How to Think Strategically with Michael D Watkins

In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Arjun Sahdev are joined by Michael D Watkins.  Michael is a globally recognized leadership transitions expert, he is professor of Leadership and Organizational Change at IMD in Switzerland and he has written 12 books including the best-selling book “The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter” and his most recent book “The Six Disciplines of Strategic Thinking” in which he explores how executives can learn to think strategically and lead their organizations into the future. Michael is a Thinkers 50-ranked management influencer and recognized expert in his field, his work features in HBR Guides and HBR’s 10 Must Reads on leadership, teams, strategic initiatives, and new managers. Over the past 20 years, he has used his First 90 Days methodology to help leaders make successful transitions, both in his teaching at IMD, INSEAD, and Harvard Business School.

 
 Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
 Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)


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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Transcript

Scott Allender: 0:03

How turbulent does the world feel to you right now? How much pressure Are you under? In this show, we are joined by Michael Watkins, Professor of leadership and organisational change and a globally recognised leadership transitions expert. He has developed proven frameworks and tools to help leaders authentically navigate personal and organisational change challenges while remaining true to their deeply held values and supporting their wellbeing. This is something we need now, perhaps more than ever before. This brilliant conversation between Michael Jean and Arjun is filled with refreshing incredibly valuable insights that will help you strategically navigate the pressures you face every day with the agility that success requires. So give this episode your full attention to be glad you did.

Jean Gomes: 1:45

Welcome to the evolving leader, a show born from the belief that we need deeper, more accountable and more human leadership to face the challenges of an uncertain polarising and automating world. Today I'm joined by my colleague and growth and entrepreneurial expert, Arjun Sahdev. Arjun How're you feeling? Hi, Jean. I'm feeling fantastic. Really glad to be back after a month of parental leave. So I'm a little sleep deprived.

Arjun Sahdev: 2:13

I'm definitely feeling glad to be to be back in the hot seat. So yeah, it feels good. Jean, how are you feeling?

Jean Gomes: 2:21

Well, I'm feeling great. I'm really excited about your new arrival, your beautiful baby daughter. And I thought you know, this is like a little gift to you know, sort of bed you back gently into into the world of work. So that's good. But personally, I'm feeling very excited. And especially because today we're joined by a true thought leader. Our guest today is Michael Watkins. He's best known for his international bestseller, The first 90 days proven strategies for getting up to speed faster and smarter. And he sold over a million copies of that book. So just not many people managed to do that. He works with C level suite executives, global organisations on transition acceleration, primarily through Genesis advisors, the International Leadership Development consultancy he founded and he's also a professor of leadership and organisational change at IMD Business School, where he teaches a popular virtual first 90 days open programme for leaders and transition. And he's also just published a new book, which I absolutely loved. I've read tonnes of books on on strategic thinking and strategy and so on. And I wouldn't say my heart kind of like freezes a little bit when I see another one coming out thinking is there going to be the new it but this just really cut through and just provides what he's brilliant at doing, which is providing just insightful, highly simple, practical ways that are incredibly powerful of helping people to think differently. So, really love that and very excited to get into to talk to him about this. Michael, welcome to the evolving leader.

Michael D Watkins: 3:56

Well, I'm delighted to be here, Jean and Arjun, I have to say, though, you know, one of the first pieces of advice I give to people about transitions is be careful about expectations, right. And be careful about shaping expectations. Right. So, thanks a lot, Jean, for that. Wonderful, both wonderful, and somewhat terrifying introduction. So

Jean Gomes: 4:14

Well, I'm sure I'm sure you can live up to it, though.

Arjun Sahdev: 4:18

Well, welcome to the show, Michael. How are you feeling?

Michael D Watkins: 4:21

I feel wonderful. You know, I think I I'm living the life I would want to be leading personally and professionally. It's, it's exciting, daunting, occasionally terrifying times out there. I get to kind of work with leaders as they grapple with it and kind of, you know, look over their shoulders while they do it. And it's it's really fascinating these days, and I'm super looking forward to talking to you about it.

Arjun Sahdev: 4:46

That's so lovely to hear. And Jean had just mentioned some of your publications, where it's been 21 years since you published the first 90 days and it's remained a bestseller and the go to guide for executive is taking on new roles. What do you think it solved?

Michael D Watkins: 5:05

In terms of the problem that made it so successful? Yeah. Well, I should start off by saying that I was in my early 20s. When I published that book, originally. That's a joke. I, yeah. So you know, the original edition was published in 2003. I published a second edition in 2013. And I'm getting close to finishing the third edition, because a lot has changed. And maybe we can talk about a little bit about that. But look, I you know, I tell people that I'm the accidental guru, right, I didn't set out to plan to do this. Exactly. I was quite happy teaching at Harvard, I was mostly teaching negotiation. And I just got interested in the subject, you know, and it became pretty clear that although there was lots out there about leadership, and lots out there about change, the consolidation, right of those things happening to you, as you go into a new role, and have to be simultaneously going up the learning curve, even as you're trying to make change happen in the organisation hadn't really been dealt with. Yeah. And and you have to keep in mind, too, this was before all the work on onboarding happened, you know, it was it was a, it was basically a green field. When I when I, when I wrote the book, and I, you know, timing is everything, right? I think catching the wave is, is a wonderful thing to do.

Jean Gomes: 6:25

I've recommended them the book to many people, but also leaders are finding themselves that even not in formal transitions, but their roles are changing so profoundly, they might find themselves with a raft of new challenges without even any acknowledgement being given to that fact. What do you see is happening in the world at the moment? And how do you look at that kind of transition?

Michael D Watkins: 6:49

So I think it's such a good point, Jean, and I call these the hidden transitions, right? I mean, we've got the visible ones that are easy to see when someone joins a new organisation or gets a promotion. But you know, we were talking about this a bit, before we started the recording right about just how turbulent the world is right now. And in the pressures that leaders are facing to rapidly pivot, you know, and rethink their priorities, rethink their strategies. So, you know, it sometimes feels like leaders and oh, by the way, their organisations are going through almost continual transition these days. But a lot of it isn't, you know, it isn't obvious, right? When it's happening, what when a team's direction changes, or when a leader realises that they need to fundamentally rethink their strategy. I mean, that's as much a transition, as you know, joining a new a new company, but it's not as visible here. To your point.

Arjun Sahdev: 7:44

Michael, you talk about two major challenges facing leaders in transitions that I'd love for you to unpack a little, firstly, knowing what they need to learn and change about themselves. And secondly, the change that they need to lead in the organisation. Could you give us some insight into how those two dimensions come work together in a kind of constructive symbiotic way?

