Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: All right, Over two hundred of his guitars are being
Speaker 2: auctioned off from his five decades and playing them with
Speaker 2: iconic bands on iconic songs. It's all happening at the
Speaker 2: Julian's Auctions Music Icon Sale happening at the Hard Rock
Speaker 2: Cafe in New York City next week. He is an icon.
Speaker 2: You just heard the music as a founding member of
Speaker 2: Bachman Turner Overdrive BTO and the guests who I've got
Speaker 2: to say, my brother George, I was texting earlier. He
Speaker 2: would be go crazy. I grew up with six siblings
Speaker 2: and so there's always music on the house, including Bachman
Speaker 2: Turner Overdrive with us is Randy Bachman. He's doing us
Speaker 2: here in our Bloomberg Interreactive Burger Studio. Truly truly grew
Speaker 2: up with it. Love it.
Speaker 3: How are you good? And I'm happy?
Speaker 2: Oh? Happy is a good thing?
Speaker 3: You happy to be here? We couldn't go any for
Speaker 3: three years.
Speaker 4: I'm happy to get out of us, not mean to
Speaker 4: go to the grocery store.
Speaker 3: Amen.
Speaker 2: Amen, we all assume that being in, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of walking around your shoes, having lived your life, the
Speaker 2: bands you've been in, the iconic songs that still resonate
Speaker 2: with so many of us today, that you've lived a
Speaker 2: pretty amazing life and are still living it. Is that fair?
Speaker 4: Well, there's two there's a flip side to the coin, okay,
Speaker 4: And I have to tell you this happens with a
Speaker 4: lot of us when the gig is done and the
Speaker 4: thousands of screaming, Yeah, you're in a car with a
Speaker 4: bunch of guys where you've been on the road for
Speaker 4: two months and you don't really like each other anymore,
Speaker 4: and everyone else is going home with their loved one
Speaker 4: to a snuggly home bed and the kids with a
Speaker 4: babysitter and the fireplace burning, and you're all alone on
Speaker 4: the damn road for thirty sixty ninety days. And it's
Speaker 4: that's the flip side. The other side is wonderful. It's
Speaker 4: your teenage dream. You want to believe like Jimmy Hendricks
Speaker 4: or the Beatles, er Lady Gag or whatever you want
Speaker 4: to be. You go and be that because you have
Speaker 4: this little talent that you've been given as a kid,
Speaker 4: and it's really amazing when you get to do what
Speaker 4: you want and make a living at it, that's the good.
Speaker 3: Side of it, and be really successful. As what the
Speaker 3: travelers killer.
Speaker 5: What was the point for you that it sort of
Speaker 5: shifted from living out that teenage dream to feeling like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I want to be home.
Speaker 3: It happens every tour. It happens to David.
Speaker 5: But did it happen earlier teenage dream?
Speaker 3: Now I'm here on this great thing. I'm plugging my
Speaker 3: guitar sale.
Speaker 5: But look to be fair, you know, Carol asked where
Speaker 5: your home base is and you said an airplane. You're
Speaker 5: traveling a ton still, yeah, yeah, all right, yeah, it wasn't.
Speaker 4: You get home, you get anxious to go in the room,
Speaker 4: and you get on the road, you get anxious to
Speaker 4: go home. If you ask an actor do you like
Speaker 4: movies or stage? They say yes, You're like one or
Speaker 4: the other each time, and you've got to do kind
Speaker 4: of both to be fully rounded. You can't make a
Speaker 4: living in this business and can't be an athlete and
Speaker 4: play a home game every all the time.
Speaker 3: You got to go away.
Speaker 4: So all these glamorous gig you guys are getting hundred
Speaker 4: millions of dollars to play baseball. There's a downside, but yeah,
Speaker 4: the episode's big.
Speaker 2: Now we feel that sometimes, right. We love travel, we
Speaker 2: love our jobs, but you know, it's nice to be
Speaker 2: home and we love that. We're gonna talk about the
Speaker 2: auction in the moment, but I want to ask you.
Speaker 2: In researching, we came across that Elvis Presley's motto taking
Speaker 2: care of Business was inspired by your band song Have
Speaker 2: you heard this?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: I was a big fan of Elvis. I played classical
Speaker 4: violin from the age of five to fourteen, and I
Speaker 4: got tired of playing classical music audition for the Winnipeg
Speaker 4: School Junior Symphony and flunked.
Speaker 3: Quit playing, went home.
