Peter Sims is a best-selling coauthor, strategic adviser and keynote speaker specializing in leadership and innovation. He is the coauthor (with Bill George) of True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, the BusinessWeek and Wall Street Journal best-selling book that New York Times called “one of the most important books on leadership to come along in years.”

Peter was kind enough to participate in our “In the Spotlight” interview series recently and he shared some enlightening insights on the True North book, authentic leadership, and his current work on the subject of leading innovation.

TSG: How did you and Bill George connect for True North?

Peter Sims: I met Bill after he gave a great speech at Stanford Business School. We got to know each other much better in the months that followed because he was starting a course on leadership at Harvard Business School that was very similar to a course I was establishing at Stanford with a group of classmates called “Leadership Perspectives.” Although we were not successful in luring Bill to teach at Stanford, he and I would speak once a week or so to trade ideas, insights, or best practices and, before long, we were collaborating on True North.

TSG: What was the experience of creating True North?

Peter Sims: I loved it - I have never learned so much, so quickly. I was initially drawn to the book in part because we could pick up where Jim Collins left off in Good to Great - how do individuals go from good to great leaders, or “authentic leaders”? Bill describes authentic leaders as those who stick to their values and lead with purpose to empower others, similar to Collins’ Level 5 leaders. Our research team conducted 125 one-on-one, in-person interviews, out of which I did about 50, including with Howard Schultz of Starbucks, long-time presidential advisor David Gergen, Charles Schwab, eBay CEO John Donahoe, and Donna Dubinsky. The interviewees did not know what they were going to be asked in advance, but we learned that, without exception, they believed they were more effective as leaders when they were authentic.

Much of the critical acclaim for True North has come from the fact that the book is based on revealing and oftentimes eye-opening research about the influences, experiences, and concrete development tactics that shape leaders. I use those lessons and insights everyday - the hardest part was determining the most important and relevant ones for the book.

TSG: Is there a particular story that you heard from an executive that you find yourself still thinking about today?

Peter Sims: John Donahoe, a great leader, summarized what we learned best, “It’s a process, not a destination.” He described how he grew through each stage of his career. Starting in his first job, he felt he had the world at his finger-tips - he didn’t know what he didn’t know. Soon, he had to begin to learn how to balance values tradeoffs between his personal and professional life and even signed a pledge to his wife on the back of a bank receipt, “I will not lead the life of a typical management consultant.” Then, in his 30s, mentors helped John understand how to overcome a fear of failure. He also experienced difficult setbacks or “crucibles” that helped him to develop perspective and self-awareness - to be more comfortable in his own skin. Lastly, he has refined his own effective leadership style, in which he has become a great leader and developer of people (which I know from speaking with those who work for him). He does all this while being the same person at home as he is at work, something that is not easy for anyone to achieve, and he shared a number of helpful tactics about how he does it. Getting there is indeed a process and everyone is at a different stage of their growth.

TSG: What was your role in co-authoring the book?

Peter Sims: Throughout the course of developing the book, I led the research, including managing our research team and making sense from the 3,000 pages of transcripts. Bill brought over 30 years of management and leadership expertise and we did a lot of concept-building and writing together. Then, Bill did the final edit before it went to press. What fueled me throughout was the desire to share the key lessons we learned as clearly and concisely as possible with our readers.

TSG: Your next chapter focuses around leading innovation. How has that evolved?

Peter Sims: Over the past few years, I developed a closely related interest: how do individuals and organizations better innovate? Like before, I started reading the relevant research and had hundreds of discussions with CEOs, managers, experts, and organizations like IDEO that specialize in innovation. Innovation has become almost a generic term, but the emerging field of design thinking provides some tested and insightful innovation processes and principles - ranging from customer need-finding techniques to rapid, low-cost approaches to experimentation - that will soon be required reading for every MBA, CEO, and corporate or nonprofit manager. A.G. Lafley, CEO of Proctor & Gamble, is one example of someone who leads innovation in this way, and with enormous success. The Stanford University Institute of Design (the d.school), is a remarkable place for innovation thinking, doing, companies, and experts.

