A CEO’s Secret Weapon: How To Accelerate Success with Dr. Frumi Barr

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TSP 171 | Accelerate SuccessEpisode Summary:

People make your business successful or not. To accelerate success, a conscious leader always starts with finding the right A players and having the right people on the team. Dr. Frumi Barr says that’s where the whole idea of concentrating on culture came from. One part of culture are the core values and another part is knowing what your purpose is, your why. She says your why is your engine that allows you to overcome challenges. Dr. Barr talks about her book, A CEO’s Secret Weapon: How to Accelerate Success, which offers essential techniques every CEO needs to know to have a huge advantage, as well as the most troublesome issues confronting the CEO every day and how to overcome each.

Our guest on the Successful Pitch is Dr. Frumi Barr who is the author of a book called, A CEO’s Secret Weapon. She’s an expert on knowing what your why is, the power of it and how to tap into it. She said a conscious leader is someone who is effectively flexible. She said when you figure out that it might have taken a company 100 years to get their culture where it is, it’s not going to be fixed in one year. She has a great story of how she was able to help a big company turn that culture around from being so negative, yelling and screaming, to being more cooperative. She said when you have your why in place, it helps you navigate the challenges that come along. It becomes your engine.

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A CEO’s Secret Weapon: How To Accelerate Success with Dr. Frumi Barr

I have Dr. Frumi Rachel Barr who is an entrepreneur having run several adventures herself, where she was a CEO and helps your team scale up. She lives her why, your purpose or your cause. She lives her why by creating a safe environment for leaders and their teams to talk about those tough issues that matter most to build profitable and sustainable manufacturing or distribution companies. Dr. Frumi is always beginning with the culture. What’s the competitive advantage of any company? She built successful businesses. She’s the author of a book called, A CEO’s Secret Weapon, How to Accelerate Success. It was ranked Top Business Book of 2012 and she got a foreword by Simon Sinek, the man who did the amazing talk on Start with Why. Frumi, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be with you, John.

TSP 171 | Accelerate Success

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone

What a coup to get Simon to write your foreword. I know what a big deal that is to get somebody of note to write a foreword. If he’s talking about why, and you’re talking about why, he saw some similar branding things that he was willing to be co-branded with you on.

I started with John Strelecky who wrote The Why Café. In order to talk about his book, he also wrote The Big Five for Life, which are the five things you wanted, do, see or experience in your life to be successful. Right after I spent a weekend at a retreat with John Strelecky, I got so excited about businesses starting with why. A friend of mine at lunch said, “I just happened to have a book with me written by Simon Sinek.” It was serendipitous. I read Simon’s book. Simon would affectionately tell you that I stalked him. He agreed to work with me. Simon love speaking, first he wrote Start with Why and then he wrote Leaders Eat Last. He didn’t like consulting anymore, so I was very lucky that he referred me to clients who wanted to find their why, even older companies that might have existed for 75 years. That’s how we became colleagues.

Can you take us back a little bit further because you have a PhD and an MBA? When did you figure out your own personal why? The story of origin is what I’m looking for.

Those things start when you’re young with belief systems. There has to be a reason. My mother put me in school when I was three. I was small and I was extremely shy, so I would never lift my hand up in class. They thought that I wasn’t too smart, which is why I have all these credentials. I realized how important it was for people to feel safe in discussing what matters most. You could be in a corporate environment where the CEO shuts you down with a phrase and then that person’s afraid to speak up. It’s important in any team to take advantage of the smart people you have at the table and create that safe place for them to speak up. Challenge their thinking because it’s only when we challenge each other’s thinking that we make an idea better. That’s where mine started.

When someone’s there, the assumptions people make about you at that point and how that spurs you on, it reminds me of Barbra Streisand talking about her mother. If she hadn’t been such a tough critic, who knows if she would have been as driven. It’s a fascinating thing for me to find out what people’s original spark was to start their career. What made you hook into this culture and why aspect of your focus?

I’ve always been fascinated with people. People make your business successful or not. That’s where the whole idea of concentrating on culture came from. After culture, it becomes a strategy and execution in order to make a business sustainable. It always starts with finding the right A-players and having the right people on the team. That’s where I start.

