Minter Dial: You Lead

"You have to be both peasant and poet."
"When you lead, you will allocate sufficient time to understand and learn from your experiences and experiments."
We interview Minter Dial about leadership in the business of the future.

00:35 Insights & Takeaways
10:00 Interview

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Book on Amazon: here
Author website: here

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Transcript

Marcus Kirsch: 0:15

Welcome to the wicked podcast where we read business books you don't have time for. I'm Marcus Kirsch.

Troy Norcross: 0:21

And I'm Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch: 0:23

and we are your co hosts for the wicked podcast,

Troy Norcross: 0:26

we take from the 1000s of business books out there and test the author's ideas by comparing them to real world challenges. With over 40 years or projects between us, we've got quite a bit to compare against. We give you the condensed takeaways followed by an interview with the author's

Marcus Kirsch: 0:41

we know you want actions, not theories and his actions that we want to help shape, because that's what the wicked podcast is all about helping you to become a wicked company.

Troy Norcross: 0:52

So Marcus, who's on the show today?

Marcus Kirsch: 0:56

Oh, today, we have our both of our dear friend and mentor dial here with his new book, A you lead? Which I think is his fourth book. Correct me if I'm wrong, we corrected in a note? Yes. Great book. He said he it took him three tries or something. It took me nearly six years to bring this all together. So super interesting book, tonnes of stuff, especially for leaders to lead and for maybe other people to know as well, who they are and how they should bring themselves into organisation. So lovely chat, however, what were you takeaways and potential actions, you would advise your clients to say take from the book into reality, I

Troy Norcross: 1:38

think when he was talking about authenticity, and having a North Star, and the way he described building a North Star, and avoiding what I called the bubble gum trap, that was really important. So I think the advice that I would give a client is to really look at your vision, look at how you're have a vision as a leader, and make sure that it has all of the right components, one of the key of which the central of which is, it's gotta be personal, it's got to be able to stir and draw emotion in you in an authentic way that gets transmitted to your customers, to your employees, to your other stakeholders. And that one was really, really key. The other one was kind of a segue conversation that happened at the end of the show, I thought it was really, really great. And it is an opportunity, that mentor is pointing out that we need more discourse, which is good, structured, constructive conversation on difficult topics. So whether that's gender bias, whether that's racism, whether that's, you know, homosexuality, kind of discrimination, having those conversations, and getting them out in the open is so important. So if you as an organisation, can create those kind of environments where the real genuine conversations can happen, and have disease, a diversity of ideas, and not just diversity, of gender, and sexuality, and race. That's when the magic happens. So those are my two big takeaways. What about you?

Marcus Kirsch: 3:16

Yeah, well, I really loved the fact that some of the leadership aspects easily transfer to everybody else, you know, in theory. In reality, there isn't actually any difference between whoever sits on top and everybody else in the organisation, we're all people. One of the themes that has come out of many other books and people we talked to is that everyone has a bias. And I think it's better to know that we do instead to admit that we do. They're not, because that builds a better trusted environment and an acceptance that, yeah, people make mistakes, even the leadership makes mistakes. Um, and I think that's where that hookway set personal comes in. So being more personal, I think really makes a good leader, even to the point where you're rather vulnerable that no, I think there's a big trend here that seems to be like be more vulnerable, be more humble, as a leader and he will be you will be deleted at the future needs. Because it will create more authentic mission statements nor stores, whatever you name it. And it's easier, it's brave and easy to stand up for. And I think that totally trickles all the way down into teams, wherever they are, because I think you know, trusting yourself and speaking out and bringing your ideas and thoughts to the organisation is essential because it D risks it brings diversity, it creates a more holistic way of looking any solution and It's proven to be very beneficial to organisations. So bringing yourself in knowing you're biassed communicating that, you know, you have biases, and that you're part of it is great. And I think that's both appropriate for leaders and everybody else. So it's, it runs through the organisation. So it's a lovely thought to be be more personal. And I think that is one thought I had that I didn't bring out in the interview, which is about I read an article about exactly that, seemingly, through all these zoom calls that you take at home, you actually finally seeing people at home, with our kids with our partners, you know, because someone's running through the background, just as you know, interview because he came in and just joined us to ask me something. It connects you differently. And it's actually nice because it, it connects the human side, there's an authenticity there Suddenly, I think that is a big value. And I think that helps how we work together as much as we are together as human beings. So I like the fact that everyone should take that personal aspect with them and be brave to embrace it. So I love that.

