Dave Hertig — High Tech, High Touch: The Future of CEO Performance | Future Ventures Podcast Ep. 34

Dave Hertig has spent his career watching CEOs up close — first as a business journalist who interviewed more than 100 of them for UBS alone, then as the founder of Boom, where he now focuses on CEO performance under pressure. Along the way, he developed a conviction that became the spine of his work: the people the rest of the company looks up to have blind spots like everyone else, but those blind spots carry outsized consequences. Get the CEO right and the whole system compounds. Get it wrong, and no strategy, market, or product can save you. 

This conversation matters because most of what's written about CEO performance is written for the Fortune 500 — the leaders who get six-month onboarding handlers, custom briefing teams, and curated executive networks. The CEOs running companies between 50 and 1,000 staff are running on a fraction of that support, often with no one in the building willing to push back on them honestly. Dave has built a system to fill that gap, and the principles behind it apply whether you're leading 30 people or 3,000. 

Key Topics Covered 

1. The blind spots that quietly shape every CEO's decision — Why "why aren't more people like me?" is the most common — and most dangerous — pattern Hertig sees in founders and hired CEOs alike. 

2. Hire for your weaknesses, not against them — The Steve Jobs / Tim Cook arc as the definitive case study in pairing vision with execution, and why trying to fix a weakness rarely beats hiring around it. 

3. The adversarial gap — Why genuine pushback is the single hardest thing for a CEO to get inside their own company, and what happens to the people who try to give it. 

4. Accountability vs. outcome in the eyes of investors — The distinction between what a founder can control (input), partially control (output), and never guarantee (outcome) — and why integrity and transparency matter more than hitting the number. 

5. The CEO Sparring System — How a boxing-inspired protected room lets CEOs stress-test Board decks, investor pitches, firing decisions, and press interviews before they go live in the real world. 

Three Key Insights 

Judgment is more important in the AI era, not less. AI can help analyze data, compare options, and speed up decisions. It can even imitate emotional understanding. But it can't develop real emotional intelligence, read a room, or replace the human responsibility that leaders have. The polished answers from large language models make a CEO's judgment more challenging — and more valuable — than ever before. 

Authenticity is not the same as showing everything you are. The strongest CEOs Hertig has worked with put on a "uniform" when they walk into the role — measured, deliberate, strategic about what they say — while still ensuring the job genuinely matches their strengths and what gives them energy. That gap is professionalism, not inauthenticity. 

A progressive CEO wants to keep growing — personally and commercially. The CEOs worth working with are still curious, still hungry for pushback, still aware that their business sits inside a larger system. The ones who have hit a personal ceiling and stopped growing are the ones whose companies stop growing too. 

Links 

• Dave Hertig on LinkedIn: https://ch.linkedin.com/in/davehertig 
• Boom — CEO Sparring System: https://boom.ceo/sparring/ 
• Future Ventures Corp: https://ca.linkedin.com/company/future-ventures-corp 

About Dave Hertig 

Dave Hertig is the founder and CEO of Boom, where he focuses on CEO performance under pressure and works with leaders of medium-sized businesses navigating high-stakes moments. He is the creator of the CEO Sparring System, a boxing-inspired format that gives CEOs a protected room to pressure-test their most important pieces of work before deploying them in the real world. Before founding Boom, Dave spent years as a business journalist and content strategist, interviewing hundreds of CEOs across industries — work that gave him the pattern recognition behind his current focus on identity, judgment, and the human side of executive leadership.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to the Future Adventures Podcast on Scaling and Clarity. On today's show, we have Dave Hurtig, founder and CEO of Boom and Company. His work focuses on CEO performance under pressure. The moment where the stakes are high and the CEO judgment has to hold. He is the creator of the CEO's partying system, a format inspired by boxing, where CEOs bring high-stake pieces of work into a protected room and have them pressure tested before using them in the real world. On today's episode, we are going to explore what it really means to perform as the CEO under pressure, why identity is foundational to leadership growth, and how AI exchange in executive judgment, the balance between high-tech and high-tached leadership, as well as why deeply understanding humans may become one of the most important competitive advantages of the next decade. Dave, welcome to the stage.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Thank you very much, Maxime. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

I am super excited to talk to you. One of the questions that we often get is like, what is the what is the future of CEO looks like? Like especially with emergence of AI, how much of the decision making will be done by machine versus versus humans. So and I know that you have been thinking about this for a long, long time, and this is kind of the area of expertise. So why don't you just kind of give us a bit of the origin stories? What led you to focus your work on CEO performance?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

So in my before in business, I started or I started in business with as a journalist, as a business journalist. And at that time, I had a lot to do with uh CEOs already. Later became a content marketer, and I worked for client magazines as well. And for instance, there was one from UBS, the Swiss Bank, and for them alone, I visited more than a hundred CEOs around the country. And I mean, at some point you just get the pattern, and you see these people that are looked up to by so many people, they have blind spots just like everybody else, but their blind spots have outsized consequences for the whole company. And if you continue that thought, that line of thought, also for society. So that's why today in my work I focus on CEO performance under pressure, and these are these high-stake, high-stake moments where the judgment of a CEO has to hold up in real life.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yeah. From your experience in Aleppo, would would dive deeper into the CEO under uh under pressure? Um, what are the most common blind spots the CEOs have?

SPEAKER_00 2:56

So the the biggest one, and you hear this especially from founders, I'm sure you hear it at least once every month, is that somebody comes to you and says, Why are the people not like me? Do you know that one? Do you hear that one?

