Ken Banta | Why Bad Management Is the Most Common Cause of Dysfunction In the World of Business + Seeing Around Corner: C-Suite Wisdom from the Leaders of: Bausch & Lomb , Hertz, United Airlines & More

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

(Speaker 4)
You could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here. And you chose to go somewhere you said, man, I can go and I can get better. I can go and I can learn. I can go and I can maybe go from where I’m at to where I want to go. But one of the most important things that you will ever do or not do in your life is to value and seek wise counsel. To be coached hard means you have to be willing

(Speaker 4)
to be uncomfortable.

(Speaker 3)
Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multimillion dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day

(Speaker 3)
to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use. Because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former US Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zunder.

(Speaker 2)
Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve ever owned a business, one of the things you want to learn to do, if at all possible, is to kind of see around the corner or to maybe predict the future or to mitigate your risk by being able to avoid the collision with unforeseeable things that are not awesome. You also want to be able to seize opportunities before they present themselves to everybody else.

(Speaker 2)
Here to talk about this and so much more is Ken Banta. Welcome on to The Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

(Speaker 1)
Great. Thanks for having me.

(Speaker 2)
Well, Ken, you certainly don’t have to sell your resume to me, but however, there are some people out there that maybe aren’t as familiar with you as my research team and I are. Could you share with us a little bit about your background previous to being on today’s show?

(Speaker 1)
Yeah, sure. Sort of starting back and rolling forward, I actually grew up in Europe with American parents and went to college in the US at Amherst College. I was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. I then worked with Time Magazine as a foreign correspondent in Eastern Europe, among other places, and then did a

(Speaker 1)
kind of move sideways to join the corporate world where for almost 18 years I got involved in one sort of train wreck company after the other that we were very successful and fortunate to turn around. So that was quite a transition to a very different environment. And then more recently for the last 10 years approximately, I’ve been running the Vanguard Network

(Speaker 1)
and the Vanguard Network really does two things, Clay. We run networks of very senior executives around leadership and we also provide advisory work with some of those same people or people of that sort. So typically things in turnarounds, transformations, reinventing a culture, those are the types of things

(Speaker 1)
that we work on.

(Speaker 2)
OK, so when you talk about a turnaround or a train wreck business, what is the most common sort of jackassery or dysfunction that you discover when

(Speaker 1)
you go sit down and look at a business that is struggling and in need of help? The most common problem is bad management. There’s a remarkable number of things that seem to go wrong running businesses that, in hindsight at least, you’d say, why did they do that? For example, Clay, in the pharmaceutical and life sciences world, it always seems to come as an incredible surprise to people that the pipeline that they had that has a limited

(Speaker 1)
lifespan because it has a limited patent exclusivity does expire and then there they are without something to succeed it. But very, very often, there seems to not have been much thinking about what would succeed or follow the product. So that’s one really major example.

(Speaker 1)
I think the other thing that often happens is that history and events and technology overtake an organization. And so they were very competitive at one point, and then something happens in the world They don’t really notice that thing and before you can you know say that they’ve they’ve either gone into

(Speaker 1)
Headed into trouble or gone gone gone out of business

(Speaker 2)
You know, I I think about Companies that have poor management and I think a lot of times, if we’re running a company that has poor management, we don’t even know what that means. We don’t even know that we didn’t. Then a guy like you comes in and he goes, oh, wow, it’s so obvious.

(Speaker 2)
Why did we miss that? Could you walk us through maybe a couple of examples without maybe mentioning the company name or something, but just specific examples of mismanagement when you look at mismanagement within a struggling organization?

(Speaker 1)
So, you know, one example that comes from my own experience is the situation where there’s a merger and integration of very different cultures and very different management styles. And what I think very often happens is that it becomes a very tribal situation. And so one group or another tries to win that struggle versus create a united team, try to prevail over the other group. And that usually fails because obviously the integration was intended to create something that was one plus one being bigger than two, the usual story.