Michael D Watkins: 8:10

Yeah, so I think both of those are critical. Right. And I think maybe I'll start with the organisational challenge first, Arjun? If it's okay, because you're right, I do juxtapose that kind of, you know, organisational challenge with the personal challenge. But the organisational challenge, you know, really profoundly shapes the personal challenge, you know, I mean, an example would be the framework I built called the stars model, right, for a startup turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, sustaining success. That's not the sum total of all possible business situations you can face. Most leaders get a mix of those things when they take a new role, you know, it's, but it's still people still find it useful, right, as a way to think about, you know, what do I need to do coming into this new, this new role? And I think of it as a kind of situational change leadership, Arjun? I mean, I look at these things as distinct types of change challenges mean starting something up as a change challenge, right. Turning something around is absolutely a change challenge. accelerating growth scaling, right, there's been a lot that's been written about scaling is a transformational challenge now. So I think, you know, I think getting your arms around the core of the challenge you're facing, and then beginning to go from there to what's the implications for what I need to do as a leader situation they right. By the way, we can have a conversation about authenticity and situational leadership, if you want. I think that's a pretty interesting dimension to this too, right. But I'm a big believer in situational leadership. I mean, I think leaders absolutely need to flex in the face of the demands that they're facing and the particulars of what their team needs at any given point in time, right. So that's kind of the organisational side. The personal side, I always riff on goes off of Marshall Goldsmith, right. And his wonderful book, what got you here won't get you there. The biggest trap leaders fall into when taking new roles is thinking that they're going to continue to be successful doing what they've done in the past. And it can even be reinforced when you're hired. Right, you know, Arjun, we want you to come in and do what you did you know, your last company on the more, right? Well, maybe, maybe that's really what they want. But it says likely that that's not exactly what they want, right? And it's more, even more likely, you're not going to just come in and do that, without creating a lot of resistance and challenges, right. And so I early on, when I work with my own clients, focus them really laser beam like on what are you good at and love to do? That you need to do less of? And what are you maybe not so great at? And maybe not so comfortable with that you need to do more up? Yeah. And so to me, that's kind of the core of what you need to give up on what you need to embrace when you go into a new role. And those things kind of then intersect, right, the situational challenges that flow off the the organisational side, that are intersect pretty powerfully with what the work the leader the leader needs to do. Does that make sense? Origin?

Arjun Sahdev: 11:18

Absolutely, absolutely. And I'd love for you to actually touch on the authenticity piece as well, because I find that really, really intriguing. I think that can inevitably help supercharge what you're just talking about.

Michael D Watkins: 11:31

So I'm a Canadian originally, and so you're gonna you're gonna get a little bit of semi Canadian humour here. But my my father, who was very, very funny, funny person, he used to have little sayings, right, and one of his little sayings was always be sincere, whether you meet it or not. And so, so, you know, there's no question that, you know, leaders need to perform, and not performing the performance sense, but performing the the acting and playing a role sense, you mean, and it intersects again, directly with situational leadership, right, the way you're going to show up into a turnaround is going to be very different than the way you're going to show up into a sustaining success kind of challenge, right? And we don't want to, we don't want to sort of minimise the importance of that. As you go to more senior levels, inevitably, you are under more scrutiny, people are watching your every move, and trying to parse out what it all means. Yeah. And so, you know, you need to think about yourself as being on a stage, right, playing the lead role, you know, in your organisation with all the implications for role modelling and the power of everything you do symbolically. So, you know, now you could, you could hear me say that, and you could, you could hear you're in that you could hear Michael thinks the leadership just be whatever this situation demands, right? And, you know, flow with it. And now, that's not what I mean, right? And the conversation around authenticity, I grounded in values, fundamentally, and leadership values, right? If you're not living according to your leadership values, then that's inauthentic at a fairly fundamental level. But you can you can adapt to lots of situations and still remain fundamentally true to your leadership values. And that's authenticity. To me. That's the that's the way to kind of undo the Gordian knot of of, you know, situational leadership and playing a role versus being authentic. That's at least that's the way I see it. Yeah.

Jean Gomes: 13:40

I'm one of those situations that is perennially difficult is when you're promoted, it often comes with the reality that you're leaving your peer group, and then you're leading them, how do you do that successfully in your experience? So

Michael D Watkins: 13:54

I think there's so many great, it's such a great example of dominance, and there's a few different dimensions to it. I mean, one is, is just the act of being promoted and and what the transition challenges associated with that are, right? I mean, I'm gonna get to your question about leading former peers in a sec, but I just want to step back a little bit, right. You know, anytime you're promoted, your scope broadens. Right? So how you delegate needs to change. You're further from the front lines typically. So how you communicate needs to change in some fundamental ways. You know, I'd love to tell you that politics becomes less intense as you go to the top of organisations, but that would be a lie. So you need to be more capable from a political savvy point of view when you're promoted typically. And then there's this question of presence and I'm very interested these days and leadership presence and try to unpack a little bit what what that means. I just had an article coming out on the thinker's 50 website about my view of leadership presence and we can Talk about that if you're if you're interested. So all that is to say, you've got serious work to do anytime that you're promoted, right, and there's a retooling of yourself that you need to focus on. Yeah. Now, you just you added the complexity, John up. And it often happens, right? Where you're promoted to lead former peers. And in an ideal world, it's obvious to everyone that you should be promoted, and everyone's happy for you and on with the show, but it's equally likely that it comes as a surprise to some, it comes as a disappointment to some, right, and you've got to kind of manage your way through that thicket of reworking relationships, right, establishing yourself, you know, in a position of greater authority without overdoing it. Right, you know, no, no, Napoleon, no, no, no, no, no, no, General John, you know, kind of showing up in the in the organisation, right. So there's a real balancing that has to happen when you do this, and it's delicate. But, you know, I think, you know, if you pay attention to the right things, do things in a way that? Well, one piece of advice I always give to folks in that situation is focused laser beam, like on what's good for the business, anchor everything you do, and what's good for the business. Right, try to let go of the personal, whatever it is right, and have some confidence that will carry you through. Did I answer your question?

Jean Gomes: 16:33

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, the compulsion to try and please, your peers. Either to mollify that resentment or frustration, not being the one or your old friends trying to make them feel somehow that you've got their back in a way is, is a difficult set of emotional challenges. Absolutely. And I love the idea that you have something that you can anchor, you're not resisting these things, and you're actually anchoring yourself on an outcome that we all share that pulls you forward, and pull them forward with you. I'm, you know, imagining in this situation, what do you see going wrong? Because I'm sure you see it going wrong quite a lot. You

Michael D Watkins: 17:18

know, so So as you're saying that you triggered another thought in me to write which about this, which is, having the team that was formerly your peers, see you out there doing battle, on their behalf is another way to anchor things, right, you're out there representing them getting resources and enabling them to do to do great work. It's another it's another anchor point, you can use your finger figured that that thought for me? Where does it go wrong? I think a couple of ways it goes wrong, right? One is continuing to behave like super peer in a leadership role. You know, so continuing to basically do some of the work that you used to do while you're trying to be a leader, but not really being a leader, because you're still too a little too cosy with the people on your team, perhaps and I can see it go wrong that way. It's rare, but occasionally you see people who, you know, the power just kind of goes to their heads, and they, you know, they they start thinking, Okay, I you know, as I said, General jobs arrived, and all, all bridges will be, you know, will be rectified. And, you know, or, I guess not quite the same thing, but a variation on it is you've got all this pent up demand for internally for what you want to do. You try to like, you know, in a very short period of time, make all those things happens. You're kind of overwhelming the organisation in some way. Those of the other examples that I

Emma Sinclair: 18:50

Hi, this is Emma Sinclair, business psychologist, occasional co host and fan of the evolving leader podcast. There are now over 100 episodes with an incredible list of guests, encompassing a broad range of disciplines, all handpicked by us to help you, our audience, understand and overcome your greatest leadership challenges. We have so much more to come. So wherever you get your podcasts, please subscribe, share rate and review. Now, let's get back to the conversation.

