The Third Growth Option with Benno Duenkelsbuehler and Guests

4 Growth Accelerants (P.C.C.C)

• Benno Duenkelsbuehler • Season 1 • Episode 135

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Jamie Gallagher, CEO of 4 the Win Partners, shares his evolution from corporate climbing to visionary leadership. Drawing from experiences at European giants like Lego and mentorship from Count Anton Wolfgang Faber-Castell, Jamie navigates the complexities of leadership and innovation in today's volatile business landscape.


Find out what the 4 growth accelerants are and how they serve as tangible accelerants for progress. By integrating these principles strategically, businesses can revolutionize problem-solving and foster collaboration. 

Always growing.

Benno Duenkelsbuehler

CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN

reALIGNforResults.com

benno@realignforresults.com

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Third Growth Option podcast, where we talk with business leaders and innovators hungry to drive growth that can be faster than internal organic growth and less risky than acquisition. Your moderator is Bernhard Dunkerspuler, Chief Sherpa and CEO at Realign, who has led private equity-owned distributors through turnarounds and growth. With battle-proven leaders from all frontiers, we want to provoke thinking about business growth beyond conventional wisdom and binary choices.

Speaker 2:

Hey, I'm Benno your host, talking today with Jamie Gallagher, founder and CEO of For the Win Partners, speaker on creativity, leadership and succeeding in a VUCA environment, which, by the way, I always have to think of. What does VUCA stand for? We'll get into that in a second here. Welcome, jamie Gallagher to the Third Growth Option Podcast.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, Ben. How are you today?

Speaker 2:

Good good. So VUCA stands for what? Volatility, Uncertainty.

Speaker 3:

Complexity.

Speaker 2:

Complexity.

Speaker 3:

Ambiguity.

Speaker 2:

Ambiguity there you go All right.

Speaker 3:

That kind of sums up what we're dealing with every day, I'm afraid to say I agree.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So Jamie, you've had, looking from the outside in certainly a wonderful career working for three different European companies in the US, most recently as CEO of Faber-Castell USA. But there was 16 years with Lego from Denmark in the 80s to mid 90s, and then Playmobil, a German toy company, and then Faber-Castell for 20 years. What did you learn in each of these three amazing companies?

Speaker 3:

well-loved companies quite different from each other companies. I think you learn different things at different stages and then to me, what's become really interesting is how, once all of those have concluded, you look back and then you learn yet again. So you've got the learning at the moment, then you've got the learning when it's all concluded and looking back, but the learning during that time, because I had just graduated from Notre Dame with a business degree when I went to Lego and that was therefore my first job and I mean this, benno, at the time I just needed a job All right.

Speaker 2:

Any job is a good job when you just graduate from college.

Speaker 3:

Exactly, and so many people, when they hear that I had worked for so long at Lego, somehow they assumed that that was a lifelong dream, which I can assure you it was not. So I took this sales job as a field sales representative with Lego and over that period of time I learned essentially three things. One was I learned how to sell, which was a tremendous opportunity and skill set at any time, let alone the beginning of my career. I learned how business worked, learned a lot more about profit and loss and expenses and revenue at the time. And then I also learned as I moved from a sales position into a brand management position. I learned about managing a global brand on a regional basis. So the Lego experience was one that was truly foundational. The Playmobil experience was one that in essence and I say this all the time taught me that you can have an absolutely world-class wonderful product and product concept and still not reach the true potential that you have for a business in a market like North America.

Speaker 2:

So Playmobil wonderful company or wonderful product what caused it to struggle in the US market? Was it leadership and management issues? Or was it some kind of hubris of we're going to teach the Americans how to do stuff?

Speaker 3:

The larger umbrella was leadership. If you, you know, take the broadest view, the broadest umbrella, it all fits under leadership and, as you so rightly point out, you know, aspects of leadership are absolutely on a local basis. And that was me, that was completely me and my inability to lead effectively, and parts of it were on the parent company and the parent company's view of the North American market and how the North American market should develop relative to the way the home markets in Europe had developed. So I think it's aspects of both, but truly, and as much as I learned at the time, I also take full accountability, for those were not my best leadership days and there were enough headwinds coming from the parent company that I had to be operating at a very effective level as a leader and I was not.

Speaker 2:

And then you moved to Faber-Castell, another German company.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and then I moved to another German company, which I mean, as you can imagine, after the experience that I had with Playmobil, the first question people had was are you sure you want to go to another German company that is privately held? And I said, absolutely, I do. The Latin for punishment, that's right. And I still had it in me to persist and make this work. So I went to Faber-Castell and worked very closely with the global chairman at that time, who was the eighth generation chairman, count Anton Wolfgang Faber-Castell, who was a wonderful person, great mentor, great leader, just really taught me so much and helped me develop. So the story, the Faber-Castell story, for me was truly the journey from being a boss to understanding what it meant to be a leader. So it's the journey from being someone's boss to being a leader.

