Building Effective Teams: An Executive Coach Discusses Leadership and Culture

Show Notes

Carl Lewis:

Welcome to The Connected Enterprise podcast. I’m Carl Lewis, your host from Vision33, and my guest is Matthew Sitter. Matt, welcome to the podcast. Please tell us about yourself and your background.

Matthew Sitter:

Thanks, Carl. Excited to be here. I do executive coaching. I run a global CEO network and think a lot about leadership development and how networks operate. I came by this on an interesting, meandering path. It started with my high school athletic experience. I played water polo on excellent teams—we were national champions. And I’m not a big guy. I'm 5'8. If you know about water polo, you know players are usually six-plus inches plus taller than me. It meant I had to pay attention to how I could improve the team in different ways—how I could support what everyone else has to do. That was my first experience of thinking, “How do I affect how the team operates?”

And throughout my career, I wanted to be in healthcare systems because healthcare in the United States has challenges. I thought there were ways to improve it, so after business school, I had several healthcare jobs. And the common thread was managing people. I shared none of their functional expertise. I had nurses, dieticians, software developers, medical billers—I couldn’t have micromanaged if I wanted to! It still went well. I was managing a lot by objective but helping the team to operate.

In 2012, I went to work for the McChrystal Group. It was founded by General Stanley McChrystal and many of his aides. He’d overseen joint special operations command and the war in Afghanistan. They’d been doing interesting things regarding empowering people and ensuring they could coordinate highly trained groups to do the same things, and they applied that in the private sector. I was mostly there as a business translator, but I learned a ton. I became an executive coach while I was there. I thought a lot about how changing leaders’ behavior in an organization could make a difference. We had several former defense intelligence analysts who got me interested in how networks work, network science, network analytics, and how we can affect our lives by considering the networks we're in.

Fast forward to 2021, when the pandemic had everyone talking like we are now: via Zoom. Down the street, across the world—it shrunk our world a lot but allowed us to connect to people we wouldn’t otherwise connect to.

I think that that's the best way to think about innovation: You learn a lot by integrating the ideas of people who are different from you, with diverse experiences, expertise, and perspectives. My goal is to bring people like that together to help them solve challenges and uncover new opportunities.

Carl Lewis:

Well, that's a great background. I started as a theologian and ended up in technology, with stops in a couple of other places in the middle. It's a different topic for another day, but the value of your college education in terms of where you start and where you end up—it’s like, maybe not.

Matthew Sitter:

There are a lot of twists and turns, but people don't end up in their jobs by accident. Something drove them there, and there's a reason they fit.

Carl Lewis:

I agree. Matt, I wanted to talk to you about the changing role of CEOs because of your background. As you’ve seen in your work, there have been many changes. People think the CEO role has changed dramatically, or at least the outlook for the role has changed dramatically because of the pandemic and other recent issues. Is that true?

Matthew Sitter:

Well, there are changes because of the pandemic, but thinking about the role generally, there are three things I consider critical for them to focus on—ways to conceive of themselves. One is that they're the chief dot connector within the business. They have a different altitude than everyone else. They're taking information from everywhere and helping people understand, "Here's where your place is in what we're doing," "Here's what our organization does within the marketplace," or “Here’s how you affect what we’re doing.”

Related to that, I like people to think about themselves as head of market intelligence. Again, you've got a different altitude on what you're doing, and you have this idea of, "Here's where we fit in the marketplace.”

That's not information everyone in your organization has, and it needs to be shared—internally and externally. If people outside the organization can understand how you see the marketplace overall, you become a more trusted source to them in whatever you're selling. You need to know, "Here's how the world works, and here's how we help you thrive within that."

The third one is that they must be the head of people, and that’s all-encompassing—culture too. The people you hire are your best asset, right? So, the more you get out of the people who work for you, the more they understand what they're trying to do, the more likely you are to achieve heights you wouldn’t otherwise.

You must use people the best way you can. They’re often a fount of untapped potential. How you get at that potential is important. It flows from the culture and environment you create and how you're helping them understand the information, which is the lifeblood of the network within your business.

Carl Lewis:

I asked my CEO friend the difference between his role and other managers in his organization. He said, "If we were all photographers, I'm a landscape guy. I take panoramas. The people who work for me do portrait photography. Someone takes closeups of flowers, somebody else focuses on animals, etc.—and all of them combined give me the information I need at a deeper level than the panorama I can take." I liked that.