Troy Norcross: 6:11

It was a really, really great interview. And speaking of Shall we shall we go to the interview?

Marcus Kirsch: 6:16

I think we should go to the interview. Hello, everyone. Today we have Minter Dyer with us. Hello, mentor. And thanks for making time for us.

Minter Dial: 6:28

Hey, Marcus, and Troy. Thanks for having me on.

Marcus Kirsch: 6:31

Lovely. So we start at the top as usual. So please tell our listeners who you are and why you wrote your book. Well,

Minter Dial: 6:41

so my name is Minter dial. I am a bohemian itinerant agent of change. I'm sure that's a good topic for you. For you guys. I have lived I'm 56 years old, I've changed countries 15 times I've changed homes 34 times, I've done diff 12 different Meteor and have only one wife, which I plan to keep. I'm a professional speaker. Otherwise, I've written published four books done one documentary film about the Second World War. And I continue to be thirsty for learning new things and exploring the future and new cultures.

Troy Norcross: 7:21

That's that's quite an introduction.

Minter Dial: 7:24

I didn't cover the book. So

Troy Norcross: 7:30

I was gonna get back to that. Exactly. Could you tell us a bit about the book? Well,

Minter Dial: 7:34

in short order, the this is a book that I actually began in 2014. I at the time, I considered it my book, the book, sometimes we always say we have a book in us. And I started it, it took four different moments for me to conclude this book. And it really felt like it was as much about the apotheosis of my professional and personal lives put together in this book. And that's what I wanted to do. And I and really, ultimately, each of my efforts is attempting to try to bring about change for good through leadership and business. And hopefully, this is a book that will lead towards that, too.

Troy Norcross: 8:13

And that's quite a good inspiration. Um, as you know, we had a number of questions that we kind of generated in the process of reading the book, which was really a very enjoyable Sunday afternoon sort of read for me. So I really, really appreciate because, I mean, I know you and Marcus and I and you all three have the one thing in common, which is the innovation warehouse, of course, because that's where we all kind of met independently and together. But But jumping into the questions, you talk about ethics, in business, and I think they're really, really important and how doing the right thing is indeed a profitable thing to do kind of in the long run. But we we find so many times that people who have less than stellar ethics, I won't say they're unethical, but less than stellar ethics, getting ahead and making progress and advancing and how do you maintain good ethical business practices in an enterprise when your competition doesn't fly to the same standard?

Minter Dial: 9:13

So the answer is, that's what they're choosing to do. You have to choose what you want to do. And what is the legacy you wish to have. If you want to go out and be a mass murderer, it's not very difficult. You can go out and do it, there are consequences. And in today's world, rather than sort of be bombastic about the type of criminal activity, transparency is a reality. And, and so just for a pragmatic standpoint, if you do shit, that's bad, there's a chance that you'll be outed, more importantly, as another real motivating reason why you need to bring your ethical backbone into the business is that your employees get it, they know it and if you are interested in having engaged employees over the long haul, then you better up your ethical game. And so the really, I think it's not just about being nice and Kumbaya, and let's do nice things and do the right thing. There are some really pragmatic reasons why you need to think about it. And then afterwards, if you don't think about it upfront, it'll get ahead of you another way, and specifically, you know, when you're looking at coding AI, if you don't bring an ethical framework into the coding of AI, where many companies are obviously looking at that, it's going to go Bobby, and people won't know that they shouldn't do that.

Troy Norcross: 10:38

I think that what you're really driving at is another thing that we really struggle with in general and capitalism, which is quarter based thinking, you're really kind of short termism, as opposed to having a long term view, you talk about really great concepts of legacy, you know, and what's going to happen in 10 years, when we finished doing the AI development, and training the AI, how do we manage bias and all of those things. So it's always encouraging to hear that there are indeed people setting the standard and educating leaders that it's more than just next quarter's numbers that matter, and we're seeing transformation in leadership, I think that's a it's a great thing.

