Bill Canady on the CEO’s Unscripted Podcast

Welcome to CEOs Unscripted, the podcast where real talk drives real growth and delivers real results for mid-market leaders like you. I'm your host Jane Gentry, and each week we're pulling back the curtain on the unfiltered stories of CEOs, founders, and executives who face the highs and lows and everything in between. After 20 years of consulting in enterprise and then experiencing firsthand the reality of being a CEO in a midsize company, I discovered why they say it's loneliest at the top. For most mid-market CEOs, there's no handbook. You learn through trial and error or by reaching outside your organization for help. That's exactly why I created CEOs Unscripted, a bi-weekly podcast by mid-market CEOs for mid-market CEOs. Each episode offers an unfiltered behind-the-scenes look at the wins, the losses, and the playbooks shared by CEOs and founders who've been where you are. No fluff, no jargon, just unscripted honest conversations about what it takes to lead, grow, and scale in today's business landscape. If you're ready for candid conversations, real-world insights, and lessons from leaders who've walked the path, you're in the right place. So grab a seat at the table because it's time to get real. This is CEOs Unscripted. Hi everyone. Welcome to CEOs Unscripted. The uh the guest that we have today, I'm super tickled about. He's a new friend, Bill Kennedy. And Bill is the, I'm going to read this because it's long. Uh, that's how impressive this guy is. CEO of Arrowhead Engineered Products, but also chairman of Ohio Transmission Corp. And you know what, Bill, before I even ask you anything, you were in Elmherst, Illinois. That's right. Yep. I went to school at Elmherst, the university. It was the college when I was there, but it's all grown up now to a university. Well, I lived there. I doubt that we were neighbors, but um, but we have that in common. I was in Chicago for a while before I didn't know that. You know, it is such a beautiful town. In fact, I'll be there in a week or so. We're having a board meet. I sit on the board there. So it's one of my favorite places of of anywhere is so people are nice, community is beautiful. Good food, good shopping. There you go. My two favorite things about Chicago. I like it. So the way we usually start this conversation is I just, I like to hear your backstory and um, everybody can go on your LinkedIn and see how impressive your resume is. I want us, I want to know how did you get where, where'd you start from and how did you get where you where you are? I know that's probably a really short story, but I'm just going to let you let you start. Well, that's very kind of you. So I grew up in North Carolina off the coast, a little town called, yeah, a little town called Richlands. And uh, which is about 30 minutes in from the coast or so. And uh, we lived in a double wide trailer at the end of a dead end dirt road. And my dad was a half truck driver, half handyman. And my mom cut hair. And uh, when I graduated high school, we were uh, like a lot of people, super poor. We didn't had any idea that we were that poor. But uh, my next step was uh, to join the Navy. So I joined the Navy, got out of North Carolina, went around, saw the world. And you know, it's funny and I see this and hear it all the time. Now at the time I was in there, I was like, "This is terrible." But afterwards, looking back, it was probably the greatest time of my life. It's a, you know, you're, you're foot loose and fancy free and you get to serve your country and learn a little bit about being a man. And I am so grateful today for that experience. Uh, well and two things. One, I've also lived in a double wide trailer when I was in college. Uh, it's not, it's not horrible. No, it's great. No, you know, I thought it was, I thought it was roomy. Um, but the second thing is, a lot of people that I know that I have a lot of respect for and are great leaders come out of the military, including my dad and and my brothers and several of my uncles. So I always think that is a great training ground. It really is. You know, you're in there for whatever reason, but you get all the right stuff out of life, you know, uh, courage, honor, duty, uh, doing the right thing with it, learning how to, you know, stand up and and take care of yourself. All that comes out. They teach you right from the basics on up. And uh, and I think the whole world would be a lot better off if more of us served and gave a little bit back to our country. Yeah, I don't disagree. What was next? So I got out and I moved to Chicago. I had been in boot camp up there at Great Lakes. Moved to Chicago, met my current wife, my future wife at the time. So we've been married 33 years now and uh, had my family there and my my wife uh was a school teacher at the time and I wanted to be a little bit more than I was. I was just a sales guy and uh Hey hey hey hey don't knock them It's true It's true Uh not those sales guys Oh it's Look nothing happens until somebody sells sells something That's right And then then it always starts coming together That's right. And but it's easy to be dismissive about it when you did it and uh and uh but I love being a salesperson. In fact, it's al.
