From Have-To to Want-To: What 50+ Years of Leadership Looks Like with Peter Arthur Smith

Welcome to A Podcast About Leadership. I'm Jonathan Kirschner, and today's a very special day. Today we have Peter Arthur Smith on the show. And let me just say, everybody watching this knows there are no shortages of leadership voices right now. Um, you can find leadership books everywhere. You can go on LinkedIn and there's leadership gurus and thought leaders and everybody's talking about leadership. And, um, you're not gonna necessarily see Peter Arthur Smith because he doesn't position himself as a guru of leadership. Um, and that's exactly why we should be listening to Peter Arthur Smith today. Peter Arthur Smith has been doing this work quietly, quietly. In his own humble way for a half, over half a century, over half a century out of the spotlight. He is a practitioner, he is a scholar. You would, you would say student. I'm gonna say scholar 'cause we know each other well enough. And I know that you're a scholar of leadership and I've learned so much personally from you. Peter's one of the sharpest thinkers I've encountered about what leadership actually is. Peter was in the British Army at the— is it 16 years old? I started at 16 in an army technical college. That's incredible. So starting at 16 years old, Peter started at a technical college in the British Army, was in the Royal Corps of Signals. Right. And ran communication troops in the world's hotspots. During the height of the Cold War, was in Belize, Aden, Cyprus, Northern Ireland. How many countries have you been in? Well, not in the British Army, but I visited nearly 90 countries. Nearly 90 countries. And 7 continents. And 7 continents. So he's seen a few things. Peter left the army as a captain and walked straight into a role as the leader, the human resources manager at a UK cash register company. So that company, there was a period of time when cash registers as a business, I'm sure, was booming. You probably came in at the peak. I came in at the peak because Britain was going decimal. So it was all the cash registers had to be replaced. Throughout the country. So your first role as a leader was jumping into an organization and essentially going through a transformation, like, from the start? Well, it, it had reached somewhat of a peak by the time I joined it. Yeah, that's incredible. Um, I definitely want to hear more about that as we progress. You then went into, um, consulting. Yeah. Uh, spending two decades at Mercury Erval, a Nordic, but now global, obviously, consultancy. And in 1994 founded Leadership Solutions based in Manhattan, where he has consulted with leaders, leadership teams, and organizations. And along the way, he's engaged in politics. You were city councilman in Lancashire. Yeah. Okay. And, and in your free time, you like to write. And in addition to articles, you have a book, Smart Decisions, and a forthcoming book, which is really what has brought us together and that I'm quite excited about. And so we have a forthcoming book on leadership, and that's really going to be a lot of what we talk about. Today, right? So, um, Peter, let's, let's dive right in. I remember when we met, uh, about 3 years ago, and we met in the context that you framed up so beautifully in an email. You said, we have a leadership crisis. And I said, well, yeah, duh, we have a leadership crisis. But you said, no, no, we have to do something about it, and I want to get on a call with you. And I said, okay, this is either going to be like super bizarre and random and I probably shouldn't take this call, but let me just take the risk. Let me roll the dice here. I've read the article he attached, it was pretty thoughtful. And here we are today, 3 years later in an incredible relationship. And again, I wanna reiterate, I've learned so much not just intellectually, but actually in the applied world of leadership from you, Peter. And so it's a, it's a really, really huge privilege to have you on the, on the podcast today. You shared with me your bio early on and something that really struck me, and there was a line in the bio that said, while I didn't pursue leadership, It pursued me through life's journey. And I want to ask you, when did you first notice it pursuing you? Right. Well, first of all, I first noticed being a leader, although I didn't really understand it then, when I was in the Cub Scouts. In the Cub Scouts? Yep. As a senior sixer. Okay. So I was the senior Cub. Scout of that particular, and then I went into the Boy Scouts, which was the next stage, and then I became the troop leader out of that. And then in fact, when I went into the Army Technical College, there was also a senior Scout troop there, and I became the troop leader of that as well. So although I didn't really understand what leadership was about in I didn't even think about it. I just kept finding myself in leadership positions. And then of course, when I was at high school, I don't know whether you have that here, but we would have prefects who were a handful of people who were to be regarded as leaders in the high school. So I was a prefect there. Then when I went to the Army Technical College, I became a sergeant leader. In the technical college. And then when I, then I went on to officer school and I became a leader there. And so it seems to have pursued me wherever I went, but I've never really gone out of my way to be a leader or expect myself to be a leader. Well, I mean, clearly a pattern emerged, right? You, you, whatever context you go into, whether it's the Cub Scouts or the Boy Scouts or the Army or in the consulting firm. Right. Somehow