Lee Naik, CEO TransUnion Africa: Why the Best CEOs say “I Don’t Know”

Debbie: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to On Work and Revolution, the CEO series. I’m your host, Debbie Goodman, CEO of Jack Hammer Global. For those of you who don’t know us, we’re Africa’s largest executive search boutique. We operate across 24 countries on the continent. I’m also a CEO coach. I work with leaders all over the world and I’d have to say my mission is that, I wanna help companies and leaders to build workplaces where people can actually thrive.

This is the fourth season on the podcast. And in this season I go deep with CEOs, not just on like what they’ve achieved and all their accomplishments, but on what the role really demands, what surprises them, what they’ve learned the hard way. And today I’m joined by Lee Naik, who’s CEO of TransUnion, Africa.

So a little bit of an intro to Lee. He spent almost 20 years at Accenture. He rose to managing director of Accenture Digital for [00:01:00] Sub-Saharan Africa, where he became one of the continent’s most recognized voices on digital transformation and technology strategy. In 2017, he made the big move. He stepped into the CEO role at TransUnion Africa with a mandate that was

definitely not simple. He was required to transform a traditional credit bureau into a full spectrum data and digital services business for Africa. And what I’m really interested in today is not rehashing a standard career story, even though Lee’s is pretty amazing. But you can find that on other podcasts, but rather a bit of a behind the scenes look

at his transition from consulting to leading a business turnaround, and then some of the realities of leadership, including the less than glamorous parts that don’t always get airtime. So, Lee, welcome to the show.

Lee: Debbie, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure being on the series.

Debbie: Good. Okay, [00:02:00] so before we talk about TransUnion, I wanna start with the place you were just before the role came along because you’d spent like 19, 20 years at Accenture doing really great work, high impact, interesting stuff advising major organizations, but you’d never actually run a business with a P and L.

And I know from some of the boards that we work with when they’re wanting to appoint a CEO. They’re kind of a little skeptical about somebody with mostly consulting experience. So my question is, at that point in your career, did you feel ready to run a business?

Lee: Well, that’s a really interesting question and you’re not wrong. I think from people that I spent so much time fixing other businesses. The question is, if you had your own business, could you do all the stuff you talk about? So

I guess for for some of that done really well in the Accenture career and consulting and helping fix large organizations. I think as a youngster, that did really well in that space, making partner quite early, the provocation [00:03:00] was, is this the end? You know, many people in the consulting world, as you well know, Debbie, end up staying there until their retirement sometimes and, and I

felt that there was something more than, so where was I

before this? I was doing extremely well. And as you would know from a recruiting perspective. Recruiters like Jack Hammer, extremely adamant that they will get you at some point. And actually remember, remember the time, um, I was approached back in April of 2016 and this

wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have.

In fact, the recruiter at the time, I repeatedly put down the phone not showing disinterest and, and many things started to happen. Uh, probably the first thing happened in 2016 was the year that I confused my treadmill, right? So most treadmills you put in your age and your weight and you try to be honest about where you are. So in the year 2016, I had to answer the question, do I put in 39 or do I put in 40? It’s the 40th year, [00:04:00] but is it 39? And so I think in that January post New Year’s celebrations, you asked the question, where are you in the journey? In this case, it felt like the start to provocation that, is there something beyond 40? So I think 40, the year of 2016 was an inflection point,

and when came about at the me, me being at the very top of my career, probably being on the pathway to leading the bigger business in Accenture, the question still remained was they more than for Lee Naik? And I think over the many months, Debbie, I started to explore the possibility of something outside of Accenture. And it wasn’t about running the P and L. The bigger question for me was, was I making the maximum impact I could to the society that I lived in, to the continent that I lived in? And if you go back and look at what I’ve always spoken about and written about to customers and to, and to clients and to consumers, the bigger thing was how do you amplify [00:05:00] impact? And that’s probably what provoked this conversation to leave a world I’d spent 19 years from university doing.

Debbie: Was there a moment though that you thought to yourself, okay, I’ve been really successful and now I’m gonna step into something I’ve not done before and I could kind of screw this up? Or did you ever have like any imposter syndrome or fear of failure? Do you, I mean, it’s a while back, but do

you remember?

Lee: No it’s, it’s very clear. It’s absolutely clear that I had not done anything else but this. So my CV has two lines. Accenture and TransUnion all of two jobs in a career almost 30 years long. So there was clearly imposter syndrome. Of course, I have great confidence in what I’ve done to that point.

