The Vision Architect

Episode 201
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[00:00:24] Simon Vetter: Welcome to the Vision Architect. I am your host, Simon Veder. In this powerful conversation with Mike Richardson, we explore how intentional leadership and clear vision can transform careers and organizations drawing from over three decades of experience. As a CEO advisor and thought leader, Mike shares his journey of purposeful pivots and strategic decisions that shaped his remarkable career.

Join us as we uncover practical wisdom about leading with vision in an ever-changing business landscape. Mike, great to be with

you. Hey,

[00:01:04] Mike Richardson: it's good to be here.

[00:01:05] Simon Vetter: Thank you for, uh, being on my podcast. So we have known each other for over 20 years, and I have seen your career and one thing that I really appreciate about you, you have been always intentional and purposeful about your career and your businesses.

So I'd like to dive into, so how have you applied this concept of leading with vision and intentionality in your businesses and, and your career?

[00:01:29] Mike Richardson: Yeah, great question. Yeah, I, I guess the short version, and then I'll give you the long version. Uh, the short version is I don't know how else to lead apart from getting really clear about a picture of the future that, you know, with some flexibility.

Of course, we'll come back to that later with some flexibility. I want to live into and accomplish. And I suppose I remember distinctly two forks in the road, you know, turning point moments in my career, Simon, one, when I was in my twenties, I'd been a scientist at college. I'd got a degree in geophysics, which was natural training for the oil and gas business back in the 1980s.

So please forgive me, everybody. And I became a petroleum engineer. And I joined, you know, a global corporation, shell International. I joined their international staff age 21. So I went abroad to the Netherlands and where I ultimately spent five years, and it was a fantastic experience for the first two or three years because they put you through, you know, six month sort of training camp in readiness to go out into the field.

And so I worked onshore and offshore oil and gas drilling rigs for two years, which was just a phenomenal experience. I just absolutely loved it. But then after you've done that, they bring you into the office to become an analyst to support everybody else that was out in the field. And I very quickly realized, yeah, I'm not sure this is for me.

And I looked at my boss, I was in my mid twenties. I looked at my boss, who was a great guy. Well, I looked at him. He was in his forties and he was running a team of me and three other people. And I thought, that's not a vision. That I want for myself in my forties. And so I made a gutsy decision like many people do, of course.

Uh, but I made my, my gutsy decision that, you know what? I'm gonna quit and I'm going to go and do the classic thing in the 1980s of, I did a two year full-time MBA at London Business School, and I'm gonna pivot. Towards general management and you know, my classmates on my MBA, of course many of them went into banking or you know, the previous era of what we now call private equity or advertising or consulting with the big global consultants like Bain or McKinsey.

And again, I just thought to myself, that's just not me. That is not a vision I see for myself. What I see for myself is I want to be a leader. Industry. And so I, uh, ended up joining, you know, uh, an aerospace company in the industrial heartland of Great Britain. And I set out on my journey of the vision I had for myself of becoming a CEO in industry and went on that journey and, and was successful.

So I, I don't know any other way, Simon, except to lead with vision.

[00:04:27] Simon Vetter: I remember we met when you were CEO of aerospace company in San Diego, LA Jolla. And you sent leaders to the training program, which I was teaching, and yeah, I remember you said, when I'm 40, I'm done with CO role, I, I'm ready for something else.

And then what was that process? Yeah. And how do you go about identifying the next stage? Over your career.

[00:04:52] Mike Richardson: Yeah, thank you. That, that was the second fork in the road. I, I said earlier there were two, one was in my twenties and then the other was in my thirties where Yeah, you and I met for the first time, I think in, in the year 2000 I think.

Probably,

[00:05:07] Simon Vetter: yeah.

[00:05:07] Mike Richardson: When I. Relocated with my family from the UK with a brief stop in Wichita, Kansas, which is one of the aerospace centers of the universe. We ended up being there for about a year and a half from uh, January 99 to to mid 2000, and by mid 2000 we were relocating again to San Diego. And of course we fell in love with San Diego very quickly and Southern California in general.

And I was already a year and a half. Into a four year work permit, and we loved Wichita, Kansas, by the way, but we never imagined a vision for ourselves in Wichita, Kansas. And so I didn't bother to initiate the process of getting a green card because I had no vision at all to be staying in Wichita, Kansas, having arrived in San Diego.

We very quickly formed a vision of ourselves staying in San Diego if we possibly could. So I played hurry up and initiated the process on getting a green card with only two and a half years left, and I managed to get my green card. I was very lucky, Simon. Luck. Luck is a huge, is a huge factor. In this whole process of leading with vision, isn't it?

Right. The, the more you lead with vision, the more good luck you track tends to show up. Right? I'm sure we'll come back to that. Anyway, I was very lucky in that I got my green card two months before nine 11, so I got my green card in July of 2001, and of course nine 11 happened in September, 2001. If I hadn't got my green card before nine 11, I sure as heck wouldn't have got it afterwards because, you know, it was just chaos afterwards.

And I would've timed out on our work permit and we would've had no choice except to have to go back to the uk. And just increasingly, that wasn't our vision that we had for ourselves. We were really dedicated to a vision for ourselves in the USA. So we were lucky in that we got our green card, and then of course, nine 11 happened.

