Strategic Leadership: Dr. John Hillen on Thinking Beyond the Day-to-Day

Freddy D: 00:01:44

Hey, Superfan superstar Freddie D. Here in this episode 99, we're joined by the Honorable Dr.

John Hillen, a powerhouse of leadership and insight with a remarkable track record across business, government, the military and academia. A former US assistant secretary of state and CEO of multiple companies, Dr.

Hillen also brings deep strategic wisdom as a board chairman and award winning professor, having taught at institutions like Duke George Mason and Hampden Sydney College. He's the author of the acclaimed what Happens Now? Reinvent yourself as a leader before your business outruns you.

And the newly released strategy dialogues. Along with countless articles in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and more.

Get ready for a conversation packed with real world leadership and lessons and sharp strategic insights. Welcome, John, to the Business Superfans Podcast. We're super excited and honored to have you joining us today.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:02:52

Thank you, Freddie. Good to be here.

Freddy D: 00:02:54

So tell us a little bit about what is your backstory of how did you get to being Assistant Secretary of State? You've done a multitude of different things. You've been a paratrooper, you've participated in the Desert Storm war.

I mean, you've got an incredible story, but how did that all come about?

Dr. John Hillen: 00:03:16

So I grew up in an army family. I was actually born in Oklahoma, an Army post in the middle of an Indian reservation. My parents were children of immigrants to New York City.

It's one of those only in America stories.

I was an army brat and then went into the army on an ROTC scholarship because I went to a very expensive private college my family could have never afforded otherwise. So the army paid for it.

And then I went into the army myself and that continued the family business, which goes back to the Civil War, but branched out later after the army and added on policy, a diplomat, and then ultimately business and then ultimately teaching business. So it's been a great journey.

The thread that ties it all together, which I've written about, is throughout all those different careers, I was always interested in leadership and a strategy. Every organization in the world needs both of those, whether it's IBM or a three person volunteer church choir.

Those two organizations have in common is they're full of people working together, trying to accomplish something. That was a common thread throughout all these different industries and organizations I got to touch in my career.

Freddy D: 00:04:23

So let's go down the road a little bit about leadership and what are the things that you've seen that leaders should be doing that aren't doing.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:04:32

One of the big ones I really focus on in my latest book because it kept striking me as the key to the kingdom is leaders are always thinking about where the organization goes next.

In other words, the best leaders I've been around want to run the organization rather than run the organization they are because you're always thinking about what's next. Dwight Eisenhower had a great formula for leadership. He says it's a two part deal, it's a two act play leadership.

He said the first part is determine where the organization's going. The second part is get everybody to want to work together to get there.

And a lot of our leadership studies, including my first book, focus on that second half of the equation. How do you use emotional intelligence?

How do you motivate people, inspire them, put good teams together, lead change all these different facets of the human enterprise, getting people to work together. But not a lot of attention is paid to the first part, which is how do I see into the future, shape it and know where to go.

That's why we call it the future. So I started dedicating more time, more teaching, more research, more writing.

It's a really small percentage of leaders who naturally think strategically. Four percent of executives, according to one study. So all the rest of us have to learn it.

We have to get a trainer, understand where the muscle is, how to activate it and work on our strategic think, thinking muscles or be a good leader.

Freddy D: 00:05:57

Absolutely correct. Because I started out as an engineer, so I've got the right brain of making sure everything is accurate and works and put together. I'm fortunate.

I have a left brain, I can think creatively.

When I got into the computer industry, I had to do training and I stand in front of people initially to do training and I didn't know how to do any of that stuff. And I taught myself right.

But it became transformative and I moved into sales and I was fortunate that I got picked and received some very high end training that made me one of the top salespeople in the company. So I completely see and appreciate what you're talking about. Being a leader, you have to think of where you want to go.

But more importantly, think of a rowing team. You've got eight people in the rowboat, they only have one or each.

And you got to get them all in line with the vision and on synchronization, otherwise that boat's not going anyplace.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:06:57

Right, right. You know, it's a great example.

Engineers are, I don't want to say a hard case for getting to strategic leadership, but the precision required in that field. Accountants, engineers, operations manager, logisticians. Right.

People who really believe in precision math people, it's very hard for them to grasp strategy because strategies, it's ambiguous, it's more situation dependent shifts and changes in your hands. Whether a bridge is structurally sound or not does not shift change in your hands necessarily. But strategy is always that way.

