Brain of Command Episode 10

Be Shallow and Wide at the Top

Every leader comes from some specific area of expertise. But a good leader needs to go beyond that and see the big picture. In the latest episode of Brain of Command, Nate and Robert are joined by Bob Wheeler, President and CEO of Airstream, to discuss what it means to be shallow and wide at the top, and why effective leaders learn when to dive deep and when to stay on the surface. 

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• How did an introverted programmer go from writing code to taking the reins as CEO at one of America’s most iconic brands? Well, that’s exactly what Omaha Steaks CEO Nate Rempe did. And he’s partnering with co-host Robert Reiss, founder of CEO Forum Group, along with other industry-leading CEOs to talk about the strategies and insights that will help YOU command a room, command your career, and maybe even command a company. Brain of Command is all about dynamic, transformative leadership – no matter where you are on the org chart – and brings you practical hacks that you can put into practice every day to maximize your potential.

Brain of Command Companion Guide: https://view.publitas.com/omaha-steak-others/brain-of-command/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

How did a once introverted programmer go from coding in a cubicle to leading an iconic American brand? Well, that's exactly what Omaha Stakes CEO Nate Rempe did. And along with CEO Forum Group founder Robert Reese, they're your inside source for magical hacks that will transform the way you command a room, command your career, and maybe even command a company. Get ready. This is Brain of Command.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Hello, America, and welcome back to Brain of Command. Today's topic is a really interesting one. Be shallow and wide at top. And this is something Nate came up with, but really, it's not only the secret, if you use this, to become a CEO, but then to be really effective and dynamic while you are a CEO, right, Nate?

SPEAKER_01 0:54

That's a really good point. I think the way that I frame it in my mind is it's um it's like a strategic leadership discipline. To be at the top of an organization, you have to be very strategic-minded. And I think depending on how you came up through your career, there's kind of a temptation to dive into the depths of your particular competency. And that becomes dangerous, right? Depth is dangerous if it crowds out breadth, particularly at the CEO level. The way I think about this is really uh the connection of two phrases: strategic altitude plus selective depth. Shallow and wide at the top is key, but that doesn't mean that you can't dive into the details when needed. And I think great CEOs spend most of their time in that wide breadth, you know, connecting things across the business, but are able to dive into the depths in support of teams in moments of crisis. These are moments where I think everybody needs to be able to dive deep, um, but then constantly coming back up to the surface and looking at the company from a wide perspective.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Yeah, and and that is so true. And with that, we have a special guest, and it's it's Bob Wheeler of the beloved Airstream Company. He's been CEO for and president for for 20 years. This company, like Omaha Stakes, around since 1917. Airstream's been around since uh 1931. And and what are your thoughts, Bob, about this concept of being of being shallow and wide at the top?

SPEAKER_03 2:35

Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me on. Yeah, it's a it's an interesting point and one that's that's really relevant. You know, I think of people as being, especially in leadership roles, being T-shaped. We all come from somewhere, right? We've got this swim lane or area of expertise that we we can't ignore, and nor should we. But Nate's point, which I think is a good one, that's your comfort zone. And to be a leader and to advance in an organization and show strategic leadership, you need to get out of that comfort zone, understand the other aspects of the business to a greater and lesser extent. We can't all be experts in every part of the business, but there for every business, depending on its output and function, there are certain key areas that the leader really has to be conversant in. You know, that said, you know, we're a manufacturing company at heart. And uh I know I've got some manufacturing engineers that wish I weren't such an expert in manufacturing, or at least I used to play one on TV, but uh understanding how things go together, how process works, process efficiency, product quality. You know, those those those understanding real understanding has really stood me in good stead over the course of my career, but also understanding you know, HR, marketing, sales, finance, and accounting, uh supply chain. To be a leader in a business, you've got to have a strong working understanding of some of these other key areas as well. So I think it's a great point.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Let's go through the progression of you know how sort of how it starts, right? So you figure early in your career, you're deep and narrow. Like I remember when I was working for a bank, I was writing Java code on a checking account opening system. You know, in the morning I would get up, and that was what I would think about. Like, how can I make it easier for someone to go to the internet and open a checking account? So, you know, very, very deep, very narrow. As I progressed through that, then I started leading other technologists. I would still think about engineering, I would still think about banking software, but now I was thinking about check imaging and savings account and moving money between accounts and you know, seeing balances. And so started to become a little bit more broad. And then, of course, top level is when the shallow and wide you sort of zoom way out. I think it's way more difficult to say you should be shallow and and uh wide at the top than it is to actually do it, especially since I have a lot of passion and love for technology and engineering specifically, but I still have to be effective at you know thinking critically about what we're doing at Omaha Stakes, for example, to provide good benefits and you know systems that make it easy to manage a paycheck. Um, and I think that those things are maybe less, I'm less passionate about them, but I have to commit just as much energy as a CEO to those areas as the ones that I may want to spend more time in. And that's the temptation, that's the challenge of being shallow and wide, is that you have to generate uh passion and you have to acknowledge the importance of a you know a more broad skill set.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Does that ever happen to you, Bob?

