Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSC an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSC and at ISIS exchanges and clearinghouses around the world. And now welcome inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
1959 was a year of milestones across the United States. In January, President Dwight Eisenhower presided over the admission of Alaska into the Union as the 49th state, and in August of that year, he followed up with Hawaii as the 50th. Now with all due respect to Alaska and Hawaii, neither of them still to this day boast professional sports teams of the major sports. And no, I don't count dog sledding among them and the Iditarod didn't even come along until 1973. No, in 1959, we might look to my home state, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the sixth state admitted to the Union to consider the fact that the Boston Celtics with Bill Russell and Bob Cousy on the court and Coach Red Auerbach lording over the bench, they'd win the first of eight straight NBA titles.
And from my recent conversation with the current SEAS owner, Wyc Grousbeck at a recent Whiskey Wednesday here at the New York Stock Exchange, I'm expecting a record 18th banner to be hoisted to the rafters in June on the backs of Jason Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Derek White with Joe Mazzullo playing the role of Red in the current iteration. Now back then in 1959, everyone knew about the Celtics, but no one knew about another future Boston legend taking shape. Bruce Henderson, a former car salesman and vice president of Westinghouse Electric, decided to join the consulting firm, Arthur D. Little. The decision to leave Westinghouse by one of its youngest then VPs launched a career that would see him become a business icon.
Four years after joining Arthur D. Little in 1963, Mr. Henderson was approached by Ralph Lowell, president of the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust company with a challenge, could Bruce build the bank's consulting division to enhance the institution's offering to its customers? The successful completion of that challenge spawned what's now known worldwide as Boston Consulting Group. As we fast-forward 65 years to 2024, Boston Consulting Group, or BCG, as it's known, has grown to over 30,000 professionals on the ground in more than 50 countries. Led by CEO, Christoph Schweitzer, and a diverse management team, Boston Consulting Group out of Bruce Henderson's original vision, is among the most recognizable and successful management consulting firms in the world.
One of those leaders who's been with a firm for almost 40 of those 65 years is today's guest, BCG managing director and senior partner Joe Davis. Propelled by a unique ability to connect to others and a passion to see employees develop, Joe's here inside the ICE House to share the strategies that have made him a legend in the consulting industry. Our conversation with Joe Davis on his consulting career and his new book, The Generous Leader, is coming up right after this.
Speaker 3:
Connecting the opportunity is just part of the hustle.
Speaker 4:
Opportunity is using data to create a competitive advantage.
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It's raising capital to help companies change the world.
Speaker 15:
It's making complicated financial concepts seem simple.
Speaker 5:
Opportunity is making the dream of home-ownership a reality.
Speaker 4:
Writing new rules and redefining the game.
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And driving the world forward to a greener energy future.
Speaker 16:
Opportunity is setting a goal.
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And charging a course to get there.
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Sometimes the only thing standing between you and opportunity is someone who can make the connection.
Speaker 18:
At Ice, we connect people to opportunity.
Josh King:
Welcome back inside the ICE House, remember to subscribe wherever you listen, and rate and review us please on Apple Podcasts, so other folks know where to find us. Our guest today, Joe Davis is the managing director and senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group. Joe's been with the firm for 37 years and running, and now he's the author of The Generous Leader: Seven Ways to Give of Yourself for Everyone's Gain, out now from Berrett-Koehler Publisher. Joe, thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE House.
Joe Davis:
Thanks you, Josh. Thank you for having me.
Josh King:
So welcome to the New York Stock Exchange, I suppose over nearly four decades with BCG, you've had plenty of listed companies among your clients, and I know there is a taboo among management consultants, not to name the firms of the companies that you work for, but any big names listed from the big board that you care to disclose.
Joe Davis:
Well, I think I can say my current client, they won't mind me mentioning is Johnson & Johnson or J&J.
Josh King:
We had their wonderful investor conference here a couple of weeks ago and their spinoff of Kenvue. It was an amazing event last year.
Joe Davis:
Yeah, that's great. That's great.
Josh King:
Is this your first time to the NYC?
Joe Davis:
First time in a formal fashion. Many, many years ago you could walk right in and look at it, and I did that as a tourist, but I can't even think of how long ago that was.
Josh King:
So with a career spanning 37 years in an industry known for demanding twelve-hour plus days, that grueling Monday through Thursday travel schedule and constant client work, what would you say is the secret to sustaining such a long tenure in consulting? A lot of people do it for a couple years, maybe go to B-school and move on, but you're still plying it away at BCG.
Joe Davis:
Yeah, that's, I got to pick not four or five things. I think there's a couple things. One, I actually didn't get very stressed throughout all the time, and it's a high stress job. If you just can let that flow makes it easy. I had incredible mentor, which just makes it very great. And then the other thing is the people at BCG, Boston Consulting, as you know, are very high caliber and they're good people. It was just incredible to be around them. So anytime someone would, a search firm would call and say, Hey, you're interested in this or that. My wife and I would explore it and say, there's just nothing as good as this. The other thing I want to say is you also are always learning, and I started at Procter & Gamble where it was a great firm, incredible. But after two years, Oh wait, we're doing the same thing we did last year and now, this time it's head and shoulders and this time of year there's secrets and this is always different and always learning.
Josh King:
In the acknowledgements you credit your wife with sitting you down at some point and saying, "Joe, you're so antsy. You're ready to leave Procter & Gamble, stick it out and see what happens.
Joe Davis:
Yeah, yeah. Actually it's worse than that. I didn't like going into grocery stores and trying to sell them to putting shampoo on a display. It was just like, Oh my gosh. My wife said, "Now come on, Joe. Two promotions with Procter & Gamble. Everyone knows that'll be a ticket to greater things. Stick it out." We were 25 years old. How she knew that I had no idea.