But to your earlier question, have you run this by yourself?

When it goes wrong, can you do it? Can you build a team around you? So all the methodologies and the playbooks and the thinking is in the head, but in the end, the [00:06:00] buck now stops with you and for sure. Um. Whether it’s a lack of confidence, doubt, imposter syndrome, those feelings were absolutely real. And, and what I would say to you is, I had the feelings for a while, but then you do what you do.

You reach out to your network and it’s such a blessing when you give to people over many years without asking, the very same people that you would need to help you think through it to comfort you, um, is exactly what I got. And that made the imposter syndrome feel less, made the doubt, feel less. In fact, a really senior HR leader who you would know, professor Shirley Zinn, her view was very

simple.

Of course you will do this, and that was the end of the conversation.

Debbie: Oh, okay.

Lee: so when you have people in your network that really are, are able to support you and you respect their views, I think that self-doubt can flip into positivity and a provocation to be more [00:07:00] than I was before.

Debbie: Mm. Okay. I wanna just continue with one last question on this, but around the, I mean, I, I engage with a lot of newly appointed CEOs, people who either we appoint, we help appoint from an executive search point of view, or, or CEOs that I coach who just. Stepped into the role and across the board, regardless of whether they have done this role before, it’s, there’s always an element of faking it. Because nobody steps into a new role right at the top, and preofesses to know absolutely everything about what they’re gonna get into.

And I see some people who are much more reticent to say yes to something because they’re like, I haven’t got all the, information, I don’t have all the building blocks. I’m not sure that I’m ready for it yet. And I think that bit of being okay to fake it is part of the DNA of certain leaders who are just prepared to take the leap.

Do you have any thoughts on, on that?

Lee: Well, I think that part of being a successful CEO is being calm, perceptively. [00:08:00] You could really be terrified internally, but being able to be calm when things are tough is what makes a great CEO, I believe. What I would say to when I walked into this job on day one, I realized that I knew nothing about this world I was going to.

I was literally outsider. And so one of the things I was lucky to have at the time Debbie was, I was able to get a transition coach, actually provided by the organization for my first a hundred days. And it really helped me, like you help other CEOs to help me think through the things that you wanna talk about and position. And I remember the very first email that I sent on day one of the organization, which was I believe the 3rd of January, 2017. It pretty much

precised as saying. Hi, my name is Lee. I’m the CEO, and I don’t have any of the answers you seek. Give me time to listen and to learn, and I will come back to you in a few weeks or in a few [00:09:00] months when I do have a point of view. And I think that that email in hindsight, it wasn’t the version I wrote. But when I reflect on that positioning, it kind of gave me that softer landing, Debbie, to allow me to find my feet. And even today, I don’t have all the answers. I have a strong team around me that makes me amplify my ability to tackle these challenges as a leader. But that landing, that transition coaching. I think it answers the point that it is scary to walk in as a new leader. It’s equally scary

to not know the answers, and equally so it’s okay not to know the answers on day one.

Debbie: I mean, I think that, it’s a bold move. It’s a brave, strategy to take to admit that you don’t have all the answers. I think a lot depends on a board and board’s expectations and how much runway they are prepared to give how patient they’re going to be. and certainly we see some very impatient boards who are not prepared to give too much [00:10:00] latitude.

 And then it becomes a, you know, it can be quite stressful. But I’m glad you had that, that slightly I wouldn’t call it an easy runway, but, ’cause you were expected to do a turnaround, right?

Lee: Well, it’s interesting, right? I was gonna make the point and say that I think when you have a long notice period, you get to do a lot of thinking about the new role. And I think it got from, this is the job description of the job, to be doing the research and the insights and I figured out what the work to be done was, as the late Clayton

Christiansen would say, what is that job to be done? And I realized upfront that it was gonna be difficult. Uh, one of the things that we, I did, Debbie, was by talking to the global leadership team. I actually got them to agree that I would need time to figure it out because I was hired as a CEO. When you get in, it almost inevitably feels like a turnaround, and so knowing what I needed to know would allow me to be better for the shareholder and for the global organization.

So I think the passage of time [00:11:00] allowed me to negotiate a on-ramp to the journey that was slightly better than I think just walking in cold would be.