Speaker 2:

The difference from sort of you know, a boss pushes and a leader pulls.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely, and you know, and part of that was being able to let go at the right times, and I saw Count Faber-Castell do that frequently. He knew when to hang on and stand firm and he also knew when to trust and defer Benno. It's that characteristic of his leadership that I believe enabled the company to reposition itself from a pencil company in the stationary market to a creativity company. That is really what I believe the driving force between that repositioning was. In a digital age, to be a stationary pencil company really wasn't going to work, so the movement and the repositioning to a creativity company was absolutely masterful.

Speaker 2:

The way you just described being a pencil company versus a creativity company. Being a pencil company versus a creativity company reminds me of the example that is given in many business books about the railroads having, you know, in the 1800s, having stuck to, or having gotten stuck to just being railroad companies. Instead of being, they could have transformed themselves into transportation companies that could have taken on the aviation industry or car industry, but they sort of got stuck just on that railroad mentality. And Faber-Castell did not get stuck on the pencil mentality.

Speaker 3:

Exactly, and that's a great example because that felt like a very similar journey. And that's a great example because that felt like a very similar journey. And the interesting part of this like other companies, Faber-Castell at the time was about 250 to 255 years old and highly, highly successful over a very sustained period of time sustained period of time. So obviously you can imagine that there were those who said you know, if it ain't broke, let's not fix it. But Count Faber-Castell and others, including ourselves in North America, had a view that said you know, to reach our full potential, we really need to be seeing this in a different way.

Speaker 2:

So you said earlier, you know, when I asked you about, tell me a little bit about what you learned in each of these three companies wonderful companies that you stayed at, for I mean, you spent 40 years in those three companies, so quite a long time in each of them. You said, hey, there were things that I learned at the time and then there were things that I learned looking in the rearview mirror. I do want to start digging into these four growth accelerants that you have thought a lot about, sort of articulated, I think, very well, and I want you to share it with the listeners because I think it's going to help listeners think through ways to accelerate their growth. But you started For the Wind. Tell me a little bit about why did you start For the Wind. What is it and why did you start it?

Speaker 3:

During the time at Faber-Castell and the 20-year period there when I traveled that journey from boss to leader, one of the things that became very, very clear to me and probably too late, admittedly. We learn these things and we look back on it. We should have learned it a lot earlier.

Speaker 2:

No, we would have liked to. We would have liked to. Yes, we would have liked to. That doesn't mean we should have. You know, we would have liked to have been three inches taller and 10 million bucks richer, you know 20 years ago.

Speaker 3:

But so what? That truly did not happen in my case, but the fact is, at some point, you know, thankfully and fortunately, it did happen. But I recognize that there will be times in our business careers where we are blessed with great product. We hit a trend and we're blessed with great product. We will find that we have, at times, great people. We will have times that the market is exactly right and there are times we will have the headwinds as well. But through all of that, we tend to react very immediately and very quickly to the situation at hand. And as I look back on it, there is a longer-term view of this, there's a broader perspective of this and that is what's made up of the four accelerants. And I didn't realize that till I had been in it a bit during some tough times, until I had been in it a bit during some tough times and also after I had gone through it. So when we did at Faber-Castell and this is one of the, I guess, kind of the key moments in my career when we were having difficulty at Faber-Castell in the US and we needed a new approach and a new strategy, it was right around the time that I read for the first time Simon Sinek's book Start With why, and it was reading that book that enabled me to look at our first step in developing a new strategy, and that first step had to be what is our why? And to fast forward in a very inclusive manner.

Speaker 3:

We were able to reestablish and reignite our why, which is and was the belief that we can enrich people's lives and that we can do that through creativity and self-expression. And we can do that for kids, we can do that for parents, we can do that for teachers, we can do that for artists, we can do it for fallen away creatives, we can do it for seniors, we can do it for post-war vets. We can enrich people's lives in a very unique way because of what we do through creativity and self-expression. That became so powerful for me as a leader that I decided about three years ago that I wanted to dedicate more of my time and my energy and my effort to pursuing exactly that. So that's when I signaled to the parent company in Germany my plans to leave and to then dedicate myself more toward this enriching of people's lives in different ways, and that then was the foundation for starting For the Win. And, as you suggest. The four is tied very closely to the four accelerants, and those four accelerants are purpose, culture, creativity and clarity.

Speaker 2:

So let's go through each of these four accelerants Purpose, I think. Well, just talk a little bit through. You already gave one example here, faber-castell articulating their purpose beyond the number two pencil. Yeah right To enriching people's lives through creativity.