Josh King:
Through those long days, and I'm sure thousands of miles logged on flights, probably up to J&J or other places that you've served, you found time to write this book, The Generous Leader: Seven Ways To Give Of Yourself for Everyone's Gain. Consulting's often considered this secret of business with particular approaches to solving client problems considered really proprietary. What inspired you to author this book now, sharing your insights and expertise on qualities that these leaders possess?
Joe Davis:
I think three or four things. One is as the years went by, a lot of my colleagues at BCG said, you should write about leadership. You should write about what you're doing and how you're leading. It sounds self-serving but, and during COVID is quite intense as you know. And at the end of that had some folks say, come on Joe, write about leadership. Second thing is actually I created a list of life's goals when I was 15, I found this, actually, it's quite interesting itself. I found that list in my scrapbook a little while ago, and one of them was get something published, written vaguely I said, Oh, I see. It's a bucket list item that I'd forgotten about for 40 years.
But most importantly, I think that leaders now have to lead more with the heart. The head, heart, and hand, we know, but the heart has to become more center. People are demanding it, and I thought if I can add my thoughts to that effort and to that and development of leaders, I'll do it. I had one friend who said, "Joe, it'd be great. Write it, and if you move seven people, that'll make a difference." Now, my aspirations are now higher than seven after I've written the book. Those were the things that motivated me and strong encouragement from my colleagues.
Josh King:
Now, whether it's J&J or anyone else, I've been inside publicly traded companies where you get the note or you hear the announcement or the plan that here comes Boston Consulting Group or McKinsey or Bain or Booz Allen, and they're coming in to do something and folks who are on the front line at that point start to shiver in their boots, and you must know this mentality among the existing rank and file. How do you get over that?
Joe Davis:
Yeah, you're right, because the minute they hear consultants, they think, okay, cost-cutting, someone's going to take us out and the CEO and leadership team doesn't want to do it. That's not quite fair, but they want to have the consultants help do it. Actually, I think, one thing about BCG, well first off, we do a broad set of work beyond just that, quite a bit actually. But also BCG is known to be extremely collaborative and working up and down the organization as opposed to just at the top, which some of our competitors might tend to do. I think that goes a long ways towards us actually being successful inside of clients. I know it's self-serving. I work at BCG, but BCG actually is just full of a bunch of smart and bright, but they're good people and clients say, Oh, I actually like you.
Josh King:
Before we get into your writing and that bucket list item of get yourself published, I want to talk a little bit about BCG. As I noted in the intro, Bruce Henderson started it inside Boston Safe Deposit & Trust. Mr. Henderson would serve as president and CEO up until 1980 and Chairman until 1985. When Henderson died in 1992, the Financial Times said he did, I'm going to quote the Times here, "More to change the way business is done in the United States than any other man in American business today." While you joined BCG two years after Henderson's retirement, how has his work influenced your approach?
Joe Davis:
Yeah, I think you're right. I missed him, but I think he's influenced BCG, which has influenced me and a handful of things. One, the guy was highest integrity, highest values, great ethical standards, which has permeated all of us, and it stuck with me. Two, it was early days when we did like eight week strategy studies, but Bruce still talked about how we well-deliver client value even with those studies. And as you know, BCG's DNA is driven by rigorous analysis with data and facts, and that was Bruce in the creative analytics. But most importantly for me that affected me is Bruce Henderson when he retired, actually he gave the firm to the nine partners at the time, and he said, "I don't want anything. I just want you to build this for the next generation and the next and the next." That was extremely powerful when you make partner MDP, managing director and partner, you watch the video of Bruce handing over the firm, and that is probably the most... Gives you a long-term perspective, develop people really trying to care and make a difference.
I think that's Bruce's, some would say the DNA of analytics, I would say the DNA of building and caring over time.
Josh King:
Sure. Some of Bruce's innovations include the enterprise curve, the growth share matrix and time-based competition, which upon their inception really became consulting management staples. For the average listener who is not in the middle of a client engagement between BCG and J&J, for instance, how would you explain what these principles are and how did they continue to exert influence on the BCG team and the broader consulting industry?
Joe Davis:
You mentioned scale curves and experience curve, et cetera. I think what these really, they were analytical ways to explain what is going on in business and what could be going on with your company, given the dynamics around it. And the analytics behind it has driven BCG, the approach of finding the best way to come up with what's going to happen and think it through with data and facts. Those just permeate our DNA.
Josh King:
When I was trying to crack into one of those consulting training programs coming out of Swarthmore in '87, I was drawn to these names. I was drawn to BCG, Bain, McKinsey and others. Competition for talent and clients is still so fierce among those firms, Joe. In 1980, Bruce Henderson spoke to that competition and the notion of having an advantage during a lecture at Vanderbilt. I want to take a quick listen to that.
Speaker 8:
What makes me different from my competitors? There's a principle of biology called Gauss's principle of mutual exclusion, which says that no two species, you can put business competitors, if you like, can coexist to make their living in the identical fashion. Now, let's take it the next step. If they're different, which one ever has advantage should be able to displace someone who has a disadvantage, shouldn't it? Well, if that happens, everyone has an advantage, otherwise they'll be displaced. How can everybody have an advantage?
Josh King:
So Henderson starts his comments, Joe, by saying, what makes me different from my competitor? Joe, what makes BCG different from its competitors?
Joe Davis:
Yeah, that's a complicated question, because it depends on which competitor you compare ourselves to. And of course I'm very biased through 37 years of BCG. These are a handful of things. One, we're very driven to get to value, which they all are, but ours is, we are deeply focused on the analytics, the facts and all that, which everyone is, but it's just such of the DNA. BCG is also highly collaborative, as I mentioned, working up and down the organization. There's another difference, which is we are the largest one partner or one MDP one vote organization in the world, and that leads to all kinds of long-term perspective, caring about the individuals on the team, et cetera.