Debbie: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I must say these, um, sort of slightly longer notice periods definitely have the benefit of that. In the US the transition time is really quick ’cause you don’t have quite as long notice periods. In fact, they can be as short as two weeks, maybe a month. In South Africa, rest of Africa, sometimes Europe, you’ve got extended three months to six months often, as a transition.

And what’s underestimated is that on-ramping time, and how much work you can actually do. Before you actually get into day one. I know that you spoke about, uh, initially you were reticent, you didn’t say yes immediately to the job, and you, had some time to consult with people, advisors, the lovely Dr Zinn as well, who is known to have a lot of influence with that.

But what advice would you give other people? Other people either who are stepping into [00:12:00] a big, a big next job that could be potentially life or career changing? Was there anything that you did that you think back and go, okay, this is what I would do again, if the next role were to arise and what you would advise others.

Lee: A really good question. I think the one thing I would say to to you is that I figured out what this job was about at a purpose level, and it kind of links back to a longer story. But the real point would be that who I am and what I’d like to do for my country and my continent this job would allow me to do. And I didn’t know that on day one when the first recruiter called me, but as I started to understand and engage and think about where the trend was going, I saw where this could go, not where it was. I saw where it could go. And I think if you can find a way to connect as a new CEO, your purpose and how you show up to where the organization wants to go, even when you start on day one, then you’ll figure out the how to get there. [00:13:00] But you just see it as a job as a P and L. And I believe it’ll be treated as a p and L and the P and L in itself has standard mechanisms of how you optimize it. I think what has made me stick around in this job for a while is I still believe in what I believe on day one. It’s true. And that passion of seeing an outcome, Debbie, it is so rewarding.

So I would say. Start by trying to figure out what this truly is. I think when you get to our level of leadership, it can feel like another CEO job, but if you can figure out

why and what the body of work is and what the impact is, I believe it truly connects you deeply to the soul of the opportunity and allow you to amplify the impact.

’cause we need to lead and guide and create followship. And I think you can’t do that if you don’t believe as Lee Naik and as Debbie, why you are here every day doing this hard work that we do.

Debbie: Yeah, I mean when you talk about purpose in that way, it can and purpose and impact. On the [00:14:00] one hand it can sound like sort of at a soul level, a little bit, not grounded, a little airy fairy. Boards definitely don’t ask that as a, an interview question, but it is actually a vital one, and I wonder how many CEOs or newly appointed, or people even along the journey keep going back to that.

Like, why am I here? What’s the big picture? ’cause it’s such a hard job. and yes, the rewards are there hopefully most of the time, but man, it takes, its, it, it takes its, uh, toll and it takes it pound of flesh. So that revisiting, over time around what’s the big picture and what’s the impact. I, I wish more leaders would constantly be incorporating that in their sort of annual review, so to speak.

Lee: can I share something with you, which I think is really important. I, It took me some time to figure it out clearly, but I came up with this phrase that helped guide me and the phrase was. TransUnion Africa, solving [00:15:00] problems that matter. I took it to the point where I created a three meter white banner that every person saw when they walked into the office. Because they want to

know what is the CEO about? And so I had a picture of a young child on an African map along this tagline, and that would guide us as to why we show up every day. So when you figure it out and you want to amplify it, because it can’t just be you that gets it, you want your team and your employees to get it. There’re mechanisms by which can amplify communicating purpose and make it more real for your people.

Debbie: Okay, so also walk around with a T-shirt on the back. Another strategy.

You’re not there yet.

Lee: But I think true stories help. Uh, you know, uh, we call, we

call these brand stories or brand narratives.

Tell a story as to why you believe, and I’ll get you to believe quicker than wearing a t-shirt.

Debbie: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay. I wanna talk about turnarounds [00:16:00] because I encounter many people, many leaders who say that that’s their, that’s a thing that they wanna do. That’s the type of CEO that they consider themselves to be. And I know you’ve said that around these jobs that are turnarounds, and this has been a real turnaround for you, is that the bigger the job, the bigger the turnaround, the more I’m using the word in inverted commas, “irritations”

’cause you weren’t quite as, sanguine about that as your terminology. You inherit. ’cause you’ve gotta fix stuff. You’ve gotta fix what came before you that weren’t the problems that you caused um, and so they often sound exciting on paper, but what do you think people underestimate about what’s actually needed, what it actually demands?

