Why Some Leaders Suffer | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

SUMMARY: In this episode, Don Schmincke and Matt Zaun talk about why a lack of strategic clarity leads to tactical frustration.

DON SCHMINCKE BIO: For over 35 years, Don and his team have consulted and trained executives in North America, South America, Europe, and India. Additionally, they have conducted leadership research excursions in South Africa, Japan, Bhutan, Vietnam, South Korea, and North African regions. Within the last few decades, Don has worked behind the scenes and trained over 7,000 CEOs on organizational performance and growth.

For more info, check out Don HERE.


MATT ZAUN BIO: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry.

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact.

For more info, check out Matt Zaun HERE. 

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors.

 

 

Matt Zaun 

In a world of trendy business theories, unproven methods and phony experts, we need to push back on the status quo and ask, what are we missing?

What do great leaders have in common? What are the reoccurring... What do some companies fail while others succeed? I'm excited for today's conversation because I want to dive into that.

Today I'm joined by Don Schmeke, who is a strategic organizational performance researcher, and has spent the last 30 years working behind the scenes and training over 7,000 CEOs.

He is a growth advisor, author, and keynote speaker. Welcome to the show, Don.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

 

Matt Zaun

Yeah, I appreciate your time. I know you're extremely busy. You're quite frequently in the air, so I'm glad that we had time to schedule this so we could talk for sure.

I just want to start off with the gauge speaking of being in the air. So I read that you tend to fly about 250,000 miles a year, which is just staggering.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

What airline do you fly? Oh, you know, it changes because a lot of frequent flyers when you're flying. Traveling at such a high rate certain little things can cause a problem like I was only united I was like a 1k for decades and then all of a sudden the upgrades Went away, you know It was instead of being like number one or two on their front of the line I was number 27 and I kept calling saying what it would broke so I ended up going with Alaska and They're their thing with the Americans that's from with right now But I do fly a lot of Southwest because it's convenient and if you're only flying for an hour or two It's you know, it's fine But you know for long term trips is hard because you don't get the seat room and the you know The meals Sure sure no I was curious that was more a question for me.

 

Matt Zaun 

So I fly American Airlines It's kind of default because I fly to Philadelphia Yeah, they've a main hub there and as you know the last few years flying is not Necessarily been a luxury experience.

There's been a A lot of change, a lot of disruption. So it's interesting, the creative ways that we've had to shift to try to figure out how that to make it work.

So I appreciate you, man.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

Yeah, sure. I get it.

 

Matt Zaun

Yeah. So speaking of flying, you've flown all over on the world, speaking with CEOs, speaking with leaders, understanding what are some doing that are working?

What are some doing that are not working? So I definitely want to dive into that. As you've done your research, your processing with leaders, has there been reoccurring themes that have come up time and time again, where if someone were to say to you, this person has these attributes, or this person has A, B, and C?

You can almost know right out of the gate that they are a great leader, or they're a leader that's struggling.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

Good question. A lot of the books and research we've done on leadership has been in varying environments. My first book was on an ancient site.

MRI training program, written like 700 years ago, and it was really a matter of how they developed leaders. They correlated very well with how we are or should be developing our leaders too.

And so part of what I got out of that research was an area of what they call the evil spirit, but we today call the ego.

So that led us into looking at how to transform executive teams to higher performance. And by performance, I mean, to increase speed and decision-making, speed of execution, speed of problem solving, and the ability to adapt.

And we learned a lot from these ancient texts as to how they did that, that had to unhook the ego.

And that ended up allowing some neurological and anthropological research. I was at Johns Hopkins, I left MIT, so I was at Johns Hopkins at the time.

And I find that that ends up being sort of a consistent theme throughout history. Is, are they driven by the evil spirit?

era. And because those that are get found out pretty easily. And I find that followers tend to mock them because they sort of, they know that they're operating from that space.

They're making themselves look good. They think they're always right, etc. So I think being able to unhook that biological phenomenon is really powerful for a leader to be trusted and followed.