Minter Dial: 11:18

It does depend on the government's model you have. And if you are going to get fired, or you're going to go out of business in in the following month, then you do need to think about your ethics in a different way, because you got a business just because you're ethical. Well, that's that's not a great business. So being pragmatic is a key ingredient. But you have to know where you are sticking the mud is. And and you need to do that a little bit ahead of time. Because ultimately, of course, it's not just you who is running the company, you've got financial, financial doods, or do debts that might be fudging things. Or you might have people in sales, people who are promising things that they can't deliver. And you might get the number in today, but you'll pay the price down the road. So you got to be pragmatic, because I'm all about you know, you got to survive. And if you can think about these things more upfront to prepare for them. For example, make sure you have a cash nest egg upfront, right, your ethical principles when it's good, so that when you hit when the shit hits the storm, you actually already know where you need to go and how you're going to navigate through the difficult situation.

Troy Norcross: 12:27

And storm and navigate leads us really nicely on to this exercise of setting your North Star. I mean, there was a really really great section of the book and the process of taking your your vision and your priorities and merging them together to become what your North Star setting isn't give you that that direction to steer you through those those choppy waters. I do know some people that try to do that. And they come up with I call the bubblegum North Star. And as you say employees can see that immediately the one that's bubblegum versus the one it's genuine. Can you say a few words about the norstar process and how to avoid the kind of bubble gum trap.

Minter Dial: 13:06

Alright, so definitely lots of bubble gum out there and lots of phone North's. So there are two things one is as corporate north, and then there's personal north. And a corporate North that looks good on a wall, printed in a annual report isn't what it's about. You need to find a way to explain who you are with some kind of realism, a little bit smart at some level. Because if you're trying to say, well, we're going to solve the world, well, that's too big. That's irrelevant. It's perhaps nice. And there's that there's a great yoghurt company in America called chobani. And, and their north is extremely realistic. There. They're not trying to do too much things the only selling yoghurts, but the way they do it seems to be incarnated by the founder. And it feels real. And the reason why it feels real is the second reason is that it's personal. A north star that is sort of cosmetic or professional, but doesn't resonate down into the guts of the individuals is bound to just be, you know, bubblegum to your point. But I would say on the sticky otherwise, because the one that really gets you is when it resonates with individuals and so the challenges from a leadership standpoint, is actually how much of you is invested in the corporate North Star. And you have a very least two different opposing ideas. One is the entrepreneur whose blood and guts is invested in in the name of his Her name is on the company. And the other one is a mercenary CEO brought in either more maybe brought up through the ranks. But isn't the founder and and so they they corrupt the ideas they, they might believe them, but they don't actually have it in their blood. And I like to use the word do are you prepared to pass the brand tattoo test or love? The brand tattoos tests suggests that you were prepared to have a piece of real estate on your body with the brand, even if you leave the company. And that speaks that's testament to the grandness of a purpose. A Northstar is got to be bigger than just making money. It's got to be doing something that's bigger than just you doesn't have to be the world. But what world do you want to solve or help. And if you can do something that's sort of contributing at a higher level, then I'm prepared to do it. So for example, I worked at redken part of L'Oreal, I definitely make the difference. But I should I be wearing tattoos, I would definitely have a tattoo of red skin or something, have it? in me, the back of my chair that we're at, I'm sitting on has read can on it. I have so much God still reckon but no L'Oreal, and there's a reason for that.

Marcus Kirsch: 16:06

So when when when we look at that I've often seen I think it's more of a case probably with bigger organisations have been there for a longer time, as you mentioned before, sometimes you have a new CEO joining or not the founder, and the lifespan of a CEO tends to be I don't know, what is it 235 years, something like that. So I think both in terms of the ethics, but also in terms of like getting to the north star, and you know, having worked on a lot of transformation projects, you see the timeframe, they're given, you know, get something already back in like three months, maybe six months, within a year, it's going to be questions if the budget still committed, and so on, because time is already running out there might already looking for someone else, if you if you if you haven't started with the start of a new CEO trying to make his or her name in the company. So in terms of limited timings, in terms of organisational or corporate turnover in people, what's still sort of the case for still chasing this or maybe just being part of the setup and not being able to follow through? Is that achievable? Or what's what's your findings on that?

