Over the last few years, Bob Chapman has been honored to present the message of Truly Human Leadership to more and more audiences.
Whether to a group of manufacturing executives, city government leaders, business students, human resources professionals, and countless others, the goal remains the same. Bob wants people to
understand that the way we lead impacts the way people live.
Bob has long been inspired by the work of The Aspen Institute and
their contribution to the conversation around leadership in the world.
So, it was an honor when he was invited to speak at the 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival alongside
a diverse slate of names, such as New York Times columnist David
Brooks, Sen. Cory Booker, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, former
HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, Saturday Night Live Weekend Update anchors
Michael Che and Colin Jost, Katie Couric, former Disney CEO Michael
Eisner, Pulitzer-Prize winner Thomas Friedman, political writer Bill
Kristol, and author Susan Orlean.
“The Privilege of Leadership” was the theme of his talk, where he was able to tell the stories of our learnings and journey at
Barry-Wehmiller to this esteemed audience. It is our hope that our message took root in many of the discussions that occurred and will continue to resonate afterward, causing action and change in more and more organizations.
On this podcast we share an edited version of Bob's presentation. You can listen through the links above or through your favorite podcast provider.
Transcript
Bob Chapman: I had the privilege about a year and a half ago to participate in my granddaughter's graduation from Aspen High School. It's in the music tent. It's a beautiful venue.
And as I sat in the seats with Cynthia, as our granddaughter Aidan walked up with 158 other students, everybody was so proud of their child, so pleased with the opportunity of one of the best public high schools in the state of Colorado going to good colleges, good universities, and everybody was applauding and looking forward to these children entering the world. And from my experience in the world, I had a tear in my eye because I knew the world that they were going into. And while we have this joy that we're sending their kids out into the world, my concern is that we have not created a world where they're going to continue to be who they're intended to be, and I want to share that with you.
So I had a tear in my eye, but I have hope in my heart. So let me walk you through this. Here's the crisis.
As it said in the video, 88% of all people who work in this country feel they work for an organization that does not care about them. Three out of four people in this country are disengaged in what they're doing. We talk about the health care crisis.
Guess who's the cause of the health care crisis? Organizations in this country are the cause of the health care crisis. Why?
Because 74% of all illnesses in this country are chronic. The biggest cause of chronic illness is stress, and the biggest cause of stress is work, OK? Do you know that on Monday mornings, there's a 20% increase in heart attacks as people have to go back to work?
Our workplaces are harming the very people we are so joyous that our children get a job. You know, we talk about an economy where we create jobs, but we're not creating dignity and we're not creating caring. And that's what we want to talk to you about.
The person you report to at work, your supervisor is more important to your health than your family doctor.
Think about that. How many people in leadership positions in this country are aware that the way they lead the team of people they have the privilege of leading is going to affect, be a primary factor in the health of the people that they have the privilege of leading? I know that I was never taught that. I was never made aware of that and we're going to show you how else it impacts you. So what we have, the way we're working in this country is not working. I had the privilege of teaching up at Harvard in the fall before the election. and there was 180 global businessmen. And I said to them, the reason you see the political extremism you see in this country right now is because people are hurting. They have jobs, they're going to homes, they're taking vacations, inflation is low, but people are hurting in this country because they don't feel valued.
And when you look at the population, the way it voted, it's so evident that we're, the American people are dying for a different message, a message that if you will, embodied in our book, Everybody Matters. So the way we're working is not working, from our education to our work environment. And so what the world is suffering from is leadership malpractice, OK? From the highest level, and again, I'm talking about American business, but I've had the privilege of speaking in the Air Force. I've had the privilege of speaking to the healthcare industry and to the education field. It is broken everywhere, not just in American business.
Non-profits, do leaders of non-profits know how to care for the people who volunteer? Do our principals in our school know how to care for the teachers in our school? Do you know that 71% of the teachers in this country are disengaged in what they're doing? Disengaged. The people that you send your children to, to get their basic education, are disengaged in what they're doing. They're hurting just as much as the American worker. So we have leadership malpractice in this country, and we could solve it tomorrow. Gallup did a survey of 155 countries for the source of happiness.