The aviation business, commercial aviation, which was the backbone of my aerospace division, was in, it was in very bad shape post nine 11. It was almost as bad as during COVID, you know, not quite, but uh, almost that's how it felt at the time anyway. But with my freshly minted green card, I had options. And so I asked myself, okay, what, what do I want to do next?

And I remember after we'd just, after we'd moved to San Diego, and I'd first met you because I'd been using Dale Carnegie across my division. And so when I arrived in San Diego, I connected with the local Dale Carnegie office, and that's where I met you. Uh, shortly after arriving in San Diego, we took a vacation in Hawaii with my wife and two boys.

For about 10 days and that bought me some, some breathing room, some time to start thinking. And on the way back to the airport, we had a couple of hours to kill. And so we just pulled into a local bookstore and I sort of drifted off and wandered around on my own. And I ended up buying an artist's sketchbook.

About an inch thick, you know, big A four or what, what, what we letter sized, you know, format or even probably legal sized format with probably a hundred pages in this thing. Just a blank paper. No, no lines, just blank paper. And by the time I got off the flight home. I'd filled that book with my scribbles and my mind maps and my ideation about what am I going to do next, and I'd begun to sketch a picture of the business model that I thought I could create.

As an independent consultant, coach, mentor, facilitator, speaker, writer, board member, and I still have those book, that first book. And I filled another dozen of those books with my sketches and drawings as I evolved my whole journey of getting clear on what I wanted to do, and many of those first scribbles crystallized into.

Images that I have on my vision board as I look across the top of my screen here. I have a, a huge pin board in front of me, and it's my vision board, and many of those initial scribbled models and ideas crystallized into. Things that I put into PowerPoint and tidied up and are now up on my vision board, and I've had that vision board for over 20 years now, and, um, it keeps evolving and morphing and, and now it is, is my next sense of direction for the next chapter of my journey.

[00:09:57] Simon Vetter: I think there's an important element in this story. One is you create visuals about it. You scribbled you, you painted images. The other thing is you came back from a 10 week vacation. You were totally relaxed.

[00:10:11] Mike Richardson: Two, two week. I wish it could have been 10 weeks, but ten two

[00:10:14] Simon Vetter: weeks. No, two weeks. Yeah. And I think being relaxed and being quiet down helps.

With the creative juices and with the creative thinking. If you are running around and you are in the midst of execution, it's hard to be visionary.

[00:10:31] Mike Richardson: Yeah, exactly. And I think you have to quiet yourself and have to, I, I find at least I have to quiet myself and I have to let my sort of sensory perception and instinct.

I have to try to get a finger on the pulse of the scent of that. I think I'm chasing what's the, what's the scent that I'm on? It's very fuzzy. I'm running in this direction, but I'm not really sure what it is I'm chasing because it's sort of over the horizon, but I can, I it, the scent of it is getting stronger and stronger and stronger, and so I find I have to quiet myself to allow that to sort of.

Surface and really get tuned into it and ask myself, what, what is that about? Why am I feeling this, this turn to the right or turn to the left, or, no, I'm going, I'm, I'm even more committed and convicted about going straight on and sticking to exactly what I'm doing. What is that about? And how do I learn to trust that?

[00:11:35] Simon Vetter: Yep.

[00:11:35] Mike Richardson: How do I learn to follow that and how do I learn to have courage? In particular about that,

[00:11:41] Simon Vetter: what's on your current vision board that you are most passionate about, that you want to pursue and, and also can be a challenge and where you know you need courage and you need to kinda double down on that.

What's on that vision board that. You're most excited about?

[00:11:59] Mike Richardson: Yeah. So, you know, so I, I, as we said, I, I went independent, you know, I started what we now call my portfolio career, you know, in the spring of 2002. So I've been doing it now for 23 years and. I set out to build a, a, what I call a portfolio business model that those early sketches and scribbles became, and all of that is, is still up on the, on the vision board here.

And it evolved and it morphed and it, it sort of went through a sort of 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 evolution and you, you know, this. But then, uh, something crossed my path, uh, Simon in 2018, which made me realize I had itchy feet and I had a different vision for myself. That was, I wanted to go back and run a company again as a sort of real time agility case study, sort of capstone experience on my career.

My, my specialty, as you know, has been agility over the 23 years that I've been a, an independent, you know, portfolio professional. And so my wife and I, we talked about it and we decided to roll the dice and we unplugged everything, all of my clients, all of my boards, all of my. Peer forums, I'm sure we'll talk about that later.

Or everything unplugged, everything. Um, we kept our home here where we live and we, we bought a condo over, uh, at a company that I became the global president of. And I did that for three years. And, um, it, we went through COVID, so it was, it was the agility experience. I was looking four times 10 and at the end of that, um, which was a great experience.

It was very hard, but it was a great experience. I found myself. Pivoting back to the sense of direction I'd had before. I'd sort of satiated my thirst to go and do that kind of thing again. And, uh, red redoubled down on, on my sense of direction and vision for myself again as a portfolio professional with a, with a refreshed and refocused.