Arjun Sahdev: 19:22

Michael, you said something earlier that stuck in my mind this idea of needing to retool yourself and part of that mix that's really critical is your your your well being because you talk about the need to maintain your well being including your family's needs. So I wonder how you think about that, particularly in a transition where it involves perhaps uprooting to a new city. Yeah.

Michael D Watkins: 19:54

Well, and you know, I mean, obviously, you're in an interesting time in your life right now. And I'm sure that's You know, you're going through it, I have to say, just completely parenthetically. I remember with my first child, the day that I got a full REM cycle of sleep. Right and and suddenly became a human being again. Oh, my,

Arjun Sahdev: 20:18

I'm so glad to hear you say that. There is light years away.

Michael D Watkins: 20:29

And I have three kids. They're all grown now. But I think I was, you know, we were in diapers for close to a decade. Right. So, you know, there is there is, you know, I don't want to depress you. But that's, you know, that's definitely in your future. So I guess a couple of things, right? I mean, again, maybe I'll try to ground it in the way I kind of think about things right. I increasingly view leadership is fundamentally being about energy, and about how you mobilise and focus and sustain the energy of your team and your organisation. So that's where I kind of began and that's not management, because there's lots of management stuff you need to do. That's the leadership part, right? It's about how do you energise people focus that energy, to your point origin, super important, sustain that energy, right in your team. And then you know, the way I describe it, as you can't hope to mobilise and focus and sustain the energy of your team and organisation without being able to mobilise and focus and sustain your own energy. And so you know, and that sustaining part is really important, right, especially today, when there's just extraordinary demands and pressures on people. So, so absolutely, you need to be focusing on that address the transition issue first, and then come back to a more general one, right? during transitions, you need to surge energetically. You just do, right. And, you know, my view of kind of energy management and leadership is there will be ebbs and flows, right. The danger is when you start just continuing to be on a curve or putting out so much energy that eventually you're gonna think you're gonna fall right. So I, when I, again, coach people, I said, like, you know, you're going to be in surge mode for a while, right? Some things are going to drop away, you're not going to get as much exercise, you're not going to get as much sleep, right, you're going to do the best you can, you know, but this is the reality of what you're going to be going through. However, we're going to set a date, right? Where you're going to start to transition back to something more sustainable, right, we're not going to let you continue to drive yourself in the way you need to drive yourself during that transition, you have to have a transition point back to something that's, that's more sustainable. So that's, I guess, one one aspect, I think you also mentioned the family and, you know, I, you know, I again, not a great metaphor, so forgive me, right. But I tell the leaders I work with, like you need to help your family understand that you're going away to war for a little while, right? That you're going to not be as available, not as accessible, you're going to be more tired, more distracted. To your point origin, you may be in temporary housing in another location, while your partner is trying to clean things up back where you are, you may do things like not move right away, because you want your kids to finish the current school year, you know, there's lots of good reasons to not move. And that creates real pressures on relationships. But it's worse if if the partner isn't on board with what's happening, you know, understanding what's going on seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, you know, figuratively. So that's kind of the way that the way that I sort of, I sort of think about it, and there's no easy answer, right? I mean, you know, transitions, they just demand a lot out of you. If you're going through a significant one

Jean Gomes: 24:08

scenario, I'm really interested in your thoughts on which is you advocate, future back thinking, to help executive shape of that leadership role from day one. So they're stepping into the future. And we know that imagination can be quite a challenge for certain individuals that particularly have kind of groomed, a very pragmatic mindset. And then more comfortable with the now forward approach the Gulf forward approach. Can you talk about how you've helped your clients to envisage the future more successfully?

Michael D Watkins: 24:38

So I try to make it really as concrete as possible, Jean, you know, and so, what I say is, first of all, it's important to pick a time frame, right? Pick it, I call it an era right of time and say, Okay, we're going to be talking about the next three years, or two years or whatever the right timeframe is for sometimes when people are ready to transition And the other question, which I think is equally important, is, at the end of that era, what will be possible for you? And by possible for you, I mean, what options will you have created for yourself? What, you know, resources will you have accumulated? What relationships have you will you have built, that will lay the foundation for the next era that you're gonna go? Right? And so that's the sort of exercise that I take, I take people through Jean, and, you know, mostly, it seems to help, it seems to help and, and, you know, people are more likely and more intuitively going to think about what they'll have accomplished, than to think about, what's the work that they're going to do to create the set of options and resources and relationships that will then take them onward? Right? I'm working with a senior r&d leader at a big pharmaceutical company right now. And, you know, he's, he's got a few more years and role. But beyond that, you know, he's looking at multiple possibilities, right? Should I continue? Will I get into a more senior role in this organisation, but hey, maybe I'm gonna go out and start another company, which he did before he took this, this current role, right. And so asking the question, you know, how do you want to focus some portion of your time to lay the foundations for both of those things, right to be seen more as an enterprise leader that prepares you for the, you know, the more senior position in the organisation, building that external Thought Leadership Profiles, so that you're more, you know, you're recognised when the time comes, and, you know, private equity firms are in that space and ready to invest in you. It's the it's that kind of thinking that I encourage people to, to do.

Arjun Sahdev: 27:45

Michael, I love that question, what will be possible? And it's just made me think, in your recent conversations you've been having, given the backdrop of developments hyperspeed, the developments in AI? How was that question change? How are the answers to that question changing for people that you're talking to?