most a thing because I was pretty good at it. I think it almost is the thing that kept me from being more successful because I was making really good money and I was doing well. Uh, but in order to to take that next step, at least for me, I needed to go to school, get my education, do and that meant I had to take a little step back in my career while I was doing it, right? So, so that was really hard to do, but I was uh very lucky. My my wife was extraordinarily supportive and while going to school, Elmherst, we talked about and then later the University of Chicago, we had two beautiful daughters and uh, in fact, one of them uh today is a dentist and she's going to become an inodonist and the second one uh I was blessed, she was blessed to give me my only grandchild Colin who is extraordinary. In fact, as his gr as his grandfather, he's clearly a genius and I know you I think that's a requirement of grandfather. I think so, yeah, he is to be. And uh, so I went and and I got my uh my degrees there and I kept working. I got out and from there, I knew I wanted to, I wasn't really even sure to be, but I wanted to lead something, to just be more than I was uh uh at the time. And and you know, and I got really lucky because in life what happens is you have to take a chance on yourself and other people have to take a chance on you at the same time. And the chance for me was going back to get my degree while while a working adult, a parent. Uh, and then uh, you know, I was just just very blessed. And and so I went from there and uh work went to I got a job at a company called Invincus at the time. Uh, it was uh called CB uh and a big old company out of Rockford. In Vincensus was a was about a$2 billion UK company. And I was very blessed because they were having terrible financial troubles and which sounds kind of opposite to say, but during times of great um challenges, there's opportunity in that. And so I got to go on the team, I was running a plant and and doing marketing and other things, but I got to go on the team who uh got to sell the business. So myself and others and I was just a little cog in the wheel. I was just a person who did a lot of paperwork. Uh, but I got to be part of that and that kind of at the end was my springboard and for a few years I wound up working for companies and doing deals and I kind of worked my way around doing that for a while and then I got into an organization called Idex and from Idex I went from so I'd had sales background a little bit of operating and a lot of deal flow at this point to uh really learning to run companies and IDEX is where I learned to do the model that I do Today uh we got a new CEO a guy named Andy Silverell just a fantastic person He uh he's done extraordinary in his career In fact he's running international paper today Uh and uh he uh myself and about 11 other people he put on a team and said "I want you to figure out the next operating model for Idex." And we really had all the tools and processes that we needed but we were missing one key ingredient That was 8020 uh one of our board members That's right That was exactly That's 20 years ago Here Yeah I want to get all the good stuff out of this book Absolutely And so yes 8020 was nothing more than understanding what they aim at. And and there's a lot of great tools and techniques out there Lean we've all been around lean And lean is an extraordinarily powerful process But one of the challenges with it **you can throw a million dollars at a nickel problem when you shouldn't just probably get out of the nickel problem. 8020 does a nice job of saying here's where the money's at Here's where the opportunity and candidly here's where it's not. Lean is how you get it out of it right uh pricing is how you get more for it and on and on. But if you start with 8020 you'll understand how to size the prize and where to focus. And that's really what we got out of that at IDEX uh we over sevenyear period you know the company just did extraordinary and uh you know from that that was my next springboard to running businesses where uh where I left from there and I went to uh a couple different companies became president then CEO and today what I'm doing is I'm in private equity we go out we buy these companies and our goal our job is within three to five years to triple the value to get three times the amount of money we we put in there it's very very standard way and it's interesting **private equity sometimes gets a a bad name You feel oh they just come in and they just rip it apart It's it's actually just the opposite. If you're going to make a return, you have to invest heavily. You have to invest in the people, the processes, the technology. You got to give your folks exceptional opportunities, be good partners, and most importantly or as importantly, you got to give a return out of that. And that today is where we're at right. You got to make things better if you got to have a process to do it. And what I found over a whole career is this process works and it works pretty well. Yeah. So I'm going to do a little sidebar. I want you to do a favor for a client of mine who's a chief commercial officer uh and I think is about to get a CEO role. And I want you to tell her, Bill, how ready did you feel the first time you stepped into a CEO role? You're not ready at all. I think at least for for me, I think I had a classic case of impostor syndrome. Sometimes I still get up and I go, "Really, you're going to do all this?" Uh, but uh, as you get older and it's like when you have your first child and you have, there's no instruction book that comes right. They you, you've prepared your whole life. You haven't seen it all. Uh, same thing with a