KF #2. Action Oriented Archives - Page 5 of 9 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Muhammed, thanks so much for joining up here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Muhammed Mekki
Thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s so fun. We’re doing this in person, which happens very rarely, but it’s awesome to have you here.

Muhammed Mekki
It’s great to be here and see where it all happens.

Pete Mockaitis
The magic enclosed porch in Chicago. It’s really fun because, so we’ve known each other for a good long time. I think you’ve known me longer than almost every other guest, maybe Kate Roche is in the running as I also knew her in high school. But if I can put you on the spot a bit, can you share a fun Muhammed/Pete memory or anecdote.

Muhammed Mekki
Yes, so many. I guess we’ve been through quite a bit. You’re right, since high school I’ve had the pleasure of knowing you. Pete’s the kind of guy, when he puts his mind to something, he just makes it happen. That’s one of the things that I really admire about Pete.

Let me think back actually one that’s not too far away. It’s a road trip that we took together down to Olney, Illinois. We packed our car and took a four and a half hour trip/drive down to southern Illinois in pursuit of a business that we were trying to get off the ground together in tutoring. We found a first potential customer. We were excited.

We got in the car, drove all the way down for a meeting basically, to sit down with that school and figure things out, and then drove all the way back all in one day. We spent over, I think it was about nine hours in the car that day.

During that time we had a lot of fun. We were joking about things. But in the end it was about both of our passion for getting that company off the ground and trying to make things happen. In the end we weren’t really able to.

Pete Mockaitis
No.

Muhammed Mekki
We learned a lot from the experience I think. Both of us have started different ventures and tried things ourselves and this is one that we can chalk up in the category of experiences that we learned a lot from, where we just didn’t – we didn’t understand our target market enough. We didn’t understand how the product that we were building connected to the consumer.

But I’ll always remember that trip and our passion to kind of go out there and find a customer and get the thing going and what that took and rolling up our sleeves to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
That was fun. I was thinking, man, I remember telling people, “Yeah, I think we’re going to sort of eliminate the Tutor Trail,” it was called, “business after all.” And they said, “Oh, why is that?” I said, “Well, we didn’t get any revenue.”

Muhammed Mekki
Yes, exactly. Oops.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Oh, you mean profits?” Like, “No, I mean revenue.”

Muhammed Mekki
No. But we tried really hard. We even drove all the way down to the other side of the state to try to find a paying customer, but in the end it was a sign I guess. Yeah. We were smart enough at least at that point to just heed that sign and move on.

Pete Mockaitis
One of my favorite moments from that trip actually was when you were driving. It was getting kind of toasty and you wanted to take off your jacket. I don’t know if you remember this. It cracked me up. I still think about this sometimes.

You’re like, “Okay, could you hold the steering wheel?” I was like, “Okay,” so I’m in the passenger seat kind of reaching over for the steering wheel. I’m kind of uncomfortable. It’s sort of 65-ish miles per hour and a little bit of curviness. I was like, “I don’t really feel like I’ve got the best angle or control here,” and so I’m sweating a little and I think you perceived that. After you finished removing your jacket, you just said to me, “Continue.”

Muhammed Mekki
This was before the days of driverless cars. Yeah, I was on that-

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s right. It’s going to be dated in five years.

Muhammed Mekki
Indeed. Indeed.

Pete Mockaitis
They were driving themselves, huh? I think one of the first things that drew me to you was that when we were in high school and I was kind of a weird kid who read business books and all of that stuff.

Then when I encountered you, I was like whoa, here’s a guy who’s putting some proactive thought into his life, his career, his goals right up front. You were like the only person who I think I knew who was doing that as much as I was. I was like, I like him and I’m just going to clamp on to him.

Maybe you could give us some perspective in terms of how do you think about just general goal setting or life and career planning because it seems like it’s worked out for you in terms of your path here?

Muhammed Mekki
I think one of the things that I’ve learned over time from my own personal experience has been trying actually not to over plan. I see that coming up with people that I talk to all the time like try to lay out a five-, six-step path and trying to follow that path.

For me at least, I’ve always tried to optimize for the next step. If I think back on all of the steps that I’ve taken, never have I been able to see two steps ahead. Always the next step had just a core affect on what would happen in the step that followed.

Let me give you some examples. When I – for instance, in thinking about where I wanted to go to college and what I wanted to study, I had a feeling that something called business and international business, specifically, was something that really was interesting to me. This was before the day I even knew what consulting was or what being an entrepreneur really was, back in the days of high school.

But I just decided to take that leap and just went and tried to find what’s the best international business program that I can find and just put all my effort toward applying for that and trying to get into the program. While there, I was able to figure out a lot of things that kind of led to me setting the next step, setting the next goal.

In fact, it wasn’t even jumping into the job market. I ended up learning about something called the Fulbright, which is a research fellowship that I had no idea existed at the time that I did the step prior, but once I learned about that, I thought wow, it’s a great opportunity to spend a year off of the career track and actually just doing research in another country and expanding my skillsets in ways that I never thought about.

I suddenly made that into my passion, my next goal. In that kind of a way I found that even in a career standpoint, now if you fast forward, in making some of the steps that I did, I would have never imagined for instance, jumping out to the – I jumped out to the Middle East. I started consulting there. I never thought that that would then lead to me going into an entrepreneurial venture.

But one step always led to the other in ways that I could have never predicted is my point. Trying to think too much about two steps ahead, has never been useful for me. It’s always, if I just channel that energy into the next step and just really try to put everything, my presence, and all that I have into the next step, then the next door will open.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a pretty cool reframe there or distinction. If you’re thinking just about the very next step, what are kind of the criteria or rules of thumb or values you’re using to kind of evaluate a given opportunity and say, “Yup, that is good stuff?”

Muhammed Mekki
Yeah, I think that’s changed over time. I used to be optimizing for what’s the most outside perceived highest-

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’ve done that well. It’s your impressive looking resume bio.

Muhammed Mekki
Well, that used to be an obsession, so I’m trying to figure out what’s the – how can I place myself in a position to be successful and try to get the right stamps, if you will, on the resume. That does have its benefits in terms of opening up some doors and maybe even in retrospect, most importantly, just giving myself confidence to just eventually step out.

But eventually, okay, so you go to a great school and then you get a great first job and then you get these accolades and you do all this stuff and you get promoted and you do all the right things, but then what? There comes a point at which there’s no next most impressive step to take unless you’re just going up a corporate ladder specifically within the same company going up one step after the other, after the other.

In our day and age a lot of people are shifting around to different jobs, different paths, all these types of things. At a certain point you’re like well, should I – when do I jump, when do I actually say, “I’m just going to try to think about what will make me happy and what I’d like to just do given all this stuff from before.”

Yeah, there was phase one, which yes, I was definitely unabashedly chasing after a lot of those stamps, if you will, which gave me the cushion and the background and the experience. Then phase two I would say started from when I cofounded an ecommerce company, was when I jumped off of a very stable and reputable job as a consultant at McKinsey. It was a fantastic job actually. I was enjoying it.

But at a certain point I decided, you know what, I’m going to go ahead and jump off and just take a big risk and try to start something.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really cool perspective there in terms of stopping to think okay, so rather than perusing the next cool big prestigious thing, at some point you’re going to run out of it. It’s like, “I guess I’m going to run for Senate. Is that what I should do next? I guess that would be about-“ You sort of say it’s cool in terms of being pro-active, like, “Well, now is the time I’m going to choose to prioritize this.”

I think I even experienced that in college a bit in terms of I was always trying to do the impressive thing and then once I got my job offer, early on in senior year for a great job at Bain, I was like “Okay, well, now I’ve got this time here. I guess I’ll just do what I want to do.” I wrote a book just because I wanted to write a book. That was really fun.

Muhammed Mekki
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool to think about when to jump. We had an author who wrote that book called When to Jump.

