Leaders Learn from Leaders with Adrian Simpson

The Leadership Hacker Podcast

Adrian Simpson is a Co-founder of Wavelength leadership group; for over 20 years he's taken top leaders into the boardrooms and shop floors of the world's most successful, innovative and admired companies. Today you can learn about:

• What makes a great leader?
• Why leaders learn best from leaders?
• How great leaders talk candidly about failure.
• The secrets behind some global transformative cultures.

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

#some audio issues in this show – thanks for your patience.

Find out more about Adrian below:

Adrian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-simpson-b600139/

Adrian on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdieSimpson

Wavelength on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wavelengthleadership/

Wavelength Website: https://www.wavelengthleadership.com

Full Transcript Below

Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband, or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.

Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors, and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush, and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you

Adrian Simpson is a special guest on today's show. For over 20 years he's really been immersing himself in amongst some of the top firms around the world, including the likes of Apple, Tesla, Netflix, and Google. And we're going to dive into some of those leadership secrets, but before we do, it's The Leadership Hacker News.

The Leadership Hacker News

Steve Rush: Purpose is a real key part of all leaders’ capabilities, but often leaders get it wrong. Commonly, we see leaders think that purpose should be the same as their company's vision, mission, or purpose, but it shouldn't. Believe writing a leadership purpose statement is not a onetime exercise at all. It's something that should evolve, and it should connect the individual to the purpose of the organization. It's incredibly important and it needs deep insight and deep thoughts. So, what is leadership purpose? Your leadership purpose is your statement about who you are as a person and how you bring those unique qualities into your world.

First and foremost, leadership purpose is about your values and what's important to life for you. It's often also considered as your why statement or your reason, your beliefs. Think about your leadership purpose statement as being your beacon, enabling people to have a real clear understanding of what your direction in life and work is. In doing so, it'll help you drive the right behaviors on a daily basis and keep you engaged when circumstances around you can be challenging. It doesn't need to be overly complicated. Your leadership purpose statement must be a living and breathing document that you can share so, others understand it too. And it'll likely change as you change as a person, or your career grows or changes shape. So, you should always update it regularly. And remember your leadership purpose will not only help keep you grounded, and you stay on your path, will help you be a better leader and the leader you're meant to be. Most important, it sets a declaration of the kind of support you're prepared to give as a leader for the people around you. So, they can also buy into your journey. So simply put, think about the purpose, your why, and make sure it describes your values, your beliefs, and your vision, and how that aligns to the organization that you work and serve with. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Let's dive into the show.

Start of Podcast

Steve Rush: Adrian Simpson is a Co-founder of Wavelength leadership group. For over 20 years he's taken top leaders into the boardrooms and shop floors. Some of the world's most successful, innovative and admired companies, including Alibaba, Netflix, Apple, Tesla, Lego, and Google but a few. Andrew, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast.

Adrian Simpson: Thanks, Steve. It's great to join you this morning.

Steve Rush: Really looking forward to diving into some of the lessons learned from some of these huge conglomerates, but tell us a little bit about you, your background and how you've arrived to do what you've done?

Adrian Simpson: Gosh, so yeah, so a very, very brief resume. Started my career in retail with John Lewis Partnership then decided at sort of age 21 to go off to University in Manchester, did a degree in business and marketing. And just after University, I managed to stumble into a role with the incredible Tom Peters Group. And for those that aren't old enough, Tom Peters was certainly in the 1980s, nineties, the most successful management guru of his time, his Jim Collins of his day, who wrote an amazing book called In Search of Excellence and sold many millions of copies and to give us sort of sense. So, I was putting him on stage in the 1990s at about $120,000 U.S. dollars a day back in those days.

So, and then one day, yeah, after being at the Tom Peters Group where I was helping put him on stage and find some, he really wrote about companies that had kind of amazing cultures that really just sort of got it. And indeed, I'm still visiting some of the companies he wrote about wrote about 30 years ago, like Southwest Airlines. The phone rang and a small innovation company called What If was on the phone. And one thing led to the other and a conversation snowballed into a coffee, a coffee into a lunch, a lunch into a come join us. And I moved into to join What If for 11 years. When I joined, we were 10 people when I left, there were 355 countries. And it was the ride of my life and had an incredible opportunity there to provide our clients with some inspirations, started running for the study tour events, and then 14 years ago made the jump to co-found Wavelength.

Steve Rush: So, what is it specifically that Wavelength do?

Adrian Simpson: Our specialism is bringing the outside world in. Basically, we scour the world looking for examples of practitioners. What are the leaders? The organizations that have compelling stories to share with our clients and really providing our clients with a combination of what I would call inspiration, education and provocation. And our hypothesis really is at the level at which we operate at, is the leaders learn best from leaders. So, as I mentioned, sort of, you know, scouring the world, looking for practitioners you know, got real experience on topics that our clients were interested in. Albeit, you know, I was literally in America 10 days ago with a group of 20 leaders from all around the world. We had clients from Australia, from India, from Japan, from the Middle East, six across North America, the rest from across Europe, from lots of different organizations.