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Well, we we all want to be people that look like us, that talk like us, that have the same beliefs. So I'm not surprised to hear that.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's if you come up, I mean, especially if you come up through the ranks, you're a managerial person, you come up through the ranks, at some point you're a CEO, not a founder necessarily, but a hired CEO. You've come through all of these stages career-wise, you know how it works. And at that point in time, you have proven to yourself and the world that you can fight your way to where you are today. And not everybody is like you. But if you don't deeply understand humans, then you might think everybody should be like you, everybody should want what you want or what you wanted in life, and that's just not true. People are very, very diverse, very different from each other.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

I mean, hence the saying, I think Harvard uh did a whole bunch of studies that that essentially the the the same team emerged, the strength comes from diversity, and so the more diverse points of views that you have, the more well-rounded opinion, and the the better the thought process is.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

That's what they say. That doesn't necessarily mean that the CEO or a specific CEO sees it that way too.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

It's true, and uh uh quite often, like the CEOs have to be in a position where they they have the authority. Like the CEO's job is lonely for a reason because you have a lot of opinions, but at the end of the day, it's you have who has to make the final call on those decisions. So, besides kind of like sameness and likeness, uh, what other blind spots do CEOs have?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Uh I mean, as asked as an open question, uh, it's just that you think your thinking is the only way that somebody could think. Uh, it's it's similar to what I said before, but it's it's what has made us survive. We know this from psychology, we know it from how human or humanity has evolved over time. Like the way that we've become, each and everyone as an individual, who you are, who I am, who that person is today, that has come from the context in which they grew up. And it has helped us to be successful. If success only even means to survive, that is how has shaped us, how what has formed us, and that is different from for different people. So standing here and thinking that the way that I look at the world is the way that most people look at the world is still the biggest blind spot.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Understood. Is this um is is this at the root of your belief that uh um identity plays a massive role in leadership? Are you able to elaborate elaborate a little bit more? I mean, talked a little bit about kind of like the upbringing, kind of like where like where is a CEO comes from, but can you unpack this idea?

SPEAKER_00 6:22

The identity one? So can I say something about the other question first? Because it came up after I had uh responded to you. One thing that that means is, for instance, there are CEOs who are much better at their job if they have a complementary person next to them. I give you a typical example. Somebody is a visionary founder, but there is chaos in execution. And I know that you are big about execution, you personally, Maxime. So so if somebody is the visionary and is not at the same time really strong at organizing the daily operations, then the best thing that can happen to that person is to A, understand that, see it as a weakness, perhaps a blind spot, perhaps perhaps a weak spot, whatever you want to call that. Understand that however much effort they will put into that, they will never get to the level where they are as good at operations as they are at vision, for instance, to just stick with the same example. So understanding that, seeing that weakness, and then saying to yourself that it would be better to hire for your weaknesses than to try to act as if you could do that job at the world-class level, or just acting as if there was no issue, that is something that would be great, and that enhances the CEO performance in the end.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Oh, I couldn't agree more. I mean, what I find is um and and and this has been my approach um everywhere with my teams, is like I'm trying to make them better, but I try to focus like it's it's like I described their um skill set and careers as if it's a tool chest, I'm trying to add tools to their tool chest, but I want to give them the tools that they can use in the things that they're really good at. Like, let's say if you're a carprinter, you want to have all of the right tools, but I wouldn't give you tools that a machinist would use, it's just it's just a completely different skill set. And so for me, this is really, really important. Like I I mean studies, but also you and I hold the same belief. You are never going to be as good at at your weaknesses as uh as as you as as your strengths. So why devote attention on things that that are just don't come naturally to you and to your other point around visionary zero execute, like you need to have somebody what is complimentary or in some ways adversarial to say, hey, that's fantastic that you have all of these ideas, but it's it's almost more important for us to pay attention on the things we say no to than things we say no to. Because if you're visionary, I have an idea, I have an idea, I have an idea, I have an idea. And it's like, which idea do we execute on first?

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Yeah. Yeah, I started to smile when you said adversarial.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

Because I think that's that's one of the most important things in the topic or in the realm of CEO performance. And it's also one of the lacking elements for most CEOs, even the modern CEOs that I speak with who came up through the ranks and understood team building and everything, and then and they had great educations or training. Like, yeah, I have one person in my mind leading a company of several hundred people, and he came through investment banking, and he said, Before I give a presentation, I always do a dry run, and that is fine, but it's not advert as adversarial per se, because the people in the business still need to work with you, yeah, they still depend on you kind of liking them, and it's not absolutely clear whether if they act adversarially when they give you that dry run for your presentation, whether that would actually benefit them in their relationship with you as a CEO. So, adversarial to me is a key word stress testing, pressure testing, challenging. And I think that's one of the elements that CEOs either don't want to experience in their role, or even if they want to experience it, it's really hard to get internally. And and that element, that pushback that you can get, I think is so important for your CEO performance.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

It's um uh it's hard for me to square because I love feedback, and so when I work with my team, my team knows that they can come to me with any idea and they can challenge any idea that I have because I view feedback as a gift. But I've worked for a number of big publicly traded corporations, and I have been part of the senior management team, and so whenever I have seen um a vice president or an executive vice president disagree with the CEO in all instances that I've observed, they have been packaged out. In some cases, like they have been what?

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Excuse me.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

They were packaged out, they were exited out of the company. In one case, this happened on a Sunday.

unknown 11:48

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

And an executive vice president disagreed with the CEO, and and all he was trying to do is protect his business unit. He was, he was, he he he he wanted the autonomy to continue to grow, the business unit, the companies were emerging and like it was growing. On a Monday, the announcement was supposed to come out. On a Sunday, the person was like, like the conversation happened with a board, the person was exited, new um replacement for this person was announced. So it and and I've seen it at public traded company after public traded company if public like to me, it's like this court leads to better decision making. So, why are more CEOs not welcoming this?