child. Same thing with the business. Now you're entrusted with care and and in some cases with thousands of of people, not only those people that come to work but their families that depend on them and you send people to school and you pay light bills and mortgages. You're entrusted all with that. And leadership matters. It does make a difference. It's sometimes people can say, "Oh, it does." I'm telling you it makes all the difference in. I agree with you 100%. Um, and I said the same thing to her, nobody has ever felt ready the first time they stepped into that role. And and I think it's good that you have that fear. It makes you, it makes you intentional. That's right. Puts a little edge on it, right? Nothing like the the the uh the shadow of the hangingsman noose over your head that gets you responsibility. And if you don't realize that you're not going to be a very good CEO. So so in your book one of the things I noticed and I it hit me because of where we are politically in a new administration and I I don't want to get political but you talk about the first 100 days. That's right. Um what what's important about that number? Why why did you pick that number? Well, there's well there's a couple of things that are super important about reason I first picked it is you know, we've all heard about it, but if you trace it back, probably the earliest uh uh in modern day at least was Franklin Roosevelt when he came in with the Great Depression. Uh he you know, the country was in terrible shape and they did something at the time and I sure I'm going to get the number wrong, but they passed like 44 bills in the first 100 days which really saved the country today, however you feel about Roosevelt or not, but that's where the 100 days was first started talked about was that the country had to come together to save themselves. And and since that time, no matter what you do, you hear about your first 100 days. So you hear in today's political environment and people understand by saying it that we're going to get something done and we're going to get it fast and it may not be perfect, but it's we've got to go save ourselves. And when you come into a new business, there's you're generally on some scale of extreme. On one hand, the business is in super trouble. Uh in fact, it may be going out of business if you can't save it. On the other hand, the business sees itself and maybe is very successful as a new leader. The more the business is in trouble and they recognize it, the better the job will be, which is kind of counterintuitive. And the reason why is they want to change. They know they need to change right. It is really tough to manage a company that thinks they're figuring it out even if they're not. But there's an old saying that you can throw an anchor to a drowning sailor and they'll catch it. So imagine if you got a life preserver to throw to them. What great things you can do, right? So there is a process to follow. There is things to do and I'm sure there's lots to do. We have ours. But company in trouble, you show up day one, you want to hit the ground running. That 100 day puts a puts a boundary around it. Say we're going to get something done. So give people a sense of what what are? I think there are three things that have to happen in that first 100 days. Did I get that right? Well, there's four, but there's really three things that you have to do.

The fourth one is actually doing it right. So the first thing you have to do as a new city sitting CEO is you have to decide what the goal is. And that is your job to determine. And where you get that input is whoever the owner is. If the owner's private equity and you're going to sign a contract that states you got to deliver a certain return, it's pretty black and white. If it's a private company, it's whatever the values and the mission of that individual, that family, that group is. If it's a public company, it's whatever you stood up for with your shareholders, right? So, so you start out with what the goal is. And let's just assume that the goal is private equity because it's simpler. It's pretty it's a pure model and you're at 100 100%. And you've got a triplet. So you got to go to 300. Just making it super super simple, right? So you look at it and the first thing you do, so you already know your goal. Your goal is to get to 300. It's math. Right now the question is how do you have the resources? First thing I do before I get there is I talk to the board, the owner, whoever it is, the ownership, and I make sure I'm understanding what they want from me. It's pretty important. If you want to, the only job a board has is to decide if the CEO can cut it. And if you can't, their job is to replace. Otherwise, there are supporting mechanisms. I'm being a little bit simple. First thing you do is you sit down with your CFO and you go, what does our capital structure look like? What kind of money do we have? How much do we organically have to grow in order self-generate and how much can we go buy? Because typically, particularly in private equity, you're going to be doing deals. That's the rocket fuel. You get your business ready, you get it so it can handle it, and you pull rocket fuel on it, which is more deals and you really leverage yourself up and it it's a very exciting and successful ride typically. So you understand through the math what's possible. You get your team into that room and you ask them. You don't tell them "What's our goal?" You'll be shocked because this happened to me every time. No one really knows. It's the rare person. Uh, you are preaching to the choir. They don't have a clue. I truly I have said to people, how do you expect your organization to impleme.
