BRAD THOMAS

>> Craig Gould: Brad Thomas, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Brad, you’ve served as chro at five different corporations including New York Life, and for the better part of the last decade, you’ve been consulting the heads of organizations on how to accelerate peak performance. And I want to learn what great leaders have told you about leadership. But I would like to go back to the beginning. You know, I like to do this with my guests, which is Brad, what was your first job? Was it, was it the Marine Corps or was there something before that?

>> Brad Thomas: As a youngster, we all worked in blue collar, you know, jobs. We happened to be in a school, high school, they were rebuilding. So we were only half days at school and half days working. So we all worked. I worked in a, shoe factories, I worked in fast food, I worked in supermarkets. We, it was an environment where if you wanted something, you earned it. And so we, we got quite a perspective. We loved when it snowed because that was, you know, $30 of snow, shoveling revenue. But, but yeah, that was that was the way it was growing up. And then, coming out of school, I went into school on a Marine Corps scholarship. So I did go in the Marine Corps and came out of the Marine Corps, went to GE Aerospace on some, what at the time were classified programs or not anymore, but they were the spy satellite programs in the supply chain and then went on GE’s corporate HR leadership program, rotational program, and it sort of went from there. So that was sort of my beginnings.

>> Craig Gould: So you kind of cut your teeth in the world of ge that that would probably be in the generation of Jack Welch.

>> Brad Thomas: Yes, it was. And a lot of my time was at plastics. Had the good fortune to work for some really talented HR people. And you know, I think growing up, you know, my father was pretty influential for me. And you know, his point of view was the more you’re around the best people, the more you learn. And so I’ve been really fortunate to be around, really, really great people.

>> Craig Gould: You spent decades working in that organization and then at the heads of other organizations. And like I said, for the last decade you’ve been consulting people at the heads their organizations. And I’m m just wondering, do you find that the GE way matches what you learn from other leaders of organizations? Do those mesh or have you found that there are subtle differences?

>> Brad Thomas: Yeah, I think you see the evolution of, company thinking and performance over time. You know, I’ve been doing this for 46 years, almost half a century now, I guess, working one way or the other. And I think things that we did, some things we learned at GE that were great and some things turned out not to be so great. And going to Pepsi and working with the incredible talent there, you know, I walked in the door there and realized when I interviewed there that pretty much everybody there was more talented than I was and it’s kind of place I wanted to be. so you take things from everywhere you’ve been and every company is different, every industry is different. the leverage that companies have from certain populations in their organizations are very different. You know, insurance has actuaries and product people and investment people that are, you know, very high leverage people. And a lot of folks that, you know, a lot of those places feel are fungible because they’re, they can learn their administrative jobs very quickly. But then you have other organizations where a lot of that is distributed. You know, you know, Pepsi had 450 sales locations and 60 plants and every one of those folks were high leverage people. So every place is different. Every organization, every point in time, in terms of the evolution of the company, in terms of their scaling is different. Being with startups or early companies is very different than being with, you know, a city group with 300,000 people. and so you learn different things in different places. I guess.

Craig You: It takes a ton of work to build a great organization

>> Craig Gould: All that being said, what are the key things that you’ve learned over the years? What have great leaders told you about being great leaders? Are there some kernels of truth that kind of apply regardless of what industry we’re looking at?

