Your Seat at the Table - Real Conversations on Leadership and Growth
Join hosts Mike Maddock and John Tobin as they delve into authentic stories of leadership, decision-making under pressure, and the invaluable lessons learned along the way. Each episode offers candid conversations with seasoned leaders, exploring the challenges faced, the triumphs celebrated, and the insights gained from real-world experiences. Whether you’re an aspiring leader or a seasoned executive, pull up a chair and find your seat at the table.
Your Seat at the Table - Real Conversations on Leadership and Growth
Pull Up a Chair: CEO Lessons on Trust, Feedback, and Growth
In this premiere episode of Your Seat at the Table, hosts Mike Maddock and John Tobin dive into the most important — and often overlooked — topic for CEOs and executive leaders: trust. Discover why choosing who to listen to is critical for growth, how to avoid dangerous "echo chambers," and what great leaders really look for in feedback. Whether you're a CEO, entrepreneur, or aspiring leader, this conversation will give you actionable insights into building stronger advisory circles, asking better questions, and accelerating personal and professional growth.
About the hosts:
Mike Maddock is the founder of Flourish Advisory Boards, a public speaker, and a serial entrepreneur known for helping leaders transform big ideas into reality.
John Tobin is the co-founder and president of Slalom Consulting, a global consulting firm helping organizations tackle their most ambitious projects and build a culture of innovation and trust.
Timestamps:
00:00 — Welcome & what this podcast is all about
02:10 — Why John wanted to start the show
05:05 — Why Mike wanted to do this together
08:00 — How they see the world differently
12:15 — John’s story: building teams & attracting talent
21:00 — Mike’s story: early sparks & entrepreneurial roots
27:30 — The ghosts that drive leaders
32:50 — Pivotal feedback that changed John’s path
40:20 — The power of culture & humility
48:00 — Big decisions during crises
55:00 — Lessons learned & core values
1:04:00 — Failures we’re grateful for
1:12:00 — What to expect from future episodes
1:17:00 — Final reflections & closing
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Pull up a chair. There’s always room for your seat at the table.
Welcome to the Your Seat at the Table podcast with your hosts, Idea Monkey Mike Maddock and Ringleader John Tobin. We're two founders, a serial entrepreneur and a billion-dollar operator who talk to leaders about how, when, and why they made their most pivotal decisions in life. Join us as we share wisdom, mistakes, and a few laughs learning from the brightest minds in business today. Welcome to the Your Seat at the Table podcast. This is a new podcast that John Tobin and me, Mike Maddock, are doing together. John, why do you think we should do this podcast?
SPEAKER_00:I think we both have our separate... reasons why, as well as maybe fantasies and where it may go. I think we've been rightly put in our place that it's probably not going to be the biggest thing in the world. But I am kind of a podcast junkie. I've really grown to love podcasts and almost making an excuse as I work out or I even go just for a walk. And so if I could If I could help create something that is as interesting as I find other podcasts, I think that's amazing. So I think for me, I'm not the creator and innovator like you are, Mike. And so if this is my little bit of a shot to do that, I'm excited about it. And then the other thing is I've always– like if I wasn't doing consulting and wasn't in like really– I guess, big business, I would have tried to become an actor. Oh, really? I didn't know that. So there's a little bit of me that wants to, you know, maybe experience this and get into that mode a little bit. Who knows where we'll go? But maybe this is my little, little foray into that world. So we'll see what happens. But I'm excited to do it. And I'm even more excited to do it with you, someone that is Truly, truly inspiring to me. And of course, this was your idea. And I think we should tell the story of after we decided to do it, what happened. But Mike, why do you want to do this?
SPEAKER_02:First, thank you for the compliment. That was sweet. I like to connect people and possibilities. So this is just a manifestation of that. So this lets us It'll let us interview really interesting people. And I think more importantly, the reason why we should do this together is because we see the world so completely differently. I think we share the same values, which is very important, but the lens that we see things through is like almost completely opposite sometimes. And I think that'll be amusing. And we should tell people we've already done, we've already, we've recorded four or five of these already and they're messy. So we apologize because we're trying to figure it out. out but what's funny is that um you john i see the world through like you're much more practical than i am and so um well here let's run an experiment i'm gonna ask you a question and if you can in a sentence tell me what you would do okay so uh ellen comes to you and says john Your wife, Ellen, comes to you and says, John, I just noticed our checkbook has half the amount of money in it this month as it did last month. What's your reaction? What would you do?
SPEAKER_00:What did you spend it on? That's probably my immediate reaction.
