesses, but one of them was, you

10:36

know, internet enabled. So I had

10:38

a little bit of everything. So in that

10:40

leadership journey, how did you see yourself evolve

10:42

as a leader? How were you different

10:45

as a leader at the end of that journey than

10:47

maybe at the beginning? Stylistically,

10:49

worldview, the way you

10:51

dealt with teams. I'll give you a

10:54

few places that I felt

10:56

were really profound changes. One was I was

10:58

a very insecure leader at the beginning,

11:01

which I don't think is unique. But

11:03

how I presented that was arrogant because I

11:05

was afraid of people. I was afraid of

11:07

my employees. I was afraid of what people

11:10

thought. I wanted to be liked and so

11:12

forth. And that manifested itself

11:14

in a really sort of counterproductive way.

11:16

And over time, I realized that I

11:18

could sort of let go of that

11:20

insecurity, that people did not expect me

11:23

to be perfect, and then also

11:25

that I could be more myself and I could

11:27

relate more deeply to my employees and

11:30

they appreciated it more. So that was

11:32

one. The second was I sort of

11:34

alluded to this, but I really wanted to be

11:36

liked and I didn't understand

11:38

how destructive that is. Now,

11:40

of course, I want to be liked by my kids

11:43

and my wife and all that, but your employees, if

11:45

you're driven by being liked, that you're

11:47

going to make bad decisions, which interestingly

11:50

enough, Mark, is going to make you less liked,

11:52

if you will. I totally agree with you. Yeah.

11:54

Once I stopped worrying about whether people liked me

11:56

or not, and instead I said I'm working with

11:58

a bunch of professionals. here. And what

12:01

they want me to do is they want me

12:03

to make really good decisions. Even the hard ones,

12:05

even the unpopular ones, I was

12:07

actually more liked, if you will. So that was the

12:09

second big area. The third was

12:11

really understanding that a lot of

12:14

business is not intuitive. And

12:16

in fact, it's skill based. And

12:19

that's, of course, what's led to the book, The

12:21

Manager's Handbook, where I identified that there were these

12:23

five skill areas that were

12:25

universal among good managers. This

12:28

is a little bit immodest to say because I

12:30

wrote the book. But I'm really making a point

12:32

about how clumsy I was as a manager early

12:34

on. I wish I had the book that I

12:36

wrote now in my 60s when

12:39

I was getting started in my 30s. I

12:41

went to a really, really great college

12:44

and a really great MBA program.

12:46

And nobody told me how to hire. Nobody told

12:48

me how to give up performance review. Nobody helped

12:50

tell me how to set and adhere to priorities. So

12:52

I learned all of that on the job. So

12:55

by the time I retired, if you will, as

12:57

a CEO, I learned all of those things the

12:59

hard way. There's this saying, you can

13:01

pay attention in class and learn today, or you

13:03

can let life teach you. Or should

13:06

I let life teach me a lot of those skills?

13:08

That's cool. I actually said the same thing about one

13:10

of my books, Unbelievable Mind. I wrote it in 2011.

13:12

But I was like, boy, I sure wish

13:14

I knew this back in 1990.

13:16

And they have that question that

13:18

sometimes we sometimes ask guests in

13:21

class, what would you

13:23

tell your 30-year-old self today?

13:26

And it's a little bit what happens when

13:28

you write a book, right, Mark? Right, exactly. You

13:30

get to look back and be like, man,

13:32

you have the power of time and just

13:35

lessons, but you can't shortcut that either. It's

13:37

more than just the lesson. It's everything else

13:39

that comes with it, the embodiment of the

13:41

experiences and the emotional development.

13:44

We'll get into the five things that I want

13:46

to talk about from your book, the execution piece.

13:49

But my experience in working with clients

13:51

is execution is really, really radically important.

13:54

That's the doing part.

13:56

But if you haven't dealt with your

13:58

traumas, you haven't done some of the

14:00

emotional work to show up authentically and

14:03

with respect. Like you said, some

14:05

of the early part of you, you know, same

14:07

thing with me. I lack so much confidence that

14:09

I showed up as arrogance or, you know, as

14:11

overcompensating for my own flaws.

14:13

And so it wasn't until I started to

14:15

do my own therapeutic work and shadow work

14:17

and letting go of the trying to be

14:19

perfect and, you know, taking off the mask.

14:21

There's a whole different, a lot of different

14:23

metaphors I could use. So what

14:25

do you think is that other piece? Like

14:27

how important is that from your perspective for

14:30

an individual to not just work on the

14:32

execution, but to work on their very being,

14:34

you know, how they show up? I love

14:36

that question. By the way, John Steinebeck wrote

14:39

a line in his book, East of Eden.

14:41

It was from one character to the character

14:43

named Callum. He said, now that you don't

14:45

have to be perfect, you can be good.

