Kris Safarova  01:14

Welcome to the Strategy Skills podcast. I’m your host, Kris Safarova, and this show is brought to you by our firm, firmsconsulting.com – the team behind StrategyTraining.com. If you want to become a stronger strategist, a more effective leader, we have built StrategyTraining.com to be your go-to platform, and we offer advanced training used by clients at major companies and consulting firms. And to get started, you can get free resources. Number one is Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies. You can download it at firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. You can also get McKinsey and BCG-winning resume example. You can get it at firmsconsulting.com/resumePDF. And lastly, you can get Nine Leaders in Action, which is a book we co-authored with some of our amazing listeners of this podcast. And you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/gift. And today we have with us a very special guest, and I think you guys will really enjoy this conversation, Robert Siegel, who is a Lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He’s also a venture capitalist and has been an operator in both large and small companies. Robert, such a pleasure to have you with us.

Robert Siegel  02:30

Thank you, Kris, it’s a joy to be here, and thanks for making the time.

Kris Safarova  02:34

Oh, I’m so excited to have this discussion. So you had such an incredible career so far. You have been an operator, investor, board member, teacher. Could you give us a brief overview of your journey so far and the key turning points along the way?

Robert Siegel  02:51

You know, as I’ve been very lucky in my career, and it’s better to be lucky than good. I started my career working for a software company when I went to university as an undergrad at University of California, Berkeley, and that company eventually went public. It was a software company. And then I when that company went public, I went to Stanford to do my master’s work. And when I graduated from Stanford, I went to work for Intel in the predecessor of Intel Capital, and so was actually doing strategy work when Andy Grove was the CEO and Intel was one of the most valuable companies in the world, it was an amazing experience. Then became a product manager. There left and then started my own company. My first startup, we made the world’s first digital picture frames, and that company got bought by Kodak. Worked for a company that made image sensors and image processors. That company got bought by Sony, and then I got a call from GE, and GE wanted somebody to run the video surveillance division of their GE Security business. And we had done a lot of business with GE and that startup that got bought by Sony. And so I got recruited to GE, and was there for three years, and really learned a lot about operating at scale, and then left GE and became a venture capitalist. And so I came back to Silicon Valley and did that for 17 years. My career at Stanford really kind of slowly evolved. About 23 years ago, I started doing some teaching at the Graduate School of Business, and over the last 23 years, I’ve taught 10 different courses. And actually now 20% of the people who ever graduated from the Stanford GSB, so I’ve been really lucky to have a leg in, you know, large and small operating companies investing as well as academia. And you know, the turning points along the way. They were pretty random, to be honest with you, when I went to Intel, that was based upon somebody I sat next to on an airplane flight, who was an executive at Intel, and we became friends and got to know each other. And then Andy Grove was one of my teachers at Stanford, when I ended up going to GE that was because they had tried to buy that company that. Only bought and when it didn’t work out, they recruited me away. So there was just a lot of very random things in life. And I think again, back to that comment, it’s better to be lucky than good. I was just lucky to work for some great people and in some really interesting companies. And hopefully when opportunities came by, I was able to take advantage of them.

Kris Safarova  05:19

I think luck is, of course, important in life, and I don’t think any of it is random. However, I think that in your situation, it’s not necessarily specifically luck. I think it is just the kind of person you are, because I got to know you a little bit over the last few months that were trying to schedule it and how incredible you was with all the times I had to reschedule. It’s just such a testament to the kind of person you are, and then you’re sitting next to person on the plane. Most people will never talk. They will be watching the movie, but you made friends.

Robert Siegel  05:52

You know. And I’m not always like that. I gotta tell you, I’m an introvert. I actually sometimes like I need my quiet time, but this was one of those times where I just randomly started talking to this person, and it opened the next five doors in my career. I often think that that serendipity often plays an opportunity in our in our lives. You know, one of my mentors used to say that strategy is the ability to take advantage of luck when luck comes by you. So there are things in the universe that we don’t control, but good strategists have the ability to say, Ah, there’s something going on here. I need to pay attention.

Kris Safarova  06:28

Exactly. We have to be prepared to take advantage of those opportunities when they come up. This is very, very smart, important insight for people to ingrain within themselves. And I think that if you write another book, one topic to consider is your specific approach to life that have been driving your luck.

Robert Siegel  06:47

You know, it’s I often will say to my current students that there’s no, you know, hard work doesn’t equal success, but there’s no success without hard work. You know that old adage that, you know, the harder I work, the luckier I get I think it’s also about being open to new opportunities when they come up. And sometimes we’re chasing things and we’re determined to kind of go after something. We have a vision we want to go after. And sometimes it’s the ability to step back and say, maybe there’s something new here that I need to pay attention to, and maybe I need to adjust my course. The hard part is being humble enough to know which one of those moments are we in? Do we need to keep driving forward, or when’s the time we need to stop and say, Wait a minute, maybe there’s a better path.