SPEAKER_02:Where did it go? My reaction would be, oh, we got to make some more money. So I think that I... I sit in the Rainmaker visionary seat and we'll talk about, you know, the way an advisory board is created later. But you are like the best operator I know. You are just an amazing strategist and operator and you can kind of figure out, okay, here's what we want to make happen. And you strive for like, uh, Practical, efficient, strategic. And I'm like shooting for the moon. I'm moonshotting it. So I think what the listener is going to find out is as we're interviewing people, our questions and our perspective, and importantly, the reactions we have to what people say to us is often going to be very opposite. And I think it'll be interesting from a leadership perspective to see how that looks.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, we definitely come at it and think of it from a different perspective. And maybe just to frame that a little bit, I just kind of came up more of what I would view as a traditional sort of corporate path in a way. Whereas almost from the beginning, you were an entrepreneur. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:completely unemployable
SPEAKER_00:as an adult. And I definitely would not have been confident enough to do that, especially out of the gate. Like you did. And I think a lot of it stems from that, like this deep rooted confidence that I feel like you have versus this deep insecurity that I have. But then I let the insecurity fuel me to work my tail off basically and then overcome what I perceive as some of my shortcomings. And it, you know, Who know who knew, but it worked. So I think that's, that's kind of the way I look at it.
SPEAKER_02:I think I, you know, I've, you've heard me say this, but I've never met a successful person that isn't either being chased by a ghost or chasing one. The question is who's got who who's chasing who, um, So just some perspective for people that are listening to this for the first time, that might be true in terms of how confidence or lack of confidence is driving our behavior. And you have thousands and thousands and thousands of people that report to you, and I've had hundreds. So it's easy to argue that you've been much more successful at scaling a business. I think I'm pretty good at starting businesses, but I tell my friends I'm a great starter and a lousy finisher. You're an excellent finisher. Again, that's part of the perspective that we'll probably bring to some of the people we talk to. So, John, everybody has a bio. Everybody has a story. And then everybody has a story they tell themselves about their story. What is your story that you tell yourself about your career?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think part of it I led off with, I guess, with the hard work piece. And I'd say the thing I tell myself story on, which is both true and not true, is I am very lucky. I really am fortunate, maybe put better word. I'm very fortunate in choosing things that worked out well. And number one, I didn't intend on doing this when I entered into college, but I sort of got myself into computers and computer science. Not when, when it really wasn't that popular in the late eighties and it was mostly, Yeah. And it was just really fortunate because I just, yeah, that one little pivot that I did in college created such a great avenue for me to get into business. And then the other piece that I'd say about my career is when I look back on it, and I don't say this a lot, but one of the best things I notice about myself is that I have been able to build awesome teams, right? And I'm a tractor of talented individuals. And for one reason or another, people want to work with me. And of everything I've done, that's kind of what I've done. I've created an environment where people want to work with me. And it ends up being amazing, incredible, talented people. And I... Where maybe early, very early on in my career, I'd be intimidated by that. But I learned really quickly, probably four or five years after I started in the working world, that that's an advantage. And don't be intimidated if people are way smarter, better, more creative. There's something that they're doing with you, John, that counts and that counts. And so when I think about my career, I think of it as, you know, one of constant growth, definitely hard work. an involvement of me as a human and a worker, an attractor of talent and a person that fosters an incredible environment where people thrive. That's probably all the things that I do. That's how I think about my career.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I noticed. So I was yesterday, I went up on the Slalom website and just to be so people know you're the founder of one of the founders of Slalom Consulting, which is a multinational consulting firm now. And I was looking for you and just your name's buried like five rows down. And I think that that is a signal of how you lead it. You know, Jim Collins said one of the most important decisions is getting the right people on the bus. And I think that if I had a business superhero power that I could add, it would be the ability to pick talent. You know, not just attract it, but being able to go, because I think this might be something that you're really good at saying, okay, you're really talented. Here's what I need you to do. These are the three things that I'm going to measure you on and just do these three things. And I've watched you over the years. come up with the metrics and go, this is it. In order to scale, these are the three things that need to happen. And that is really, really hard to do. You don't notice it that much because it comes so naturally to you. But I do because I'm not good at that. So talk about real quick. So I'll ask you some practical things. So how many countries are you all in now? How many countries is Slalom in? We're in eight. Eight countries. And your latest job at Slalom is actually starting up. When you started with Slalom, it was like you were planning cities, right? You were like, I've got to start Chicago. I've got to start
SPEAKER_00:whatever. We started in Seattle. As you know, that's headquarters. And then in 2004, we chose to go to another city. And it made sense to go to Chicago just because I'm from Chicago. I know the market a little bit. I know some people there. And it just started really small as another office, another extension, almost a separate business than the Seattle business. And it took a while, took a long while. It took about a year for us to get traction. And you may remember this, Mike, but me and Troy Johnson and one of our greatest salespeople, Woody, Eric Haywood, we all got like an apartment in the summer in Chicago and to really bootstrap the market because we weren't making traction. And within, let's say, 120 days or so of really chasing a lot, we finally broke into Allstate and 3M almost at the same week. I remember.