SPEAKER_00 12:32

I mean, you and I could give this uh a similar answer to that, and it's probably ego, and it there's most probably also um the fear of losing your role. I mean, getting challenged in the animals kingdom means that the challenger actually wants your role, right? The the young gorilla wants the old gorilla to die or be cast out of the group. Yeah, so perhaps there's an element of that. So, and of course, that needs to be taken into consideration. You don't want the challenge to be formulated in a way that actually challenges your authority, but you want a company in which different opinions and different takes and perspectives flow into decision making.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

I I completely agree. Um at the same company that I was referring to with this particular example, my mentor with the chief operating officer, and the advice that he had given me is like, Maxim, the the way that you know that you're succeeding in a company, in the company is when your team is high-fiving each other, and when the work does not stop, whether you're there or not. Your job is to make sure that you remove challenges and roadblocks out of the way, inspire them, give them clarity, give them autonomy, and set the direction, and then let them execute rather than like, oh, you gotta do this, you gotta do this. Like, I mean, we're doing like um scramps, uh, so we were very agile, but but it's like get out of the way, get get out of the way and remove road barriers and blocks for them.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah, I I think you just mentioned Scrum and Agile. It's similar to Kaizen or Lean when it comes to that element, uh, and because one thing that they both share is the work organized in sprints. Organized in sprints means you readjust after a certain sprint period. Let's let's say every week or every second week, and that's an important element of that. And what you want to have happen is that there is somebody organizing the backlog and organizing the work that is being done at this point in time. And at all points, when whenever somebody pulls a next task into their responsibility, their personal field of responsibility, that should be a highly prioritized task task. And if you have a company or an organization like that, that means it's always focused on the goal, it's always focused on the mission, and everybody always works on something that is really important, and everything that is not really important gets left behind. That's the consequence of lean and agile. And back to your high-fiving, uh, the team that high-fives each other. I think if you're in such, if you work in such an environment, then you have good reasons to high-five yours, uh I mean each other, because everybody works towards the same goal. But of course, that and you will agree with that, even that is not necessarily the case for all the companies.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

I completely agree. Um, the other challenge that I'm seeing, and again, I put the the uh I put the honors on the CEO to set this right. I rarely see um goal setting done right in companies. Um outside of the tech industry, very, very few companies have uh adopted the OKR, the objectives and carries out framework. And whatever uh goal setting that happens at these companies, it it's very superficial and uh um um it it lacks the specificity. Like, for example, in my companies, in my teams, what we would do is like we would like we use Jira for the project management, we would do conference for communication and use Atlas for the goal setting. So there's a clarity and alignment. Hey, if we are trying to accomplish this as a company, this is our goal in three years, in two years, in one year, this is it kind of worked backwards in order for us to accomplish this. The team has to accomplish this. In order for the team to accomplish this, you have to accomplish. And it's very, very specific. I have never seen this done right in a big corporation. Never, never, never. I and I've been a consultant with EY, I've been a consultant with Deloitte, so 13 years with them working with big corporations. I have never uh EY and Deloitte do it pretty well because they're human performance machines, but in industry in the big corporations, I have never seen this done, right? Never seen it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

I I left UBS when I was 21 years old, and then I never worked in a huge company again. Yeah, uh, but of course, in at UBS, for instance, it's the goals are just the numbers, the numbers need to increase quarter over quarter, and that's the goal. Uh you you don't hear about any other goal.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

The promoter score, customer satisfaction. No, it's just the numbers have to assets under management.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Um by the way, Maxime, I should say, because you also defended Tiroit and EY, I should say that age 21 for me, that's a long time ago. So perhaps you guess is different today. I hope for them that they are.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Well, they're a big bank, so hopefully they've they've learned nothing onto over the years. Um it and even with the big four, I left big four in 2015, so it's been 10 plus years. My understanding, again, I don't have a an inside view. My understanding is that that environment has changed dramatically from what I know. Um, and and partnership plans have changed, structures have changed, organizations have changed, AI has uh proliferated, so that environment is very different. So I I'm speaking based on what I knew 10 years ago versus what those from skin look like now.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Yeah, I I like to stay away from the huge companies. Uh yeah, one reason is even in big company, I'm thinking of one, I'm not naming the uh the company, but there is a CEO, she's a woman, yeah. Uh, and everybody speaks highly of her, and then I know the stories from the ground in one country specifically, and it's terrible. So even if you have a great CEO at the top of a huge company, several hundred thousand people, you can still have the a terrible experience in one country uh oriented unit. It's just it's just what seems to be happening in these huge companies. So I I prefer I prefer to work with the medium-sized companies, yeah, and also I think the medium-sized companies, in my case, I usually define them as uh 50 to a thousand staff. Yeah, they are also underserved. Like these CEOs are really underserved, underserved. If you go to bigger companies, for instance, I give you an example of a headhunting company that also does other services on the side. For instance, you come in as the new CEO, they start preparing you six months before you arrive at the job. Yeah, during your first 100 days, they will be with there is a person holding your hand, basically. Yeah, preparing an outside person from the outside the company, preparing you for each meeting that you're going to have for the first three months, yeah, preparing you for each person whose hand you're going to shake. And the idea behind it is that you don't make any silly mistakes while you're still onboarding with the company. Now, that is a service. I mean, imagine that. But a CEO of a medium-sized business will never see anything like that, even from a distance. So there's a lot that we can do for CEOs of medium-sized businesses because what the services services that really exist for CEOs today, I would say, are the same services that exist for another C of something. What I mean by that, as an example, if you are the CEO and you also feel in charge of the CMO role because your company is not big enough so that you have a C for everything, you're also the CMO, then you will use the same services any other CMO who is not the CEO will work with. There are not so many services for CEOs that are specific to their role.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