Muhammed Mekki
When to Jump. Yeah, I mean it’s not even just about going off and doing an entrepreneurial adventure or whatever the case might be, but it’s jumping off of the tried and trodden path of just going from one step to the next step to the next step. Say okay, I’m going to take a left turn and it’s going to be a risk, but let’s see what happens.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. Well, if we could just stop for a moment at the stamps collection phase. I’m curious to hear, you’ve done a fine job with your stamp collecting. We talk about Penn Huntsman, Stanford, McKinsey, Fulbright. That is all the things a VC or a hiring manager might like to see in a compact little presentation.

Any pro tips when it comes to the applications or the interviews or how you manage to nail those again and again?

Muhammed Mekki
I think that for a lot of different prestigious programs or schools, they’re blessed with actually having way more applicants that actually qualify than they have space for. The challenge always is that even if you are qualified for a particular program or for entry into an opportunity, differentiating yourself and distinguishing yourself from the rest of the applicant pool is the challenge.

I think the aspect of these applications that I spent a lot of time on and almost obsessed about was actually the essays and the story behind why I wanted to do something. It comes back to your first question about kind of taking the step – how to decide on what is the next step.

Once I had decided, for instance, that I really wanted to after university go and do some research as a Fulbright fellow, I spent a lot of time in introspection actually and thinking about why is that and how will I apply it. I channeled a lot of that into the application and into the process. I think the challenge is differentiating yourself from the pool based on your personal story.

Similarly, when I was applying for an MBA, there are a lot of very well qualified consultants that apply to go to the top MBA programs. You risk being just put into the pool of, “Oh, another consultant that’s applying to go to a top MBA program.”

I tried to choose my stories based on one, my own personal experience and background of what can I bring to the table given my background that’s a bit different from everybody else. Kind of thinking about what distinguishes you outside of work.

For me, I have my cultural and religious background that kind of played a role as well in how I think about and how I interact with the world. I wasn’t shy in bringing that kind of stuff up in the application saying, “Yes, I am a Muslim and I have these – this is how it informs who I am. This is how I can make the class actually a richer class,” and bringing in examples of that.

Whereas some people might shy away from some of these types of topics, I feel like why not bring them to the table and show what makes you a full person that’s going to really distinguish you from just the pool of everybody else that’s there. I think that’s probably if I were to extract one learning from these different applications, that’s what I’ve tried to make happen throughout.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool, but it’s funny. I’m looking at the study Quran that you recommend that I get and it is ample with its notations. This is maybe sort of random, but I remember you had an award for reciting or having memorized is it the whole Quran or large portions of it?

Muhammed Mekki
Yeah, that was something that I did when I was actually out in – on the Fulbright. It was again, something I would have never predicted would have happened, but while I was out there I found a classical teacher. I was able to explore this other side and learn things that I hadn’t expected I would do when I first went out there.

But I just – if you keep yourself open to what you might – who you might intersect with. That was an example where I started something. I’m like, “I’m going to take this all the way to the conclusion,” and actually try to get basically a – what’s equivalent to kind of a diploma or certification actually the recitation. It became something really important to me. I did take that on.

Pete Mockaitis
How does one – those are huge chunks-

Muhammed Mekki
It’s not memorization. It’s actually recitation of the – yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, so it’s sort of like pronouncing it perfectly.

Muhammed Mekki
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Much easier, much easier.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well now I’m clear there. Thank you.

Muhammed Mekki
No worries.

Pete Mockaitis
I have so much I want to hear from you in terms of generally, it seems that you kind of think and operate a little bit differently than others, in the best possible way. Not that you’re a freak or a weirdo.

I think that a couple of things that come to mind there is at one point I recall you were at a workplace and you earned a triple bump, not a single or double bump as one might get at the end of year or a review cycle, but a triple bump, which happens I guess maybe never or super rarely there. How is that done?

Muhammed Mekki
It was actually the context was that – it was early on in my career. I decided to just really just pour myself into this job and try to find – what was a slower start basically in the first projects that I was doing, I ended up finding an opportunity where I’d be working on a really small team.

The exposure – it was a combination, as a lot of things are in life, between luck and being prepared and rolling up your sleeves. The luck element of this experience was actually getting assigned to a project where I did have a chance to shine in front of a senior client.

I think as a very junior member kind of out of under grad, you don’t usually get the opportunity to be the client-facing person on the ground, but just because our team was – it was smaller than perhaps it should have been, and there was just too much work to get done, and I had built up some rapport and trust with the partner. He just sent me off. It was kind of scary, but also exciting.

I was like “Oh wow, I’m the one who’s representing this firm in front of the client in a couple of the different locations or the offices.” Once I had that – I think that’s the luck element. You have that sort of window or that opportunity.

Then it’s like “Okay, well, if I hit this one out of the park and I really show that I’m able to do much more, this is my chance.”

I think this one experience was actually what led to – it was probably the most important factor in that review cycle when we’re looking back at how I perform is actually the fact that the feedback from the client being that “Wow, Muhammed was somebody that I felt like I could – that was really adding a lot of value and was representing the firm.”

I got a lot of good feedback from the client side, so that made the partners happy. We were able to actually make a demonstrative positive impact on their business.

These things I think when you see those openings, that’s – a lot of times you’re just in a job and you’re just kind of doing the day-to-day, but every once in a while you get that chance. When that chance comes, you’ve just got to have your eagle eyes open and just read to just jump on it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah. I love that – see here we go talking about you thinking differently. I hope you’d find some gold here of perusing this line of inquiry.

Yeah, when it comes to the opportunity because you might view that opportunity in a completely different mindset in terms of “Oh my gosh, I’m already overworked. There’s no way I can take on this extra thing. I’m exhausted,” or it’s like, “Oh crap, I’m in over my head. I’m just going to try to not screw anything up, so what are the key things that could go very badly. I’m just going to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

As opposed to “How can I just super knock it out of the park?” and identifying that opportunity when it emerges. This … is I remember I guess it was – again, hey, I’ve known you since high school, so high school memories are coming back.

Muhammed Mekki
That was a long time ago.

Pete Mockaitis
I remember I was in National Honor Society. We did very little in National Honor Society because we were being honored. We were at a meeting. They said, “Okay, so, oh yeah, a clothing drive is a great service idea. Yeah.” There was a little bit of agreement behind that, like, “Yeah, yeah, that should be the thing we should do.”

Muhammed Mekki
Somebody should do that. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Then the advisor asked, “Okay, so who would like to head up the clothing drive?” I thought, well, I’m just a sophomore or junior. I don’t know. It seemed like it should be something a senior does, but I was like a sophomore or maybe a junior. There was a pause for a couple seconds and then no one raised their hand.

I thought that was really funny because what I heard her say was, “Who wants to be the National Honor Society president next year?”

Muhammed Mekki
Exactly. It’s like-

Pete Mockaitis
We do just about nothing, so if this is the one thing we do and you do it-

Muhammed Mekki
That’s basically-

Pete Mockaitis
Then we say who should lead us, it should be that person.

Muhammed Mekki
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Again, I guess I was in some of that prestige stamp collecting phase myself in high school and in college a bit. But yeah, I think that’s cool. It’s like how do you view that in terms of “Oh, that seems like a burden and exhausting,” versus “Oh, this is my window to really make some things happen.”

Muhammed Mekki
And I think the point that you brought up about risk limiting is also an important one. It’s not just the burden, it’s also like “Oh wow, I’m – things could go wrong. What if I just do the – cover the basics, I’ll be okay.” Versus going in there, what I tried to do consciously in this example, I was like, “Let’s just go and just try to just go with this. Let’s see what we can do here.”

Going in and having senior meetings with people and sitting down and really trying to uncover, we’re trying to figure out in this particular project how to really optimize a loan process, how to make it much more efficient and how to remove a lot of the problems out of the process. It involved a lot of interviewing and figuring out what people are currently doing and really doing some research into best practices.