Michael D Watkins: 28:05

It's just such a good question. Arjun. It's such an interesting time. Right. You know, I again, just background, you know, I think we live in absolutely extraordinary times. And, you know, my my mantra personally is every day is a new adventure. Right? Now, sometimes those adventures are wonderful. And sometimes they're awful, but never a dull moment, you know? And it's kind of like that for leaders today. They're living in this, just this incredible, you know, tumult, right, I'm trying to deal with things. And partly, that's just the political, economic, you know, usual social stuff. But technology has got everyone you know, in a world, right. And that's, in part because it's moving so fast. Right. And I think that what I see leaders struggling with, you know, is how fast and move with this technology, because if you don't go fast enough, you know, it could be the end of your organisation, potentially, right. But the flip side is if you get going too fast, and the technology is advancing faster than your implementation is, you know, you're gonna have made investments that arguably may not have been, you know, particularly good ones. So there's this real tension I see leaders facing about how fast we move with this. And how do we do it safely? And how do we decide whether we're going to do more internal, you know, kind of employee facing or internal operational applications or more externally facing customer impacting applications, right. But I just, you know, I think that the bottom line, again, back up, my son runs AI startup in Toronto, focusing on it on HR these days, and he sent me the link to chat GBT in about 10 days after it was released in November of 2022. I'm sorry. And he said to me, you know, your dad, you need to look at this right? And so I was, you know, I was in it pretty early. And I've stayed pretty engaged. And I was probably the first faculty member at IMD that really got to grips with with AI. And, you know, there was this initial Oh, my God, it's going to change everything. And then there's been the inevitable counter revolution of, you know, oh, it's all overblown, you know, I'm sorry, but it's going to change everything, it's absolutely going to change everything, right? We are just in the calm before the storm, in my opinion, right and the calm, what the calm consists of is organisations figuring out how to really leverage this technology, right, and begin to truly implement it at scale. And when that really begins to take hold, I think we're going to see absolutely astonishing magnitude of change in the business environment. And that's not even going I guess, coming back to your question, right. The other thing I say to leaders these days is don't focus on where the technology is exclusively, right. Anticipate where the technology is going to go. And what some of the implications will be because it's developing so rapidly, right? You know, what's GPT? Five gonna look like? Six, seven? Right? What's Gemini super advanced gonna be like, what is Claude? You know, 15? Gotta gonna do for us. Yeah. But it's also kind of scary, because there's people that believe that there is nothing that these systems won't be able to do. You know, in terms of human capability, right? Where does that take us? I mean, you know, so anyway, I'm not really truly answering your question, Arjun, other than to say it's super hard to grapple with these these challenges right now. Yeah. But But what do you think? I mean, I'll turn the question around, if that's okay, what are you seeing and thinking about this?

Arjun Sahdev: 31:58

So, I think the, there's huge amount of uncertainty in terms of where this is gonna take businesses, and also new business models. I think there's going to be a nexus point between some of these emerging technologies like AI, web three, and you know, kind of biotech and a range of others that's going to completely it's going to completely blow our minds. And I think it's coming faster than anyone could even imagine. I think that the struggle is going to be making that transition. I'm thinking particularly about people, like, you know, cousins I've got that are coming out of university and wondering what they're going to do with their careers. The struggle is going to be making that transition between something that's quite traditional to, you know, I want to be a future leader, a leader of tomorrow. And I'm faced now with this unprecedented situation where all these emerging technologies are kind of are coming together at once. And it's so hard to predict. So I feel it's quite overwhelming and heavy. But I feel immense excitement.

Michael D Watkins: 33:10

I know. Yeah, I know. And that's completely. That's completely that's not mutually incompatible, right? I mean, I think there can be both, you know, incredible excitement, real trepidation. But we want to see what's going to happen, right? I was at dinner with one of my faculty, one of my programme groups, you know, so I teach a programme at IMD called appropriate transition to business leadership, right. It's one of my Andy's big executive programmes. And we had a and it's a two week module kind, of course, and so we have a dinner at the, at the end of the first module, and one of the participants, you know, introduced a really fun little thought experiment, he said, If you had a one way pass to any time and place, past or future, where would you go? Well, that's pretty interesting. Right? He then proceeded to say that, you know, he said he wanted to go to a certain time and his wife was outraged because it was I thought was hilarious, but, I mean, it's just a thought experiment. Let's be frank, we're not actually embarking. Right. But but my answer the question was, I wanted to go, you know, sort of 500 years ahead of where we are, right. And he said something interesting, which he says that, you know, the vast majority of people want to go back to someplace, I don't want to go back anywhere, you know, I can read history books, I don't need to do that, you know, I can go reenact battle this, you know, if I if I if I want to, you know if that's what I'm interested in, I want to see what happens. I'm, and I want to go far enough ahead that all this will have arguably shaken out to some degree, the climate, you know, the technology you know, I guess the worry is that I'll arrive and be the sole human being, you know, kind of on the planet, but I don't really think that's what will happen. I just think we we have no idea, right? We have no idea what its gonna look like in 500 years. But I want to know, you know, I want to see what happens. I'm really disappointed and annoyed, that's not gonna happen, unfortunately.

Jean Gomes: 35:25

Well, who knows? I mean, there might be some technology that preserved part of you to go and experience it in the future. You know, coming back to your your thought about, you know, what, how do we how do we navigate forward, I think we've been looking for the last five, even 10 years of this notion of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, there hasn't actually been that revolutionary in terms of change. I mean, there's a lot a lot of change. But it hasn't been that level of seismic disruption that you've seen in past industrial revolutions. For a lot of people, it's been quite incremental in many respects. And this feels like it's going to be the that point where many parts of the economy globally and nationally are going to be disrupted, and people's careers are going to be upended, and education systems are going to be updated, and so on in a very short period of time. And so it makes me think about trying to distinguish between the possibilities of new business models and what human beings are actually for in those. And actually figuring out the things that only human beings can do at every stage. And I don't think a lot of a lot of executives are asking that question. They're still looking, they're projecting forward, the assumptions of the past about how you staff and organisation and so on. And, you know, think about the things that you have been saying, Michael, in this conversation, they're all incredibly human problems that you're describing, you know, the reality of what it's like to be in that human state around things. So you know, your well being being a massive source of competitive advantage. Because if you've got more energy than other leaders, that's a source of value, you get more done in less time, you inspire and motivate people. And so I think those things have energy of situational understanding that an AI model can't do, because it's only fed with what it's got decision making, forming, and enriching relationships, and so on those sources of human value creation are going to be the things to focus in on if you want to manage your career forward.