That's interesting. Um, I mean, onboarding, uh, successful onboarding is probably one of the most critical foundational things companies can undertake to ensure that this well that well, one to ensure that you have the culture of it. So before even hire the CEO, like drive the assessment to ensure there's a culture of fit. Uh, but two, like make sure that that CEO is successful. Uh again, like everyone talks about the first 100 days and kind of what you're gonna do when you're gonna be listening to, or you're gonna listen more, then you decide and act. I get this, but this is an amazing service that uh um most I mean all CEOs should have.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Um the way that it usually works, and I give you an example of somebody who comes with And he took a job, he took on a job in Paris, France. And that was the founder was leaving the company and needed a replacement for himself.

unknown 22:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

He was sitting in the next room. And the team still went into his door in to his room instead of to the new CEO. You know what I mean? And the guy accepted that. The founder accepted. That's the reality, typically, or more often, in a medium-sized company. Now that's the wild, wild west out there. And if we can help these CEOs perform better, then we have done a good job, not only for them, but also for society. I can tell you that much.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Um I I I mean, I love it. I I completely agree with you, but it it's it's it's incumbent upon the founder to set the right behavior because culture is the it's not necessarily set the set of beliefs, it's kind of what you what what you do when you're not watching. So the reason why people were going into the founder's office rather than the CEO's office is because he was allowing it. He should have been like, hey, go talk to the CEO.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

That's who I think. You and I know. You and I know the incoming CEO knows, but now talk to the other guy, you know. I'm just saying, I'm just saying there is a wild, wild west out there, and the CEOs of medium-sized businesses, in this case, we're speaking about those who come into a company and directly into the role of the new CEO, they don't usually experience that kind of onboarding that we talked about for the big time or the big company CEOs.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

For sure, for sure. Um, Dave, I I wanted to go back to something that you just that you said a couple minutes earlier um about the female CEO. Now, there's numerous studies that have proven that uh women make better turnaround CEOs than men uh because of empathy or other factors. Now, you have the CEO aspiring system, and um there's kind of like this belief that if if if if a woman is uh aggressive, or maybe kind of use the boxing analogy, they're seen as pushy, is aggressive, and like the things that we prize and value in men are are maybe in some some ways seen as negative in women. So, kind of like what what is your perspective on kind of the differences and connotations of uh um male CO versus female COS and kind of like what how should they behave differently or kind of like how how would they apply the CO aspiring system differently, or do they at all apply it differently?

SPEAKER_00 24:29

I don't know whether it's between women and men, because I feel that also men do some. So it's being said out there that two I think that's what you're alluding to. Very oftentimes it seems to be the case that women who come up into a CEO position seem to act almost like men. That's what's being said out there, right? I think that many men are also acting like an example of a man that they are not.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Yes, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 25:01

It's in my mind, not every woman is like every woman, not every man is like every man. And I see men who are very good at empathy. And by the way, uh, when we did our ideal profile for CEOs, and I didn't do that myself, it was based on what's out there in terms of research. One thing that came out is that an ideal CEO is really good at working with people, really good around people. It's so so the the image that we have, I would say from the media and perhaps also from Hollywood, because in Hollywood, if somebody is a higher up, usually the way they get their authority is by shouting. Uh in Hollywood, especially, if somebody's not happy with performance, they clear their desk, right? They throw everything to the ground, they have uh an outburst of emotion. That's that's something that happens too. That's not the the medium-sized businesses CEOs that I see. Most of these people um come from a CE from a sales-oriented role or from a marketing-oriented role. Yeah, more rarely, they have been the chief HR officer before that, but CEO, uh, sales and CEO, in a way, share some traits of the ideal profile. Yeah, because both of them ideally would be really good at humans, understanding humans, interacting with humans, and in a way, uh, just be able to create these environments where others feel good and feel confident and feel seen and feel appreciated, and then start to flourish somehow.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

I couldn't agree more. I mean, uh, most modern personality assessments would have kind of like how do you view yourself versus how others view you? It's kind of like the inner persona versus the outer persona. What do you have any observations there in terms of is there a big delta and gap between how people behave innately versus how they behave outwardly?

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Um, that I'm not sure about. Can you please say that again?

SPEAKER_01 27:16

So you know how it um most personality assessment would have you um like they would phrase the question in such a way that they're assessing how you view yourself, and then they would have questions that would yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:32

So so the question is basically the way when you take the assessment, are you actually giving off the right image of yourself?

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

I I want to tell you one story that I experienced. Uh I somebody to uh a CEO took the assessment, and I was like, this doesn't seem right. Doesn't sound like yeah, and I went to the LinkedIn profile and copy-pasted posts into the same tool basically. Yeah, I used an LM for it, I used the chat for it, and I said, Does this profile that they had given me match with how they communicate over here? And it didn't, yeah. And and I told the person, and he completely completely blocked me out on that call. Like I tried to be to be smooth about it. Uh, and I also hoped that this would lead to a conversation that would deepen our relationship in the end, because in my view, most probably, and I'm not saying I was absolutely right, but all the indications pointed in that direction. This person didn't really understand who they are and wanted to be somebody else, at least partially. And if that's the case, how does that help you in life? Does that really do you any good? I don't think so. So I went back to the CV of this person, and the independent assessment suggested that that my version of it, together with LinkedIn, the LinkedIn post, etc., makes much more sense. And I give you I give you the reason why I say that. It was a person who claimed to be very creative and lived in this world of the creative people, still does. But the assessment that I did said they're really about execution and very strict and in a way almost rigid, which is not a bad thing. But I think it's important for you to understand what you are, and then that person had a background in the military. And I was like, why would a visionary, a creative person, spend their first five to ten years of a professional in the military if they're visionaries and creatives? Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 29:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

So I got my I got my answer there, kind of.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

I mean, and and there's like a obviously a very perfect example in terms of juxtaposition between Steve Jobs and and uh and Tim Cook, like Apple, right? Steve Jobs was the visionary, Steve Jobs was the creative. Um, but the person that drove the most value of Christian in the company was Tim Cook. He was a well, he is still amazing at execution. Um, and so they're they're just different personalities, just you need to know who you are. So, from like if we're to just double-click on this, what role does authenticity play in a CEO's role or kind of like how successful they are or they become?