Kris Safarova  07:30

Maybe I’m knocking in the wrong door, right? There’s a door open right there, and I’m just like, but there’s actually a wall behind it, and even if I open it…

Robert Siegel  07:40

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Kris Safarova  07:43

So, such an incredible career. So much to unpack. Looking back which early, or even not early, any career experience you feel really shaped your leadership philosophy the most, or maybe a few experiences?

Robert Siegel  07:56

You know, I’ve been so lucky that I worked for so many great people. You know, the first CEO I worked for was a gentleman named Brian Dougherty who really showed me that what people could accomplish if you empower them to do great things. So the first software company I worked for, we were kids coming out of college, and we were taking on Microsoft. And Brian kind of believed that we could do and accomplish things that maybe somebody who people who were more senior or more experienced could do. And so you really kind of had this belief in people that if you gave them a direction and pointed them towards a particular thing and let them figure it out, that they would actually figure out how to do it. And so that, I kind of love that it really kind of developed a sense of trust between leadership and the entire employee base and also tremendous loyalty that you could care deeply for the people you work for. That doesn’t mean we always got along. That doesn’t mean we did everything right, but the kind of the the emotions that came along with it would help us get through the hard times when I went to work for Intel. You know, I was working for Intel when it was probably the best run company in the world, and if not the best run company in the world, you know, in the top five. And so I got to see greatness up close, working for Andy Grove and the leadership of Intel and knowing what it meant to execute and to deliver and to keep your word. And then, you know, when I went to my first startup, how do you build a team and get it up to 75 to 75 people and try to have them be motivated and try to kind of, like, do something special at GE I learned how to operate at scale, like how to run a company that, at the time was several hundreds of millions of dollars. My division today would be, you know, the equivalent of about a billion dollars. And how do you make sure that you take care of your channel and your product development and build a great team that can operate at scale, I think. And finally, if I think about the people I work with at Stanford, you know all the mentors who taught me how to teach, what does it mean to kind of socratically try to seek to understand truth, try to help your students? Be the best versions of themselves, so that they’re learning, not that we tell them what to think, but we teach them how to think. And so over my career, a lot of it was, I think I just worked for great people, and then at a place like Stanford, like, you know, I get all these great leaders who come to my classes and help us teach the students. And that allows me to write books, and, do, you know, right cases. And so I think if we have that mindset, that we can kind of learn at all times, that also helps us stay fresh and not get stale.

Kris Safarova  10:29

And I think translation for everyone listening be the kind of person that great leaders will want to keep really close.

Robert Siegel  10:37

Yeah, like, we know who they are when they walk in the room, like, you know, it’s like, you know, when a great leader comes in and we all stand up a little bit straighter, like we know who they are. And the trick for what I’ve tried to do is to figure out, what are the attributes of these leaders, and how can we say, okay, what can I learn from them? Not that we want to be like them? It’s like, I’m not going to wear black turtlenecks just because Steve Jobs did. But if you look at kind of a composite of a variety of leaders. You know, what are the kind of the skills and attributes and capabilities that we can learn from them, and that we can kind of take a small part of it and bring it in ourselves?

Kris Safarova  11:09

What do you think made you the kind of person that very senior, important leaders within each organization you worked for wanted to keep within their close circle?

Robert Siegel  11:21

Well, slightly facetiously, I actually don’t think it’s anything about me. I think it’s that I’ve played on great teams, and I get the benefit for playing on great teams. No, behind me is the Stanford logo, and it’s, I’m lucky to work with great men and women at a university, and I get to play on that team. And so, you know, I think that if you work with a group of people and around you an organization, sense of community that people want to be affiliated with, that helps. And I think my role on that is to try to figure out, what can I contribute to it. And so like in the classroom, I like to say that I’m the principal provocateur, that when I’m with students, I’m always pushing them, no matter what they say. I’m going to keep pushing them, and I try to let them know that it’s a safe space in the classroom, but I’m not going to let go, right? This is us learning together. I don’t try to make anybody look bad. I don’t try to make anybody feel stupid, because that’s actually not it. But all the hard questions in business and the hard questions in life are in the gray area. And what I find with my guests, when they come to class like I can be very pointed and ask very hard questions about their strategies or some of the decisions they’ve made, but I’m not trying to make them look bad. I’m trying to help them unpack. What was their thinking that a moment in time, how did they go through the thought process and then, you know, just as importantly, how did they, you know, handle failures and successes, and what can we and then I want the students to learn from that. And I think if a leader knows that, I’m not trying to make them look bad, I’m trying to actually pull out kind of what was the naughty, hard problem that they were wrestling with. And by the way, they will often admit that sometimes they got lucky. They will often admit sometimes when they messed up and did something wrong, and how they fix it for next time, or how they had to fix their problems. You know, I think with all the leaders, what I find is that they’re incredibly human. You know, the whatever we read online about leaders, when I’ve met them in person, almost always that’s not what they’re like. They’re generally very, very different. And I think when you see them just as humans, I find that they will relax. Also, I’m lucky. This goes back to playing on a good team. I’m not a journalist, right? They look at me and they see an academic who had been an operator and an investor. So like they know, I’m just trying to learn, learn from them, and try to translate their knowledge to something I can teach my students. And so that also helps. There’s, I think that’s where trust kind of gets built in. So if I’m pushing a little bit, if I push them, or I push the students, I think that they know that it comes from a good place.

