Episode Details

Episode 157: Chris Zook - The Founders Mentality: A Bias For Action & Front Line Obsession

Chris Zook is a partner in Bain & Company's Boston office. He was co-head of the Global Strategy practice for 20 years. During his more than 25 years at Bain, Chris has specialized in helping companies find new sources of profitable growth.

A best-selling author, Chris published his fifth book,The Founder's Mentality in 2016. Based on a decade-long study of companies in more than 40 countries, The Founder's Mentality shows how leaders can overcome the predictable crises of growth and set their companies on a path of sustainable growth. Chris has been a featured broadcast guest, including NPR, CNBC, Fox News and Bloomberg TV. He has been a keynote speaker at a wide range of international and business forums including the World Economic Forum, the World Knowledge Forum, the Forbes' CEO Conference, the BusinessWeek CEO Conference, the Economist Summit and Endeavour's entrepreneur summits. In the last five years, he has done over 500 talks and workshops across more than 35 different countries.

Episode 157: Chris Zook - The Founders Mentality: A Bias For Action & Front Line Obsession

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The Learning Leader Show

"The leaders who have a deep intellectual curiosity to continuously learn" will sustain excellence over an extended period of time"

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• Having a burning intensity and passion around a topic/cause and a love of the details will lead to sustained excellence
• Walter Chrysler was a great example of this.. -- Also Phil Knight (Nike), Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX)
• The importance of a "deep intellectual curiosity to learn"
• Front Line Obsession - Do you treat your front line sales and customer service employees as the heroes of the business? Do you do whatever it takes to support them?
• Customer Advocacy - Do you relentlessly try to create loyalty with your customers? Is the voice of the customer fully represented in all important meetings?
• An Owner's mindset:
  • A bias for action - Making decisions with speed. Quick to take on personal responsibility and risk to do the right thing
  • An aversion to bureaucracy - Have you simplified your initiatives to focus on the biggest priorities? Are your planning and review processes the best in the industry and do you reallocate resources to make your front line more competitive?
• The amount of time spent on the preparation for quarterly meetings (building PowerPoint decks, etc...) is immense -- However, it's not focused on customers, which is a problem
• How Home Depot went from great to poor to great again...
• The 9 Nike Maxims -- Make sure you celebrate your front line employees
• How can a company deal with cost reductions?
• "Train the guns on thet thinkers, not the doers" -- The bureaucracy has to go
• The importance of mindfulness
• Have a bias for action... Be a doer, not a talker
• 85% of a companies issues stem from internal issues
• Why a company needs one dedicated person to owning the customer experience
• The hero of WWII - General James Gavin
• New Leaders - Spend the first 6 weeks in the field. Learn what is happening and why. See it for yourself
  • Send an email to every person in your organization and take the time to thoughtfully respond to every email
• How Chris helped build Bain from 100 employees to 5,000+
• Thought of "Learning Leader" as an academic term originally, but after being a guest on the show views it as a way to bring ideas from an outside audience and share with others

"Complexity is the silent killer of growth"

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