Minter Dial: 17:18

Well, so I, the second chapter of the book really deals with governance. And I think that somehow when you are put into a position and the company has been existing for 100 years, you're just a mercenary, I call it mercenary CEO, then you have to really understand your governance principles. And the chances are that you will be somewhat constrained in your abilities to move things around, you can't change the governance principles easily, especially if you only have a three to five year moment when you're going to do this. So you have to understand how much flexibility you have afterwards as a selection process, and and do you join a company where you feel there's something going, or just you just going to be a true mercenary, and do it for the buck. So that there's a selection before you as an individual decide to take a position manager or CEO or whatever rank in between going to do it. And then when you're in it, how much do you know yourself? Oh, yeah, I really, it's really interesting. I'm fascinated by ball bearings, they're really, you know, they're, they're, I would love to sell more ball bearings. Really? I mean, maybe it's the spherical object and the beauty of the exactly, perfectly dimensional pie oriented, filled ball bearing with some shiny lustre that turns you on, you know, much like a good scotch might in the evening, fine. Or are you just doing it for the sake of having CEO on your business card? And so there's an element of Do you know yourself? And are you looking for you in the company? And that's an upfront exercise then afterwards, if you know your governance, limitations, can you or can you not impact it and afterwards, if you've got a three to five year job, and you're targeted like that, either you just agree to that or you decide that's not for you, and you've got to make that decision within you. So if you decide I'm going to run this company, I want to achieve success five years is my thing. I don't care about ball bearings, I just want to achieve it then inshallah Good luck to you

Marcus Kirsch: 19:29

want to add to the the other part as well, so I'm going to stick a little bit with timeframe available for change or impact or, and so on. So you're saying somewhere that you know, you know, lending sufficient time to listen and learn is is an important factor. And I'm sure I've had my fair share of experience where, with a design thinking or so some background, you have customer research, you want to treat everything as an assumption. That's sort of the mantra and it's not always organisation doesn't always give you the time to learn and implement the right kind of learning cycle. And I wonder how much that is part of or allowed or part of, you know the leadership element as well, because, in theory that should happen. And in theory, the leadership level should learn as much as what happens with the teams on the ground, in the field and so on. Learning should be across an organisation, in my experience, learning is often quite subdued, not implemented the right way. It's not a part of business as usual, day to day people are just taken out of context, in a workshop coming back, and then maybe, or maybe not remembering to this later, what they've just been doing. How does it work with leadership? Given the expectations that many businesses have the day you come in? Yet, again, time is a factor within a limited amount of time you want to be effective. But organisations are highly complex entities to leaders learn or given the space to learn and your experience? And is that is that doable? Is that achievable?

Minter Dial: 21:10

So it's complicated?

Marcus Kirsch: 21:14

consultant?

Minter Dial: 21:16

Because we're dealing with egos. Are you going into the situation? Think you know it already? I've done this job. Yeah, 50 times I know how to do it. Or are you going in there with like, I really have to rewire my brain. It's incredible how many stupid mistakes are made, because of some bias, or some preconceived notions in my mind. And as a leader, the issue, of course, is that you have less and less people feeding into you information. If you're the CEO, you have this sort of select group of people, and you're far removed from reality. But the ego headed individuals who say, well, it's not for me to go talk to the riffraff. It's not for me to learn about digital. Well, then, of course, you're really going to come up against some big event obstacles that are in your 24 hour day time limit being what it is, you're not, you're going to take so much longer to make it happen. You might do things quickly, but they will not be the effective way. And as far as the the learning component is you have to have the sort of humility to say, I don't know everything, like Satya Nadella. I'm not I know, at all, I want to be a learner at all. At the same time, you can't spend your entire day learning because you got to do shit, you have to decide. So first is to have the humility to say I don't know everything, recognise that hire people accordingly. Spend a portion of the day I like to dedicate a portion of my day to learning i but i do it in a time constraint way because it turns out, I only have 25 hours of my day. So I but I want to make sure that systematically, I'm doing something new. So whether it's, you know, I'm an apple boy, but hey, listen, show me a Samsung, what's, what's the Android going like? Or try to make me shift around and make me unstable on a no different things. And then finally, when it comes to organisational learning, I think it's all wrong. This whole idea of Lfd learning for development and, and programmes and webinars and other well we attribute the high we you can go to that we have budget for you to do that. But reality is I think that everybody should be responsible for their own learning. And you have a portfolio, you can sign up for it or not. And because you're the only person Marcus that doesn't know what you don't know, mean knows that you don't know this stuff. So you should be completely responsible is given agency for the learning and everyday, not just the Lfd stuff, but spending time learning in every part of your day. So that's continuous learning. So Marcus does what he does, Troy does what he does, mentor learns what he needs. And we're always in a constant learning, and that has to be exemplified by the CEO.