Other areas come up. A lot of it depends. I think levels of complex thinking. Some of the work from the psychiatrist, Dr.

Elliott Jackson is important in terms of some people can only think at certain levels of complexity. And he had this whole thing mapped out.

And when I do my workshops with the executive teams or I do my keynote speeches, I find that this model tends to get a lot of attention and interest.

And people rush out to buy some of his books on his research because We think that everybody's got potential, but we found out from the psychiatric models that know they don't.

In other words, you have potential for a certain level of thinking, but if you go past that, you kind of now become handicapped.

You're not able to function. So like, for instance, some people can deal with looking out three to five years.

They can run a strategic project. They can look at the big picture, connect the dots. Other people can only look at maybe three months or in one month.

So it's hard to expect a person who's really competent at execution with that short timeframe to expect them to have a conversation that looks out three or four months.

So structuring organizations around this psychiatric modeling of the brain has become really, really helpful as we've taken companies and doubled their size, tripled their size This model is one of those that we use.

probably consistently to see is everybody in the right place? Is everybody in the right meeting? So I think that's helpful.

Sometimes we do run in CEOs that are frustrated. They feel like they're being sucked into operations too much. Usually when we look at that, we find out underneath of them somewhere there's a weakness in their team.

So they end up doing someone else's job and until we call them out on different forms. And when I do these speeches with CIO groups and everything, it's you see the pain look on the faces when I bring that question up.

It's like, how much time do you spend getting sucked in operations and like all of a sudden their heads just start, you know, going back, like, oh my god, you had to ask that question.

But the point is, it's up to you to put people at the right level. And whenever at high altitude leadership with Chris Warner was getting involved with mountaineering, gave a really great model because there's only certain...

levels of altitude some people can handle. And when they go above that altitude, you start having altitude sickness. And it's very unpredictable about when I present this model and I overlay it with Dr.

Elliot Jaxery's search, just like perfect, because the point is we're moving people to higher levels where they can't function.

They can't breathe. And we really need to keep them at the levels where they can be functional. So all selecting speed and time out of execution.

 

Matt Zaun

Sure. So let's talk about this altitude sickness, because you had mentioned. So there are a lot of people that are good at executing the here and now, maybe upwards of three months, but then there's the individuals that can really dive into a five to 10 year strategic plan.

So my guess is you need both, right? You need both ones that can do now and the future. How do you empower leaders that might back to your point, that ego piece, they might be figuring out how to keep the

He goes and checks. So they're already dealing with that. And then now they're trying to figure out how to get the right people not only on the bus, but the right butts in seats on the bus to coin, I guess, those Jim Collins, a good to great.

What do you do with a team like that? What what what should be the focus? Should it be the here the now till the three months?

Or should it be more the long term strategic approach? What do you recommend to leaders as far as their team make up as concerned?

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

What needs to be depending on the level of thinking? And so for instance, if you're a CEO and you have an executive team, they all better be thinking out three to five years or more.

Because otherwise, they're going to be in a meeting. You're going to be looking at future trends or challenges or threats to the business.

Shifts in the industry and you're going to have somebody in the room thinking like, wait a minute. We just need to rewrite the telemarking script or wait a minute.

We need to just have different brochures or wait a minute. We need to change the website. And then be like, what?

You're looking at them like, what are you talking about? But they're in the wrong meaning. You do need to do those things, yes, but that's a different meaning.

That's an ops meaning. That's a meaning that's more tactical or operational. So I find that because we don't structure our teams to the level of thinking needed, some of these meetings become really sabotaged by this level of mix of thinking.

And that can be a problem. Like for instance, a lot of times we'll train about 700 CEOs a year and then I'll do a number of workshops, insight companies or keynotes.

And in each case, when there's a level of executives in the room, it's sort of they realize like, oh, maybe this is causing my problem.

Because if I'm, you know, we're having so much politic happening, a lot of it's from tactical conflict. not strategic, what's happening is there strategic unclarity.