So there's no right answer in strategy. This drives my students and I'm teaching a core strategy course in an MBA program.

The students that are really good at accounting and operations management, they want a formula and they want to plug in the data and everybody gets the same right answer.

When I tell them that in strategy there's no right answer, there's only the answer you come to and how well your analysis might support drives them nuts. True. The students are doing a combination law school and business school.

Very comfortable with this because in law school they learn how to make an argument and try to convince somebody of it. Sales, which you just referred to.

Freddy D: 00:08:11

Yeah.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:08:12

And so, yeah, it's a totally different set of skills. I love the way you framed it because it is quite literally, I talk about this in my book.

It's quite literally two different parts of your brain and the brain. Science shows us the analytical data processing part of your brain is really good for task accomplishment.

But strategy requires you to light up the creative forward thinking part of your brain and not struggle with the lack of answers or data. You have to make a decision.

Freddy D: 00:08:39

Oh, absolutely. And you've got to get everybody else to buy into that vision. So go back to the rowing team.

You got to get everybody on the same page with the same thing and going in the same direction. Because otherwise you can have all the strategy in the world.

But if you don't have anybody backing it up and engaged with the same vision, you're not going anyplace.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:09:02

That's right. In fact, I put at the very end of this book about strategy and thinking strategically a long chapter with a bunch of good examples on executing.

Because you just pointed out a lot of great strategic plans. Strategic thinking get put on a shelf or people don't get anything out of them and therefore they lose their legitimacy.

I cite in their study that looked at hundreds of strategic plans and then the outcomes from them. The average strategic plan delivered only 63% of what it promised. So where does the other 37% go?

The nice thing is you can identify exactly where the air leaks out of your strategy balloon.

One of the biggest culprits in robbing a strategy of its effectiveness is exactly what you outlined, which is people are confused about how to work together. Who's Got the information, who gets to make what kind of decisions and how to essentially row together to get it done.

Freddy D: 00:09:59

And so how important is it to recognize, appreciate, express gratitude to the team so that they become part of the team?

Dr. John Hillen: 00:10:12

Oh, hugely important.

One of the biggest steps I see missed by executives now that I spend my time teaching and coaching after my careers as a CEO and director, is executives making the same mistake over and over again. They come up with a brilliant idea and think strategies are idea generation, game.

They go off in a corner, read a book, and they come back to everybody. They say, I got a brilliant idea. And they fail to do the human things that can have everybody implemented.

They don't form a powerful guiding coalition. They get a group of acolytes who are going to own it. So it's everybody's idea, not just pushing that down.

They figure out ways to empower everybody to be part of this idea down to the lowest levels. They construct waypoints to celebrate, to achieve and celebrate short term wins. Everybody says this path is a good path.

I can see we scored a touchdown. The game plan's working right? So there's little measurements.

And they put together this whole thing that is oriented on one factor and get people to work together to accomplish this and stay energized and enthused along the way because it's their plan, not something the boss said. You don't have to be much of a corporate psychologist to know that an enterprise is ill. If you ask somebody, why are you doing this new thing?

It's terribly exciting, looks hard, why are you doing it? And if the answer you get back is because the boss said so, you know there's a problem in that organization.

Freddy D: 00:11:41

Absolutely. There's no ownership. And so it's a directive versus buy. In. My book that I wrote is called Creating Business Super Fans.

We talked about it a few minutes ago. Getting everybody onto it and getting them energized. Once you get your team energized, they become super fans of that idea.

And that energy becomes contagious to everybody you're talking to. They're talking to a prospective customer, supplier or a distributor.

You can tell energy people don't believe it, but it does come across and that's contagious and it carries on and multiplies. You take care of that supplier. I had a person on the show just recently and they had a good working relationship with the supplier.

When the pandemic hit. Everybody needed laptops because everybody's working from home.

He got his 500 laptops right away because he had a strong relationship and that supplier was a superfan of him.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:12:43

Right. That's very powerful.

I tell people who are very busy, especially leaders I'm working with and are super busy, I say, look, you need to go out, not work just in your business, but work on your business, go outside of your business, and make sure you're cultivating and forming relationships that are not the people that work for you. Because if you wait until you need a relationship, it's too late to form it. And I'll lay out for them a networking plan.