But I took all of that on and just said I’m going to talk to everybody and really kind of uncovered a lot. Then just went into a cave and just kind of wrote a lot of that stuff out, did a lot of research, came back, presented, got the blessing of the partner, and then went to some senior people on the client side and gave them my recommendations. They liked them and they were interested and they started implementing them.

Even that was an example of just saying, you got that chance, so just go for – go all in. What’s the worst case scenario what’s going to happen? Something might go wrong. You’re a junior anyway, whatever. It’s not going to be the end of the world. I think that’s the end of the story is that it will be a learning experience. It’s fine. It’s not a big deal. But the upside is potentially really big because you’re proving yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. That’s good. Well, hey, let’s keep going in terms of you thinking differently and digging into some of your early career moments.

You were at another workplace and you spotted some inappropriate behavior, kind of just really meanness on the part of a somewhat senior leader. Tell us a little bit about what was going on and trying to preserve as much confidentiality and integrity as possible. Kind of what was going on and how were people reacting? How did you react a little bit differently?

Muhammed Mekki
Yeah, it’s surprising sometimes you find yourself in an environment that purports to be a really positive one and of high caliber and you still have these bad apples that are inside. They’ve somehow survived and even thrived within this environment. You just don’t know how that happened.

For me it was stark because I started on day one on this team that had just been assembled and it was like from the very beginning I felt something was off of this manager and the team dynamic. Something was a bit off. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was, but it didn’t take very long.

It was within that same day, hours later, you had a manager basically hurling personal insults, kind of telling this more junior member of the team that they’re just – they’re not worth as much as he is, this is why they pay him less. Things that you just – really horrible things to say, especially to a junior person. It wasn’t done in a jest or joking kind of way. This was kind of like I’m trying to get you.

It was – I remember the feeling – I remember feeling awful that I didn’t immediately stand up to this person as it happened. But then I was playing back excuses in my – oh, I just started that day and it kind of took me by surprise and blah, blah, blah. I would hope that now if that happened and I was around I would just take that person to task immediately, but I was a bit junior and it was a bit just jarring and sort of surprising.

I kind of just was – I just sort of took that in. I thought about it and decided after seeing more behavior from him in a similar way, I think none of it was directed directly at me, but I saw it happening. I decided somebody’s got to say something, so I just said, okay, I’m just going to go in and report this guy to HR, to the senior manager.

I started with a trusted senior manager within the company, telling him the story, being like, “Listen, this is what’s happening and I don’t feel comfortable working in that environment, so I’d either like to get off of this project or to figure what can we do basically.”

He opened up the door then to an inquiry that ended up happening, HR-led. It turned out the really sad thing about it was that – and this was just a lesson to learn – is that this person – they interviewed a bunch of people he had managed over the last couple of years and the stories came out at that stage where he was just repeatedly doing this over – and abusing basically his people on his team.

Nobody had stood up to him. Nobody had said anything. He had just kind of continued. That’s how people like that just kind of continue along. But I think the conclusion was a very – actually it ended on a positive note. I think I gained a lot of respect for this company because based on these findings, even though this was a very strategic project with a – and one that he was leading.

Pete Mockaitis
Plenty of dollars.

Muhammed Mekki
Exactly. That they pulled him off the project. He was basically reprimanded. They reconfigured the team very soon thereafter. I think it also shows that even a junior member of the team can have that kind of an impact and somebody’s got to stand up.

That was kind of a scary moment for me because it was just like – even though I hadn’t done anything wrong or anything, but it’s just always difficult to be the person kind of the whistleblower if you will to kind of stand up and say, “This shouldn’t be happening here. This is against our values. This is not the kind of place that I want to be working in.”

Pete Mockaitis
You see it on the news all the time, these scandals, whether it’s molestation or harassment or verbal abuse. It can persist for many, many victims and many years. It does take some courage to go there.

I think it’s awesome that you did do that and a cool reminder that the first step doesn’t necessarily need to be crazy, “I’m going to get on CNN and I’m going to shout to the mountain tops,” like, “This seems pretty off to me. I’m going to see if there’s a leader that I trust. I’m going to run it by him and we’re going to see how that goes.”

Muhammed Mekki
That’s exactly it. I didn’t know what to do, so I said let’s start there and then test that out and then when it really – thankfully, for that person it really resonated and said “Okay, we need to do something.” That support from a senior manager I think makes all the difference in the world. Had he shut it down, I think it would have been really hard for me to go and escalate. It reinforced the fact that this off. This is not the way things should be.

Pete Mockaitis
Think a little bit now in terms of how things should be. You’ve learned some lessons and now you’re co-owning a business and managing folks and being all grown up. What are some of the best practices that you’re seeing and implementing when you get to run things your way?

Muhammed Mekki
It’s interesting because I come from a family – my parents are both physicians. We have a lot of doctors in the family. There’s a lot of – maybe that immigrant generation coming in with high degrees and have a passion for doing good also, really wanting to – you can’t argue with a doctor healing people. That’s just good.

Sometimes when you look at – you look at somebody who’s in management or somebody’s who’s in business. It’s like, okay, this guy’s – person’s out to kind of make more money or it’s – it doesn’t seem like-

Pete Mockaitis
Cash is king. Greed is good.

Muhammed Mekki
Exactly. It’s not the most noble of callings on the surface when you look at it. I think this is something that I’ve thought about. What I found over time is that actually management can be quite a noble calling. It depends a lot about how the perspective that you bring to the table.

This is particularly for those who are embarking on the path of managing your first employee or starting on a small team or later on when you have a bunch of people that report into you, to think about just the impact that you can have as a manager on that person, not just their career, but their life.

It really puts a different perspective on the table because the small things that you do to develop and to help push and develop your team really can have a huge impact.

I was managing a team in a previous role and then seeing some of the team members actually go off and get amazing opportunities in other jobs and really upgrading and going –

We pulled in somebody from a completely different industry who took a leap of faith and jumped into tech and ecommerce. Then she ended up kind of continuing along that path and jumping into a couple of other companies that are well-regarded and continuing to improve her position and getting a lot more opportunities.

You kind of think like wow, that interview and convincing her to kind of actually jump off from the hospitality industry into sort of the tech and ecommerce industry actually did have a big impact on her life in the end because that ended up changing the way – changing her path.

That’s a responsibility for sure, but also it’s exciting because then it opened up a lot more doors and hopefully the skills and lessons learned from the experience being on the team. It will be something to be able to take with you for the rest of your life. That’s something I – that’s the element of management that is I think something which makes it a really important and meaningful path.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. I’m curious then – that’s a great reframe in terms of its – your responsibility is big in terms of where you kind of end up leading people in the lives that they get to have as well as sort of the day in/day out sort of skills development, and coaching, and growing that can either happen or not happen based upon your willingness to invest time and candor into your relationship.

Any other kind of things that you swear by in terms of effective teaming or productivity or making it happen?

Muhammed Mekki
Yeah, that was big picture stuff. Then if we get down into the more smaller details, I think a few things that we at AstroLabs now, the company that I’m currently managing, are quite passionate about.

I think one is always closing the loop. We’re always – whether – if you’ve opened up something with somebody or somebody’s expecting something from you to make sure that you’re getting back to that person as quickly and as kind of comprehensively as possible. It makes a big difference.

I think whether that’s within your own team or with outside partners or people that you’re dealing with, I think that’s something that distinguishes our organization.

We on a very tactical path, we’re big proponents of inbox zero, zero inbox basically, which is to make sure that you’re on top of everything that’s coming into your email, into your inbox. Once you’ve cleared something out, once you’ve dealt with it, you’re archiving it, you’re getting it out of your inbox.

The things that are in your inbox, and now even in Gmail there’s a new snooze feature, which used to be something that was a plugin called Boomerang. But you could just say “I don’t need to deal with this right now. I’m going to get back to it in another couple weeks or in another week or so.”