There's just the lack of strategic clarity causes tactical conflicts. So when I go to look at their strategic plans, they're shocked when I point out to them.

It's not everybody, but I'm thinking probably over 80%, maybe 90%. When you open up their strategic plan, it's not strategic.

So when you look at the data rates on the scholarly research done on it, I find it. Why is it failing?

Why is strategic planning failing so much? And I find out that it's because most strategic plans aren't strategic. They're tactical.

So that ends up being like a clue that maybe we're not doing a strategic planning properly. So about 20 years ago, when I was at Hopkins, we were looking at like, what's missing?

Like, why are we not doing it that way? And I was part of the problem. I mean, a lot of it is because what we call tools seduction.

We get seduced by There are tools and a lot of our tools are analytical. And the problem is we think like that's how we're going to do planet.

Somebody have a SWOT analysis, a MIST analysis, a market analysis. But I found out that that wasn't it. That was causing the failure of strategic planning.

Because I was looking at these companies that are not supposed to survive, and they end up rising up the dominant in their industries.

And I was curious of this pattern. So as a researcher myself, I'm thinking, wait a minute. This company starts off.

All the management consultants say they're not going to make. All the thought leaders say, they're violating this and that.

And so I know the industry experts say, don't worry about it. Don't worry about the small Texas airline. They're not going to make it out of Texas.

But then all of a sudden, the company grows to dominate the entire market capitalization. And all of a sudden, all these experts and consultants shut up.

They just shut up. They stop. They stop. Stop complaining about this company doing it wrong. So I was curious, you know, like how did Jeff Bezos, when everybody said he's not going to make it, make it.

And what was everyone else missing? And they ended up getting slaughtered by ignoring it. I was curious. And what we found out it was because we're using analysis and best practices and all that.

And that's great for tactical execution. It sucks for strategy. Because strategy is more around out maneuvering, you know, out maneuvering that.

And it's about intuition. And yet I haven't seen any strategic plans that invoked intuition.

 

Matt Zaun 

Wow. All right. There's so much wisdom on what you said. I love what you said. The lack of strategic clarity leads to tactical frustration.

That is a lot of leaders. Yeah. Frustration across this country and the world. You mentioned tools to duck. So let's talk about that a little bit more because you mentioned I saw somewhere that you had written.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

that a lot of leaders get sucked up into this program of the month syndrome. It's like that new flashy program.

Yeah.

 

Matt Zaun 

Have you seen this? I mean, I almost feel like the last few years, this has become even more prevalent where it's the program of the month.

And it's maybe it's because so much is changing with AI and new tools that everyone, again, is focusing on these tactics.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

But do you feel that in the last few years that it's radically accelerated? Yeah, I think that what we were wondering, like if it's so obvious when we look at our ancestors, we look at our biological makeup as leaders, our evolutionary design as a species, why we keep forgetting that it doesn't matter how many tools you throw at the problem.

By tools, I mean all the books, all the systems, all the, you know, we need goals, we need metrics, we need structure, we need processes, we need systems in place.

That's great. You do need those tools. But we focus. some of those tools that they're going to make us win and they don't.

The best way to pick up a good series of best-selling business books is just go to the liquidation auctions at a bank broke company.

Not only did they have all the best-selling books on their shelves, a lot of them hired the authors. I call that a clue.

It's science. We call that a clue. It's like, wait a minute, this shouldn't be happening. We did more research and found out why, what was going on.

The thing is we found out that tools are great. We need the tools, but until we alter human decision, it's a total fail.

In other words, until human behavior changes where the decisions begin to shift, you're not going to get different results.

We throw into the day, it doesn't. We just have a bunch more books and we had a bunch more consultants come through.

We had a new new, new new book. Who TEDx talks we all watched, but at the end of the day, if it doesn't alter human decision, you're not going to get any different results than you've had.

So when we went into the ancient world and looked at Alexander, Leopatra, and Gandhi, and Genghis Khan, and Caesar, and some of these CEOs dominating their world markets, it was really around altering beliefs of humans.