They flew into Dallas Texas on a Saturday. We began on a Sunday morning with a sort of half day workshop. And then for the first day and a half, we spent going inside the legendary Southwest Airlines and Ritz Carlton, really focusing on excellence in culture and leadership and service. So, they can value the three and a half days, looking at innovation, disruption, new business models, what's next? And what's next? Next. Doing some set piece visits but also doing some incredible things like going for drives in the world's first, fully autonomous robots, taxis operated by crews to have no drivers in them at all [laugh] or doing metaverse meetings in the metaverse, Oculus quest headsets.

So, we do things like that to very, very intense one-week immersions for very senior business leaders. We have at the other end of the spectrum, we have a digital only program called inspire, which is every single month. Typically, on a third Thursday of the month, we take a cohort of leaders from lots of different client companies live inside a great business, somewhere around the world of an audience with a really accomplished leader. Last week we hosted a session with Alastair Campbell on mental health. Next week, we have the former Prime Minister of Denmark. Helle Thorning Schmidt on how to lead the country. We've got Jesper Boring coming up IKEA Chief Exec. We've hosted Alan Jope Unilever's Chief Exec. We are hosting Tim Steiner, Ocado Chief Exec in September, and they are just short, sharp, regular doses of live world class inspiration for our clients. And we've got amazingly 700 people signed up to that program from around the world. So, we do, you know, whether it's digital only, short, sharp, live inspiration, whether it's weeklong, or we have other programs, one called connect, which is sort of, has about 50 people on it and is UK based, it runs about nine months or whether it's just, you know, helping clients bring speakers in for a particular offsite or conference. But again, any speakers we will use, will be practitioners.

Steve Rush: How awesome. So, you managed to really bump shoulders with, and as you said, immerse other leaders with these great leaders from around the world. What's the reason your focus is heavily aimed at making leaders learn from other leaders.

Adrian Simpson: I just think there is a relevancy that you cannot get and that applicability that you cannot get from any other kind of learning when it comes to leadership is in my view. Now I'm not for a second saying there is not a role for, you know, academics and business schools and some kind of provocative, rigorous thinking. I think there is a role for that, but I suppose my best sort of summary when I had a chief exec who has been with me, a chap. He was chief exec of a fortune 500 company. He came with me to America for a week. He came with me to China for a week. And I said, you know, John, why are you doing these programs? And he said, it was very simple Adrian. He said, my previous HR leader, he said, kept on telling me to go to Harvard.

And I kept on saying to her, tell me where I should go to business school to learn about business from someone who never run a business and I'll go. He said she didn't. So, I didn't [laugh]. And I thought, and he said, so when, you know, she put in front of me the chance to spend a week in the U.S. alongside peers from different industries, different sectors, learning from companies and leaders that were perhaps bit further ahead of us in terms of their narrative. He said it was a compelling proposition because they know what it's like to sit in my seat. They know what it's like to sit it as a board director with multiple stakeholders, internal and external, limited resources, having to make informed decisions. And he said with the greatest respect, no academic, no guru, no consultant knows that reality unless they have also at some point run a major business.

So I think it's that sort of you know, real applicability I think and I think it's, you know, what, I've, I've learned as well is that, you know, when you give clients the opportunity to hear from other leaders and learn from other leaders, you know, it's easier almost to swipe with glee, if you like, what it is that they've done, you know. I mean, I'll just give you an example. There was a, you know, I actually did a podcast myself with a tremendous guy called Fred Reid couple of months back, and Fred was the founding chief executive Virgin in America. He was the president of Delta Airlines, the president of Lufthansa. He went on to work with five years of Brian Chesky Airbnb and he also did a stint with Larry Page at his private company Kitty Hawk. So, you know, he is worked with Richard Branson, Larry Page you know, Brian Chesky, and also been a twice president and onetime CEO. And I was talking to him about the challenge of, you know, communication and how do you, as a leader, you know, build an understanding in the business of what business you are in and operational realities. And he told this fantastic story about when he was both at Lufthansa and Delta faced with that challenge, he decided to create a board game. And basically, what he did was he would invite cross sectioned cohorts of leaders from across the business, whether it's air stewart’s, pilots, mechanics, ramp agents, didn't matter. And they would be invited to take a day out, fully paid to play this board game.

But what the board game was full of was real operational data and decisions. And in sort of teams of eight, they have to like to make a decision. Are you going to give people a 3% pay rise? Are you going to buy new uniforms for the air stewardess? Are you going to pay the loan off on that plane? Are you going to buy the new plane? Are you going to make invest in the innovation fund? Because innovation director says we're not innovating fast enough. Are we going to, you know, are we going to hedge on oil right? And he said, throughout the day, they had to make real operational decisions based on real operational data that we'd given them from the airline. And he said, the only decision in the day they had to make was to appoint a president. And he said, it was hilarious. They all pointed each other and said, it's you, it's you.