TSG: The topic of innovation is not new, but what do you think are the keys to successful innovation today?

Peter Sims: There are many best practices designed to help make incremental innovations. However, the main question that CEOs ask me about is how to achieve breakthrough innovations, especially since the failure to do so will lead to irrelevance. Entrepreneurs are usually the best examples of executing this type of innovation because they don’t overanalyze - they act as quickly and inexpensively as possible to identify unique market opportunities. It’s a mindset. Similarly, Beethoven used countless experiments to gradually differentiate his music from Mozart’s established brand of classical music. Beethoven learned from small failures and built upon his successes such that he eventually built the movement toward a new era of classical music. Amazon executives have used a similar mindset to continuously use experiments to identify ground-breaking innovations such as the Kindle, just as Toyota has done with the Prius. That innovative mindset comes naturally for many entrepreneurs and pioneering leaders, but it doesn’t fit easily within traditional management or strategic thinking. Combining the rigor of strategic thinking with the dynamism of an innovative mindset is the future of leading innovation - a handful of insights and approaches will help guide the way.

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More about Peter Sims:

While studying at Stanford Business School, Peter established “Leadership Perspectives,” which is now one of the school’s most sought-after classes. His work has been published in Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and The Huffington Post and he has spoken at and advised organizations such as Eli Lilly, Molson Coors, Current TV, American Data Network, and Gallup. Previously, he was part of establishing and building the European Office of Summit Partners, a leading global investment company, where he worked with hundreds of the world’s most innovative companies and served as part of the Deloitte Touche Tomatsu Global Strategy Team.

To consider Peter as a speaker for your organization, contact The Speakers Group speakers bureau or visit Peter’s speaker profile page on The Speakers Group’s web site at http://www.thespeakersgroup.com/Peter_Sims.

Posted under In the Spotlight, Innovation Speakers, Leadership Development, Organizational Excellence

Following is part two of the transcript of the “In the Spotlight” interview with Pete Luongo, author of 10 Truths About Leadership. In his signature fashion, Pete speaks frankly about some key issues that managers and leaders must address to lead their people and their organizations to higher levels of success. Picking up where we left off in part one of the interview:

TSG: Talk about the difference between “rules” and “standards of excellence.”

Pete Luongo: “Rules are for the weak and uncompromised standards of excellence are for the strong.” That’s Truth #5 and I can’t imagine it being anything more straightforward than that simple truth. As Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman tell us in First Break All the Rules, “creating a culture of compliance strangles an organization of its flexibility, responsiveness, and most importantly, its good will.” I believe it goes even deeper than that. Anything that gets in the way of our imagination, ingenuity, and creativity is non-productive. Standards of excellence are about expectations. What is it we want from our organization? It’s simple! At the Berry Company we were only interested in two things: selling lots of advertising and satisfying every customer. Anything that got in the way of those two objectives was not valued. As I so often said, “the solidarity of intent fills the team with the strength of knowing its purpose.” All 2800 employees knew that every day they woke up their focus and responsibility was around accomplishing those two objectives. It’s about embracing simplicity and making certain everyone understands their role in meeting and exceeding these expectations.

TSG: What qualities have you found to be effective indicators of greatness – or potential for greatness – in evaluating prospective employees?

Pete Luongo: It’s not about greatness. It’s about finding the right match. Truth #1 says, “Past Performance Predicts Future Behavior” and that is the answer. What are those qualities, those behaviors that are required to perform a certain task? Once they are determined, it’s simply about finding those people who bring those qualities to the relationship. To be very specific, when we were rebuilding our sales force we knew that our best salespeople were possessed those attributes of competiveness, commitment, character, capacity to learn, and passion. Our challenge was that through the selection process, we only brought those people into the business that possessed those same types of behaviors. Assuming they found their sweet spot we know they had a high probability of being successful. It really is that simple! Knowing that you can’t change people is a precursor to effective selection.