We also, probably one or two other competitors have a broad depth of practice areas, not just the industry practice support, but also functional operations, organization, these things. And then driven by very, very high values that Bruce started and other CEOs have pushed, which our industry gets some grief. There's different newscasts and books out there, and those values continue to be such front and center for BCG. So probably what's different is put that package together, not just intellectual analytics, but also good people who are collaborative and have high values and you get something a little bit different.
Josh King:
So we talked a little bit, Joe, about the early part of your career path and those years at Procter & Gamble, NYC, ticker symbol PG. Before you joined BCG in '87, that same year I was trying to break into those firms unsuccessfully, I should add. What impact did your experience at P&G have on your understanding of what constitutes The Generous Leader?
Joe Davis:
Yeah, so a couple of things. First off, P&G interestingly is a high-values, high-integrity company, which also came from the founders in that time, a 100 years, whatever, 80 years earlier. But we talked about that and we knew that there was still great value placed on the people, people development, serving the consumer and serving our customers, the retailers. But there's actually two stories that I think actually affected the way I think about this generous leader. One was, I was a new unit manager, we call it. I had four sales reps. One was trying to climb, three were career sales reps. I would ride with these people every other week, and I remember at the end of the year I was doing one of the fellow's reviews, Rich, one of the career sales reps, Rich, not Rich Lesser, Rich, and he was giving him all this feedback and you're not doing this by the book, you're not doing that.
He finally stopped me. He said, "Joe, what are you doing? You ride with me every other week and you've never told me any of this." I can't even remember what I said. I was so embarrassed. And afterwards, my boss at the time said, "Never again do you give feedback where the person doesn't know every word that's coming to him." It was a real lesson to me on if I cared enough and get over my own fears, I would've shared insights with them each time. So that was quite impactful as far as learning and development.
Josh King:
So from that initial impactful moment at P&G, then comes the nearly four decades at Boston Consulting Group. Five CEOs have led the company since then with Christoph Schweitzer currently at the helm. Under Christoph's leadership, there's been this emphasis on accelerating investment in the firm's people, also advancing its ambitions related to climate, sustainability and AI. How do you think the firm has grown under Christoph's leadership since he took over in 2021.
Joe Davis:
First off, I will say there's been no variation in the values, respect for people, delivering client value to the client, et cetera, on all that stuff. He has done, he campaigned on it's time to turn the firm over to the next generation. Guys like Rich Lesser and me, the CEO, started in 1988, and he is putting the firm into hands of a set of new, I consider them younger. They're not that younger leaders. Also, to your point, Rich Lesser pushed hard on climate, but he has driven that even further in three ways, making sure in our own house we keep it in order, serving our clients where they're navigating their climate commitments and making a difference out there in the world. We're quite involved with cops and we actually with Bill Gates, we're one of the founders of Breakthrough Energy. That, and then you mentioned technology. He's putting us big emphasis on making sure we're on top of and ahead of AI. So, obviously the impact's going to be massive. So I'd say it's continued to drive the firm like we always had, profitable growth with some emphasis on two pretty pillar topics.
Josh King:
Before we turned on the microphones, Joe, I asked you where you lived and you said it's a complicated answer. I want to dive into that a little bit because your career has spanned locations including Boston, Melbourne, Washington DC, San Francisco, Miami, opening offices and building teams. In what ways has spending time on both coasts and also your tenure down under influenced your management style?
Joe Davis:
That's interesting. I do... People are people, I get it. But there are differences. When I went to the West Coast as an example, consulting firms do pretty well everywhere, but the West Coast was underperforming for BCG for many years, and essentially because that group of people, which is just another talented set of BCG-ers needed, to unlock their potential, needed to build confidence, and it was a whole new lesson to me. How do I actually motivate, inspire great people who don't all believe in themselves the way they should? So there were differences. In Australia, there I'll tell you a funny story. When I was a manager at the time and the partner said, "Hey, come with me to this meeting. And I said, "I don't know anything about that client." He said, "Oh, it's all right. Just speak American and you'll sound impressive." I thought, okay, so I think I sounded impressive, I guess.
But that's even a little funny lesson in there is that if you're at least somewhat on your game or if you're on your game, you can actually be impactful even if you don't know everything.
Josh King:
Did you enjoy your time in Australia?
Joe Davis:
Oh gosh, yes. It was wonderful. Well, this was 35 years ago, but it was a work hard play hard kind of place. The stores were closed on the weekends, they're outdoors-
Josh King:
Big kids at Foster's Lager.
Joe Davis:
Yeah. Foster's And yeah, it was, what do you call them, meat pies and the like. Those days I was vegetarian. Now those days I ate meat. Yeah, actually it was hard to leave. When we were getting ready to leave, they said, why don't you stay three more years? And Sarah, my wife, spoke with some other expats and said, "Sarah, if you sign up for another one, get your kids in school. You'll be here forever." I remember it sounds a little silly, but the night we decided to go home, tears are streaming down her face. She goes, "Well, if you want to stay, I will stay." I was taking the garbage out and that song, Proud to Be An American Born in the US start going through my head, I would have said, "We're going home. What are we talking about?" So it was a wonderful experience.
Josh King:
Millions watched the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs in Superbowl 58 at Allegiance Stadium in Las Vegas. But interestingly, you led a BCG team years ago that worked to bring Superbowl 50 to Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara. That was back in 2016, I think. While that game capped Peyton Manning's Hall of Fame career, it also marked the first Superbowl in northern California since 1985, beating out Houston and Miami as the host city. You spoke to the challenges of this particular pitch in a 2013 TED Talk. What was the process of securing the bid and swaying these very difficult 32 NFL owners to award Superbowl 50 to the Bay Area?