I'll say, you tell me your goals and then I'll ask you who the three people are the most helpful, you accomplish those goals. And then we'll frame out a plan where you can form a good strategic relationship.

Not a transactional one where I scratch your back ears, but a real relationship. And the most common pushback I get on this, everybody recognizes the value in this. And you just laid out a great story.

The pushback I get is I don't have time for that. I've got so much to do in the office. And I say, you know what? Stakeholder management is your real job. Let somebody else do this stuff in the office.

You go out and manage outside stakeholders, because when things happen, you're going to need those relationships.

I think that's a bit of a secret superpower that not enough leaders know about, which is really having an organized way to understand stakeholder management and cultivate and build it all the time.

Freddy D: 00:14:02

Oh, absolutely correct. Because when I was managing global sales for a software company, I set up about 60 resellers around the world. Some of them invited me to their homes.

We built friendships. It was beyond just transactional. We were friends.

And so when I needed something or they needed something, they got a priority because of the relationship.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:14:25

Or even if you don't need anything, you should just call people in your network and say, don't do anything. But I could use your thoughts on this. I've always valued your counsel. Tell me what your thoughts are.

I've never met anybody who's not flattered by that. People who put time into that. I find it's not an accident.

It is a pure correlation between really successful people I've met in life, in any field, from professional athletes to business leaders, government leaders, and people that have a really extraordinary and diverse network on which they can rely and is full of genuine relationships.

Freddy D: 00:15:00

Yeah.

And that really differentiates, like you just mentioned, the successful leaders and the companies that are scaling and the ones that are wondering why aren't we growing, what are we doing wrong? And then they've got turnover in their company and they've got frustration. They continually have the same problems.

It's a rinse and repeat to the same problems versus, you know, as you mentioned, kind of get themselves out of their own way.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:15:26

Yeah. Especially with smaller enterprises.

I think a lot of times, if I'm working with a smaller organization, a smaller business, and I say, you need to think strategically. You need to build networks and be prepared for the future. I see. That's a big company drill. Right. We don't have time for that.

Everybody around here works is a small business. I closed our biggest deal yesterday. Today I'm fixing the office coffee machine. We work around here.

I get this very proud pushback, and I say, okay, well, here's the things having a good strategy and having a good outside network can do for you. It can be the boss when the boss isn't around. It can help you make your resource allocation decisions.

It can tell people what to do when there's not a formal policy handbook or plan in place.

I list these 20 things on the board and I say, go ahead, go up to the board and strike any of those out that you don't want that you'd hate to have that advantage. Of course, nobody's ever had that temerity or made a good argument to go up and strike out. I don't want to be in a position where I can avoid crises.

I'd rather manage every crisis that comes in front of me only five minutes after it happens. It doesn't matter how big or how small the organization is.

These are strategic and interpersonal skills, as you learned in transition from engineer to sales tend to be the ones that determine success at the highest levels. Technical skills are great. I want all the accountants to have exquisite accounting skills.

But five or six years into the career, in a cohort of accountants, you don't promote the best accountant. You promote the best leader.

Freddy D: 00:17:00

Right.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:17:01

And at that point, they're relying less on their accounting knowledge. CFO doesn't do many accounting decisions, but they oversee a ton of.

A CTO doesn't write a line of code, but they oversee all these technological processes.

So the transition from technical and tactical to strategic and interpersonal, every executive goes through, but most people don't train for that second half of their career. So I advocate starting early in your career to understand those dimensions.

Freddy D: 00:17:28

And then you've got to also learn how to empower people.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:17:32

Right.

Freddy D: 00:17:32

Because that's really the biggest thing, so that you can actually do other things and people don't have to run to go, mom or dad, can I do this? And that they're empowered to make a decision which then in turn makes them feel much better about themselves.

Because now, wow, I'm in charge of this department. It's my responsibility. A whole different ballgame.

They now have ownership, and so now they're excited, they're motivated, and now they want to make sure that they're taking care of their team because now they're responsible. For some people, it's transformative, totally.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:18:07

Yet leadership development and delegation is the ultimate weapon for a leader because it allows them to get rid of the things they're doing and be the leader the company needs for the future, not the leader of today. So I often ask my coaches, tell me, your 20 tasks that captivate your energy that you're responsible for every day that keep you awake at night.

We get the list. I say, okay, how do we get rid of all this stuff? What do you mean, get rid of my job? Yeah.