Kris Safarova  13:49

Robert and when you’re teaching students, what are some of the key things you want them to internalize and learn in terms of how to think differently?

Robert Siegel  13:57

Well, I think too often in Silicon Valley, we take ourselves just a bit too seriously. You know, this whole idea that we can see around corners and put dents in the universe, and the language is so full and flowery and like, that’s just kind of not really how it works. I think everyone’s just kind of on their journey and making their way. So when I talk to my students, I want them to be very ambitious. I want them to do things that are hard and can actually have a real positive impact on society. But I also want them to be good leaders and good humans, not just, you know, their commercial success, to be honest with you, you know, you have commercial success. That’s awesome, but you know, for us, I think, especially the graduate school level, my job is not to give them morality. They’re already going to have the morality that came from their parents and when they grew up, but more to be thinking about societal level issues, because so much about what’s happening in business today interacts with the larger parts of society, and I want them to understand that role. And so what I’m trying to kind of get our students to see is that it’s not just about shipping a product. Yeah. You want to find product market fit, and I can teach them finance, and I can teach them good tools and good skills around product management. But also, what does it mean to, like, lead an organization? What’s it mean when you’re trying to get an organization to do something on a very hard problem? That’s I like to call it the 5149 problem, because, like, as you become more senior in an organization, only the hard problems come to you, the easier problems get handled lower down in the organization. And then, how do you conduct yourselves under times of stress, under times of duress, when it’s not going as you want? How do you model good behaviors and be generous and kind when things are good? But also, how do you you bring a sense of calm and purpose when you’re hitting the challenging days.

Kris Safarova  15:43

And when do you feel students struggle with the most?

Robert Siegel  15:46

I like to joke that my students at Stanford are kind of like Golden Retrievers. They’re really, really cute. They’ve got tons, tons of energy. And when they get bored, they chew the furniture, right? Just like a kind of, you know, a lab or a golden retriever. And I think when they really struggle is, you know, they’re so driven to work and they compare themselves to exogenous variables. You know, these are the students who got the greatest test scores and the best grades, because they actually measure themselves against things from the outside. And I think when we do that, we sometimes forget why we’re doing something, because they’re so busy achieving, they’re so busy trying to kind of hit a target or a goal that they’re like word of, did I make enough money? Am I successful enough? Have I lived the life I want you you look at kind of, are they living up to the Instagram life, right, that they see all the time in their feed, and like my comment to them is, if that’s not real, you know, that is basically just a manicured, you know, purposeful for face that somebody’s putting on out there. Yeah, like, don’t believe LinkedIn. Like, LinkedIn is everybody’s best version of themselves. My wife and I, we have three grown children, and when they were little, like, our house was pure chaos. You know, kids screaming at each other, throwing stuff, I’m like, and you’re sitting there saying, we’re just trying to teach them to teach them to be good humans, and like, little kids kind of go crazy, and that’s kind of that messiness of life. And I want the students that kind of see like, that’s what we try to get through in business and in our personal lives, and how do we conduct ourselves in those days? In the end, hopefully things kind of work out, as long as you know, with a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work. But I think when they really struggle is when they’re so focused on I’m supposed to this is what success looks like. Success is the perfectly manicured life. It’s a huge bank account. It’s the perfect Instagram feed. And that’s not what most humans live.

Kris Safarova  17:35

Exactly. And also what often happens is, once you get there, you’re not happy, and you think, Okay, I got everything I worked towards for the last two decades. Where is the happiness?

Robert Siegel  17:47

So two of my colleagues on the Stanford faculty, Jennifer akra and su chi Huang, actually did research on this. It’s really interesting. What they found is they had studied two groups of people, and each one of them, each of these groups, achieved a specific goal that they were trying to go after. One of the groups hated the process, still achieved the goal, but hated the process. The other group actually enjoyed the process and achieved the goal. This group was an order of magnitude happier, right? And so what they found was that, like, if you don’t enjoy the ride, whether or not you get there or not becomes irrelevant. David White, the American poet, has this great poem called close. And this idea in the poem is that, like all we are as humans, like we never arrive. Close is all that we are close to achieving our goal, close to success, close to giving it all up, close to failure. And all of these things that we do when it’s in that moment of close, that’s all there is. And if we can kind of get comfortable with that and whatever we’re doing, we’ll be much happier along the way with the ups and the downs.

Kris Safarova  18:48

And then, if you just live in for one moment, or when you, for example, being something you’re trying to win, it’s just a moment. If you visualize it enough, you will feel like it actually happened in your life, if you really want it so much, but you will miss years of your life.

Robert Siegel  19:05

I think that’s acutely true if you have kids, and when the kids are little, you know. I think back to when our kids were little our house. I said our house was chaos, you know. And sometimes I look back and say, Wow, I wish I could have been even more mentally and emotionally present during the chaos, you know. I like to think I was a good father. I went to dance recitals, and I coached sports teams and did all the things that hopefully, you know, contributed to, you know, did work around the house, but you know, at that time, you’re still figuring out your marriage and your career and trying to, like, be present in the moment, like my wife was way better at that than I was.