Speaker 4: That's it playing. I'm never playing the violin again. The
Speaker 4: next day I saw Elvis on television and said, what
Speaker 4: is that. Oh, it's called rock and roll. That's called
Speaker 4: the guitar, and that's called Elvis. All you play on
Speaker 4: violin is melody. You're playing the guitar line. So my
Speaker 4: cousins had a guitar. I got their guitar. I could
Speaker 4: play everything because I was playing violin by ear, even
Speaker 4: the classical music. My teacher played first Tchaikovski or Chopin,
Speaker 4: and I would play it. So I start playing lead
Speaker 4: guitar boom, and then I'm in the guests who and
Speaker 4: then here I am. Because of Elvis. A few years ago,
Speaker 4: after he passed away, Priscilla was doing an HBO special
Speaker 4: in Graceland.
Speaker 3: She said, oh yeah.
Speaker 4: We were driving to the LA airport to fly back
Speaker 4: to Memphis, and Elvis heard a song on the radio
Speaker 4: by a Canadian band, taking Care of Business. He went, Boom,
Speaker 4: I want that TCB lightning bolt right away, but a
Speaker 4: big butter boom, and that became his model for his band.
Speaker 4: It's on his tombstone. Nobody else can use that. I
Speaker 4: wrote the song I can use taking care of Business.
Speaker 4: He can use it.
Speaker 2: And that's pretty cool.
Speaker 4: I have a buddy. He was waiting somewhere for me
Speaker 4: to show up. Incredible, Well dude singing taking care of
Speaker 4: business together?
Speaker 5: Okay, not too soon.
Speaker 2: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 5: The auction is something we want.
Speaker 3: To talk about.
Speaker 5: Two hundred guitars, stove of a couple hundred, That's that's
Speaker 5: what I want.
Speaker 3: How many pairs of shoes do you have in your closet?
Speaker 3: You don't know, I don't know how many guitars I have.
Speaker 2: I don't even tell my husband. No, it's interesting. My
Speaker 2: husband also plays guitar, not you know, but a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. But it's like you can never have enough guitars, right,
Speaker 2: what is that?
Speaker 3: How many shoes do you have? All?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: You know what it's done.
Speaker 2: You don't even have to justify. So why are you
Speaker 2: selling even some of them?
Speaker 3: I had four?
Speaker 4: When you travel, I wanted to be like Chuck Berry
Speaker 4: or a lot of these other guys. You have a
Speaker 4: home in London, a home in la so you don't
Speaker 4: have We're sick of motels. You'll drive three or hundred
Speaker 4: nights to sleep in your own bed for a couple
Speaker 4: of hours. So I home in London, Covent Garden, Santa Monica, Toronto,
Speaker 4: outside of Toronto, Oakfield and Victoria, can't go to them
Speaker 4: shut down for three or four you you can't go
Speaker 4: to your home. You sell everything, ship it to me.
Speaker 4: You end up with four lawnmowers, four toasters, hundreds of
Speaker 4: knives and forks, and hundreds of guitars all coming to
Speaker 4: your house. You got to rent a storage space and
Speaker 4: you can't see them. They're all in the storage, so
Speaker 4: you've got to open the door and go in and
Speaker 4: look at your stuff in storage.
Speaker 3: So it was time to sell it.
Speaker 5: These guitars, though each one of them has a story, A.
Speaker 3: Lot of these do a lot of them.
Speaker 4: My American Woman nineteen fifty nine less Paul is a
Speaker 4: rare guitar. To begin with, they only made a couple
Speaker 4: hundred each year, and the fifty eight to fifteen, nine
Speaker 4: and sixty are very rare because they were the last
Speaker 4: time they made it with a certain glue that when
Speaker 4: they put the neck in the body, that glue permeated
Speaker 4: the wood in the pores and then petrified. The guitar
Speaker 4: has this brain and it's very heavy. Guitar weighs fifteen pounds.
Speaker 4: You imagine that on your shoulder for four hours every day.
Speaker 4: You end up doing this all the time. It's just
Speaker 4: dynamic tension. Your muscles do that. And I had to
Speaker 4: get a lighter guitar. But I played that one sitting down.
Speaker 4: But it's the sound of an American woman.
Speaker 3: And no time.
Speaker 4: All the guests who hits and a lot of bto
Speaker 4: guitar solos were that guitar. I just didn't play it
Speaker 4: on stage. Was too heavy to stand up. So then
Speaker 4: I start to play strat Fender stratocaster. So the two
Speaker 4: white strats I used with bt Or, they're their number
Speaker 4: one guitars. They played on You Ain't See Nothing Yet,
Speaker 4: Let It Ride. My Les Paul was American Woman, No Time.
Speaker 4: So these are iconic guitars that have played a number
Speaker 4: one singles and then all the albums on both sides
Speaker 4: of it. So I'm hoping they get a good home,
Speaker 4: because sooner or later you leave home, or your kids
Speaker 4: leave home.
Speaker 3: My kids are leaving home.
Speaker 2: They don't necessarily hope.
Speaker 3: Somebody adopts them.
Speaker 4: And the American home guitar is bought by Slash or
Speaker 4: Lenny Kravitz, who deserve it, and it has another hit
Speaker 4: it plays.