How do we fire you and hire future you for where the organization's going that requires dedicating time to developing other leaders so that you're confident in delegating things down to them. So I'll take this further. I get buy in. People are like, okay, I get it. Mr. Smart Leadership Guy. You convinced me.

I'm going to dedicate 20% of my time to coaching, developing the people underneath me so they're super competent. I can delegate my today's task to them and develop myself for the future. Great.

I go back and I check four months later with their assistant because we're going to color code their coaching and leadership development moments on their calendar. And those things always get pushed off. A crisis came up, a meeting came up. Fire drill. Yeah. I just didn't get around to it.

I'm like, okay, well then you are single handedly holding yourself and your organization back.

So the discipline for leaders to dedicate some time to developing others so that they can delegate things so that they can move forward is a rhythm and a pattern that I think every executive needs to challenge themselves to do.

Freddy D: 00:19:43

Yeah. Because I worked recently with the company and they've been around for many years and that person just couldn't let go.

And they were at a point where they were driving and delivering stuff. It was what they've done for 30 years. And so you're not going to tell me what to do.

I built this business and sometimes you got to walk away from those as well because you can't Help them. There's an old saying, if somebody's not willing to help themselves, you can't. There's nothing you can do. That's right, sadly. But it's the truth.

So let's talk a little bit more about what the book is about and how does that help leaders.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:20:23

Yeah. So I mentioned that every leader is expected to think strategically. Right. And yet very few people are told what that means. I'll give you an example.

Another executive coach who I wrote a book with told me a story.

He was coaching a woman coming up through the ranks in the company, and one of the directors pulled him aside at a board meeting and said, do you think she's ready for the C suite? Do you think she's ready for the boardroom?

And the coach said, well, they laid out a very analytically rigorous framework and said, yeah, here's where she is and everything. His basic guess it was, yes, she's ready for the C suite. She's ready for the boardroom. And the old director said, well, I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know if she thinks strategically. So the coach says to the director, well, what does that mean to you, to think strategically? The director couldn't articulate it right.

So here he's holding somebody accountable for an executive competency. That sounds like something he should say, but he himself can't explain it. So in the book, what does it mean to think strategically?

The book's called the Strategy Dialogues. The aha is that strategy is not a what to think. It's a way to think.

It's a style of thinking, a style of understanding your surroundings as an executive. A style of how to gather and process information and to make decisions. The ultimate requirement of an executive is making a decision.

Strategy is a way to think, not a what to think. It's not an outcome. It's not a formula. It's a way to think very simply.

You know, Patrick Lencioni called the book very practical as well as entertaining.

The guy who wrote the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, I lay out in very, very practical ways with chapter whiteboards, summaries at the end of every chapter. What does it mean to think strategically?

And how can executives have a really sound strategic process that's simple and easy and gets them out of this trap of being accused of not thinking strategically because all they're doing is spending their day getting stuff done, and they're most.

Freddy D: 00:22:24

Likely not getting stuff done to the level that they could be if they were leading strategically.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:22:32

Exactly. He's Getting stuff done, delivering things. But he's not going to progress. He doesn't want to progress.

Freddy D: 00:22:39

No, it wasn't. They've been flatlined for many years. Sometimes you gotta get yourself outta your own way, as we mentioned earlier. And he wouldn't.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:22:49

So it's a different way to think. A lot of executives have problems. If I go up to an executive, I say, hey, what's really bugging you today? The conversation is never a short one.

Don't get a long list. Every executive can see challenges and problems in their business.

And I always tell them, if you want to think strategically, reframe that problem as a set of options about where to go in the future. So my problem is sales are declining on this one product or product line. Okay, let's reframe that as options about the future.

We could add new features to the product and try to push it back to the same old customers. We could pitch the same old product to new customers, penetrating new market, a new geography.

We could divest it and get into a totally different line of business. Or we could merge with somebody who's got something complimentary and make it twice as good.

Your problem becomes a set of options about a different strategic future.

Freddy D: 00:23:39

Right.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:23:40

I'm not saying any of them are a silver bullet. I'm going to provide some magical great outcome. But it's a way of thinking.

If you just start thinking that way, all of a sudden, you're not sitting around in a meeting talking about declining sales and let's load up the circular firing squad. You know, you're talking about different paths to a different future. That's strategy. Sure.