Kris Safarova  19:37

And I think it is easier for a woman. It just so I think more than most men would ever do in a situation like that. Now, speaking of being a father and a spouse, how did you manage that and being a successful professional in so many areas of life?

Robert Siegel  19:57

Oh, making lots of mistakes, a lot. The way. And you know, you know, I found a good partner Well, you know, truth be told. You know, my wife of 29 years yesterday was my 29th wedding anniversary. You know, I had a first marriage that did not succeed. So I think the trick was finding a good partner that were kind of the most important values were very, very consistent, so you can get through and enjoy the good times and work through the hard times. It was a lot of hard work, and lot of nights where there wasn’t enough sleep, and you just kind of do your best. There’s no There’s no magic pixie dust that I could find in that process. I like to say that relative to my friends, I was a late bloomer, and the things that I accomplished in life came much later than many of the people who I’m close with, and actually, I’m very much at peace with that. But, you know, marrying a good partner like that helps a lot.

Kris Safarova  21:01

Of course, no, this is critical in life. Finding the right spouse is critical decision. It’s actually also a career decision.

Robert Siegel 21:10

Yeah, my wife was a tech executive for many, many years. And how do you balance, you know, two working careers, you know, building a family, trying to figure out how you at certain times you prioritize one thing versus another. I don’t know. There’s no magic. I don’t know. How do you how do you do it? You probably have better advice than I do on this.

Kris Safarova  21:28

Well, I think just knowing the priorities, not wasting energy on things that are noise, so that you have enough energy and things that are important, yeah, I would say, and just maintaining, really being strict on your state, your internal state, and also making sure that you taking care of yourself so you are healthy, you have energy, and then prioritizing and not wasting energy.

Robert Siegel  21:52

That prioritizing something I talk about a lot, both in terms of relationships as well as our lives. I’ll often ask people, you know, what are the five variables in your life that you’re playing for, because you can’t do everything, so you’ve got to figure out what’s important. And one of the theories I came up with, I call it the alphabet soup theory of relationships. And the alphabet soup theory of relationships, you know, alphabet soup that we feed our kids. It’s kind of the tomato soup with the pastas as letters. So I argue that everybody in the world has 26 needs. A to Z, you have 26 needs. I have 26 needs. Everybody listening to us, has 26 needs, and no other person can meet all of your needs. And the question is, if you’re looking for a partner, with whom should you mate? Now, some people say, this person meets 14 of my needs, and this person meets 12 of my needs. Should I go with the person who meets 14 and I say that’s the wrong way to think about it. You want to connect with somebody who meets the needs of your vowels. Right? Vowels are what allow language and communication to work. Vowels are what allow everything to flow, a, e, i, o and u. I’ll give you a Y, I’ll give you a sixth one. Everything else is a consonant. So if you’re with somebody who meets the needs of your vowels, you could have another relationship. It could, in fact, be quite good, but it will never be better. So the trick is to find those five or six things that you need in a relationship. Everything else is noise. It’s a consonant. Doesn’t matter.

Kris Safarova  23:13

So powerful. And when I said selecting a spouse is also career decision, what I meant by that, if it wasn’t clear for someone listening is, if you select the right person, they will actually be an important part of your success. It will make it very hard for you not to be successful.

Robert Siegel  23:32

I like to say that my wife and I, we built everything together. It doesn’t matter kind of who made what. You know, there were times when her career was going really well and mine was struggling, and then the opposite.

Kris Safarova  23:45

But you built it together, Robert. And if you could go back to the day when your first child was born, and you could pull yourself to the side and say, Hold on, Robert, I have some things to tell you. You need to listen. What would you tell yourself?

Robert Siegel  23:56

On the professional side, I wouldn’t do anything different. On the choices that I made. If I made any different choices, I wouldn’t be here right now talking to you when professionally, this is where I want to be on the personal side, to kind of go back to something I alluded to earlier, is try to be mentally and emotionally present in those moments that are fleeting. You know, there’s a saying that when kids are little, the days are long and the years are short, and I think that’s something that resonates very strongly with me. So to try to make sure in those moments, to when the kids are little, to be there and be present, the other thing I would say is, you know, we all make good choices and bad choices in life, it’s because we’re human, especially when you’re dealing with, you know your children or your parents or your spouse or your siblings, you know that’s when you want to make the most important good choices. Because if those are the people who matter the most to you, that’s when we want to focus. I think in life, sometimes we take those people for granted. And when we look back in life, it’s like those are the. Relationships and the things that we need to protect and take the highest care of. And so that’s probably what I would tell my 27 year old self.

Kris Safarova  25:08

Very important message. So I have to ask you. So at Intel, you worked with Andy Grove, and you described him as a systems leader before the term existed, what were some lessons or things you learned from him that really stayed with you?