Speaker 2: Has anybody reached out to you?
Speaker 4: There's a magic in these guitars. We just picked them up.
Speaker 4: They were traveling with us all day playing them. And
Speaker 4: when you plug it and play it, you've heard the
Speaker 4: sound before, even though its strange to you, you've heard
Speaker 4: it on the radio so many times. Even the rhythm
Speaker 4: to Let It Ride and things like that. There's there's
Speaker 4: a king when you hear.
Speaker 2: It, but when you when you play it, again. Is
Speaker 2: there any part of you that's like, maybe I don't
Speaker 2: want to let it go.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They were handing for me one at a time last
Speaker 4: that it was a little showcase, and I go, see,
Speaker 4: I don't want to sell this, but I haven't played
Speaker 4: it for eleven years.
Speaker 3: I'll probably never played for another eleven years.
Speaker 4: It's time for it to get a new It's flying
Speaker 4: for somebody to play them, you.
Speaker 2: Know, right, rather that than they're sitting in their cases,
Speaker 2: right yeah, in a storage room or in your home, the.
Speaker 4: Legal lawyer's library. They don't go to the books anymore.
Speaker 4: It's all on the computer. But it's just like the guitars.
Speaker 4: You can't get to the guitars. They're all in storage.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable. Randy sittit. We're going to come back, Like I said, Doe,
Speaker 2: a little.
Speaker 6: Bit of news.
Speaker 2: We're talking with Randy Bachman. He's founding member you know
Speaker 2: this a Bachman Turner Overdrive. Also the guests who here
Speaker 2: in our studio. We're going to talk a little bit
Speaker 2: more about Julian's auctions Music Icon sale. It's happening May
Speaker 2: twenty ninth, May thirtieth, next week, live at the hard
Speaker 2: Rock Cafe in New York City. So you can actually
Speaker 2: own kind of a piece of an icon. So we're
Speaker 2: going to talk a little bit more about that. This
Speaker 2: is Bloomberg Business We Carol Master Tim Stenovik, and this
Speaker 2: is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Meser and
Speaker 1: Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio and Television.
Speaker 2: All right, everybody, we're talking with Randy Bachman, founding member
Speaker 2: of Bachman Turner Overdrive and the guests who because he's
Speaker 2: got an auction coming up, Julian's Auctions Music Icon Sale.
Speaker 2: He's got over two hundred or roughly two hundred guitars
Speaker 2: in that auction, and that's happening May twenty ninth and
Speaker 2: May thirtieth at the hard Rock Cafe in New York City.
Speaker 2: Having said that, you need to share with our audience
Speaker 2: about the lost guitar, tell us about that.
Speaker 5: It's one guitar that will not be auctioned off.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 4: I just got it back after being gone forty seven,
Speaker 4: forty eight years. Oh, it was stolen from a hotel
Speaker 4: in Toronto or doing a bto album there.
Speaker 3: It vanished.
Speaker 4: There's no internet then, so I had to fax all
Speaker 4: the guitar stores. I ended up in a frenzy buying
Speaker 4: Gretch guitars. I went through my midlife crisis buying Gretz guitars.
Speaker 4: I masked over three hundred and finally sold them to
Speaker 4: Fred Gretch. It became the Fred the Gretch Museum in Savannah, Geork.
Speaker 3: Joe I believe.
Speaker 4: But this one that was stolen I kept searching for
Speaker 4: and we got a notice back a couple years ago.
Speaker 4: Tall and I my son were doing Back When, Back
Speaker 4: When train Wreck every Friday night on YouTube because there
Speaker 4: were no gigs, and the guy said, I found your
Speaker 4: Gretch guitar. It was in Tokyo with a guy named Takeshi,
Speaker 4: was like the Brian Setser of playing rockabilly on this
Speaker 4: big orange gretch. Yes, and my daughter in law is Japanese,
Speaker 4: so she set up assuming them translated everything he offered
Speaker 4: the guitar back, I went and founded Sister Guitar from
Speaker 4: the same year. Two digits off in the serial number
Speaker 4: so I could trade him a like guitar. We couldn't
Speaker 4: go to Tokyo, but the Canadian bassor said, I'll get
Speaker 4: you as a diplomat. You don't have to do two
Speaker 4: weeks of isolation, being COVID tested every day, their Canada
Speaker 4: offered free tickets. It was like everybody doing a good deed.
Speaker 3: For this guitar. And we went there.
Speaker 4: They wouldn't let me meet Takeshi or see my guitar until
Speaker 4: I walked on stage on Canada Day July, the first
Speaker 4: in the Canadian Consulate. So to the filming, this is
Speaker 4: being a film. They wanted to see my face when
Speaker 4: I saw this guitar. It's like if your childhood bike
Speaker 4: or your dog got run over by a truck and
Speaker 4: then somebody later came to, well, your dog had poppies,
Speaker 4: and here's a poppy and it's just like your dog.