SPEAKER_00 30:33

I have no issue with somebody putting on a uniform when they go into their job as a CEO, yeah, instead of giving off everything they are. And I've seen CEOs of startups, even friends of mine, who were friends of mine before they even founded a specific company. And I'm thinking of somebody who has exited their company in the meantime, so they had a successful exit. And at some point during this process of growing, uh, and I think at the time they had around 30 people, he said to me, I needed to learn not to make jokes when I'm on a on a on a call with the team, because not everybody understands my jokes. So he became much more strategic in how he communicated and what he actually said and what he just decided not to say. And it was more machine-like in that sense that everything was measured, and that made a lot of sense to me. Now you could say this is not authentic because he's a joker. When when he's with me, yeah, he he makes these jokes, he makes these statements, he also makes them just to figure out how I would react or other people would react. Yeah, and he stopped himself. So if that is authentic, then I don't need it in the professional life. But of course, they should what they do in their business and what in their role as a CEO should still be a match with what makes them feel good, what they love to do, and also their strengths should fit to the role of a CEO somehow. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 32:07

It does, it does, it does. Um within the environment and it it's like know your audience, um, because that that that defines uh how you shape the message. I mean, one of the things that they've done as of uh the last probably four or five years is I have spent a lot of my time thinking about change management and even becoming change management practitioner because not because I I want to specialize in change management, but the work that they do is strategy growth and capital. And so if I'm trying to influence strategy, you can come up with the like with a strategy or the business model. That's that's not the hard part. The hard part is making sure that everybody gets bought into this strategy is the change management aspect rather than coming up with a blue sky thinking.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Yeah, yeah. I have a question for you, if I may. Of course. Because you you mentioned Tim Cook, who is now leaving his role as a CEO, and the his sprint at Apple, a long sprint, right? Uh more than a decade, yeah, was will go down in history in terms of the financial results as one of the most successful uh tenures of a CEO. Absolutely. And he is not he's a hired CEO, he's not the founder, he wasn't there at the beginning, even. And he was tapped by Steve Jobs personally. So Steve Jobs, the visionary guy, after having had the experience where he got ousted from the company through or by an incoming CEO, yeah, yeah, had this experience and it was traumatic for him, then came back, then said, This guy, Tim Cook, is my man. Yeah, so so that was he must have made a much better choice. Uh, Steve Jobs must have felt that he made a much better choice this time, and then this man, Tim Cook, goes on to take it to a level that nobody ever could have foreseen. Now, the criticism is not very visionary, no new products. But why I want to ask the question back to you is you are in the business of scaling, and I think in your business, that is one of the most outstanding stories there are. So, how do you see that?

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Um, I mean, I I think that our views will be very much aligned. What we've seen, and it's kind of think about it from the perspective of um like we we work with a like a lot of the investors, and so the investors they they they're kind of struggling with this dichotomy or or this deer thought of like they want as much equity in the business, but at the same time, they want the the founders to have as much skin in the game. And the reason why you want the founders to have skin in the game because they're the visionary, they're the ones that are setting the direction. Without them, it's yeah, you can you can put the most amazing operator, but without the vision to that that you have to have to pursue, it's hard to execute. I mean you said it right. Tim Cook is one of the most successful CEOs in history. I think that I, if I remember correctly, I think he drove two trillion dollars value accretions for Apple. Like it like outstanding. I mean, outstanding in the in every way in terms of execution. Um, the most amazing supply chain person, like uh amazing execution. But to your point, look at the product line, look at Siri, look at the Apple car. They just like probably the most successful product came out was the the i the uh AirPods. Outside of that, what has he done? The other thing that them that it and again, this is not not a criticism to Tim Cook because the average lifespan of a CEO is four to seven years. Statistically, that's the average lifespan. It's a really, really hard job. Um, it it takes it takes a massive toll on a CEO. Um, 10 plus years, that's a long run for a CEO. And so it's not surprising for Apple to be looking for new energy. Now I'm not convinced that the new person is the right person for the job, but that's only time will tell this. But I do think that the the smaller the company, the more important is to have a vision CEO, the bigger the company, and because especially if you're a public trading traded company, the more important is to have somebody that's steady eddy that that that we know would be would have the right uh attention on the right levers to make sure the company is consistently executing on its mission, vision, and mandate.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Yeah. I I think it's you so I don't know what's going to happen next. And and if this vision, the the lack of vision, if you want to call it that, um turns out to be a problem, then it will still take some years until we know. I mean, for the last three years, people said they're really behind in terms of AI, but you know, uh we will see. We will see. But what it also tells us is how far the vision of Steve Jobs has taken the company. He was able to hand this over to somebody who is great at operations. That person ran with it for another 15 years, more or less.