nt a vision they don't know it's literally a change It's a change management It's a launch I'm so glad you said that The whole 100 days in fact the whole three years if you will is nothing more than change management. But imagine getting in your car you got gas in the tank you're ready to go and you know like the Blues Brothers said if you remember that I hit it You know y where you going you better pick your destination So you're going to go to Chicago you're going to go to Knoxville going to Atlanta make sure you know so you can put a map together So start out with the CFO as the leader See what how much gas you got in your tank Get the team and then just ask them right then from there you got to put the number on the table or on the whiteboard and you're going to have to discuss it They have to believe that number is possible and it'll be made up of several things What the company's done historically what they feel they're capable of all of this But you have to get agreement around that number That is step one You typically do that the first week So you show up day one you set your meeting go off site get away from everything spend a couple of days and bat that around You must have agreement and it and it's got to be everyone in the room. Now now they may not really agree at this point but they at least got to say it right step two is you've got to determine how you're going to get there What the strategy is to get you there. Now this is really important and this where a lot of leaders I think can go astray is the team has to determine the strategy It can't be you. If you tell them as the leader our goal is to go to Atlanta just to pick that as a destination and I'm going to tell you how to drive the car to get there They won't believe you right because you're going to be doing what you do in your role They actually have to execute on this If they believe in it they'll figure out a way to make it happen because no plan survives meeting the enemy right your customers get a a vote your employees get a vote your competitors get a vote So the old famous uh Persian saying is no no plan survives the enemy But if they believe in it what they'll do is they'll see what happens and they'll start making the necessary adjus.
tments just as a boat in a storm Sometimes you have to tack into the wind as well as with the wind they'll figure it out If you tell them they'll say it's not possible Maybe not at the beginning but as soon as it goes bad and it fails I love that because I I often see CEOs or we've had people on the podcast who have said "I could only get my company to a certain level and then I got stuck." And I'd say "Well in retrospect did do you have a sense of why that was?" And he said "Yes I was a great individual contributor." In other words the CEO has not come up to be a leader of other people a developer of other people He's trying to lift he or she is trying to lift everything on their own without getting enrollment around the vision You're exactly right You're like Atlas with the world on your back Can't do it It will not work Right Yeah Yeah Uh so if your team won't join you either you didn't get buy into the goal because I'm going tell you my experience is people want to win People want to be on a winning team. If they're not buying in something is wrong You need to step back and go is it me is it the goals bad did I not present it right is the team unqualified it can be any one of those A lot of times it's a combination thereof And just being a human being and talking to them goes a long way So day one we got a goal We all agreed to it Day two which is about 30 days out we have a strategy right and that strategy is going to be just as shallow as you would suspect given you've only got 30 days to get it done But the reality is we're going to focus on what we're good at. So if you're in manufacturing pumps or you're selling real estate or whatever you're not going to go say "Well I think I'm going to get in the restaurant business." Right that's a that's a whole one You're not ready for that You shouldn't even look at that It's around what are we good at what's our core competency do we have the capabilities and that's where you're going It really focuses the mind right so you're setting in there A lot of times the companies I take over have multi-divisions In other words they're a rollup of a lot of companies they bought So you may have a billion dollars but this one's 200 million This is 50 million This one's 300.

And so on and so forth You've got to get all those aligned And the leader of each one of those I'm going to call it a natural segment Maybe it was a P&L before standalone company or whatever They have to tell you how they're going to deliver that plan. Now here's the key for them They can't make it up either. They got to get their team in the room and they've got to talk about how they're going to go do it. Because if they go back and they say "Oh my god that crazy CEO Bill is making me do it." and they work all night long to get it done without their team they're going to be on an island and they'll lose them right so you force them to come in put together the plan and you come back The third step and this is the one where people show themselves This is where you generally start seeing changes in the team is you say "All right I buy in the strategy." And there's a lot of back and forth right it's not just a once and it's a lot of back and forth You get agreement The next step you have to do is you have to organize yourself or reorganize yourself around that strategy. So let's say you've got a group they've been doing 10 things The decision is we can win in this one area They have to figure out how to take the resources from those nine other areas and put them around that n that one area And you'll hear things there's these are red flags We've done this before It didn't work You don't understand It's different here You have to get through all of that If you don't get through all of that you're going to find yourself having a discussion that goes something like this This job is not for you Well you are you are uh you are talking about a thing I use with clients all the time and I'm sure you've heard of it Managing transitions with William Bridges right it's manag people through change right you got to help Leaders are not bad at change They're terrible at getting people through change Um and that's who really affects the change isn't it that's right And so you have to drive And there's a bunch of tools that we talk about in the book but you just know in real life there's a J curve that people go through which means they start out here they get worse and then they get better right and we talk about things like the Ei.