Lee: I think in many cases people don’t know that it’s a turnaround until they land in the position, and I think out of definition, when you hire and you hire, call a Debbie to help you find a CEO, it’s something [00:17:00] transformative. You’re looking to up the stakes and make an impact. And so what people don’t realize that when you walk into an opportunity, it’s never what you think it is and you’re required to figure out where the. Where the holes are, you know where the dead fish are, you know, understand what it is. And almost inevitably it requires a passage of time for you to listen and hear and go from symptoms to issues. And, and I spent a good few months, I’d say months more than weeks. Just listening,

listening and listening and listening.

Trying to figure out what is the pulse of the organization, whether there’s employee engagement, understanding how customers feel about the business without judgment, and I think people won’t understand that walking in. You’d understand that after you spend some time in the business and and I can said at the beginning when I joined this organization, like any CEO that joins a new organization, you are the outsider. They’re on the inside [00:18:00] already. You’re in their territory. You’ve gotta become one with the people, one with the system, one with the way of working, and that turnaround always more than you think it is, primarily because it’s always complex because the shareholder wants more. There’s a bigger opportunity and you’ve been tasked as an external hire to find that potential that they see and to realize it. Is it possible? How do you do it? That is not known. That is the job of the incoming CEO and I think almost innovatively given the current climate of the world over the last three to five years. I believe that every CEO job has a large shape of turnaround and transformation, before the easier days come into play.

Debbie: I wanna, uh, refer back to something you just mentioned a little earlier, and this is the idea of the first 100 days. I’m actually writing a piece on that because, uh, my question is how much [00:19:00] of that is just like a bit of a fiction because the first a hundred days, how much time is needed to actually figure out what’s going on in an organization and the kind of turnaround that you’re speaking about.

That’s not something that happens instantly. And I’ve seen leaders who start acting too quickly and they are misinterpreting signal and noise. They’re not distinguishing symptom and issue. And so what are your thoughts on this first 100 days story?

Lee: As a guy that spent a lot of time in transformation in the consulting world, I can tell

you that it’s a powerful mechanism because whether you’re a consultant walking or a CEO walking in, if you don’t know what’s really going on, coming up with suggestions of change or change programs, it’s actually more difficult than you think. So my reflection, my first a hundred days, it allowed me the time to meet the [00:20:00] leadership, to understand where the yeses, the nos, and the maybes were. Following the General Electric model, it ask, it asks you to understand the products, the customer, the sentiment. I think that buying the time in your journey to listen and to hear the pulse of the organization is something that set me up in good stead. If I had skipped that, I would’ve led with my arrogance, is what I thought the answer would be, and I think that will be a big, big mistake because I had very clear preconceived notion as to how I fix the business in a few weeks or a few months. But the reality is that nothing is that simple. Specifically the business, like the one I run that’s 125 years old.

Debbie: Right. So what I see a lot is CEOs go in for their panel interview to a board, and then they’re expected to do some presentation. That’s what they’re gonna do in the first 100 days. And they’re not saying, I’m spending the first 90 [00:21:00] listening and figuring things out. They’re actually expected to present some kind of action plan, and so that feels like quite, quite quick.

I don’t know that that’s even possible and feasible in this day and age.

Lee: I, I don’t think it’s feasible, but what I did do as part of like having to convince myself to take the job is, I had the privilege of meeting the global leadership individually, every single one of them, right?

And so I got to ask many of the, the questions even before my first start day, but equally so when I sat down with the global leadership team, I was able to create the on-ramp I needed to be able to slower to give them a, a better answer. In the case of the organization I run, for a long, long period of time in Africa, it was a single service provider. It had no competition, and by the time I

arrived, it had five other competitors. We had to understand as a global leadership team what we didn’t know, and if we understood what we didn’t know, we’d make better choices and what we should do for us to drive our relevance and our growth [00:22:00] as an organization.

So I have the benefit of maybe having taken longer. And maybe it’s unlike where you find yourself today in, in the US where it’s two weeks or four weeks. I had four months of thinking to do, and I met

the leadership to pre-think about some of these scenarios. So those first a hundred days, I would never give those up.

And I, I encourage every CEO to ensure you include that in your transition planning as well.

Debbie: Right. I think that’s absolutely brilliant advice. I want to, take a little bit of a step and peek under the hood a little and go, well, there’s an unglamorous part to being CEO that people don’t often talk about. And, uh, you know, the view is, well, you’re at the top, you’re getting the big fat paycheck, so, you know, suck it up buttercup.