You can have it leave your inbox and have it come back in after a week just to make sure you’re not letting things fall off of your radar. We – that’s one of the things that we’re quite – we value a lot within the context of our company.

At the same time we’re against face time and just being there for the sake of being there and doing things – but I think there is an importance to actually making sure that you’re following through on your commitments and you’re closing the loop with people and you’re on top and not letting things just fall through the cracks and being proactive. These are some of the ways in which we achieve that.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. It’s funny. We’ve had some guests who say, “Don’t look at your email first thing in the morning. You’re being reactive. Are you really productive if you just answered all of your emails? Is that what it’s about?” How do you kind of balance the perspective associated with, “Oh, you’ve got to have that deep work, that quiet focused time, the maker time,” versus crushing every email.

Muhammed Mekki
It’s a really good point. I think you can get into this trap of just letting other people put a bunch of stuff on your to-do list if you’re just reactive and that’s all you do.

I think closing the loop only applies, in my perspective, on things that you’ve started or where there is already a relationship. I’m not saying that any message that comes into your inbox you have to reply to or deal with. You get inbound that you just decide I never asked for this. This person reached out to me out of nowhere. I’m just going to archive it.

That was a change for me because I’m so – I need to deal with everything. It’s like, well no, actually I don’t need to deal with this because I don’t have time and this person’s taking my time. But if it’s something where I’ve opened up that thread or there is an expectation of getting back, I sure make sure – I do make sure that I do that.

What balances it out is making sure that there is a weekly and maybe longer term sort of goals for juicy things to achieve and actually blocking off some time on a calendar to say “I’m going to go dive deep into drafting X, Y, or Z,” or “I’m going to make sure that I’m getting the brain time in order to structure this project that I want to do” versus just being on the email and just replying to everything in lightning speed.

I think it – yes, there is a balance. I’m just passionate about making sure that you are – that things don’t fall through the cracks as my – that’s a pet peeve of mine, if you will.

But the way we balance it out is saying, “Okay, as a team what is everybody planning to achieve besides the day-to-day stuff?” Everybody knows, okay, you’ve got to do your day-to-day job, but what are the bigger, juicier things that as a team we want to achieve this week. When we set those – we have those discussions. From there we can see if there’s ways that the team can collaborate and work together on some of the points.

Then we can keep each other honest, like “Okay, which of these bigger projects have we gotten done? If we haven’t, why? If we have, what else can we do?” That’s a good mechanism that we use internally to make sure that we’re not just running through the hamster wheel of answering emails.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. As we discuss this, it reminded me that I owe you an email about the lead generation thing we talked about, so I’m ashamed.

Muhammed Mekki
It’s good brainstorming and working together. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention or highlight before we shift gears into talk about some of your favorite things?

Muhammed Mekki
Yeah, I think the – I’d say that one of the things that I try to do – took the opportunity in a transition point, which was business school, was to really shift things up a bit. In my case I wanted to jump into the tech sector and I wanted to jump to a new geography.

I decided that I couldn’t do both at one time so that was one thing that I thought about. I was like well, I tried but I couldn’t really figure out this new sector that I never worked in and all this and in a new geography.

I went ahead and just decided to – that actually going to business school is a great chance to do – to change something big and it’s a good post or sign post. I went ahead and jumped out to Dubai, to the Middle East, and continued doing the kind of work that I was doing in the past.

That wasn’t as big of a change, but I had my eye open to the new sector that I was hoping to get into and eventually was able to make that jump.

Didn’t know exactly how it was going to happen, so, again, going back to the earlier point about not over planning. I did have an idea of where I wanted to go, but I let that opportunity kind of emerge as I had kind of – as I was settling in as I was understanding the landscape. Then the chance to be able to get some funding and actually start a company happened in a way that I couldn’t have predicted.

I think that’s one of the other learnings that I’ve had is just taking that risk and jumping out, whether it’s an international assignment within company or a chance just to experience something different. Earlier on in the career, it’s a lot easier to do. You kind of just jump on those opportunities would be a piece of advice is just whatever sounds a little bit crazy, a little bit different, just try it.

It will just – a) it will give you those stories that we talked about it in the past. We go back to the applications and being able to distinguish yourself. If you’re just in the same job, doing the same thing, kind of going up, it’s harder to distinguish yourself. You’re going to have to dig deeper.

But if you really had a – even a short term experience that’s a bit different, but you kind of took a leap, took a risk, it’s something that you can anchor a really cool story about and really distinguish yourself when you’re trying to get to the next step or the step after that.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. Now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Muhammed Mekki
The one that I use often is “You don’t get what you don’t ask for.” I think it’s something that I’ve learned that it doesn’t hurt to ask in any context. It just doesn’t hurt to ask. Nobody’s going to give you something unless you’re going to ask for it.

If – whether it’s in a professional environment and you’re thinking about taking on more responsibility or you want to do something a bit different or you want to stretch yourself, yes, an excellent manager will say – will see the potential and place you perfectly, but a lot of times you’re not going to get that chance without asking for it.

Or even in a much more mundane situation. If you’re travelling somewhere and you’re trying to get an extra perk or you’re trying to – you just – nobody’s going to give you something unless you actually make that request.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome, thank you. How about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Muhammed Mekki
I think Clay Christensen from Harvard Business School did – there was a study – it’s like an article on how will you measure your life basically. It kind of comes back to the point that we talked about earlier about management being a higher calling.

You’re not going to measure your life based on how many widgets you sell. “I’m going to sell 5% more widgets, then I’ve got 15% week-on-week growth” or “I was able to get this project approved by senior management.”

These are not the things that you’re going to remember or that will make an impact on your life long term, but making an impact on people and the people around you, your team, and all these types, … and they’re more meaningful. He delves into that. I believe it even turned into a book. But that’s an interesting one to kind of take a look at.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. How about a favorite book?

Muhammed Mekki
In this theme, in this spirit, I think, there’s a book called Rework. It’s a little bit more entrepreneurial sort of focused, but it does have lessons across the board on just how to be efficient and productive in a work environment. They kind of challenge some of the traditional assumptions about what is an effective work environment.

It’s done by founders of 37signals, which is a distributed tech company that everybody was working at a different environment, wherever they wanted to work from, that they bootstrapped, they didn’t take funding. It was kind of a unique context and had some really interesting juicy insights to take you there.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. How about a favorite tool?

Muhammed Mekki
Probably LinkedIn. I find myself using LinkedIn a lot. I think it’s – as I’ve used social media less and less, I think the utility of and the power of that tool in a business context has been quite powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite habit?

Muhammed Mekki
I don’t know if it’s a habit, but it’s something that my wife and I have been talking more purposefully about. Being out in Dubai, I think making a habit out of – it’s not easy with two little kids now – but spending some quality time out in – out here in the US or making sure that we are staying connected with our friends and our family and everything.

I think – we just spent a couple weeks out actually in the Bay Area, where I went to school and have a lot of classmates and everything. Keeping in touch in a face-to-face kind of a way, beyond the emails, beyond this, but actually just meeting up, seeing the kids and keeping those relationships.

Even though we’re a 16-hour plane ride away from San Francisco and it does take an extra effort, I think it’s something that’s well worth it and it’s something that is important to us.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Speaking of kids, Jonathan has probably woken up since we’ve been speaking.

Muhammed Mekki
I can’t wait.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell me, is there a particular nugget that you find that you share it often and people kind of quote it back to you, like, “Oh yeah, Muhammed says this.”