>> Brad Thomas: Yeah, let me back up just A hair on that, Craig. In terms of culture, one of the biggest things that I’ve noticed is, the power of culture. I mean, you could. Your organization can be the Navy seals or it can be the post office, and it’s going to be what you design and build, or you’re going to get something. And by definition, if you don’t do anything, you’re going to probably be average or less than average. And so the people who are really, really great at all this understand that, and they understand the work it takes to build a great organization. And that, I think is a. Is a huge insight because it takes a ton of work to really build an organization that’s distinctive and remarkable. I mean, look at the ones that, I think when you think about how many companies are in the original Fortune 500 are still there, you know, they’re a tenth of them, maybe. And so trying to understand how you take an organization and create a high performance organization where the culture is such that the value proposition for great people is such that they all want to come. And from there, I’d say the difference between an average leader and a great leader is enormous. I mean, there’s. I’m no expert at this, I’m no research scientist or anything, but you look at the McKinsey studies, the HBR studies, you look at everything, and it’s a huge difference because it sort of cascades through their organization. They attract other great people. Those people attract great people. They’re higher performers. You look at all the numbers on productivity, it’s like 55% higher productivity. I could go through all the studies and whatnot, because they’re all over the place. Deloitte’s got them, McKinsey’s got them, Harvard’s got them. But the fact is that that culture, where you look at all the levers to build that organization and the work it takes to sustain that, to really get people aligned around what has to happen. And what’s kind of shocking to me in the last 10 years or so is how many organizations never realize this. I mean, I can’t tell you when people develop their strat plans every year. And there’s a complete and total absence of any consideration of this work. There’s no human capital section. There’s no effort to turn around and say, how do we become this remarkable organization? And all of these levers, in terms of who you select, how you incent them, what the communications are inside, what the leadership training, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all these things, the culture and You. When you think about the leverage of a great strategy, engagement, accountability, there’s, you know, three or four things that really stand out in. In those terms. And it’s. It is things like strategy, engagement, accountability, and how you look at whatever those factors are you’re after and how you really build it. You know, I just. I just got done running a search for. For a company for. For Chro, And I think probably nine out of nine of some of the candidates I talked to at the beginning, in talking about this, had absolutely no comment about any strategic imperatives related to this topic. And, I. I just. It shocks me sometimes to think about that, because it’s so relevant, right, to running a company and what you’re trying to build. And I’m not trying to say it’s the same for everywhere, because it’s very different in publishing than it is in consumer products. And Med Device is very different. Government regulation stuff is different. Financial services is very different. And so where those levers are and how you get at them is something that, you know, when you ask me about leadership, I think it starts with this understanding of that in terms of being a leader. But to your point, and while I’m not an author and I wouldn’t pass any tests of, research integrity, I did, over the past 10, 12 years, interview about 200 really great leaders and asked, them what they really valued in the best leaders that they work for. And I was really surprised at how tightly their feedback fit into certain buckets. And I don’t claim to think that, you know, it’s all inclusive by any means, but these things really jumped out. and, you know, at the end of the day, the CEOs who insist on rigorously measuring and managing all these cultural elements that drive performance, they more than double their odds that their strategies will be executed. And over the long run, they deliver triple the total return to shareholders, according to McKinsey. So all that sort of background.

>> Craig Gould: So what did you find, even anecdotally? Is it something where it needs to come from the CEO, or is it a situation where whatever that vision is, it needs to be replicated down the organization, where individual department heads share the vision? Is it a matter of knowing what the culture is? Knowing what the main goals are? Goal congruency? Is it even just a matter of, having a particular attitude in how you communicate? Whether that’s the stick or the carrot? What’s your feeling?

>> Brad Thomas: I don’t think I could say that there’s one thing but culture and performance Starts at the top in terms of the environment you create. And to the extent that you can sustain sponsorship for that through the organization by having leaders aligned at each level is really important because one of the things that Pepsi, when there was a bunch of studies done, we realized is when you lose a big department, when you lose a leader, you have kind of a black hole, you lose everybody underneath them. And so if you don’t have that sponsorship and you don’t have that alignment, that shared perspective around what you’re trying to build, what’s important, why these things are worth investing in and what their responsibilities are, it’s really hard to get that all the way down. I mean, I’ve been looking at, watching this whole thing of Boeing and I remember at GE there was a long ago, there was a problem with somebody playing games with the financials in the government contracting. And, and they said, well, to Welsh, can you guarantee this will never happen again? He said, I got 300,000 people here. You think I can. I can guarantee the behavior of many people. And and you know, changing a culture is a huge long term thing when you have two, 300,000 people. and so, yeah, I don’t think there’s one thing, Craig. I think it’s. But to your point, it very much depends on what they decide to do at the top, what they value at the top, and how they align the organization. If you don’t do that, you get a very different incongruent set of behaviors throughout the company.

>> Craig Gould: Bringing up Boeing as an example, it kind of brings in mind a, corollary trait which is trust, Trust and credibility.

Trust and credibility are big parts of talent management, right

Right. Can you talk about the importance of trust in this mix?