Joe Davis:
We met with Daniel. He said, "Well, what are you guys going to do for us? What do you know about?" I said, "Daniel, you're going to get a set of young, highly energetic, very smart, hardworking people who love football, and you'll notice it." About a month he said, "Oh my gosh, Joe, I didn't never expect this." But there, to win that bid, we knew we had to appeal to the owners, and there was a couple angles that was the most technologically advanced stadium at the time, Silicon Valley, they want to be perceived as moving to the future. We also, because of Daniel, I think pushed hard on a charitable aspect to this, which is something the NFL valued, silly as it might sound, traffic. Everyone's nervous about traffic to Silicon Valley. So we had to make sure we had a traffic answer for them. And the other thing, and you mentioned the other cities, right or wrong, I don't know, but there's reputation that they better be able to have.
Well, what did Kelcey say there? "Viva Las Vegas. Now let's go party." You have to be able to have a good, I wouldn't say party, but be able to have a show, good time in that town. So we put together a package across all those things. I think that stadium was quite instrumental in the technology. And a funny story, we sent them the pitch on an iPad, which this is 2014 at the time of the pitch. And what we figured, probably not a single one of those owners would open it, probably their team would open it. But we tried to even display the technology in our pitch in those days.
Josh King:
Was it a particular collection of Northern California Bay Area, San Francisco BCG years that you did, or did you look across the firm for a team of experts who really knew how to make the economic and infrastructure and logistical case to 32 owners and put together a dream team really to make that bid?
Joe Davis:
Yeah, yeah. It was a Bay Area team, because I think the emotion and the passion went a long ways to making sure that Daniel put together a team. Well, it was mostly, but of all kinds of different capabilities for the bid. BCG, sounds a little bit self-serving again, but it's chock-a-block with very talented people who even if they don't know something, get up to speed pretty darn fast. So it was a dream team of Bay Area folks.
Josh King:
So in that 2013 TED Talk, you referenced a moment when San Francisco was awarded the bid on the NFL network. Shortly after you're making your pitch, I want to take a listen just for a minute to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on May 21st, 2013, announcing the results.
Speaker 9:
Okay, we do have a decision on the host city for Super Bowl 50. By vote of the NFL clubs Super Bowl 50 in 2016 has been awarded to San Francisco.
Speaker 10:
So as they said in their bid video, the Golden State near the Golden Gate Bridge will be the host for the golden anniversary of the Super Bowl.
Josh King:
So that's the NFL Network's Rich Eisen weighing in quoting Goodell, the Golden State near the Golden Gate Bridge, host of the golden anniversary of Super Bowl. Following that initial celebration, how did you translate your pitch into these actionable plans and ultimately fulfill promises made to those owners to keep traffic out of Santa Clara?
Joe Davis:
Well, there was a number. Yeah, I think we hadn't gone overboard, not we, we plus then it was there host committee and Keith Bruce was driving that with Daniel. Daniel stepped back a bit, but we had gone overboard and where the buses would be. I don't think anyone drove down there as these loads of buses going from the city. And, of course, people lived down there, but you really had to make sure we pushed very hard for companies in the Bay Area to contribute for the charitable art that we had committed on, which was very serious. We looked for ways to broadcast the game around the world, given the technology angle and even in lost time zones. Those were some of the things I think the team focused pretty, the group focused hard on.
Josh King:
So let's pivot a little bit from some of those engagements to the generous leader. We touched on the inspiration for writing the book, but earlier in your career, a simple performance review helped influence what would become Joe's management style. In what ways did that experience contribute to your understanding of the generous leader?
Joe Davis:
Yeah, that was a very powerful performance review. This was early days at BCG, and I had a mentor and a boss who cared deeply about you, but he was a tough guy. He was tough.
Josh King:
Name.
Joe Davis:
Steve Gunby.
Josh King:
Yeah.
Joe Davis:
Now, CEO of FTI. Steve told me, he and I debate how he said it, but "Joe, I could put you in a room, four white walls, no way out and put a tough problem in there. You probably wouldn't solve it. I can put this guy Philip in there, he'd solve it every time, but then if I came out and asked you to get it done, Philip probably wouldn't get it done very many times or ever, and you would get it done every time because you actually know how to..." Then I think he paused and I was shaken, "But no, I know you Joe, you know how to team with people. You know how to inspire people. You know what you don't know and you go look for the answers." So there was a lot of richness in that feedback, even if it was interestingly painful. But there were points there about the power of connection, about the power of listening, about the power of acknowledging what you don't know and going looking for others to help you, which is all I think, parts of what a generous leader really is.
Josh King:
And if I look at the jacket design of The Generous Leader, three words, The smaller, Generous, gets bigger, and Leader is in the biggest typeface. Generous is highlighted in yellow. Leader is the biggest term there. It's one of the first things you see when you pick it up to read. But how would you describe the intended audience? Is the book primarily aimed at executives like Dan Lurie or are there valuable lessons intended for employees at other levels within the organization?
Joe Davis:
Oh, no, no, actually, it's probably least targeted. No offense to the CEOs in the top. I had a coach throughout who was quite good in pushing me every week and helping me think through what I was trying to say, and she'd say, "Joe, think of your son-in-law, who's 42 years old, or your daughter at BCG, who's 33 or 34, that's who you're writing to. You want them to develop and grow into generous leaders." Now, I love a longtime CEO to become more generous if they're not. So I think it's that set of people for sure, and it's whether you lead four people or 40, or Joaquin hundred thousand, it doesn't matter. The principles are the same. And actually whether you are leading your kids' soccer team or your family, these principles of caring and leading with the heart are quite relevant.
Josh King:
We're going to get into the seven principles in a second, but you've led employees through turbulent times. The dot com crisis. You probably had clients that were going up and down like a top at that point, 9/11, the Great Recession, COVID-19 pandemic. I read a bunch of the emails that you sent out to your team in those particular times. Each of these events really impacted the workforce and leadership dynamics. How have they influenced the core teachings that you are trying to convey in here?