Speaker 4: It's Skippy is back, right, So get my guitar up.
Speaker 3: Skippy it was back.
Speaker 4: They filmed it, and it's going to be a film
Speaker 4: coming out very soon being edited.
Speaker 5: Right now, it's Netflix.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe if they Midhei.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, well will you come back when it's
Speaker 2: when it's I will.
Speaker 4: That'll be a whole different story. That's the guitar I've
Speaker 4: gotten at home. It was number one guitar with the
Speaker 4: guests Who and Beto with all their hits and albums
Speaker 4: and maybe I'll have a number one again on Rotten
Speaker 4: Tomatoes or something when the film comes out. But my
Speaker 4: son and I cut an album that's coming out. That's
Speaker 4: the soundtrack to the movie of the Lost Guitar.
Speaker 3: You never know, you never know. It might be my
Speaker 3: magic Feather, might be my Dumbo. You can fly. Here's
Speaker 3: your magic Guitar. Another hit song.
Speaker 2: Do you have a favorite hit song of your own?
Speaker 4: I think it might have to be taking Care of Business.
Speaker 4: I've had many teachers come to me that teach handicapped kids,
Speaker 4: altruistic kids, very advanced kids, and to get all their
Speaker 4: attention in the morning, they always play taking care of Business.
Speaker 3: All these little kids were attention deficit or whatever. And
Speaker 3: also guys going in desert.
Speaker 4: Storm in their tanks to battle, playing taking care of
Speaker 4: Business or playing American women in their tanks. They're going
Speaker 4: to fight. When the Canadian astronaut was in there, he
Speaker 4: played taking care of Business. But then we got to
Speaker 4: say that song thanks to Elvis and me.
Speaker 2: He's like, wow, gotta feel pretty cool about this. Got
Speaker 2: thirty forty seconds left here. What do you want people
Speaker 2: to know about the auction?
Speaker 4: Well, there's guitars, some of them are on split display at.
Speaker 3: The hard Rock.
Speaker 4: You can't afford a guitar, Go down to the camera,
Speaker 4: take a picture of the guitar. Some of they're going
Speaker 4: to sell for millions of dollars. The fifty nine that's Paul.
Speaker 4: They're all going Mark and Authers went for one point
Speaker 4: four million pounds or something like that.
Speaker 3: This was a replica reissue. Mine's a real one from
Speaker 3: fifty nine.
Speaker 2: Are you okay that you stopped playing violin and went
Speaker 2: this way?
Speaker 4: Really? I actually get beat up with the violin my
Speaker 4: army Saturday morning, and all the guys would beat me up.
Speaker 4: Here's the sissy going through his five in. Listen, we're
Speaker 4: playing hockey. It's winter peg right.
Speaker 2: It's not sissy. It's pretty amazing. Come back. You're welcome
Speaker 2: back in here.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks, good luck.
Speaker 2: On the tour. Thanks yeah, stay safe.
Speaker 5: Come back hang out with us again.
Speaker 3: I love hanging out with you guys. You're really happy.
Speaker 2: Randy Open he's founding member of Bachman, Turner, Overdrive and
Speaker 2: the guests who check out Julian's auction. As we said,
Speaker 2: May twenty ninth and May thirtieth at the hard Rock
Speaker 2: in New York City.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week Inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business, finance and tech news. As it happened This
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Meser and Tim Stenebeck on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 5: It is Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 2: That's Carol.
Speaker 5: I'm Tim.
Speaker 2: Hi, Hi, just getting my notes, Carol.
Speaker 5: Little bit of news today in the world of executive transition. Yes,
Speaker 5: James Gorman is going to seed his role at Morgan
Speaker 5: Stanley as chairman at the end of the year. He's
Speaker 5: going to cap at nearly two decade run at the firm,
Speaker 5: in which he rescued it from the brink of failure
Speaker 5: turned it into a wealth management powerhouse. Remember Gorman was
Speaker 5: CEO until January. That's when Ted Pick took over.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, this is Ty Wiggins world. His job is
Speaker 2: to guide CEOs through their first year two year and
Speaker 2: a half. He writes in his new book that he's
Speaker 2: part coach, part cheerleader, a venting partner, a challenger and
Speaker 2: an advisor. I feel like I want to hire him,
Speaker 2: but anyway.
Speaker 5: Or it sounds like a pretty cool job. Actually, the
Speaker 5: new book is called The New CEO Lessons from CEOs
Speaker 5: on how to start well and perform quickly minus the
Speaker 5: common mistakes. Ty's also global lead and CEO and Global
Speaker 5: lead of CEO and Executive Transition Practice over at Russell
Speaker 5: Reynolds Associates. It's an executive search form. He joins us
Speaker 5: from the UK, Ty, good to have you with us.