Michael D Watkins: 37:33

I completely agree with that. I think the one the point you sort of alluded to there, too, right of the kind of the looking the looking at the now I'm projecting forward, and I see this related thing I said, alluded to it briefly, right of treating the technology itself as static, right. As opposed to something that's just going to continue to, to build and build and build, right. And, and when I whenever I hear someone say, well, AI can't do X, I always say you want to add yet to that sentence, right? Yeah, AI can't do that yet. Right? Yes. But there's, there's, you know, there was a big study done, you know, a couple of months back of over 1000 AI researchers, and one of the questions was, how long will it be before AI can do everything the human can do cognitively only better. The outside estimate was 2040. Right? That's pretty extraordinary. So you also think something, I just want to grab something you said to Jean, about previous industrial revolutions. Right? So cuz I wrote an article recently about general purpose technologies. Right. And the idea that, you know, we've seen these general purpose technologies, and you know, steam was an example. Electricity was an example, the internet, I think everyone more or less agrees was a general purpose technology and a general purpose technology is one that has these vast economic and social impacts, and kind of enables a lot of other technological developments. And I can't imagine that people can argue that this is a general purpose technology with all the what that means. And in that article, as you know, what, what I did that was, I think, interesting was I looked at the timeframes for the, you know, 75% implementation of those technologies, you know, Steam, it was 100 years, right? Electricity, it was 60 years, you know, internet it was 20 years. Ai, what's it gonna be? 510 You know, I mean, it sucks. And I think, you know, human beings are remarkably good at adapting given time. And that's my biggest worry about this one is not that we're not able to adapt but it It's gonna happen to so fast, but it's gonna be super hard and very disruptive as a result. So that sort of pressure

Jean Gomes: 40:14

Well, it's the end of the week and you know, like, down like, no, no, no, no, not at all. But I do want to shift your latest book, because this is an incredibly succinct blueprint for how to think differently. So I want to start with your definition of strategic thinking, because its meaning is fairly elusive, when you ask executives often I think,

Michael D Watkins: 40:39

so again, if it's okay, I'll just a tiny bit of context, right, you know, so I mean, the conversation we just had, and by thinking about it as one reason I wrote this book, right, because I truly believe that strategic thinking is one pillar of what's gonna help people get through this business leaders lead organisations through this right. And I think that I don't think there's been a time in recent memory when strategic thinking, you know, has been more important than it is right now. Yeah. And, and I, you know, I'm sort of working with this idea of these kinds of three pillars of, you know, moving into the future. And strategic thinking is one adaptive organisation, and especially adaptive culture is the second, right, because if you if you can get focused on the right things as a result of the strategic thinking, you still need to have your organisation move rapidly enough to make the changes necessary. And then the third piece is kind of resilient leadership. Right, which is, how do you help leaders deal with the enormous pressures? Right, so that's my little, my little triangle? strategic thinking, you know, to get to your question directly. One of the reasons I thought this was a great book to write was exactly what you just said, Jean, which is people do not have a good definition of what it is exactly right. And, you know, you talk to leaders about this, and it's not uncommon for them to have been said, had said to them at some point in their careers, you know, Arjun, you need to become a better strategic thinker, you know, you need to work on your strategic thinking ability, you know, an urgent kind of goes, Okay, you know, like, what exactly are you telling me here, right. And there was very much in the interviews that I did for the book, I know it when I see it kind of thing, right? And that's just not good enough, right? It's just not good enough, because you can't help people understand where they are, you can't help people get better, which I believe you can help people get better, right? Unless you've got a reasonably, you know, clear view of what it is we're talking about. Yeah. And so I think one of the contributions, at least I hope, one of the contributions from the book is to try and clarify some of that, right, and clarify a few different layers, you know. So first of all, it's about thinking and not about strategy. Right? There's plenty of works out there about strategic planning, strategic analysis, strategic frameworks, you know, that's, so I feel like that's kind of covered. And you won't find a single reference to that in the book. And that was intentional, right? There's no reference to classic strategy frameworks, anywhere in that book. What I wanted to focus on was the thinking part, right? What's the thinking capabilities that let leaders do things like envision the future, right, or navigate through complex political systems, or connect the dots between different trends that are emerging in the environment and know what's important out there? Right? The thinking is the focus, not the strategy. Right? Now the thinking has to be an aid of doing things that are strategic for the organization's strategic meaning longer term, bigger picture, more directional in their, their orientation. So then, you know, and then I reached back to some work I actually did with a colleague at Harvard. Probably more than 10 years at this go at this point, which is a book that I wrote with a guy named Max Bazerman called predictable surprises, the disasters you should have seen coming and how to avoid them. And that book was really about the idea that, you know, most of the disasters that happen, you know, at least some people recognise them well in advance. In any organisation, there were people that were already aware of it, right. But for some reason, that recognition and prioritisation of that particular threat didn't happen the way it should have. Yeah. And so from that, I kind of built this little RPM model, I call it right, recognise prioritise mobilise, right. Great strategic, strong strategic thinkers are able to recognise emerging threats and opportunities Ah, the opportunities are as important as the threats, prioritise the right things, and critically mobilise their organisations to, to do something about it. And, you know, that RPM is, you know, it's RPM for a reason, right? Because the speed around that cycle is important. And then I drew on some work that was was done, actually by the US Army. Before the, you know, before the Gulf Wars on, how do you move faster than your opponent? Right? How do you that the language that was used at the time was getting inside their decision loop? So that they're still trying to, you know, respond to the last thing you did? While you're already enacting? You know, the future, right. So that notion of speed through that loop of recognise, prioritise mobilise is pretty important. I haven't developed that as fully as I want to, right. So that's another that that that sort of the value of speed around that loop is something I think I've got a little more work to do actually on, but that was the basis. And then from there, disentangle that into the sort of six disciplines, right, which I view as kind of ways of thinking that contribute to your ability to do that RPM process, right, pattern recognition, systems analysis, mental agility, right, that's recognised, prioritise. structured problem solving, that's how do you move your team in a rigorous, rapid way through complicated problem solving, visioning. You mentioned the future back, how do you not just vision but you make it a shared vision, and you communicate it powerfully and simply to align the organisation. And then probably the one that surprised people the most about the book is the inclusion of political savvy as a discipline of strategic thinking. But, you know, the people I know, the leaders I know, who are good at this are incredibly strategic and how they navigate through the political networks internally and externally. Right. They're very, very, very good at knowing where power and influence lies, how to mobilise it. Things as simple as what's the right ordinateur? Talk to people? I mean, there's a lot of strategy, right? In political savvy, and that's why I included it.

Arjun Sahdev: 47:26

Michael, you pose a really interesting question that I'd love to get your view on, where the strategic thinkers are born or made. And one of the things you define strategic capacity, as is endowment experience and an exercise almost like this formula. Could you unpack that for us, please?