Speaker 3:

You had talked about the example of Starbucks when you and I talked a couple of weeks back about the example of Starbucks when you and I talked a couple of weeks back, and I think, benno, the important part of all of these, but maybe none more so than purpose, is go back to where our conversation started. Today, we live in what I truly believe is a VUCA world. It's volatile, it's uncertain, it's complicated, it's ambiguous. This is the underpinning of the world we live in and it's in this type of a world we're not only asking and required and seeking to be successful, but we're also looking to be fulfilled at the same time. So it's no small task in this environment to be successful and to be fulfilled in doing that.

Speaker 3:

So when I look at this idea of purpose, the question comes to mind, as it did from Cynic is you know, why are you here? What are you doing anyway? Of all the things you could do and all the things you could be and all the things you could stand for, what are you here for anyway? You know we talked about Starbucks. You know what are you here for anyway? We talked about Starbucks. You know, is Starbucks there to sell coffee? Well, they believe that they're here to inspire and nurture the human spirit. So it's a much bigger mission, it's a bigger purpose that we're tied to than some of these, you know, narrowly focused products that we sell, focused products that we sell, and in a VUCA world, I believe that the importance of purpose is also that we need something to unite and align us, because on any given day, we'll be distracted, we'll be busy, we'll be doing different things. We need to have something to come back to as a group or even on our own selves, and say what is it that unites us? What are we here for anyway? What can align us in such a way that we together can be more effective? And that's the role I think purpose plays.

Speaker 3:

It also and I'm sure you're familiar with this and talking with the many leaders and people that you've spoken to, you know many times you hear people speak about pivot. Okay, we need to pivot, and what I always find fascinating about this idea of pivot is, most of the time, when we speak of pivot, we're talking about that which is going to change, that which we are going to move toward. And the interesting part for me is, on any pivot, there is a fixed point. If you don't have a fixed point in a pivot, then you're actually jumping. And we're not talking about jumping. We're talking about pivoting. Purpose can be the fixed point as we effectively pivot.

Speaker 2:

You know another way I think about purpose. Actually, any of the four things purpose, culture, creativity, clarity any of those four things to me end up being filters that I use, filters that a management team uses to make decisions together. There's just a filter that it has to go through. Well, does this fulfill our purpose? Is this what our culture is right? So talk a little bit about culture. I don't know if I'm stealing the punchline by saying culture is not what you say, but what you do. I had a hard time understanding exactly what culture means, because it felt like 10 years ago, when, five, 10 years ago, when people really started talking a lot about get the culture right, culture eats, strategy for breakfast and all of that stuff, it felt a little bit ambiguous to me. It felt a little bit wishy-washy. But when people say, you know, it's just about what you say, it's not about what you say, it's about what you do.

Speaker 3:

It's not. I mean, at least in terms of the way we describe it or define it. That's absolutely true. It really is about behavior. I mean it is really about the behaviors and oftentimes it's like a lot of these four accelerants it's not like none of these four or any of these four, never get lip service.

Speaker 3:

You'll find them in strategic documents, you'll find them on posters. You'll find them all over the place. But I think what sets it apart from those who do it well is a level of intentionality, and this level of intentionality that enables them to be integrated or, as you say, filtered through and into an effective business strategy is really what sets them apart, and culture is, in fact, that same way. I mean, one of the things that I think is really powerful, that fits within culture, is this idea of collaboration, collaboration. When you look at that and think of why that's so powerful, I mean it's really just maximizing the collective impact, and in a culture where we're not embracing collaboration and not taking the hard steps into collaboration, you know we're foregoing the opportunity to maximize collective impact and I don't think anybody would sign up for that collective impact, and I don't think anybody would sign up for that.

Speaker 2:

And then talk about creativity. Why do you think creativity is one of the four growth accelerants and creativity is another one of those words that I think is misunderstood? Right, Because people, the first thing people think of creativity is like a creative person, an artist, Picasso right?

Speaker 3:

Well, I'm not Picasso and to this day, you know as many books and articles and talks as there have been about creativity. It is still very, very frequently tied directly to artists and people who are in the arts. The simplicity that I see within creativity is within. Creativity is once again in this VUCA environment. We are looking to fix things and we're looking to create new things, and without creativity, without environments and mindsets of creativity, we are really going to struggle in terms of fixing things that need to be fixed, problems that need to be solved, and creating new things and innovating. So that's why, when you see these surveys and all these articles that are out there that keep talking about how important creativity is, is because there's a clear recognition that we've got problems to solve and we've got to be innovating new things of value. And creativity sits, you know, right at the center of that. It requires a certain mindset and that mindset within a certain environment, which brings us back into the discussions of culture and purpose. So obviously these are all interrelated.

Speaker 2:

But you just said a really, really important word mindset right, and I think creativity is too often misunderstood as a skill, right, like I'm an oil painter, I'm a sculptor, I'm an artist, I'm Picasso, I have a skill as a creative person. But you're talking about creativity as a mindset to be open, to be curious, to ask questions, to ask questions about sacred cows.