SPEAKER_02:And Dave Cutler was, was that before? I
SPEAKER_00:didn't know what he was talking about. Motorola, I meant. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Was Dave Cutler part of that? I know he was in Chicago, but is that later?
SPEAKER_00:It was early. It was early, but not that early. Yeah. He was more, I would guess, 2006, 2007, because we started more of our technology arm around that time. And in fact, it might even be later than that. But like, yeah, Dave was instrumental in starting more of our technical business. And it was like more of our technical innovation specifically. That was probably around 2009, 2010. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:He's great people. So, and he, he introduced Dave Cutler, introduced me to one of my business partners, Mike Bechtel.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Who's not, who we interview and they're not coming and he's running, he's the chief futurist for Deloitte now. So the world keeps getting smaller. So just, I want to shine a light on something. So you, you started Deloitte. Seattle, then Chicago, then the next city, then the next city. And now you're doing exactly the same thing. You're like Johnny Appleseed for consultants across the country. So today you're in London. I'm in Chattanooga, Tennessee. So that pretty much says it all. And tomorrow you'll be in Australia. So, okay. And
SPEAKER_00:you started what year at Sala? So that was 2001 when we started. And when did you
SPEAKER_02:hit 10,000 employees? Do you remember?
SPEAKER_00:That wasn't until later. It probably wasn't until 2021. So 20
SPEAKER_02:years basically to 10,000 employees. That is crazy. It's absolutely nuts. So I'm trying to give some perspective to people that might be stumbling
SPEAKER_00:upon this. The other interesting thing about that is that we grew– Only organically. So right or wrong, and you could argue both sides of it, but we've only hired our own people. And we've had– what's one of our honestly secret sauces is that we're amazing at talent acquisition and kind of to your point, finding the right people, making sure they're the right fit for us. And you could be an incredible at your job and a big– and a business builder and everything, but he still might not fit with us because one of our unique core values is stay humble and curious. And not everybody is. And I think, you know, that like there is a lot of knowers out there in the world and they're very good at business, but they are not going to be great for our environment where it has to be very collaborative, where we have to have a different type of experience with our clients. And that's the feedback we get from our clients. It's like, you weren't, doing things to us, you were doing things with us. It felt like a different experience working with Sloan. And that's all through the culture that we built up over the years and things, Mike, that I was doing that I didn't know how to codify or name, but we did over time. And I think that that's made all the difference in the world.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I knew your father. So I credit your dad with... that value of people and humility. Do I have permission to challenge you for a sec, Chad? Yeah. Okay. So you talked about knowers and learners. I think early days, and by the way, in order to start a business, I think people have to be... a little bit narcissistic. They have to believe that they can do something that other people can't. You're like, sure, I'll start a consulting firm. What could possibly go wrong? I would argue that early in your career, you were pretty stubborn about what you knew and what you didn't know. And at some point, something happened and all of a sudden you became much more curious about learning and growing. Fair? In
SPEAKER_00:certain times, yes. And in other situations, yes. uh, yes and no. I say there were certain things like when I knew I, when I did it and I proved myself, I did it. Then I was like kind of a know-it-all about that thing. But anything new or anything new or any new opportunity or different new job I was going to take, I was so nervous about it and very not believing. And then I'd be doing it for like a month and be like, Oh, this is easy. So there is absolutely a stubborn piece of me. And then the other, the other thing that really did wake me up though, honestly, was just, um, I think amazing feedback, frankly, and it happened for me. And I've told the story before to people at, at, at, um, at Slalom, but it was really when I was at ENY and, um, Ernst& Young. I'm sorry? Ernst& Young. Ernst& Young, yeah. And this is the mid-'90s, and Ellen and I– Ellen is my wife and Mike's sister, if that's not clear. So Mike's my brother-in-law. Ellen always wanted to move to Seattle, and I was at the position in my career where it just like– it was an okay time to sort of take a pivot and do something maybe a little bit different or just– Do something different, I think, in general. So she always wanted to move to Seattle. So I said, okay, let's move to Seattle. I ended up joining Ernst& Young. And so we moved across the country. And for like a South Side kind of not so polished individual going to E&Y on the West Coast, it was a bit of culture shock. And I had kind of a... I honestly, I don't know how it got rid of it, but I had sort of a thicker Chicago accent. I'd say, I swore all the time. I would swear all the time in meetings and stuff like that. And I'd be like, what, what, what the fuck? You know, it just like, it was like, I didn't even, it wasn't even an issue for me. Going to the West coast was just such a wake up call. Anyway, I had this thing at this time, and this is like, again, mid twenties or so where I, If I didn't respect you, if I didn't think you knew what you were talking about and yet you were talking, I was a total jerk to you. And I didn't– I just– I was a jerk. I really was a jerk and I didn't– I almost got myself super frustrated and just out of sorts. And I said some things like in different meetings and even in front of the