(Speaker 1)
But in fact, they often create one plus one equals zero. And that’s often caused by very, very sort of human tribal behavior, the one group trying to win it over the other or refusing to work with the other team. So that’s a very, very common example. Another one I think is where the management team doesn’t realize that it’s kind of out of its depth in terms of bandwidth. So they might have been working in a smaller market or with a smaller organization and

(Speaker 1)
doing fine and then they grow organically or through some transaction and suddenly they’re in a much bigger pond and a much more complex situation and they don’t have the leadership bandwidth to handle that. So that’s another example of what can go wrong.

(Speaker 2)
Now, a guy like you could have probably retired a long time ago, but yet you continue pursuing entrepreneurship and business and business development, business growth. What keeps you activated, motivated, fired up about turning companies around?

(Speaker 1)
Well, currently I’m probably more involved in working with people who are reinventing or rebuilding companies than doing it myself. But I think that that and the work we do with leaders and leadership is just very energizing. It’s great to be involved in something positive happening. And it’s really fascinating and exciting to me anyway to be involved with people who are leaders sometimes of quite large enterprises because in a sense, the work that you’re doing with them or the role that you’re playing together with them is really scaled. You take perhaps a CEO of even a medium-sized company of say 1,000 or 2,000 people.

(Speaker 1)
When they get things right or they do something better, it’s not just improving their performance, they’re really having a ripple effect on the 1,000 or 2,000 people, and they’re having an even bigger impact on the community, and they’re having a gigantic impact on their customers.

(Speaker 1)
It’s that multiplier effect that’s exciting. Of course, it’s really cool to see something go from good to better or even to great.

(Speaker 2)
Now, I’m going to shift gears here. You could have been maybe whacking a golf ball. You could have been traveling around the world pontificating about the accomplishments you’ve had. But instead, you decided to commit your mind, your body, your spirit into writing a new book here called Seeing Around the Corners, See Sweet Wisdom

(Speaker 2)
from America’s Most Insightful Leaders.” So first off, what inspired you to write this book, “‘Seeing Around Corners’?”

(Speaker 1)
Well, first of all, I think the title “‘Seeing Around Corners’ really captures what I think is a really important aspect of leadership. Sometimes it’s difficult for people to even see what’s right in front of them, but it’s even harder to look ahead and see where things are going in three months or six months time, particularly in an environment where things are very volatile. At the moment, I think any

(Speaker 1)
company, any CEO is having a challenge figuring out where the US economy is going, where regulation is going and so forth. So that seeing around corners seemed like a really important element of leadership. It’s not the only element, but a really important one. So that’s how we ended up with the title. And then what motivated me to put it all together was that I realized, I think at some point late at night, that

(Speaker 1)
we had this tremendous network of leaders across multiple sectors and at various levels in big and smaller companies. They all had something really valuable to say. Some are more well-known than others, but they all had some really pithy things, some really useful pieces of advice. And we were fortunate in having a lot of that,

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literally on tape, because we do a tremendous number of interviews and video pieces and podcasts, actually, with these members who are leaders in their own areas. And so it was, especially with the help of AI, frankly, it was really relatively easy to go through all of that knowledge and expertise

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and pull out the various gems.

(Speaker 2)
So in your book, I mean, you do feature some of the who’s who in American leaders. I mean, you’re talking about United Airlines, Hertz, the leaders behind. Again, these are the leaders behind these companies.

(Speaker 5)
Who are some of the more notable companies featured or leaders featured in this upcoming book here?

(Speaker 1)
Well, you mentioned some of the more well-known companies and people. I’m quite impressed also by the wisdom from less obvious sources in some ways. And I’d single out the CEO of a group called Community Solutions, which is a nonprofit. It’s really the world’s leading enterprise solving homelessness versus simply figuring out how to warehouse it. And the person who runs that organization is Roseanne Haggerty, who I’ve known for a long time. And at one point I was on her board and I’m still an advisor.