They thought it would be money, right? It wasn't money, because people had enough money. They were no longer motivated by money. They thought it would be health. They found people take their health for granted. Their number one source of happiness in the world, which every one of you want for yourself, people you care about, and the people of this country, is a good job working with people you enjoy. So what do we deny to 88% of the people in this country? And so when we see the political and climate we have, why are we surprised? There's nothing that... I always say to the groups that I get to talk to around the country, don't worry about who's president or who your congressman is.
Worry about what you are doing, what you are doing to create an environment where everybody matters. So I'm going to walk you through a little bit of this. One of the things I want you to understand, the shift from management to leadership could be the most powerful force in the world, OK?
More powerful than any other force I've seen. If we just shifted from management to leadership, and if people, as the theme said, to embrace the privilege of leadership, not the financial consequences, you know, the good car, the higher salary in the office, but the privilege of being impactful to other people's lives. So we're going to now talk about the journey about the privilege of leadership.
What I was taught, I went to undergraduate in Indiana, got an accounting degree, got an MBA degree from Michigan, and then I went to work for Price Waterhouse in public accounting. I took management classes, I got a management degree, and I got a job in management. So what did I try and do? I tried to manage people, I mean, right? I mean, that's what it's all about. That's what I was taught, and that's what I experienced out in the world. What is management? It's the manipulation of others for my success. I was never taught to care.
I was taught to view people as objects. That's a receptionist, that's an engineer, that's a salesperson. They're not human, they're functions for my success. Nobody actually teaches you that, but that's the implication. You need these functions, and if you can justify some automation or some new technology, you can get rid of those people that are such a problem, right? So, and what is, how do we define success in our society? Money, power and position. Not living lives of meaning and purpose. We define success all wrong. But I was never taught, never taught in my undergraduate, graduate or my work in the field, that our job as leaders is to inspire the people we have the privilege of leading to be who they're intended to be and celebrate whatever that's intended to be. And I was never taught to care about the people, I would encounter along my journey.
So we're going to walk through this a little bit. Our journey to Truly Human Leadership. We originally called it people-centric leadership. Leadership focused on the people whose lives are entrusted to us. But Simon Sinek came and he spent a lot of time with us. And Simon said, No Bob, this is Truly Human Leadership. This is the way we are intended to lead each other. It's about people, purpose and performance. There was a restaurant here in Boogie, in Aspen, some of you remember, named Boogie's, and there was a sign on Boogie's wall that said, “Quality, Price and Service.” Pick any two. OK? People, purpose, and performance. It's not pick any two, not pick any one. Right now, our society picks number three.
It is about performance, about creating of shareholder value. Our principles are around, it starts with the fundamental responsibility. I was interviewed for two hours by Washington University and St. Louis organizational professors. After two hours of interview, they said to me, you're the first CEO I've ever talked to that didn't talk about your product. I said, we've been talking about our product for the last two hours. Seriously, when you think about your life, are you going to look back at the machines or the products or the things you sold or the lives you touched? So when you look at an organization and you look at number one, the people, you have the privilege of leading, and knowing that you're going to materially affect their health, it puts a totally different spin on what leadership is.
Around a purpose. We come together, Simon talks about finding your why. Why do we come together, and how do I inspire people to discover their gifts, develop their gifts, share their gifts, and as you'll hear, be appreciated for their gifts? And then we have to create value.
Inc. Magazine did a story of Barry-Wehmiller and said, people over profit. That is not true. That's what the author of the article wanted to say. It is people in harmony with profit. If we do not create value in organizations, non-profit, for-profit, we cannot be good stewards of the lives entrusted to us. That is the basis upon which we come together.
So it's people, starts with people, profound sense of responsibility for the people you invite into your organization, a purpose that inspires them, and then we have to create value and let people know that they make a difference. So Barry-Wehmiller that we talked a little bit about here is, it was a broken company in 1975 when my dad died and I stepped into a position of taking this $18 million company. Today it's about a $2.8 billion global company and it's a combination of 90 acquisitions around the world. So when you say it's hard to develop this culture in a company that grew up from the base, it's like an orphanage of 90 companies that came together around the world. But you can fly anywhere in the world. And I'll give you an example.