TSG: What do you think leaders are doing better today – as a whole – than they were doing 10 or 20 years ago?

Pete Luongo: I’m almost embarrassed to say this, but I’m not sure we are better today than we were 20 years ago! I’m convinced we’re smarter and certainly more technologically advanced, but there is so much greed, so much winning at all cost that it’s taken its toll on every aspect of society from youth sports to our Fortune top 50 companies. Organizations and individuals are struggling with the question of how do we not compromise our core values as we chase the endgame, both individually and collectively, and personally and professionally. We all know the right things to do but l question the courage of leadership today to do it the right way!

TSG: What do you believe is the greatest challenge that leaders today must overcome in order to achieve long-term success in their organizations?

Pete Luongo: The answer is incredibly complex but it has to start with a fundamental belief that our individual legacy as both leaders and human beings will be willingness to make a difference in other people’s lives. It’s about unconditional love! It’s about helping our employees find the courage within themselves to lead others and dismissing the belief that leadership is the unwanted burden of a privileged few – but rather it’s our most basic birthright. The deeper we drive leadership in an organization and the more we can distribute ownership throughout, the greater chance we have of being successful both individually and collectively.

TSG: You’ve got this book out there now. What else are you doing to spread the message?

Pete Luongo: It’s like any business – it’s about distribution! It’s about getting in front of more audiences. It’s about building a learning series. I’m convinced that while there are a lot of theories, models, etc. out there, not many thought leaders have been at the edge of the cliff and have implemented a model that not only has universal application, but also works! It’s a story that needs to be told and I’m convinced that we will get the exposure necessary to share The Leadership Pledge.

TSG: One last question: When you stand in front of a group of leaders as a keynote speaker, obviously you can’t work a miracle in 60 minutes. What is the take-home value you’re trying to deliver in that setting?

Pete Luongo: My message is this: As leaders and employees we’ve all got to accept accountability and responsibility for our actions. Only when we understand and accept our roles and responsibilities in each relationship can we be successful. The Leadership Pledge defines those responsibilities, but it must be up to each of us as individuals to recognize that only when we’ve learned to accept ourselves can we learn to accept others and in the context of differences and similarities, find better ways of coping as a behavior organization.

TSG: That’s a good message! Thanks, Pete, for taking the time to participate in this interview.

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For more information about Pete Luongo:

Peter A. Luongo retired as President and CEO of The Berry Company in August 2003. His career at The Berry Company spanned more than 33 years. During his last nine years with the company, Peter was instrumental in guiding Berry through a period of record sales growth, numerous contract acquisitions and the perpetuation of the nearly 100-year-old company as an industry leader and “a great place to work.” Since retirement, Peter has dedicated himself to sharing this unique approach with audiences all over the world. His powerful message transcends business transformation, emerging technology, product innovation, corporate vision statements and strategic imperatives.

Posted under In the Spotlight, Leadership Development, Organizational Excellence

A couple of months ago, I highlighted Pete Luongo’s book, 10 Truths About Leadership, on this blog. Full of simple, practical lessons, I recommend the book for anyone in a leadership or management position. I recently had the opportunity to ask Pete some questions about his background and the 10 Truths for our “In the Spotlight” interview series. Following is part one of the interview transcript:

TSG: You retired from The Berry Company in 2003. Did you have in mind that you would write a book when you stepped down?