(Speaker 1)
And she had a terrific, well, she’s had a terrific track record, but she had really interesting things to say about how you create a sense of purpose and how you create a purpose driven organization. And she says in our book that you really have to do that with a non-profit because that’s the prime motivator for people. Other businesses, there might be other levers for success, but in something like what she

(Speaker 1)
runs that is the enterprise, is its sense of purpose. That was fascinating. Another person who’s extremely well-known but not an enterprise in a classic sense is Ram Charan, who, as you probably know, is one of the top, perhaps the top strategy advisor in the world. Indian-born person, advisor, probably every, almost every significant CEO that I can think of,

(Speaker 1)
and continues to be a source of like really pithy kind of insights that, as one of his books says, is confronting reality. He’s terrific at that. I think that phrase actually, confronting reality, is a terrific concept.

(Speaker 2)
Now in your book, again, this book Seeing Around Corners, you really dive into a variety of very relevant topics. I have a stack of stuff I’ve assembled here of five topics I wanted to pick your brain about during the limited time we have today that you’ll find more about in the book.

(Speaker 2)
First is leading in an age of disruption. You know, you got Elon Musk saying there’s gonna be more humanoid robots than humans. We got that. You got Elon Musk saying, hey, by the way, pretty soon your Tesla vehicle will serve as an Uber that’ll be driverless, that’ll pick people up.

(Speaker 2)
You’ve got Elon Musk discussing universal basic income. That’s Elon Musk over here. You got President Trump discussing tariffs, epic tariffs, wild tariffs. You’ve got the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, they’re all teaming up to introduce maybe a parallel currency or way of transacting away from the SWIFT system. There’s a lot.

(Speaker 2)
So we’re certainly leading in a time of disruption. What does your book advise or teach readers about leading in an era of disruption?

(Speaker 1)
Well, I think that there are quite a few different voices and viewpoints on that in the book. But if I were to kind of consolidate it and summarize I think that There are two two two ideas or two topics that keep coming through One is the concept of adaptability

(Speaker 1)
So, you know there was a time in management theory and practice that said, you know, really great management Just you know finds a goal and goes straight for it, right? And perhaps Jack Welsh was an example of that. You know, don’t kind of, don’t get detoured, don’t get distracted. I think that that is no longer the way things work. You’ve got to be able to dodge and weave and also adapt as the environment changes. You have to adapt your leadership style, you may have to adapt your company to the environment. For example, global tariffs for some organizations,

(Speaker 1)
this is a life or death matter. And the successful CEOs will be the ones who figure out how to adapt quickly to that and move, maybe find different markets, find different ways of addressing the tariff issue. And the other concept is agility,

(Speaker 1)
which is very closely related to adaptability, which is the ability to change gears really quickly and to not be phased by what may look like a mountain range of issues.

(Speaker 2)
Now, this next is high performance leadership. There is leadership that’s low performance

(Speaker 7)
leadership.

(Speaker 2)
Unfortunately, there’s some of that. You know, there’s somebody out there listening to today’s show. And your job is to manage a toll booth. And the expectations put upon you are very low. And even though you’re a high quality person,

(Speaker 2)
you find yourself managing the toll booth. I worked at Target, Applebee’s, DirecTV. I’m thankful for those jobs. I’m thankful for those jobs. I’m thankful for those organizations, but there were low expectations on me at that time, and I’m glad I had those opportunities.

(Speaker 2)
But somebody out there watching today’s show, and they are in a high-performance leadership environment where the expectations are much higher than what they’re used to. What does your book advise readers about high-performance leadership?

(Speaker 1)
Well, I think that high performance leadership does have a kind of a specific meaning to it, which is that, yeah, you’re not simply delivering the minimum, but really kind of going beyond expectations in some ways. The other aspect of high performance leadership, which is maybe kind of implied, I guess,

(Speaker 1)
is that it’s sustainable performance. So we all have seen organizations, whether it’s sports teams or small businesses or big ones, that have been very successful in the short term, but they’ve done it either without thinking through how they’re gonna succeed for the longterm

(Speaker 1)
or have actively undermined the longterm opportunities by trying to consolidate for the long-term or have actively undermined the long-term opportunities by trying to consolidate on the short-term ones. And, you know, for example, in any big business that has a large consumer-facing element, if you determine to stuff those channels and to drive the maximum amount of revenue in a given year, you can do that,

(Speaker 1)
and you’ll have that short-term performance. But over the next three or five years, you may go out of business. And so I think the concept there on high performance is sustainable performance.

