Unlocking the modern CEO with Joe Leech | HowToWeb Conference Talk

In this talk, Joe Leech takes the stage to unravel the essence of being a modern CEO. Through a series of engaging narratives and practical examples, Joe sheds light on the pivotal moments and decisions that define leadership in today's fast-paced world. 

From the ancient Buddhist thought experiment that challenges conventional problem-solving to the fearless approach of breaking the rules for success, Joe's talk shares wisdom for aspiring leaders.

You will embark on a journey through the realms of strategy, growth, and the unavoidable fear zone, discovering how these elements intertwine to sculpt the path of a successful CEO. Joe's candid sharing of experiences from working with CEOs across various stages of their careers offers a unique glimpse into the trials and triumphs of leadership. The video doesn't just stop at highlighting challenges; it provides actionable insights and innovative solutions like the "Spider Finding Game," which turns problem-solving into an enjoyable team activity.

With Joe's guidance, you'll also learn the importance of embracing fear as a catalyst for growth, the art of asking the right questions, and the significance of fun in the journey of leadership. 

This video is not just a talk; it's a call to action for leaders to step out of their comfort zones, challenge the status quo, and lead with authenticity and courage.

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Videos for all these episodes are on my YouTube channel.

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Transcript

Paul: 0:02

Okay, let's start with an experiment. We've had lots of talks about experimentation over the course of the last couple of days. This one's a thought experiment. In fact, it's an ancient Buddhist thought experiment. I'd all like you to take part in for today. So we've got a goose and we've got a bottle. In fact, we've got a baby goose. It's a gosling. We put the baby gosling into the bottle. We pull its little neck out with the head of the bottle. Don't worry, it's just a thought experiment. No geese are harmed in this! You take the goose's head, you pull it out through the bottle, and over the course of the next three months, you feed that little goose, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger inside the bottle. And before you know it, you can't get the goose out of the bottle. What do you do? There are two rules in this thought experiment. Your job is to get that goose out unharmed. Number one, you can't hurt the goose. And number two, you can't break the bottle. What do you do? How do you get the goose out of that bottle? Okay, I hear answers to this like, well maybe we could melt the bottle, put it under the fire. Okay, the goose is going to, what's going to happen if we do that? Well you're going to hurt the goose, the bottle's going to break. What about starving that poor goose? Well you can't do that because again, it's ribcage is so big you can't get it out. What do you do? How about slowly slicing the bottle to try and get the goose out? Well no, that's not going to work cause you're going to probably harm that goose. Hurry up! It's Paul Goose is stuck in this bottle. What are you gonna do? I'll tell you what you're gonna do. You're gonna break the fucking bottle to get that Paul Goose out of there. What kind of experiment is this? Now, I know what you're thinking. You gave me two rules, one of which was not to break the bottle. Who am I to give you rules about what you should do? And that's something that I've learned with the founders that I've worked with over the last 20 or so years. It's the ones that are successful, they play their own game. They break the fucking bottle. Oh, I should have checked, is that okay for me to swear? Alright, good, thanks everybody, that's me breaking the bottle in my own small way. A good friend of mine once told me this joke, it was a while ago now. How many coaches does it take to change a lightbulb? Anybody know the answer to this one? Five? No. Thank you. Only one, but the lightbulb's got to really want to change. So my job, I'm a coach. I coach founders, CEO founders, all the way from founder right through to large enterprises. So I work with CEOs across the whole gamut of their career. And the big factor they all have in common is they want to change, they want to get better, they want to upgrade. And that's my job, is to help them upgrade. I'd like to try and do the same with you today. So I'm Joe. Hello. Great introduction there at the start. As I mentioned, I work with CEOs, have done for the last few years. Before I was the coach of the CEOs, I was also an elementary school teacher. So I'm going to bring a lot of what I've learned from being a school teacher, as well as a lot of what I've learned working with the CEOs over the last few years. Okay. Today I'm going to talk to you then about the modern CEO. And the modern CEO is a series of ideas. A manifesto, as it were, for a CEO in the 2020s. Skill set, mindset, the things you need to do to be a modern leader. Cause again, a lot of leadership literature is outdated. It doesn't fit with the tech ecosystem, it doesn't fit with the world that we're in today. I want to update that. And part of that is I have the manifesto here. You can go and have a look. It's a very early draft. I'm going to share some of the findings of this today. So I would love your feedback as we go as to what works, what resonates, what doesn't, as we go. Go and have a look here. You can see all of the things that I'm going to discuss today. so I'm going to take you back a few years. This is one of my very first. I was working with some hotel companies, in fact, I was working