Speaker 5: Congratulations to you and the team on the new book. Look,
Speaker 5: CEOs they're few and far between. There aren't that many
Speaker 5: of them, there's only one at each company. So what
Speaker 5: do you want non CEOs to get out of this book?
Speaker 7: No, thanks, Tim, Carol.
Speaker 6: I think non CEOs, you know, the opportunity in the
Speaker 6: book here is to understand the pressures and the challenges
Speaker 6: that CEOs go through in their transition.
Speaker 7: And I think if you're a senior leader or an executive.
Speaker 6: At an organization that's undergoing the CEO transition, the book
Speaker 6: will give you insight into how to best support and
Speaker 6: also slot in with the with the new CEO.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, talk to us about who you talked
Speaker 2: to for this book to get some insight, and you
Speaker 2: know what is so important about maybe those first few days,
Speaker 2: first few weeks, first few months for a CEO on
Speaker 2: the job because I got to say, I feel like
Speaker 2: CEOs move around a lot as of late, and especially
Speaker 2: if it's a publicly held company and the stock isn't
Speaker 2: doing well, activists around out there or media is all
Speaker 2: over it, and there's a lot of pressure.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Now, in terms of the book, interviewed close to forty
Speaker 6: CEOs and then had the opportunity to speak to CEOs
Speaker 6: such as from On the Guider of PepsiCo and Huntspsburg
Speaker 6: of Verizon, Carol Tomato of UPS, and a string of
Speaker 6: others that are so cited in the book. You're right,
Speaker 6: CEO tenures are decreasing, which puts pressure on this early
Speaker 6: period in order to get a good start, and I
Speaker 6: think some of the early actions that CEOs take need
Speaker 6: to be really well thought through. We know that some
Speaker 6: key factors are the state of the business that they inherit,
Speaker 6: how quickly they assemble the right senior leadership team around them,
Speaker 6: and importantly what the former CEO does and how that
Speaker 6: individual leaves the organization.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, Carol share with us though in some of
Speaker 2: the conversations that you had with CEOs. All of the
Speaker 2: companies that we named, whether it was UPS, or some others.
Speaker 2: You know that these are very well known, certainly to
Speaker 2: the Bloomberg audience. You know, what did you what did
Speaker 2: you get from them about that first year?
Speaker 6: Well, a lot of humility, which was which was really
Speaker 6: good to hear. I mean, these are great CEOs, as
Speaker 6: you've mentioned, and you know, some of them came internally
Speaker 6: within the organization, and I think there was a common
Speaker 6: thread around how difficult the CEO role is, how there's
Speaker 6: no real sandbox for it in terms of getting ready.
Speaker 7: It's a shock.
Speaker 6: We've talked about the loneliness a lot across different medias,
Speaker 6: and it's an actual it's an actual issue for a
Speaker 6: lot of CEOs.
Speaker 7: And the responsibility.
Speaker 6: You know, when I asked what the best and worst
Speaker 6: part about being a CEO is, often the answers are same.
Speaker 6: The responsibility. You know, these are individuals that want the responsibility,
Speaker 6: that want to lead, They want to have an impact
Speaker 6: on the organization in their community, but they also feel
Speaker 6: the weight of that responsibility in terms of being responsible
Speaker 6: for the financials. But also you know, there are employees,
Speaker 6: their employees, families, et cetera. In terms of the market
Speaker 6: and the communities that they lead.
Speaker 2: What do you think about like those CEOs that are
Speaker 2: at a company leave and then they come back, and
Speaker 2: I think of someone like a Michael Eisner.
Speaker 5: The Boomerang CEOs, the boomer Rang But you know Revere,
Speaker 5: I mean a Boger.
Speaker 2: Like a Bob Iger, you know Disney Revered more like
Speaker 2: a Howard Schultz or a Howard Schultz right come back
Speaker 2: and you know their track record was incredible when they left,
Speaker 2: certainly boy byger right people you know, held them up
Speaker 2: really high, and then came back into a situation where
Speaker 2: the company was under some pressure because of its streaming
Speaker 2: pivot and so on and so forth. You know, is
Speaker 2: he like kind of starting from scratch again a little
Speaker 2: bit because some of the dynamics have changed. I just
Speaker 2: I'm curious if you have a thought about or Howard Schultz,
Speaker 2: those company those CEOs. We talked to John Mackey yesterday
Speaker 2: of Whole Foods, you know, who.
Speaker 5: Stepped through more than forty years, right, but stepped.
Speaker 2: Back sometimes had a co CEO byby that was more
Speaker 2: out in front. Like I just wonder your thoughts on that.
Speaker 7: I think it's you know, to have CEO return.
Speaker 6: You know, depending on the individual and the organization, it
Speaker 6: can represent a number of things in terms of, you know,
Speaker 6: a succession that hasn't been successful, it obviously shows a
Speaker 6: passion and a love for the organization to come back.