Passion for everything to do with boards. So that's the answer to your question, Simon. Now and my, when I look at my vision board now, the latest incarnation of my portfolio business model is a triangle where the three sides all relate to different forms of board work. So governance boards is the first side of the triangle.

The second side of the triangle is advisory boards, and the third side of the triangle is peer advisory boards or sometimes called peer groups, or in our case, peer forums. And uh, when I was away for those three years. As you know, part of my previous portfolio business model was I was a, uh, a leader, a facilitator, a chair of peer groups, peer forums for 15 years.

I had four groups, 60, 70 members at any one time. Coming to monthly meetings. I was a peer forum speaker as well on my specialty topic of agility. And I spoke to 400 groups around the country and around the world. And when I was away for those three years, two of my very longtime members who'd been with me 12 years and 10 years when I left the previous organization I was with, and they were members of, they were so passionate about their peer forum experience that they decided to acquire.

San Diego franchise license of a competitor that was previously called Renaissance Executive Forums and subsequently rebranded itself to REF Ref. So they bought the license for that, started building a community of peer forums, and they called me up and they said, look, this is your fault. We want you involved.

And so I got back involved with them. I got involved with REF globally and nationally, and I very quickly came to realize, Simon, that doing peer group work, peer advisory boards, peer forums is the answer. To the question when I coach portfolio professionals or people considering taking the leap to become portfolio professionals, I heard it, I heard it put this way from someone I was coaching and she said, you know, I, I think about it this way.

She says, I ask myself. What is the work that I can't not do? And for me the answer to that question, the work that I can't not do, is facilitating peer forums because it feels like everything I ever did was preparation to do this. And I, I love it dearly. And so that is the, the clearest vision that I have for myself going forwards, is to continue doing that work that I can't not do, which is facilitating peer advisory boards.

Also on the second side of the triangle, advisory boards and also governance boards. So everything relating to boards and how the board needs to be the top line of enterprise agility for whatever the enterprise is.

[00:16:53] Simon Vetter: Yeah,

[00:16:54] Mike Richardson: and our role is to make sure that that boards are part of the agility solution. Not part of the Fity problem, uh, that organizations face.

[00:17:06] Simon Vetter: Yeah. And the power of those peer groups comes from the collective intelligence. Where executives, CEOs, leaders come together and learn with each other from each other. And you're kind of the hub, you're the, the spider in the middle to bring all those ideas and expertise together.

[00:17:27] Mike Richardson: Yeah. And, and I, I heard a great speaker once come through my groups, uh, Steve Schneider, I think his name was, if my recollection is correct, I think that's correct.

And he said, look, there are only two questions in life. Number one, what do you want? Number two. How do you get it? And later on he said, actually, it's the third question number three, how do you give as much of it away as you possibly can? And he said, the biggest problem is that most people don't have a very clear answer to question number one.

What do you want? So that is the top right hand corner, if you like, of how I facilitate my peer forums by helping the members get clear. About what do you want? Yeah. Not just in business, of course, but also professionally, personally, and in life. And I spend a lot of time facilitating them, not just once, but every year.

Checking in on that question and their answer. What is it that you want? Where's your true north? Where's your sense of what, what scent are you on? What are you chasing? Not just in business, but also in life and. I've got various exercises that I get them doing to sort of, if you like, do the same thing that I did on that plane filling that sketches, that sketch artist book of have a dialogue with yourself.

Don't worry about crystallizing a vision yet. Let's have a messy ideation dialogue. With ourselves. Let's let it be messy and let's just compound that, that dialogue with ourselves, that eventually, from which you can crystallize a vision and then lead with that vision in the direction of what do you want?

Number two, how do you get it? Number three, how do you give as much of it away as you possibly can? You know, leaving a legacy as it were. That's partly why this is the work that I can't not do because it's just such a privilege to leave footprints and fingerprints in other people's lives and to see them go onwards and upwards to phenomenal things like I would never, never dream of.

It doesn't get any better than that.

[00:19:34] Simon Vetter: Yeah, and that simple question, what you want incorporates a lot of other questions. Again, what do you want with your business? And also the question is, where do you go? Which is the ultimate vision question. Where are you going? And it goes back to the initial question.

You have always been intentional asking that question for your career and your business. And it's interesting, you end up in a role that you help others figure that out. I was in, um. Coaching program early two thousands. When I start my business and they ask on a piece of paper, just draw your ideal for the future.

So I draw a world map and in San Diego I put a star with waves and palm trees, and then other star in Switzerland with me skiing and mound biking, and I. Put a line between those two stars and airplane indicating that I live in two different places

[00:20:26] Mike Richardson: and here you are. Just

[00:20:27] Simon Vetter: got back and here I'm, yes. So it's exciting.

So let's pivot to agility. What's the concept and why is it so important these days?

[00:20:37] Mike Richardson: Yeah, it's a great question. It's a, it's a short question. It's a very long answer. So the world is, is accelerating all the time with disruptive change. What used to take. 10 years of disruptive change now happens in five years, three years, one year.

One quarter, one month. Sometimes it feels like one week, right? Sometimes it feels like, you know, what worked yesterday doesn't work today. And so we have no choice except to be in a constant evolution of adaptability. And the biggest myth of all is that startups and small to medium sized enterprises, mid-market companies and corporations.