SPEAKER_02 37:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

And look where they are. At some point, you said at the beginning the visionary might be more important, and I think that's most probably true. But look at what has been possible based on that foundation that Steve Jobs put there, laid, uh, especially in his second stint.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

That's amazing. I mean, what what's amazing about uh founders and and and what makes great founders, um, and again, this is based on hundreds, if not thousands, of conversations we've had with investors, is you want you want a founder that has a chip on their shoulder, they have something to prove. Uh so if you look at if even if you take statistics on um US presidents, who who who were the US presidents, if you look at who were the most successful founders in history, Steve Jobs was adopted. Steve Jobs was adopted out of his own company. He had a lot of positive anger that kind of drove him to prove what he what what he was trying to prove. And so um, I mean, he wasn't perfect. There's a lot of like those stories around Steve Job as a CEO and and in some ways being you know an asshole, but he was absolutely a visionary and with dogged determination to succeed.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Yeah, and you like that, you like grit. I know that from your other interviews.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

I love grit and resilience because that's what makes for great CEOs. You want founders to be able to walk through fires, to walk through walls. Um, because you in you primarily invest in them. The idea may be fantastic, the market may be big, um, it may be on the rise, but at the end of the day, if you don't have the right CEO to determine what direction the company should take, even the best ideas will fail.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

If you have, if you happen to run into an investor who searches for a chip on the shoulder of a CEO and can't find one, give them my phone number. I will I will go and find the chip on the shoulder of every person in the world.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Yep, a double-click on it.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Um problem there.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Yeah, yeah. No, it's interesting. Um, as we talk to investors, they have different scoring rubrics that they use in terms of how they evaluate uh CEOs. One of the most common um criteria that they've heard from investors is accountability. Are you going to do what you say that you're going to do? That's kind of like it, it it's it's the one that most commonly emerges in our conversations.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

I have a question about that because are you going to do what you say you do? If that's if achieved, so there's two things to that, right? One is the input. Are you going to give your all to achieve the goal that you set for us together to get to, to achieve? That is one thing, but you can never guarantee that you will get the results in in the time frame that you have given from the beginning. These are two different things. Now, when I spoke of UBS or we speak about Apple, of course, they will deliver every quarter. Every quarter, the numbers will go up a little bit. Oftentimes that's the case. And they can do that because it's a whole different game. For startuppers, scale up, early scale up, I'm not so sure whether that's actually possible. We're in the Wild West again, a bit of in the messy jungle. Uh, all of us can be can be happy for themselves if they're out of the forest. Let me put it this way. But while we're still in the jungle, it's really hard to predict what's going to happen. So if you make promises to investors, they must be kind of outsized. The investor wouldn't go for an for a tiny promise. So they want the big promises. And if they then want the CEO to also act upon what they said they would do and the plan that they laid out, they must understand that the input must be enough. Like you go at it, you're all in, and you're all out, and you go at it, but it's hard at the beginning of a hundred percent in the early stages of a company, of a startup, especially, to know exactly what's going to happen in Bowen.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

I I a hundred percent. Um give you specific examples. Uh, the earlier the company, the more certain the outcome is because you're small compared to a bigger player. I mean, Apple is a juggernaut, so they have a lot more control over the market than the incumbent player, at least in in some aspects. Like they don't necessarily dominate in terms of hardware, mobile hardware hardware devices, but they certainly have the stronghold over the the luxury uh end of the mobile devices. Um the other aspect, so if you kind of think about the the the rubric, the scoring rubric that investors use to evaluate founders, um, after accountability, they look for integrity. So like the results are the results. What and to your point, they want clarity and transparency over what's been done. Like they like they understand that the founder cannot control the outcome, but they want to see integrity and they want to see transparency in communication. So if there's bad news, unlike good wine, bad news don't get better with time. They want that clarity and transparency as early as possible in terms of hey, we're doing this, it's not working out. You want to say something?

SPEAKER_00 43:07

So basically, you can control, you can be as a CEO or any person, you can be in charge of the input. Make a promise, put that work in. You kind of can have or semi-control the output, but the outcome itself depends so much on outside factors that okay that's that's a different game. Um, the you said that the topic of this uh conversation is about high tech.

SPEAKER_01 43:35

High tech, high tech, yeah. So tell me, like, I want to dive deeper in this, like, tell me.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

Uh I and I also am interested and curious what you think about it because AI is important to you and the companies that you work with.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Do you think that AI is at a point where it basically is the one tool that a CEO needs, and we're done?

SPEAKER_01 44:01

Um the short answer is no. The long answer is very, and what I mean by this is AI is amazing at decision making where is data to analyze uh or data to to make an informed decision on.

SPEAKER_00 44:21

We're talking about original data, like owned data of a company, context that is specific to a business.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

Yeah. So so there's there's a there are a ton of companies at the moment that are working on what they call the AI brain of a company. So essentially, how do you build uh uh I mean in in the old terminology is a data lake, the data lake just stores the data, but in this case, we're trying the companies that are looking to build retrieval of method generation systems with pulling data from from a lot of different sources, using an AI brain, or essentially uh like creating institutional memory for the for the company, for the CEO or leadership team to make informed decisions based on kind of what exists within the company, plus what they can pull from an external source. So, from that perspective, it AI is really, really helpful. The problem with AI is that the statistical model, right? Like it can analyze, it can compare, it can make informed decisions, can benchmark, that's fantastic. AI, it I am not a believer that AI can become sentient. I'm not a believer that AI can develop EQ, it can mimic EQ, but I don't know that it can develop EQ. And so um you yourself said that uh the role of a CEO is to be a people person, like a lot of the work that they do is to inspire people. Um I I don't see a way around this for CEO. Uh, my personal perspective on this, um, and and it's kind of interesting. Like I got booked by one of the top search firms next week to interview on that particular topic. Uh, my personal belief is that AI is a tool, is an enabler in the pocket of a CEO, but it's just that it's an enabler, it's not a substitute for what they have to do. And so um there's the like there's a lot of things that get left and said, and yes, you can layer tools within your communication layers of a company that analyzes sentiment and things like that, but it's still not a substitute for being able to meet with a person and read kind of like what what their situation is, or kind of like read body language and understand like what's happening in their lives and what they may be going through. So that's just my personal belief. It's it's increasingly going to become more important, it's gonna facilitate faster decisions, it's not gonna become a replacement or substitute for decision making.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