Marcus Kirsch: 24:07

I think that's definitely true. I mean, given, for example, the project we had at bt where we were literally learning on the job, we did hardly any outside learning and different workshops, which is headed straight there. Plus, as you said, right, listen, I think that's the same true both for tools and learning or whatever you process you want to any change you want to bring to it right change or upgrade you want to bring to it. teams of people should notice themselves or they likely know themselves best, where they could do that. I think that's a really great point I think will be talked to Jeff Colvin about that about learning and new types of learning. He definitely agrees with that as well where you know, people themselves take themselves back like or what would you did we just do let's reflect let's do our own reflection on what we've done ourselves in order to learn not what someone else tells us to learn now I think is really, really really great point. And I think, I think one one more comment, or maybe one follow up question on that. One is? if, if, if you're learning like that, and maybe it's a very self serving question, question and follow up here, like, where do leadership really go for learning? We're having a podcast here about books about business books, there's a lot of them. You know, some of us you have written some, and we've read a lot more, we look out into the organisations and sort of, don't really see a lot of them implemented. Just Just knowledge that's been around for 5060 years. And one of the reasons is yet again, this podcast trying to do the same again, and maybe some, someone will listen, hopefully few more. Where do we where do leaders really go to learn? Do they really? Do they only have time for the consultants to come in and have a sit together? And that's it? or do some really go out or like some mythical you to really read a book a week? Is that a typical CEO or something to do? What's your experience there? What what what do leaders really have time for in terms of learning? What do you reckon?

Unknown: 26:16

Love?

Minter Dial: 26:19

So let me explain. I think that if you're going out for love, you don't kind of want to look for it, you need to create the environment for it to happen. You can't tell somebody, hey, love me. And I think in the same way of learning, you actually have to have the attitude to absorb and see and connect dots and allow the time for it to develop. So the interesting thing for me is the time constraints, of course, is our reality. But if we're in an ROI exercise, I need to read this book to learn this thing. Okay, I inspired Hi, it's great. You might have learned one thing, but you're not in a, I would say, a bigger learning mode. And when we talk about podcasts, the interesting element is or conversation, should we rigorously insist that it's 20.2 minutes long? Because that's how long the average commute is? Or can we find ways to create an environment where we're listening to one another, engaging, connecting dots in different ways, learning and letting learning happen? So like love, so you don't just programme love, you don't programme learning, you need to let it happen. And so, in the case of conversation, which is so cruelly lacking in our world today, where we have unfettered, long form conversation, not happening yet in conversation, can I learn from you, Troy, and Marcus, and from whomever, if I'm open to it? Anyway, that's how I like to answer it, love.

Troy Norcross: 28:09

It's a really interesting parallel, and I like the the one comment, which is, you, you let love happen, and you let learning happen. And you create the space for love, you create the space for learning. And I'm going to proxy that into into another one of my questions. Relatively famous company, Jim shark, you know, has just had phenomenal growth in the last two years, relatively young founder has done amazingly well. How do you kind of how do you give people advice on maintaining authenticity in times of hyper accelerated growth.