Let’s double click on culture. I’ve had the ability to talk to Larry Senn who’s been called the Father of Culture and he’s in his 80s. Let’s do two different ways with this. One is if you’re Coca-Cola, a big brand that’s been around forever. They have a culture defined. The other is if you’re a startup. You’re less than a year old or you’re just putting a team together. Let’s talk about the similarities and differences on what makes a good culture.

[bctt tweet=”Your why is your engine that let’s you overcome challenges.” username=”John_Livesay”]

What’s important with culture is what the core values of the corporation are. We can have a very big company like Coca-Cola, any company that’s old or long-established often have core values on the wall. They don’t necessarily live those core values. They don’t necessarily hire according to those core values or fire according to them. It’s very difficult to change the culture of an established organization, although that can be done. If it takes 100 years to form a culture, it takes more than one to change it.

I can give you an example of that. A 100-year-old company that I worked with was a nonprofit, one of the largest nonprofits. They used to have a CEO who used to basically bark at everybody that it was a commanding control environment. He was the CEO for about 25 years and after he left, another CEO came in who was more of a servant leader. He had to deal with the shift between a lot of his employees being used to still barking at people. That was an uncomfortable environment for him. I worked with them for about five years. It took us about three years to shift the culture so that takes time.

What kind of values do you see in someone’s culture that makes them successful whether they’re new or established?

Let’s go back to the startups first. Startups have a unique opportunity to create their culture. When I first start working on a plan with a startup, they have a lot of aspirational values. They’re not necessarily values that they’re living. We create a set of values based on what the founders or the first team believe. At the end of the year, we review them and see which ones are actually living. The way that you measure whether people are living their values or not is the stories that they tell. Let me give you an example, and I learned this from John Strelecky. How would you bring those values to life?

One of the things that we suggest is what we call a book of email. Imagine that on the first day at a company, instead of just being given the policy manual, you’re also given a book of emails where you can see what people value. Imagine if someone wrote to you and said, “John, good for you. You upheld our value of extreme ownership.” You give a little story about what extreme ownership meant in that regard. In that way, the new employee is reading real things, not just a line on the wall that says extreme ownership or integrity. One of my favorite ones is aligned by McIntosh Trading, which is a Canadian company. One of their core values is, “Make mama proud.”

Would you say or do anything that would make your mom proud? If not, don’t do it.

TSP 171 | Accelerate Success

Accelerate Success: Be able to share that message and cascade it down, no matter how large your company becomes.

You don’t want to be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. That’s the way you create a culture of living values. What are the activities that you’re going to do to promote the values all the time? That’s the first part of culture is those core values and the second part of culture is knowing what your purpose is. Be able to share that message and cascade it down, no matter how large your company becomes.

Does that tie in to the why at that point?

Yes. I’ll give you an example. There’s a supermarket that’s been around for 80 years. It was started by grandpa. Why did grandpa start the company? It’s a little hard 80 years later to figure out exactly why he did it. We had this group of 24 people in the room. A supermarket has a drug pharmacy in there, it will have groceries, etc. Why would you unite all of those elements? As we were talking about this, the grocery people said, “Shouldn’t we talk about fresh vegetables?” The pharmacy people said, “Should we talk about the drugs we have?” Here’s the why. Infusing life with health and happiness. That’s the message they started sharing. They have that alive and well in every supermarket. You use that as the compass. If you’re making a decision, you ask yourself, does this fit? Is this an alignment?

The third part of culture is attracting the people who believe what you believe, like what Simon says. If you’re very clear about your core values and you’re very clear about your purpose, then you do what we call top grading. These are a series of interviews when you’re hiring someone. You explore whether they are fit according to their core values, core ideology, or their purpose. If people aren’t in alignment, you’re trying to put a square peg in a round hole.

What are your thoughts on diversity? Is that a value or is that part of a culture?

That’s a big topic.

You’re certainly qualified to answer that topic of how important it is. Why is it important? Anything you want to talk about on that, I’d be fascinated to hear.

I was invited to a dinner put on by women who lead. The big question that we were discussing in that dinner was Women on Boards. There was an initiative, Women on Boards 2020. The idea was to get to 20% because there really hasn’t been a diversity on boards of all kinds. The 2020 goal has been achieved. The goal is to go higher. The question is what do you mean by diversity? Everybody means something different.

Let’s take a very top line definition that it’s not a bunch of white guys over a certain age running the whole show.