Often believe they are naturally agile and they are 100% categorically, not they're naturally frenetic hair on fire seats of the pants that is absolutely not agility. Now the opposite isn't agility, big, corporate bureaucratic stuff. Clearly that's not agility either, but agility is an end proposition in the middle.

Where you have the best of both worlds, you have the rigor of a bigger corporate and you have the spark of a, of a smaller, you know, company startup, energy flare entrepreneurship. So it's the marriage of those two things where things really flow and the ability to adapt, adapt, adapt, be on the front foot, never get caught, flatfooted never get caught on the back foot.

And most people think there's kind of two kinds. Adaptability is binary. You either are or you are not adaptable. Actually, there are three kinds of adaptability. There's post adaptive reactive, you are behind the curve. There's adaptive. You are on the curve and there's pre adaptive. You are ahead of the curve.

You are ready for anything. You are on your front foot. You're doing scenario thinking. You're not just ready for one prediction of the future. You are ready for a range of futures. No matter what comes up, that's true agility is that when you are pre adaptive and it's not easy to achieve, and of course it feels a bit paradoxical with leading with vision because you might say, well then if everything can change in an instant.

What's the point of having a vision and being able to lead with vision? It's even more crucial to lead with vision when things are speeding up. The trick though, is to not hold that vision too tightly. Of course not to hold it too loosely is to hold it just so, so at any moment in time you have a vision and it is your true north and it it is.

It is driving. A sense of direction, but recognizing that you're gonna be steering, you know, as you go, because you just don't know what's around the next corner or beyond the next horizon, you know, or out there in the storm clouds that are gathering. And so it's, it's the ability to pivot and pivot and pivot.

But at any moment in time to have a vision. Out there on the horizon that you are leading with. And so it's paradoxical for people, which means it, it's, uh, it's a sort of higher order. Mindset to develop and to evolve. And, uh, the concept of agility has exploded over the last, you know, two decades. And I now talk about enterprise agility, business agility, organizational agility, team agility, and leadership agility.

And there's nothing more that I love to do than to hold a mirror up to, you know, a CEO or an executive. And their teams and to get them reflecting upon, are you part of your agility solution or are you part of your fragility problem? And how do you move from the majority who are part of the problem to the minority?

Apollo solution and what does that take?

[00:24:30] Simon Vetter: And there is a balancing act. Like some people, they have a vision that's very generic, interchangeable. You change the, the name of the company and it could be the competitor. That's not unique. It's very general and it's broad. And then there is this very narrow, it's you said, tied on and it kind, it's a rigid, how do you find the right balance between those two and how do you always look forward?

[00:24:57] Mike Richardson: Yeah, exactly. It's an and proposition of both. And in fact, I urge people, and I know you agree with this actually, to not use the word balance in particular when it comes to work life balance.

[00:25:12] Simon Vetter: Yeah.

[00:25:12] Mike Richardson: It's because that gets your head into a scarcity mindset where, which is a zero sum proposition. Where more of one means less of the other, whereas really what's there is a work life integration, a harmonious integration of work and life where you are now in an abundance mindset where one plus one can equal 3, 5, 7, 9.

And so yeah, agility is, is a harmonious integration of this and that all at the same time. Which most people would hold as an OR proposition. I can be short term or long term oriented. I can be a leader or a manager. I can be strategic or execution oriented. I don't have time. I don't have the bandwidth. I don't have the ability to do both.

Equally, uh, uh, in proportion. And so the end proposition of agility is, is, well, you, you, you have to be able to do all of that simultaneously. And, uh, we do it in so many walks of life. I invite people to realize, look, when you drive to the office in your car, you're doing strategy and execution, leadership and management, short term and long term, all at the same time with hardly thinking about it at the same time as, you know, making a cell phone call, talking to a passenger and drinking a cup of coffee.

It's amazing how agile you are able to do all of that when you drive to the office. So how come when you park in the lot outside and walk inside, how come you leave those skills in the parking lot? How about we take them in with us? And when you're in the driving seat of your business, you get yourself into the same mode.

That's a, a very simple, easy metaphor to explain. It's very complex, of course, to be able to live up to that as a leader, as a team, as an organization, as a business, as an enterprise. And that's, you know, the work that I do.

[00:27:06] Simon Vetter: A question here about abundance mindset. How do you nurture your abundance mindset and how do you get to that point where you have that mindset of there's enough for everybody and one-on-one is more than three or

[00:27:19] Mike Richardson: four or five?

Yeah. There's enough for everybody and, and relatively speaking, you know, I, I don't have finite capacity. I don't have finite bandwidth. I don't have finite. Productivity. I don't believe in that. I, I believe in, at least relatively speaking, no, I have infinite bandwidth. I have infinite productivity. I have an in infinite capacity.

So it's a, for me, it's a, it's a belief system. It's, I, I've gotta flick a switch up here and through experience, um, what I find is that whenever I can coach myself back into that flow and belief. That great stuff happens and I'm, you know, amaze myself and other people amaze themselves and I amaze them.

They amaze me about, wow, gosh, look at how far you've come. You've massively exceeded, you know, what you thought you could achieve. You know, back to leading with vision. One of the things I see all the time, you know, I'm sure you do too, is that when I work with organizations, they'll show me their mission statement, okay?