Yeah, yeah. Um, I I agree. First of all, I would like to say to the to the CEOs out there who listen and don't feel that they're a people person, I'm also only situated in some situations a people person. I can be I can be very happy just being by myself, and that's true for CEOs of big companies too. So if you're a more technically minded person and not a uh a people person, but your company actually needs a people person, that would be a great example for somebody who can hire for the weaknesses. Uh, you don't need to be that person. A CEO does so many things, and in the end, is just the accountable person for success, for mission accomplished, okay, somehow. And and if that person is not a people person, and I know quite many of these people who are not people oriented, CEOs who are not people oriented, they can be very successful at the job. Just understand that somebody needs to take care of the people. If people are crucial to your success, I agree. And how and understanding that you have that as a weakness or a blind spot is the first step in that direction.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

I agree. Dave, can we uh just shift gears slightly and talk about the CEO spiring system and kind of like how you develop this model? What does it look like? Um, what are the outcomes that are being achieved through the CEO sparring?

SPEAKER_00 48:21

Yeah. So that happened, or we started it at a time, we started to develop it at a time when we were still thinking that our business model would be a platform model where we bring in the CEOs, progressive CEOs who we work with, and on the other hand side, we connect them to third-party vendors. And we we didn't even plan to have our own product in that sense. But a CEO of a company with 60 staff came to me and said, I don't want a coach, I don't want a mentor, I don't want a consultant, I know where I'm going, I know where I'm headed. What I really want is a sparring partner, somebody who challenges my ideas so that I can improve them. And that's what he wanted. And it stuck with me for years before we even started developing that. And then over three different sprints over the years, I worked with different groups of people on it. Always when somebody made a promise, like for instance, I will sell this in Country X, right? And then we started, we put together a group, some people worked on this, and then I understood that it would be me doing it. So I was like, this is not my business model, stop. But at some point, I was in touch with my co-um creator of this program, Thomas Stoker, who is now the head of sparring system here at Boom. And together with him, I was able to take it to the to the level where we can actually deploy it. And what it does and why we have developed it is because something like this doesn't exist. And I want to take it back to what you said, where I started to smile when you said adversarial. That's exactly it. Because if you don't get the pushback in the company, because people don't want to treat you like that, and all you would get is some well-meant feedback, a little bit of pro, a little bit of con, but nothing that really cuts. But you need to have something that really cuts, you need real pushback. Then you don't have that. How would you where would you get it? Of course, you can talk with friends if you have that. Uh, I don't know where else you would get it, but if you want it as a system, somebody needs to deliver that to the market. And we decided to deliver that to the market. So, what it really is, is the CEO brings a piece of actual CEO work to the sparring match. It's inspired by boxing, where sparring, the concept of sparring comes from. Yeah, they come into a sparring match, it's even organized like a boxing match. Three minutes rounds, one minute break, three minutes round, one minute break. And what we do is we have somebody who in the in the virtual corner of a Zoom call, typically, comes out of their corner and attacks your presentation. So you start presenting as the CEO, and this person attacks you based on a brief. Of course, we use AI in the preparation phase, and we make sure that this person doesn't only act as themselves, but they are a senior professional who has seen the world, understands the situation of a CEO, and then they come in loaded with additional information about the person who that CEO will actually deliver the presentation to once they're out of our room. So that sparring partner's job is to attack you, to throw you off balance. And like with boxing, the idea in boxing when they do sparring is they are preparing for a big match. But what they cannot have is an open lip or a cut above the eye, or uh even worse, a brain damage, which they get from boxing, right? So what they have developed is this idea of sparring where somebody who is at your level comes in and boxes with you, but if you're open, you've you've let your defense down. Uh if you're open and they could hit you in the face, they will not. Yeah, and that's exactly the same thing. So we're building this protected room where we go at you, like we we we challenge you hard, we stress test the thing that you bring into the room, and if it breaks, you will look really bad, but only to the room, and the room is on your side. And that's the idea behind the CEO sparring system.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

I mean, I I I absolutely love this idea because it provides them with like um this intimate conversation where um they don't feel like like to your point, they don't feel like they're losing their authority, uh, but at the same time, they it the CEO sparring system leads them to make better decisions. Uh, they don't have to be defensive because it's subordinate. Uh they can just be themselves and just um I was listening yesterday to a podcast, uh Masters of Skill, and they had David Epstein on it. And so the art of range, the wrong, the art of uh uh uh uh in the box, I think it's around limitations, kind of restrictions, limitation leads you to be creative. And so um David Efton came out with criticism for Malcolm Gladwell around the 10,000 hour concept, and and Malcolm Gladwell welcomed his uh criticism. And uh David Ashton found found this to be like really, really surprising because it's criticism. And what Malcolm Gladwell had essentially the way that he reacted is like I learned more from my critics than from my fans. Um because it's like if if somebody's taking the time to critique me in a constructive way, there's gotta be a reason for it. So let me explore kind of what what this looks like.

SPEAKER_00 53:59

Um yeah, what how we do it, you mean yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:04

I'm just gonna like this was more of a of a of a comment.