Robert Siegel  25:24

Andy’s probably the greatest business leader that I had the good fortune of studying and working for. Andy had a fierce desire to get it right and not be right, like Andy wanted to find truth, and he surrounded himself with people who would help him get to the right answer. So I think there was a standard that you mean. He held us to a high standard, but just as importantly, he held himself to that high of a standard, and he took nothing for granted. And so I think that the search for excellence and the desire for excellence was just he modeled it other things that he was very much able to get us to focus on, like kind of important, very, very complex issues, but he made them very simple for us, that if we can take a lot of complexity in the world and simplify it, you talked earlier about trying to find the few Things that matter, like Andy was great at that. I also think Andy, when he died, it was interesting. If you read what people wrote about him, you could be three or four levels down from him in Intel. And almost everybody told a story about how there was a time Andy stopped by their cubicle, and there was a very personal moment with him, a very human moment. It could be about playing solitaire on the computer. It could be about talking about a sporting event, that there was a side to Andy, that even though he was the great Andy Grove and he had a, you know, he was ambitious and he had a big ego, he was also very human. And like some of my greatest memories of him, are talking about personal stuff, you know, his history growing up, things about, you know, his children. And he was always very open. If you asked him questions, he would share. And I always very much appreciated that about him. So he was like the, you know, from a strategy standpoint and an operational standpoint, he was as good as they came. But also there was a very human side to him that I think engendered fierce loyalty from the men and women who worked for him.

Kris Safarova  27:26

And seems that he was very humble. He was not putting himself above people.

Robert Siegel  27:30

Here, there was one story that I’ve shared with a few times. When we were working on the book, we were there was about a week with at the end of only the Paranoid Survive, when I did all of his research for the book, and we spent a week at his house. We were holed up finishing the book, and his wife, Eva cooked dinner for us. And so there was it. Was me, Andy, his collaborator, his agent. I think there were five of us having dinner, and so Ava sent us inside to go get the plate. So Andy and I come in, and we both ended up stacking the plates up our arms like waiters, and we looked at each other and started laughing, right? Because it was one of these things where we had both waited tables when we were much, much younger. And that was really kind of like when I think of Andy, that’s exactly the man that I remember, you know, the great leader on the you know, times, Man of the Year, but also the person who, like he waited tables, and it was still very much a part of who he was, even at the height of his career.

Kris Safarova  28:22

Yes, he was willing to bring everyone the plates, versus thinking, No, you know, you should bring me the plate. I’m the main guy here, right? This is amazing. So speaking of a book, congratulations on writing it. What would you like people to take away? I know you cannot summarize everything, but maybe 1, 2, 3 things you really want people to take away after reading the book.

Robert Siegel  28:44

So the book, The Systems Leader, comes from a course that I taught the last eight years with Jeff Immelt, my old boss from GE and the idea behind the book the class started, we were looking at a world where everything is connected. It combines digital and physical. And we started the course thinking about, what are the leadership attributes of leaders in today’s world? But really what it evolved into, and where the book ended up, is we seem to be in a world of constant crisis and increasingly rapid technological change, like we wake up every day and we turn on our computer, it’s like, oh my goodness. What happened last night, and I found with the 100 some odd business leaders that we studied, like they felt like no matter what they do in any kind of moment in time, they felt like they’re gonna get it wrong, and they feel like they’re being pulled apart what I call by cross pressures. These cross pressures are things that pull people in seemingly opposite directions. And so we identified five of them as we taught the course, and I wrote about them in the book things like priorities. How do we balance execution and innovation people? How do we make sure that we hold people accountable and show strength, but also empathy, which is acutely important for the younger generation sphere of influence? How do we make sure. We know internal and external geography. How are we acutely aware of local and global and then finally, purpose? How do we balance our own personal ambitions, but with also being a steward or a statesman or a stateswoman for our organization and these cross pressures that we identified, we then went and studied a whole bunch of different leaders and looked about how they dealt with it and how they dealt with it is what we call systems leadership. It’s this idea to like, understand certain dualities and live in those dualities inside of ourselves, as well as the ability to see action and reaction between functions inside of a company and our company and its broader ecosystem. And so the book looks at after we define systems leadership and what it means to be a systems leader, we look at these five cross pressures, and then we go through a bunch of leaders that we studied and try to figure out, kind of, Okay, how did they handle these situations, and what can we learn from them? I also make a point of pointing out what I think doesn’t work in today’s world. You know, this old notion of command and control or staying inside of your function, that just doesn’t work in a world where everything is so interconnected. And in addition, we see in a lot of today’s leaders what I like to call unserious behaviors. In a serious world, we see people replacing outrageousness, you know, instead of decorum, we see people focusing on trivial goals or showing disdain for customers or not accepting changes they don’t like. And I go through some examples, by the way, have we seen we see in leaders today, and by the way, these are leaders. When we see them, this is often the largest, you know, and most successful business and political leaders. And we watch these behaviors, and we’re like, wow, that’s wrong. I know it’s wrong, but yet this is what’s happening, is that what I’m supposed to do, and I hope behind the book, is that I can show about 2030, leaders and how they deal with a lot of these same challenges in the world. And you know, they don’t get everything right. But this idea that I say, okay, maybe I can try it differently. And the leaders that we highlight in the book, you know, they may not be the people we read about all the time in the mainstream media or on social media. On the other hand, they’re hugely successful, either in their startups or in their large organizations. And that’s what I kind of want the readers to take away, is kind of that sense of empowerment and that they can do it. And it’s not that I’m going to promise that everything’s going to be easy. It’s not that I’m going to promise of if you do these five things, you’ll be hugely successful. That’s a dumb Tech Crunch article. This is more about a way of, how do I deal with the everyday challenges and crises that keep coming up, and how do I make sure I respond well to them.