with all of the hotel companies over the course of about three years. I started out, I worked with Hotels. com. Expedia, Marriott, Lastminute. com, Hilton. I worked with all of them over the course of about three years. And what was interesting about working with all of them, they were all obsessed with everybody else. They all wanted to know what Expedia were thinking. What are Lastminute. com planning? What are Marriott, what's Marriott's intentions to do this? And they all had the same goal in mind, is they want to be number one in hotels. That was their strategy, not the greatest of strategy, but that's where they were. They're all focused on each other. And then of course, somebody else comes along, as you know, the story here, and eats their breakfast. Booking. com came through and I was lucky enough to work with Booking. com in the years after this. What was interesting about that, and we've all heard this story, is what drove them forward as a relentless focus on continuous improvement. That is a strategy. Being number one is not a strategy. And it was an important lesson for me in understanding, well, what does it take to build a strategy? What does it take to be a leader in a particular space? And again, we can look at the literature to figure this stuff out. There's this fabulous model. You should take a photo of this, it's great stuff by the way, I shouldn't tell you what to do, but you can take a photo of this if you'd like to. This is how to write a strategy. It's pretty straightforward stuff. These are the things you need in place to create a strategy. Now all of those businesses I showed you before were struggling for one reason or another. All of them struggled. None of them could get there and be number one because something was missing in terms of their strategy. Here's a fantastic idea about what you need to succeed. And this is the second lesson I'm going to offer you today. As a leader, as a CEO, you can only create the conditions for success, not the success itself. You need everything on that table that I just showed you to ensure success. If you're not creating the right conditions, success is not going to happen to you. You can't force success by saying, we're going to be the number one. It doesn't work like that. There's not willpower alone. I also, I'm lucky enough to work with VCs. Um, and what's interesting about VCs is they all have the same sorts of challenges that CEOs do. Now, this is a story about a VC that I work with, I've changed her name, her name's Victoria. One of the symptoms I'm seeing with her and her firm is they just keep missing out on deals. The deals are not, they're there at the early stages of the conversations, but the deals are not there. They're not moving fast enough. You dig beneath the surface, there's disagreements about, amongst partners about who they should back. Some of their term sheets are being shipped around. They're losing out. And what's interesting in talking through the challenges with Victoria and the other partners at the firm is that all of them are in a scarcity mindset. They're all worried about protecting their money, protecting their investments, not thinking about the times that we've all had before when there's been abundance in the world where they've been operating from a place of power, where power has driven their thinking and been pushing them forward. They're offering them a place of scarcity, which is holding them back. And a big part of what I do with the leaders that I work with is, I have this one concept. Name it to tame it. Once you understand where you are, what the problem is, what the challenge is, you can do something about it. And the big shift that I worked on with the VC firm. It's changing their mindset from scarcity to abundance. They were reacting because of scarcity, not acting because of abundance. Again, on the quiz, have a look, are you operating from a place of scarcity or abundance? Many of you, if you're in the growth stage, you're absolutely in the abundance mindset. Many of you, if you're later on, if you're seeking funding, your roadmap's running, your runway's running out, you're operating from a place of scarcity. That will absolutely change your mindset. People can smell scarcity and it's not very attractive. People love abundance because it's powerful. And all it requires is a mind shift to know which of these you're in, to help you move forward to the one you want to be in. How many of you are parents out there? Any parents out there? A few of you? Right. One of the biggest lessons that I've learned in terms of working with CEOs is it's the same as having kids. And the same is true if you're a CEO. It's a lot like having lots of kids in your company. The same things you do when you've got with your kids, you can do with your employees as well. Let me tell you about another story. This is another founder called Jenna. Uh, just close the series A round, and Jenna was a fantastic early stage founder. She was across everything. She knew the answers to everything right there and then. The business was fully and completely under her control, but what started to happen was that superpower that she had early on was not the superpower that was giving her strength going now. In fact, it was counting against her. Staff were leaving, she was being accused of micromanaging, bad decisions were happening. Her mind was being changed by things all the time. She went from this quite Decisive person to somebody who was all very much overbearing in terms of the team and the reason was is because early on She confused umbrellas with something else. So this is my daughter. This is Liv. She's six every day because I live in the UK. I Have to check the weather app to see if