14:47

I love it. I really strongly

14:49

embrace what you're saying and it's one of the

14:51

reasons why I have a whole chapter on

14:53

fighting an executive coach. Because an executive coach is

14:56

not just about the nuts and bolts of,

14:58

you know, how do you run a meeting, but

15:00

it's how are you showing up? And

15:03

I address head on in the book,

15:05

you know, if you've got issues about

15:07

dependency on substance, you've got issues

15:09

in your personal life with your marriage,

15:12

things going on in the office, you have to

15:14

find a coach that you can talk about those things with

15:16

because you can't put them under the cover. We have a class

15:19

that's specifically devoted just for, you

15:21

know, mental illness among entrepreneurs, which

15:23

is rampant. I think, don't hold

15:26

me to the stat, Mark, but

15:28

I think it's five times more

15:30

prevalent among the entrepreneurs than the

15:32

general community. So I have

15:34

a guest and he's mentioned in the book,

15:36

not in this context, but in other contexts,

15:38

Paul English, who was one of the couple

15:41

of founders of kayak.com, the travel site, and

15:43

his battles with bipolar disorder. And

15:45

he comes and we talk to the

15:47

class about not only how you think

15:49

about your own struggles, but also

15:51

how you help as a

15:53

manager and a leader with people who are having

15:55

struggles. You may not have any issues with

15:57

mental illness, but there are some that you may not have.

15:59

there's a 100% chance that if you have

16:02

any decent sized organization, there are people

16:04

there to do. Same thing with substance

16:06

abuse, etc. And so I know the

16:08

scope of your question was more how do

16:10

you kind of get your own act

16:12

together, but it also bleeds into these other

16:14

aspects. And I do think you have

16:16

to have that kind of largely together

16:18

before you can lead correctly. So you know

16:21

how you're showing up. Right. I think

16:23

it's we really need to de-stignify mental

16:25

illness, right? Because again, it just sounds so

16:27

awful. Like, oh my God, I'm mentally

16:29

ill. Like I'm broken. You know, some

16:31

of the most brilliant people and creative people

16:33

are bipolar. The challenge is like that

16:35

brilliance is incredible. But then on the other side

16:37

of the roller coaster, it's awful for them. And

16:40

so to have the compassion,

16:42

right, to be able to understand when someone's,

16:45

you know, where they're in that trot, you

16:47

know, to help them through that, but it doesn't

16:49

make them broken. In my opinion, it's just something's, you

16:51

know, something's off of their chemistry or

16:54

whatnot. And without that, they wouldn't have that genius.

16:56

I mean, look at what Robin Williams brought to

16:58

the world. It's just extraordinary. You know, in the

17:00

comedic field, he was a bipolar. And

17:02

now that, you know, post COVID, like

17:04

mental illness is all over the place.

17:07

I bet you half the population has

17:09

something that would be categorizing the DSM,

17:11

right, as a mental illness, burnout, right?

17:14

Fatigue, anxiety, depression. I think it's

17:16

time to de-stignify that. And for leaders, organizational

17:19

leaders to like bring it right up to

17:21

the forefront and say, this is not bad.

17:23

Your job's not on the line here. Let's

17:25

everybody get healthy. You do a lot for

17:27

that through your program and your podcasts and

17:30

the other things that you do. So, I

17:32

mean, you're really helping to get the message

17:34

out that can be talked about openly, and

17:36

it should not be stigmatized. And

17:38

until you're willing to do that, you can't

17:40

actually deal with that. But there's no but,

17:42

period. In addition, that leaders

17:45

and managers not only need to think about their

17:47

own world, but they also need to have the

17:49

tools in place so they can manage

17:51

those issues, not if they come

17:53

up in the workplace, but when they come up in

17:55

the workplace, and not to run away from it,

17:57

but run into the issue. And there's...