But, you’ve been quite honest about the fact that the work is tough and sometimes quite lonely and you use this term so I’m gonna excuse my French and say I’m shoveling shit. Um, what did you mean by that?

Lee: I think the [00:23:00] reality is that the, the role of A CEO is to be the face of the organization to be able to deal with the challenges and opportunities that come your way. Equally so not everything is glamorous in your job. You know, whether it is the facilities or the building or the people or the hiring or communicating, these aren’t necessarily glamorous things, but to realize that as the CEO, you’re first and foremost accountable for everything about this business, you are the face of the business, Debbie. And when you start to understand the accountability, you soon start to realize that you wanna be organized in terms of the team around you that gets you, gets the the ask of you. But to understand that some days it isn’t about what you’d like it to do, some days you can do something that’s more menial,

that may be more tedious. But the truth is that it requires all sorts of facet. That you are responsible for, [00:24:00] that leads to your accountability, and some days aren’t that nice. That’s reality. Whether it’s

Lee Naik or Debbie Goodman, that’s reality. I think you’ve got to understand that the buck stops with you and you need to make the point of understanding how your business org runs. And if you don’t understand how your business runs,

how do you take leadership? How do you delegate? Right? To your people if you don’t understand what it is. And for me, in my experience running transformation before this job, I can tell you that many leaders are quite stepped back from the detail of the organization.

You can run a business by looking at the P and L. My job was to understand why I wanted this job and to understand how the business runs from the people to the processes. ’cause once you understand how the business works, you can appreciate the detail enough to make the right choices for the organization. And because I come from detail, I was able to put that effort in and I think doing the harder menial things. It’s [00:25:00] certainly part of the job and I’d say to any CEO that’s listening to so or wanna be CEO, that it requires you to be all things to all people and realize that in the end, whether it’s a lack of milk in the cafeteria or whether it is something being delayed or something you need to apologize for, the buck will in fact stop with you.

Debbie: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s the, that is the truth of it and is the very unglamorous part of it. I wanna switch tack a little bit. You wake up incredibly early, like 3:30 AM if the urban legend has me believe it. What are you doing at that time of day?

Lee: Clearly I should be sleeping. That’s the honest truth. I think,

think Peter Attia says that we both need seven hours minimum of sleep. So we’re not getting there yet. But I will actually tell you that my current pattern is better than my previous career in consulting, right? Um, so what I do every morning is I [00:26:00] have quite a regimen as to how I go about my day. I believe that by the time I get into my car every day, I need to know enough about how the world works and how my business may be impacted for me to have a point of view. One of the things about being the front door to the organization that you may get a call at any time and they could say, Lee, I’m going through this.

What do you think I should do? Lee, I’ve heard about this trend. What do you think? So I do a few things, debbie. The first thing I, I try to do is express gratitude for just being alive and being well to start another day with my family. But then I spend the next bit, uh, in a concurrent play. One part is to acquire as much knowledge as possible. It could be by watching late night television that just finished in the US in the previous night. It could be by watching a few of my digital feeds or by watching a meditation video on YouTube. But I spend about [00:27:00] an hour and a half every morning just taking in the world while I’m walking on the treadmill or doing some light exercise, because as we deal with the stresses of being a leader, looking after your body, trying to connect with your family, connect with the earth, connect with what’s around us, I think is the trick. So I find that i’m an early riser. I’ve always been the guy that gets up at two in the morning to study for exams at university. So 3:30 is actually a lot better than 2:00 AM but it’s enough time for me to start my day with what I need to be, what I think is a better CEO than without that information and knowledge and exercise and routine.

Debbie: Hmm. Yeah, look, I mean, it’s considered best practice actually to start early and do this kind of, uh, inner work. and I know that there’s some, best practices that say, you know, certain amount of time, meditating, certain amount of time, journaling, certain amount of time, information gathering, et cetera, exercise, moving your [00:28:00] body.

 My golden hour is 4:00 AM and I don’t get a chance to do any of that ’cause I’ve gotta get onto calls right away. But, um, I do, I swapped it, swapped it around anyway, at 4:00 AM You need somebody to talk to. You can, you can always give me a ring. I wanna talk about the loneliness piece, ’cause maybe you would be open to sharing a bit about this.

Where do you feel this most? Because you, I know you’ve got a great network. You’re surrounded by good people. So when you say lonely, when does that happen?