>> Brad Thomas: Yeah. So it’s interesting you said that because the themes that came out of the interviews I did, there were like seven really big buckets. And the very first one that came up, that was really the center of everything. The whole thing was earning trust and credibility and that’s demonstrating the value and skills that make your team the destination for great talent. It’s, it’s showing people that, that you do what you say you’re going to do and that you’re good at what you do and you know what you’re doing. You know, I give this story sometimes when we were in the Marine Corps, we one day we were out orienteering and you know, we had six hours to hit these, you know, 10 boxes that were a couple miles apart. And you know, you have 200 second lieutenants doing this. They say, hey, be back by 3:00 and 299 of us are back by 2:30 and one guy’s missing till 5:00 and he comes tumbling down the hill covered with mud. Really nice guy with good intentions, but not many people felt he was very credible. You know, didn’t really want to jump behind him in terms of following his leadership. A silly example, but the trust and credibility thing go together, right? And so, you know, there’s a whole bunch of things that came up around that, you know, the fact that you provide the context and you frame issues and you know, you show the mutual benefit of what you’re trying to do. You, keep your commitments, you see, you know, there’s all these things under that. But you’re absolutely right. High trust organizations are two and a half times more likely to be high performing revenue organizations according to hvr. So you’re right on. I think that came up from everybody.

>> Craig Gould: So we don’t want to hire the lone marine that’s tumbling muddy down the hill. So, you know, you’ve led HR organizations and some really big companies. How do you control that talent input from the very beginning? Like how, how do you figure out how to elevate talent acquisition? How are you able to hire the best people that I guess you need to know what your culture profile is before you know what you’re looking for.

>> Brad Thomas: You know, you’re right on. One of the other ones you talked about and that is that, one of those seven was the fact that people felt the great leaders really elevate this idea of talent. You know, they really are careful and deliberate about who they get. And it’s one thing to say we’re going to look at all the people who apply for our job. It’s another thing to say we’re going to go out in the market and seek and find the people whose profiles are what we want. You know, I, I had research firms at a couple companies where I had all competitors sales organizations, profile on a wall. I had profiles of every competitor I could see which ones were presidents, list which ones weren’t, and actively recruiting the passive candidate who was so valued by the other company that they didn’t ever want to even think of going. So it’s very different to say I’m going to go seek and find the person versus the person finding the job. And so building a different way and mentality of finding great people is a big part of talent acquisition. Big part of talent management. It really does matter too. I mean, in one of the med device companies we brought in ahead of manufacturing that I knew who had run manufacturing for all of Pepsi’s bottling. And he took our gross margins in less than two years from 45% to just about 70%. And that’s the impact of somebody. And brings up another point. We have boards now depending on the size of your company, you look at market pricing and they say, oh gee, this is how much we should pay in the market. It’s the 75th. Well, if you really have a high, high leverage job, making the investment and going and finding somebody who’s already done it, who’s already proven, who’s really, really talented, who can bring the talent in. I mean this guy brought in two other guys who had done the same job, he did, and just killed it, you know. And so this whole notion of how you think about talent, where you find them, how you go about it, it’s a big deal.

Did you use in house recruiting or did you use retained search firms

>> Craig Gould: That active recruitment, that active identifying, is that something that you were able to do in house or did you work with retained search firms? And what, what are those relationships look like from your side?

>> Brad Thomas: Yeah, so a couple things. There’s research firms that can get information and data and profiles for you. And so I’ve used a couple of them and some of them are remarkable in terms of the information they can get you this public information. the other thing is that whenever anybody came into our organization, part of their onboarding was asking them who were the very best people in any function they’ve ever worked with in any company. And just getting a starting list of people that they really admired where they were. It gives us a starting point of people we might want to look at or at least start with looking at profiles that way and putting the referral program in place so that if we did hire one of those, they got you know, five grand or something and we avoid the big high cost retained search except for stuff that’s really hard.

>> Craig Gould: So what’s really hard, is it the C level or.

>> Brad Thomas: It can, it can be when you have, you know, for instance, you have a head of technology in a mid device company where you’re, you know, you’re trying to find somebody who’s got both the performance and the cultural background and you know, who’s willing to be in the geography you’re in and all these factors where it becomes harder and harder to do yourself. And so sometimes you have to use the folks who do this in a retained search, you know, capacity.

>> Craig Gould: So if I’m a, a senior level executive, maybe an SVP in a particular company, And I’m wanting to break through to the C suite in my industry or something. Corollary, what’s my best plan of action to get on the list? Is it just making sure that my colleagues understand how great I am, or is it, is it a bigger process of networking in lots of different ways?