Show me their vision statement, okay? And all, all the other great stuff, their values and their value proposition and their passionate purpose and all that kind of stuff. And typically what I'll show them is I'll, I'll put their mission statement and their vision statement side by side. And what I'll show them is your vision statement really isn't a vision statement.

It's just a different expression of your mission statement.

[00:28:49] Simon Vetter: Yeah.

[00:28:49] Mike Richardson: And there's nothing wrong with what your vision statement says, but let's be clear. It's not a vision statement. A vision statement needs to be a picture of the future that you could unambiguously declare victory. Or not. And so oftentimes if it's a corporate or a nonprofit, they're not, you know, they're so invested in their mission statement and their vision statement.

'cause they've had them for quite some time. They're not about to just delete that vision statement and change it into something more. So I will say no problem, leave it as it is. But now let's imagine that there's a another blank piece of paper that you've now got to fill in. Because you do not have a clear vision of the future, a true picture of the future that you can lead with.

[00:29:44] Simon Vetter: Yeah.

[00:29:44] Mike Richardson: If you don't know where you're going, any road will do. And, and you know, the, some of those classic, you know, ideas are, are, are so timeless. They've been around forever and yet they're so timely right now because as the world speeds up more and more and more with disruptive change. Leading with vision doesn't become less important.

It becomes more important. And that's the paradox for most people. And so I'm constantly, I'm sure you are too, working with people to say, three years out, five years out, x years out, whatever X is right for you. And it might be 18 months, it might be seven years. Who knows what, whatever X is right for you.

Paint a picture of the future that you're not gonna hold too tightly. 'cause if the world, you know, pivots, you are gonna pivot with it. But you're not gonna hold it too loosely 'cause then it's worthless to you. You're gonna sort of hold it just so, and it's gonna help you drive things forward. Paint me a picture of the future in unambiguous terms.

You could declare victory on or not. You know, that for me is, is really getting to a place where now, now I've got a vision I can lead with.

[00:30:55] Simon Vetter: Yeah. And here's also a, an important distinction that, as you said, it's a picture. You can see it and can you see it? And can the people on your team see it?

[00:31:05] Mike Richardson: Yeah. And.

[00:31:08] Simon Vetter: I always look at the, when you have a management team, seven people, and they all look out the window, they look into the future. Five years from now, do they all see the same thing?

[00:31:18] Mike Richardson: Right.

[00:31:19] Simon Vetter: And usually a vision is something that has not happened yet. And it takes creativity and then we, it takes a belief.

This is a vision that is possible in the future. And realistic.

[00:31:32] Mike Richardson: Yeah. And, and it's the old idea that, uh, a picture's worth a thousand words.

[00:31:36] Simon Vetter: There we go.

[00:31:36] Mike Richardson: And so let's, let's truly try to create a picture. And it doesn't mean it's necessarily a artistic picture, as it were almost a photographic picture of the future.

It could be more of a business model draw, let's draw squares and boxes and triangles, and let's draw the machinery of this business. That we're trying to achieve. So no, there's no one right way to do it. But yeah, I agree with you. Um, I'm constantly trying to get people into a more whole brained mode. I, I see plenty of people saying they're very visionary and, and I say, okay, show me.

And they show me a spreadsheet or they show me, you know, maybe it's a PowerPoint slide rather than the spreadsheet, but it's lots of numbers and lots of bullet points. And I'll say, great. That's fine. That's great. Now let's open up another blank page and let's start drawing because a picture is worth a thousand words because it's a, it's a whole brained experience.

Sure enough, the left brain is in the game looking at the fine lines, the dots, the shapes, you know, it's zoomed in looking at the detail, and the right brain is in the game, zoomed out, looking at the spatial relationships of everything and the overall shape and pattern. Connections of everything. And so a picture is worth a thousand words because it's a whole brained experience.

And for me it is so crucial when we're doing this kind of work to get the whole brain in the game. Because, because then we have a much better chance of getting the whole team in the game. Because, you know, you've got members of your team who lean towards the left brain, you know, your, your engineers, your scientists, your.

Your mathematicians, your accountants, your your legal people, your, your production, purchasing personnel, administration people, and then you've got your right brainers. You know that lean towards the right. Your biz dev people, your people, people, your, your marketing, your sales, your creatives, your inventors.

Now, like this whole left brain, right brain thing is, is less clean and tidy. Than we thought it was with modern MRI scanning. But, but metaphorically, it's still, it's still a very useful sort of metaphor, you know, left brain versus right brain. So how do we get, how do we get a whole brain team in the game?

Because leading with vision is a whole brained proposition.

[00:34:05] Simon Vetter: A few specific recommendations for that you have from your experience to become more visionary. To sharpen those skills to lead with vision. Can you give a, a few, uh,

[00:34:18] Mike Richardson: yeah. I, I think, um,

[00:34:19] Simon Vetter: I think that you can start implementing next week.

[00:34:22] Mike Richardson: Yeah. I, I would say start if, start working the other side of your brain into gear.