Lee: Well, I think the reality is whether you’re Debbie at 4:00 AM in the morning questioning your life choices or Lee Naik every single day, the reality is that when you’re solely accountable for some structure within a bigger shareholding construct, that buck stops with. There’s certain things that you can talk to your team.

There’s certain things you can talk to your boss. There’s certain things you can talk to your coach, but there’s certain things that you wanna talk to a confidant about. It could be a coach that’s coaching externally that doesn’t have the [00:29:00] day-to-day context. It could be a mentor that you have. So for me, I think the loneliness comes in

you are trying to figure out something that’s very complex and you just soundboard because the decision, the set of choices is quite controversial, and whereas you can talk about many things in a leadership meeting or an executive committee, some things you’re doing that is actually against the grain of what is normal.

Because to drive a transformation, to drive growth requires a provocation to the way things are working. And sometimes an external soundboard, it could be the wife, it could be a friend, it could be a mentor, it could be a global colleague that you have. That’s what I think you need it most. It isn’t about the friendliness about it. It’s when you’re trying to work through something complex, you literally want someone just to say, Hey, Debbie, can I just talk you through what I’m thinking in confidence? I’d love to get your view. You are an expert in that space. So what I had to do, Debbie, [00:30:00] over the years is

find a few people that we have an innermost trust with where we go to each other when we wanna talk. Of course there’s other constructs like YPO that I’m also a member of

the Young President’s organization. As you know, the concept of a forum is very confidential. We can leverage that

to have such conversations. The truth though, which I’ll go back to your question on, I think a large part of being a CEO is that there’s some things where you’re part of the team and other things where you lead the team by making bold, disruptive choices. It is those moments where you prefer to have a soundboard against your loneliness.

’cause you wanna be more right versus more wrong in those harder choices.

Debbie: Yeah, I mean, there’s some actual science in the work of being able to vocalize and articulate these complex, challenging, uncomfortable moments, these decisions that you have to make, or these issues that keep you just [00:31:00] restless and just having somebody there who will listen, they don’t even have to give you advice.

They don’t even have to point you in a direction. They’re just there to hear you, speak about whatever issue it is. That in itself, there’s science in showing how that essentially helps one to resolve and find one’s own decision at the end of the day. And these peer networking groups, YPO, Vistage, I mean, there are many over the world.

 They continue to exist and they’re worth their money because for this very reason. So that you do have these, networks of people who can identify with the challenges you’re going through and don’t necessarily give you advice, but are there for you to talk through it. The talking through it is the point.

 I know that you’re a very disciplined person, aside from the 3:30 AM wake up and your morning ritual. You’ve spoken about running the business, running TransUnion, Africa as an 11 month operation, and then December is the cream. I’d love listeners to hear more about that. It’s such an interesting idea.

Lee: South Africa has this, not a unique challenge, [00:32:00] but it’s very equivalent to, summer vacation in Spain. Right. Um.

Try to get hold of someone in Spain in August, you’re gonna struggle. South Africa has our summer holidays in December,

so most people are literally gone from 15th of December until the mid of January. and and one of the things I realized, Debbie, is it’s almost in a couple layers. One of the things about running an organization is to take the BAU engine, the business as usual engine, and try and get it to hum as effectively and as efficiently as possible. So you’re leveraging automation and digitization. And all the benefits of the technology around us and improved processes to allow us to get to the point where the business starts to almost run itself. and and why that’s important is that when you think of disruption and growth, you wanna do something that’s new, not something that’s the same. Same will get you so far the benefit of inflation and the economy improving.

But to solve a new problem requires you to let [00:33:00] go of the things that are BAU. So a large thing to recognize, number one is if the business can run by itself as much as possible, it frees up the mind space, it frees up the team to focus on the things that matter. The 11 month construct is important in a very South African, Spain or just EU construct

in that, if you think about how people. Want to make big, bolder decisions. Getting a big bolder decision in December is always difficult, so my view

is if you compress the pressure early in the year, you don’t have what we call in consulting this inevitable hockey stick pressure in December, right. And

so you forward load the pressure into your business earlier in the year and the time you get into that October, November period, you have a clear line of sight as to where you’ll end.

And to your earlier point, you then ask yourself, how much of the cream will you benefit from knowing that your budgets are in order, your plans have [00:34:00] manifested. If you leave it to the very last day, just before Christmas, it’s probably too late and you can’t control the outcomes. And I think your point of discipline is important. Discipline

says to you that your primary measures as a CEO, whoever you are, is revenue and margin. Organize yourself to be successful and you will be successful. So something I learned over many years of working with large organizations is that they always leave it to the last month of their budget cycle to make their budget

Right.