you find a way, you gravitate towards, you become a leader. What compelled you to take leadership positions in those various contexts? Other than when I, later on in the becoming an officer and so forth, That's when I really started to become, to understand what leadership was. Before that, I just did it, whatever it was. I've just played the role. But then by the time I became an officer and really through education and so forth, really began to understand what leadership is. Although the reality is that since that, my mind has become much clearer about, in my view, what leadership is. And I think I've shared with you that I see 5 elements of leadership. One is vision, to be a visionary. The second is to be a person of integrity. The third thing is to have courage. Yes. The The fourth thing is to have humility. And the final thing is to have wisdom. I don't know whether I portray any of those things terribly well, but— Well, certainly humility by saying that. But those are things that I admire in people who I regard as being good leaders. They have those five qualities to a greater or lesser extent because I don't think there's many of us who have all of those absolute qualities, unfortunately. Um, so, um, that's my take on leadership and where I've arrived at at this moment in time. Mm-hmm. I, I love that, Peter. What did you learn about leadership, both like the positive, but also like what not to do, um, as a function of your experience in the art? Right. Well, um, One of the key things that was important that I learned about being a leader is that you take care of yourself last, you take care of your people first, you take care of them and make sure that their needs and so forth are met. And then in other words, if it came time to sit down and have food and so forth. You make sure that your people are fed. And then at the end, okay, maybe it's time for you to be fed. You're the last in the line. So that was one thing. Another thing that I learned is that real good leaders don't lead from the front. Most people have this idea that to be a leader, you have to be out front. And I learned from various instances that in fact that's not a good role for leaders. One thing I tell people is that in bringing into Americana is that Gettysburg, which was that very vital Civil War, the opposing sides, the thing they focused on was the leaders. If they could kill all the leaders, Then they would have control over the situation. And that's what the snipers concentrated on. They con— the leaders at that time felt they had to be at the front and the snipers would kill all the leaders off. Oh, wow. And that way, then they would destroy the enemy. The idea is if you do get to the front, you'll get shot. And therefore you're not going to be an effective leader anymore. Right. So, right. Leaders have to think ahead and be looking ahead, but not necessarily acting ahead and being out front. Wow. When you think about, um, the things that, about leadership that don't work, you know, was there anything in the Army, in, in your Army experiences that you saw in terms of like ineffective leadership or bad leadership? That informed how you decided to lead? Right. Well, another thing is I found that be careful of the adage that you have to set an example because none of us are perfect. And if we try too hard to set ourselves as an example, then we are going to eventually be denigrated by the people who we are leading. So we have to be sensible about what we, the example that we provide, and perhaps it's not a good idea to be charismatic. I mean, one of the things I was reading about recently is that how during the last century we've changed our focus from character leadership to personality leadership. Where, and places like Harvard, they very much focus on personality leadership where you have to be the extrovert, the person who's the life and soul of the party. Lots of charisma. Right. All the charisma and so forth. And certain books I've read show how that model doesn't really work. And from my point of view, that model has encouraged us to pursue a degree of narcissism. I believe that we have too many narcissists leading both in the world and so forth. And that is creating a crisis in my view because we have these personality types who are there and they don't really give a damn about the people that they're supposed to be leading. They only care about themselves. Yeah, it's almost like a little bit of a trap, like the follower feels compelled by the charisma, the energy, you know, the sort of implicit hope in all of that, in all of those positive messaging. But in terms of the actuals, the substance, they can sometimes, or oftentimes even be disappointed, right? So, right. So my whole thesis is more about involving your people and getting them on board as much as possible so you can encourage them to take the lead rather than you take the lead and then you become the orchestrator. I mean, I tell people another example I had was when we were on patrol, we were, I was in the North Yorkshire Moors and we were on patrol. On a sort of a mock exercise. In fact, they were American Green Berets out there and we had to find our way to capture them if we could. Okay. Okay. So I had a troop of soldiers that we were out during the night and trying to look for these Green Berets and Suddenly, at some point, it was a moonlit night, and at some point I was aware that all of my troops were behind me and I was the person out front. And there they were looking at what looked like to be the specter of a soldier up on the hillside looking down on us. They were all behind me, hmm, you know, waiting for me