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Yeah, it does. And it is a discipline, as Nate points out. Again, to step out of your your comfort zone where you have a lot of expertise and background into areas that are A, you'd you're not the expert in the room, and that can be a challenge for many people with a leadership and an alpha mindset. And B, it may not be your personal interest, but understanding that look, unless you can show support and connection in these areas across the breadth of the business that may not be your background or your comfort zone or your or your preference, uh that's a discipline you have to maintain as a leader. And you have to force yourself to, in some cases, to dig in and show enthusiasm in these areas where, you know, in some cases it's uh it's just not something you really connect with.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Yeah, I you know, I um in interviewing like um over a thousand of the top CEOs, I I learned an interesting lesson on this from Bill Marriott because he's completely shallow and wide at the top, but he also says, every now and then, I need to go deep so I could hold people accountable. And I said, Well, how do you do that? He said, Well, you know, when there's a short order cook, I'll just ask him one question. How many times do you flip over the hash browns? And if it's anything other than one, I know I have a problem there. And by the way, a gentleman, Nate, I asked him the same thing with stakes. He said, Oh, when you're doing stakes, do not push it down. He said, flip it over one time. But what that says to me is you can occasionally go deep. It's like um David Stern, the um the 30-year commissioner of the NBA, said, never underestimate the power of micromanagement episodically.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

You know, you shouldn't be afraid to flip your steak more than once, just for the record, especially if you're doing it in a cast iron pan and you're basting it. We could probably have a whole you know brain of command session on the proper way to flip and baste a steak, and you know, depending on where you're cooking it, but um I think you're spot on, Robert. I think it's it's going down and using a phrase that I had a peer of mine use years ago that uh when he said it, I originally found it so such an odd phrase. It was uh be able to call somebody on the carpet. Have you heard that phrase before?

unknown 8:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

And the idea is like, you know, knowing the metrics just enough, you know, understanding the constraints, you know, grasping the you know, the strategic levers just enough to where you can detect when things might be off. And then you can elevate that or ask the question so that things can be brought back to center. And in some ways, it's kind of like pattern recognition, being able to connect things together and say, hey, you know, we're off on the on the wrong, wrong foot here. We're off the track. And that's where going deep and being then being able to come back up and look for those patterns again. I think in practice, that's how that happens.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Yeah, we're we're about to take a commercial break right now. Um, but when we come back, we're gonna hear exciting things. Number one, we're gonna hear from two people who both coincidentally not only are with hundred-year-old about iconic American companies, but also we're engineers. But the second thing we're gonna hear is what is their advice to you if you want to become a CEO of how you really use that? So, right now, we're taking a commercial break. Stay tuned, be back very soon. We'll get back to the show in just a minute. First, I have a quick question for you. What's in your plan for dinner tonight? If your schedule looks anything like mine, you don't have time to plan for dinner, make another grocery run. That's why I love having Omaha steaks on hand. There's steaks, burgers, chicken, seafood, you name it, arrive expertly pre-portioned, individually vacuum-sealed, flash frozen at peak freshness, so I can cook exactly what I need without wasting anything. With customizable subscription options, my go-to favorites show up seriously fast right at my door on my schedule. And every order backed by a 100% guarantee. It's the smartest way to shop and an easy way to get ready for summer grilling. Visit OmahaStakes.com and use code CEO to get $35 off. That's OmahaStakes.com. Code CEO for $35 off. Terms apply, see site for details. Hello. Welcome back to Brain of Command with my co-host Nate Rempe. And Nate Rempey, as you know, is the um is the CEO of Omaha Stakes. And I do want to say earlier in the show, we were talking about using the cast iron pan. The singular best uh meal I had all summer was Barbara took Omaha Steaks, two of them, put them in butter in a cast iron can, and she did flip them over. Of course, you're putting the butter on it. So so Tuche, you were right on that. That was the best the best meal we had. It was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