clients and about the partner, about the senior manager that was on the project. It was like a big no-no. So I didn't even really know the politics of larger consulting. And this guy, Stane Laxo, actually, his name. I'll give him credit for this. And he was a senior manager on the project and a bit more technical and someone I did respect, actually, on the project. And he pulled me aside and he kind of took me for a walk around the HP. We were at Hewlett Packard at the time, the HP campus. And he's like, John, you got all the tools. Like you have like smart people like you, people like working with you, but you're never going to get anywhere if like you can go off the handle like you did and you don't figure out a way on how to work with people that maybe you don't like or you don't respect. You've got to figure out your way around that because you're going to face it. Yeah. It was amazing. It was amazing. So yeah, that first quarter, because they used to do quarterly reviews, I got all fives. You get five grades and it was like delivery, sales, contribution to the firm, people, relations, and then culture. And I think it's surprising for people at Slalom to know that we have such a strong culture My first quarter at E&Y, I got a one in culture. I had all fives and a one in culture, but it was because I really had this attitude. So long story short, back to your stubborn piece, I think I was in certain cases and if I was in the wrong environment and that piece of feedback really kind of slapped me in the face and woke me up that I've got to rethink about how I interact and the wake I'm leaving when I have these moments. So that was, it was a gift. Totally.
SPEAKER_02:It's funny how you remember. I can think of maybe a half dozen times when someone kind of like, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher appears and someone kind of slapped me in the face metaphorically with some, like, what is it? Uh, Johari's window, something that was invisible to me. It's in that pain where it exists, but you can't see it. Um, and as soon as you notice it, uh, our friend ran Stegan, and by the way, uh, Rand is what I was thinking about because we were talking about Rand. I remember that guy. Why would I do that? And he's a he's a good friend of both of ours. But he now describes leadership as responsibility. That's it. One word. But in order to first, you have to have awareness. Then you have to have choice. Like, OK, now I see it. What am I going to do with it and take responsibility for? OK, am I going to change that or not? And I can think of, again, a half dozen times when someone who was who cared enough about me to actually tell me the truth about how I was behaving. And it woke me up like, what, what? Um, yeah. So anyway, that's, I, I think that, uh, I I've always loved your humility and, and the fact that you don't, um, I don't think you really recognize your genius. None of us do because it feels easy to us. That's a big insight. We get to 50 years old and realize, hey, no one can do this one thing that I think is so easy. And we spend our whole career oftentimes diminished because that's easy, that's easy, that's easy. I'm going to work on my weaknesses. When if you could just go like that thing that I'm really good at, if I just did that, you know, but we don't see that. It comes easy for us. And what comes easy for you is like seeing, like, here's something we need to fix. Here's how to fix it. Here's the person that can fix it. And here's how to, this is what I need you to do to tell me you're fixing it. That's like, you fall out of bed and do that every day.
SPEAKER_00:I'm pretty good at change. I have to say like that. That is one thing I really realized. And it's for some people, it's too fast. Actually. It's like, I just, I hear something. And I'll just move. I'll just move then. So, hey, I want to flip it to you, Mike, a little bit. And maybe from the outside looking in and thinking about you, it feels like you always had this innate belief in yourself and belief in what your superpowers were. But just can you talk a little bit about your start, early days, and then Was it true that you so believed in it, in yourself and everything? And maybe just share that a little bit with the audience.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I don't think it, I think, so I'll give credit to my great-grandmother and then my mom. I remember as a little kid, my great-grandmother, every time I saw her. And it's important to know that my Laura Pryor, my great-grandmother, was married to the chief creative officer at J. Walter Thompson. And he was also a writer and editor at the Chicago Daily News. So he was a great artist, a great creative thinker. As a kid, I liked to draw. I wanted to be an artist. And so this woman who was amazing, she lived to 104 years old. She drank bourbon. She ate chocolate. She read the Bible and did the rosary every day, like total Irish enigma. And she would sit me on her lap and whisper in my ear, you're the one. it's you kid. I can pick winners. Trust me. I look around the room. It's you. And like, she probably did it to every kid, but I believed her. I'm like, yeah, I'm the one. And she married this guy who's like running a huge agency. And so that was the seed that she planted. And then, uh, her, her granddaughter, my mom, um, You know, watered that seed my whole life. But there were moments when I remember there was this one particular moment. It was in high school. I had just broken up with this girl that I was absolutely in love with. And I was just feeling sorry for myself. And my mom got really, really mad at me. She's like, hey, hey. When are you going to realize you're something special too? And it was like, well, hey, yeah, I'm something special. So he had a way of realizing when I was losing confidence and just saying, you can do anything you want. And by the way, the data did not suggest that that was true. Like if you looked at how I was in school, I was completely disinterested. And so that's exhibit A. Exhibit B is I liked having money in my pocket.