>> Brad Thomas: You know, I looked at one study, Craig, and it said that and whether. I don’t know if this is actually true, but it made a lot of sense to me that one of the major factors in long term predict, predicting long term success for executives is peer opinion. And I’ve really found that to be true if everybody’s working around you. And I saw that, you know, at Pepsi where some of the guys in my own function were, you know, just hands down respected by all of us. And we’re, you know, we’re, we’re logically the next person to go. And when everybody that’s working around you admires you and trusts you and thinks you’re, you’re the best one, that’s a pretty good predictor. Right?

>> Craig Gould: Right.

>> Brad Thomas: so, you know, I think the best thing to do for somebody is to understand one, are you carrying the culture the right way? Two, are you really clear about your accountabilities and are you delivering them and do you collaborate well and build partnerships and define team very broadly? you know, and the performance, the capability, performance of your organization, the results you deliver, the partnerships you do, all that stuff goes into play in terms of saying, well, you know, obviously this person’s really successful and why wouldn’t we want them?

>> Craig Gould: I’ve mentioned on, on the podcast before, I had a manager that used to tell me that you interview for your next job every day and that I feel like that’s really in line with what you’re saying there. You can’t, you can’t fake that. Right. You know, people, people see what your day to day, performance is. I think some people feel like they wind up in organizations or on teams where they wind up not being noticed. And I think some people have the benefit of winding up on a team with a manager that’s going places and you’re able to tag along. Like, how does someone get from one situation to the other? Is it a matter of getting off that particular ladder and hopping onto the ladder and in a different organization? What’s your experience?

>> Brad Thomas: You know, I don’t think there’s one answer here. Right. But, you’re bringing up something that’s really true. Who you work for is really important. So when you take a job, or anybody takes a job, the person you’re working for, if you believe that they are really capable, that they have really great values, that they’re well respected, that their point of view is important, you know, taking a job with somebody where you don’t feel like they are the right person, where they are a really good leader, you’re going to have a, probably have a harder time with your own visibility and being part of an organization that’s not as respected as it was before. You know, you can’t say it’s a blanket thing. Right? You know, you do a great job. If your manager isn’t great, quite often you’re still, you’re still recognized for that. But I do think your point about who you work for is really, really important.

>> Craig Gould: So what else have great leaders told you? or what, what have they demonstrated? What have you seen? What have you.

>> Brad Thomas: so a few things. One, you know, starting off with what you talked about to trust and credibility and then moving to the notion that they shape the future and build the culture. You know, they, they have a direction, they understand what’s an imperative. How do you shield yourself from, you know, one of the, one of the consultants we used, Pepsi, used to call it the tyranny of good ideas, where you focus on those things that are really, really important and you don’t deplete your resources on things that aren’t. And so they shape the future and they build the culture. And that’s another headline that people talked about that people were able to frame and say, here’s where we’re going and here’s why, and if we don’t do this, here’s, here’s the implication and, or here’s, here’s what we’ll miss out on or here’s the pain we’ll feel. And so they, they’re really good at shaping the future and building the culture. You know, kind of aspire, assess and architect where they’re going. So that was one. I mean, you know, in some respects their strategy, you know, strategy is about making choices and trade offs. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s about setting yourself apart. It’s finding those things that are going to be, really important to the organization. So they do that, you know, they really build that. They also do what you and I were just talking about, about the talent acquisition and talent elevating it. They really elevate that notion of talent and talent development. And I think, you know, it might sound, really conceptual, but they build excitement, enthusiasm and commitments for the opportunities ahead. You know, they engage, they align, they inspire. And, you know, not everybody has that exact personality or they do it in one way, but they do energize the team. They get them excited about what they’re working on. They make them, they value their points of view, you know, so they track and reward progress. They do those things where you really engage the group. They get excited and inspire. And then, a couple of the other things that came up were, they sort of connect, coach, and develop at an individual level. So, you know, Craig, if you’re on my team and I understand what’s important to you, they make that time to say, what are you trying to do? What are your aspirations? How can I help you get there? Let’s talk about where you stand versus where you want to go. How do I help you unlock that potential? And so they do that kind of individual engagement. And, you know, when you become a leader, success is all about growing others.

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Now back to our conversation. You know the conversation I had just this last week with Chris Cassidy, who had spent a decade as a Navy seal, and you know, when I was asking him what did he feel like was the most valuable leadership, lessons that he was able to take from decade as a seal? I anticipated his answer to be around, excessive preparation towards operational excellence. But his answer was the culture of mentorship, which I feel like is, right in line with what you’re describing.