Michael D Watkins: 47:44

So you know, like, it's, it would be arguably still interesting to write a book on strategic thinking, if the answer were was Jean either is or is not. Right? He's born with it, or he isn't, you know, end of story. Yeah. I don't believe that. And it's not been my experience, right, that that's the case, because I think there's a lot you can do to build up people's strategic thinking capability. But there are limits. Right. Before I was a leadership, Professor, I was in negotiation and diplomacy professor at Harvard, right, started studying big international negotiations and teaching programmes on negotiation. And, you know, there was no question that at the end of a semester long programme on negotiation, people were demonstrably better negotiators than when they started the programme right. Now, how much more is it? 10%? Is it 20%? It's certainly not 50%. You know, but, you know, I mean, the joke I always used to make at the end of those programmes is, you know, okay, I've made to 20% Better negotiators, I want to, I want a piece of the action for every negotiation you engage in, right for the remainder of your lives, right for that, because you think about it through the whole sweep of all the work you do a 10% increase in performance is huge. So, so then Argent, back to your point, that little formula. Right, you know, the way I conceptualise it is look, we do have an endowment, cognitively. And emotionally. We do. Right. You know, I mean, we know from things like IQ curves, and I definitely don't want to get into dodgy territory here. Right. But there's just no question that people come with different levels of what would be called general intelligence. Yeah. And I think it's equally clear that strategic thinking ability is correlated to some degree with some of those parameters right. Now, you know, I very quickly then go to multiple intelligences and you know, the the kind of EQ that underpins political savvy is also important, right? So you're going to want to pin it all on IQ. But even there, you'll see people who are more naturally able to tune in to what people are carrying About or better at reading the room, and it's just something inherent in the way their brains are structured. Right? So I kind of wanted to both point that out, but also kind of take it off the table, you know, a little bit, if that makes sense and say, okay, you know, yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna have this and download. The experience is all the things you've done to help develop and realise your capacity, up to the point in time when maybe you're, you know, in early adulthood, right? When things begin to kind of become a little less, a little less fluid. My poor children, right, I, you know, I was thinking 20 years ago about what the world was gonna look like, when they became adults. And I was already pretty concerned, you know, at that point, and so, you know, I, my kids, we played games, right? Civilization strategy games, you know, we did exercises on word connection at the table. And, you know, I'm sure it's, it's sure it's gonna create multiple years of future therapy for my children, but, you know, I help them develop their strategic thinking capability, right? And there's no question that it did that I did. What I did helped them. Yeah, I did other things, right. They went, they all went to wilderness camps, and learned how to, you know, be in the wilderness and survive physically, right? Because you just don't know what's going to happen at some level. My point is not that I'm crazy, although Arjun you're looking at me like I am. And you may well be right. But as you know, as the Billy Joel, saga goes, you know, you may be right. I may be crazy, but just maybe a lunatic you're looking for right. Getting. Anyway, but but I think that's the experience part, right, which is how do you help people through their developmental years, you know, build up their capability, right. And then the final one, which is I think the point in the book, to a degree is exercise, like literally having a cognitive exercise routine that you do, and things you do with your team, and otherwise that help really build up that capability. I mean, I wrote not it's not in the book, but it's an article I wrote recently about, you know, a 30 minute cognitive workup daily, right? And it's things you would expect to see, you know, it's a bit of strategic journaling, it's read that read some read the news for 10 minutes, but try to see the connections between what's going on. It's playing, it's playing games, right. So again, my poor children, right, we we play Wordle and connections and one other game every day, competitively, right. And so that's good for the brain. It just is, yeah. I'm not a particularly gifted chess player, my children, especially my boys wipe the floor with me fairly routinely. But I do chess dot coms daily puzzle every day, right? Because it just gets you into the mode of thinking about action and reaction moving counter movement exercises, certain muscles in the brain. And I think from there, you get into, okay, how do you build strategic capability and thinking capability in your team? Because you shouldn't be the sole strategist, right as a CEO. Anyway, hopefully, that's, that's helpful. So let's pick up on the first of the six disciplines in terms of pattern recognition at Smart executives avoid the intelligence traps such as confusing pattern recognition with pattern expectation, or overclaiming, or having to be the expert and so on. How do you Yeah, to see more clearly what's really going on? So it's exactly the right question, Jean, about this, right? Because I think, you know, human pattern recognition capability has been an is essential to our survival. Right. You know, our ability to distinguish important threats and opportunities in the environment is part of what's made us successful as a species. You know, there's no question about that. Yeah. analytics is super important, right? You need to merge this with the ability that we have today to do strong analytics, once you've kind of pointed in the right direction, you need to do checking against the biases, right, you know, are we operating on a sunk cost set of assumptions are we caught in overconfidence, you know, of some form? Are we doing good probabilistic reasoning about what is going on? You need to do those things, right? Because otherwise you can fall into some of the classic traps that people like Daniel Kahneman and others, so so ably illustrated for us. Yeah. And then I, as I said, I think there's, you know, there's immersion, there's, there's mentoring, right, there's almost apprenticeship is the way I think about it, right? You know, Jean's a great strategic thinker, artisans, you know, a promising strategic thinker, Arjun is going to be the apprentice to the master and learn about how Jean thinks about the world. Right? And what does he look for? out there? So I think there are again, things you can do to sort of help help build up that capability. Sorry, what the voices allergy season already.

Arjun Sahdev: 57:14

Michael, let's, let's move on to systems analysis. What advice can you give to help maintain a more holistic understanding of a corporate system given its inevitable complexity?

Michael D Watkins: 57:28

So first of all, I think origin that complexity is at the core of most of the challenges that people are facing today, leaders are facing today, right? You know, the classic bucur framework, which is probably 20 years old, but as never, in my opinion been more relevant than it is today. Right? It starts with volatility. And then it goes to uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, but I think the heart of it is actually complexity, right? Because there's just so many moving parts and everything we're dealing with these days. And then of course, you overlay uncertainty overlay, rapid change in volatility in the way we've talked about it. That then leads you to think, Okay, well, how do I deal better with complexity? Right, what are the tools at my disposal to help me navigate through a highly complex situations and, you know, systems analysis is, among the best tools, we have to do that, right. There are others, I mean, I would point to scenario planning as a way to kind of navigate through something related to complexity with a, you know, some uncertainty kind of thrown in, right. But at its core, you know, what a systems model is, is a powerful simplification of something really complicated, right? And powerful in the sense that it helps you really understand the key drivers of the system and the interactions and cause effects in the system, simply because it lets you reason about something that otherwise would be overwhelmingly complicated to deal with. And that's, to me the core of the value of systems analysis. Now, you know, as we've talked about, AI, arguably is letting us do grapple with much more complexity than we previously were able to write. And so but I still think that systems analysis is important. And often AI is itself building systems like models of reality, right? Inside those those neural networks. Yeah. The example I use in the book is organisational systems, right? So I personally do quite a bit of work on organisation design and, you know, you need a way to think about organisations that's simple and powerful, right. And just thinking about them as a morass of, you know, interactions. It's not all that helpful, right. But when you start to say, look, there are key elements of the organisation there is strategy. There was structure, there was processes, right? There are capabilities, you know, and you can begin to imagine how you could use that diagnostically to start to look at the different pieces of your organisation, right? Well, what is the strategy? Does the structure support the strategy? Right? Are the processes and systems delivering what we need to to realise the strategy? Right? Do we have the people and capabilities in the organisation. And you can sort of see by disaggregating, something complicated into these elements, you can to a degree, focus on the elements. And then you've got to put it back together, you've got to go Argent, you use the word earlier, back to the holistic view of fit among these pieces, you know. So that's an example I use. And I think, you know, this is stuff I teach to my executives a lot saying, like, you know, you need a way to think systematically about organisations if you're really going to be the architect of transformation, as an example, you know, but I think any domain modelling, systems modelling is valuable, right, understanding tipping points, understanding feedback loops, understanding, the language of systems analysis, even in and of itself, I think, has a lot of value.