Minter Dial: 28:53

So that's not easy for everybody. There are people who are able to start up, work in a garage, or tend to the fax machine, coffee machine, the sales, the marketing, and then there's the sitting in an office and pushing papers and sitting in meetings all day, and some are able to do both, and some are not. And so I guess the the real question for anybody who's in that position is Do you really want that or not? And and but not like because over Yeah, I want to be able to say that I've written a book kind of feeling, or do you love fucking writing? And that's the, I would say the mindset when it when it comes to to that. Then a second thing is one of my paradoxes I talked about is truth versus storytelling. Say the facts that surrounded storytelling. Hmm, a little bit fishy. So the interesting thing about this is that a you do want to think about how you are going to exist in the future and if at zero days, you're starting to think about that, well, that might be a little early, a little premature to be thinking about how it's going to be when I become IBM, or whomever. Because you know, you've got $0 in the door. So let's just be a little bit real, let's focus on it. At a certain point, though, you know, you're going somewhere, you need to be able to project like your North Star where you want to go. And that becomes your guiding principle within that. And then that helps you to sort of configure your growth as you go along. Without that, you'll end up chasing whatever type of money, and you'll end up in the hamster mode, running after whatever, because I'm growing. And I don't know why I'm growing. I don't know why I'm spinning. But oh, this is an all of a sudden, you're going to be burned out.

Troy Norcross: 30:43

You must have not one or two startup founders, because I recognise that particular arm flailing going very well. Very well.

Minter Dial: 30:52

Well, I mean, of course, and the other thing, too, is that they are, they are also being someone's doing in the background, putting like this, because they are called VC private equity, or going to go public, and, and that's putting in the spoke. And they're, they're, they're, they're feeding you some, you know, Spike KoolAid and, and you're in there, that's really exciting. And then all of a sudden, you know, woof, the, the wheels fall off, or you you know, you fly out? Right?

Troy Norcross: 31:18

So you mentioned your paradoxes. And I'm going to read from the the title of the book or the index, number one we need belong, and yet be different. We need to understand our past get live for the future, we must reconcile the quest for order in the presence of chaos. And we must seek truth, but gravitate towards stories. And my underlying question is, each one of these seems to be a way to mitigate or manage risk, are we addicted to kind of risk avoidance because I work currently for our client who's a major bank, and all they do, like literally a third of their day is spent looking for their where there might be risk and putting in controls and mitigations against it, how can we kind of embrace the fact that the world is a bit riskier?

Minter Dial: 32:06

Alright, so I just realised, Troy that I didn't close the loop on on a thought before.

Marcus Kirsch: 32:12

And please

Minter Dial: 32:12

do and I'm gonna, we're gonna go back into the story, true story. So that you're growing your company, you've got your North Star, hopefully you figure that out. And then you need to retrofit some kind of story. And the story needs to be romanced because it's not exciting when I'm sitting in the oil, smoky, stinky garage. That's, that's actually not very romantic. So you need to know how to craft a story and then become a quantum storyteller as you go forward. And then that transports you along, as you go forward, and hopefully towards your North Star. And it really is the end of the day, a narrative. There is no such thing as a North Star. I mean, there is, I suppose, is out there as the shiny one. And and for you, Troy, you might have your own personal star, and I certainly do. But it's, it's a concept. And, and it will evolve. And my interpretation of it will involve if I told you it, you'd have one meaning of it. And, and Marcus would have another anyway, that's the truth. And the storytelling paradox kind of played out. As far as the risk component is I funnily enough, I don't think of it as a risk, avoiding story. He's paradoxes. I think of it more as a letting go. concept. And, and it's not one side or the other. In these paradoxes, it's about managing both. And the fundamental principle that I feel about each of them is it's somehow about letting go, letting go of some hard facts that you are programmed to want to do, is letting go perhaps about certain dogma that you feel is the only way to go and allowing for more messiness in our humanity. So yes, there's a lot of people who are risk of us, I tend to feel actually that it's about allowing for more risk taking in, in these paradoxes. And and as such, it's about being more personal, more tied into your emotions, that messy, gooey shit that we don't really want to put into work, because we're all about performance. Dammit.

Troy Norcross: 34:27

You've been to America one time too many.

Minter Dial: 34:30

I've been to many places actually, that have performance and generally speaking, it's boardrooms full of men.