Speaker 6: You know, in many cases, it's disruptive depending on the
Speaker 6: time period, you know, because we do expect the new
Speaker 6: CEO to see the world differently and to take a new,
Speaker 6: long term.
Speaker 7: View of the organization.
Speaker 6: So if there are changes that need to be reversed,
Speaker 6: that could be a little bit unsettling. But I think
Speaker 6: for the individuals involved, you know, I think if they're
Speaker 6: leaving at the right time in their career, then you know,
Speaker 6: I think it's less than ideal for them to need
Speaker 6: to return. But you know, each individual case will be different.
Speaker 5: Ty, We've heard criticisms about boards being too close to
Speaker 5: their CEOs. Tesla, for example, one of the board members
Speaker 5: there is Kimball Musk, Elon Musk's brother.
Speaker 2: Should you don't have a board member who has the
Speaker 2: same last name as you?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's good, it's a good question. I mean, should
Speaker 5: should the boards too close to their CEO? Shouldn't they
Speaker 5: be more independent from one another? They're supposed to keep
Speaker 5: them honest.
Speaker 6: Right, absolutely, I mean the board, the board role is
Speaker 6: crucial to the governance of the organization, and they do
Speaker 6: play a specific role in One of those key roles
Speaker 6: that they play is to hire and fire the CEO,
Speaker 6: And so this is you know, any CEO transition lands
Speaker 6: heavily on the board as well as all groups of
Speaker 6: individuals and and you know, within organizations, it can be
Speaker 6: quite a challenge to continue to maintain that independence, especially
Speaker 6: when you have a very successful, very dominant CEO.
Speaker 5: Should CEOs be allowed to serve as chairs of boards
Speaker 5: in your opinion.
Speaker 6: Well, I think it's common practice in a lot of organizations,
Speaker 6: especially in the United States.
Speaker 7: In other countries it's less common.
Speaker 6: I think as long as there is an independent, you know,
Speaker 6: senior director to provide that counsel, that support and that challenge,
Speaker 6: it does allow CEOs to move with greater pace. So
Speaker 6: if the organization is in trouble, then that allows for
Speaker 6: quicker decision making. But I think that, you know, if
Speaker 6: we look at the independence that we require, there's a
Speaker 6: argument for the CEO to be separate to the chair role.
Speaker 2: Just get about a minute. Then we're going to come
Speaker 2: back and continue the conversation. Having said that, is there
Speaker 2: a common mistake in talking to CEOs that you find
Speaker 2: that they all say, this is the one I made.
Speaker 2: Is there a common mistake among them, especially in that early,
Speaker 2: those early months or that early first year, year and
Speaker 2: a half.
Speaker 6: It's the common mistake is generally around something that they
Speaker 6: say in a fairly public environment or an early action
Speaker 6: that they make without enough context and without enough information.
Speaker 6: And this is a question that comes up a lot,
Speaker 6: and the answer is, really it's any mistake that causes
Speaker 6: the board to doubt and to where you might lose
Speaker 6: the confidence of the board, because that obviously significally impacts
Speaker 6: your tenure and your ability to deliver along the term.
Speaker 5: John Mackie talked to us about this yesterday is two
Speaker 5: thousand and nine op at about Obamacare on the Wall
Speaker 5: Street Journal. He was hiking and he got this panicked
Speaker 5: call it's in the book from the board. And after
Speaker 5: that he said, you know, the board said basically shut
Speaker 5: him down when it came to talking about that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't share your opinions on this stuff.
Speaker 5: It's really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to get back to Ty Wiggins, author
Speaker 2: of the new CEO Lessons from CEOs on how to
Speaker 2: start well and perform quickly minus the common mistakes. He's
Speaker 2: also global lead of CEO and Executive Transition Practice at
Speaker 2: Russell Reynolds Associates, an executive search firm. He's still with
Speaker 2: us from the UK. Hey, you know this kind of
Speaker 2: spoke to us. There is a section of the book
Speaker 2: about dealing with the street and here we are, you know,
Speaker 2: coming off an earning season, but we're always thinking about
Speaker 2: the next one. But you do talk about Mark Klaus
Speaker 2: who was CEO at Pinnacle before joining Campbell's, and just
Speaker 2: the level of engagement and communicating with investors when he
Speaker 2: got to campbell. I mean that's that can be a
Speaker 2: big thing and kind of a real eye opener, right
Speaker 2: for CEOs who are early and on the job.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, unless you've been a CIO or a CFO and
Speaker 6: had you know, extensive experience, the investor relations will be
Speaker 6: fairly new and it's a challenging period of time. You know,
Speaker 6: the people will often underestimate the amount of preparation that
Speaker 6: goes into delivering results and doing the investor road shows
Speaker 6: and you know, trying to form that relationship really early
Speaker 6: to get buy into you know, what you're planning to
Speaker 6: do and what you're thinking about doing. So you know,
Speaker 6: this is where it's really important that you surround yourself
Speaker 6: with with good IR people and you know, people to
Speaker 6: support you in those conversations. And you know, if it's
Speaker 6: early in your tenure that you deliver results, then you
Speaker 6: have a little bit of grace and you should take
Speaker 6: full advantage of that.