Muhammed Mekki
I don’t know if I’ve reached this kind of level of – but I think probably the joke internally at AstroLabs is definitely – even this – the quote that I mentioned is “You don’t get what you don’t ask for,” is sometimes “You don’t get,” dot, dot, dot. You kind of – that’s probably the one that I would bring up.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. If folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Muhammed Mekki
They can reach out on LinkedIn actually. I’d be happy to connect. Just drop me a little note and connect.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Muhammed Mekki
Yeah, I think if we just tie together a few of the things we were talking about. Keep your eye open for these opportunities to outperform and to do something fantastic. That’s kind of like your lucky opening. Just jump on it and outperform and go above and beyond.

Look for chances to distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack. That might mean taking an international assignment or jumping on – doing something a bit different with your career that’s outside – taking that left turn as opposed to everybody else going up a ladder.

Think about chances to be able to do that, which will position you really well whether you’re trying to apply for something or you’re looking for your next opportunity. You have something a little bit different and deeper to be able to talk about and to show that you’re willing to take a risk and willing to do something new and different.

Then yeah, I would love to connect and challenge people to come on over to Dubai and see what’s happening in the tech sector. We’ve got lots of companies now that are from all over the world actually setting up their presence in Dubai and scaling up there to emerging markets around the region. Happy to connect with your listeners who might be passing through and are interested in technology and in the region.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. That’s a fun – I would just encourage folks to take Muhammed up on that. He’s a gracious host, sliced watermelon and more, often-

Muhammed Mekki
Watermelon is key. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Muhammed, I’m glad we finally got to do this. It’s been a blast.

Muhammed Mekki
Thanks for having me. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Keep on rocking.

Muhammed Mekki
This was great.

Pete Mockaitis
Kim, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Kim Powell
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I learned a little bit about you and that you one time played a championship football game in the Notre Dame Stadium. What’s the story behind this?

Kim Powell
Yeah, strange factoid, right? Most people are familiar with Notre Dame’s obsession, if you will, with American football, but it may be less well-known that the participation rate in intramural football on campus is extremely high. So, I didn’t know how to catch a ball before I started college, and got roped into my intramural team, and we had a fabulous team. So the championships were at the Notre Dame Stadium, we played like the regular football team, we had a mascot and cheerleaders. And three out of my four years won the championship, and I have a bag of grass before they moved the turf somewhere, somewhere in a box in the back of my closet. But yeah, it was a fun experience.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is cool, yes. Well, my wife went to Notre Dame, and that’s always a little bit of a joke – it’s like, “How do you know if someone went to Notre Dame?”

Kim Powell
They probably have it plastered on their clothing, they are watching football every Saturday, yeah. Something that was a surprise to me, but certainly the collegiality of the game and the willingness to take someone who couldn’t catch and turn them into a wide receiver and a kicker – that was fun. It was a good experience.

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool. And so, speaking of experience, you’ve got loads of it over at ghSMART. And we interviewed a colleague of yours, Randy Street, from there, way back in episode 30. So for those who are newer listeners and didn’t catch that one, what is your company all about?

Kim Powell
Yes, ghSMART is a leadership advisory business. So, the core of what we do is assessing senior leaders. And in an assessment what we are doing is looking for the fit of a given leader to a particular job experience or job situation. I personally spend most of my time supporting boards and selecting CEOs, as well as CEOs and selecting their teams.
And we’ve branched out probably since you spoke with Randy, so a good, I would say half, 60% of our business is that core helping on key talent decisions. And the rest we branched out to do more broader leadership development, CEO succession, I do quite a bit of my work in the private equity space, supporting on human capital diligence prior to deal close. So we’ve certainly grown a little bit, I think, since episode 30.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, that’s so cool. And so have we. And I always love it when there is a rich, rich research base behind the stuff that you’re doing. So first maybe, while we’re talking about fit, I would love to hear in broad strokes how you think about that onto the macro-level, because I imagine you can break it down into numerous competencies and indicators and cultural parameters. But how do you think about a fit, because sometimes the word “fit” is really just a euphemism for “He or she didn’t do a good job. It wasn’t a good fit.” But you mean something different.

Kim Powell
Yes, yes. So, critical and I guess core to our methodology is what we call “first developing a score card”. And this is really sitting down with the board of directors, or the CEO, or the hiring manager in some cases, and stepping back to say, “What are the critical, call it 5 to 10 key outcomes that absolutely have to be delivered for you to have a smile on your face, that this role was successful?” And we get pretty granular to articulate what those outcomes are. Ideally a good chunk of them are measurable in quantitative ways, and we also get into how those outcomes need to be delivered.
And in that way we get into some of culturally what things work, what things don’t work, what are most likely the biggest reasons why someone might fail at a given role. And then what we do is, in that 4 to 5-hour behaviorally-based assessment we sit down and go through the entire career history, including education in the early years for the various candidates, and we’re looking for behavioral patterns. What we want to see is an individual who has operated in similar context and delivered a similar rate, size, pace of outcomes that this particular role is expecting, to define success.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood.

Kim Powell
Yeah, and obviously to your comment, it’s not just, “Hey, they just didn’t work out” or, “I didn’t enjoy working with them.” It’s we’re really looking for somebody who has a high probability of delivering – if it’s expanding international growth by 30% by opening the doors to two new countries, for example. We would be looking for behavioral patterns and underpinnings where they’ve done that in the past in different contexts, they have exhibited the agility, call it cross-culturally – those types of things.
To sit down with then the hiring manager and say, “Look, in these contexts they’ve successfully done it, or in these contexts they haven’t”, and guide them towards making choices where you’re putting people in situations where their strengths can come to life, and you’re identifying early potential developmental areas that could hinder them from success. And a lot of the conversations, what can you do to put the right supports in place, whether that be other people and their team, whether that be types of measurements, whether that be development, coaching, on-the-job training, that will help this individual increase the probability of delivering on those outcomes?

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, that sounds like a ton of fun. That just sounds like a cool job to have.

Kim Powell
I was going to say, the best part is I get to hear these fascinating stories. And it’s really incredible to be a witness to people’s amazing accomplishments and how they address setbacks and how they bounce back from that. And you do really quickly start to see some patterns of success, which the reality is, we gather things that go really well, we gather a lot of things that don’t go well, and we hear how people talk and internalize and approach that.
And for me stepping in almost five years ago, it was fascinating that we had not adequately, in my opinion, taken full advantage of this amazing assessment dataset. So, I’d done writing and research in my background in strategy consulting, and I stepped in and said, “This is a rich, rich opportunity to mine this data in a way that could be really useful for aspiring leaders, managers out in the world.”
And teamed up with one of my colleagues who had that same intention, and started supporting a research effort, which we call the CEO Genome Project – how do we decode what makes a CEO. And conducted a bunch of research over a number of years, and ultimately delivered some insights that we thought were worthwhile, telling on a broader stage. So hence the idea of, maybe we should write a book. But it was really after already uncovering some interesting nuggets that we thought would really be useful for aspiring leaders, and only then did we decide to embark on the marathon of putting it to paper.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and put it to paper you did, and the book is called The CEO Next Door. And by the way, excellent title. It harkens to The Millionaire Next Door, which is one of my favorite books – full of insights and counter-intuitive, data-driven goodies. And you delivered some of these within this work. So can you share, what are some of your central findings here?