So here's what I want to ask both of you, Bob and Nate, you each came up through the ranks as um as engineers, really. You know, Bob, you've been a CEO for 20 years, which is a long time. Nate, less than that. But I would like to hear from each of you your perspective. If anyone is technical, how do you really focus on building your career on being shallow and wide at the top? And then when you're CEO, does that change?

SPEAKER_03 11:36

Well, you know, it's it's a great question. It really takes me back. My advice would be start with an area that scares you most. This that's not in your area of expertise. And for me, I was working at General Motors Saginaw Gear Division plant in Buffalo, New York. This was about 1989. And I was very comfortable as an engineer, manufacturing engineer, facilities engineer, but I was terrified of supervising people, especially people that didn't have the same background as I was. And I asked to be assigned as a production supervisor for six months, put out on the floor, given a crew of union guys that ran a bunch of milling machines. And because I knew that that scared the hell out of me. But that if I couldn't address that fear and gain some expertise in managing folks that weren't like me and get an understanding uh for their lives and lifestyles, that I would that this was gonna be a fast track to learning how to manage people of any type. And I did that, it was very challenging, and I think in the end, uh it was one of the most formative experiences I've had. And it illustrates your point of hey, learn parts of the business that you're not familiar with, but also I would challenge people to move into an area that really scares you and makes you nervous. You're gonna learn more from that than something that's uh that's near your comfort zone.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Yeah, I agree. Being uncomfortable really pushes you to grow as a leader. I would totally agree with that. The other area, too, for me was that I realized as I started to want to expand my horizons that engineering was just problem solving. In my case, it was, you know, I was trying to figure out better ways to manage memory, better ways to improve speed. And these problems were very specific to my kind of my narrow depth. But as I elevated up, uh the problems actually expanded not only in type, but at in count. Um and I discovered that really what I wanted was to solve more problems, that I that I really extracted a lot of self-satisfaction out of my work. Um, and that the the higher I moved in an organization, the more problems um, you know, both in type and and count, I was able to solve. Um, so I could, you know, dive in, provide some assistance in a problem, come back up, move to a different one. Um now at times that can be really overwhelming. I think any CEO feels like you know, there are moments where, man, I've got 17 different things in a single business day where I gotta put out a fire here, I gotta, I gotta come up over in this part of the organization, provide some assistance. But in reflecting, that's really where I have a lot of job satisfaction. I extract a lot of personal satisfaction out of you know being able to advise people on a on a number of areas. And I think that that um that problem solving component for any engineer, it's to realize that what you're after and what you probably love the most is to solve technical or or manufacturing uh problems and that that can still be there as you elevate and be shallow, uh, you just get a little bit more variety, if you will.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

Understanding you you talked about asking the right questions when people bring you a problem. Understanding that your role is to give people the freedom and set the expectation that they're gonna bring you solutions, not just problems. A lot of what I do is I pressure test what they bring me and say, okay, what do you recommend? And then I by push and pull on that, give them questions that challenge their assumptions, and they go back and work on a better solution. It's very rare when I actually say, okay, this is what we need to do. My people know, in most cases, the right thing to do. They just need to be have their ideas shaped and formed a little bit, and through that process, they become better decision makers. They're empowered because I'm trusting them to make a decision, and to be able to fail without serious consequence is a very important cultural uh tone to set so that they feel comfortable coming up with their own ideas, advocating for them, and implementing them, knowing that hey, if it doesn't work out, no one's gonna chop my head off. So all of these things tie together to set a culture and a tone of expecting people to come up with decisions, to think creatively, and have the courage to move forward with them.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