18:00

certain things you can and should do as

18:02

a leader. Right. I love your recommendation to

18:04

have executive coaching. I know a lot of

18:06

organizations are starting to employ like internal executive

18:09

coaches or bring in organizations and I hired

18:11

an executive coach in January to work with

18:13

me. As you know when you

18:16

start a business sometimes you find yourself

18:18

several years later standing on an island

18:20

going like, I don't have anyone

18:22

to talk to. I don't have a board of directors. I

18:24

know you probably have all that because your wiser than I

18:26

am when it comes to that. So

18:29

I've had to get really smart over the

18:31

last couple years to surround myself with advisors

18:33

and mentors and now a direct executive coach

18:35

who like holds that mirror up to me

18:37

and says, hey Mark, this is what

18:39

I see. You got a great podcast a

18:41

while back on it specifically that you know

18:44

the topic of executive coaching and so forth

18:46

which I thought was fantastic. Yeah. So what

18:48

are best practices from your vantage point for

18:50

either finding a coach or working with a

18:52

coach or being a coach I guess the

18:54

whole thing. Yeah. The book is divided into

18:57

five skill areas which were not

18:59

something I just kind of stared out of

19:01

the window and thought about. Instead I went

19:03

to reverse. I studied really effective leaders that

19:05

were just great at getting things done and

19:07

I looked for commonalities and I found these

19:09

five things and there were no exceptions by

19:11

the way. Interesting. And what if it was

19:13

an ability to seek and take advice? Well

19:16

if I said, if I were on your podcast right

19:18

now Mark and I said, by the way if you

19:20

want to be a good leader you should be good

19:22

at seeking and taking advice. Well that's not very particularly

19:24

controversial. Where it gets interesting

19:26

it's also not useful and

19:29

I wanted a book that could be used that could

19:31

be read and so I broke down

19:33

well what are the components of seeking and taking

19:35

advice and one of them is thinking

19:38

about getting an executive coach. By the way you know

19:40

when it got to the whole notion of executive coaches

19:42

when it kind of got started which they

19:44

say that kind of Peter Drucker that's

19:46

a half century ago was kind of the first

19:48

person that makes that kid coach. It's

19:51

increasingly it went from that to an

19:53

executive coach you bring in when the

19:56

CEO is stumbling to

19:58

what we have now today which is executive executive coaches

20:01

are definitely not because you're stumbling and

20:03

definitely not just for the CEO. So

20:06

that's a huge positive breakthrough.

20:08

So the book sort of explains what an executive

20:10

coach does, explains why an executive coach

20:12

is different than a mentor. And then

20:15

it's a how-to manual, right? So it's how do

20:17

you find an executive coach? What questions should you

20:19

ask them? What should you be looking for in

20:22

an executive coach? In fact, at the end of

20:24

the chapters, you know, it says, you know, 10

20:26

questions to ask an executive coach when you're interviewing

20:28

them, different websites you can go to. And I

20:30

can't think of anything that would be more

20:33

applicable to the average manager who's

20:35

beginning to learn to manage and

20:38

having an executive coach. It'd be a little bit like I want

20:40

to, you know, I want to play for the NFL, but I

20:42

don't want to have a coach. So a lot

20:44

of folks are in transition. I get a

20:47

lot of people coming to our unbeatable programs.

20:49

We have a coach certification is it's not

20:51

executive coaching. It's more like integrated, holistic, more

20:53

life coaching. But we're kind of

20:56

heading more into the OD work. So that'll

20:58

change. But if you're listening,

21:00

if a listener is saying, Hey, I'm interested

21:02

in becoming an executive coach, what would you

21:04

tell them? Like what was a good place

21:07

to start investigating? Where would

21:09

I get the skills and the training? You

21:11

know, is there other best practices or is

21:13

a particular program that you really like to

21:15

become an executive coach? So the first thing

21:17

is being an executive coach, which is one

21:20

of the things that differentiates an executive coach

21:22

from a mentor. The executive coach is not

21:24

someone who brings their several decades of

21:26

life experience and kind of sits back

21:28

and offers wisdom. These good executive

21:30

coaches, you know, for what you do in your own

21:32

program is being able to run a

21:34

process in a certain way to try to

21:36

bring out the best of that person's talent. That

21:39

is a process that in most cases needs to

21:41

be taught. Few people I just figured

21:43

out intuitively. And in the book, I mentioned

21:45

a number of schools and programs where, you

21:47

know, the book's written from the context of

21:49

a client who would be signing up for

21:51

an executive coach. But if you're interested

21:53

in being an executive coach, those are listed right in the book,

21:56

as well as I think this important differentiation between

21:58

what is an executive coach. coach versus

22:00

what is a mentor and advisor. They're

22:03

very different. Yeah, they are. I agree

22:05

with that. Do you think it's important,

22:07

just to put a pin in this

22:09

conversation, that the ICF certification to go

22:11

with an executive coach, and most coaches

22:13

that I've seen who really are

22:15

trying to do as a career, they want that. I

22:18

don't know if that's important from

22:20

your perspective or in that high-end

22:22

executive world. I never had an

22:24

executive coach, so this was one

22:26

of those great chapters where it's

22:28

purely my curation of the best

22:30

practices of other people, which included

22:32

coaches. Pretty much across

22:34

the board, I heard very good things about

22:36

that certification, that program. There's another

22:38

element to it too, which is continuing

22:40

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our good times. It's

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24:51

That's couragefoundationusa.org. Yeah,

25:01

the ICF is the International Coaching Federation.

25:03

I want to double-click, you mentioned the

25:05

360 report or review which

25:07

came out of the military. I

25:10

got to tell you, the first 360 that

25:12

was administered on me, I got

25:15

kicked in the Jimmy. I was

25:17

like, holy crap, they

25:20

actually perceived me that

25:22

way. I had no idea. It

25:24

led to a complete transformation of how I lead.