Kim Powell
Yeah. And before I go there – to the title. Actually one of the things that sparked the desire to write this book was, in our assessment work over the years, we realized what we were seeing in amazing leaders didn’t necessarily match up with if you pull your latest Fortune, Forbes, name, your article about leadership and you get this portrait publicly in the media of this pantheon of charisma, amazing strategist, flitting from Davos to the next multi-cultural summit of talent. You just get this picture that they’re larger than life, and an iconic, kind of heroic set of leadership skills and capabilities.
And that does not match up with what we’ve seen or what I’ve experienced, what we’ve experienced as a firm. And when you dig into the covers and you get closer to these real CEOs, the CEOs if go beyond the Fortune 500, which usually is what’s profiled out there, and look at the 2 million CEOs over, call it a size of over 5, 10-people companies – you realize they’re real humans that make mistakes, that do also amazing things, but they feel much more accessible.
And the closer you get, the more it opens that possibility for more of us to aspire to larger platforms of leadership, or we can amplify our positive impact on the world. And that was really the kind of purpose-driven, I guess, motivator for the book for me, was unlocking that. If I could transmit that opportunity to more people, I think we would have a larger base of leaders out there wanting to change the world. And I feel like we could use that right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love that. That is inspiring, and it’s so true when you talk about the myth, or the kind of picture of what you think of when you see a CEO. I just chuckle a little bit whenever I see those magazine or Shark Tank. It’s like all of them, they love to fold their arms in front of them, I’ve noticed. That’s like the CEO super powerful, “This is what I look like”, ooh, like you’re a superhero.
And yet I remember when I was at Bain, the very first time I was in a meeting with a CEO of a billion plus dollar company, I thought, “Oh my gosh, it’s the CEO. I’m going to be in the same room.” I was so sort of excited and nervous and curious what this sort of mythical person would be like. And then he just listened very well and carefully to all the things we were sharing, and just asked the most fundamental of questions like, “Does this number include the benefits or just salary? The benefits, okay.” It was like, “Oh, he’s just a normal guy.” [laugh]

Kim Powell
It’s so true. In our research what we found is… We interviewed about 100 CEOs, just to compliment the quantitative research that we did, and to bring the stories to life. And what we found is 70% of them did not know they wanted to be CEO until typically the role just before, or potentially two roles before CEO. When they got close enough to work directly with the CEO and see what it is actually like when you start to break down those myths a little bit and see reality, and they realized, “Huh, maybe I could do this. And maybe this is something I would be interested in.”
And so, yeah, it’s something where you think people are destined for these roles, and the reality is, it’s not true. Back to your original question on the main themes – one of the main themes is the behaviors we saw that differentiated high-performing CEOs were all buildable. I mean they’re all buildable muscles. The things that popped out of the exploratory, quantitative research were not intrinsic things that you are born with; they’re things that these leaders honed over time, and they’re muscles that you can build. They’re not easy – it’s not like it’s a walk in the park – but I was really encouraged to see that these are things that you can practice and get better at. So that was one of the key themes or key findings.
The second is what gets you hired is not necessarily what drives performance. I guess it’s not surprising; we know there are biases in the hiring process – that’s certainly well-chronicled. But it came through in our research as well. And obviously the last thing we’ve talked about is just this – the role is more accessible if you kind of increase the aperture and look at a broader representation of CEOs. And our data said it extends across sizes, across industry sectors, it is much more representative of the CEO next door, as opposed to the Fortune 500. And so in that you do see that the myth isn’t necessarily reality, when you get closer to the C.

Pete Mockaitis
This is intriguing. So, let’s talk about each of those a bit. You mentioned they’re all buildable muscles. And recently we had Gary Burnison from Korn Ferry on the show, and I was so intrigued to get his take as I’m a kind of dork who will plum through their For Your Improvement competency matrix, and note that I’m so intrigued by how they’ve cataloged some competencies are much harder to develop than others. And I asked Gary to put a little bit of a context on that, and he said perhaps 200 times harder than others to develop. And so, I’d love to get your take on, when you talk about they’re buildable, but it’s challenging – just how challenging?

Kim Powell
Yeah, these fall into the middle set, I would say. The things that are really immutable that are hard to change are obviously the stuff like basic IQ capabilities. I mean, there is work out there that says that’s shapeable at some level, but man, that’s really hard to fundamentally change that. And again, some of this is how much are we looking to change, and how much do you need to change to be effective for what you want to do.
In this conversation we’re going to define success as growing in your role, but success doesn’t have to be CEO. They’re plenty of successful people who are not in that role that I admire. So, I do think it also depends on how much you need to improve to be effective. And I would say the four behaviors, just to call them out, that were statistically significantly different for high-performing CEOs compared to low-performing CEOs, were decisiveness – and this was all around the speed and conviction at which you make decisions, not necessarily be perfect or right or fully correct on all of your decisions.
The second was adaptiveness – your ability to change personally, as well as drive change and adapt your organization to the needs of the market and the shifting consumer or competitive context. The third is reliable delivery – so this is the ability to consistently deliver against expectations. And the last is engaging for results – and this is really about your ability to manage a very diverse and increasingly diverse stakeholder set, and moving them in an aligned fashion towards a common goal, which is really obviously tricky and gets more tricky as you grow in an organization.
So those are the four. These four behaviors all fall in the spectrum of changeable, and you can certainly improve, but it requires a significant focus. It’s like the Ben Franklin, pick a given trait, work on it relentlessly, build a new habit – and there’s plenty of work out there about how you build a new habit. But it takes that level of focus. It’s not something technical; for example communication skills – you get some guidance on how to structure a presentation, get video, get some feedback, you can improve more easily. I would put that as the “easy” category.
These are things that I think because of the nature of them, require very discreet focus because you’re making decisions at every moment. And you can practice and build better behaviors at every moment, but it’s not as simple as going to a training class, if that makes sense. I don’t know how that meshes with what you’ve heard before, but that’s why I would describe them as “changeable”, which is really encouraging. But it’s not easy; you’ve got to really focus on it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So let’s talk about each of the four there. Now, let’s kind of fast forward a bit.

Kim Powell
Yeah, sure.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very cool. So I’d love to chat about each of those four. But first, Kim, can you tell us a bit about that point that what gets you hired doesn’t drive performance?

Kim Powell
Yeah, of course. So we gathered outcome data around who was hired and not hired. We also gathered, did they exceed performance expectations, meet or not meet. And what we found is those buildable muscles, those four behaviors that matter, were all correlated with high performance, but only one of them was actually correlated with what gets you hired, interestingly. And that was reliable delivery.
In our conversations we also talked to board members; we reviewed a suite of 70 CEO firings, so we spoke with the board to get underneath what drove that. And really what you hear is, reliable delivery clearly is important in delivering performance, but it’s also something that exudes safety in the process of hiring. If you’re someone who has met or exceeded expectations across your career, managed that effectively, put in rhythms, cadences, etcetera for your organization to deliver – you are someone who’s going to make the board feel very safe. And they feel very nervous in that critical decision around who should lead the company. And so safety is something that you can play to by ensuring reliable delivery.
The thing that did pop out that is a big driver of getting you hired, but is not correlated with high performance, is likeability. So the warmth and energy you exude in the interviews really matters. And if you combine that with the safety of reliable delivery, you end up as an individual that the board wants to back. So, while being likeable doesn’t help you deliver results – we have to do a little HBR – a little piece around being too nice can get you in trouble. Being very likeable in an interview does work to your advantage; at least that’s what the data would say.

Pete Mockaitis
Now that’s so intriguing, Kim. And I’m trying to be nice and I think I’m often likeable, and so I’m wondering, is it sort of no correlation or a negative correlation, like I’d be better off if I’m a little meaner?

Kim Powell
Well, it depends if you want to get hired or if you want to perform.

Pete Mockaitis
Perform.

Kim Powell
I would say the trick… There’s nothing right or wrong about being nice. The trick is… I think what we’ve seen and what we wrote about in that piece was, individuals who prioritize affiliation, who are motivated to affiliate, who define success as being liked by all, are unlikely to make the difficult calls when you are by definition going to disappoint a given stakeholder, group or individual.
There are natural tensions in a business always, between manufacturing and sales, I mean you could fill them in. There are always natural tensions and you as a leader of an organization are having to make difficult calls that won’t make everyone happy. And by definition humans don’t like to change. If you’re trying to improve your organization – again, there’s going to be resistance to that. And you cannot have as your primary goal affiliation and achieve the level of progress that is likely demanded by your shareholders, or whatever your governing structure.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, noted. Point taken, thank you. So, I think we hit the point about the role is more accessible pretty well. So let’s talk a bit about these buildable muscles. So, decisiveness, adaptiveness, reliable delivery and engaging for results – could you give us maybe a picture for, first of all, what does “great” look like, versus “okay”? Because I think sometimes many people would say, “Yeah, I’m decisive, sure. I deliver reliably.” And so, I have a feeling though you’ve got a clearer picture on what “great” really looks like here.