So if you are a very ripe, brained person, quite likely you will easily draw pictures and, and create word pictures and, and be very, you know, sensory. But it might be lacking some of the nuts and bolts. Things which, you know, the, the left brain is on the team need to feel comfortable and vice versa. If you are a very left brain person and you can look at most, most personality assessments, disc, Myers-Briggs Predictive Index, generally speaking, one of the dimensions on which they are based, you know, they're often a two dimensional kind of model, aren't they?

Or, or a four quadrant kind of thing. But you can usually deduce that one of the organizing dimensions behind the scenes of the, of the theory of this tool is the sort of left versus right kind of leaning, you know, introvert versus extrovert, analytical versus, you know, scientific versus artistic, those kinds of things.

So usually it's in the backdrop. Most of these kinds of tools. So whichever way you lean, try to work the other side into the brain up to speed so that you can, you can start to find the middle as an end proposition and develop a more whole brained, a more whole brained approach. And I think just, yeah, becoming more visual, you know, in some of the electronic tools that we use.

PowerPoint, you know, mind, mind mapping. I'm a huge fan of mind mapping. I'm mind mapping all the time, uh, because, you know, mind mapping aligns with so well with, you know, how the brain works. I, frankly, my head is just an, is a constantly morphing mind map. That's what it is because. Whatever mind map I had yesterday, last week, last month, last quarter, is losing its relevancy because I've learned new things.

I've, I've got new data, I've got new information, I've got new perspectives. I have had new epiphanies, experiences, light bulbs, and my mind, my mind map has to keep up with. The, the, the reality of where, where things are at. So my mind is, I'm sure like yours is a constantly morphing mind map, and I have to be okay with that.

I have to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

[00:36:55] Simon Vetter: Yeah.

[00:36:56] Mike Richardson: With the fact that it's never going to stop and it's only gonna, it's only gonna speed up and get faster and faster and faster. And I just have to be okay with that. And it's, it drives, you know, if you try to fight it, it can drive you crazy. And create a lot of stress.

So I just embrace, embrace it and actually enjoy, enjoy the process

[00:37:16] Simon Vetter: in that process. Also, how do we stay curious and always open for new inputs and how do we ask better questions? And sometimes I go to Chachi PT and say, Hey. Give me a list of questions related to this issue and it stimulates new ways of thinking.

[00:37:33] Mike Richardson: Yeah. I've enjoyed over the years hearing some authors really nail that. And, um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna struggle to remember who said what, but one author said questions, beat answers actually in, in, uh, in, in most peer, peer group organizations, not least of all, ref. We say that, uh, this is a place you come to get your answers questioned.

[00:37:55] Simon Vetter: Uh, Eric Schmidt, when he became CEO of Google, he said, our company is the one who asks questions, not gives answers.

[00:38:03] Mike Richardson: Yeah. Yeah. And I read in a book recently, questions create our world questions, create our reality. So, yeah, I couldn't agree more with you.

[00:38:14] Simon Vetter: Agility, you have a model with different levels of agility.

Can you describe those? How does that apply to leadership?

[00:38:23] Mike Richardson: Yeah, so agility is a lot more complex than most people think. I, I love to talk about complexity and how, you know, when you grow, complexity goes exponential just because of raw math beyond your comprehension. And of course, I, I end up, I, I have a progression of things that I, that I reveal to people about complexity.

And I end up talking about a Rubik's cube. You know, I ask people how many permutations of a Rubik's cube are there? And you know, they say, well, you know, a hundred million, a billion, 10 billion. And actually the answer is something like, I think it's something like, I think the number is 43 quintillion.

It's certainly quintillion. And people like, look at me like, and someone will ask, well, what? What's a quintillion? That's 18 zeros. So, which I guess is a billion, billion, billion, right? 43 billion. Billion, billion possible permutations of Rubik's Cube. And there, there are some websites dedicated to this. And then, and then I think it was Google or one of the tech companies devoted a few years of supercomputer power to calculate the answer to the question of, well, from any one of those 43 quintillion permutations, if you know what you are doing, how many moves?

Does it take maximum to solve the cube from any one of those 43 quintillion permutations? You can always solve the cube in this number of moves or less, and the answer is 20. You can solve a Rubik's Cube from any one of those 43 quintillion permutations in 20 moves or less. If you know what you are doing.

If you don't know what you're doing, then you will be lost in complexity forever. 43. Quintilian Everest. So what I reveal from that is complexity goes exponential beyond your comprehension just because of raw math. A a Rubik's cube isn't that complicated. It's 27 building blocks, right? In fact, 26, 'cause you've got the sort of gimbal thing in the middle.

It's not that complicated. You know, if you, if you broke it apart and put it out on the, on the desktop here, there's only 27 pieces and yet. When you assemble it like that, the complexity goes exponential beyond your comprehension, and yet, if you can make the right moves, complexity melts away faster than your comprehension.

So if you can start making the right moves, then you can find the secrets of agility and you can stay on top of complexity. Even when you're scaling your business substantially. And so yes, there are multiple levels of moves to make with agility, you know, from macro things at the level of the enterprise.

You know, top down to micro things at the level of an individual bottom up and everything in between. And when you make the right moves, you can really develop the agility you need to be. Future proofed to a great degree. Now, can you ever guarantee that you are future proofed? Of course you can't, but can you have a quiet, full, calm, collective confidence composure if you like?