senhower matrix which is the urgent and unimportant and the you know and on and all these things So we try to equip them with tools but it's really a lot of conversations and say I'll get up in front of the guy and I said "Now look you're going to feel a lot worse in two weeks I'm going to tell you right you're going to go through it and if you think you're going through it how bad imagine your team who's not even in this room they they don't know what's happening and it's going to be done to them they're scared right they feel unsafe you have to go create that environment so you have to create an environment where people can get through it and you have to allow them to go through it but they have to go through it right they have to get through it and they have to get themselves through it and their team through it just as you are if they will not get through it the role really isn't for them right and I see it sometimes It's surprising Uh some people think "Oh my gosh they're going to be on it." But because of the speed you're going remember you're not trying to save one individual You've got a thousand employees They all have three or four family You got three to four to 5,000 people depending on you to get this right And your job is to get that individual through it so they can see it and hear it and really make it successful Because listen if this was all going great you wouldn't have got hired for the role anyway right change is here We got to get through it Yeah Yeah Agreed And you hit on a couple things that I just literally shot a video last week Um I love being your yang a little bit You you know I'm in so much agreement with so many things that you're saying I see so many strategies rolled out and never uh implemented Happens all the time. Some of the things that I see are too many initiatives right very common uh don't have the init don't have the resources to go to to do those initiatives Um don't check in enough on how things are going so that you can course correct if you need to and um shiny object syndrome So you know we're a few months in and you you go squirrel and you just you know move on to something else And so that tells me that strategy wasn't that important in the first place I'd love fo.
r you to comment a little bit on that every one of these in fact we are in in one of my business today we were having it's where we do it's called we call our situation assessment and uh one of the gentlemen who's extraordinarily gifted brings in his list and there's nine items I go there's no way on this God's green earth you're going to get those nine items I if we can get one done I'll be thrilled but you couldn't you can't have more than two or three he was so you could just see his face right he was like these are all important I go I don't I don't doubt they're all important I know They're all important but you can't do them And and I'm just going to save you the grief by telling you you can't do them So go back and remove some of them uh you know from it But yeah so the the two biggest ones uh are the ones you talked about first which is too many initiatives and then poorly resourced. And there's a couple things you can do to save yourself So if you don't have someone like me or you who says that's too many then all you have to do to them is say "All right stack your initiatives up from your most important to your least important." Just stack them up Exactly what I say too Force rate cut them Then I want you to take all your people Just take all your people and then I want you to take the first cut because they're just human beings There's not extra hours I want you to fully staff the first one All right now who's ever left you can put them on the second one And if you have more people you can put but I don't believe you have nine stacks worth of people who can go do because someone's actually got to run the pump company Someone has to take the order So you've but you know if you look in their team and you know generally less than 5% are the people maybe as many as 20% but less than 5% are the ones actually doing the initiative Everyone else is running the business Someone's got to take the orders and place the orders and make the orders and ship the orders If someone Yeah it takes a different group to actually come in and do this strategy staff your number one and then I'd like to see and if it's the same people number two or three I now you and I know it's not going to work because they're they just don.
't have the bandwidth so I can force them to see it themselves uh through just by making them actually you know what's the old saying if you write it down 90% of the problems already solved Yeah agree We we actually have the process It's called zero up Uh where we go through simplification zero up The zero up is taking the resources and putting them next to the initiative You start to say there's no one here Who's our first initiative here's the group that's going to go do it Here's the group that that's going to not do it as the case may be Yeah I think that's great You also talk about leadership uh in your in your book and and uh some of the things that you know I know we're talking you know about PE and about stepping into a company but we we were also work with a lot of owners and and you go really through the same scenario don't you Bill when when uh when the market changes or when you know when something dramatic happens in your industry that you kind of you have to start at this place too and do all of these things that you're talking about But I find too that um getting really intentional about how you show up as a leader matters and we talk about kind of the different ways that you evolve as a leader depending on where your company is in its life cycle What are what are your thoughts on that you you talk about I agree 100% Right So just you know in some ways I not to diminish it but but we rise to whatever the occasion is So we're if you will you're an actor for that moment and then you're going to you're going to change So the the three things that a CEO has to do to be successful is the first is they have to set that goal and they have to get buy in on right The second thing is they have to make executing it a condition of employment And this is where CEOs will fall down They'll think they get buy in but then they go back and they take the strategy and they put back on the shelf We won't do that Our strategy can be just okay It can be average But if we all get together and hold hands and go after it we for sure will have a better outcome than a wonderful strategy that no one follows right so so and because we operate under progress not perfection If the strategy is poor which we don't recognize I mea.