25:27

I still think a lot of people resist

25:29

these. They kind of feel like

25:31

they get forced into them sometimes. But

25:34

man, what a valuable tool. That's something

25:36

that normally a good executive coach

25:38

would either facilitate or request that

25:40

they get done. Yeah, earlier in

25:42

our conversation, Mark, you were asking

25:44

about my own evolution. I

25:47

only did one thing that could even

25:49

remotely be qualified as 360. That

25:52

was early in my career. And that's where I

25:54

got feedback on how I was sort of

25:56

presenting myself. I mean, I didn't walk into the office saying, oh,

25:58

David, I'm going to do this. you know, you're insecure,

26:01

have a good day." But it was there,

26:03

I was feeling that. And that's where I realized

26:05

how it was presented as being

26:08

presented as arrogance and aloofness. And

26:10

by the way, the phrase, you know, ice water in

26:12

your veins, I got, you know, kind of kicked pretty

26:14

hard as well. However, since

26:16

then time, the practice

26:19

of 360s has really evolved and

26:21

gotten much more sophisticated and much

26:24

less painful. You don't really have to

26:26

be, you know, have that jolt.

26:28

It's not about shock therapy. Yeah, the

26:30

presentation isn't really important. And you've got

26:32

to have the skill to present it

26:34

properly. Yes. So for example,

26:36

the best 360 processes are not ones

26:38

where you go online and you download

26:41

an app, and everybody puts in whatever

26:43

they want. And maybe you've got,

26:45

you know, you Google the 200 best

26:47

360 questions to ask, and then

26:49

you give that information to people. That

26:51

uncurated information is generally not

26:53

very useful. You can lose good

26:55

people. And in the book, I talk about one in

26:57

particular, it can be very painful and destructive

27:00

to the 360 process. And especially

27:02

now, where we've got this world where people

27:04

will go online and they'll say stuff they would

27:06

never say to somebody face to face. The

27:09

360 is not kind of an anonymous chat

27:11

group. And what I describe

27:13

is, first of all, how you formulate those

27:16

few questions, because you really want to focus

27:18

on a few questions. Let's say,

27:20

for example, that you and I have a

27:22

company that we're delivering something, and

27:24

on time delivery is a very important component of

27:27

it. So a good 360 program is, to

27:30

what extent does Mark contribute to our

27:32

goal of 27 minutes

27:34

on time delivery? That's a good

27:36

360, you're going to get really

27:38

valuable information from that. So crafting

27:41

your 360 questions around what the company's

27:43

goals and ambitions are is really critical.

27:45

Otherwise, you're going to get these kind

27:47

of like 10,000 foot answers. The

27:49

second thing is that the manager, or, you know,

27:51

you alluded to Mark, where you can have a

27:53

coach do this, but let's say it's

27:55

the person's manager, they curate that information

27:57

and they take all this input. They

28:00

repackage it in a way that they look

28:02

for common themes and common themes that they

28:04

think the person should be working with

28:06

and then they give that feedback to the person and say,

28:08

okay, Mark, here are some general themes that

28:10

we got. One is that

28:12

it seems like you're very aspirational about

28:15

the on-time delivery, but because

28:17

you're not organized during the day, and we

28:20

heard that over and over again from drivers. Okay,

28:23

now we're starting to go into the 360 is

28:26

not about judging you, but it's about

28:28

helping you to become a better performer. So

28:30

that notion of sort of packaging and curation.

28:33

And then I talk a little bit in the book about how when you're doing

28:35

a 360 review, if the company doesn't have

28:37

them yet, you start by doing a 360

28:39

review on just yourself. Devutation.

28:42

And then you model to your staff

28:45

how you deal with feedback. So you got the feedback, it

28:47

might not even be curated, you're going to have to put

28:49

up with that or you can use a coach. But

28:51

then you go through very simple steps. I

28:54

would say, this is what I heard. These are the common

28:56

themes that I heard. This is what I'm going

28:58

to work on right away. This is what I want

29:00

to work on, but I'm not going to be able to work on

29:02

it until the next and this is

29:04

where I'm not going to change and let me explain why. And

29:07

I know you're a big fan of this having

29:09

these frameworks and processes in place. So

29:11

you're not just out winging it, make it

29:13

really very easy for you to execute well.

29:15

Right. Let's pan out and just look at

29:17

your book, the manager's handbook.

29:19

What are the five key areas? I know

29:22

we've already been talking a lot about coaching

29:24

and development. What are the five key

29:26

areas and then let's pull out a highlighter too. Yeah.