We bought a company on the coast of France, in France, which has got kind of a bad reputation for business, anti-government, workers' councils, etc. I flew over to hear the verdict because the workers' council has to vote for us to buy their company. So I flew over to this coastal village of France to hear the outcome of the workers' councils. They said, Mr. Chapman, we went to Paris. We sat with the workers' councils in Paris. We like your culture. We've studied it. And we want you to buy our company. Here an ugly American buying a French company from a French company. We want you to buy our company. And then a gentleman sitting next to the chairman of the workers' council said, Mr. Chapman, could I say something? And his name is Felipe. And in his broken English, he said, Mr. Chapman, we've been waiting for you for 32 years. And they began crying. These men were in their 50s and their 60s. And they began crying because they felt they were finally going to get to work for a company that cared about them. French government is very protective of French workers, right? But you can't protect people's souls, OK? You can't, they can't dictate how to care. They can dictate laws on, on compensation and, and, and all kinds of rules which we have, but people around the world are hurting. That's what we see all over the world. We operate all over the world. This is a universal truth.
We had a gentleman fly in from Moscow who read our book Everybody Matters. And he said, I want to learn to care for my people in Moscow. He has 2,000 people that work in Moscow. And he, and he was, and I said, isn't it amazing? We spent all of our time thinking of you as a Russian, and as a child, we hid under desk when you said the word Russia. OK? And here we are sitting together, talking about, caring about people. This is a unifying force that could begin to heal the world. So that's Barry-Wehmiller.
Now, let me talk to you through these 3 revelations I had that converted me from a traditional businessman to a Truly Human Leader. We bought a company in 1997 in South Carolina during March. It was 1997. It was March Madness. I flew down there to buy this. We bought this $55 million company and they make machines that Frito-Lay would buy to bag potato chips. So I flew down there. The first day, I bought it. It was a serious investment. I was standing in the lunchroom and everybody is having a ball talking about which team won, which college team won, who's in the final four and they were just having fun.
And the closer they got to 8 o'clock, you could just see the fun go out of their body. You can't even say the word job or work with a smile. OK? And I said to myself that day, why can't work be fun? Why do we call it work? Why do people leave? Why do we have TGIF in this country? Thank God, it's Friday, OK? To get the hell out of this place and drown my pain with beer, OK?
That's, we're seeing that pain. So I said, why can't business be fun? So I walked into a meeting and we, and I just off the top of my head came up with these games we could play that created value, would have fun, and we saw a profound change in culture. And we were astounded by it. I just wanted people to have fun. But when we, when we found out people had fun, they perform better. And that wasn't why we did it. I just wanted them to have fun. The second, Cynthia and I are Episcopalians. We were at our church, where the mentor of my church. Ed Salmon was a profound influence on our life, profound influence on how we raised our kids. And we were sitting in the pew and Ed gave a sermon. And I thought, isn't it amazing to have the privilege of standing before us and giving a sermon to inspire us to be who we're intended to be? And I remember getting up from the pew and looking at Cynthia and said, oh my God, Cynthia, Ed's only got us for one hour a week. We have people in our care for 40 hours a week. We could be 40 times more powerful than the church if we simply cared for the people we had the privilege of leading. I walked out of that church with a statement, business could be the most powerful force for good if it simply understood the profound impact we make on the people's lives we have in our care for 40 hours a week.
This is the one that, this is the revelation that occurred here in Aspen. A friend of ours, his daughter was getting married down at the Roaring Fork Club. So, then I were in the audience and he was walking his daughter, some of you have had the privilege of doing.
He was walking his daughter down the aisle, which some of you had the privilege of doing, and everybody's oohing and awing how beautiful she looked, how proud he was. When they got to the altar, he took the hand of his daughter and he gave it to this young man and said, her mother and I give our daughter to be wed to this young man. He sits down next to his wife, and they hug each other to watch the ceremony continue.