Kris Safarova  32:37

Robert and as you were working on this book, what surprised you the most? Maybe something you uncovered? something you realized?

Robert Siegel  32:45

I think that with all the leaders, two things kind of like came out the most. The first was, no matter how successful they are, just how human they were, that all of these people were willing to talk about what they didn’t know often was the right answer, and kind of how they navigated through a moment in time. They also showed conviction and strength and intelligence, like these were obviously, clearly well heeled people, but I think I was just more surprised at how they weren’t trying to put on a persona that they were willing to come off of message, and they were willing to let me write about it. So I think that’s the first thing. I think the second thing is, I was just surprised how many great leaders are out there, and that we just don’t hear about them all the time. We hear about the same leaders over and over again, and you think there were only five or six business leaders in the world that mattered. If you read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or fortune or the FT like, you know, it’s always kind of the same people over and over again, and yet, there are 8 billion people in the world. There are a lot of companies out there, and there are many different ways to lead, and we can learn from all of the men and women who are out there.

Kris Safarova  33:57

100% so important. So I have to ask you about AI, of course. Of course, many leaders feel they are already behind when it comes to AI. In your view, what do you think separates those who adapt successfully from those who will become irrelevant?

Robert Siegel  34:15

All right, I’m gonna actually answer that question in two parts. So the first thing is, I will often be asked, like, what do people need to do as leaders? So I’m not going to talk, by the way, about inference models and training and stuff like that. I think there are three things that every business person needs to do when it comes to AI. Number one, think of the technology suppliers. And by the way, the key word on that is suppliers. All right, the LLM the people who sell the llms to us? They are suppliers, and they should be treated like such, right? So you wouldn’t put a faulty component in an automobile or in a medical device. Make sure that whoever you’re buying your your your solution from is using your data for your good and not for their good. So like their suppliers, make sure that you. Remember that relationship. Secondly, this is going to have a hugely profound impact on the labor force, and we’re seeing it already. And so leaders today need to be thinking about what jobs in their company are going to be going away, and how do they retrain and reskill their labor force today, like they’re going to have to get in front of it for their for the men and women who work for them. And then third, they need to be basically bringing AI into their everyday workflows, even when it’s uncomfortable and awkward, whether it’s helping you write an email, do a presentation summarizing large amounts of data. You know, working on a project, you’ve got to start using the technology so you can have an opinion on it. So those are the three things that I think every leader needs to do now, given that that sense of we’re behind, the third one there is actually really, really key. I’m starting to talk to companies around the world about how they’re using AI in particular functions. What I have found broadly is that everybody’s trying a lot of things. No company has revolutionized itself yet because of AI. They’re not. It’s not like, oh my god, the whole company’s different, but you’re seeing things happen in marketing and manufacturing, in supply chain. And so I think it’s about having that intellectual curiosity to go find out what’s going on, and to be asking people, and then trying to make sure projects are happening inside of your company in those same areas. You know, one of the things I’m taught, we have a new dean at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and I’m spending a lot of time with her, talking about not what we teach in the classroom, and I’ll get to that in a moment. But how do we run the business school? Like, how do we and remember, a nonprofit like a university, we don’t have the commercial pressures, right? So we will actually be the last to change if we wait for exogenous forces, because those exogenous forces, we don’t have that commercial mindset. And so the question that we got to think about is, how do we kind of serve all of our key constituents, students, faculty, alumni, administrators, the government, how do we make sure we’re using AI to serve those constituents well, and so I think it’s that mindset of being willing to think through, okay, how’s my business going to change? And going to get primary data to look at what others were doing, and then try stuff inside. I think we also have another advantage right now. I don’t think any vertical is being more impacted by AI than education. Like all of my students use AI to write their papers and do their problem sets full stop, whether I want them to or not, they’re going to right? So I kind of wish the genie back in the bottle, but that’d be dumb. They’re gonna do it anyways. So we’ve got to deal with issues in the classroom about what are we testing in terms of mastery? How do we teach it? Because they’re going to do it anyway. So we got to get in front of this. But then even, how do you run a university? You’ve got to be thinking about that. And so I think leaders today need to be kind of like asking themselves, sure, how’s AI going to be part of your product or your service? But also, how are you running your company? And you have to think about it on both of those tracks. I kind of think it’s exciting. It’s a little scary. Sure it’s scary. Change is scary. Humans hate change. On the other hand, like think about what’s possible and what might be exciting about that, and how can you help your organization advance and get better? Then we all want to kind of help ourselves and our organizations get better. And so I see it as much of an opportunity as anything.

