Brain of Command Episode 12

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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/

• Look for Brain of Command on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 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_04 0:30

Over the past 11 episodes, we've covered some incredible ground, 11 leadership hacks, world-class guests, and more than a few moments that stopped us in our tracks. Today, I'm here to bring you the best of Brain of Command, the insights, the stories, and the moments we keep coming back to. Here are a few from episode one, where we explain the first hack, intentional deja vu.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Intentionally use this feeling of deja vu to create comfort and to guide yourself in a moment that would otherwise be a very anxious, uh, you know, maybe scary moment for many people where you're getting up in front of a group of individuals. It doesn't need to be a lot, could be a small room, could be a large presentation, but to replay that moment in your head over and over to create that feeling of the when you're on that stage, when you're in that room and presenting the information or telling the story that you've been there before.

SPEAKER_06 1:31

Am I giving a talk on something I've earned the right to talk about through my preparation? Am I eager to share this because I want to give something to the audience? I see it as a gift. And then the third thing was am I excited about the topic? If we've done everything right leading up to being there, um, it's it's gonna be uh a lot easier. I can share one story with you. I was excited about this talk because it was the first talk I was giving after COVID. I show up the day before, everything was perfect. And then the next morning, the morning of the speech, I run up and I'm behind now. Behind stage is a curtain, a floor-to-ceiling curtain. And I I literally just my foot hit the step and I went flat on my arms and my knees and a big thud. And I'm thinking to myself, people probably no one probably saw that, but they definitely heard it. The point is, I think we have to be flexible in the moment. We don't know what's going to happen, we can't control uh all of our environment. So um, and you know, and the rest of the talk went fine. But but again, it it goes to the preparation, to the visualization, um, to being able to be adaptable in in the moment, and uh, and thankfully it went fine.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

That story from Joe Hart falling flat before a thousand people and still delivering is the essence of what brain of command is about. Control the controllable. Next up, the power of language. In episode two, we introduced the concept of Simon says.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

If you use the right words, you can really influence you know a group of people inside a company. And and this language gets created inside organizations organically. Developing allies is a key portion of being successful, and there is no better way to do that than using the right language at the right time.

SPEAKER_11 3:21

Aaron Powell We'd like to influence the culture of our companies. We can't control it, but we can influence it. And how do how do we influence it? We influence it with our behaviors as leaders, which is which things do we tolerate, which things do we reward, and what things do we punish. And vocabulary is an important thread throughout all of those ideas.

SPEAKER_04 3:43

From language to the people who quietly wield it. In episode three, we met Cindy Bigelow and talked about the insiders who really run every organization with our third hack, the insider phenomenon.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

The key component to an influencer inside a team is really that they hold and own the trust that affords them the authority to move things forward or move things backwards. The way I think about it is like this if you printed off your org chart and then you flipped it over and there was invisible ink on the back, you would see your insider chart. And and it would describe the trust flow. This is really how stuff gets done. I think of insiders like uh the credibility credit union. They can influence an idea, they can underwrite a person or a thought and make it happen, or they can shut it down.

SPEAKER_08 4:47

It's not about the title, it's about the ability to contribute, the creativity, the ability to pick up trends very quickly. And so people that stay in the room, it's how they're able to digest and bring out ideas that contribute to the whole team's movement on where we need to be going.

SPEAKER_04 5:06

Now, here's the hack that our guest said is the single biggest career accelerator of all 11. Episode four, play the part.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

The idea is this it's operating at the level of the role you want before it's officially yours. You know, you do so in a way that makes it obvious to the organization that you belong in that role.

SPEAKER_10 5:32

My first time ever being CEO was at the age of 14 in my JA business. The business wasn't super great. It was like a t-shirt business. But I was 14, and you know, I also had a bit of a speech impediment in those days, and it gave me a leadership role and it made me feel that I could speak fluently and people would actually listen to what I say, and I could make friends and be popular, all that kind of good stuff that after-school activities let you sort of experiment with. I genuinely believe that I would not have had the confidence to be CEO in my 20s when I started, you know, a real commercial enterprise if I hadn't had that early experience. So playing the part early on, just like you said, it sort of starts to rewire your brain to think differently about your capabilities.