Now, any man in this room who's walked his daughter down the aisle knows absolutely that is not what he intended to say. It's what he was told to say. It's what he was told to say at the rehearsal that night before. What he wanted to say is, look it young man. Her mother and I brought this precious young lady into this world. We've given her everything we can give her so she can be who she's intended to be. And we expect you, young man, through this marriage, to continue to allow her to be who she's intended to be. Do you understand that, young man?
So I sat there, and as you now know, my mind goes to different places. And I said, oh my God, all 12,000 of our people are somebody's precious child, just like that young lady. And what are we doing? And that's the day I no longer saw people as functions.
I didn't describe people as engineers anymore. I described them as special people in the world that I had the privilege of leading. I would say to you, the wedding story, which is in our book, which was the most transformative way I thought, when I saw everybody who worked for me as somebody's precious child, the chairman of American Airlines, Doug Parker, about two months ago in his global leadership meeting, read the wedding story to his 6,000 global leaders and explained to them how it changed the way he views his 125,000 people. And he was very emotional when he did it. And so there are pockets of hope out there. So anyway, after the incident where we said, why can't business be fun? We started standing back and observing dramatic changes in behavior. And we gathered a group of people together to say, what's happening in our company? There's something bigger than we can imagine happening. And we started writing these things down. And this was about the environment of the Enron scandal and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, where I was somewhat concerned about how we define success in our country. And so I said, we are going to measure success by the way we touch the lives of people, not the growth in our share value, not the growth in our sales, not our market share, but we are going to measure success. We touch our customers, we touch our team members, we touch our bankers, our suppliers, our communities. Success is the way we touch all these, and we articulated these values. And so it gave us this foundation upon which to base everything.
So, and now let me tell you a story. We then implemented these. We started a university to start teaching people how to learn to care. And we were having an event up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, a company we'd bought, 180 million dollar company to make tissue equipment for people like Procter and Gamble. And we're having this global leadership meeting. We had about 20 of our presidents and operating executives, another 20. So we had about 40 or 50 people in the room. And I got an email the night before. We're going to start the meeting. And the VP of Operations said, you might want to walk out into the plant, Bob, because some people did some exercises in lean waste elimination, the Toyota Production System. He said, I think they'd really appreciate your acknowledging what they've achieved. And I said, well, Craig, why don't you just have them come into the meeting and update everybody. So these three gentlemen, two UAW team members, one non-union team member, which was Steve here, who I'd never met before, got into work the next morning, VP of Operations said, you're going to go talk to everybody. So they came in front of all of our presidents and they talked the language of business. It was all about numbers. We came together, challenged to reduce costs, improve quality, reduce lead time and improve customer experience. And it was numbers, numbers, numbers. And they were talking the language of business.
Again, to repeat, my mind goes to different places. I wasn't paying any attention to the numbers. And I looked at this gentleman's picture here, his name is Steve. I'd never met him before. I said, Steve, how did it affect your life, this? And what he told me was profound. Here's a gentleman who had no idea he was going to talk to the chairman of the company, never met me, didn't know the questions. And Steve stood up and he said, You know, Mr. Chapman, I've worked at this company for 30 years. I show up to work, I punch my card. I'm told what to do. Nobody ever asked me what I think. I get 10 things right and I never heard a word. And I get one thing wrong and I get my ass chewed out. He said, I found in reflection, when I'd go home at night, I didn't feel very good about myself. The way I was treated all day. But, you know, that was just my job and nothing I could do about it. So when I get home at night, I take my baseball cap off, I'd open the screen door and I throw my hat in. If my hat came flying back out, I knew I better go down to the bar and have a beer because it clearly wasn't a very good environment. But since, since we embrace Truly Human Leadership, and people now ask me what I think, I get to contribute to making things better, and my ideas get heard. He said, Mr. Chapman, when I go home at night, I feel dramatically different. And when I feel dramatically different, when I go home at night, I'm nicer to my wife. And you know what? When I'm nicer to her, she talks to me. I said, Steve, we're going to have a new metric for lean in this country, and it's going to be the reduction in the divorce rate in America.