Even if we talk about gender diversity, never mind all of the cultural diversity. Any board would benefit to having a broad range of diversity from people from different cultures. If you just take the gender diversity, it brings a much richer conversation. One of my initiatives for 2018 is to be on manufacturing or distribution company boards. I feel that at this stage in my life, looking at the next chapter, I have so much to offer a board and I never thought about it before. Recognizing that there’s so much emphasis on Women on Boards. I thought maybe it’s time. I’ve been in business for so long and I never really thought about being a woman. I did what I had to do. I’ve never pulled that card so to speak.

[bctt tweet=”A conscious leader is one that is effectively flexible.” username=”John_Livesay”]

Let’s double click on manufacturing and double click on distribution company so that people have a clear example of each one.

I bought a part of a company that had a unique design like Gucci Watch with interchangeable faces and interchangeable materials around the face, like wood or leather. One of my reps went into Sears, and this was in Toronto, and we’re supposed to have an appointment with someone from Sears. I said, “I think I should go instead of you.” I was young and he said to me, “You’ve never sold anything, aren’t you afraid to go in and see this buyer?” I said, “It’s my company and I have to pay the rent every month, so I think I should learn something.” I went in to see the buyer. I asked him a question that no one had ever asked him the ten years that he was a buyer. I said, “What do you need?”

The simplest of questions. He said, “I know exactly what I want but nobody wants to make these because I think they’re shocked.” He pulled out a picture from a gift show. It was a California sunset with a screen print to dial in the corner and a quartz movement. He said, “Can you make these?” I said, “Sure, no problem.” He said, “Come back in two weeks with six samples.” I called him a couple of days later. I said, “I’d like to make an appointment to do a site visit with you next week.” I picked him up and we went to a rehabilitation center that I had engaged. There were my clocks, rolling off the conveyor belt. He looked at me and said, “I didn’t expect this. What’s your plan?” I really grew my company from that moment to supplying 67% of Sears’ clocks. I supplied all the other catalog in Canada.

In addition, I flew down to Chicago and ended up having a reciprocal licensing agreement with the largest US clock manufacturer to import their clocks in pieces into Canada to avoid the 12.5% duty. That’s manufacturing. You have to be resourceful, you have to pivot and you have to be lean. I was into lean before lean was laying. I had two infomercial companies. Distribution can mean all kinds of things. In my case, it was having a very popular infomercial and then having to fulfill the product by media, etc. I’ve got a ton of that experience.

One of the chapters in your book is The Power of Why. Can you expand on that for us?

The best way to explain that is to talk about how I wrote the book. My initial idea of writing the book was to talk about how lonely it was at the top. That had always been my experience. I found half of the CEOs that I spoke to, I spoke to 50 from around the world, weren’t lonely at the top. The reason was they were in peer groups. They felt that they had that ability to share and get advice from their peers. The other half worked in peer groups and they were remote. Even though they wanted to be in a peer group, they were two hours out in Dublin or two hours out of Boston. It was too much work to be in a peer group. I asked him another question which was, “What’s your greatest challenge at this time?” My book was written as a distillation of the 40 challenges that I heard. Can you imagine 50 CEOs and I heard 40 challenges?

[bctt tweet=”Each one has their own version on how to use resources and when to use resources.” username=”John_Livesay”]

Each one had their own version on how to use resources, when to use resources and how to overcome people challenges or communication challenges. At the core of it, your why is your engine that allows you to overcome challenges. If you have a strong enough why, it’s at the core of getting up in the morning and being able to overcome whatever obstacle in your path. If you don’t have a strong why, I think either you’d be depressed or you want to give up.

Let’s play a little bit like we’re having a private conversation that people are eavesdropping in on. What you’re saying is a much deeper why. It’s not about just making money so I can support myself or my family. You’re talking about more of what’s your personal mission. I’ve put a lot of time and thought into this. I used to be on the self-esteem rollercoaster, being in sales for a large part of my career. I’m only feeling good about myself if my numbers are up, and bad about myself if my numbers are down.

I thought there’s got to be a better way to separate that. Who I am is bigger than my results. That’s what caused me to write my first book. That’s what gets me up and motivated to go out and speak to companies’ sales teams, is to get them off that self-esteem rollercoaster. I know if I can help other people get off of it, then there’ll be able to handle bad quotas, bad numbers, or getting laid off. That might be useful to the listeners and I certainly welcome your input on it, if you think that’s a good example of a why.