n we wouldn't do it on purpose We can change So we start going in something we realize well that's not working for whatever reason Maybe the situation's changed maybe we misunderstood it We can pivot or we can slightly adjust as necessary So the CEO first where we going determine your goal Your team determines how you're going to get there This the next piece we have to do is make sure people follow it Right that's the condition of employment The third piece is the measuring Every month I have to get my team together We go KPIs fancy term for key performance indicators We're going to look at how are we doing and then every 90 days we leave the building and we go on an offsite and we ask ourselves are we on track and if we're not on track we adjust you know we don't say well geez we got to 12 months It doesn't matter If we are losing if we're if we're winning let's go faster If we're losing oh this isn't working Let's figure it out And it's not about changing your mind or not you get better and more information and you bring that in you go now given our situation for instance like we may look at a product and go this is a really great product let's go after it and a competitor could come in with a similar product and eat our lunch well that's not working I was at we sell golf carts uh we're big big one of the largest in the world at uh do upfitting in golf carts and the Chinese manufacturers have came in uh and has really started dominating the North American golf cart business uh club car is one of the major manufacturers out there and they make this golf cart and it is absolutely beautiful It makes me think of a pontoon boat because in the back there's a table It's you can sit around and eat lunch or drink beverages with your friends Anyway I'm at the PGA show and they have that golf cart there and that golf cart was $31,000 That's the price that you would expect to be That's a lot of golf cart right right next to it was a brand out of China They sold it for $14,000 I'm like "Wow." And so I'm standing there with our guy and uh and we're looking at it and the salesman comes over and he's he's he's we're like "Well is it as good as the Club Car one is a very high they make a wonderful product." He goes "No but why".

You can throw it away and get a whole another one and still be cheaper than the original one So if it lasts three years who cares?" I thought there's a lot of people out there who will respond with that Club Car has to figure out how they respond to that right if they're going to if they're going to be because you know there's a premium section that people want There's also people who are valuedriven Well it's the same thing with us As you get that information as a CEO you got to take that into consideration You do that in your quarterly meetings Every 90 days I find you come up with your plan In 90 days it's shaky So much has changed Interest rates can change economies can change we get new presidents we can get all those things Your puppy's going to be fine Don't worry about it. So uh uh uh so you got to take and you got to be agile enough to deal with that and go on It it does make a huge huge difference Jane Yeah What what did you learn in your career at some point Bill that that surprised you about running a company you know there's several things that I I learned uh and most of them the hard way The way you get to be really good at running a company is you were really bad That's a fact So you start out with that you know personal uh you know perseverance and and things like that really start standing out So the first is as as a leader you got to make something happen and and people like myself we are difference makers We come in and we will shake it up Sometimes we break it right but generally it comes in and you start making something happen You have to get a team around you that really supports it So what's the first thing you need support in there And you cannot I hate to use this term but fight with everyone You don't want to fight with anyone In fact if you're fighting at all something's gone wrong But if someone's not on your team you need to replace that person And that is really hard to do off of it. But you got to have people whether you're a president of United States your cabinet members have to be on board with you If not they will work against you It's the same thing in work running a business your presidents and your VPs have to be aligned around the vision you have You will go faster you will.
have far more success So that's one of the most critical pieces of it I think I interrupted you when you boy I have so many conversations with um CEOs about toxic uh per high performers in their organization and I'll say they got to go They got to go and they may be great at what they do It's our highest per one of our highest performers Jane I go you will be amazed what's going to happen when you let that person go inside And every everyone's watching and they know right you don't have to be mean You don't have to you just go it's not working The second thing is you have to be flexible and understand that the situation is demanding change. Now you said something really important the shiny object Be careful about management by bestseller you know whatever you last thing you read last person you talked to But if you've got a good process and you know what you're doing right in other words you're going and you're really engaged in it If it's not working you need to understand why and adjust Don't blindly run off the cliff I was I was uh in a car the other day with a with a gentleman and and he'd had a really rough rough time of it and uh he had been running restaurants up in the Northeast and he's down in Florida now And I said "Well geez how'd you get so bad?" He goes "I knew it wasn't working but I just said I could will it to work." Right and he wound up burning through everything he had But he knew early on that the economy had changed There was a pandemic going on Like the situation had changed He needed to modify and he didn't And it wound up costing him really everything So same thing here Do not blindly run off a cliff But if you if you understand the business you understand your resources There's a vast difference between adjusting to accommodate how the situation has changed and then just simply being uh blown by the wind wherever it goes right so you need to have courage You need to have conviction until you get better information and then be prepared to change. You talk about getting enrollment a lot You didn't say it exactly that way but you keep talking about people being on board and uh you're a military guy right uh command and control leadership was really the norm in the military It's not anymore.