So, Bob, I wonder if you've had similar experiences to me. You know, that muddy middle between really being an engineer that thinks about a specific problem every day to becoming a CEO. There were moments in my career where I did not grasp this idea of helping people solve the problem as opposed to me solving it for them. I had less patience to allow that process to happen. And the net result was people didn't want to work for me. I was getting in the way, thinking I was helping, but I was actually inhibiting. It took me a while early in my career as I kind of hovered in that middle, you know, call it that mid-level between, you know, leader and doer to really figure that out. And I think that there's there's some really great advice or takeaways we could offer the audience about how to navigate that muddy middle when you're in a place where you need to be empowering people to problem solve, not doing it yourself. Did you experience that as you were coming up to your absolutely?

SPEAKER_03 17:11

And one of the things I realized early on by watching some bad examples, frankly, is that we have this paradigm that leaders they solve people's problems. You bring your problem to this person, they say, This is what you do, and that makes them a leader, and it makes them feel like a leader. It's very gratifying to hand someone a solution. But what you're doing is propagating and perpetrating this idea that you're the only one that has the answers. You don't set an expectation that people coming to you are going to have thought through a solution. So you talk about that muddy moodle. I used to get stuck in this. Bring me a problem, I will give you a solution, and you go away happy, and I feel like I'm doing my job. Exactly. So, what I realized was that's all they did. That I was training people to rely on me, and I made myself this bottleneck for decision making. And once you step back and realize that ultimately that may be more harmful to the organization than forcing people to think independently and giving them the freedom and the uh ability to move forward with their ideas, that that's how you grow an organization organization-wide.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

I think it's a great, super important lesson uh is to recognize that behavior. The faster you can recognize that behavior and realize that you know, by trying to do it all, you're slowing the organization down. Now, I I have to admit, that's a very difficult thing. I used to think it was only engineering specific. Like I would define my intelligence and my professional self-worth by how good I was at my singular craft. Like if I was good at writing code, I was smart, savvy, and valuable. Uh and to set that aside and to decide that I was going to elevate up and I didn't have to have the depth is more easy to say than it is to do. And I think that decision to say, you know what, I'm going to decide I want to lead people and help them get to the decision, to get to the conclusion faster, and to help them feel that moment of self-worth and satisfaction. What a great takeaway, what a great lesson for the audience if you're in that muddy middle, to that self-awareness of those things and to have the courage to set that depth of knowledge to the side for the benefit of helping more people across an organization be personally successful.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Well said. Final thoughts on advice, Bob, for the audience of how you do that, how you put it into play.

SPEAKER_03 19:40

Well, it's the challenge is in just what Nate described is recognizing those behaviors at that point in your career and knowing that in order to advance and really learn how to manage people and grow an organization, you have to have self-awareness. You have to be able to step back and set aside that personal gratification of solving their problems for them. You know, beyond that self-awareness, uh, you know, some people never get out of that.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

They don't. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 20:05

That's a hard thing.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

And that's okay. That's okay if you don't, you know, if you want to stay in the narrow, there's nothing wrong with that. Um, that you know, there's a lot of people across this country that are absolutely fabulous in a narrow position.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

So here's how I want to sum up. First, I I want to thank you both, Bob, Nate, my co-host, partner in crime, and in getting all these leadership hacks so we could build a better America. But I want to give you one final thought about a better America. Now that we know that the world, people aren't always going into work. They want to travel, they want to do where they are. Just imagine this lifestyle, everyone. Thinking in you're driving an airstream, you stop, you got a campfire, you put down some Omaha stakes on them, you're living when you're living. Does life get any better than that?

SPEAKER_01 21:00

I see a pinch in the future.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Great having you both on the show. And everyone, remember, you can create your own destiny. Just follow some of these leadership hacks. We're here for you to help you. See you next time.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Being able to see the entire playing field is crucial for leaders. When you develop a broad understanding of your business as well as the goals and challenges your teams face, you develop strategy and competence beyond your area of expertise. For more on today's hack, download the free Brain of Command Companion Guide at OmahaStakes.comslash podcast. Join us next time and discover hacks to fine tune your cultural myth radar. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and tell your colleagues that you're hacking your career with Brain of Command.