Matthew Sitter:

That makes a ton of sense. And being that integrative thinker, they must see the whole landscape. But if they can supply that information in, but also play back to the guy who's taken a picture of the rabbit, "This is how it falls into the greater picture," they’ll take a much better picture of the rabbit next time.

Carl Lewis:

If we don't take care of the rabbit, look what will happen to the rest of it.

Matthew Sitter:

Right.

Carl Lewis:

One thing that's amazed me through my business experience is that I've had CEOs from many backgrounds. One of them was a youth minister before he became a CEO. One was an operations manager who'd been with the company for a while and excelled. One was a salesperson, and one was an accountant.

Matthew Sitter:

Right.

Carl Lewis:

So, it seems there are traditional paths, but untraditional ones too. But they must share a common skillset. What do CEOs have in common?

Matthew Sitter:

There are infinite ways to succeed. What if we all tried to lead like Elon Musk? We’d fail—he has unique experiences, expertise, and access to resources we don't have.

When you consider how you’ll lead, you must determine what’s authentic to you and what takes advantage of your strengths. You’d have to surround yourself with people who complement what you have. And how can you make sure you have the right folks around you and don’t rely solely on you as the person? If you're going to scale, you have to work through people.

There are many ways to work through people. You have to determine the style. CEOs and anyone who aspires to greater things must be students of human behavior and communication. There's so much that can go wrong with communication despite all the ways to communicate. Phone calls, email, text, Zoom, Slack, you name it. They all have advantages, and how you're using them for the proper ROI is critical. And there's this unique aspect of the leader— they're always on stage. People are paying attention. They're interpreting what they see. And absent information, people will make stuff up.

CEOs must think, “What's the message I'm trying to communicate? How am I letting people know what's important?” Meetings are absolutely the most expensive form of communication. People have to get there. You must be ready to interact. There are inputs and outputs. And you multiply that with all-hands meetings or other meetings with so many people in one place at one time. You ought to communicate things that are critical to the business and explain that you’re talking about them because they're a priority.

If there's one common thread around what a leader must pay attention to, it’s the value of their communication and how they ensure people understand the vision and the direction they’re heading.

Carl Lewis:

Elmer Sealy has been a customer long enough that he’s become a friend. He’s in my hometown. And like his name sounds, he’s a good, quaint, matter-of-fact man. If a farmer can be CEO of a book company, that's Elmer.

Elmer is 100% genuine. He leads like himself, and he’s a joy to be around because of that. His employees love him because he's so genuine in how he runs his business. A buddy used a quote—I don’t remember who said it, but it was about Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside, and that if you as a CEO were Mr. Outside, you needed your first employee to be Mr. Inside. And vice versa. Because that was like your other hand you don’t use as well. You said that. CEOs build teams.

I have four or five things I do every week. I have to get them done and keep them on track. What’s that like for a CEO?

Matthew Sitter:

It differs from person to person. There's a tendency to think structure decreases flexibility. But structure increases your flexibility. The things you do repeatedly? You're putting structure around that to give you flexibility in other parts of your schedule. We only have so much energy/cognitive force every day. How do you think about the structure around what you're trying to do? And again, when we're thinking about all these leaders being unique—there are different things they need to focus on and create structure around it. And the idea, too, is that structure is supposed to give you leverage. It's not giving you leverage. It's just bureaucracy.

What structural things will let you have a multiplier effect on what you're trying to do?

Carl Lewis:

I used to fight scheduling things because I felt like my calendar would fill up. It finally dawned on me that if I was smart about it, I could structure and schedule my free time too. So, I started with the big, important things, then other stuff. Then, it was easier to say no to other things.

Matthew Sitter:

I worked with the CFO of a big tech company who said, "I'm tired of playing defense with my calendar." Because anyone could lob something in, and he had to accept or not accept. He wanted to start playing offense. I asked, “What do you want to accomplish? How can you take control of those things first in your calendar? How can you limit being a receptacle for what other people are trying to accomplish?”

Carl Lewis:

Right. I think anybody who's been an employee at more than one place—if you're fortunate enough to be at the same place, you must like it. I've been in this industry for almost 20 years and only two companies. One led to the other, so that was fun. I've had CEOs I liked. They were fun to be around, and they spent time with their staff. In the changing world you talked about, it's difficult to get everybody in an all-hands meeting. A lot of CEOs in the past did it casually. When I come to work in the morning, and I walk in the door, I walk through the plant and say hello and talk to everybody, and I try to learn everybody's names.