Pete Luongo: It was probably the last thing that I thought I would ever do. Not even on the radar screen. When l retired I had a full plate with accepting a teaching position at the University of Dayton, teaching strategy in our MBA program along with serving as United Way Campaign chairman and accepting two positions on boards. And speaking was about seventh on my list of priorities. But as the requests for me to share The Leadership Pledge with organizations increased, l kept hearing that I needed to write a book so that we could get the message to a much broader audience. A good friend, Marty Grunder, who had written a book, kept insisting that I do the same and he introduced me to his publisher and I guess the rest is history. Richard Hunt came to hear me speak and encouraged me to write a book and I spent the next 10 months writing and we published September of 2007. As I look back on the experience it was one of the most meaningful things that I ever accomplished. Not only has the reception been overwhelming but more important it allowed me reflect in a much deeper way about the influences in my life including growing up without a father, my faith, the many setbacks in my professional life and most importantly those special people who took time to care about me. It is a story that I believe needs to be told – especially in a time when greed and self-indulgency have put a strangle hold on not only our business climate but our society.

TSG: You admit that the lessons in your book – these 10 truths about leadership – are relatively simple. Yet there’s no question that collectively, we as leaders desperately need to hear the message. Why is it that something so basic is so often overlooked?

Pete Luongo: The focus on winning is the short answer, and it gets in the way and clouds our judgment as leaders, coaches, teachers, peers, employees, volunteers, parents, and friends. We all tend to over-manage relationships when outcomes are in doubt and absent a code of conduct we seek short-term solutions which are not sustainable and impact long-term relationships with customers, employees and investors. We learned that The Leadership Pledge was that code of conduct – that set of mores – that provided us with the discipline to define roles and responsibilities and gave us a very simple approach, not easy, to execution. In working with so many different organizations including college athletic programs I can honestly tell you that there is no lacking of strategic plans, vision and mission statements, etc. The problem is execution! And when you do not have a track to run on, we become so vulnerable to short-term solutions and eventually the train wrecks that we are seeing today.

The solution was the five steps that make up The Leadership Pledge: people, support, expectations, feedback, and accountability. lt became quite clear that recruiting folks that had a high probability of being successful, giving them the tools to do their job, making certain there was a clear understanding of expectations, and providing honest and meaningful feedback defined the roles and responsibilities of all managers at Berry from the president to the first level manager. It was then and only then we could ask our people to accept accountability and responsibility for their performance. It’s simple, it’s just not easy.

TSG: One thing I love about the book is your vulnerability and your admission of mistakes – you didn’t just come off the starting line as a brilliant, perfect leader. What was the real “ah-ha” moment that led you to shift your focus and practice the kind of leadership you write about here?

Pete Luongo: I’m convinced that all of us have to go through that one epiphany in life that brings a new level of understanding to what we already know and helps us rebalance our priorities. Mine was the moment I realized that the only time we realize our dreams is when we help other people realize theirs. l had been on a very fast track in my career and had really never faced or confronted failure. My passion for winning – success, if you will – became such an obsession that it almost destroyed me and everyone else around me! And sadly in many instances it was the people that l cared about the most. It was then that l began the journey looking for a better way. If you’ve read the Celestine Prophecy I’m sure you’ll agree that the most compelling message is that there are no coincidences in life. I’m convinced that people come in and our lives and whether or not we pay attention has huge implications on our lives. It was during this difficult period that l was exposed to Vince Flowers and Charley Hughes who shared with me the behavior-driven philosophy which is at the core of our model. It was Vince and Charley that convinced me that l had to learn to accept myself before I could ever accept others. That was the “ah-ha” moment, and no longer being held hostage by the need to please others allowed me to free up my instincts and devote myself to making a difference in other people’s lives.

TSG: You achieved some tremendous success at The Berry Company. What are you most proud of?

Pete Luongo: That’s a tough one to answer. We faced some very difficult times when the company’s survival was at risk. Being part of that turnaround as executive vice president/COO and president/ CEO has to rank at the very top in terms of accomplishments. Those can be measured in terms of contract acquisition and capturing 95% of the business that changed hands in that 9 year period. Growing the independent line of business from 75 million to 450 million while enjoying employee satisfaction levels that ranked us at the very top of all corporate America – 98% of 2800 employees said they were proud to work for the company – and achieving net income objectives each of those years were measurable success stories. But, what I’m most proud of is perpetuating a legacy of a company that enjoyed success in whatever metrics you choose to measure while creating an environment where employees felt valued, respected, and part of something special.