I like to bring people down to sort of the bottom line of agile composure, and that's the idea of remaining composed in the face of craziness. Because you have a cool, calm, collected quiet confidence that you have the agility to cope no matter what. And that is a very peaceful place to be. It doesn't come easy, but by and large you can get there.

And what I like to say to people is, look, in a world of accelerating disruptive change. That really is the only competitive advantage you have that has any degree of permanence these days. Everything else that you think is your competitive advantage is probably a lot more temporary than you realize, and could be disruptive, disruptive, bigger, faster, sooner than you think.

Probably bigger, faster, sooner than your worst nightmare, and the only thing left that you can really treat. As a competitive advantage that has any degree of permanence, is your agility as a leader, as a team, as an organization, as a business, as an enterprise, because you can have a somewhat quiet, cool, calm, collected confidence that we can survive and thrive no matter what, because we've got this agile ability.

To adapt and to pivot and to evolve.

[00:43:08] Simon Vetter: Composure is also that confidence. How do we project that among the people and then connect with the future? How do we help people paint that picture in the future? That confidence, that composure is

[00:43:23] Mike Richardson: one of my favorite. Expressions of that was from Colin Powell, who I, I'm pretty sure has passed away now.

Right. The previous politician and before that general, he said, leadership is about keeping your head while all around you are losing theirs. And I guess he's, you know, referring to, you know, when the grenades are coming in and everybody's starting to panic. A leader needs to stay cool, calm, collected, confident, composed, keep their head.

Think things through, see a pathway forwards that I can believe in and fully commit to it. And with a little bit of luck, we'll come out the other side of this thing. Okay. And I'm a huge believer in exactly that. Back to where we were earlier on. Leading with vision becomes more crucial, uh, for agility, not less.

What I coach people towards is, can you see a pathway that you can believe in? Because when you can, if you can, when you can, you can invest belief and hope in that

[00:44:31] Simon Vetter: and activity.

[00:44:33] Mike Richardson: Activity and drive and strategy and execution. You've got a fighting chance of emerging successful outta this crisis that you find yourself in if you're facing sort of downside risks and crisis.

If you flip that the other way up out of this upside opportunity that you sense and you are going for, right? Really that's the same kind of journey. It's just, it's just the upside version of the downside version there. Really, the, the flow of that journey is remarkably similar

[00:45:08] Simon Vetter: and it's compounding energy.

[00:45:10] Mike Richardson: Compounding energy and, and rhythm and tempo and cadence and, and momentum and traction to sort of reach, escape velocity and break through, you know, whatever that glass ceiling is or that situation is. So, can you see a, i I ask this question all the time of leaders. CEOs and executives and teams, you know, when they're in a, in particular, when they're in a tough spot, I'll ask them, can you see a pathway?

You can believe it. And a lot of the time their answer will be something like, no, not really. It's like, well then we, we better get busy. Because until you can see a pathway that you can invest belief and hope in. It's gonna feel hopeless. And I remember, I, I, I saw Tom Peters speak once around about the time I met you.

Yeah. When I was taking the leap from the corporate world in the spring of 2002, Tom Peters was in town doing a big keynote, and I got there early and I sat in the front row. If you remember Tom Peters, you know the guy that wrote in Search of Excellence or one of the authors?

[00:46:13] Simon Vetter: I met him too a couple times.

Yeah.

[00:46:14] Mike Richardson: Yeah. He was, he was a very provocative speaker. I, I, I sat in the front row and I asked a question and he's up, he's up in my face, you know, giving me the answer. And, uh, I remember one of the things he said was this, he said, leaders are dealers in hope.

[00:46:33] Simon Vetter: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:33] Mike Richardson: Now we know that hope is not a strategy.

We've, we've heard that many times, so let's not get confused here. Uh, what he's talking about is. Leaders are dealers in hope and belief. If you want to, if, if you want to energize a team, you've gotta give them belief and hope. They've gotta be able to invest their hope and belief in, in a pathway that they can see has a fighting chance of success.

Because if they can't see that, it feels hopeless. And many employees, that's their experience, just hopelessness. I don't think it's ever gonna change. It's never gonna get better. I just try. I just try to survive every day. I do my job as best I can, and then I, you know, I go home.

[00:47:14] Simon Vetter: Yeah,

[00:47:14] Mike Richardson: yeah. And so for me it's leading with vision only becomes more crucial, not just a vision for this destination.

Not just a vision for this mountaintop, it's a vision for the pathway. You know, that has a fighting chance of finding its way There.

[00:47:31] Simon Vetter: You highlighted two very important elements. One is the clarity. It's that picture. You can see it, you can believe it. And the second one is that, that belief, you believe in it and it's when you present it, articulate it to others.

Do they feel the belief that you have? And does it transfer the belief to them so they can believe it? And the combination of the clarity and the belief creates tremendous energy and motivation and also willingness for change.

[00:48:01] Mike Richardson: Yeah, and I, I couldn't agree more with you and I, and I think really in many ways when you sort of boil it down, that's what we're dealing in here.

It's energy and I, I notice it in myself. I'm sure you do too.

[00:48:14] Simon Vetter: Yeah.