>> Brad Thomas: I’m sure that conversation was fascinating because the standards of that organizations are so high. Trying to even be part of it is such an aspirational thing for so many. I have friends who are SEALs and, I went to school with and it’s really an Example, I mean, not everybody wants to be the SEALs. And obviously, you know, there’s different reasons to be what you want to be, but to have that level of performance in terms of the type of mission that group is responsible for. I bet that was a really interesting conversation. I’m really looking forward to going back and listening to it.

>> Craig Gould: I feel like part of what you were just highlighting is around, let’s say we have a vision, we’ve established goals, we’ve established a culture, and we want to have a roadmap for success. We have to define what success looks like, but we also have to be able to measure that. You know, my experience is I worked for a, less than optimal company one time, which I felt like didn’t do a great job of aligning goals across the organization. And one of the things I learned from that bad experience is that you really have to get your goals set right. You have to figure out how you’re going to measure them correctly. That way everyone’s headed in the same one direction and, you know, you have to be able to measure success.

>> Brad Thomas: Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, that leads right into.

One of the other items that came up a lot was redefining operating excellence

One of the other items that came up a lot was this notion of sort of redefining operating excellence. you know, this idea of alignment, accountability, real time visibility, rapid response. When you’re behind, never getting behind, and when you do, you work really hard to get back on track. And to do that you have to do what you said, you know, so it’s, you know, having goals that are, that are clear, getting everybody top to bottom on the same page and keeping that scorecard front and center. One of the stories or books that people talked about, I can’t remember, I think it was called the game of Work or something. They talked about a tennis match. You know, if you and I go out and it’s 110 degrees or 100 degrees or whatever and we’re hitting the ball around, be out there about 10 minutes. But if it’s a big game and we’re keeping score because people go out there for four hours, right, and kill themselves working. And it’s the same idea how you, you know, how do you get the game a world clear in terms of our challenges, in terms of what’s realistic but what’s really aspirational, and then this idea of, when you keep track, you can know when you’re off track and responding very quickly, when you’re off track and pulling together as a team to jump on an issue that may not be necessarily just yours. But the team is there to help. And so if you do that and you have a scorecard and you’re really tracking what’s important, you do better.

>> Craig Gould: If we’ve identified those goals and we have the scorecard, we’ve identified the quantifiables, you know, I think in the old days we would think, well, if we can tie bonus dollars to those things, maybe that will incent the employees better. In the last five, six, seven years, you know, there’s been a lot of thought around, you know, simply gamifying in the, in the workplace. Is there, is there value in gamification? You know, just m. You know, earning badges, earnings levels of recognition either on your own dashboard or, on a community dashboard. That helps kind of keep people headed in the right direction without necessarily saying, your bonus check this year is going to depend on whether you met this particular number.

>> Brad Thomas: It’s kind of a, in some ways a kind of a complicated question, Craig, because certainly there’s some benefit to, to people engaging in something that tracks where we are, where they’re interested in seeing it. And so that we want to call it gamification or whatever, I think. And that’s helpful, especially for other generations, younger generations. But I think the most authentic part of this is the reward people feel and the recognition they feel. I used to take a big part of something to the board and say, look, here’s our bonus pool accrual, but here’s our recognition program accrual. And every month we go through and say, who really sacrificed this month? And we put real money behind that, not, and recognition. So people would call them out and say, we want to thank you for this. This was really an effort and a sacrifice for you. We don’t want you to have to do that all the time, but you really did it and we really appreciate it. And it was a way for us to have a quicker recognition and a, ah, quicker reward. The recognition was often a lot more important than the reward. But still, I, think the most authentic way to do that is people knowing what they’re accountable for. When they’ve done great work, they get recognized for it, they get rewarded for it, and they understand how important they were to what you’re trying to do.

>> Craig Gould: Let’s say I’ve established goals, we’ve put a plan in place, I’m selling my vision, and the results aren’t exactly what I hope they would be. How do I go about adjusting course as a leader? Where do I turn to find that next idea in terms of Results not.