it's gonna rain that day. It's gonna rain that day. I give her an umbrella Now I know you're thinking those parents out there. That's not a very good way to teach your little girl If she needs an umbrella or not, you've got to let her get wet. Okay. And that's exactly what you do. You know, I, I don't check. I tell her to check. She doesn't check. She doesn't take her umbrella. She gets wet. She learns. Okay. Parenting 101. The big challenge and the big thing you see with, with VCs is they, um, with CEOs is they, in early stage founders like Jenna's, they mixed this up. The other thing that you can learn about with kids, if my little girl here, if she was about to step out in front of a bus. Am I going to let her step out in front of a bus? Of course I'm not. I'm going to pull her back, right? Of course I'm not. I don't want her to learn that lesson. That's not the sort of parenting that I want to be. And you've got to understand the difference between umbrellas and buses when you're a leader. Cause when you're an early stage startup founder, everything seems like a bus. Everything's a problem. Pull the team back. Don't do that. That button can't be green. It must be blue. It's the end of the world if you get that mistake wrong. Many early stage founders, and this is a big point at the time when they work with me, is they start to Everything feels like it's a bus. Nothing's an umbrella. Nothing's a learning experience for the team or for them. And to make that shift from an early stage founder into a growth founder, you need to know the differences between umbrellas and buses. If you don't, you will burn out. You cannot be across all of the decisions as your business grows. It's impossible for you to be able to do that. It doesn't scale. You need to scale, everybody needs to learn, and you need to let go a little bit. Okay, next story. Two other founders that I work with. This is Dana and Chris. And what was interesting about working with, I started working with Dana, the CEO, and I eventually started working with, with Chris, the CTO, as they weren't getting on. And on the surface, it seemed like most things were alright. I mean, you've probably heard this stuff before. I mean, I think I've seen this in quite a few presentations over the course of the last few days. We need to launch The new product this quarter, and the CTO is thinking, well we can launch something this quarter, most definitely, the whole thing maybe not. And this is a big problem, of course it's a big problem. The CEO has an expectation of the CTO that this is going to happen. The CTO has an expectation of the CEO that I'm not going to ship everything. You're going to get something, that's just how Agile works. They both have mismatching expectations. And this, of course, is a huge problem, and you see this across businesses. I see this all the time with co founders. They have mismatch in expectations. I run a mastermind group for founders on the road to an exit. So I work with six founders at any one time. We're working towards an exit. So surprising about how many of them haven't had a proper conversation with their co founders about exactly what the exit's going to be, what the shape of it's going to be, when it's going to be. And we have mismatches like this, where they're both thinking different things. Right through to much more operational stuff as well, about actually who's got control, where the buck stops, who's running this business. I hear this quite a lot as well. The business decides who gets built. No, the tech team decides what gets built. You kind of see where the mismatch is. These folks are living in the world of expectation and it's a really dangerous place to be. So often I come in and see these sorts of situations. The first question I ask is, well, what's your agreement on this? What's the agreement about an exit? What have you got written down about this? And the CEO always says, oh no, we don't need agreements, we're on the same page. Clearly you're not if you're having these disagreements about these things. You're living in the land of expectation and expectations kill relationships at the end of the day. Expectations kill relationships in business, but they also do at home. So I notice any CEOs that I'm working with who have expectations of their team often have expectations of their kids, of their partner, of all of these things. Expectations. These are dangerous. They kill relationships in business, they kill relationships at home. Okay? Your spouse expects you home at 6 o'clock, you come home at 7. 30 cause you've got a meeting. Your spouse is upset with you. Okay? Expectations only have two results. Either you meet expectations, and it's like, well great, you met expectations. Or you miss expectations, and there's a lot of disappointment out there. Remove expectations. Swap expectations for explicit agreements. Ideally written down. Write it down. What is your exit plan? It may be only two days into your startup. What's your exit plan? You say we're going to ship this feature this year, what does that actually mean in that first meeting? What do you actually both mean by that? Swap expectations for agreements. Tell your spouse what time you're going to be home. Have an agreement. What happens when you're not home at that time? This sounds like very simple stuff, but it's the stuff you've got to get onto if you're going to be a good leader. Cause as soon as you start doing this yourself, your team are going to start to do the same thing and disagreement amongst team members will also fall away if they're doing exactly the same thing as you. Okay, other challenges that I hear. So this is um, I'm lucky enough to be working with a fantastic COO. She's working with a