Why not make it earlier? And then you have the cream of benefit of further uplift that is, you know, over and above what you’ve expected. So it’s discipline, but also as a benefit of having seen this play out in many organizations in many industries across the world.

Debbie: Hmm. I mean, it’s actually a simple idea. It’s so obvious I haven’t yet seen it in any of the leadership books. So maybe you’re the first, maybe you’re the pioneer of this concept

Lee: got.

Debbie: Lee, I think. I think you should. You [00:35:00] should monetize this. I think. Um, it’s a, it’s a good one. Um, alright, I want to come back to something that you’ve touched on before and that is the dealing with rejection and you’ve spoken about the many rejections you received while trying to get into university, the other rejections over your career and

I know that there are people who really, they don’t cope well with this, and they kind of internalize this idea of being turned down as almost like an identity of failure. So I’m curious to know what’s your approach to the cycle of not winning all the time? Um, because that can happen even for a very successful person.

One can go through a phase where you’re not hearing the yesses at every corner.

Lee: earlier I told you that calm is a perception, so I’ll tell you that I’m really good at doing it. The truth, however, is that rejection is hurtful and painful to each one of us, whether it’s in a personal family or a business perspective. What I’ve realized though, so you, you called out the [00:36:00] point that it’s something I learned as a child, in my environment where I lived, where it was almost normal to fail. So nobody was expected to succeed. There was a standard expectation of how far you’d go with your career. So uh, in that context, my mother was the first leader I met. She showed me the opportunity to break out of the predetermined stated expectation of anybody around me. And so

on one hand I was told you could choose rejection or you could choose to change the odds and change the exam question. I will tell you today, you know, 30 years or so into my career, what my mother taught me that I still use today. So it’s my mother’s methodology, not mine, but I try to find a way to listen and to accept and to receive and try to digest what is going on. Realize that I can’t control all the variables and all the odds. But once I know what odds I’m playing with, [00:37:00] once I know what variables I’m playing with, I’m able to then process a rejection or process a disappointment then to recover quite quickly from that. So that’s one point.

The second point I would say to you is that the current state you have is your baseline.

Once you figure out where you’d go to, where you aspire to, you know, we call it the North Star. Along your journey from where you are to your North Star, you’re gonna have many rejections and failures. It. One of the things I do, going back to solving problems at NATSA, is I ask myself like, why am I here? And when you’re having a down day or a bad day, you get reminded that that North Star is why you do what you do. And when I close

my eyes and I think about what I do, i’m reminded of like snapshot memories that get me to overcome the rejection as a short term passage of time, knowing that there’s a bigger goal, there’s a bigger expectation as what I could do and what may lie ahead of me, whether it’s [00:38:00] tomorrow or the next week. But I wanna have more ups than downs. I want to have more impact than less impact, and I think disappointment and rejection is part of the journey for every leader when you make peace with the fact that it’ll not be perfect every day. And I’ve had to learn this, Debbie, I’m very honest. I come from being what I think is a high performer in the context which I grew up in, in my previous life. And I had to learn a new language, new people, new systems and processes, and had to learn to give myself that grace and that time to figure it out. Every CEO that you’ve met on this conversation would tell you the same thing, I believe. It’s never easy, but if you can give yourself the grace, I believe that it’ll become easier and you’ll be more success when you realize that you aren’t a superhero and it isn’t possible to do everything in a minute or in a day.

Debbie: That’s a great answer and I I, one of the characteristics that I do see with leaders is their sort of, their [00:39:00] bounce back ability is even people who’ve been ex extremely successful and have won most of the time, will also always have the failures, but the things that enable them to go forward is this really quick recovery.

So they will, I mean, and I know for myself, I have failed so many times. Things have not gone in a straight line so many times, and I really feel it when I am not successful. Man, it hurts, but I am able to move on quite quickly, even from a, a low low, and I’m not entirely sure whether that is teachable, whether that is cultivated.

 I’m interested to see. I, I know that particularly our younger generation, they’re into instant gratification and when things don’t work their way, it’s hard for them to move on. They start believing that they’re, that they’re not this or not that, or not good enough. And so I, I’m still questioning around how does one cultivate and develop a quality of the, I don’t like the word resilience, but more the, the bounce [00:40:00] back ability because that’s an inevitability in life.