Joe Davis:
Yeah, each of those were times of uncertainty for employees and for people, probably depending on who they are, levels of anxiety, where they almost every time someone is looking to the leader to be there to care, et cetera. And I'll tell you two quick stories. One, 9/11. When 9/11 hit, I was in our Washington office, we could see the smoke coming up from the Pentagon and people freaked out. And my, well, the founder of the office, my partner Steve Gunby at the time, shut the doors. He didn't let people go out that side. And I thought, "Steve, what are you doing? They want to see their family." He says, "I know, Joe, but let's let everyone calm down, make calls," because he literally felt like people were going to run out in the street and look up and say, is the sky falling?
Josh King:
Where was the office relative to the Pentagon?
Joe Davis:
Bethesda?
Josh King:
Yeah.
Joe Davis:
But you still could see it. It was interesting.
Josh King:
Yeah. I was in Dupont Circle at the time.
Joe Davis:
Yeah, well, you were closer, but you'd say, well, that's counterintuitive. Shut the door versus let him get out. But he cared so much that he cared for their wellbeing, and he made some counterintuitive decisions. And of course, COVID was a culmination of so many of the values I talk about. And there when we started, when COVID hit, I did town halls with my staff. Like many people Zoom, we'd have 2000 to 5,000 people, and I remember the second one, my daughter, we had just put my daughter on a plane with her baby back to Germany, which was as the borders were closing. That was scary enough. And when she landed, she discovered her husband who was in the military, was in California and gotten COVID, and no one knows what that means back in those... Remember when I was counting the story of the staff and I choked up, I'm known to choke up, and I just got so much feedback that, wow, the honesty, the vulnerability, just enabling me to confront my fears too.
So it was very powerful, the importance of connecting broadly, trying to connect personally and deeply and being authentic and vulnerable.
Josh King:
Within the book, there are discussions featuring business leaders, including United Airlines CEO, Scott Kirby and Joaquin Duarto, Chairman and CEO of J&J. You regard both of those gentlemen as effective communicators with reputations of connecting closely with employees. What about Scott's and Joaquin's backgrounds and their actions contribute them to being examples of generous leaders?
Joe Davis:
Well, Joaquin's interesting. He told me a story. He said, "Joe, I'm one of," I can't remember, "36 cousins. Six aunts and uncles and the family always together. You had to connect with one another, we worked to connect with..." And he said, "My dad was one of these very humble and good leaders, but very humble person who knew the name of everybody with whom he worked and made an effort to connect with each of them. And he said, "That really was instilled in me." Scott, I don't remember. He is amazing actually. Maybe you've sat out with him. But his care and concern for the shareholders for delivering and all that, but for the employees who are making that all happen is amazing. I didn't ask him where he learned it, but some of the examples of stories he told me about how he connects are pretty powerful. Can I tell you one?
Josh King:
Yeah, please.
Joe Davis:
One of them was interesting. He said he interviewed, he meets with everyone who's getting a vice president position and above, and this on the context of listening to learn and figure out what you don't know. And Scott talked to the three, there were three vice presidents of operations who oversee the mechanics, they call them technicians, and I said, mechanic, one more word, he got mad at me, "Joe it's technicians." Scott said, "Yes, all three of them, what do the technicians need?" And each one said, "Sir, they need more parts in the airports." And you think about it, they're the guys that get on the plane, we're staring at them, they can't get it going. They don't have the parts. He said, "Okay, I'm going to buck the spreadsheet numbers," that would say, don't put working inventory, working capital out there, "and put more parts in all the airports," sure enough for every airplane. And he said, "That will inspire and motivate these mechanics who are critical to the safety as well as the customer service to feel more loyal to do a better job." And he did that.
And he got some grief from the finance team, but he said, "No, no, this is something they need to do their job, and I want them inspired and motivated." And that was pretty powerful.
Josh King:
We talked earlier about how J&J spun off Kenvue last year here at the New York Stock Exchange. Another maybe less known, but equally interesting spinoff was when Zoetis spun off from Pfizer. Earlier in one of your chapters, you reference a Fortune magazine interview with Kristin Peck, who is now the CEO of Zoetis, ticker symbol ZTS, one of our prior guests here on Inside the SS back in episode 240 when she discusses millennials who now constitute 50% of today's workforce and their expectations they have from their leaders. How have workplace desires of this group evolved and what qualities are they seeking from their leaders? People like Kristin?
Joe Davis:
Yeah. She happens to be a BCG alum interestingly. I think this generation of millennials, and probably the Gen Zs too, so the younger set, you read about it, but it doesn't seem to be true, and I saw this at BCG, people want an organization with purpose and they want to be able to contribute in a meaningful way. They're also looking to be seen as a person, as a human, not a cog in the organization's wheel, which might've been the way it was if we think back a time ago. I think what's driving some of that is there's so much disruption whether you take technology and you start with the Blackberry and you move right through the laptop, the iPhone, and now Zoom. There's wonderful things there. More flexibility, connect faster, but also it leads to work life blur. You are always on, work life and personal life just blurred completely together.
And because of that, that's one critical factor. I think these young people today want that work environment to be as positive as the personal one. The other thing I'd say is social media puts anything, you mentioned the disruptions and you mentioned whatever, 9/11 or COVID or the January 6th or whatever it might be, it puts it right in your face immediately. Climate issues, the wars around the world, and I saw this with young people, that causes uncertainty and it causes anxiety. People are really looking for their leader to think calmly through how to make sure that the company is sailing the right way, how do we take care of the shareholder and all that, but also, how do you make sure I am feeling good about what I'm doing, and are you actually listening to me and engaging with me and understanding my perspective and connecting with that? So there's a number of disruptions that are changing the way that group works and clearly what they're expecting. They're expecting leaders who care, who bring the heart much more central to their leadership.
Josh King:
You highlight millennials yearning for leaders who want this empathy and authenticity, and as I said, I read some of the emails that you sent to your team during COVID. Do you think these preferences are a response to the changes they experienced during COVID? How has that period influenced the wishes of what the younger workforce wants?