Jean Gomes: 1:01:13

So you've, you've created your model of the organisation that simplifies and allows you to get a handle on complexity, you then talk about the third kind of discipline being this mental agility? And how level shifting can help you to think more strategically? Can we talk about that?

Michael D Watkins: 1:01:31

Sure. So so when I originally was going to was sort of coming to the point of starting to write the book, I actually originally had seven disciplines, right, which arguably, probably would have been better than six from a sales point of view. I'm kidding. But sounds better, right? All great things happen in sevens. But mental agility, I kind of package two things together, Jean, and in mental agility, and one's what you just talked about, which is that that sort of cloud to ground thinking, ability, right to look at things from the big picture point of view, the more holistic origin point of view, dive down into the detail, but not get caught in the detail and move with intentionality, you know, between the levels of analysis, and help people move between the levels of analysis, right. Another way, you know, a metaphor I use sometimes is that are you know, are you on the dance floor or on? Are you on the balcony, watching the dance floor, right is another sort of way to think about it. This, by the way, is an example of something that you can exercise, right, you can start to think about, you know, I tell my executive programme participants, right, play with this in your, in your team meetings, right? What's going on down on the ground level, if I stepped back up and looked at it from a higher level perspective, what would I be noticing about the group dynamic, right, the energy of the group. But the key to me is that it's the ability to move between the levels, but it's really critically, the ability to do it with intention, right, not get caught down in the weeds, not get caught up in the clouds, but really move in the way that's most productive, I guess, given the situation. And then the other discipline was really around the sort of chess master skill set, right of, you know, looking forward a couple of moves and thinking about, you know, counter moves and counter actions. And that pretty quickly intersects with pattern recognition. Because we know chess masters see things in the in the chessboard configurations that mere mortals do not, right. They don't just see a set of pieces, they see energy, they see possibility, right, they see potential sequences of things to do, right. And there's, there's some real, I think value in that. So that's the that's the packaging that I get of mental agility, if that makes sense.

Jean Gomes: 1:03:54

Can we just stay with that ability to play out the game of consequences from home because that, I think, is one of the more difficult aspects. I mean, a lot of people aren't great at chest, simply because they haven't got the ability and the discipline and the energy and the resilience to keep thinking things through. They'd like to think about the first move the second move, maybe even the third move, but life is in the nth consequences. And it's in the 10th movers. How do you train people to, to do that to kind of actually have the discipline and the motivation to keep thinking it through?

Michael D Watkins: 1:04:32

play lots of chess, that's a joke. So I think there are there are, but it but it unquestionably helps. Right? Just I mean, just doing that daily chess problem, right? You start to see more than one or two moves ahead. You know, even if you've never played chess, you start to see things and patterns start to emerge for you a bit. So sometimes I think it's, you know, it's certain simple things you can do, Jean, right. So there and again, I'd want to anchor this just not in you, but also with you and your team thinking through important things. And there was a US General and I haven't been able to find his name sort of back in the Kennedy era, who was famous for basically asking one question, and the question was, and then what? Right? We're going to do XYZ, and then what XYZ, then what right, you know, just keep, he kept pushing people to go through the exercise of thinking through consequence. And beginning to, you know, explore alternative points of view. I think scenario planning can help you with this, right, some strong scenario work, can help you think about the future and then maybe reason backward to where we want to be want to take things. And I do think that future back thinking is valuable, right, to the extent that you can do it. Because you want to be, you know, yes, you want to be envisioning where you want to go. But you also want to think directionally, how am I going to start to move the organisation towards that? Yeah, so that helped. Yeah,

Jean Gomes: 1:06:12

it's a it's a big topic. And, yeah, in the time, we've got it starting to just unlock a few thoughts for people about what they

Michael D Watkins: 1:06:19

actually do to sprint one more block, right, which is, you know, getting, making sure your team has enough time to actually engage in strategic thinking and think things through, you know, the most common excuse for why people don't do strategic thinking is I'm too busy running the business. You know, and I, and I always sort of my reaction to that is, you mean, you're too busy running the business into the ground? Right, because if you're not engaging in strategic thinking, your business's not gonna persist. Yeah. So maybe, maybe sometimes, it's just the act of devoting enough time to really working with your team through the consequences of the choices you're gonna make. That's actually what the structured problem solving chapter gets into in a fair amount of detail, too.

Arjun Sahdev: 1:07:10

That's one thing I wanted to just touch on. Because I think the beauty of thinking about the consequences is it really helps you break down and create this method, methodical approach to tackling challenges, right? So when it comes to structured problem solving, and that discipline, how do you? How do you think about combining creativity and pragmatism? So the kind of juxtaposition of those two, those two things as well?

Michael D Watkins: 1:07:38

So I call it I just wrote an article for Harvard Business Review, magazine, January, February on problem framing and reframing origin, right. And the tendency that leadership teams have to jump to solutions without really thinking through the core of what the problem is, you know. And I think that we also talked a little bit about the importance of both doing divergent and convergent thinking, and devoting time to both those things, right, knowing when to open it up, right. You know, I mean, brainstorming, but also, there's this there's a technique called frame storming, believe it or not, that's about what are alternative ways to frame the problem that we're facing. Yeah, that's a divergence. But then, of course, you've got to do the convergence, right. And so just the act of separating those processes, I think helps, you know, with, because the divergent is inherently it's the creative part of what you're doing. Right. I think the other piece of it is the connecting the dots piece, right, which to me flows out of pattern recognition, but also a lot of dialogue about how do you see the connections between what's going on there? And again, what are the relevant ones we need to be to be paying attention to?

Jean Gomes: 1:08:53

So I love the idea of brainstorming and redefining the problem? Where can people find out more about how to do that?

Michael D Watkins: 1:09:00

So there's January February issue of Harvard Business Review, if you just go online? It Yeah, the title is to solve a tough problem reframe it is the title of the article. And it basically lays out a five phase model for thinking about different ways to reframe problems. Yeah, yeah. Probably the best, the best source.

Jean Gomes: 1:09:24

Yeah, and I've definitely recommend that I really enjoyed that article. So the act of visioning, which is that our next discipline is perhaps one of the most challenging tasks for executives, as we've kind of covered a little bit before Can you can you walk us through the kind of motivational drivers for constructing that compelling vision?