I’m, I’m always interested to hear lessons from people like you and, and the other leaders I encounter. I don’t know that there’s one great answer around that, but yours is pretty good.

Lee: Part of HA having this dialogue today is our ability, both you and I to give back to the community of aspiring leaders and or leaders today. And I think for those that know we should teach. And for those that don’t know, we should seek to ask others how they do that.

And I think the vulnerability of asking is a very powerful thing. As a leader, you aren’t born a

CEO. Right. You may have the potential that needs to be exercised to get to CEO, and I’ll just say that in every challenge you have, someone’s been there, someone’s done it before, so vulnerability becomes a strength and not a weakness.

Debbie: Yeah. that’s excellent. I wanna end on, I mean, you’re a really inspiring voice for everybody in the business world for up and coming, [00:41:00] professionals and leaders, for your community. I’ve heard you say you want people to know that their dreams are valid. And I love that. I mean, it’s a beautiful, inspiring statement, but I kind of wanna move a little bit beyond the beautiful, wrapped in a bow.

I wouldn’t call it platitude. It’s a wonderful, view of the world. What practical actions do people need to take in order to support the possibility that their dreams have a chance of manifesting? Because to go back to my earlier point around this, this instant gratification, it either works quickly or I’m, you know, I’m gonna give it up.

 What practical actions do people need to take?

Lee: Well, a couple things. I think uh dreams are valid, comes in asterisk, just above the D uh, on the

timeline, because I think there’s, I’ll just maybe show a quick framework to think about it. There’s possibilities and there’s probabilities and there’s preference. Is it possible that you could be the president of a country, Debbie?

I think it’s possible. [00:42:00] Is it probable? I think it’s less probable than, than more probable. And in everything you think, when you think about the dream, the first thing I’d say to us as leaders is to validate our dream. So it’s valid, but you gotta ask yourself the probability of happening. So is it possible you win the lottery? It is absolutely possible, but the odds are stacked against you. So, so one part is to understand and give clarity to that dream. So you talk about, I’d like a car. What car would you like? When you close your eyes in your, in your virtual vision board, can you see it? Can you manifest it? And that allows that second part about the practical part. If you can’t see it, how will you manifest it? Right? So whether it’s a new product, whether it is growth for your organization, whether it’s for you to be a kinder or a better leader, if you can’t close your eyes and feel it, you can’t see that. It’ll not be possible. So one part

is to almost give [00:43:00] color to the dream, to the point where you can communicate it to yourself and to others when asked. The second thing is when you figure out what that dream looks like and feels like, you gotta build a pathway to get there, that is practical, right? Some people say, you know what? I have an aspiration. Everybody else has done it in 10 years. I will get it done in two years. Now it’s absolutely possible you do that. It’s probably not probable unless you’ve got a pathway to get there that’s pragmatic and tested for me from a child growing up where I grew up to where I’m today, I try to err on things that are both possible and probable and have preference. You may have

a dream that belongs to somebody else. It wasn’t really your dream.

You, you said, I like that other CEO from the other recruiting firm. I’m gonna copy their dream, but it’s gotta be yours.

You gotta assimilate and make it yours in how you think and how you shop every day. And then to build a pragmatic path is say, okay, that’s how [00:44:00] I get there. Because if you can’t tell me the how,

like Simon Sinek says, in response to the

what, in response to the why, then you know what? That’ll never be possible. So I think pragmatism says possibility must become probability and probability must have preference, which means that you made a bold choice and you’ve built a pathway to get there, Debbie.

Debbie: Okay, well, I mean, that’s a really, really great model. That consulting DNA of yours is coming to the fore with those perfect models. And it really is a wonderful one. I’m a pragmatist, but I’m also a dreamer. And so trying to marry those two is sometimes, hard work. But it’s great to hear the hierarchy as well.

Like you gotta have the dream then believe that is possible. And then figure out a way that has to be practical ’cause uh, this idea of just manifesting and magic will happen. Uh, maybe I think we are gonna close because I run a tight ship and we’re at just over [00:45:00] 45 minutes. Lee, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation.

So grounded. You’re so incredibly generous. I appreciate how you’ve gone beyond just the surface level leadership talk and as always, so inspiring. Thank you so much.

Lee: Thank you, Debbie. I appreciate the opportunity.

Debbie: Bye now.