Joe Davis:
I think as I just said, that COVID experience, the George Floyd murder, and there's so many things that just cause stress and anxiety. It's in your face immediately, that people are looking for someone to connect with their feelings. As Kristin said, they're looking for people that are empathetic to where they are. And they're demanding it now. Some may say, Oh, no, no, it'll all go back. Maybe the hybrid thing will change over time. I'm not so sure. But I don't think young employees are going to go back to the command and control leadership and find that acceptable. At least not the best.
Josh King:
At least not the best. After the break, Joe Davis and I are going to continue to discuss his new book, The Generous Leader: Seven Ways to Give Of Yourself For Everyone's Gain, and his teachings throughout the book. That's all coming up right after this.
Speaker 11:
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Josh King:
Welcome back. If you're enjoying our conversation, want to hear more from guests like Joe Davis. Please remember to subscribe to the Inside the ICE House Podcast wherever you listen to your podcast and give us a five star rating if you would and also a review. Before the break, Joe Davis and I were discussing his almost four decade long tenure at Boston Consulting Group and his new book, The Generous Leader: Seven Ways to Give Of Yourself For Everyone's Gain. Out now from Berrett Koehler Publishers. As we look Joe at the seven tenets of a generous leader, I want to begin with what you call generous communication, the idea of building deep connections with colleagues in light of the transformative impact that COVID had on the modern workplace and considering some of the ongoing technological evolution of office arrangements as you mentioned before the break.
Some companies continue with remote work while others have brought workers back to the office full time. Certainly here at ICE, we want to have people inside collaborating with one another, being in the same room, looking at the same whiteboard. Reflecting on that incredibly stressful period March 2020 when the work from home model was really in its formative stage, what did you do to stay connected to your employees at a personal level, even though all communication was now done through these new things that we hadn't really used at that point, Zoom and other technology.
Joe Davis:
So Zoom was probably a Godsend for me, because I could connect with so many people so rapidly. I always was known to travel around offices and connect, but now I could do it so much more quickly. One, I did the town halls as I mentioned, which that was one way, so that was a little problematic, but it was able to connect with thousands at a time. I also had a colleague who said, Joe, you're not doing the right thing by our staff because you don't understand their lived experience. And here I was 30 plus years of BCG. Of course, I didn't. I wasn't 23 anymore. I remember she said, "You just got to connect with people more." And I remember I actually made a quite active effort to connect one-on-one with a lot of mainly younger people in different situations. I was talking to one, some person once who was on his bed.
I said, what you do in your bed? He said, "Well, Joe, my apartment, my wife and I share, we have a living room, little teeny kitchen and the bed, bedroom. I get the bedroom one week, then I get the living room the next week." I thought, Whoa, here I was moving from room to room around my house where my children had all left the home, so plenty of bedrooms to work from. So I actually quite actively used all the electronic tools to connect pretty regular with people and really to make sure I tried to find out what are they living through that I'm not living through, and how does that affect what I should be doing and what we should be doing at BCG.
Josh King:
So Joe, is there a correlation between what would be the next two principles, generous listening and generous inclusion? Given your belief that ideas and your involvement in BCG's diversity, equity and inclusion consulting team, do you think that those who practice open-minded listening are more inclined to foster collaboration compared to those less receptive to diverse perspectives?
Joe Davis:
Yes, and you could say diverse perspectives or any perspective that isn't my own. If I watched the people who were unsuccessful in their careers, whether it's BCG or even some clients, those who saw the world from their perspective and did not engage with others that coming at them, it was very noticeable how that held them back. I'm going to tell you a funny story. Once I had a client, Canadian Tire, up in Canada, and Steve Bashan was the CEO, and someone was presenting to Steve, a supply chain guy, and he had a path he was going down in his presentation, Steve asked a question that came in a different direction. Person looked over at him, gave a half-assed answer and went right back to his presentation. Steve's eyes glassed over. He said, wow, he's not even listening to me. He's not trying to get into my head and understand what is my question, what's on my mind? That's any leader today.
I think you mentioned if you're going to really listen to learn and to take the other's perspective, you're going to require to do that, to make a difference and to really inspire others. But especially as you say, when you start to include more, there's a lot of people that, you can see me, I'm a White male, 60 plus year old who do not share my experience or I don't share theirs. And if I don't stop to think about what they're going through, how can I inspire, motivate, or how can any of us inspire or motivate them to be all they can be to reach their highest potential, which indirectly, of course, benefits the leader, because it benefits the organization.
Josh King:
You discuss the under-representation of minority groups at the C-suite level in executive positions and the need for allies to help bring about change in the workplace. In your writing, you also distinguish between two types of allies, the action ally and the second natured ally. What's the difference between them and how should a leader determine which is right for them?
Joe Davis:
First off, yeah. The second nature, the performative ally, it might be called. I say, don't be a button wearer. You put the pride button on during pride month, and that's what you do, or you strive for diversity goals because you're trying to hit metrics that someone is asking you to do. That's not an action ally, and I'm not an expert on this. As I said, I'm a White male, but I talked to a number of my colleagues and it was very clear that they look for people who don't pretend to know them, to know their shoes, et cetera. But who are a co-conspirator with the person you're supporting and opening doors for them so they can walk through and perform and deliver at their best. You don't do it for them. And then importantly, you stay there when the going gets tough.
One colleague, Justin Dean said, "Give me your top 5% and don't run the minute something's getting rocky for me and duck away from that." And that's really, I think an action ally is someone who's there to help open the door, support, not do for them, but enable others to perform at their best.
Josh King:
If you look at numbers from the Pew Research Center, only 10.6% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women unlike Kristin Peck, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also reports that less than 6% of all chief executives in the country are Black. Alan Jope, former CEO of Unilever, that's NYSC, ticker symbol UL, back in 2020 spoke to the success they had under his leadership of increasing diversity hires in management. I want to just take a quick listen to Alan.