interestingly enough but I still see a lot of CEOs try to lead their organizations that way Uh I'd like you I'd like you to give your point of view on that Yeah there's some organizations that still work that way and very successful I have a very good friend of mine that uh has a uh a light and and trailer manufacturer does about $3 billion a year He is a command and control individual He's ran that company for 30 years He knows everything and does extraordinary job and his team loves him right uh and then other organizations just won't work in In today's environment it is absolutely harder to do it if if not in many cases as a new leader impossible because you just don't know enough Right that gentleman has signed off on as far as I can tell every employee that's ever come He knows them all He's also took 30 years of his life to do it So is I wouldn't say it doesn't work but it doesn't work for me right what works for me is I come in and I set certain boundaries that I know will work Like I know I have to pick the goal and I got to get people to buy into it I can't make them buy into it but I pick that goal No one else picks it and it comes from a lot of input Uh but it's it's I make that decision The second thing that I absolutely uh own is it is a condition of employment that we all follow the path to get to it We're going to pick a strategy and we're all going to be on board And if we if you can't be on board for whatever reason not for you And and I will call them out on it Right so there's certain things that I do at the the monthly cadence meetings They could show up with it written on napkins I couldn't care less I don't care what size font it is and all that other people do and it's important to them but for me it's not important what I want to understand is what they're doing the intent of it and is it getting is it getting through I want to see progress right so if the math I have worked for many people including the military and if your first chart wasn't the way they wanted then you were dead it just wasn't going to work well that was that environment in my environment we prize speed over accuracy we're not trying to cure cancer we're not trying to rely on rockets on the moon We're just trying to have a conversation about is this program working or not and I'll deal with that noise and it seems to work right So we laugh at ourselves we laugh at each other and it goes through with it So understand your role understand what the nonvolatiles are the non-negotiables We got to do this But for me getting my team's buy in and getting their belief that they can go do it is the most important thing I will set where we're going though Tell me um tell me another principle in your book that you think is important for CEOs to know So if you go back to those four things is make sure you land the plane like takeoff is optional I used to fly my own plane and all that I quit flying but I still used the vernacular take I remember the story in your book about uh when you thought you were going to die and you went oh I learned how to land That's right I I successful crash right I I walked away in the plane I could fly again So uh so yeah So so uh getting the goal you got to have that getting the strategy they need to own it You'll be surprised how much that will save you and the team later on Probably the next biggest piece that I find people really not not it cause themselves to to fail is they will not organize themselves correctly They'll they'll love the strategy It'll be a perfect strategy and it would work if they would do it but they will not resource it correctly Underresourcing a strategy is almost a for sure a guaranteed failure. That's what I say all the time is my average strategy will be anyone else's great strategy because I'll resource it and I make them go through it to show me I don't determine what it should be because a lot of times I just won't know They may have been here 10 years I this is I'm still in week one But I'm gonna say "Walk me through it." And I just listen to it And not only do I but my team and and so one of the things I do that I find uh it's it's a little bit connive but it works So it's generally it'll be myself the CFO uh maybe the HR person maybe the COO It depends what the instru not every company has an HR or CEO but there'll be two or three of us maybe four who are really the key leaders that everyone's going to be reporting to And I'll say okay you're Jane you're going to talk first I'm gonna go last and there's some hierarchy Not that it needs to be a hierarchy but when you're the CEO if you say it everyone else has to agree with you right it's just the power of the chair So you want to go last so people can be heard and it can be it can have an impact So uh when I come in nobody will talk when they'll go "Okay what' you think?" And they'll wait for me to talk I'll have a conversation outside the room I go "Jane you are going to talk before I am If you're uncomfortable with it just get over it." Right you have to go first because it gives people a safe space right where they can say whatever it is and then how I react either reinforces that or makes it worse right so my job is to reinforce it So we have all these little conversations outside of the room Some people get it naturally some people struggle with it But these are things that are important and it creates that environment So this the next thing I do which is I don't know if it's unusual or not but when you start out and you have all this going on everyone in that room is it's like it's coming at them a thousand miles an hour you blows their hair back the rest of the company can't see anything happening right it's like what is going on and they think terrible thoughts we set up in that first 100 days a series of three we call them town hall meetings some call it all hands but with today's stuff with these you know zoom and teams we'll set up one I'll set up The first one right at the beginning I'll say "Hey here's what we're going to go do Here's the team." The second one's about halfway through We announce that where we are And then the third one is the announcement of we have made decisions and things are happening Companies really really respond to that So once we get it kicked off I go on a road show and I just go location to location to location and I have a little mini town hall in all of them 30 minutes of talking Hey here's where we've been Here's where we are Here's where we're going And then it's all Q&A It's amazing how powerful that is Yeah Bill and you're talking about exactly what I said earlier which is these initiatives should be treated like a launch of anything inside the organization And that communication is.