founder, um, she's new to the business, um, and she's come in and this is what she's been dealing with on a, on a, on a weekly basis, almost daily basis. Things like this. The competition isn't doing that. This isn't going to work. People are coming to her and saying these things to her all the time. We just can't do it. This is my favourite, the VP of sales every month is coming and saying, Can you just get those numbers from HubSpot for the sales presentation for the board please? Every month, the same question. The CEO says, Yeah, of course, no problem, I can do that. Right through to other things like, Dan, Dan isn't performing. And, if you look at these, these might seem like quite serious problems, but ultimately these are all surface level problems. Okay, an experienced CEO will spot these are all surface level challenges. Inexperienced CEOs will dive into each one of them. Well, why isn't Dan performing? Let's put Dan on the performance plan. What has Dan done? All of these things will happen if you're an inexperienced CEO. If you're an experienced CEO, you'll spot that these are surface level challenges. We call these monkeys. And what was happening with this fantastic COO, at the end of every day, she was collecting monkeys. Every time somebody came to her, she collected another monkey. Each one of these is a monkey, and by the end of the day, she's got five monkeys she's got to deal with. All of these problems are now her problems. The best leaders don't let the team leave any meeting, any workshop, any call. With them, with, uh, with their monkey. She does not let the monkeys be left with her. The team have to leave with the monkeys that they bring. This is from a fantastic book called One Minute Manager by Keith Blanchard. Don't collect monkeys. That's all well and good, but how do you do that? How do you stop collecting monkeys like that? What do you do? What's the simple way of doing this? And it relates to something I mentioned earlier on. The best CEOs, the best leaders Have the best questions. They don't have the answers. Most CEOs would expect to go in and just answer all of these questions. Well, this is what we're going to do about this. This is the answer. This is the answer. This is the answer. The best CEOs, the best COOs take a step back and say, What's really going on here? Why isn't Dan performing? What do you mean the competition is ready? They ask questions all the way through. So the biggest trick you can do as a leader, as a CEO, if you're finding yourself with other people's monkeys, is to ask. Leadership is about having the right questions, not the right answers. Don't let people leave without taking their monkeys with them. Simple as that. Okay. Rollercoasters, right? Everybody talks about start up life or business life, or life in general as being a bit like a rollercoaster. And we all kind of think we know what that means, don't we? It's full of ups, it's full of downs. Well, actually there's a different meaning to it as well. So this lady here, what emotion is she feeling here? What emotion? Panic? Fear? She's got kind of smile on her face as well, hasn't she? Yeah? This is, this is excitement, okay? She's excited. This is exhilarating. There's a positive emotion associated with a negative emotion here. Now, if you spot people in the line or a queue for a rollercoaster, what are you going to see? You're going to see two types of people, right? You're going to see the people that are really excited about it. And you're going to see the people that are really scared. Oh, I don't know if I can do this. I think I should. In fact, that was like me just before going on the stage. I don't know if I can do this. I'm really scared. And other people are really hyped before they go on and they do things. It's the same. It's not the emotion you're feeling. It's just your outlook is different. Both of these are fear, okay? Excitement and fear are two sides of the same coin. And you just have to understand that and notice that in yourself and the people that you're working with. As I mentioned before, we name it to tame it. Here's a great model you can use when it comes to fear. So before coming on stage today, I was talking to some of my friends and fellow speakers, um, about imposter syndrome. So I don't know if I can do this. I'm not the right sort of person to come on the stage today. Why are these guys going to listen to me? There's going to be nobody here. All of those feelings of fear came to me when I was just about to get on the stage here. And that's because I was in the fear zone, right? And what's great about the fear zone, Is it tells you, you're pushing yourself to the place you need to be. If you're feeling the things in the fear zone, great, it's pushing you out of your comfort zone. You need to go through the learning zone. A big part of being in the learning zone is being here on stage today. I'm learning, this is actually alright, I'm quite enjoying myself right now. I'm dealing with the challenges and problems, I'm extending my comfort zone, I'm learning new skills and that pushes me into the growth zone. My comfort zone gets bigger because I'm pushing my way through fear. Now, of course, that's the two thing, that can be like a rubber band, that fear. That fear can pull you back. If you're operating from a place of scarcity, if you've had a bad night's sleep even, that feeling of fear can pull you back into your comfort zone and you never, you never make change. You never grow. You never expand. So if you're not feeling fear, you're probably doing it wrong. And what's really interesting about the big enterprise CEOs that I work with is they're just in the comfort zone. Okay. They're running multi billion dollar companies. And