Troy Norcross: 34:38

So I'm going to kind of one last question because we always have more questions then then we have time. Oh, good. But I think it kind of pulls into the emotional connections and to the riskiness a friend of mine mentioned the other day a very important HSBC executive, Antonio sim Weiss, who is Very high up with an HSBC. He's from Portugal. And of course, because I'm now in Portugal, I'm thinking about these things more often. And I'm working adjacent to HSBC. And he is an out gay man. And it has been amazing for him. There's a nice Guardian article, we'll put the link to the article in the show notes about how it made him a better leader, by being authentic about who he was. And as a gay man myself, you know, it's always one of those things that I struggle with, at what point and when does it ever come out? And what is that what happens? And, and when it does happen? And I'm in the right environment, I flourish? Absolutely. So I get it, and I relate to it. And the question is, how can you as an organisation as an enterprise, let the people the leaders and the people on the frontlines know, it's okay to be you? Well,

Minter Dial: 35:51

I guess it depends a little bit on the person, you know, who exactly is saying it's okay to be you? Because, you know, you're waiting for approval?

Troy Norcross: 36:00

Well, that's, that's what some people are, they're waiting for permission.

Minter Dial: 36:03

Right. And I think that's sort of the crux of the issue. If if you don't have the agency, then you need to just dig in on, on what's stopping you being you? Is it your, you know, father's opinion? Is it society's opinion? Where is it? And how comfortable? Are you with that? And ultimately, at some level, how Sure, are you about you? And being gay is one thing, but you know, let's say I'm an axe murderer? Do I Do I want to let that happen? And the answer is no. So you need to have an ethical concept with regard to who you are, allow for your imperfections. And I'm not suggesting for a second that homosexuality is an imperfection. I'm just talking about x bar during this meeting. But it because it's part of this issue is the imperfection story. Right? When you're accepting who you are, your expect you're accepting the warts and your imperfections. And as soon as you're able to accept that, then that's really the big picture. For me. As far as diversity is concerned, the winner, I mean, I love the Tim Cook, way he has expressed himself. And I feel like he's at home with himself. And that makes it so much more obviously. Okay.

Troy Norcross: 37:29

Yes. For him,

Minter Dial: 37:31

that's right, if it comes from a bad place, and it's gonna bring with it chips on the shoulder challenges, and, and that can confuse also our business concepts. One of the things, you know, diversity, big topic, inclusion, and so on. white males as we are, the the challenge is, and I think on podcasts, I think is really interesting. I get plugged by 80% of the time white males. And yet, that's not exactly the representation of the world. No. So something Something is wrong there. But having diversity for diversity sake, is not good. It's like having purpose for purposes sake. So one of the things that's key for me is having as an individual, I would say, leaning into your own sense of self accepting your foibles. For me, I took a while to come up with and say, Well, hey, I took LSD 300 times, as a CEO of a company, that could be risky business. But I will tell you that it rewired my mind, it may be aware of the consciousness of our smallness of my ridiculousness in this universe. And I think that brought me a lot more than if I stuck with the party line, so to speak, so comfortable with my own imperfections, and then conceive of diversity, not necessarily of sexuality, or race or sex, but diversity of spirit, diversity of thought. I think that's a more powerful concept because if you go out of business, having a rainbow no good.

Troy Norcross: 39:22

pragmatic again,

Minter Dial: 39:24

I think it's necessary to be a little pragmatic and their own where companies go do do it wrong. Is that like an HSBC in general is that they they do policies by process almost by committees and committees dummy's you down? And so that's how they have that reputation of being conservative, bureaucratic, because they've sort of trying to please everybody all the time. You need to know what you stand for. And then be prepared to have the courage to go for it.

Troy Norcross: 39:56

Yeah, and that applies to leaders and people across the country. I'm afraid we are now out of time. Marcus, do you have any closing thoughts before we say goodbye to our friendly guests?