Kim Powell
Yeah, yeah. Fundamentally – and I can’t underscore this enough, because this was the real insight and surprise for us – decisiveness is about speed and not about perfectionism and ensuring you have gathered the nth degree of data, that you are 99.5% sure that this is the right direction. The really good decisiveness looks like willingness to move with 60% of the data. It looks like willingness to push decisions down when you recognize they are not a CEO-level decision, or fill in your level of leader decision. You streamline what you are deciding so that others in your organization can speed up, make quicker decisions, and not everything is being elevated, for example.
The other litmus test that you see in really decisive leaders is, they really have a way of cutting through the noise, which helps them speed up their decision-making. And the way that they do this is really having a very crystal-clear picture of value drives in their business and they have almost like an inherent formula in their head: “These things matter, these other things don’t.” They’re very relentless about focusing on what matters and they understand the things that will move the needle, and they focus their decisions there.
A couple of leaders I really loved speaking with, they talked about continuously asking certain questions of themselves. One of the leaders of a tech business told me, she said, “Look, if I sensed that I was struggling with a call, if I had to make it in the next 30 seconds, what would it be? And 9 times out of 10 I would push myself to just do it.”
Another leader said, he’s like, “I tested myself with two questions. The first is articulating what is the downside of getting this decision wrong? And weighing that with, how much am I going to slow others down by delaying my decision here?” And he’s like, “By thinking about those two dimensions, I was able to push myself to move forward, even if it made me uncomfortable that I wasn’t 100% sure.”
And I think they recognized that they were setting the pace and the cadence of the organization. So if they’re slow, if they’re asking for their 100-page analysis – the reality is the organization is going to adapt those behaviors. And so it’s not just yourself; it’s actually the signal and the ripple effect that you’re sending throughout your organization.

Pete Mockaitis
Kim, that’s dead on, thank you. Please, unpack the others just like this.

Kim Powell
Yeah, yeah. So, let’s tackle “adapt”. This one’s really.. I was least surprised about this, just given the amount of writing out there. And I should have noted when we did the exploratory research with SaaS, they actually unleashed text-based analytics on our data, as our data’s text, which frankly we couldn’t have done 10 years ago, because they’ve progressed so much.
But what we did is said, “Here’s the outcome data, here’s the text-based data. Have at it, apply your models.” They do all the predictive fraud analytics for credit card companies, they have really fascinating, for a separate conversation, tools that they can apply. But they did exploratory research. We did not say, “Hey, go prove that adaptive behaviors are important.” They actually came back to us, and that’s why we were so surprised with some of these things.
But of those surprises this was least surprising. I think his name is Richard Foster of Yale, he did a piece of work that showed the lifespan of leading companies has shrunk to less than half. I think it was from 60-something years to 20-something years over the last couple of decades. Just the pace of what is happening in the market right now demands a level of adaptation that just wasn’t there for the prior generation.
So this I don’t think is very surprising, but really two elements, or two litmus tests, I would say, that I saw in very adaptive leaders. The first is that they had an openness, self-awareness and willingness to change personally. They were really humble to recognize that they do not know what they need to know, almost across the board. And so what you found is a willingness to let go of past behaviors and practices, even if they had been successful.
They were really good about proactively thinking about “What can destroy my business?” What about personally my behaviors that have led me to this place but may not lead me to the next ambitious goal?” And so they’re willing to let go of… … the book, “What got you here won’t get you there.” These leaders practice that, and it’s a really difficult thing to do. So that’s one litmus test, is willing to let go of what got you to the seat, essentially, and relentlessly question that.
The second is, they adapt more of a future-orientation. So you see these leaders really embodying… There’s no one else thinking 10 to 15 years in the future, most likely, other than the CEO. And so they don’t give up time with the customers; they double the amount of time they are thinking one, two, five years out, compared to the amount of time they spent looking out to the future in the role before CEO. So you see them shifting their attention to a longer
timeframe when they get into the C. So those are a couple of things to call out on adaptiveness.

Pete Mockaitis
Got it, thanks.

Kim Powell
Yeah. And then reliable delivery – this is the most boring one; however it is actually I think the most important – if you look at leaders who did this were 15 times more likely to be in the high-performance group. So it was a really strong behavior and it also helps you get hired. So, it’s boring but it’s important.
And essentially to deliver reliably, there’s a couple of things I’d unpack here. The first is these leaders are really good about setting expectations, as opposed to letting expectations get set for them. So they are actually very proactive and front foot around anticipating and setting expectations of those around you. And that’s important to note because as a CEO you have a board – call it, I don’t know, somewhere between 4 and 15, some public boards are way more – individuals coming from a different seat, with a different set of goals, a different set of expectations. And the CEOs who are successful really actively spend time setting an aligned set of expectations for performance, in a way that allows them to deliver. And this is not a one-and-done; they do it over time as the context changes.
So I remember talking with a board member who was really frustrated with his CEO, and I was like, “Wait, I saw the original value-creation plan – he hit that.” And the board member said, “Yeah, but the market changed. It actually opened up and this happened to this competitor, they went away. It actually should have been bigger.”
And that dissonance between changing expectations created friction and frankly sucked up time and was unproductive for the CEO to deal with on the board. And had they been ahead of that and proactively shaped that, they could have minimized the friction and transaction cost.
The other element to reliable delivery is, I think more the mundane one, which is these leaders try to show up consistently and build consistent expectations into their organization, and this removes ambiguity. So for people who are operating day-to-day, if you are working for a leader who you don’t know, “Is Jekyll or Hyde is going to show up today?, “Is your expectation to the questions you ask of my P&L going to be different than they have been the last month?” – it is hard to operate affectively. You’re constantly guessing, you’re in a world of ambiguity, it does not lead to your highest performance.
And so these leaders recognized showing up consistently removes some of that ambiguity for the team, and the clearer they can set expectations – they use score cards, they use metrics, they give clear feedback, they hold people accountable – and if that’s consistent, the organization operates at a higher performance level and a higher capacity than they would otherwise.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, makes sense.

Kim Powell
So a couple of things there, yeah. And the last one is engaging for results, and as I mentioned this is really around, “How do I herd the cats to a given bowl of food?”, in the simplest way. And the cats all want to go in different directions, and some like mice and some like chicken – I’m making this up. But basically you do need to spend the time with the important stakeholders, whether that be key leaders, key regulators, key industry titans, key board members, to really gain their perspective.
And often times there’s a lot out there around how you empathize, you imagine what it’s like in someone’s shoes. Actually these leaders are actively asking questions and getting the perspective directly from the individuals at hand. They’re not imagining; they’re asking smart questions and listening, and they’re using that intelligence and understanding of that individual or a group of individuals’ goals to harness that knowledge and move them towards a given intent.
They have a goal for most interactions, they know what they’re trying to get or where they’re trying to get to or where they’re trying to move this group or individual to, and they’re very deliberate about using the individual’s motivations and ambitions, knowing very clearly what the intent is, and then putting rhythms into the business or into those relationships that move those stakeholders forward in an aligned fashion.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you mentioned a part of that in the book there is that there’s some conflict, some differences of opinion about what’s best in what stakeholder over another, and how do they navigate that well?