29:29

So the first one is the ability to build a team. I

29:31

refer to it as a commitment to building a team. I

29:34

like it because we talked about this a little bit

29:36

earlier in our conversation. If I were

29:38

teaching at Stanford or I do teach at Stanford, what I

29:40

teach at Stanford, if I said to my students, hey, you

29:42

need to have a commitment to building a team, everybody is

29:44

like, I ought to nod, but they'd say, I paid tuition for

29:47

this. Then I talk about seven

29:49

particular steps that you go through in terms of building

29:51

a team. It starts with hiring. But

29:54

then the very next chapter goes into how you onboard

29:56

and the next chapter on that is how you give

29:58

feedback. The next one is being a fan. custodian

30:00

of your time. What I observed

30:02

is that the best leaders recognize that I don't

30:04

have any more time than you and I do,

30:06

Mark. But some people have hundreds of thousands of

30:09

employees working for them. So how do they do

30:11

that? And again, it's not, hey, be careful with

30:13

your time. But what are very specific things that

30:15

people do that don't require you to go to

30:17

a three-week seminar or a weekend seminar, don't require

30:20

you to completely re-engineer your day that allow you

30:22

to be a good custodian of your time. I

30:24

think others would be interested as well. But like

30:26

what were the top two or

30:28

three things that the people you studied

30:30

did to radically preserve their time? The

30:33

same note of things that they didn't need

30:35

to do or shouldn't be doing? The foundation

30:37

of this was a study done at Harvard

30:39

where they looked at 27 high-performing CEOs. And

30:41

if you can imagine this, Mark, they documented

30:44

how they behaved in

30:47

15-minute increments, accumulating

30:49

literally 60,000 hours of

30:52

data. What they

30:54

saw is that while each of these

30:56

27 high-performing CEOs may have done a

30:58

few, no two did manage their day

31:01

exactly the same, there were

31:03

some clear common themes. For

31:05

example, they always plan out their day. Sounds

31:07

simple. I plan out my day every single

31:09

day. But then nobody wants to

31:11

fill out a seven-page questionnaire with their plan

31:13

filling out their day. My day

31:15

planner takes 90 seconds. I described that one

31:17

in the book by way of example. A

31:20

second one is how they manage their time. So I

31:23

wanted to write a book that people could

31:25

implement the next day and could say, wow, I could

31:27

do that. So one example would be

31:29

take your 30-minute meetings and cut them

31:31

down to 20 minutes, which you

31:34

can do, and take your hour-long meetings and cut them

31:36

down to 40 minutes. By the way, when

31:38

I went back and looked at my own calendar and I said,

31:40

okay, what if I had done that over the last month? It

31:42

was an extra 70 minutes per day

31:45

of time. That was actually really

31:47

powerful because it was so easy to

31:49

do. Also, if you schedule a meeting

31:51

from 1 o'clock to 1.20, people

31:53

assume that there's a reason for it and they

31:55

know you got to get to business. So we

31:57

actually hacked a lot of information in there. And

32:00

the meetings ended at 120. How do you

32:02

determine which meetings can go and fit into 20 minutes

32:04

and which ones need Well,

32:07

we do that anyway, right? We set hour-long meetings and

32:09

half-hour-long meetings. It's very hard to get

32:11

a 60-minute slot on my calendar. I'm going to

32:13

implement this one tomorrow. You just improved my life.

32:15

Thank you very much. I saved you 70 minutes

32:17

a day, which... Send me an invoice. Which

32:21

is... it's big, right? It's huge. So

32:23

I'll give you a trick statistic. Before

32:25

the Internet, the typical executive had

32:27

about 1,000 pieces of

32:30

communication per year. Okay?

32:33

Pre-COVID, which is when this study was done, so

32:35

it's even worse now, went from 1,000 to 30,000

32:40

pieces of communication, and it's ever increasing.

32:42

The irony is that most of these things were

32:44

supposed to make us more efficient. Oh, we'll do

32:46

email. That'll make us more efficient, and we're going

32:48

to have collaboration tools. That'll make us more efficient.

32:50

All it really did is it made

32:53

it easier for people to waste their time. And

32:55

so in the book, I've got a chapter on the

32:57

digital disaster, what I call it, and

33:00

marking off these 27 CEOs, how

33:02

you manage this digital input or

33:04

these 30,000-plus pieces of

33:06

communication in a way that they

33:08

don't consume your time. I mean, we all have

33:10

experienced those days where you go home and

33:13

you think, all I did was

33:15

respond to email. That's

33:17

all I did all day long. That's

33:20

not where you add value. Wow, that's cool.

33:22

That is very simple and powerful. So we

33:24

had building a team and then

33:26

being a fanatical custodian of time. We talked

33:28

about willingness to seek and take advice, and

33:30

we were talking about executive

33:32

coaches, then setting and adhering to

33:34

priorities. And then the last one was the

33:36

obsession with quality, which by the way, that was the one

33:39

that I would not have predicted, but

33:41

it was universally true. And

33:44

I hope that it's obvious, well,

33:46

it would not be obvious because it wasn't obvious to me. These

33:49

all go together. Okay, so here's the story I want to tell you. Michael

33:52

Porter is a pretty famous professor

33:54

at Harvard. He had helped

33:56

me and coached me with some of the writing and

33:58

read most of the books. We were kind

34:01

of done or I was stunned and I was in his kitchen

34:03

and I said, here, I wrote the introduction of the book. I'd

34:05

like you to read it. So he reads the introduction. He

34:07

gets done. He's a very, very bluff direct

34:10

guy. He said, this is all wrong. Like,

34:12

oh my God, I thought I had to rewrite the book.