SPEAKER_01:It
SPEAKER_02:was freedom for me. I could put gas in the car. I could go on a date. I could get away from stuff and do my own thing. And so I started working pretty early and just by chance worked for lots of entrepreneurs. Everybody I worked with before I started my own company ran their own company. And I got to see behind the curtain at how messy it was and how many mistakes you made and how people yelled at each other and cried and, you know, just kind of scraped their way. And I realized... that people that start businesses aren't perfect. They're just gritty and they believe in themselves and they keep trying. And so I had this belief that, well, I believe in myself and I'm gritty. And so I had a really bad boss, an amazing boss, Doug Harms in college, great entrepreneur, God rest his soul. And then I had a pretty lousy boss right out of college. And I thought this guy's a jerk. And so when I saw an opportunity, um to start my own business which was seven months after now that about a year and three months after uh getting out of college i'd like man what do i have to lose you know car college loan and a car payment
SPEAKER_00:like was there a was there like a client that kind of said hey if you want to go out on your own i'll use you or did you literally just uh I'll just do this. No,
SPEAKER_02:what happened was right out of school, I got hired to sell a printing system by a guy named Tom Kane, who was this old, salty stockage designer. He was in the Navy. He would always do these dirty limericks. Tommy Kane. He was just amazing and funny. And so I was working on commission for him. And I said, listen, I'll sell this for you, but I want to be able to be showing my portfolio because I want a job in advertising. He goes, that's fine. So when I was selling this system to a company that Wes Douglas worked at. Right after I sold them the system, I said, hey, my portfolio is in my trunk. You want to see it? And they wound up hiring me. And that's where I met Ruth, my late wife. And I went back to Tom and said, hey, I got a job. He goes, congratulations. And about six months later, he's like, hey, if you ever want to start a company, I'll rent you space. I'll Importantly, right after Ruth said she'd start dating me, I quit and rented space in his basement. And that's how I started first Matic Design, then eventually Matic Douglas.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:got it. Wow. Really cool. Yeah. And just one thing I want to amplify. You said you were fortunate. Me too. I think there's so much... luck. The stars have to align. And like a piece of advice for anyone who wants to start a company, if you're the greatest surfer in the world and you pick a lousy wave, you're going to look like a lousy surfer. But you can be an average surfer. If you pick the right wave, you'll look like the greatest surfer ever. So picking the right industry, picking the right wave to start paddling on is a big part of success. You moved to Seattle, John. Ellen has told me that when you moved to Seattle, that place was like, oof, because of all the technology firms that were starting up there. And so people that were starting businesses in Seattle, they picked Seattle. The economy was so good locally that you had a wave that you were surfing on that helped you out. So picking the right wave is so important. That's so true.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Again, just it was like one fortunate little nuanced decision that if you take it in a short time frame, it was a huge mistake. And like I went to– I left E&Y and went to my client, which was AT&T Wireless. And after two months, I was kind of like, oh, my God, I made a big mistake because it's just so different being in industry than consulting. But the things I learned as a part of that and part of what I learned was being a buyer of consulting, it totally changed my perspective on consulting. I would not have had that. I would probably not have the insights I had if I never did that. And in the moment, it actually seemed like a big mistake. It seemed like I took a safe path versus a fun path. But it actually created a better thing for me later. So that's the other thing. It's good to have the end in mind. But these little steps you take, sometimes they seem divergent, but it actually can really work out. I think that's another thing I learned through my jumps and different career moves.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I want to ask you a couple of questions because this is the last time, the first and last time I think that we'll get a chance because we're going to turn the camera towards guests after this and just asking them questions. But, you know, you've got a lot of people that have worked with you. You've got a lot of friends. So I want a word that your team would use to describe you. And then the follow-up question is what's a different word that you'd use to describe yourself?
SPEAKER_00:What the team might say about me in like one word, if it's one word. Yeah, one word to describe you. It's a tough one. I think it could be integrity. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:that's awesome.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Some people might say, you know, values or culture, because I do think that's probably the biggest thing I brought to Sloan. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:And what's a word you'd use to describe yourself that's different than those?