>> Brad Thomas: Being where you want them to be. I think the great leaders sit down with the people who are doing the work, and they really try and understand what’s in the way, what got in our way, what did we not anticipate? How do we make a change to overcome that? we don’t always know everything we need to know, you know, and so we get started on things and we miss a budget or we miss a deadline or whatever. but it’s an imperfect world when you put a plan together, right? So you try to do your best, but the people who are doing the work are the ones who know best about what’s in the way. And the faster they bring that to everybody’s attention, the quicker that you know about it, the faster you can, you can address it. So I, I think, you know, the trick is to know about that as early as you can. but most leaders who are really great leaders aren’t trying to, trying to do all that work themselves. They’re relying and depending on the people who work for them to say, hey, look, there’s a, there’s a monster out there. We didn’t know it was there. Right. We need to figure out what to do about it.

I’m sure you have had many a conversation about the composition of boards

>> Craig Gould: Tell me about your experience with boards, because I, I know you have, consulted for many years at the C level. You’ve lived that life. I’m sure you have had many a conversation about, the composition of boards. I know for some organizations there are lots of questions about what’s the right makeup of the board, what, what should the board’s role be? Can you give me some insights from what you’ve learned over the years?

>> Brad Thomas: Yeah, sure. And I, and I can say that I’ve worked with and seen a huge range of performance and configurations for boards. I’ve seen some that are just absolutely fantastic in terms of understanding their role, being advisors, running the governance, part of their work, great partnerships with management. And then I’ve seen some where, you know, you have an ego that’s driving everything. And, you know, you can, you can often see these results. And, you know, one I recently worked with a little bit, their stock’s been flat for five years. And, you know, look, there’s a lot of responsibility there to be shared for what’s going on, the choice of what CEO, the, you know, all that stuff. So I think, you know, from a board standpoint, there’s, there’s so many observations. I can tell you what people on board say they’re frustrated with. They get frustrated with the wrong. The inefficient use of time is one thing. A lot of boards have these long drawn out presentations from management that just go on and on. Their pre read is 40 pages. And some of the great ones, for instance, some of the practices that the good ones use, and this was one that I saw at Guardian, is any presentation had a cover page on it and it would say this is what the facts are in five or six bullets. Here’s our recommendation. And this is for your decision or your information. And I’ll take questions on the 20 page backup that’s behind this. But we have the discussion about it as opposed to sitting and listening to a 30 page thing we’ve already read six times. You know, so there’s this bucket around efficient use of time, understanding their roles clearly and building these partnerships with management. I mean those partnerships are not built in the boardroom, they’re built outside of the boardroom. And so having those partnerships where both of them feel like they’re in the same foxhole, you know, a, team is driven by interdependence and common goals, right? And so if they feel like they’re in the same foxhole together and they’re working together, then they’re more transparent. Management’s a lot more transparent when the board isn’t trying to, judge them all the time, but trying to help them and advise them. So it’s a whole bunch of things that you see, with the boards. and I often see management where instead of looking at the board or a tone being set with the chairman or the chairman setting that tone as, trusted advisors, they look at them as almost adversaries. And they spend enormous amounts of time trying to review and prepare people to not say certain things or to say other things. And that’s just not productive. You know, it just, it’s not a real world thing. And so this relationship between the board and management is really huge. the communication outside the boardroom is really huge. The mix of people you have on the board in terms of the depth of their various skill sets, the financial skill set, maybe the supply chain skill set, maybe the operating or sales skill set, or depending on the nature of the business, having expertise on that organization where they can provide some counsel or even refer people to people that have that expertise is really helpful. And so, you know, you see a lot of times where some board opening, a board opening opens up, and the boards have board members, have friends and they say, well, we want to bring them on it’s not driven by a search for the best person with that particular profile. It’s, it’s say I want to bring my friend on, I’m on a board. So you see everything and everything, you know, I mean it’s just everything you see in between.

>> Craig Gould: I imagine that it changes or it’s different from board to board. But who leads that search for additional board members? I mean is it the board together throws out names or is it again working with a consultant or retained search to identify what skill sets or experiences, connections that are lacking and somebody that can fill a gap? Is it just that? Are some boards purely cronyism and others really strategic?