TSG: One of the light bulb moments for me, when reading the book, was when you wrote that motivation is a personal responsibility. Traditional thinking is that a good leader has to motivate his or her people. You came to a different conclusion. Talk about that.

Pete Luongo: It’s one the great debates today in leadership and coaching circles and I’ll have no part of it. Personal motivation has to come from within. Accept my definition that your level of motivation is in direct proportion to the pleasure you receive from whatever you do. It really goes back to the hiring process and whether or not we’ve put ourselves in the best position to maximize our god-given talent. For each of us, finding our sweet spot or our strength zone as my friend John Maxwell describes has everything to do with our ability to be motivated. It’s about finding our purpose in life and approaching it with passion. Motivation simply provides the energy. As l so often tell the college coaches that I work with “you can make them more than they are but you can’t make them something they are not.” We can provide the environment, the stimulus but motivation has to come from within. It’s the inspiration that we as leaders are accountable for and that is simply caring about our people. We all have deep within us the need to be cared for and loved. And when we become more human as leaders and express our love and appreciation for individuals we become the leader that people respect, admire, and respond to. It’s a difficult step for most of us because we are afraid it exposes our vulnerability. I would argue that it exposes our uniqueness as both leaders and human beings. Any time we influenced anyone in any aspect of our lives l can assure you we did it with our heart, not with our head.

TSG: #1 on your Leadership Pledge is “Recruit, Hire and Retain.” Recruiting is practically a science in itself, it seems. What is the key to success in that arena?

Pete Luongo: Making it the HIGHEST priority in your organization. It has been a real shock to me since I’ve retired and have had the privilege of working with so many different organizations to see the lack of attention paid to the hiring process in both time and resources by senior leadership. It is NOT an HR function. It belongs to everyone starting at the top. And while there are there is no question there is a “science” to it and there are plenty of consultants our there teaching those techniques it all becomes meaningless unless it starts at the top. When it’s important to the boss it becomes important to everyone else in the organization.

TSG: A hot topic these days is employee engagement, and you write about that. What advice do you have for a leader – whether it’s a department manager or a corporate CEO – seeking to create an environment that fosters employee engagement?

Pete Luongo: l believe it is vastly underestimated and overlooked. While much has been written about employee engagement, how many organizations truly practice it? Far too many decisions continue to be made in corner offices and boardrooms without the advice, counsel, and input from the people that count the most – those employees that are touching the customer every day. We introduced the Upside-Down Pyramid back in the early 80’s when we began our journey to help our employees understand Truth #3: “Effective Leaders Manage Support Systems, Effective Employees Manage Themselves.” It begs the question, how can I ask to do your job unless I give you the tools to do it? As leaders it tests our listening skills as well as our willingness to engage our employees in finding the answers.

To be continued…

Come back for part two of the interview transcript on Thursday, August 28, where Pete answers questions about confronting poor performance, standards of excellence, hiring the right employees, and his perspective on what leaders are doing better today than yesterday, and the greatest challenges leaders must overcome to achieve greater success in the future.

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Peter A. Luongo retired as President and CEO of The Berry Company in August 2003. His career at The Berry Company spanned more than 33 years. During his last nine years with the company, Peter was instrumental in guiding Berry through a period of record sales growth, numerous contract acquisitions and the perpetuation of the nearly 100-year-old company as an industry leader and “a great place to work.” Since retirement, Peter has dedicated himself to sharing this unique approach with audiences all over the world. His powerful message transcends business transformation, emerging technology, product innovation, corporate vision statements and strategic imperatives.

Posted under In the Spotlight, Leadership Development, Organizational Excellence