So we found that the thing we're not teaching in our management training programs, either our international, you know, institutional courses, and our companies, we're just, we're missing the point that we need to be teaching about belief management.

So when we go into the issues, you know, I usually have a group, like if I do a group of executives, I have them dump all their issues on a flip chart.

And I'll say, how many of these issues are because of humans? And they're like, not, they're heavily, all of them.

I said, but if humans were doing what you expected, how many issues would you have? And they were mostly vanish.

So I said, let's look at that, because we talked about anything else, it's just a waste of time. How do we alter human belief?

When we got into this, I was doing the book with Chris Warner, who's probably the top rescue climber in the world.

I was climbing with Chris in the Andes and we got his book idea because NBC was going to film him when it's third attempt to take to it, which is the death mountain.

So it's got like a 10 times higher death rate than Everest. NBC couldn't find a camera man, they were all busy at the time.

 

Matt Zaun

I'm sure.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

Chris filmed it and it was really, I think it was nominated for like 11 Emmy Awards or something. It was a fabulous film, but in the process we were doing the book live.

So while he was on the mountain, they were linking in via satellite to me and we wrote the book live.

Now, what's the whole point of tool seduction? Take bodies, he's pulling off a mountains and he's pulled a lot of bodies off a mountains, or clutching their tools.

They thought the tool was the salvation and they couldn't make it and they had all the right tools at the end of time.

So, frozen humans that are in dead-home mountains probably are clutching a pole somewhere. And I said, Chris, so are companies.

Dead companies are also clutching their tools. They're clutching their best practices. They're clutching their new sales program, they're clutching their new system, they'd put in place.

But they're all dead. So, I said, what is it about us clutching our tools? And we found out that it was because of the human instinct for safety.

So, what that means is that we tend to use tools because we think they're going to make us safe and to figure that out which tool we need, we use analysis.

So, we find that analysis is useful for us, but it can become a problem. So, we like to analyze the world.

And from that, we can control it, we can understand it better. And it's that control that's important. So, I need tools to be in control and to save.

So, that's why we have 35,000 business. books published every year with a failure rate of 90% implementation. And I don't know why no one was talking about this.

I mean, the data is published, but it was like no one was mentioning. I trained 700 CEOs a year and I said, I told these you this before and they all like Shaker has, you're the first person.

That's actually, and I show them the data. I get online and I see where it is. So, but the point is this seduction was fascinating to me in how they were going to fail.

And it turns out, I think that we're missing belief management and that's a different domain than analysis. That's an a dangerous, suffering, painful, risky domain.

So naturally, we don't want to go there because we have no control. And that domain is called art. So we don't teach art.

And that's the problem.

 

Matt Zaun 

That's the problem. Because there's so much power in what you said. So people clinging to their. tools. So there's a new tool that is emerging right now.

It's not new, but it's the most popular tool, so to speak right now, and that's AI technology, right? A lot of people are interested in how to utilize AI.

How do you foresee people clinging to the tool of AI at the destruction of their own businesses?

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

Are you concerned about this new phenomenon? Well, in each case, I mean, sometimes, like we get called in to do rescue operations with the company that's failing, or the stocks dropping, or the sales are down, and we get called in to transform that organization and get it working again.

And in each case, what we find is that we need tools, but what the question was they didn't ask themselves is one of many questions, but an important one is, are we using our tools or are our tools using us?

Wow. And the problem is, and most of the dead companies are the ones that are failing, the tools are using them.

They're not using the tools. We get in there and we change that belief and have them reassert how they're going to be using their tools.

Things begin to change dramatically. And that saves a lot of dead companies and dead climbers.

 

Matt Zaun

For sure. So this, are we using our tools or tools using us more than likely there's going to be a lot of companies that cling to that AI, the new, whatever the new app of the month is.

And it's going to be the detriment of those strategic plans that you mentioned are not really that strategic because they're focused on this tax.