SPEAKER_05 6:13

I I remember early on, I was asked to um to coach Ivan Seidenberg, the CEO of Verizon. I was like 27 years old. I hadn't done this, but I knew I had to play the part, which means you have to learn everything, do your homework, and be perfect. And that led into a long-term relationship and probably one of the key areas of why I started interviewing CEOs.

SPEAKER_04 6:40

Playing the part takes courage. So does the next hack, one that most people get completely backwards: being fiscally responsible and building your brand around it.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

The personal brand is the key there. It's not just about being good with money. You know, lots of leaders can cut costs or deliver return on investment, but they never reap the reputational benefits. So, and that's the difference in doing and being known for doing. So when you negotiate a vendor contract, you know, that saves the company $100,000, you can't just file it away and move on. You know, you need to take intentional action, sharing the outcome with the right stakeholders, framing it as disciplined resource stewardship, and then connecting it back to organizational goals, and then you're building your brand at that point.

SPEAKER_09 7:34

Creating the balance of entrepreneurial and discipline is key to growing a business, to managing a business. Doesn't matter what it is, how big you are. So when you create that kind of a culture in an enterprise of being entrepreneurial and disciplined at all levels, the chances are that you're going to do well.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

When I was first coming in as CIO, the relationship between me and the CFO had not really been established because I was new. And so I built that reputation of being thoughtful about my PL, of understanding where the money was flowing through IT, not just, you know, kind of being irresponsible and knowing I got to spend all this money on technology, because that's what people do, right? People spend money on technology. Well, that personal brand got attached to me. Um, so when I went to the boardroom and we had executive level meetings and I needed resources, that personal brand, I was able to flex that muscle, and it was a much faster track to a yes, because I had taken the time to prove myself as being a fiscally responsible person that that brand shined through.

SPEAKER_04 8:40

One word that runs through fiscal responsibility, through playing the part, through everything we've talked about, trust. Hack six was about building that trust in a very surprising way, the right way to brag.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

You can think about it really more like self-promotion. And I think self-promotion is important. I mean, if you don't tell people the good thing that you're doing, then you can't expect them to know. So over the course of my career, I figured out ways to put those things out there without it coming off overly braggish. One of them is called the impressive email trail. It's a great way to take a win and to share it without looking conceited, especially if you say things like, you know, this is a good example of my team really tackling a hard problem, forwarding that to some leadership, not saying, hey, look what I did, but indirectly using the power of we, taking an email trail that gives the facts, Jack, right? Here's what we grew, here's how the cost cutting we did, and sharing that with leadership in a way that, you know, brings the team into the conversation is just one example of a tactic that can be actively used to share wins in the business workspace without looking like you're bragging.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

I am gonna riff on this idea of honesty. I I think that that's a really good one. And I think that that kind of helps people think through uh this this sort of like this quagmire of what's bragging and what's what's not, and how do I do it the right way? And I think by calling it just being honest, that also helps the people who might lean toward that I'm I'm you know, I'm full of humility or whatever it is. But the truth is people are seeking out a certain level of earned confidence in leaders. They they want you to be confident. You have to be confident. It is an earmark of being able to do the job.

SPEAKER_05 10:48

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SPEAKER_04 11:48

From building your brand to understanding how your brain works, episode seven was one of our favorites, the fast CPU.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

We can't very much crack our heads open and install a new brain. At least not yet, right? So if you're a person that has call it a slower CPU, you can still be extremely effective and extremely successful by leveraging different tips and tricks. And by the way, if you're someone with a fast CPU, you also have to be cognizant of how that affects your leadership and affects um how you deal with others.

SPEAKER_14 12:25

Uh if you've got a fast-spinning engine, that's fantastic. But if you have no brakes, you're in a whole lot of trouble. And if you have a terrible starter, you're in a whole lot of trouble. And if you have, you know, terrible exhaust systems, you're in a whole lot of trouble. So it's it's a piece of the puzzle. And it actually, depending on kind of the whole system, it can be a fantastic asset uh or a real problem.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Even in myself, as I was coming up in a C-level role, just not patient. My brain would tell me the answer. I didn't want to wait around for other people to get there. I had tried to ram that through, and I couldn't get my organization behind me as a leader.