Speaker 12:
It starts at the top of the organization. We have 10 non-executive directors of Unilever, five men, five women. We have a prominent African leader on our board. He's a loud voice for this subject. We have three ethnically Asian women on our board. Over the last 10 years, Unilever has gone from 38% of our 14,000 managers being women to 51% of our managers being women. So because of our extreme international nature of our business, we're naturally quite a diverse company.
Josh King:
I should say Intercontinental Exchange, ticker symbol ICE, our parent company has a board representation of 60% female, one of I think 10 or so listed companies at that level. Joe, considering Unilever's ongoing commitment to inclusive hiring initiatives now under the leadership of its current CEO, Heinz Schumacher, what do you believe has prevented other companies from replicating that approach?
Joe Davis:
Preventing them, I don't know, but I do a couple of thoughts. It takes, as he said, a commitment, and it's clear from the top to push and to drive. It does take metrics, they are important, whatever they may be. But I do want to caution, I think at BCG, we push very hard to hit hiring targets, and it's quite diverse now. But then there comes the next challenge, which is retention. And you might put somebody into an environment where they're one of two people like themselves, and that's not that easy. So I'm almost going to say it's probably easier to fill the top with a diverse group of people because you get to pick the picks yourself, but to grow them into management. And I think about the women because the women numbers have changed over the years.
Well, BCG has been at it with our women's network and other for 30 years, and we're in a good place actually at the top two. But you have to really think hard about how you're going to retain, which is, I just got to say, is not easy. Talking about understanding lived experiences, engaging with people and what they're going through and the challenges they face, which are not your own for most leaders.
Josh King:
Between 2020 and 2021, BCG, along with the BVA group did a survey of 9,000 employees worldwide on the qualities that they prioritize in a leader with issues like recognition and development emerging as the top two. Balancing these traits Joe, can be a challenge for leaders as they aim to motivate, while also providing the kind of constructive feedback that you got in that performance review so long ago at BCG. From your experience, how can leaders advance past this challenge and encourage while also coaching up areas where improvement is needed like you got?
Joe Davis:
There is a phrase, strength brace training, which we all hear about, but I think a leader, I'll say first has to do the work when you need to understand and recognize other's strengths, you need to applaud those when they happen, but then you need to help them help people apply those strengths to their opportunities for development. And it takes work to think about that. You have to for each person, my friend Steve, who maybe he's very quick, but he observed how I behaves and this is where you're not good. So that's the one thing is understanding strengths and helping them leverage. Then I'm a very big believer in not giving what I call mush feedback, and that's you got to overcome your own fears. Christina Sistrunk from Aera's Energy at the time talked about how she was afraid to be direct. She had a coach, said, no, no, but what are you afraid of? The impact on you or the impact on them?
And I'm just a big believer if it comes from a place of caring, if you're trying to really develop somebody when you give direct, and it doesn't have to be blunt, direct and blunt and clear feedback in the moment, unlike what I did when I was 24 years old, it will be taken and it'll be understood, especially if you've done the work in advance, to understand where the strengths are and help them leverage those strengths.
Josh King:
Chapter seven of The Generous Leader, Joe, you highlight the importance of small acts of kindness, and I want to quote your writing from the book here, "Casual, seemingly insignificant ways we treat and recognize people can sometimes play a bigger role in producing positive work attitudes that the more business-like activities managers focus on." And again, I was struck again by the number of both your own personal messages that you used to your teams in the book and the way you were impacted by the feedback that you got back from those messages. How have you observed these smaller acts being effectively distributed in today's ever-evolving workplace?
Joe Davis:
I said seemingly insignificant, but you and I both know thank you goes a long ways. When I first started at BCG, I shouldn't really tell the story, but there was a partner, it doesn't matter his name, but he never would look me in the eye. And I thought, wow, am I so meaningless to you? Now, I realized later he was focused, he was driven, he was thinking, but a simple greeting of, or glance up makes a difference. And then I think if you go further and acknowledge something simple like birthdays, acknowledge successes and acknowledge them publicly. If you're on a Zoom meeting and the most junior person in the room say hi to them, introduce yourself, they wake up. Scott Kirby, this is another one. He's a big believer in these. He told me a very interesting and great story. He said his wife was on an airplane, and the pilot came out, the captain said, "Oh, Ms. Kirby, I'm so excited to see you."
It was a Black female. And she said, "You cannot understand how much I love United." She goes, "What do you mean?" She said, "Well, your husband took the time to call me after the George Floyd murder and just ask how I'm doing." Didn't have an answer, didn't tell me. I just wanted to listen, wanted to engage, and that was so meaningful. Now, maybe a phone call is a little bit harder than a thank you, but I don't know how many, probably put 50 phone calls out there to people of color instead of the captain in pilot ranks. And it made a big difference. Made a big difference, and it wasn't that much work.
Josh King:
Is your sitting behind your screen and writing some of your messages to your team, and I saw between the lines, the care with which you constructed every sentence, thought about every word the way it might land. How did you develop this sense of, well, I could be across the table from Scott Kirby at a very high level, but I'm also talking to my team and I'm weighing how my message is really going to land in this potentially stressful situation. How did the precision of the way you go about that develop for you?
Joe Davis:
First off, of course, I'm sure that was an evolution over many years of my life where, and I won't go into a lot of stories, but there were episodes early on in my life where I showed emotion and it actually, instead of being embarrassing, it connected with people. I cried through my entire wedding vows. My wife was strong as a Dickens. And then I also am a big believer, well, what do they say, Sesame Street. So they figured out 12 second snippets is all a kid can deal with. I don't know that we're that different. I can't remember, in the book there's a quote from Adam Grant and how long actually University of Maryland did a study, how long people actually spend time. So I think through those experiences and the reinforcement I got for it's okay to be direct, to be honest, and what I do, and Steve trained me this too, my head is always thinking, how are they going to read this? How are they going to read this?