34:16

What he ended up telling me is he said,

34:18

you're thinking about this all wrong. You're thinking about

34:20

it as if you've laid out sort of 35

34:22

things that somebody can do to be

34:25

a more effective manager and that people can

34:27

kind of pick and choose which ones they want to do. Like,

34:29

it's a menu option. And he said,

34:31

that's not how it works. He said, what you've

34:33

done, this was very nice of him to say

34:35

this. He said, what you've done is you've created,

34:37

in his words, he said, a unifying theory of

34:39

execution. This is the guy who created

34:41

the unified theory of strategy. So I was quite flattered

34:44

that he said that. But he talked about how

34:46

they go so well together. And so we've been

34:49

talking about time management. The

34:51

fourth part of the book is about adhering to priorities. And

34:54

you can't adhere to priorities if you

34:56

haven't hired the right people. And if

34:58

everybody's not managing their time well, and so

35:00

it goes. And so he was the

35:02

one who really unlocked for me that you

35:04

don't get to pick and choose. You kind

35:07

of got to do it all if you really want to

35:09

transform your organization, even the ones you don't like to do.

35:11

I'm sure that many,

35:13

many times in your career, because of the arc

35:15

of your career, in order to succeed, you had

35:17

to do some things that were not fun at

35:20

all. Still doing some. Right? But you can't pick

35:22

and choose. Okay, I'll pick

35:24

a simple example. When you're interviewing, the

35:27

easiest thing to do is to glance at the

35:29

resume and then go in there and

35:31

effectively just visit with the person for

35:33

an hour and decide whether you like them or not and

35:35

whether you click or not. That's a miserable way

35:37

to hire. The right way to

35:39

hire requires hard work. But

35:42

you have a huge payoff because your hit rate on hiring

35:44

the right people is so much higher. Same thing with running

35:46

a meeting. You and I could go to a meeting and I could

35:48

wing it, or I could take six or seven minutes and prepare for

35:50

the meeting. It's

35:53

a little bit more work, but that's the

35:55

difference between what Jeff Bezos did and all

35:57

of the carnage around the internet with people

35:59

who do. tried to do exactly the

36:01

same thing as Jeff Bezos, except they got

36:03

slaughtered. Right. I see how all these tie

36:05

together in a process. I've got a

36:07

smaller organization. I can see how. I mean,

36:10

this is challenging to scale execution excellence. It's

36:12

easier. I've often said this in the SEAL

36:14

teams. It's easier to form a team from

36:16

scratch than it is to change a team

36:18

that's been operating for years. I think that's

36:20

true. If someone's listening and is like, man,

36:22

I love these ideas. We haven't really talked

36:24

about the quality one, but they all make

36:26

sense. But my organization, the culture, is

36:28

just stuck in our rut. And we

36:30

know from Harvard, Keegan's work, that organizations have

36:33

an immunity to change. So how

36:35

do you get this implemented? And is there any

36:37

kind of secret sauce to that? There is. I've

36:40

broken it into effectively 18 months. If

36:44

you read this book and you go, OK, wow,

36:47

I don't necessarily go with every word in there. But

36:50

boy, if my organization ran like this, it'd be so

36:52

much better than we have today. And then you bought

36:54

10 copies and gave it to your managers and say,

36:56

let's all read this and let's all do this. You're

36:59

guaranteed to fail. And by the

37:01

way, I'm not defining failure as no improvement.

37:03

You'll absolutely improve. Your meetings will get a

37:05

little bit better. Your hiring will get better.

37:08

But you won't transform your organization. If

37:10

you want to transform your organization after

37:12

your team reads the book, then you say,

37:14

I think we all have a lot of energy

37:16

around this onboarding issue because we're losing a lot

37:18

of people in the first 100 days. So

37:21

let's start focusing on the onboarding

37:24

chapter. You get everybody's side up. You

37:26

work on that. And then when that's done,

37:28

you go to the next one. And when that's done,

37:30

you go to the next one. And so you do

37:32

it in a serial fashion. And if it takes you

37:34

five months to get your onboarding process in place, that's

37:36

funny. But if you try to do everything in

37:39

parallel, you're most certainly going to fail. People

37:41

are going to get discouraged. In my investment

37:43

fund, it's a small organization as well in terms of number

37:45

of people, probably is very similar to yours, Mark. We

37:48

said, well, we're going to cut our meetings down to

37:50

40 minutes, at least hour-long meetings.

37:52

Well, it took about three weeks for

37:54

everybody to realize that stop sending the

37:56

hour-long calendar invites. That's 40

37:58

invites, right? So, you know,

38:01

implementation does take a little bit of time.