SPEAKER_04 13:02

Status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness. Keep those in mind as we move to hack eight. Your network defines you.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

So it's not only about your network helping define your success, but it's also about how you intentionally shape your network so that it becomes a kind of a living reflection or definition of your professional identity. So it mirrors who you are and it helps architect who you can, or in some cases, need to become.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

But what I loved about it is it allowed you to spend the time to really think about those types of networking relationships and really where you're at with them. And what was surprising to me is I was spending a lot of time with certain stakeholders that weren't really even in the field, right? Where the energy needs to be spent. So it allows you to say, okay, if this is my networking map I want to care for, where do I have really solid relationships that are just easy to keep going back to versus the ones I actually need to care for?

SPEAKER_05 14:05

I remember there was this 96-year-old guy, Henry Baker, the top real estate salesman in the world. And I was 22, I'm in his office. I said, What's the key to business? He goes, never burn a bridge.

SPEAKER_04 14:18

Well, that's just one of Here's one that most people overlook entirely. And it is the most nuanced hack in the whole series. Hack nine, be just funny enough.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

And look, this skill of know your audience, react to your audience is a great skill on many levels. But certainly when you're going to apply humor in a professional setting, having that, you know, working that fader, seeing how things are hitting, and adjusting that, knowing your audience is going to make the level of humor ultimately correct for the situation. And that at the at the lowest level is really what we're talking about today, which is making adjustments.

SPEAKER_07 15:01

When I was a student, one of the jobs I had was selling VAX vacuum cleaners door to door. And one of the things I learned was if I could if I could just show them how much dirt the VAX sucked out of their mattress.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

You had them at that, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 15:16

It was a 90% conversion. 90% conversion if I could just get to the mattress. Uh and I used to I used to ring the doorbell. The door would be open, usually by in those days, a woman, and I would say, uh, my name's Andrew Robertson. I'm representing the um Vax Vacuum Company. Can we go up to your bedroom? And most of the time they would laugh. Occasionally they would say, Most of the time they would laugh. And if they laughed, there was a really there was a 90% chance I'd be able to sell, I'd be able to sell the VAX.

SPEAKER_04 15:51

The man understood delivery, and that brings us to episode 10, which is really about everything a CEO has to master at the very top. Hack 10. Be shallow and wide at the top.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

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.

SPEAKER_13 16:35

My advice would be start with an area that scares you most. That's not in your area of expertise. And for me, I was working at General Motors and I was very comfortable as an engineer, manufacturing engineer, facilities engineer, but I was terrified of supervising people. 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 I think in the end, uh it was one of the most formative experiences I've had.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

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, but then constantly coming back up to the surface and looking at the company from a wide perspective.

SPEAKER_04 17:37

And our final hack, and maybe the most important one for any organization that's been around long enough to have traditions, hack 11, the cultural myth radar.

SPEAKER_02 17:51

This is radar that detects when an organization is operating on a story that feels true, it sounds true, and is repeated like truth, but is no longer actually supported by the facts. Okay, now some stories are useful. They preserve wisdom, they keep people aligned, you know, they help teams move faster. But then some of them start as assumptions. They, you know, they harden beliefs, they eventually get repeated so often that they become treated like facts. And that's kind of where this hack comes in.

SPEAKER_12 18:23

I used to hear it all the time. Uh, we tried that before, right? That product line doesn't work. The consumers don't want that, we don't make money off of that. Uh, the shareholders won't be happy. I've heard all those things. How do you know that you didn't miss something when you went down that road before? And if you're talking about detection, one way to detect is require your leaders to walk their own process. Walk the process yourself. And so, in other words, when you go out and start looking at everything that you've got documented about how something should work, you start asking the whys, though. Why does it work this way? Should it work this way? Is this best for the organization? Is this best for the consumer?

SPEAKER_02 19:05

You know, the first six months that you're here will be the most value that you deliver to the business because your cultural myth radar is on high alert. You're gonna, you're not affected by that institutional language per se.

SPEAKER_04 19:23

11 magical hacks. 11 incredible guests, 11 ways to transform your thinking and transform your career. Thanks for listening to Brain of Command with your hosts Nate Rempe and Robert Reese. Dive deeper into all of these hacks and discover how to put them into practice with the free Brain of Command Companion Guide at OmahaStakes.com/slash podcast. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and tell your colleagues that you're hacking your career with Brain of Command.