So now, a couple of weeks later, I'm hiking up in Independence Pass with my daughter Jennifer, and Cynthia and a few other people, and this one lady is from Dallas, Beverly. And I said to Jennifer, Beverly had a TV program in Dallas on family counseling. She's really famous. And so Jennifer, with three kids, 45 years old, three kids asked her the same thing you would ask her. She said, Beverly, what's the most important thing in raising children? Beverly thought a minute and she said, from our experience, the most important thing in raising children is a good marriage. OK? And my mind went bingo. I now put together Steve and Beverly. When we send people home, 88 percent of all people home feeling that good, it affects the quality of their marriage, and the children that they brought into this world with best of intentions are now subject to parents who don't feel good about each other and treat each other the way they've been treated all day. And we know that for a fact, and I'll get into that later. But clearly, the way we send people home, when we look at the problems in our communities, when we look at the problems in education, we ought to look in a mirror. It's not the kids, what have they seen, what have they experienced? We have sent people home broken, they've lived less-than-perfect marriages, and their children have not witnessed the kind of marriages that they can emulate when they go out into the world. So in this room, if every one of us committed to caring about the people, we have the chance to interface with our life, we could profoundly affect the next generation and begin to heal. So Steve was a profound change on me.
The next thing, I told you that a lot of our leadership came from what Cynthia and I learned about parenting. I think when you're young and you're raising kids, you kind of focus on why didn't you put away your clothes? You came in late for dinner. Why did you get a B instead of an A in school?
We have a problem and so what occurred to me along this journey was that we need to shine a light in the organization and look for the goodness. Because if you don't compliment people seven times for every one constructive positive, it becomes oppressive. We know that in raising children and we know adults are no different. The environment that we said Steve was in was one where he got, what did you do wrong? What did you do wrong? Steve goes home and what did he do with his kids?
He tends to replicate the way he was treated. We have all kinds of awards. We're constantly looking in our organization for the goodness and holding it up. Because what are most organizations like, hey, did you hear who got fired? Did you hear we're going to have a layoff? We talk about the goodness of people all the time. So I wanted to economic downturn. Simon talked about this yesterday. We embraced the Guiding Principle of Leadership. 2008, 2009 came along and our orders dropped by 35 percent. Before the Guiding Principle of Leadership, I would have done what everybody else had done in this country and I wouldn't feel bad about it because it's just what you do in business. I would have laid off a lot of our people. But I was sitting in Italy, and in January, I had walked into my board meeting and as I walked into the board meeting, the first words out of my board is, don't you need to lay off people? In January 2009, everything was falling apart and I said, I don't think so. We got a pretty good backlog. I think we're OK. But about six weeks later, I was sitting in an Italian hotel, and I got an email that a major customer had just put on hold a massive order that we had. So I thought, oh my God, it's hit us. What am I going to do? I went back to the guiding principle leadership and I said, if we measure success by the way we touch the lives of people, and we lay people off in this environment, we are going to hurt the very people we have the privilege of leading.
So that forced a way of thinking that I never thought before, because I just did what everybody does. I laid off people. It's not personal. And so I came up with this. I said in my hotel room, I came over with the idea, what if everybody took a month off so that nobody had to be let go? So I emailed back to America. I said, think about this. How could we do this? We had unions. We had plants all over the world. And the team, by the time I landed, they'd come up with an action plan. And we announced that everybody is going to take a month off whenever they wanted, which was huge, and without pay. And what happened was the morale in the company went up dramatically. Now we took one-twelfth of their salary away and the morale went up dramatically.
Why? Because they felt safe and they felt they gave up a month's salary so their neighbor in the office and others should not lose their job because they knew these people, they knew their kids, and they didn't want them to get hurt. Because there's collateral damage when you lay off people and people know those people, they know their kids, and they feel the pain of their friends being hurt. So that, we also suspended our 401(k) savings plan, our match, they could still put in the savings. And so we get through the economic downturn, and all of a sudden our business improves more dramatically than we thought by like the fall of 2009-10. I went home to Cynthia and I said, you know, when things got bad quicklv. we went to our people and said, you've got to sacrifice. Now things are getting better quickly, what's the appropriate way to respond? And I said, you know what, people's retirement is very important to them, why don't we go back and give them back the match that they gave up? And so we believe we're the only company in the country that went back and gave back to them the match that they gave up over the next three quarters.