Kris Safarova  38:18

Of course, and for leaders listening to us right now who feel they don’t have deep technological background or any technology background, what is the most effective way for them to stay ahead of what’s happening without also getting distracted by all the hype and noise you should not be paying attention to.

Robert Siegel  38:37

It’s a great question. I’m going to do a slight reframe on that, different people learn different ways, right? We some people are auditory learners. Some people learn visually. Some people learn by reading. So I would encourage you, however you choose to learn. Listen to a podcast, watch a video, you know, start playing with chat, GPT and doing stuff on writing, you know. So there’s lots of different ways to kind of soak it all in, figure out how you learn as an individual and go there and then, in terms of, like, staying ahead of it. I think that’s a fool’s errand. We can’t stay ahead of it. Like even Stanford University can’t stay ahead of it. This is moving so fast. I mean, that’s part of the what I write about in the systems leader. You know, it’s really interesting. There was a book written by Alvin Toffler in 1970 called Future Shock. And in that book, he predicted fast fashion, the personal computer, the move to cities. It’s like reading Nostradamus, if you go back and read it. That was 56 years ago, right? And he was highlighting, you know, the challenges of what he called information overload. He coined the phrase that technology was moving so fast, as we as humans don’t evolve that quickly. And so the thing that we have to also accept is the technology is moving quickly. It’s not a question of, I have to stay ahead of it, because that’ll be kind of a race that you’ll never win. The question is, how do I follow what’s going on? And I think. It’s about being curious, reading about things, talking to people, absorbing, trying some things. I think that’s actually that’s the new operating rhythm, and so if we kind of just have that as part of who we are, we’ll all do Okay, and we’ll all be our best. But don’t try to think that you’re going to know everything. It’s just not possible. It’s going too fast. Figure out what you need to know, try to make yourself smarter and then be proud when you actually learn something and you apply something like take a moment to celebrate and say, Yeah, that’s kind of cool.

Kris Safarova  40:27

Very good advice. And what would be your recommendation on the sources to use that are reliable?

Robert Siegel  40:34

You know, I think a lot of the universities are doing a lot of good research and on on AI places, universities all over the world, in Europe, Asia and in the United States. And you can also see how it’s moving forward. I try to also compare, like, what’s happening, you know, between anthropic versus open AI, I saw also what’s happening in China, like what happened with deep seek. And trying to just kind of understand and being curious, like, well, what does that mean that it’s so much cheaper to train the models and why? I’m trying to understand what Microsoft and Google are doing, playing with notebook LM, like, these are actually the things that we want to be trying. And so I think it’s finding like, time in your day Don’t let your your calendar be like meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting. Sometimes you need to go learn and explore. And sometimes that means, you know, trying some things and reading. I try to read a lot of different things. For me, I try to look at a lot of different sources of information. And it’s with those different sources I can actually, you know, pull a like a pointillism picture. I can pull it all together. I also ask people, you know, how are you using it? What do you use it for? I ask my students all the time, how do you use AI, what? And it’s funny, with most of them, they use it to summarize large amounts of information, and that’s the consistent answer I get the most time that they say it’s the most helpful if they’ve got a ton of data and they just need to synthesize a key summary. They actually don’t trust it yet for details, but they kind of, they can get to the 8020 you know, on it pretty quickly. They’ll also use it. I see people who use it for writing emails and stuff like this. I’ve got a CEO of a portfolio company, and she uses it for, like, everything. She doesn’t even read her email anymore. Now, she’s way more advanced than most of us, but she’s but I asked, I asked her, what does she do and why and how does she do it? Because I want to learn from her. I may never be that person, but I can still learn from her.

Kris Safarova  42:27

Of course. And then you also have to be careful, because some clients can get offended if they see that it was written clearly, written by AI and not you.

Robert Siegel  42:35

Totally it’s like when my students give me papers that were written by AI, I’m offended, and by the way, their grade reflects it. You know, there’s right now, what I’m seeing with AI, and maybe it’ll be different in a year, is that the quality of the bottom comes up because the bots can do a decent job, but I actually see consistently much less original thought. Like, you know, the papers all sound the same. They all look the same. There was an MIT study about this that came out a few months ago, which is very, very clear, like what I saw when I graded 82 papers in the spring quarters. Like the papers were very undifferentiated. Normally, 10 to 15% of my students papers usually blow my socks off, just things that I hadn’t even thought of. This year was much lower because the students were using the bots just to save time, and they weren’t really thinking critically about it, and that showed now, by the way, a year from now, maybe that will change, maybe the papers will be good, but today, not so much. So am I offended? Not offended? It is kind of it is what it is. You might as well yell at the wind. On the other hand, do I think they’re missing an opportunity to learn? Yeah, but that’s their choice. My students have agency and free will.

Kris Safarova  43:46

Missing an opportunity to grow. And also, I think that it is respectful, given that you’re going to be taking your time out of your life, which is limited, right? We all have a limited time here to read the paper. You kind of have to write it as well.