Michael D Watkins: 1:09:43

Absolutely. Right. So, you know, and again, I I tried to be careful about framing up what this is in a useful way, right, because the conventional wisdom is Arjun has a perfect vision of where things are gonna go Oh my gosh, she's brilliant. And, you know, aren't we fortunate to have him and you know, on with the show, right. And I view first of all, I believe, I believe leaders should start with a personal vision for where they think they want the organisation to go. Like, I think that's a good place to begin, which is to have a point of view, as a leader about where you want to go. But you very quickly should be making that the creation of the vision for the organisation a shared activity, in part, because it's going to inject, you know, more realism into it, in part because, you know, 97% of the time I made that number up, the vision is not going to end up being exactly what happens, right? And you need to be able to flex in the face of it. And if it's just your vision, Jean, and it's not working out, then boy, you know, Jean, what an idiot, right? He had this vision that wasn't realistic, you know, gosh, look where we are now. Again, joking. Whereas if you're, if you engage in a shared visioning activity with your team, using perhaps your visions and starting point, and really get people to coalesce around this is the, this is the clear picture of where we're going to try to go and how we're going to feel if we get there and why it would be motivating to pursue that vision. There's true value in doing that, you know, and but it also has this, this added value of when conditions change, we, you know, can make the shift to, to a new reality, because these days, you know, any vision you create, now, that's three, three or more years out is virtually guaranteed not to work out the way, the way you hope now, I still think the vision is important, right? Having that destination is important. directionally taking your organisation towards it. But also acknowledging, you know, that you're going to need to flex almost inevitably, as you do that. And then I think, you know, good visions, I think use that word motivational drivers, they, they tap into people, things people care about, right, you know, achievement, achieving something great. Winning, you know, I mean, let's face it, people love too often, right in business feel like they're winning. So as you're as you're doing the work of visioning, making sure it sort of psychologically and motivationally sound work and taps into those underlying motivators. And then in that chapter, I also talk about powerful simplification, right, which is the idea that a vision that can't be communicated powerfully and simply isn't very useful, right? The whole point is to try and align the energy, I'll go back to energy right to pull people energetically forward. And if you can't communicate that powerfully and simply, no, it's just not going to do that.

Scott Allender: 1:12:54

Friends, if you're enjoying the evolving leader, I encourage you to order a copy of Jean's new book leading in a non linear world, which provides a new understanding of mindset, and how to build it in order to thrive in a more uncertain future. It's available online at all major retailers, and there's a link in the show notes.

Arjun Sahdev: 1:13:15

You spoke earlier about the political skill and savviness of leaders being super important. And I imagine it's part of the reason why so many leaders have become become successful. It's their kind of proficiency in that in that area. But how do you think they should? They should overlay this and think about this in the context of strategy and strategic thought.

Michael D Watkins: 1:13:41

So it gets a little trickier, Jim, because we're kind of in you know, the intersection of strategy and execution to a degree, right. I mean, one way to think about political savvy. And by the way, when I when I use political savvy like this, I'm kind of almost implicitly assuming that you're doing it to to achieve important valuable things and not just for purely self aggrandisement. Yeah. And I taught negotiation and diplomacy for many years and view this, you know, as a technology, right, there's a technology of influence. There's a technology of negotiation, and the way that technology is used, right, you know, can vary widely. So I'm, I'm focusing more on the Okay, origin, you want to move your organisation forward, you want to make that big acquisition, I'll use a concrete example. Right. But in order to make that acquisition, you need to, you know, have approvals from three states and the federal trade commission and you need your board to be on board with that. And so you've got a lot of Alliance building, and negotiating to do right. And so, the strategic thinking there is it's less about the fact that you're kind of creating a strategy and more about you're being strategic and how you're doing this work. You're being thoughtful about who are my stakeholders, you're being thoughtful about what are the networks of influence that are operating here? You're thinking through momentum, right? And how you build momentum behind something. That's the strategic part of political savvy, in my view. And the people who are good at it, you know, I talked about Gene Woods, the CEO, I mentioned who, you know, it's, it's an amazing story, right? He, when I started working with him, he was leading, significant but modest sized healthcare system, you know, in the, in the southeast us. And today, he's leading one of the largest healthcare systems in the country, in the United States. And that was done by multiple, you know, combinations and deals that no one thought was possible. Right? So this guy is just an absolute master of building those alliances in support of getting great things done. And that's political savvy at its finest. To me.

Jean Gomes: 1:16:07

So Michael, as we come to the end of our time, together, what, what's next for you? What do you what's?

Michael D Watkins: 1:16:14

Well, you know, that there's a there's two answers that question, Jean, Ron, what is one is what should I be doing? And the other is, what am I interested in these days? Right, you know, what I should be doing is finishing the third edition of the first 90 days, that's what I should be doing. You know, and it is what I'm gonna focus on next. But, you know, what's so hard about that is just gonna be talked about it just there's so much interesting going on right now. Right? That it's hard not to, you know, to get get pulled into writing about some of this. So I mean, I, you know, I've recently written articles about getting two API's to talk to each other. I've written an article about general purpose technologies. I've written an article that was co co authored by both of, you know, Chuck GBT and Gemini. You know, together. I'm even doing stuff like this I've written about, we didn't get into mindfulness. But I've written an article about mindfulness and leadership right? In. You might even think I'm a little unfocused at the moment, at the moment, if you know, well, I'm

Jean Gomes: 1:17:17

just wondering, what would the author of this book say to you right now?

Michael D Watkins: 1:17:22

Physician, heal Thyself is what the author of that book would say, set your priorities and, yeah, but but I think it's, it's a product of the times, right? And, you know, I think, I'm sure like you guys, you know, there's just so much that's important and interesting going on. And you kind of want to be part of the conversation to a degree and it's really hard to resist doing that. And also, there's so much going on with AI in my, in my, you know, at IMD at Genesis that it's, it's hard not to get pulled into it. Yeah. Which I guess goes to show you that I need I need serious strategic thinking. Workshop, right or something. Get me back on track

Jean Gomes: 1:18:05

for yourself. Yeah. Well, when I was reading the book, I mean, one of the things that, you know, is the perennial challenge for leadership teams I'm working with the moment is how to prioritise. And it's almost like a it's an existential crisis for many leadership teams, because they go round and round in this, you know, conversation never really arrive and anything and reading your book, you know, I recognise just how true that was for me in my organisation as well, you know. So I think it's never been more important, Jean Wright than it is now. Yeah, absolutely. But this is where I want to, you know, just because I don't often make such a strong endorsement of, you know, of the books that our guests bring. But I really do recommend that everybody gets themselves a copy of this, whether you're at the start of your career, or you're in the midst of it, I think, okay, some of it, you will already understand and know, but there's so much here in terms of Brett putting together a very clear framework for people that will provide some alleviation of the anxiety that, you know, we're feeling right now, which I think is, which is a great testament to it. So Michael, just on behalf of Arjun, myself and the whole of the evolving leader, think team, thank you so much for being generous with your time giving us so much of the the insights into your work. And, you know, at some stage, we'd love to have you back on again, if you're, if you're willing to do that to talk about all the other things that we didn't get around to, but for now, until my other distractions we'll hear about all the other things that you shouldn't be doing but you have been doing, which you'll be which will be truly wonderful. And we always love Canadian guests. They seem to blend the perfect match of European philosophical All and humane thought with American drives. So we love that that makes but anyway to our audience, that's it and until the next time remember, the world is evolving by you