>> Brad Thomas: you can see everything because I work with family boards, private boards, I work with public boards, a lot of range, the really high quality boards, they do a really good search, they engage a, you know, retained search firm, they have a really good specification they’ve developed in terms of skill sets and a comparison on what they need on the board. And so you see a lot of, a lot of boards do that, you know, and a lot of well run companies do that. And I think that’s mostly prevalent. But you do see circumstances like you mentioned, family boards are less predictable and less experienced with board governance than the public boards are. so you just see just about everything imaginable. But I think a huge part of it is who you have as the board chair. Because if you have a really good board chair, they’re able to set up the committees, right? They’re able to make sure the charter makes sense, that the committee heads are really clear about their calendar and their, the output that’s expected, respected, the work involved and ah, they’re really good at helping the board build the relationships with the management team. So that board chair job is really, really crucial. Of course, the CEO job is of course as well.

>> Craig Gould: Brad, I really appreciate your time today. If folks wanted to follow you, if they wanted to work with you because they can sense the depth of knowledge that you have on these different topics, where’s a good place for people to find you out there?

>> Brad Thomas: I’ve made a little bit of a change here in the past six months and I looked, I’ve been doing both board consulting work, a little bit of search work for people I’ve worked with before, but not much, but a lot of executive coaching. And so I’ve joined what I think is the finest executive coaching firm. I think about 80% of the people in that are former CEOs and that’s XCO, Exeo, they have a great process, they have a great team, they have a lot of investment in improving what they do every day. I really enjoyed being part of it. and so yeah, you can find me through exco. I would steer them to exco. I’ve sort of narrowed the work I do now as I’m getting a little bit older. So I take, you know, four or five people at a time now and kind of stay in that space right now working with xco. And I really enjoy, you know, when you’re out on your own for a long time it’s great. But when you have a whole bunch of colleagues who have already run businesses who are very distinguished and have great track records, it’s really fun to hear their point of view. And you build off each other and I think Xcode does a better job of that than in many, many firms. It’s their core business and they’re really good at it.

Is there a particular EXCO methodology for coaching executives

>> Craig Gould: Is there a particular EXCO methodology? Because when I’ve watched executive coaching videos before, it’s almost like that coach is filling the role of almost a therapist. I mean the questions are very open ended and kind of let the executive percolate to the top. What is the biggest need or struggle and then start drilling down from there. Do you find that the case where you feel sort of like a, an executive therapist?

>> Brad Thomas: I don’t mostly, you know, in many, many cases there’s a lot of different circumstances as to why you’re being asked to coach. There’s a lot of circumstances where they’re trying to prepare a really great executive for the next really big role that’s a little different than they’re trying to fix, a really significant issue that’s going to block someone’s career if they aren’t able to address it. And so, and there’s everything in between and so it’s very circumstantial as to what you do. I think at the end of the day these executives rely on your experience and helping them figure out where they stand, what they’re trying to achieve and how to achieve it. In some cases it’s being able to say, hey, look, here’s materials that we should go over and you should understand or here’s an understanding of how you’re perceived by others and what you might want to change, how you perceive yourself versus how others perceive you. and so it’s not always about fixing something that’s wrong. It’s very often about proactively saying, what’s my next stage and what are the skills and perspectives I need that I never had before.

Some companies have a prior CEO serve as an executive chairman

>> Craig Gould: What is your experience with companies having a prior CEO serve as an executive chairman? And you know, do you find that that’s a beneficial role towards smooth transitions and, you know, success?

>> Brad Thomas: Obviously separating the role of CEO from chairman, you know, is the preferred method for a lot of really good reasons. it’s, it can be really helpful to have someone who already was, was a CEO and has the history and legacy and for a while they move and stay on the board, because they are level of continuity and insight and perspective and they provide context that you don’t have from any. Because no one’s really been in that operating environment to the level they have. But you know, there’s, there’s boundaries there too, because you can’t interfere with the CEO that you got in place. They’ve got their own show, their own lens to see things. And so with the right personalities, they can be a really big help, you know, if they stay on the board. Making sure you have a separate chair and CEO though, I think is a pretty, pretty standard thing these days. People understand it well.

>> Craig Gould: Again, Brad, I really appreciate your time. This has been gold. I appreciate you, being willing to share, share your decades of wisdom with us. And Brad, thanks for being my guest.

>> Brad Thomas: Oh, listen, it was, it was great. You know, I would just say, look, I certainly don’t have all the answers. I have a perspective from the life I’ve lived and I love hearing everybody else’s point of view. And you know, every day is another chance to see something else and learn something else. So I really enjoyed it, Craig. It’s great to get to know you and hopefully we’ll catch up soon.