SPEAKER_00:I think this wraps up a lot of that, but it's, it's like, it's caring. And like, if you really care about, And what I'd like to think of myself as a servant leader, if you care and you're a servant leader, then of course you're going to work hard for the client, for your people, for the place you're in. But it kind of gets jumbled up into, because I care so much, you're going to give it your all and it's going to manifest itself effectively. So I think... Caring.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. You say that I, uh, both, we both have dads that, uh, were servant leaders. My dad's still with us and he is, you know, Navy captain, servant leader, guy, minister. And I've been spending a bunch of time with him lately and it's just so sweet how he's always looking to help people. Um, and I bet you your secret sauce, if you took a, like a 30,000 foot view of it is that you hire servant leaders. I bet you that's sort of what's happening in those interviews.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's part of that. There's definitely part of that. How about you, Mike? What would be... How would people describe you with one word? Jackass, John. That would be the one. Maybe. Possibly. Is
SPEAKER_02:that jackass coming at the party? People that work with me were probably... So I wrote the book Free the Idea Monkey and I... It's because Raf Vitan, our friend Raf, at the time we were partners in the business, and he's like, hey, hey, idea monkey, idea monkey, get in here. I need an idea. And he, you know, he hit his tongue firmly in his cheek, but I thought, oh my God, that's the best compliment ever. So I think, you know, I would describe myself as a connector, connector of ideas and people. I think people who have worked with me would describe me probably as a I don't know. They wouldn't say idea monkey, but they might say ideator or
SPEAKER_00:brainstormer.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Creator. Yeah. I, you know, famously start fires and complain about the heat, you know, that's. So, okay. So how about the next one? What's a book, a book that you've gifted or recommended the most? Maybe something that people would be surprised
SPEAKER_00:by. Like, no question, Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. Like, no question. It's my go-to book on the truth about teams, building teams and foundation of trust. And it's such a huge part of how I think about leaders, leading, building teams, having tough conversations, being honest. Yeah. And the best teams that you're on are high performing teams when you have that same goal in mind and you got each other's backs. And so I, that's, I'm a broken record internally around pushing for high performing teams. And I think to me, it's like a manifesto on how to build that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I think I, I'm a big fan. Pat Lindsey is a good guy, Patrick. And anyway, I'll spare the name dropping. What Happy People Know by Dan Baker. I read that many, many years ago. And what I love about the book is that it combines the science and psychology of happiness. And there are these little tidbits that you pull from. I learned from that book that it's impossible to be afraid of And grateful at the same time, your brain can do it. So a simple hack when you feel anxious or afraid is just to write a list of five or six things that you're grateful for. And it can be anything. It just takes your brain out of the ability to be anxious. And that's really served me. I mean, that was such a gift. It's a good book. Okay. What's a core value you would never compromise on?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it's like honesty, integrity, like our first core value, do the right thing. Always basically do what is right. Always. It's super basic, but sometimes hard to do, but actually not if you just, and we used to do this all the time, like challenge ourselves. And when we were wrestling with it, it's like, it was so, it would come down to really simple. What is the right thing to do here? What's the right thing for the client? If you were the client, what would you do? What's the right thing for our person? It was super easy. And then it becomes clear. And then you got a choice. You want to do that or not? But I think- Can you think of
SPEAKER_02:a time you fired someone because they violated that core value? You don't have to name names.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no. No question. Yeah. I mean, there's been several. And it usually gets mumbled up in a lie. or a set of lies, you know, and part of it was just the line that, that not even, but the actual line.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I remember there's a, um, we had a core value, um, of humility years ago and we had a brilliant, brilliant creative, uh, and, you know, I won't say his name, but he's running one of the best firms in the country now, like top 10. And he had tweeted, this is early days of Twitter, a campaign that we had just done, but the product didn't launch for another two weeks. Oh no. So he put it out on the internet. And I remember the client called us like, what is happening? So, uh, The person that he reported to went to him to say, hey, dude, you can't do that. And he's like, I'll do whatever I want. And he goes, well, now I got to fire you. I didn't come here to fire you, but now I got to fire you. And it was because he broke a core value. I think mine would be... By the way, I didn't practice these, so I'm coming up with them as I go in terms of a response. I refuse to be anything other than authentic. I think that's really why I started my own business because I didn't want to be anybody but me. What's happening? You have an allergy thing happening right now? Are you getting emotional?
SPEAKER_00:What's going on? No, I'm not. I know I was going to say it. I got a contact issue. I apologize.
SPEAKER_02:Am I making you weep? Has this become very difficult?