So it could potentially help companies, but ultimately it could be too many companies detriment.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

Yeah, and I told tools are cool. I mean, like I'm an MIT geek, so I love tools, but the thing is, is tools should serve us.

 

Matt Zaun

We shouldn't serve them.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

Sure. And that's why when you drive from beliefs and you be able to see, you know, what are my beliefs about my market segmentation?

And why have we not challenged that? And who's our real enemy? You know, we think it's our rival, but maybe it's not.

There's a dozen other other arrows that could take us out. And then how do we win? Do we just want to, are we filling in the blanks here?

Is this just some sort of strategic plan where we fill in the blanks? And that's it. Like, how's that going to allow us to outmanure the enemy?

And so I think we get so seduced by tool problems that we forget to ask these questions. Like, there's a great book that came out traction in the EOS system, and a lot of clients are using that.

But they say, hey, we have a strategic plan. And they're like, no, you have an operating system, which is what you should have.

That's helping you become great and more efficient. I get it. I get it. But I don't think that strategy.

I mean, because I don't care how effective your operating system is from your A-track manufacturing plan. You're not going to sell any.

You're dead. So I think we need both. But for some reason, strategy seems to be the lost one. That's the lost area.

Because when we get in there and we tear apart a strategic plan, it's like, guys, that we need to.

I'm thinking about this and it's obvious when we say it because it's like, oh my God, you're right. We didn't even think about that.

So I think we need to reinvent strategic thinking in a new way.

 

Matt Zaun

We need our operating systems.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

We need our tools. But one anthropologist, because anthropology really opened my eyes to this whole thing.

 

Matt Zaun 

But once said, you know, a fool with a tool, there's still a fool. And I was like, I'm like, oh, wow.

That's, that's powerful. So, so speaking of foolish, what, what is a universally accepted business principle that you fundamentally disagree with?

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

Oh, God, how many? You know, I've done so much with exposing myths. And I've had some really great coaches in the past.

I was trying to figure out what to do. Like Mark Levy, who's, he was Simon Synek's coach that helped pull Simon into his.

start with Wifen. We end up seeing a lot of these myths and I ended up, in fact, I got a book coming out of the end of the day, made me do a shameless plug.

Yeah, I got a book. It's basically called winners and losers. And this came out of Mark's coaching of me, because we teach a lot about winning.

We don't teach a lot about losing. And if you can lose powerfully, that's exactly what the greatest entrepreneurs know how to do, but we don't teach this.

And so we thought, let's release this book. And in the book, we dispel a number of myths that are there.

And some of them are like what we talked about. As my strategy really strategic or is it just tactical?

Our followers are really following the leader, because that's another thing we teach wrong. We teach that a follower follows a leader.

I'm like, well, how does that explain all the assholes getting followed? When Apple started funding, helping us with our creation research through Cameron Lugman, who was up

by hearing that. I see, you know, they wrote books about Steve Jobs. And it's like, wait a minute, if this guy violates everything we teach in our business goals, and he creates the most powerful company in the world, why is no one asked that question?

Why? How did he do that?

 

Matt Zaun

Sure.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

I think that's the question everybody should be asking. How did he do that by violating everything we teach? And this is what led us to looking at, you know, General Patton and I think even Forbes did an article some years ago.

And do you have to be a jerk to be a great CEO or something crazy? But as I was looking at this, I began to realize the pattern.

We think followers are following them and they're not. But the followers are following or something we call the compelling saga.

We stole it from the Vikings. You know, the compelling saga, like what is that story? What is that, that, that next pass ahead of you, the next challenge that's so formidable that everyone believes they need each other to achieve it.

And they're willing to do two things we don't teach, but we desperately need in our in our cultures. the willingness to suffer and sacrifice together.

And people are like, oh, that's so politically incorrect. I said, no, that's what winners do. They organize to suffer and sacrifice together to capture the cause, because we're still focused on happy employees and self-esteem.

And everybody gets a participation trophy. It's like, come on. That's the most dramatic social failure experiment we've had. I said, if you want to know what makes people happy, what makes people happy is winning.