So the person at home on his couch or on his bed, when the wife is on the couch, how's he going to interpret this? And he's going to think who I am and have a filter. So I just think a lot of it is just spending the time to think about how it'll be interpreted, how would I feel, how would I feel if that's coming my way? And then not being afraid to be honest and to be emotional. A lot of leaders, one leader speak at BCG officer meeting said, "Well, of course you can't show any weakness. You have to really be on top of it all the time." I won't say what country he's from, wasn't America. But I thought, well, buddy, I think that's not the way it is anymore. Scott Kirby wouldn't say that. He would think, no, no, you can be honest and open. So I think it's an evolution for me as well as working hard to put myself into where their head is. And then how would I read it if I were sitting in those shoes?
Josh King:
Talking about your own evolution, your own ability to show your emotions, to express your own vulnerability. You mentioned in a 2017 conference in Chicago where you shared with several hundred BCG employees that your dad was gay and passed away from complications from AIDS. What was your thinking before and after disclosing that pain, that trauma to your colleagues revealing part of your past that you really had previously kept quiet?
Joe Davis:
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting, because there was many clues that my dad was gay, but I don't know. I guess a young man thinks, how can your dad be gay? How are you here? Especially, this was in the '80s in San Francisco. Just I slowly realized this on this topic of vulnerability, this is a major part of me and there's not no reason for me to keep this to myself necessarily. And then with that group, it was our pride network, and I thought hard about, I'd love to share this with them. Not so all of a sudden they think, I think I know what they're living. It wasn't quite the same, but so that I could share a little bit of what they may be feeling, but also show them that I have some connection to them and that they can be themselves more at work.
There's quite a complicated story to describe in the book, but when I decided to say that in front of all those people, I practiced what I was going to say, so I wouldn't sound self-serving. But afterwards, the feedback was just great on the willingness to be, it was quite warm and the willingness to be open, to be vulnerable. But more importantly to this day, well maybe not now, it's been a while, but people would come up to me and say, the fact that you shared that just enabled me to share more about me and just open me up and give me so much more room to move and to grow. So it was very powerful for me to front a few hundred people, but it was quite meaningful for them too.
Josh King:
BCG isn't in the business of executive recruiting or management coaching so much as it is the focus on analytics that you and I were talking about at the beginning of our conversation, Joe. But as we begin to wrap up from conversations you've had with colleagues and CEOs, do you think that leaders are improving their ability to be more generous and responsive to the wants and needs of the workforce that are underneath them?
Joe Davis:
Well, I certainly hope so. And yes I think, when you talk to people that I had the pleasure and the privilege of speaking with like Scott and Joaquin, you hear these stories. And I think of Fran Katsoudas, the chief people officer at Cisco. She told me, well, Joe, I actually started off my career spending the time to engage with my people and care about them and think about them. And there was a more senior executive who said, "Hey Fran, you got to put that away. You got to be more hard edged here." Well, she went on to a very senior position. I'm not sure where he is, but she noticed that. So someone like that, you mentioned Kristin Peck. She talked about the importance of being empathetic for millennials. So one other story, I guy named Samir Bodis, who's CEO of Icertis, I think it's still a private company, but he came out of Ward and went to Microsoft and he told me how it was just numbers, performance, outcomes, metrics, boom, boom, go, go, go.
Then he left Microsoft and he had a company that he was signed to turn around or gotten the privilege trying to turn around, and he realized if we're not open and honest and authentic with ourselves and with our customers, et cetera, we're not going to get anywhere because we're all ducking what's going on. He said it was such an eyeopening thing for him to convey fear and uncertainty to each other and to their clients, and it just made a big difference and it changed the way he thinks about leadership. And I'll just close on that question that you remember, Arne Sorenson, the CEO of Marriott who passed away from cancer and during COVID, now famous, but now famous video where Arnie's there bald head from the chemo and his tie was crooked as Forbes Magazine likes to discuss it being very authentic about himself and very authentic and honest to his employees about the numbers, they're going to lose their job, be furloughed, et cetera.
And it was very powerful video. What I thought was more interesting to your question about is the world starting to change? The business press made hay about that and talked about, wow, the example of a truly authentic leader and watch this video. I thought that was a big positive sign as opposed to, well, this guy's going to try to figure out how to not lay off a bunch of... He was open and honest and he was rewarded for it. So I think there's shift, and I actually say, we talked earlier, we started with the millennials. The young people today are going to demand it one way or the other if you really want to tap into them and all their potential.
Josh King:
Whether you're young, middle or old Joe, a lot of us run for the hills when we are told it's time for your 360 degree assessment. And at the very end of the book you include a self-assessment for folks to determine where they are on the scale of being a generous leader. You were even recommended, as you mentioned, to exclude the self-assessment altogether. Why did you decide to keep it in the book?
Joe Davis:
That's a funny question. I was told that hardcover business books fill a lot of the landfills. Maybe I shouldn't say that. So if you want to skim it, go to the back and at least read the questions there and put yourself through your own self-imposed quiz and think about whether you're actually meeting a lot of the traits of a generous leader. And then of course, if you think it's interesting, go read some of the stories because I think quite frankly, the stories from other leaders or what makes it powerful, what makes the book powerful and maybe helps in one's leadership.
Josh King:
I've read some of the stories. I read the book. It's a great read. Thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE House, Joe.
Joe Davis:
Thank you, Josh.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Joe Davis, managing director and senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group, author now of The Generous Leader: Seven Ways to Give of Yourself for Everyone's Gain, out now from Berrett Koehler Publishers. If you like what you heard in our conversation today, please rate us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show or hear from people like Joe Davis, make sure to leave us a review. Email us at [email protected] or tweet at us at ICE House podcast. Our show is produced by Lance Glynn with production assistance, editing and engineering from Ken Able. Pete Ash is the Director of Programming and Production at ICE. And I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein. All of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of [inaudible 00:59:27] clarity.