SPEAKER_00 54:08

Um on what uh Malcolm said. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Understand. So in our case, the only thing that I would like to push back here on is uh it's not an intimate conversation, it really feels like a battle. Okay. So so you start pre you start presenting, for instance, yeah. What could a piece of CEO work be? It can be a presentation that you're going to give to the boardroom, to the board of directors. It can be that you have to meet uh investors, uh, it can be that you have to fire somebody. You're not sure about hiring somebody, you have an issue with some with one of your key people, and there is nobody internally who you can speak about that with. Uh any memo, even that you put out, you go into an interview with the New York Times soon, and you need to be prepared, for instance. You can do that with your internal PR person, but you know, perhaps not. So you want to be prepared. And in order to be prepared, you come into our room and you get the pushback that you need so that you find out what breaks before you're actually out there, so that it doesn't break in public.

SPEAKER_01 55:23

Dave, you've you've coined the phrase progressive CEO. Um, have you developed um any kind of a pattern that that that that you resort to that would give you a sense this person will likely succeed in the age of AI? Um they are somebody that is very progressive in their thinking. I mean, how would you juxtapose a progressive CEO versus maybe somebody that's more traditional?

SPEAKER_00 55:51

Yeah, I I just experienced a great moment yesterday because I have had a Google alert on progressive CEO for years. And usually what comes up in a Google alert is the CEO of the company called Progressive in the US. There are even several of them Progressive Health and Progressive the Insurer. So that's what has been Progressive CEO until now in my Google Alerts. Yesterday, for the first time, somebody used progressive CEO, and it was the uh the newspaper, the French newspaper Le Monde. And they used it for Dario Amade, the CEO of Anthropic. And they literally in their trans in their English translation, it was written in in French, but in their English translation version, they called they said the progressive CEO Dario Amade of Anthropic. And I was like, Yeah, and by the way, that's a good one. Uh, Dario Amade, of course, right now he's a bit of a star, right? Uh in the world of AI. So it's so funny to me, and I had a little celebration dance that they that it's the first time that somebody calls somebody a progressive CEO, and it's not me who does that, and then it's Dario Amade. How do we know whether somebody in our filter, according to our definition, is a progressive CEO or not? I have seen CEOs who don't want their company to grow. Hard to understand, but one person that I have in my mind literally told me if my board wants the company to grow, I will, they will have given me the mandate, at which point I will go back and tell them how much it will cost them to execute on the growth plan. Until then, we just stay as we are. Now, that would not be a great client for boom. They don't want to grow. Then I the growth part, I also connect it to the willingness and desire even to grow personally. If somebody feels that they have achieved what you can achieve in life and their personality has hit the glass ceiling and they're super happy with themselves, then I would go rather with uh Malcolm Gladwell than Mr. Epstein. The other Epstein, David Epstein, I think you may. So somebody who still wants to grow, somebody who's still interested and curious in getting that pushback is more interesting to us because I believe that this person will achieve bigger things in the future, independently from what has been achieved in the past. Then it's about uh health as well, like somebody who just kills themselves in the job. I'm not really interested in that. It's the same with people who have no worries about the world, the planet as a whole. I just can't live with it. It's like, yeah, of course you can do that. And I understand that we all need energy and all of these things. I'm not against that. I also understand we have wars. It's not a this is not a leftist position in any way. It's just understand that the world is a thing as a whole, and that our businesses need to have their place inside of that overall system. So that is one element too. And then I one strong accent of this is on do you understand how important the people, at least the key people in your business, are to your success? Yeah, and if you are, if you do understand that, then let's do something about it because the way that we have led humans over decades, perhaps since forever, has not been up to the task, I would say. And there is so much science out there and technology out there that would help us do much better. So let's use that and do a better job at leading humans and making sure that their potential actually gets used in the workplace.

SPEAKER_01 59:36

Makes sense. Uh I couldn't agree more. It's like it, it's it's it's it's like fine wine. Everything has to be in harmony, it has to be balanced. If you have one element accentuated over another element, it's just be like the the product becomes edgy. And so, in the case of SEO, you you need to have that right balance, and and the balance needs to shift based on the environmental stage of the company, or or maybe in this case the guardrails that are imposed by by the board, but it needs to be in balance. Um, I know we're at time at time, Dave. Um, any parting thoughts and words of wisdom?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:11

No, just I would just like to make the point that you already made when it comes to AI. We talked about AI quickly twice two times in the conversation. I think one thing that you said is super important. You are the thinker. You, together with the LLMs, you build a new system. That's a new kind of CEO. You are the enhanced CEO, as you said. I like to call them uh enhanced or amplified, so do other people too. I really feel like a different person thanks to my LLMs and what I can do with them. But if you want to use them well, it takes time. Many CEOs don't have time. Back-to-back meetings, no time in between. It's hard for them to even understand the ins and outs of a regular chatbot, a regular LLM in the in the in the physical body of a chatbot. So you need to understand whatever it is, and whatever you hear out there, whatever the hype promise is, understand that you are still the person who needs to do the thinking. And this is a tool, and it will help you do better thinking, but you need to be the thinker even more than before, because now all the BS ideas that you get from the LLM, among other uh players in your system, sound so polished and looks so great and comes in perfect English. And it's just hard to judge. And judgment of the CEO has become even important, even more important based on the AI tools that you can work with.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:43

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Uh thank you, Dave. That has been one fantastic conversation. I took a lot of validation in in my thinking. Obviously, you are the one that uh is the expert and specializes in this, but this has been uh amazing. I'm sure that our listeners and viewers will take a lot out of it. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:04

Thank you, Maxime. That was a great conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:07

My pleasure.