Speaker 5: Okay, I want to play off grace a little bit
Speaker 5: because I was when preparing for this book and for
Speaker 5: this interview, I thought about the CEO stories that we've
Speaker 5: covered over the years, and it does seem like there
Speaker 5: was a spade a couple of years ago twenty eighteen,
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen where we had a lot of episodes of
Speaker 5: CEOs behaving badly, a lot of male CEOs having affairs
Speaker 5: with women who reported to them, and there were some
Speaker 5: very prominent examples of that. And I'm wondering if you
Speaker 5: think it happens more at the executive level, or like,
Speaker 5: is this something that I mean, it seemed kind of
Speaker 5: a little wild to me that we saw people get
Speaker 5: to these levels in companies and then they would have
Speaker 5: such public downfalls by making what seemed like a really
Speaker 5: really silly mistake.
Speaker 6: Look, it's I don't know whether i'd argue it's happening
Speaker 6: more or less. I think it's certainly disappointing when that
Speaker 6: is the outcome. Well, that is the behavior that we
Speaker 6: see from the leaders at the top of the organization.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 6: One of the things that stands out for CEO is
Speaker 6: when I talk to them about what's the most important
Speaker 6: thing that they focus on, it's inevitably culture. You know,
Speaker 6: this is the one thing that whilst there's lots of
Speaker 6: people that support it. As CEO, you can't delegate that.
Speaker 6: So you are the masthead for the organization and how
Speaker 6: you behave and act and what you say, you know,
Speaker 6: is disproportionate in its effect to the culture of the organization.
Speaker 7: And you have a culture.
Speaker 6: Which is not conducive to where you want to take
Speaker 6: the organization. You know, your performance and the organization's performance
Speaker 6: will really struggle.
Speaker 2: Hey, one of the things that we wanted to get
Speaker 2: into and Tim is and are prepping for this, Tim,
Speaker 2: you kind of highlighted this. But executive compensation CEO compensation.
Speaker 2: I mean I think about sometimes when there's a company
Speaker 2: in trouble, right peloton, you know, and you have Barry
Speaker 2: McCarthy comes in, he just stepped down his peloton CEO
Speaker 2: had total compensation one hundred and sixty eight million dollars
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two. To be fair, most of that
Speaker 2: compensation UH ninety nine point seven was option awards are
Speaker 2: tied to the company stock price. But it's a lot
Speaker 2: of money for a company that's you know, got a
Speaker 2: dwindling market cap. I think barely over a billion here
Speaker 2: at this point. You know, it's an like, I hear
Speaker 2: what you like. It can be a tough job. I
Speaker 2: understand there's a lot that comes out of CEO today,
Speaker 2: but it does feel like they're taken care of.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Fortunately, compensation is not an area that I get involved in.
Speaker 6: I know that it's a contested issue. I know that
Speaker 6: the CEOs that I work with certainly are really aware
Speaker 6: of that in terms of their role, you know. And
Speaker 6: you know, it's nice to it's nice to think that
Speaker 6: the people that I work with, especially, you know, this
Speaker 6: is not the driving force for what they're doing, why
Speaker 6: they're doing what they're doing. Oh, and it is really
Speaker 6: about the opportunity to have an impact over such a
Speaker 6: large group of individuals and a responsibility and I guess
Speaker 6: a belief that they can do you know better and
Speaker 6: make improvements and you know, really serve. So you know, again,
Speaker 6: you know, I probably have a privileged group, but that's
Speaker 6: not the key driver for why they're doing what they're doing.
Speaker 5: Forgive me, because I must have a misconception about executive search,
Speaker 5: but I thought compensation was a big part of not
Speaker 5: just how you go out and find folks to do
Speaker 5: these jobs, but also how you actually get paid as
Speaker 5: a result of finding successful fits.
Speaker 7: Hundred percent.
Speaker 6: My role though within our firm, is focused on the
Speaker 6: CEO and executive transition practice. So I don't do the
Speaker 6: search work, and you know, I don't get into those
Speaker 6: conversations with the clients. I come in once they're appointed
Speaker 6: to help them to make sure that they're successful in
Speaker 6: that transition.
Speaker 2: But fair right, it certainly is a lot of the conversations. Hey,
Speaker 2: one of the things I do want to go to
Speaker 2: is chapter eleven. If I could do it all over again,
Speaker 2: and you share a collection of pieces of advice from
Speaker 2: some of the CEOs you talk to. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to put you on the spot in terms of necessarily
Speaker 2: giving you a name like Mark.