(Speaker 2)
Your book, there’s a lot of books out there. This just in, there’s a lot of books out there. For people that are thinking about reading your book or any other book of books out there, this just in. There’s a lot of books out there. For people that are thinking about reading your book or any other book that’s out there, why should everybody check out your book? Or maybe who should check out your new book?

(Speaker 1)
Well, I think there’s sort of two reasons that could be interesting. One is that, as you’ve seen looking at it, it is composed of, frankly frankly sort of bite-sized insights from people. And so, you know, this is a book where you don’t need

(Speaker 1)
to settle down and read a 15 page or 20 page chapter to get the gist of things. It’s a, you know, it’s a half page or a page and a half, which I think for some people can be interesting. It can be a little frustrating if you wanted to learn more, but you can learn more by picking up on that person who we feature and look for them on the internet now and read more. The other aspect of it I think that makes it interesting is that it is a selection of

(Speaker 1)
insights from very different people. So there are a lot of good books out there written by a single author with a kind of a particular point of view over X number of chapters, which has lots of things in its favor, but what it doesn’t give you is a diversity of perspectives. And so I think that’s a plus for this book. And I think, you know, in terms of who it would be valuable for, it was quite interesting.

(Speaker 1)
I have a godson who works in construction in the UK, and Constantine wrote, I sent him a copy of the book and he wrote back and said he shared it with uh… the foreman on the site uh… where they were doing some construction work outside of cambridge and uh… this guy said they this is really interesting i think i’m gonna use it with my people so i mean there you go uh… dot that’s a

(Speaker 1)
somewhat unexpected but you know quite quite telling use of the book i’m sure that uh… it could be very valuable to people who are in small businesses as well as large ones.

(Speaker 2)
Now your book, again I’m going to pull it up on the screen so people can look at it here, your book, you talk about how to build a high-performance culture in the book. That’s powerful. So if you’re watching today’s show and the culture of your organization is frankly drifting, the word culture means that which you allow to grow and if you’re allowing your organization to grow in the wrong way It’s becoming dysfunctional perpetual chaos is becoming the norm

(Speaker 2)
I would invite you to check out the book seeing around corners see sweet wisdom from America’s most insightful leaders You know, can you hop on some incredible podcasts and and I’m sure you get off the show and you go gosh I wish that guy would have asked me this. I wish he would have asked me that. So with the final, you know, 60 seconds, if we have you here today, sir, I’ll give you the floor. What’s that question that you wished

(Speaker 2)
maybe I would have asked, or the question that you wish a host would ask that maybe you want to communicate that answer to our audience?

(Speaker 1)
You know, frankly, this has been pretty engaging and I am very impressed by the discussion. So there isn’t really anything I’d ask that wasn’t asked. I suppose the only thing I might say about the leadership topic that isn’t really stated so clearly in the book is that sometimes there’s an image that leadership is for people at a certain level or at a peak of a company or in some fashion it’s a kind of status thing. But I think that what I see is leadership exists almost anywhere you look.

(Speaker 1)
And that cliche that leaders kind of tell other people what to do, I think is really outdated if it ever was true. The most impactful leadership is often leading through influence or leading from behind. And when you think of it that way, people in kindergarten and elementary school are leaders of a certain kind.

(Speaker 2)
Folks, if you’re out there watching today’s show and you are looking for a way to infuse a new level of leadership, of cultural success within your organization. If you’re somebody out there that doesn’t hate yourself, but at times you find yourself hating your job and you’re a leader, I recommend you check out this new book by Ken Banta. It’s filled with insight from some of the most successful CEOs on the planet. Ken, I really do appreciate your time.

(Speaker 2)
I know time is frankly your most important asset. So thank you so much for joining us, sir. And hope you have a great rest of your day.

(Speaker 1)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

(Speaker 2)
That was terrific.

(Speaker 6)
Take care, brother. Take care, brother.

(Speaker 5)
Bye-bye.

Transcribed with Cockatoo