I had one CEO who knew at least a thousand employees’ names and said hello to them personally. It was a gift he maximized to the largest extent you could ever imagine. But that's difficult when people work remotely. A friend said, "We've grown through the pandemic. I used to know everybody in the company; I would meet them when we hired them because it was all centralized. Now it's decentralized." And he says, "I don't even know we hired 10 new people last month. They just go. They just make stuff happen." They had to change their HR policy so everyone in the company started getting announcements about new hires and such.

How important is it for a CEO to be aware and in touch with their entire staff?

Matthew Sitter:

Well, that friend you just mentioned—the fact that he didn’t know people were getting hired means they're scaling. He's not being a speed bump for everyone else, which is good. Something we saw during the pandemic was that transactional communication went up overall. When I say transactional communication, it's like ordering a cup of coffee at Starbucks. I order, give them money, and expect to get a coffee. I can easily determine the success of that transaction. Did I get it fast? Did I get what I wanted?

What we saw with the pandemic was that when working from home, you would say, "Hey, I need something." That's why I'm contacting you. Or they need something, and that's why they're contacting you. We could tell if that communication succeeded. And in individual circumstances, transactional communication is more efficient. But if you take the totality of those communications over time, you're wearing down the context someone has and their ability to understand what's going on. When I order coffee at Starbucks, they don't care if I’m thirsty and water would have been a better choice, right? They just care about what I ordered. So transactional communication removes context and the ability for people to take the initiative. I mentioned earlier that CEOs are chief dot connectors.

They must consistently think about the dots they're connecting for others and how to put them in the right spot to do what they need to. That’s tremendous value. You can't create more time. If they say, "I want to make sure I’m spending time with individuals in the company," that’s a substantive cost. It means they're placing a lot of value on the people they're working with. Then we need people to understand, "I’m spending time with you because it’s important so you can understand where we're going."

Carl Lewis:

I'm a big advocate of having a yearly—at least—all-hands meeting where the CEO communicates directly to the staff about the company’s general direction or what’s happening in the industry, to the economy, etc. Speaking of economy …

Matthew Sitter:

I'm a fan of connecting overall. One interesting thing ... Oh, sorry to interrupt.

Carl Lewis:

No, go ahead.

Matthew Sitter:

When I worked at McChrystal Group, we talked about something they did with Joint Special Operations Command. They created the ‘operations and intelligence meeting.’ It was 9,000 people on a video teleconference call for 90 minutes every day. That’s a massive expense, right? They did it because so much changed in their daily operating movements, and many people had to know about it. But I would never recommend that to any company. They can think about some periodicity around it, but it was also highly choreographed. And when General McChrystal was speaking to someone, they extended his value even further. Because when you think about how you and I are interacting, you can get close to me, closer than you could get to a star.

And if you're getting this close, you get the feeling you're with them. He would say the person's name he was talking to, like, "Hey, Carl, great to meet you." He'd been briefed ahead of time. He knew he had to say hi to Carl. Then Carl's like, "I had this interaction," and all of Carl's friends are like, "Oh, he got to talk to Matt." This can extend the capability of the leader where they feel like there's a halo effect on who has connected with you. It's not just with a CEO in an all-hands environment. Him talking to everyone, yes, is important. But the interactions with individuals that everyone else can see can extend the individual’s capabilities. It can make them seem more accessible.

Carl Lewis:

That's a good point. People aren't just listening to what you say. They're watching what you do. If you’re visually warm and cordial to this staff person, that extends to other staff people because they make a judgment and see value in the style. That's a good note.

So, the world continues to change, and the economy continues to give people fits, or maybe not. Who knows? What are CEOs doing to keep themselves informed and track what's happening globally?

Matthew Sitter:

One more note on change in general. Without change, without constrained resources, there's no innovation. I like to say change is where opportunity happens, and you must figure out how to take advantage of that change. When we think about the most innovative ideas, they typically come from people who are thought integrators. They have networks of people where they're connected to someone who’s unconnected to someone else in their network. They have a diversity of thoughts coming at them. They get these ideas from people with specific focuses/areas of expertise and then bring them together. You need a diverse network to pull on for “How am I solving the different problems out there?"

Intellectual curiosity is generally valuable. How do I understand the world and what's going on? Where can I get my information from? Am I reading a variety of sources and not just one trade magazine? Because you learn from folks in other industries. I worked with one CEO who ran a brewery and another who ran a SaaS company. The SaaS guy talked about customer acquisition cost as the most important metric he was using. The brewery person had never thought about customer acquisition costs as a metric they should use, but they changed how they thought about their marketing strategy because of being connected to someone who they otherwise wouldn’t have been connected to.