Kim Powell
Yeah. Well, sometimes they don’t – we could talk about a bunch of examples of that. But when they do, they are very good at… Again, it kind of links back to expectation-setting. They’re very good at listening, gathering input, understanding goals and finding other ways to move individuals towards that goal, and logically explain why this is best for the enterprise overall. They have an ability to link it to, “What’s in it for me”, me being the person sitting across the table from them. And they have an ability to make it relevant to that individual or group’s context.
And that requires really listening, not just imagining the goals, imagining the context. They have to really understand that stakeholder group or individual and find a way to translate the goals into something that’s meaningful, that’s in it for that party. And that does not mean not being disappointed, but it does mean being logical, transparent, setting expectations and delivering, and linking it to some sort of objective of that party.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Well, that’s a nice lineup there. And so, in addition to these keys, you mention some handicaps and career catapults. Could you maybe comment on one of each of those?

Kim Powell
Yeah, yeah. There are some other fun analytics we did on the data. The hidden handicaps are really around what can stop you from getting the job that you want, and there’s some basic… I would call these “linguistic” or “superficial” factors that we saw, that have little or nothing to do with what it takes to perform as a CEO, but can trigger biases in the interview process.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sounds like a quick win. What are they?

Kim Powell
Yeah, so a couple that I’ll call out – one is using pretentious language or kind of ivory tower, elevated affectation, like using too big a word, not being down to earth – actually hinders you and hurts you in the hiring process. So, the more snooty you sound, the less likely you are to be hired. The other one we saw, which I took to heart, being a former management consultant – the more platitudes, consultantese and acronyms you use, the less likely you are to be hired. So, all those consultants out there – be wary of the consultantese when you are going for CEO roles.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, noted. So we can just cut those out. And it’s funny because people kind of become attached to them; it’s like the platitudes are their friends, or sort of comforting. And in a way – that’s a whole another conversation – I think they’re comforting because they give a little bit of an umbrella of ambiguity. So they’re less kind of conflicted.

Kim Powell
Precise. They’re not specific. And exactly – they play it safe and as a result they’re not precise or specific, and that I think is what really triggers the reaction. The more precise and specific and down to earth you can be, the more safety you exude. The more ambiguous, amorphous, hard to pin down – that does not elicit a sense of safety by your interviewer, if that makes sense. They’re not sure what they’re going to get, I guess, is the way to say it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and I love it when it’s dirt simple, like, “Customers don’t like this. We need to change that.” There it is!

Kim Powell
Yeah, versus the, “Well, we leveraged this and created amplitude in that.” What? What did you do? [laugh] Yeah, and then some of the basics came through that I think everybody is aware of, but the more meaningful numbers you can use, the better. You want to be memorable and relevant, was what we found.
And so, if you’re coming from an organization that’s not well-known, you don’t have it in with the organization to the extent that you have what we call “bona-fides”, but if there are ways to articulate a stamp of approval from somebody who’s respected by the organization you’re hiring or interviewing for, finding those connections and then being memorable and relevant, and numeric where you can, in terms of your impact and what you’ve done in the past, are all good things to file away for your next job interview.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I completely agree and I see that. I’ve coached many people on their resumes and it makes a world of difference between just saying “improved” to “cut $20 million improved”. It’s like, “Oh, okay.” It’s sort of night and day. And I even see that myself. I was buying paper today and it’s like, “I don’t know what paper to get. Give me the numbers that show it’s great – the thickness, the brightness, the whiteness. Okay, that’s a good paper.” And I think it’s the same for humans – even though we’re hard to quantify, we want something that gives us that comfort, like, “This person has what it takes.”

Kim Powell
Yes. And even better, cutting 20 million in cost off a base of 100 million, versus off a base of a billion – actually means something different to me. And I want to see that you can cut it out of 100 million, ideally in a sustainable way, or in a way that predecessors haven’t done. So I also think sharing some of that context, like why do these numbers actually matter, why are they great, is also really important.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Well, Kim, tell me – is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about a couple of your favorite things?

Kim Powell
Well, I think I would just say, for everybody who wants to be awesome at their job, don’t just accept any role. Pick the right role for your strengths and your skills and your values. One of the myths that we bust in here in this book is, there’s really no, we call it the “all-weather” CEO. The reality is I’ve met fabulous, really great leaders, that wouldn’t be great in the context for which we were making a hiring decision. And it doesn’t mean they are not a great leader; it just means that that wouldn’t be a good fit for them, for what the job needed relative to their skillset. So, be choosy and be thoughtful about where you can be at your best.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, excellent. Well now, Kim, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Kim Powell
Ooh, I’ve got one actually from my 10-year old daughter, if that’s okay. Her quote is, “You can still taste when you take small bites”, which has been a philosophical quote – it became philosophical for me around how much do I bite off career-wise, how much do I bite off in terms of my calendar and schedule? And the reality is I can still taste performance, success, impact, even if I take small bites.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it, thank you.

Kim Powell
So, not a famous quote, but it’s important to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fun, thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Kim Powell
Oh, I’ve got a lot. I think I saw somewhere that maybe you’ve had your first child.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Kim Powell
So I’ll call out two. One is called NurtureShock – I think it’s by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman – data-based research on parenting – so that could be up your alley. The other one, I have a 10-year old girl… There’s a great book called Untangled by Lisa Damour, who again – data-based research on how to navigate the teen years. And then I would say from a business perspective, I love (Growth) Mindset by Carol Dweck.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Kim Powell 
So, I use an app called Strides, which is I think originally an exercise app, but you can customize your goals. I’m very goal-driven and I use it to track nights away from my family. So, if a particular week is horrible I can zoom out and look at it by month, by quarter, by year, and realize I’m actually still on track.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that’s helpful?

Kim Powell
A personal practice is about every two to three years I actually try to take a recharge period, and I find that I am a much more effective leader and advisor and coach when I have a chance to catch my breath. And that’s a pattern actually than extends across my career.

Pete Mockaitis
And how long is a recharge period?

Kim Powell
It’s varied, but sizeable. So anywhere from four to six weeks, to four to six months.

Pete Mockaitis
And so you’re just not working during that time?

Kim Powell
Yeah, I’m just not working.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome.

Kim Powell
I’m gearing up for one this summer actually, in late summer, to again, just unplug. I do a lot of fiction-reading, I tend to have a few personal goals in that time, whether it’s reconnecting with family or exercise, athletic-type goals. And then I come back kind of a new human. It’s hard to do in some roles, but at a point of change – if I’m changing roles, changing companies – I always try to build that in to the process.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool, thank you. And is there a particular nugget that you share with some of this work that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, getting them maybe quoting yourself back to you?

Kim Powell
Two I would call out: “Engage for impact rather than affinity”, which we talked about earlier. The second is: “Connect before you correct”. When you’re providing feedback to your team, connect before you correct. It’s also applicable on the home front with your kids actually.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think we could have a whole episode on this, but now I’m thinking that’s true kind of on the macro scale – hey, you want to have a deep, solid, firm foundation, relationship before you provide constructive feedback, otherwise it’ll often be sort of rejected, like, “Well, screw that jerk. They don’t know anything.”

Kim Powell
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
But is it also… How are you thinking about it in the micro context, like, “I’m about to deliver a correction. What should I do beforehand, in this very hour?”

Kim Powell
In the micro – understanding what’s going on in their world. So often times they’ve had a terrible shock to their life and they’ve had a bad performance for the last couple of weeks, and someone passed away, or their dog died, or fill in the blank. Take the time to see what’s going on with them. Assume positive intent before you jump on the critical feedback.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And Kim, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Kim Powell
So I’d point them to CEONextDoorBook.com for more information about the book.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And do you have a final challenge or a call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Kim Powell
I would say the whole notion of, “You’re destined to be a great leader”, is false. And so, my challenge or call to action is while there’s no perfectly planned or carved plan, there are ways to get stronger and make better choices. So, it’s really just an inspirational, evaluate the opportunities ahead and put yourself in positions where you can excel.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Kim, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you for sharing these research insights, and good luck with all you’re up to, and have fun over the next recharge period!

Kim Powell
Thank you, I will.