Freddy D: 00:24:01

Just repackaging, changing your mindset and looking at it differently from a different perspective. Instead of, there's the old product and it's not going anywhere, so we're going to shelf it.

Like you strategically said, you can repackage it, re develop relationships potentially and create new market opportunities. But if you're not stepping back because you're caught into the soup, you can't see the soup, right?

Dr. John Hillen: 00:24:32

Yes. Yeah, that's a great way to think about it. You've just identified it. I always tell people, you'll know strategic thinking when you run into it.

And there are tells. Like in Las Vegas, you have a tell, and one of the tells is, are they stepping back from the problem and seeing a bigger picture?

One of the hallmarks of strategic thinking is big picture, not looking at life through a soda straw. It's long term, not short term. But the other feature is when you pull back and look, you see patterns.

You see patterns of behavior among suppliers, customers, competitors, all strategists that think competitively, you can be a little bit paranoid. I think it's a good feature for strategists. And when you step back, you see these patterns, you see how ecosystems touch each other.

And then you're better equipped to play with ideas about different kinds of futures rather than seeing everything as a step in a project management process that broke down.

Freddy D: 00:25:27

Oh, absolutely. You're absolutely right on the money. Because one of the things I mentioned, John, is one of my quotes is the little things are really the big things.

And so you can step back and now you start looking at it and you make a little tweak, and it can have a profound impact on a multitude of different things. But you had to step back to see, oh, if I do this little adjustment and make this little change, wow, this is going to have a tremendous impact.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:26:01

Right, right. Yeah.

And you know, that's a great point because some people are intimidated by doing strategy because they think won't have achieved in strategic thinking unless I come up with some wild, crazy, big new idea. Right. We're going to live on Mars. Right. It's got to be that scale. If I'm going to invest in strategic thinking, better be something big.

You know, some of the best stuff is just differently about something you've been doing for a while. And by doing so you have a chance of inventing a new future for it.

Freddy D: 00:26:33

Yeah. I recently worked with a company and we made a minuscule tweak. It was a little thing that became big thing.

We increased hourly pricing, that we charged our customers by $5. $5. I only had three customers come back and say, hey, our invoice changed. What's this extra 5? Explain. We hadn't increased the price in 2, 3, 4 years.

Inflation's changed. It's a minuscule 5 bucks. They said, oh, totally makes sense, no problem. But that $5 over a multitude of things became a big amount of money.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:27:21

Yeah. I have a whole chapter in the book on business models, which includes your pricing model. And the story I tell in that chapter is of a company.

It was essentially a software program. And they designed a company around the software program. Very unique software program. This is a business I had worked in.

I ultimately became the chief operating officer of it. Very successful business. So what do you do as a software company? You sell the software. And how do you sell the software? You sell it like software.

Right. You package it. Licensing maybe, you know, and we had an investor who was Very bright.

And he said, well, you know, actually, what you're doing is it's software, but you're creating a marketplace for people to come to. So why don't you refund people that come to the marketplace to sell their goods?

That way you'll attract them and then charge twice as much for people that buy something in the marketplace and leave. Sort of like hiring the best band or the most popular kids to come to your party first. And everybody wants to be at that party, right?

Freddy D: 00:28:22

Yep.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:28:22

So we went to a rebate and extraction pricing model for the software, and all of a sudden we went from struggling to make a profit to 40% net margins. It's just one little tweak. I have a whole chapter in there with some very easy frameworks to walk through about people's business model.

You're not changing your strategy, but you may want to change your business model. That may be the key to your success.

Freddy D: 00:28:44

Yeah, the little things, the big things. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about some of the things you've seen successful leaders do that transform their organizations.

And you had a hand in it.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:29:01

he middle of the recession in: 2009

I've done a fair amount of transactions, mergers and acquisitions, probably two dozen over that time. So I've seen a fair amount of my business career. And I have a couple of keys to the kingdom. One is the ability to think strategically.

I think another one is just for leaders to be emotionally intelligent. Right.

A lot of leaders are on broadcast, and the only thing that really sinks into your organization is what people receive, not what comes out of your mouth or out of your email.

So I make a big distinction between lean communications from leaders, the company email, the town hall meeting and the presentation of town hall meeting, and rich communications, which is a conversation back and forth. That's why my book's called the Strategy Dialogues. That's how people learn and digest information. They go back.