And you get a team that establishes bravery and honor, and they're willing to suffer and sacrifice.

 

Matt Zaun 

And I'll put them up against any happy employee team any day of the week. Sure. But this is all ancient stuff.

It's not new.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

But why we're not teaching it anymore, I don't know. But when we go into corporations and we do this, the bottom line impact, the balance sheet impact, is just phenomenal.

It's beyond anything that we're able to achieve. So that's why. A lot of our clients stay with us for 10 years and we're until they sell the business or something.

We just love doing that with human groups that are willing to learn and willing to get to the next level.

That's my long-winded answer to you.

 

Matt Zaun 

No, I appreciate that. You brought up a thought in my mind. I want to unpack with you. There's this wave of millennials coming into leadership positions at least across the United States.

Do you see major differences with millennials and Gen Xers on how they lead? If so, is there any cause for concern regarding where millennials are in leadership positions?

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

What are your thoughts, generally, generationally speaking regarding leadership? It's interesting because every generation has a problem with the previous generation.

Sure. When we get back to leadership, it's all about humans and our DNA has not changed that much. We're 2 million years old and our current function.

probably this way for another two million years. So what do, so the same patterns exist? We may have a different style of leading, but I see a lot of millennials have some sort of vision or purpose and so that's great.

I mean, so you're doing, you're creating this story that you should be creating. People are gonna follow that story, they're not gonna follow you.

By the way, you don't have to be an asshole on saying, it's nice to be a nice guy too.

But creating this story in the impact in the world, I think is something we've been doing for thousands of years.

They may have a different way of doing it or maybe not. I mean, a lot of these companies start off and all of a sudden become powerful and they start becoming like what we normally see in a great company.

The resilient, they're adaptable, they're listening, they're changing when they need to. They don't get stuck, we hope, and the current belief system.

But I like that. When I go back, over thousands of years, it's like, look, I don't care what generation you are, humans are going to follow the story and they're going to follow the culture you create.

And the culture you create has little to do with the posters on the wall and speeches you give. The cultures you create come from your triggering tribal grouping and things and humans.

And that's not going to change. And what does that look like? Symbols, rituals, magic, by magic, I mean the magic moments and the mythologies of our tribes.

And whenever we've been able to induce this in companies, things took off. People started aligning. So they may have a different style, but I think they're still going to use symbols.

And I think they're still going to use rituals. And they're still going to use magic. And they're still going to have a powerful story to follow.

 

Matt Zaun 

Sure. Wow. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And thank you so much for your time today. I very much appreciate our conversation.

I took a lot out of it. I know listeners probably took other aspects. But the three things that I got the most out of this done was I

I really appreciate what you mentioned regarding ego. That ego is so powerful when it comes to leadership, that you mentioned that the ancient samurai actually potentially viewed it as an evil spirit because they understood what it could do in a negative way.

I also appreciate the second point that you mentioned regarding altitude sickness. I appreciate mentioning lack of strategic clarity leads to tactical frustration.

That is so important. There's so much wisdom in that, that a lot of these climbers are clinging to their tools.

Such a powerful analogy. Thank you. And then the third and final point, which is my big takeaway is that belief management.

You mentioned that humans have this need for safety. We really want safety and it could be to our detriment.

So thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your wisdom. I very much appreciate just learning from you.

So thank you.

 

Don Schmincke [email protected]

I'm going to get more information on you, what you do, they want to reach out to you. Where's the best place they can go to get that?

information. What's interesting, we just uploaded a PDF, people are saying, well, can I have it? Can I have, plus these myths that you're exposing?

What are some of the things we can do? Well, I have a myth poster download. You can go to sagaleadership.com, like the Vikings, the Saga, S-A-G-A, Sagaleadership.com, and it should be a download button right there.

 

Matt Zaun

So, all right, I will include that in the show notes. People can just click, download a PDF right from there.

Thanks again. I appreciate your time.