And that was profoundly meaningful, because who you are in your worst of times is who you are, and that's how people judge you. If you care about your people, you don't fire people. You know where that came from? The French firing squad, right? I mean, the language of business is inhuman. We have bosses, supervisors, managers, we fire people, we lay off people. It's an inhuman language to your children, brothers and sisters, and mothers and fathers. So I think what we've learned along this journey, management is the manipulation of others for your success. You can't manage anybody, so why do you try and why do we give people that title? Leadership is the stewardship of the lives entrusted to you, and that profound responsibility for those people in your care. Leadership and parenting are identical. There is no difference. It is simply caring for the people that came through birth or through employment. People at all levels, all levels, profoundly want to know who they are and what they do matters. When you genuinely show them that, you touch their lives beyond your imagination. Listening is the most critical leadership skill and the most powerful act of caring. This is something I want to amplify and touch on for a minute. When we decided that we couldn't ask people to go from management to leadership because they had been taught management, they'd never been taught leadership, so we had to create a university. One of our team members said, if we're going to teach people to be leaders, we need to teach them to listen. I said, why would you need to teach adults to listen? We all learn to listen when we're very young.
I was asked to speak to 200 members of the Republican Party in October, I think it was, and as I was sitting at the table with Paul Ryan, and the lady running the Republican event leaned over to me, and this won't surprise you, and right before I was going to give my keynote, and she said, Mr. Chapman, what are we going to do about the lack of trust? I said, you mean in Washington? She said, no, I mean in this room. She said, nobody trusts anybody. That's the government we have in our communities, in our country, in the world. Nobody trusts anybody, and that's evident when you look at the news at night. Why? Because we have never, and so we got into this intense five-minute conversation right before I went up, and I shifted my whole focus of my talk to these 200 Republicans, and I said, you know the problem all of you had? You all learned to talk and you get elected because you know how to talk, but you come together and you don't know how to listen. Because we don't know how to listen, we don't know how to value the other person's opinion. We don't know how to work things out because we don't understand the way you think. Because we all think, the golden rule is obviously treat others you want to be treated, but we find it's not quite that way. The message is, treat others as they need to be treated, and you have to learn to do that. It's a learned skill. So how we lead, how we lead on any organization, profoundly affects the health and the family unit that's represented. So the people that go home from your care, the way you treat them will affect the way they treat their spouse and their children. And we could change that tomorrow. We don't need to raise taxes, we don't need to change laws, we just, and when we all try and look for government to fix things, to me it reminds us, thinking the other day, if you walk around the city of Aspen and you see some trash and you say, I wonder why Aspen doesn't pick up this trash, instead of leaning over yourself and picking up the trash and throwing it away. Why do we look for the government to fix what's wrong in this country when it's right here in our hearts and heads that we could fix this country tomorrow if we just began to care about the people who have the privilege to lead? It affects their health and their family life.
So Simon Sinek made this observation in studying Barry-Wehmiller. In the military, we honor those who give themselves in service of others, and in business, we give bonuses to people who sacrifice others in service of themselves. Do you know how true that is? XYZ company lays off 5,000 people, the share price goes up. Good job. So you got your share price up. What about the 5,000 people? They'll find another job.
Why can't we teach in our business schools, in our education, people to care about the people who have the privilege of leading? Why do we teach all the class we do? We don't teach listening, and we don't teach people how to inspire people. We teach people management courses. So, how we lead impacts people's health and their family unit, and we don't need to teach you anything other than to awaken you to the profound privilege of leading others. It's not about pay and title and power. It's about the profound responsibility for somebody's precious child who's placed in your care. So, I'm not talking to you about a theory. I'm talking to you about the way it is in Barry-Wehmiller. This is not a theory. We can create a world where everybody's precious child knows that who they are and what they do matters. We can celebrate children going out into the world if we learn to be good leaders. Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you. I hope all of you, I hope I've touched your heart so that we can make a difference in this world. Thank you very much.