That's why people are listening to your podcast. People go back, back and forth. So if you're emotionally intelligent, you try to hear what other people are thinking, not develop what you're saying.

I think that's a very important key. The other one is being an ethical leader. Do the right thing.

I run into a lot of leaders who say, in this day and age where we don't want to judge people, I don't feel equipped to really make ethical calls. What's right? I said, you better find your gear for that.

Because who else in the organization is going to ultimately make the call about what's right behavior and what's incorrect behavior? What's the right way we do things around here versus what's not?

If you're a leader and you're not willing to not only set the tone for the culture, but enforce the culture, the culture will be formed without you. It may work and it may not. Remember the cheating scandal with Volkswagen and the EPA testing? Right.

How do you get a couple of hundred really good German engineers? All them are good people. There's no Dr. Evil and Volkswagen trying to take down the company. They're all good people.

How do you get hundreds of German engineers to cheat simultaneously on something they all took seriously? How does that happen? Well, they had a culture problem as they finally admitting and so. And the leaders did not want to take charge of the culture.

It was offensive for me to impose my values on you. The best leaders I see really come to grips with that.

They're unapologetic and unafraid to make not only the right for wrong decisions, but the right versus right decisions. You know, they feel comfortable being the philosopher in chief of their organization. They have no problems with that.

So I think those are some keys that really. And then I mentioned another one, leadership development leaders that spend time developing leaders.

I tell a story in one of my books about this woman, the CEO, she had a mug on her desk, and on one side it said boss, and on the other side it said coach. She would turn the mug around to you in the meeting, so you knew what kind of meeting you were in. Maybe she's coaching you in that meeting.

Maybe she's your boss in that meeting. But her mind was always. And that probably reminded her too, that she's not just a boss, she's also a leadership development person.

So I think those four or five things, if you string them together as a leader, don't worry about the X's and O's of your business. That'll work itself out. If you get those pieces right, the X's and O's will fall into place.

Freddy D: 00:32:11

The team will do what they need to do because they're empowered, they believe in it, and they're energized because the leader is actually leading.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:32:22

Right? Right. Yeah. Too many leaders sit around sweating, you know, oh my gosh, have you seen that? The rates for this are going up. What are we going to do?

I'm like, you know what? Get the things I just talked about. Right.

You'd be surprised how few of those things come up on your agenda because you got an organization that is out front solving them sometimes even before they happen.

Freddy D: 00:32:44

Absolutely right. One of the companies I worked with, the team came up with creative ideas to do some marketing, make changes in the company, some different SOPs.

They came up with their own SOPs, documented it themselves so that they had a system to follow.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:33:04

Right. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. It also just helps you hold yourself accountable. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:33:09

So John, as we come close to the end here, how can people find.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:33:13

You the strategy dialogues My new books on Amazon? For the past month it's been the number one new release in a couple of different categories and blurbed by great people.

Your listeners will have read like Patrick Lencioni, so I hope people can check that out on Amazon.

My website is just johnhillen.com, jo h n h I l l e n.com I have a bunch of things on there for people to think a little differently about leadership and strategy. I hope people think this way. It'd be great if you get a chance to access it through some of my work.

But I think the real mission here is to get leaders to be comfortable ascending that highest level of leadership where they're inspiring rather than just directing and where they're framing the future rather than just managing the presentation.

Freddy D: 00:34:03

Yeah. I'll add to that as you're transforming all your stakeholders into super fans of your leadership.

I love that because that's the game changer right there.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:34:15

Totally.

Freddy D: 00:34:16

So John, we'll make sure that that's in the show notes. Great conversation, great insights for our listeners. Definitely would love to have you on the show down the road and thank you so much for your time.

Dr. John Hillen: 00:34:27

Sounds great Freddie. Thanks so much.

Freddy D: 00:34:30

Hey super fans. Superstar Freddie D.

Here before we wrap, here's your three A playbook power move to attract ideal clients, turn them into advocates and accelerate your business success. Here's a top insight of this episode. If your team is only rowing because the boss said so, your strategy is already sinking.

Real momentum comes from shared ownership, not top down orders. So here's your business growth action step. Choose one major initiative and build a guiding coalition around it.

Then ask the team to co create the plan so it becomes theirs, not just yours.

If today's conversation sparked an idea for you or you know of a fellow leader who could benefit, share it with them and grab the full breakdown in the show notes. Let's accelerate together and create business super fans who champion your brand.