so unbelievably critical that you don't leave people in the dark Um Yeah They'll think the terrible thoughts and you'll start losing them You'll lose really good people if they don't understand what's happening Yeah I I've said to leaders and and you can correct me if if you disagree The three things that create engagement for people is they want to know where are we going They want clarity around what our goal is as an organization Secondly they want to know what's their role in that That's right And finally they want to know do I have any autonomy at all in my role to contribute to how we get there and um it sounds very similar to what you said and it's really just having a communication strategy for this so that people understand what's the plan what's my part Jane you're exactly right And so some of the feedback we've gotten is so first of all don't sugarcoat it People love the earn varnish truth Don't be hurtful Don't be like pessimistic We're all going to die You don't want to be in a plane We're going down We're You don't want to do that But you need to be honest and and and hopeful and aspirational At the end of these meetings I always say "Here's what I need you to do." And a lot of times I just need you to keep doing your job Take care of the customers Treat each other with dignity and respect right do the things that you're already doing Uh and uh and we're going to get there And then I will tell them what to expect that's coming so they'll know what's coming next right and and it's amazing how powerful it is There's things that we all want to know that we're going to be safe We have a plan We're executing on that plan We don't have it perfect It's going to be bumpy I'm going to tell you right now we're going to make some mistakes but we are going to make it It is amazing how people respond to that I I agree with you 100% So I could chat with you for like five more hours Um but I don't think we can do that I think people you know so we do this a little series of rapid fire questions at the end Are you open to that absolutely Okay It's just four or five What one thing did you learn early on in your career that impacted your success uh probably the most important one is that get out there and get invol.
ved in make something happen Okay What do you hope that people young people in business will learn you know I think the uh the thing today and it's different at all times You know I think it's about getting back engaged We've all kind of got in our bedrooms and our houses Getting back to the office and going out there and just being a part of it is so important And everything we learn learned in kindergarten is what you you need Show up on time Be nice Be respectful to each other Do your homework Super simple Isn't there a book everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten It's still true I think there I think there is a book So Bill they say the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago Japanese proverb The second best time is now What do you wish you'd done 20 years ago oh my gosh I talk about this all the time You know I feel like I'm finally getting good at stuff and here I am at getting towards the end of my career So I you know youth is wasted on the young I wish 20 years ago I'd gotten in private equity You private equity is really just looking at a return And if you're a leader who you believe in yourself and you got a good team you actually get a chance to go out and do it And so I wish I'd have gotten in private equity 20 years ago Well there's a big encouragement for people Get into private equity What What do you do when you feel stuck you know a couple of things Probably the most important thing to me is my wife She's my partner my friend She She tells me when I'm doing bad and kicks me in the rear end and she's always capable of getting me unstuck So I I talked to her Isn't that great to have a sounding board i think everybody should have a sounding board like that Choose but choose wisely I don't know how I got lucky We've been married 33 years Uh she was probably smarter than I was but I just got lucky and I'm grateful for it Hey marry up It's not a bad strategy Mary I I'll kick my coverage right so is there anything you wish I'd asked you that I didn't no I got to tell you what I love talking to you You're such a breath of fresh fresh air Your energy and excitement just really gets me going So I just want to thank you for inviting me and having me on your show today I appreciate you So I uh want everybody to go on what well I got it on Amazon I don't know where else you can get it Bill's uh the 8020 CEO great book And you have another one coming out Tell everybody when your second one's coming out I do I do The second one comes out April uh 29th and it's called uh From Panic to Profit which I think is a great book for our time Lots of things going on All the books are available in all fine booksto uh as well as you can come to my website We have it on there as well and we're happy to sign a copy for you and ship it out to you So uh really appreciate the support and I hope everyone uh goes and gets the new one It's published by WY and uh look we're going to be in 161 airports with That's what I was just going to say Aren't you going to be in airports yes we're going to do so all that are traveling Can pick it up right out right out of the airport bookstore Uh Bill I am so grateful to you This was this was fun And I love when I can get on here and learn also And uh I just appreciate you so much and thank you for being so open to other CEOs who you know this is the way we learn is talking to each other Well thank you Jane It's been wonderful I'm grateful for you Same here That's a wrap for this episode of CEOs Unscripted where real talk feels real growth I hope today's conversation gave you fresh insights and inspiration for your own leadership journey If you love this episode be sure to subscribe so you never miss a candid conversation with a trailblazing leader Until next time keep leading with intention growing with grit and driving for results I'm Jane Gentry and this is CEOs Unscripted See you next time.