Speaker 3:

Exactly, and that is once again why it's so different from the common definition, because the creative mindset is one that you know believes in your own creativity, but it's also one that is able to suspend judgment of your own ideas and the ideas of other people. Hold on a second here. Let's finish this. Let's hang in there. Let's not judge it right away. Let's be open to where this is going. And you know that's another element of the creative mindset. So yeah, without question, you know, a creative mindset is absolutely critical if we're going to have effective creative environments, if we're going to have effective, creative environments.

Speaker 2:

And to me, a creative mindset and a growth mindset are actually the same thing, because both growth and creativity require us to shed the old skin, to not hang on to everything that has worked yesterday. The old what got us here ain't going to get us there. I mean that's a creative mindset, that saying.

Speaker 3:

Exactly, and I think, in addition to that, ben, we also look at, you know, the elements of a growth mindset and you know we look at okay, how do we treat and how do we view mistakes, how do we view failure, how do we view errors? You know, do we look at that in a growth minded way, which where it becomes a learning opportunity, or do we look at it as a reason to be punitive and to judge? So you're absolutely right that the relationship, the interrelationship between the creative mindset and the growth mindset is very, very close.

Speaker 2:

And the fourth, accelerant clarity. Why do you think clarity is important and what makes it difficult to achieve?

Speaker 3:

I'm able now to step back and look at this world that we're living in. There are clear attributes of busyness, distractedness. Do everything, do it now, never say no. It is just the world that we live in and, believe me, I am not a disbeliever in the importance of technology and social media, but I also know that the prevalent content that we have and the opportunities for us to be distracted are like never before. So within that type of an environment, clarity becomes very important. So what are we going to expect from one another? What are we going to focus on, what is it that we're going to see as being the most important, and then do it to the very, very best of our ability.

Speaker 3:

And I think I was sharing with you in one of our recent conversations that there's a lot of discussion about remote versus hybrid work, versus in-the-office work. There's a lot of discussion about compensation. But within all of that, what becomes really important for workers today is this sense of clarity when do I stand? What's expected of me? How am I doing? So? That's why, for me, clarity in this type of an environment becomes one of the really key accelerants.

Speaker 2:

So these four accelerants—purpose, culture, creativity, clarity—you have described as being foundational parts of—that should be foundational and are sort of universal, should be part of any and all strategies. But then you're comparing the foundational to the technical, specific to market niche category, maybe functional product or distribution or HR or finance kind of technical strategies. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think you're saying these four accelerants, these four growth accelerants, are foundational and it's not either technical or foundational, it's a yes and it's a both, and the technical stuff and these four foundational growth accelerants. Is that how you see it?

Speaker 3:

Absolutely, and that's where this idea of intentionality and intentional integration into the classic building blocks, the strategic building blocks. So this is not either or this is not that one overtakes the other. It's that these together, this intentional integration of purpose, culture, creativity and clarity in your business strategy, in your planning, is foundational. It's essential to begin there because I do believe it becomes I mentioned to you once before becomes the glue that keeps us together and becomes the grease that allows us to move forward more quickly.

Speaker 2:

I love that. Before we jumped on today's episode, I was asking myself and I would encourage listeners to ask yourselves to imagine your own company vis-a-vis these four accelerants. Are these four accelerants present? What do each of the four look like? I mean, I actually went through Realign, mike, the company that I run as a day job, when I don't do podcasts, and sort of wrote down okay, what is the purpose of Realign? What is our culture? Do we have a creative mindset? Is there clarity? So I think those are four excellent accelerants to think about vis-a-vis your own company, and I would encourage everybody listening in to do that. Jamie, thank you so much for spending time together sharing with us your thoughts on the four growth accelerants and how they came about and how powerful they can be.

Speaker 3:

Well, Benno, it's my pleasure. I always get so much out of any time I spend with you, so I really appreciate your time as well today.

Speaker 2:

If folks wanted to reach out to you one-on-one, what's a good place to find you?

Speaker 3:

Sure, I mean I'm on LinkedIn, so you can find me on LinkedIn under Jamie Gallagher. You can also visit the website for For the Win, and that website is forthewcom. And my email, if you'd like to email me, is and it's the number four.

Speaker 2:

It's not spelled out. It's the number four. It's not spelled out. It's the number four, the W.

Speaker 3:

T-H-E-Wcom and then Jamie at four. T-h-e-wcom is the email.

Speaker 2:

Terrific, this was great. Thank you so much, jamie Benno. Thank you very much, hey. If folks wanted to explore other growth topics, you can find me on our website, realignforresultscom, or just email Benno.

Speaker 1:

B-E-N-N-O at realignforresultscom to subscribe, rate and review it. Share it with your friends or colleagues if you enjoyed the content. Always growing.

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Benno Duenkelsbuehler

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