they're a little bit bored. There's nothing there that's really pushing them forward. There's nothing there that's pushing them forward into something else, okay? This is the model they need to look at. So you need to extend this comfort zone into that. So again, that fear zone can pull you back or it can push you forward. If you're feeling fear, good. It means you're in the right place. You're like that lady on the roller coaster right there. Name it to tame it. And we also see some of the challenges from before, right? The things the team were coming to us about. The monkeys, the superficial ones. These are all symptoms of being in the fear zone. See it in your team, see it in your employees. Oh look, they're in the fear zone. I know exactly what's going on. I know exactly why they're saying that right now. They're saying that because they're in the fear zone. I need to help them get through that. Imposter syndrome is a feature and not a bug. If you're feeling imposter syndrome, Great, you're doing the right thing. If you're scared, great, you're doing the right thing. Embrace it. It is scary, but that's where growth comes from. So I'm lucky enough to work with some really amazing CEOs. Um, this is Tall Jeff, Tall Jeff Strabanski. He was formerly Chief Operating Officer at Stack Overflow for about 10 years. He built the whole enterprise sales team, the whole enterprise commercial model at Stack. And I've been working with Jeff for about two years now. And I've learned a lot from him. Jeff's very He's on his third startup now. He's had two exits, plus the exit at Stack as well. Um, and he's working on his next thing, which is Reframe. Tech. com. It's a new operating system, a brand new operating system. The future of computing. Audacious, big, scary, fantastic thing that he's working on. And I've learned a lot from Jeff, and one of the biggest things I've learned from him is run towards a problem as fast as you can. When he sees a problem, he runs at that problem as fast as he can. Cause if you don't Well, you know all what happens when you procrastinate over anything, right? It just gets worse. It just gets more stressful. It just gets harder. Run to problems as fast as you can. Now, easy for me to say, easy for Jeff to say, but it requires a practice, a muscle for you to get there. You've got to practice running at problems. You can't expect to do it from day one because it's hard. It's scary. You're in the fear zone. All of the stuff that I've shared before is relevant here. Another great quote from another CEO. This is what Jeff Bezos says, Jeff Bezos says stress comes from ignoring the things that you shouldn't be ignoring. Stress comes from the point of view, when you're in a business, when you're ignoring things. When things are challenging you, stuff's just not sorted out, it's not resolved. Stop ignoring, start doing, the stress will disappear, and of course that's scary. So I'm working with another, uh, another CEO founder, incredible business, grown from almost nowhere to Uh, 8 million a year in, uh, recurring revenue. Fantastic model. No venture backing, I think. And Fiona, who I was working with at this business, she, one Friday, just decided, out of curiosity, I'm going to have a little look into the customer support emails and see what's there. Whoosh! She got a bit of a shock. Things were not being done as the way she wanted them to be doing. The culture wasn't working at that point. She pulled out that rock and she found spiders. And that's scary. She said to me, she said, well I'm really worried now. What happens if I keep pulling up more rocks and finding more spiders? And of course the stress from just thinking that over the course of the weekend was really big for her. Cause you know, this could be across my business here. So we thought about that. Well, if that's going to be stressful and difficult, how can we make this fun? How can we make this enjoyable? So that's exactly what we did. We set ourselves the goal of saying, well, how could this be fun? So we made a game. We created a game. And then we called it the Spider Finding Game. Over the course of the week, the whole team from the whole business had to look under every single rock and find a spider. And the person that found the most spiders, the most problems, won a prize. And by the end of that week, everybody was really happy. They'd uncovered so much shit in their business. But everybody was really buoyant about it cause it was all out there. There was no blame cause it was fun. It created an enjoyable experience from something really bad. So if you're worried that So, if things are going a little wrong in your business, have a spider finding competition. It was a lot of fun. That's my final thought for the day, is this should be fun. If you're not enjoying doing what you're doing it, you're just doing it wrong. There's fun and enjoyment in every aspect of being a CEO, of being a leader, of being a founder. You've just got to find it. And again, it's a muscle. Looking for fun is a muscle that you need to flex. So to wrap up today, here's the advice that I've given you, folks. There's plenty more. I've got about 46 of these on my site. I'm going to be expanding this all the time. I'd love to know how you got on with the quiz. We'll have a look at the quiz in a minute. Remember this advice. And of course, overall, just break that fucking bottle. Do and live by your own rules. Don't live by somebody else's rules, not the VC's rules, not the competitor's rules, but your own rules. Do things your own way. If you do things your own way, that's reward, where reward comes from. Cause after all, rebels get results and you guys, you've got to be rebels to do this stuff. Thank you very much.