It’s a good example. Is this a story that you would tell someone if you first met them? That’s part of what’s important.

If somebody was interested in getting to know me, I certainly would talk about that.

TSP 171 | Accelerate Success

Accelerate Success: Sharing your why is a personal thing. Nobody wants to share their core vulnerability.

That’s one of the ways you can tell that that’s really why. I want to share a story of a why with you. I belong to a networking group. It’s called ProVisors that were all professional advisors to CEOs. There used to be this gentleman who would stand up and talk about all of his certifications. He was a trust attorney. Every time I heard him stand up and say these things, the fifteenth time I rolled my eyes because I’ve heard that before. I said to him one time, “Why do you do this? I would be so much more inspired to hear why you do this.” He said, “Let me think about that.” Sometimes when you share your why, it’s really a personal thing, nobody wants to share their core vulnerability.

He stood up in another meeting where I was doing a why exercise with people. He mentioned that I challenged him to share his why and this was his first time sharing it. This was his story. When he was in law school, his parents dragged him to a trust attorney. It was a Friday and his parents were organizing their trust. A couple of months later, they left on a holiday and they were on the Pan Am plane that crashed. He spent the next two years trying to unravel their probate.

The reason he felt that happened even though they went to a trust attorney was that the trust attorney maybe did divorces on Monday and bankruptcies on Tuesday. Friday was his trusting. The reason these certifications were so important to him was because he felt that he never wants anybody to go through the pain that he went through. Imagine how people looked at him after he shared that. The one thing you can be sure of was that that man really cared about giving you excellent service.

If you’ve been there yourself, you have such empathy for people that they are drawn to you.

That’s why your why makes a lot of sense for you to share that because not everybody’s on that rollercoaster. It makes you much more likable and much more relatable. I don’t think there’s a sales person alive that doesn’t go through mornings where they wonder if they can still do it.

The burnout factor. You talk about in your book becoming the leaders that others want to follow. Simon even wrote about that at the foreword. It’s such a well-thought out structured book. I highly recommend it to people. In order for someone to lead, people have to follow you. It’s not about authority. What do you think is one of the key elements to becoming a leader that other people want to follow?

There are so many definitions of different kinds of leadership. There are authentic leaders, there are servant leaders, so many different kinds. The most important thing is to be a conscious leader.

Let’s distinguish. You mentioned someone else being a servant leader that took over someone who is authoritative. What’s your definition of a servant leader? We’ll dive into conscious leader after.

I would say a few words. A servant leader, you would say to people, “What obstacles are you facing and how can I remove them?” Servant leaders seem to focus on that. Authentic leaders seem to focus on being very transparent. A conscious leader to me would know when to be what, when you need to be a servant, when you need to be authentic. You can’t be one thing all the time. It’s like situational leadership.

There’s a little bit of fluidity that’s happening in the personality and the style. A conscious leader is all about effective flexibility. Are there any last thoughts that you want to leave us on leadership or the importance of why or how did you discover it?

[bctt tweet=”Think about what would make today a museum day, the kind of day you’d like to see if you had a museum of your life.” username=”John_Livesay”]

Why is a journey. You can’t just sit down one day and discover your why. It takes a little time to sit in the question. When people get uptight about whether or not they know their why, what I would tell people is live every day on purpose. Don’t just let life go by you. Think about what would make today, what John Strelecky and I call a museum day, the kind of day you’d like to see if you had a museum of your life. What is special?

I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan visiting a friend. I went to the Gerald Ford Museum. I’d never been to a presidential museum before. If you think of that as an example, we all can’t be CEOs or presidents, but if someone wants to make a museum of your life, that’s what you’re talking about, those key elements.

One of the things that my children mentioned to me is that I don’t like gifts necessarily. I like experiences.

How can we follow you on social media? How can people reach out to you if they want to have you on the board for their manufacturing or distribution company?

I have a very unique name so on Twitter it’s @Frumi, on LinkedIn it’s Frumi Rachel Barr and Scaling4Growth.com. [email protected], if anyone wants to send me an email. I love talking to people.

You’ve been a delight to talk to. Thanks for sharing your insights on why, leadership and conscious leadership.

Thank you. I love being here and I liked our conversation.

Thanks.

 

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Tags: accelerate success, CEO's secret weapon, conscious leader, core values, culture