Speaker 5: Bitzer of wild Pool, So we speak to him a lot.
Speaker 2: We've talked with him a lot but are there a
Speaker 2: couple of pieces of advice that really just have resonated
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, when people reflect on their time early in their
Speaker 6: CEO role, there's a couple of things that come up,
Speaker 6: you know, most often, the most popular is that they
Speaker 6: would move faster on their executive leadership team. You know,
Speaker 6: being CEO is a role you can't do on your own.
Speaker 6: You must have the right people around and for a
Speaker 6: bunch of reasons, you know, we don't move as quickly
Speaker 6: as necessarily. Our gut is telling us to move, and
Speaker 6: there are other restrictions in terms of momntum. So the
Speaker 6: first is that they would move faster. The second is
Speaker 6: that they would engage the board more effectively and earlier,
Speaker 6: so similar to dealing with the street. You know, working
Speaker 6: with a board for the first time as CEO, not
Speaker 6: as an senior executive.
Speaker 7: It's quite a ship and it.
Speaker 6: Usually spend more time on board and board related activities
Speaker 6: in your first year than you expect, so you really
Speaker 6: need to factor that in.
Speaker 7: And the third is that.
Speaker 6: They would flex their leadership style more so they hang
Speaker 6: on to some of the things that served them well
Speaker 6: before without really accepting and stepping into the full gamut
Speaker 6: of the CEO role, accepting the good and the bad
Speaker 6: parts of it in terms of driving the outcomes that
Speaker 6: they that they know they need to deliver based on
Speaker 6: what they've promised the organization and the board and the market.
Speaker 2: And if you're someone like Hans Vessberg, a CEO of Verizon,
Speaker 2: I've talked with him a few times. You walk the
Speaker 2: board through, or he did walk the board through his
Speaker 2: white paper. I love that before accepting the role. So
Speaker 2: it's basically like when my daughter wanted a puppy and
Speaker 2: she did a white board presentation and she spent a
Speaker 2: long time and she went through it and we're like, okay,
Speaker 2: you get the dog. But it's right, like you lay
Speaker 2: it out and you're saying, here's what I'm thinking, and
Speaker 2: let's just make sure all on the same page because
Speaker 2: if this doesn't work for you, it kind of doesn't
Speaker 2: work for me, right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And Hans did it really well.
Speaker 6: And this is one of the things that you see
Speaker 6: second time CEO is doing much better than first time CEOs.
Speaker 6: Is this pre contracting with the board, is outlining, you know,
Speaker 6: this conversation of when not if I want to make
Speaker 6: a significant change or point the organization in a different direction,
Speaker 6: how are you going to respond? And in Hans this case,
Speaker 6: he was really keen to to make sure he didn't
Speaker 6: get six or twelve months down the track and have
Speaker 6: the board say I didn't know you were going to
Speaker 6: do this or I didn't know you were going to do.
Speaker 7: That, And it was really key to him moving fast exactly.
Speaker 2: Hey, just get about a minute left. Here is Elon
Speaker 2: one of the new CEOs in your view.
Speaker 7: Elon Musk, Yeah, I think he's a different CEO.
Speaker 6: Go On, Well, I think there's you know, there are
Speaker 6: very few individuals like him, and you know, in many
Speaker 6: ways the impact and influence has had in his space. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I would say he's definitely in that new category.
Speaker 2: And what about Boeing, which has been plagued with problems
Speaker 2: just got about for searching flat Tail. They're searching for
Speaker 2: a new CEO, you know, internal, external, what it like?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Just give us some smart thoughts on
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 6: Well, I think, you know, not necessarily Boeing specific, but
Speaker 6: an organization that really has lost the trust of the public.
Speaker 7: You know, it's often a cultural change.
Speaker 6: So whoever comes into an organization that's in a state
Speaker 6: in that type of state. They really need to focus
Speaker 6: on changing the culture, being transparent with the consumer about
Speaker 6: the issues to the level that they can be, and
Speaker 6: owning some of these challenges in terms of you know,
Speaker 6: how and how and what we're going to do to
Speaker 6: fix that. But ultimately these challenges stem from culture. It's
Speaker 6: a culture issue.
Speaker 2: Really interesting, Yeah, no, absolutely interesting. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for stopping by and sharing your book with us. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Ty Wiggins, Global lead of CEO and Executive Transistionion Practice
Speaker 2: over at Russell Reynolds Associates, as we said, an executive
Speaker 2: search firm over there in the UK. The new CEO
Speaker 2: Lessons from the CEOs on how to start well and
Speaker 2: perform quickly minus the common mistakes. It's a new book,
Speaker 2: so be sure to check it out.