SPEAKER_00:No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02:Do you have a failure that you're grateful for?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I think the story about E&Y, you know, because I got the feedback. I'd say a couple times at Slalom, I hired the wrong person and I didn't make moves fast enough. And I think I learned at the end of those different stories, and there's probably three that I can think of where I waited too long. And it was always in my head. gut or my instinct that this was the wrong person or I shouldn't do this what am I but like either the pressures of business timing whatever other people I just I went away from my gut didn't trust my instinct and then paid for it paid for it and so I really the best the best thing out of that is just to just trust my gut more and trust my instinct and It's proven to be pretty good. Not infallible by any stretch, but pretty darn good. How about you, Mike? You probably have some different stories. I
SPEAKER_02:have so many failures, it's really hard to figure out which one I'm most grateful
SPEAKER_00:for. You take a lot of swings at the plate, Mike. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I do. I like, what is it? Like 300 is you're in the hall of fame, right? So that's kind of been my attitude. Just keep pitching. Come on. I'm swinging. Um, uh, failure that I'm grateful for. Uh, I try to be grateful for everything. I'm, I reminded that Paul Andretis, uh, do you know, Paul, he was a coach at Sagan. He was my coach. Yeah. His favorite. Do you remember his favorite F word? like whenever he wants to go fascinating, fascinating.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, I, I, I'm grateful. I, I started up a venture fund years ago, you know, about this job because you were, you invested in it. The, and I started it with Jeff Hart and Mike Bechtel. It was a terrible hindsight, like what, what, What right did I have to say we should start an investment fund? I had no experience. Anyway, I won't get into it, but I'm grateful for everybody that invested in that. We learned a tremendous amount, and I learned a lot about people because everybody that invested in it was like, hey, man, you did the best you could. It didn't work out, so no big deal. Really, to a person, I felt terrible. Yeah. Probably should have stopped working on that about four years earlier. But I'm like, no, I can't make this work. So I'm grateful for how humans showed up in that and didn't, you know, rub my nose in a failure. Okay, so... That is cool. That is good. That's a really good one. Yeah, so let's... I want to frame what this podcast is about, and then I want to challenge the listeners, if anybody's still listening, what to notice as we're interviewing people. So the podcast is called Your Seat at the Table. And the idea is to get people that have had a seat at the table, like an important seat at an executive leadership team or a family or an organization. They had a seat where they had to make a decision. What's the context? What's the decision? How did you make the decision? And what happened afterwards? It's kind of like lessons from the edge. So let's practice, John. What's the most important decision you made? Give us some context. What happened?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I could go in a lot of different directions. I'll probably stick with Sloan on that. And because I, you know, you could say Mary and Ellen moving to Seattle, but I think things within Sloan, I'd say pretty early on, we started in 2001. We started having success. We had probably five, six, maybe even seven or eight markets open by, 2008. And the financial economy really, really went bad. And like things were bad. And it was the only year at Slalom up until the last couple of years that we were flat from a revenue standpoint. And honestly, that whole time we were going, I didn't even think once about like stopping Slalom or like not going. cutting staff or anything like that. And it was really a pivotal moment for us, even though I didn't know. That's how ignorant I probably was. I just didn't even realize that, oh, we should be doing something different. And the only thing we did different was, hey, let's start investing in this stuff. Now that we have people, we have time and people on the bench, let's take these smart people. We're starting to get a lot of inquiry about iPhones and mobile applications. And we think it's going to go in a big direction. Why don't we invest heavily on our engineering teams and come up with some new methods, new ways of doing things? Let's double down on mobility. And again, this is like, you know, 2009. So it wasn't very early on, but it wasn't, it wasn't nearly as advanced as And even cloud computing was starting. And so we started dabbling with the idea of AWS and things like that. So it was a moment, and I don't even know if it was a decision as much as, well, it was a decision that we made. And I specifically remember talking to Tom Chu about this. And Tom was a guy that I worked with at E&Y. And then I brought him in in 2003 to start our technology group. But I remember we had this just really smart engineers and, and he was like, what should we have him focus on? Is there a tool that we should build internally? And I'm like, yeah, maybe, but like, let's use it so that we grow this new part of our business. That's all focused on mobility. And it was a real subtle thing. We only had, we maybe had seven to 10 people work on it for about six, maybe eight months. And we did build some internal tools and things like that. We built an internal platform for learning and education. But it wasn't as much of a decision as much as... almost an ideation session. And when I do that, I think of the people that, again, it comes back to those five dysfunctions of a team. It's like the people, if you trust each other, it's not much of an argument or a decision. It was just like, hey, let's move forward. Any issues? Did anybody have any questions? There wasn't no one held back. It was like, yeah, let's just go do that. And, you know, that was tested a little bit as maybe an opportunity would pop up. Oh, can we free this person up? And it would depend on what exactly they were working on or learning if they really were available. And so freeing those people up to really focus on that, that set us up for such a great future in that space and allowed for many different amazing partnerships that we've had. We've become, in a lot of ways, much more tech-focused than when we started out, but it We rode a great wave. And a lot of that came back to just that decision of not skipping a beat during that time. And in fact, double down on our people and that they'd be able to almost reinvent us. And so that was a cool time.