[00:48:15] Mike Richardson: I know when I'm energized and I know what I'm not, I know when I'm coming up swinging and fighting and, and determine, and I know and I'm dragging, and I always ask myself, what's that about? Why is that? And it usually is something to do with a misalignment.

Between my sense of where my true north is. 'cause it, it may have drifted. It's always drifting, right? It's always moving. It's like I'm still trying to go straight on, but I'm noticing, yeah, but it seems to have drifted over here. I'm not sure I quite believe in this as much as I used to anymore. And therefore I'm not as energized as I used to be and I'm just, this just feels like hard work now.

It feels like. An uphill struggle. What's that about? It? It may be that true North has drifted, or it may be that I'm going at it the wrong way, but there's something not clicking with, with what we were just talking about, my hope and belief and the path that I can see. I'm sure you do too. I, I just encourage everybody to notice that.

More clearly and take it on board as information to decide decision worthy information to check in on some things and, and possibly make some different decisions.

[00:49:31] Simon Vetter: And then where that's important to have time to reflect and, and distill and have some quiet time, and then also look for feedback and look for perspective and have someone being challenged.

That's why. Peer learning groups are great, or have a coach or have a trusted friend you can talk about.

[00:49:50] Mike Richardson: Yeah, because it's lonely at the top, very little, that that is not just a cliche, it is a reality. I mean, I've been doing this kind of work now for 23 years, and the number of times that I have pretty much said what I've just said in front of a crowd of CEOs and executives from, you know, a dozen or two dozen up to thousands.

I see lots of nodding heads, lonely at the top. That is a reality. Uh, whether you are in corporate or a mid-market company or you're a solopreneur portfolio professional like, like you and I, it's lonely at the top. And how can you have an antidote to that loneliness of being in a room full of peers? With no competitors in the room, totally confidential.

No other conflict of interest, so you can hang it all at the door. The, the ego, the armor, the thick skin, come on in. What happens here? Stays here. It's totally confidential. Be fully transparent. Be fully you, not just in business, but also in life. And self-disclose with how you are doing, not because you expect anybody in the room is gonna have the silver bullet answer for you.

Just knowing that you are not alone. Everybody is struggling with the same kind of stuff. Uh, that's the reason why these peer forums, peer groups, peer advisory boards work is because. 80%, 90%, 95% of all the issues, challenge problems are all the same. Yeah. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what specific business or industry you are in.

You're struggling with strategic stuff, execution stuff, leadership stuff, people stuff, process stuff, technological stuff. By and large, the issues are all the same. And so yeah, it, it becomes a very. Profound place of, of good people who just want to be with other good people doing profound work together to, you know, in a very human way, to just figure out how to find their pathway forwards with more composure, more confidence to go after that.

Those three questions, what do you want? How do you get it? How do you give as much of it away as you possibly can?

[00:52:08] Simon Vetter: As we, um, come to conclusion here, what is one thing you wanna leave for the audience here?

[00:52:15] Mike Richardson: Well, I know you've asked me, you've asked me this question before, and that is, you know, what advice would you give to your younger self, Mike?

[00:52:21] Simon Vetter: Yeah.

[00:52:22] Mike Richardson: You know, what advice would you give to your, perhaps your 21-year-old self when you were leaving college and going into your, you know, career for the first time? Of course, I'm not too far removed from that in that I have two boys. One is 33 and one is 30. They've been in the workforce now for maybe, you know, 10 years or so.

And, um, they've all, they've both already been through a lot of disruptive change, you know, in their careers. Just because, because, because, um, of course they went through COVID and, and all of that. They, and, you know, I, I give them the same advice I would give my. Myself as a 21-year-old, and that is, don't worry, don't worry if, or rather, hopefully when you keep working hard, you keep adapting.

You keep getting clearer and clearer and clearer on what do you want, how do you get it, and how do you give as much of it away when you keep learning on how to be agile and stay composed and be a good leader and a good strategist, and a good executional, you know, kind of person when you go with the flow.

Don't worry. It'll be, it'll be fine. It, it'll be, it'll be okay. In fact, it'll be perfect. It'll be just perfect.

[00:53:45] Simon Vetter: And then trust the sensors, have

[00:53:47] Mike Richardson: that, then trust the sensors and trust those forks in the road. Like it's not if you'll have forks in the road, it's only when it's not. If you will hit a brick wall, it's only when,

[00:53:59] Simon Vetter: yeah,

[00:53:59] Mike Richardson: it's not if you will get knocked down, it's only when that happens.

What happens next? Do you come up swinging or do you start to check out?

[00:54:09] Simon Vetter: Mike, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for all your great advice and stories and concepts. I always appreciate being in the room with you and learning with you and from you. So.

[00:54:21] Mike Richardson: Thanks for having me.

[00:54:22] Simon Vetter: Thanks. Thanks to you.

[00:54:23] Mike Richardson: Thank you.

[00:54:23] Simon Vetter: Excellent.

Thank you for joining us for this insightful conversation about leadership, agility and the power of vision. If you found value in Mike's wisdom and experiences, please like and subscribe to stay updated on more transformative discussions with industry leaders. I invite you to explore our other episodes for more strategic insights that can help you navigate your leadership journey with confidence.

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