Marcus Kirsch: 40:07

Yeah, have an I think it's, I really enjoyed that we end up on a big subject on a very deep, deep thought here I think is really brilliant. And when you started talking about, you know, gender or sexuality, I mean, you know, we we, our first couple of episodes, were all with white males, till someone you know, to our to our all and apologies like point out you need to get some women in here it's like yeah, but it's mainly business books are very often written by white males. And there's an obvious bias here. But basically the buyers aspect is actually really interesting there in our so as much as we talk about those aspects. at many times we had coming up, where basically just anyone on the table being listened to people being confident enough just to speak, and we can talk about subtle things like being more extrovert or introvert. You know, the introverts, statistically, maybe not bringing themselves in that much, or because you think you have a flaw you don't know as much, you might not want to bring yourself in that much. Okay, but I'm sorry, I have a little visitor here. But essentially, you know, to have every to have every voice listened to because we know statistically as well, that diverse teams and different viewpoints together, de risk and bring in better solutions. And that even the best leaders are biassed we we really, we really, we really gained from that. So I think it was a great finishing thought here to, you know, start with something that might be a bit more sensible or more more harder to manifest. But this trickles all the way down into the various subtleties of our individual fears and so on. And I think is a very important and great thought we have to attend, I think

Minter Dial: 42:09

I like to just add a couple thoughts. One is, is nothing worse than identifying a black person, black man, woman to be head of diversity. It really should be incarnated by the people who have some influence and leadership within the company. And by the way, you can't just give diversity to an individual diversity needs to be

Troy Norcross: 42:35

a conversation going on.

Minter Dial: 42:36

It's a, it's a four, it's a four way all of a sudden, it's so far away. So you need to avoid the idea. You need to avoid the idea of having her diversity being a a title, or just some thing on the wall. It needs to be incarnated by everybody just like sustainable development. And I studied Women's Studies University and I would prescribe that all white males and males in general, take Women's Studies, because it's it really opens the eyes. And and typical of the study and women in general, it wasn't just relegated to women, it was actually the study of all minority voices. And it really opened my eyes to this. And the and the challenge that especially as a white male we have is finding a reasonable discourse. Because either you go party line, this is what I should say. Or I feel for something I stood, I stand for something, and not afraid to push it. Because if it's full of cotton mouth cotton wool in my mouth, you're going to know it. And, and so you've got to be real. I wear a rugby shirt. It's a all black rugby shirt. I played rugby for 18 years. And I'll never forget a time when I'm in the locker room. We've just won a good match. And a couple of the boys said some rather ugly things about a gay guy. Oh, about all the other team. And I said we don't need to say that. And then they all looked at me. And there was that horrible moment of like, you know, ostracization. So this is you know, the heterosexual speaking in a rugby team. I was like, Well, wait a second, you guys, you know, we're better than that, aren't we? And somehow, in those moments, you need to have the courage to stand up because it's the it's the heterosexual white male that still today has the power is driving things is getting on podcast is writing these business books. And it is beholden on us to lead the way because that's the way it is. So if someone's not speaking up at a table Hey, Gemma, I've noticed you didn't say anything. Make sure you please contribute. And calling people and giving them permission to to weigh in. Because if it's quiet, diversity, that's no good, either. So you need to be able to model of behaviour, accept different mentor, you're full of shit. Thank you. Thank you for that feedback. Please explain. Great, yeah. Go on mark,

Marcus Kirsch: 45:28

we go on sorry. I had to say, you know, when you have too many guys in the room, and suddenly there's quite sexist jokes going around, and even in a professional sense, where you just have to stop it right away. And because those things can be quite toxic. And I think you know, it goes back to your authenticity is like, that's what you stand for. And I think being honest to what you stand for, gives you power. And I felt the same, you know, you have these moments where you feel maybe ostracised, especially when you're literally in a room with a client for foreclosure, like I was, you know, to really tell the client off is a bit of a thing. But I think you get respected more afterwards, you know, because you're actually yourself. And he said, Yeah, well, that's those are my beliefs. Here you go. Brilliant. I think we really have to wrap up. This has been absolutely great mentor. Thank you so much for your for your insights, and for your time. It was it was splendid. So thank you. Thank you very much.

Minter Dial: 46:22

My pleasure.

Troy Norcross: 46:27

You've been listening to the wicked podcast with CO hosts Marcus Kirsch and me, Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch: 46:33

please subscribe on podomatic iTunes or Spotify. You can find all relevant links in the show notes. Please tell us your thoughts in the comment section and let us know about any books for future episodes.

Troy Norcross: 46:46

You can also get in touch with us directly on Twitter on at wicked n beyond or at Troy underscore Norcross also learn more about the wicked company book and the wicked company project at wicked company calm