Carl Lewis:

It's interesting that a brewery would think like that, but I can see where it would work. If you could pick one staff person a CEO ought to be absolutely in step with, who would that be?

Matthew Sitter:

It depends on the size and type of the organization and the CEO’s capabilities. There are several positions I find interesting because they’re so broadly defined. That's the COO and chief of staff. They could do many things, but there's not much you could say they shouldn't be doing. And so how that complements what the CEO is doing. Then there are other strictly functional positions. The CFO, you understand their job. You understand a CHRO is head of sales. When you're thinking about your leadership team, the goal is that they should ultimately feel accountable, not just to you as the leader but to one another.

If they feel accountable to one another, they’re more likely to supply information to one another and help folks look around the corner versus some rivalries that typically come up within organizations, like between sales and finance. The sales guys just try to sell whatever they can. They don't care about margin. The finance guys always say no. And they both think they're protecting the organization. How do you help them feel accountable to one another?

Carl Lewis:

Right. I think sometimes our staff learns their part of the business well without a great appreciation for the other pieces and/or their stresses.

Matthew Sitter:

Yes.

Carl Lewis:

They need to learn about each other. I worked for one guy who insisted we spend time together, doing each other's work to gain an appreciation for that. That was where I learned accounting.

Matthew Sitter:

But you probably weren’t the best accountant there ever was from it.

Carl Lewis:

Oh no.

Matthew Sitter:

But you probably improved at your job because you could understand what they needed from you, what you could give them, and what they could give you.

Carl Lewis:

I was head of sales selling ERP software, which is all about accounting. And my focus was on the operational side. But knowing more about accounting helped when I met with the CFO of a prospect, right? Learning those other disciplines was helpful, and I think it helped with that accountability factor you mentioned.

One last question, Matt. When CFOs look into the future, what do they see? What stuff keeps them up at night?

Matthew Sitter:

Many things. Some things have created greater uncertainty, like inflation in the global economy. How much are things going to cost? And we saw a substantial disruption in the supply chain. How can I gain some control of what we're doing? They must constantly look out. They’re always going to be worried about something.

And what's the critical thing that's going to help them? Some tools we’re afraid of but shouldn’t be. We have to learn how to use them, and experience is the only way. One is ChatGPT.

It's incredible. You can produce so much stuff. To figure out what you can do with it, you need experience with it. Have it write a haiku or create something that will help you with work. You need to demystify it and hear how other people are using it.

CEOs also need to think about their talent portfolio. Usually, we’ve thought of people as being full-time employees or contractors, but now we have a much broader portfolio to consider: full-time, part-time, contractors, and gig workers—and all these people may be generationally different.

Younger folks may be more attracted to gig work. What are these employees that could be in your portfolio? What are they well suited for? How do you optimize that? The only way is to get experience and understand how you’d work with these folks. So even if you don't understand exactly how you would use a gig worker, experiment with it so you can say, "I understand how this can work and how we can put them to use in the future."

Carl Lewis: I can combine those two ideas for you. I've done this with interns before, but it might be a better opportunity to do it with a gig worker, something like ChatGPT. You want to know how it could help our business? Well, hire an intern to help you figure it out, right?

Matthew Sitter:

Right.

Carl Lewis:

They'll probably be better at technology than an older person and will probably be excited about it. Or hire a gig worker who's very technical and tell them, “For the next six weeks, I want you to investigate and find ways our business can use ChatGPT."

And they can be anywhere in the world and do that for you. It doesn’t matter.

Matthew Sitter:

For sure.

Carl Lewis:

Matt, this has been interesting. It must be fun to work with these CEOs in a network fashion and have these conversations all the time.

Matthew Sitter:

It's intellectually stimulating. I hear some of the most interesting things they're thinking about and the best solutions they come up with.

Carl Lewis:

I sit on a couple of committees. Everybody's a business owner in this one group I belong to—except me. I'm sort of a trusted employee who joins them, and it's fascinating to listen to how they approach things. And all of them with tremendous legitimacy. There are no bad ideas in the room.

Thank you, Matt. It’s been a pleasure and good information for my audience

Matthew Sitter:

I really enjoyed it, Carl.

Carl Lewis:

And to everyone else, please tune in for the next episode of The Connected Enterprise. Until then, stay connected.