38:03

And then there's a chapter on how to run an effective

38:05

meeting. And the reason why you want to run an effective

38:08

meeting is you don't want to waste people's time and

38:10

you want to make better decisions. But

38:12

reprogramming how you behave in a meeting

38:14

takes a little bit of time. So

38:16

then you say, well, let's all work

38:18

on how we run meetings. And

38:21

then you do that and you keep knocking these off one at

38:23

a time. But the beauty is you don't have

38:25

to go back and do it again, because you

38:27

just talked about a key again in how

38:29

organizations resist change. Well, once you embed this,

38:31

people don't want to go backwards. So

38:34

I'm on the board of 12 companies now. And

38:36

we've been really fanatical about how to run board

38:38

meetings, which is very similar to how you would

38:40

run a, you know, any kind of management meeting.

38:43

Nowhere have I seen that once people kind

38:45

of got into habits and practices, they

38:47

want to go back to the old way. They know the

38:49

old way, you know, it takes you, you know,

38:52

three hours to do an hour's worth of work. Well,

38:54

that's not any good. I mean, high performers don't want

38:56

to be in that environment. And second,

38:58

you're making better decisions. So it's

39:00

more fun. You're making better decisions. You're using

39:02

less time. Nobody wants to go backwards. You

39:05

know, knock it off one piece at a

39:07

time. And it takes discipline. But as my

39:09

friend, Jaco Willink, the Navy SEAL says, discipline

39:11

equals freedom. Right.

39:13

On the other side of disciplining yourself

39:15

to have those shorter meetings and to

39:17

come prepared and to be authentic is

39:19

freedom. And also, you know, that comes

39:21

with that freedom is, you

39:24

know, having very clear frameworks on how to

39:26

do things. So, for example, when you give

39:28

feedback, I could say, well, Mark, when

39:30

you and I give feedback, let's say that we work

39:32

together. When you and I give feedback, we should be

39:34

really direct with people and we'd all nod and say,

39:36

yeah, we should do that. And we should be more

39:38

fluid with our feedback. We'd nod and then we'd go

39:40

back and do exactly the same thing we did. We're

39:42

doing before or maybe a modest improvement. So

39:44

I break it down and said, when you're

39:46

talking to an employee, giving them feedback, what

39:49

positive and negative feedback or developmental feedback, do

39:51

it in a six-part framework. And

39:53

you might hear that and you say, oh, I don't know,

39:56

that seems like hard to do. It's actually way easier. It

39:58

just becomes paint by numbers. asked you to do

40:00

it about 10 times, you don't need to refer back

40:03

to it because you can't imagine doing it any other

40:05

way because it's just easier. That's awesome. We're

40:07

coming to the end here. We'll wrap

40:09

up pretty soon. Talk

40:11

about that last section a little bit about quality.

40:13

Like how do we, what's that about? I mean,

40:15

we all think we want quality,

40:17

but usually a lot of times it gets kind

40:19

of like missed or ignored.

40:21

Well, I made it the last chapter because

40:24

in a lot of ways it was my

40:26

favorite chapter or my favorite part of the book.

40:29

Partly, it just surprised. I didn't expect that

40:31

to happen. I didn't expect that to be

40:33

one of the five skill areas. And

40:35

secondly, because I just love the fanaticism that

40:38

people had about quality. So here was the

40:40

first kind of epiphany that I had. People

40:43

like Steve Jobs, for example, who

40:45

we think about him in terms of quality

40:47

and so forth. These great

40:49

leaders did not think about quality as

40:51

a form of ethic or do right

40:53

by the customer or anything

40:55

like that. It was about making more money. It

40:58

was about beating your competition. And

41:01

what they realized is that if you're, let me

41:03

ask you this, which would you fear

41:05

more? A competitor that had a

41:07

darn good product at an

41:10

awesome sales and marketing team or

41:12

an awesome product and

41:14

a darn good sales and marketing team. Of

41:16

course, the letter, right? Yeah, for sure. The

41:19

point is we all know what a competitive

41:21

weapon, high quality is. It allows you, first

41:23

of all, pricing power. And

41:25

if you increase your price, that goes straight to the

41:27

bottom line. So pricing power.

41:30

Second is we know from data in our

41:32

own just common sense is that it's harder

41:34

to bring in a new customer than keep

41:36

a customer. Well, the only reason you keep

41:39

a customer is you're delivering a quality product. So it

41:41

closes the back door. So it drives

41:43

sales. The second way to drive

41:45

sales is it brings in more customers because

41:47

word of mouth and how people

41:49

learn where they want to do business with is

41:52

even more fluid down the internet because you can

41:54

type in anything and find out the best place

41:56

to buy a lawnmower or the best consulting company

41:58

out there. drive sales. And

42:01

the third is it makes it easier for you

42:03

to recruit and retain the best people because the

42:05

best people want to work for a company that

42:07

has a high quality product. That's

42:09

why it's one of the five components in

42:11

the book. The recurring theme is,

42:13

okay, fine David, but like how do I

42:15

do it? And so I examined

42:18

how people who deliver high quality products do

42:20

it. And one is that they

42:22

are really good at understanding where they stand

42:24

in the marketplace. So there's a thing called

42:26

the Lake Wobbegauen effect. To have

42:28

a listen to that Garrison Tieler. Oh yeah, he

42:31

used to love that guy. He got canceled unfortunately.

