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I'm Shannon burning books editor for knowledge of Wharton and I'm happy to be
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here today to speak to Paul Schumacher about his new book with Steven kup winning the long game how strategic
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leaders shape the future Paul thank you for being here today my pleasure Shannon thanks I'm so
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curious what challenge did you see for leaders that led you to WR winning the long game well we deal with a lot of
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leaders and they tell us especially managers who want to be leaders that they often given feedback during a
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performance review that they're doing very well operationally and their execution skills are great and then at
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the end they sort of told they should be a bit more strategic because they might
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have missed a new market development or competitor entering and they then wonder
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how do I do this and when they ask their bosses what do you mean can you be more
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specific they don't say much more than you know do like Wayne Gretsky skate to
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where the puck will be but that's often not enough that's right and in the book
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you provide a questionnaire for for the readers to assess their own strategic leadership yes and I think that probably
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gets to the heart of um exactly what you're talking about makes it more concrete can you tell us about those
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questions and what you what you're helping uh the reader to assess yeah we feel that it has to be more concrete
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than giving very general propositions such as having a vision or having commitment Etc so we um in a sense
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deconstructed strategic leadership into six elements um the these would be things like how to anticipate changes in
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the external environment or internally in the organization better it could be the ability to challenge yourself and
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other people's views especially in a changing world and our focus is a bit on
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how to be a speciic leader when things are changing in the external environment so these elements that I mentioned are
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especially important for that for example the ability to interpret things that are happening not through old
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lenses but new lenses and then in the world of uncertainty the ability to make tough decisions that takes some courage
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you can't wait for all the information so that's a definite leadership skill
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the ability to align people around a vision but how do you do alignment how do you bridge differences how do you
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deal with um you know conflict and learning is the last so we have six elements and each of these elements we
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in this particular survey we have about 10 items that very behaviorally ask how often do you engage in the following
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kind of behaviors and that's what that survey does so at the end the the participant has a sort of a profile they
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can draw a little hexagon as to how well they score on these various dimensions and focus more on the gaps and then we
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offer specific advice on how to bridge the gap the biggest gaps right in particular one of the things that's so
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interesting is that in each of these um chapters you're really looking through
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the lens of discipline as a as a priority can you tell us more about that yeah we thought we thought about what
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are these skills are these abilities are these competencies are these orientations are they skills and it's a
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bit of all of that so we figure it's the term discipline which is a bit of an odd
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word in some in some quarters maybe but it captures three key elements namely that
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it is based on knowledge there's a knowledge based underlying it so if I say the the discipline of playing bridge
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or do sport or playing the piano that people associate a knowledge base that is one the other is literally the
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discipline or being disciplined that is practice a stick with a program don't be
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so easily you know distracted so that's important um and the third element is
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that you like any discipline you don't master it by reading a book you master
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it by having a framework and then practicing practicing practicing just like a musical instrument so we felt
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that discipline has all of those connotations but it also left uh room for the notion that there is an artistic
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element to it the art of a discipline right in the martial arts or something like that and I don't think we have the
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it's not a scientific um model necessarily it it it allows for um you know customization and um sort of it's
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contingent on culture and situation so that's all wrapped into the idea of a
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discipline that you know how to deal with the this enormous variety of situations that leaders encounter and
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can you give us a couple examples of leaders who've been very successful as strategic leaders yeah well we mentioned
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many so each chapter we start with a leader that everybody recognizes so the first chapter on anticipation we profile
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Elon Musk who most people know of course as having been with SpaceX a remarkable
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inventor and PayPal he became very rich and now he's pioneering the electric car
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with a Tesla and he does approach it as a discipline um when he was asked once on television program how can you be so
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creative he says well most people who want to be creative don't even try he says and I want my Engineers to be very
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creative we don't people to have average ideas and he says I work on this very
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hard till my brain hurts so there's an element of sort of being uh you know recognizing it as something you had to
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work on just like an an author would or an athlete but then other elements like challenge
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we profile actually Pope Francis who took over an somewhat dysfunctional organization some would say with a lot
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of tough issues and he may and he's really you know it's a tight rope how
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much does he really challenge there's dogmas that he can't Cannons of the
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church that he has to and he's very conservative in some ways and he's very
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liberal and very remarkable in other ways so for each of these topics we kind of profile leaders who we think were
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very impressive in business we uh describe um Mr holiday who was the CEO of DuPont and early on in 2007 he picked
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up weak signals that we're going to hit a wall with the economy but there were
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truly weak signals like the reservations in Hotel DuPont were down he picked that
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up on at a reception or was in Japan and a Japanese customer wanted more cash you
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know he he was short of cash so he wanted to get postponements of payments Etc and then the auto companies which
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are big for dupond wouldn't share their production plans and he gets his information disjointed ly and he puts
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like Sherlock Holmes kind of puts together the picture and and and sees what's happening before others do and
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survived as a consequence the deep depression or the recession better than than others the other side of things
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would be if you're not able to you know practice this this discipline of strategic leadership can you give us
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some examples of those who uh were not able to implement those [Music] ideas I think you can look at any of the
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failed companies right at it's Kodak or there's so many um no no Nokia would be an example but
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the ones we profile are companies like Lego you know Lego the Danish company that has all the lovely the lovely
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bricks plastic bricks they really were almost bankrupt after 30 or 40 Years of great success and it was really their
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inability to anticipate changes in their Market in particular the video Revolution the sort of the it Revolution
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that games becoming electronic and they were almost and in billand in in jetland
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Denmark where they employed almost two-thirds of the town you can imagine what how devastating this was because
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the company almost went under and then they had the opportunity to kind a deal with Lucas film for um you know sort of
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a really very successful uh the force you know they embraced the force and uh and that that saved them but there was
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one one leader who who who who killed the deal he said we're not going to work
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with Outsiders we've always done it ourselves was very distrustful of the outside world and he said Over My Dead
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Body and it was until a senior leader recognized that they were falling behind the times that the world was changing
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outside of Denmark and they needed to really team up with Partners who could do this much
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better as a final question Paul can you tell us uh what you hope readers will take away from the book yeah for one we
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hope that readers um who Aspire towards strategic leadership start to realize that you need to integrate strategy and
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leadership in a world of uncertainty much more than it's typical the typical
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model is you know a strategy gets formulated leaders are involved in that process but then others often execute
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and then of course in a world of uncertainty no business plan survives contact with reality so you need people
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who are very good in picking that up quickly and be able on the fly to make adjustments so the tighter integration
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that's one they will have a conceptual model for what is really at the core of
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doing this sort of rare skill very well and they have some instruments but I hope that they will just also learn by
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example by just you know reading the stories of leaders who were really quite remarkable uh as and we it's fairly
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International so it's not just American leaders as we profile them across the
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world um and and then also they may want to Mentor other people so leaders who are already strategic can use the book
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as a guide to tell people who who they feel should become more strategic how to do that thank you Paul it was great to
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speak with you it's my pleasure thanks Shon appreciate it [Music]