Robert Siegel  44:00

Well, and if it’s basically, if they don’t value it, then they’re not going to spend time on it. If they think writing the paper is checking a box. And this, by the way, is like all of our companies are going to have to ask ourselves, how do we serve our customers and for what purpose? Now, I don’t think students are our customers at a university. I actually think society are our customers. And the question is, how do we graduate men and women who can actually work inside of society? Well, that’s my task.

Kris Safarova  44:30

And this is such a powerful way to think about it. I want to wrap up today. Unfortunately, we are running out of time. It’s reaching incredible organization. I want to wrap up with my favorite question. Over your entire life, what were two, three aha moments, realizations that you feel comfortable sharing that really changed the way you look at life or the way you look at business?

Robert Siegel  44:51

You know, it’s funny. I feel like I have one of those every 12 to 24 months. I think the first time that I. Was in a classroom, and kind of, I knew I had mastered my craft. You know that that time when we’re competent at our job, that was about, it’s kind of like when you enter the flow, and I that happened to me in the classroom one time, and I remember the moment that it happened and it was like and I was early in my teaching career. Maybe I was only 10 years in, but that was when I realized that all that hard work had led to something where I was actually able to really support my students and push them in challenging but positive ways. That was one moment I think you talked about earlier, the first time I held my daughter, our oldest daughter. I remember I was I was holding her, and I remember thinking to myself, you know, oh, my God, this is what my parents feel like when they look at me. You know, I knew what it was like to be a husband or a brother or a friend or a nephew or a grandson, but like, it was the first time, like, to be a dad, and then to realize that’s what my parents think when they look at me like that was a big aha moment, because that emotion of looking at your child is is, like, it’s a thing. I don’t know. Those are probably two that come to mind. One professional, one personal. That really kind of stopped me in my tracks. But like I said, I think if you have a mindset towards learning, you actually run into those things a lot. Oh, I got a last one for you. The first time I went to Saudi Arabia in 2017 all of my preconceived notions were wrong. And one of the things I took away from that trip, and I’ve been lucky enough to travel all over the world. On that particular trip, I went with 30 Stanford students and my wife, and I learned so much, and I realized, you know, I I learned so much, and that I know nothing. And that was kind of a big aha for me.

Kris Safarova  47:01

That is natural thing. The wiser you become, the more you realize that you have to learn so much more. There’s just it’s not possible to learn everything we need to learn in one lifetime. One very quick last question, any success habit? So to say, success habit that you really rely on?

Robert Siegel  47:20

I think there’s a tenaciousness of hard work, but, but in order to do that, I’ve got to take care of myself physically and mentally. So, you know, I used to struggle with a weight problem, and, you know, I try to exercise, you know, as much as possible every day, even if only for a little bit. I’m not always good about eating as well as I should, but And as I’m getting older, I’m realizing the importance of sleep on my physical and mental health. And so I think that’s like, you know, because I’m gonna work seven days a week, that’s just kind of how I’m wired, but making sure that I’m taking care of myself along the way, and sometimes that means recharging and unplugging and finding that time to kind of let my battery recharge and rebuild. I find that when I do that, I think better. I took a sabbatical three years ago because I was burned out, and that was a real blessing, and I worked with an executive coach, and like, you know, just trying to make sure that, you know you’ve got to take care of the whole self. And I think for me, that’s I’m still going to work hard, but I’ve got to make sure that I’m making good choices to take care of myself.

Kris Safarova  48:34

Robert, thank you so much. Such an incredible discussion.

Robert Siegel  48:37

Thank you for having me. Always a joy to connect with you and looking forward to hopefully speaking again sometime in the future.

Kris Safarova  48:43

Same here. Where can our listeners learn more about you? Buy your book? Anything you want to share?

Robert Siegel  48:49

Okay, so you can learn more about me at robertesiegel.com, and Siegel is spelled S, I, E, G, E, L, that’s robertesiegel.com, and there you can find and see all of my substack posts. My substack is also Robert E. Siegel, and that’s called Principles and Provocations. I’m on LinkedIn. You can find me there, and you can buy the book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble or a local bookstore near you. It was released in June. We were lucky enough to have some people write about it, hopefully you can find it all over the world. Translations are coming out soon into other languages, but if I can be of service in any way, please feel free to reach out to me at my Stanford email, where you can find me online on my faculty webpage at the Graduate School of Business, or, again, go to robertesiegel.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Kris Safarova  49:41

Our guest today was again, Robert Siegel, an amazing guest, such an incredible discussion. Author of The Systems Leader, a very, very, very good title, and this episode is brought to you by StrategyTraining.com. If you want to strengthen your strategy skills, you can get three gifts from us. Number one is the Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies. It’s an overview one pager. You can download it on firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. You can also get McKinsey and BCG-winning resume example, which is an actual resume that resulted in offers from both of those firms. And then you can get Nine Leaders in Action, one of the books that we co-authored with some of the listeners of this podcast. And you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/gift. Thank you for listening. I’m looking forward to connect with you all next time.