42:33

Yeah, he did. But he had a good

42:35

run there. He did. And he started the

42:37

show you might remember where he says in

42:40

Lake Wobbegauen where all the children are above

42:42

average. Well, of course, that can't be

42:44

half after we above average, half after we below average.

42:47

There was actually an interesting study

42:49

where they asked American drivers

42:52

and 90% of American drivers said they

42:54

were above average. This

42:56

is the best part about it. Or if he

42:58

ended up coining that the Lake Wobbegauen effect. So

43:00

Garrison Tieler will even though he got canceled on

43:02

PR, he will live in infamy in the neurology

43:05

or neuroscience. So that's

43:07

all sounds like a quaint little story. But

43:10

they did this study and

43:12

they surveyed CEOs and 80%

43:16

of the people surveyed said that they

43:18

offered a superior customer experience. Guess

43:21

what? Then they went and looked at what the

43:23

customers thought. Only 8% of the customers agreed.

43:26

What a disparity. Wow. Here's disparity. So

43:28

the book talks about how the really

43:31

best companies and best leaders identify

43:33

what how their customers are identifying quality

43:36

or what they look for quality, how

43:38

you identify how you measure it, how you

43:40

propagate that across the organization. And again, it's

43:43

very, very hands on it is not quality

43:45

is not about a poster in the lunchroom,

43:48

or not about a speech that you give

43:50

once a year, what's in your airport. Quality

43:52

is actually about doing nuts and bolts things

43:54

in the same way of running a meeting

43:56

or hiring well or onboarding well, the same

43:58

thing as those tools that people use for

44:00

quality. It was probably the most

44:03

endearing chapter when I wrote it because

44:05

I really got into how well these

44:07

people that are so focused on getting

44:09

things done, how much they apply quality

44:11

as a business weapon. I believe it.

44:13

My honor man certificate from SEAL training

44:16

said, the act of doing ordinary

44:18

things extraordinarily well is uncommon, something

44:20

like that. I was like, that's

44:22

really cool. So that's what

44:24

quality is, to do the ordinary things extraordinarily

44:26

well. Fantastic. The book is

44:28

out. Where can people learn more about

44:30

you, your work? Do you have ways for

44:33

people to connect with you? I'm pretty active

44:35

on LinkedIn. That's probably the best place that

44:37

I try to post information material that I

44:39

think might be useful to people. The

44:41

book said well, it hit the Wall Street Journal

44:43

bestseller list, hit the USA Today bestseller list. So

44:45

it's getting out there. And I

44:47

only say that because I wrote the book

44:50

to try to help transform organizations. It was

44:52

not a victory lap blade in my career

44:54

on how I did things. I really wanted

44:56

to help people become better managers. And it

44:58

goes back, if we could just go full

45:00

circle, it goes back to me growing up

45:03

in rural Colorado. And I wanted to be

45:05

in situations where basic blocking

45:07

and tackling and execution that I had

45:09

control over was going to determine whether

45:11

I was successful or not. Terrific. Well done.

45:14

Thanks for that contribution. I'm going to go

45:16

buy a copy from my team. Fantastic. And

45:19

start saving some time, that's for sure. Thank

45:21

you so much for your time, David. I really appreciate

45:23

it. It's been a really cool conversation. Not at all,

45:25

Mark. I enjoyed it. Likewise. All right.

45:27

Take care now. Yeah. That

45:31

was a fascinating conversation with David Dotson.

45:34

Thanks so much for your time today.

45:36

I loved the discussion about your book

45:38

and learning how to focus and make

45:40

better decisions and build teams and to

45:42

lead by becoming an excellent manager. Really

45:44

cool stuff. One of my most powerful

45:46

takeaways is to cut my meetings to one hour meetings

45:49

to 40 minutes and my half hour meetings to 20

45:51

minutes, which will save me a significant amount

45:53

of time every day. Show notes

45:55

are up on our website at markdivine.com. YouTube

45:57

is on our YouTube channel. If

46:00

you want to reach me on social media on

46:02

Twitter X, I'm at Mark Divine and on Instagram

46:04

or Facebook I'm at real mark divine or you

46:06

can find me on LinkedIn if you're not

46:08

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46:50

being part of the change you want to see in the

46:52

world We can do that now at scale with technologies like

46:54

this podcast, but it all starts

46:56

with us. It's our world So

46:59

if we want things to change around us, we

47:01

got to change from the inside out So keep doing

47:03

the work till next time. Oh, yeah

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