SPEAKER_02:I love the nugget in there that people support what they create. That's an axiom of innovation that bring everyone around the table and go, okay, let's build something together. So it's their idea. It's not your idea. And I think a lot of leaders are like, I've got the idea. I've got the idea. Here's what we're going to do. And your instinct is, I don't have the idea. What should we do? Let's go. What do you think? I have a seed of idea. Like, here's something, but let's build it
SPEAKER_00:together. And I think I'm pretty good at building on other people's ideas and then kind of to your point, creating ideas. way to make it happen or a team to make it happen, I think I'm pretty good at that. Less on the actual original kernel of the idea. How about you? When I think about it, I do think of impacting even our executive team, our board. A lot of it has to do with the decisions we make on investments, the decisions we make on people and key personnel. I Earlier in my career, I would never have thought I would be at the– have that seat at that table to make these kind of bigger decisions. But I absolutely know I belong there. And I think that's a big difference like to wonder and have that imposter syndrome to absolutely know I should be there. you better want me there. You need me on that wall, so to speak. Look at you, all grown up. Exactly. It is possible, even for the most not confident person to eventually get confident.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think that there's a difference between confidence and still having that ghost that said, am I going to... Again, I started with this. I'll kind of end with it. I have these advisor boards, CEO boards, and one of the boards has the average revenue of each person around the table is roughly$600 million. So these are not small companies. And within two or three months after starting this group, seven of those people out of 10 said, called me privately and said, I don't deserve to be at this table. I'm not good enough. And like, well, that's why you're at the table because everybody feels the same way. They've got like, am I good enough? It's what drives you to continue to like grow and be better. I think that, that humility. Now there's a difference between knowing that you, you know, I can do this job. I'm capable and you, I will not let you down. You trust me. I will not let you down and go and have that little voice in your head going, you know, you know, they're chasing you. Here come the robots. My answer to the question is years ago, I joined entrepreneurs organization at the time is YEO. And then I joined Young Presidents Organization. And the number one benefit of those groups are these peer groups called forums. So I joined my first forum about 30 years ago. I've been in the same group, the same forum now for 26 years. I'm also in a YPO forum that I've been in for, I think, 17 years. And just spending time every month for 26 and 17 years with people that are growing businesses watching We can't make payroll. I have to let my number two go. My kid has depression issues. Watching life through the lenses of all these peers has been such a blessing to me. And when my late wife got sick, those guys literally carried me figuratively and literally made sure that I My businesses were okay. I was okay. My family was okay. So I think the number one thing that I, the best decision I've made was deciding to know that I needed to be surrounded by peers that could, that would help me see things differently. You know, it's, I've started an advisory board company where I actually put these groups together because it made such an impact on me that, I would rather learn from wisdom than intelligence. I would rather learn from someone else's mistakes than make them myself, even though, you know, watching you, you wouldn't know that based on all the mistakes that I have made and continue to make. But I would say that's the best decision I made in business. So there you go. All right, so here's what I'd like the viewers to be looking for. John and I are not going to agree. John and I love each other. John and I share the same values. We often don't agree. And the reason we don't agree is because we see the world differently. And that's what makes us so beautiful. A lot of times opposite. So watch. I would challenge you if you're listening to stack your biases at the door. If you fully agree with what I'm saying, John might be right. And if you fully agree with what John's saying, I might be right. And we're going to try to bring guests on board that see the world through a completely different lens again. So the idea is when we're talking about the choice you made when you had a seat at the table, watch to see how we think differently about it, because that's where the wisdom is. What is the Mark Twain quote? It ain't what you think. you know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for certain that just ain't so. So we're hoping that while we're talking to each other and we're talking to guests, maybe something that you know for certain that just ain't so will be revealed to you. And John, I really look forward to having an excuse to hang out with you a few times a month. I
SPEAKER_00:think in addition to that, Mike, I honestly, I think that between You know, you and I and the different guests that we've already have, I really think there are a lot of, like, again, not patting or tooting our own horn, but just like the education that we've had both in real life as well as even real leadership development kind of programs. I think there's a lot of great nuggets in there that, you know, the recent one we did I'm jotting down notes on, oh, that's a great way to think about it. It's a great mindset. So even if it's not you and I disagreeing, I think having a different lens on something, I think sometimes really opens your mind to different thinking. And then that different thinking creates action. So I really do hope that people kind of listen to something and be like, you know what? I'm going to try that. That was a different idea, a different approach that I heard. And I'm going to try that. So I'm hoping that some of the nuggets that come out are very actionable for people that kind of, oh, you know what? I'm going to go into my business or even in my home life, and I'm going to try this tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02:And I'll commit, and I know you will too, to bring the most clever people that we know to the table to have a conversation. John, can't wait. It'll be fun. Looking forward to it. It's going to be fun, Mike. All right.
SPEAKER_00:Cheers. Cheers.