to take the lead. Whereas in fact, what I in fact did, I encouraged them all to get down and I encouraged them to get around me and say, okay, let's see what we can do to deal with this situation. So we agreed that they would break up into contingents and one would go one way, one group would go the other way and so forth, rather than, you know, and we would stay where we were to keep that person, whoever it was, focused. We ultimately found out, in fact, it wasn't a person at all. It happened to be a tree. Yeah. That's interesting. Wow. That's fast. That, but if I, if I'm reading the story right, it, it sounds like, um, the way in phase one of this pursuit, uh, you were sort of at the head and they were behind you. Right. But, um, in phase two, you said, actually, I need you all to disperse in a coordinated way. I'm your orchestrator. I'm not in the lead. I'm sort of, I think you mentioned, like in the middle. I'm the catalyst here. The catalyst in the middle is orchestrating. To orchestrate, okay, that one group goes one way and one group goes the other way, and we'll keep the enemy focused on us, while you go and maybe, you know, uh, capture him. Maybe. But of course it happened to be a tree instead. Happened to be a tree instead. So, um, that's a great story. Well, I, I would love to, you know, bring it into the context of, say, organizational— let's go into civilian context for a moment. You know, after the Army, right, you, um, you moved into the role of head of of human resources for the cash register company called Gross Cash Register in Brighton. Brighton, yes. Brighton in England, yes. And it was just, you know, times were booming for cash register machines. Because everybody had to throw away their old ones and get a decimal one. And get a decimal one. So you saw a lot of adaptation, and then you presumably saw I mean, did you see the decline of cash registers? People didn't need the cash register anymore. They didn't need it anymore. And this company had about 2,500 people. Of course, there was no market for them. So they started innovating the next generation of cash registers at that time, more digital computerized, but they didn't need all of these people. So they decided they had to downsize. So they had to downsize. And you being the head of HR. I had been HR with my small team that I had. We had to preside over all of these people leaving the company, and many of them had been in the company a long time. They were very talented, many of them very talented, very loyal people and so forth. And I can assure you there were a lot of tears. There were a lot of tears as we saw those people going through and the procedure we had to take them through to end up their finances and everything so they could leave the company. And that was a major impact on me. And the sad part is that even here we come today and we're now talking because of AI We're now talking about many companies are going to be laying off a lot of people. I mean, Amazon have just announced in the last few days they're going to downsize by 20,000 people. That brings me, I mean, I was just dealing with 2,000 people, but, and from my point of view, the enormous waste of doing that. And I believe that we need to find another way to deal with it. And to me, when you downsize by that, to me, that's a leadership failure. That's a failure of leadership that you have to downsize by 20,000 people instead of somebody like Amazon knowing full well that they were going to come to a point where they were going to put robots in and so forth to take the place of people. In my opinion, they could have 10, 5 years ago, started looking at other business and/or looking, exploring other business entities that would need the talents of some of these people that they had, and they could start growing other businesses so that those people didn't then have to be laid off, basically. And I believe this is where we, this shows that we have a tendency to, we get so focused on today and making money today We're not looking ahead to say, well, you know, how are we going to make, take advantage of all this talent that we have at our disposal instead of just throwing them out under the bus? It's a real tricky trap, right? Right. You get real successful and that success really like encourages short-term thinking in some, in some ways, right? Yeah. In some ways by necessity, right? Like you've gotta fulfill the demand and, and you have to focus on like, how do we, how do we fill all these orders? Like we need to hire more people, we need to, and, and so you get very focused on the immediate, but you do that too much and, and it becomes, it gets, it's at the expense of like your strategic thinking. Your longer-term thinking and your creative thinking, presumably. And making time to be thinking about tomorrow as well as today. Management too often focuses on today, as you said. Yeah. Taking care of all these things that we have to do, get the products out of the door and so forth. That's what management tends to do. But Leaders are thinking about tomorrow as well as today. Yes. And that's why they're leaders as opposed to just managers. So when you think about, you know, when you go back to the days at Grosskast Register, right? You know, obviously there was a huge disruption. It created a lot of layoffs and reduction in force, which is no matter how you look at it, right? An awful experience. Yeah. You know, what was your takeaway from that? Like, what did you learn from that experience, um, particularly around, you know, leadership or, or how organizations adapt or don't adapt? You know, curious what, what your takeaway— well, I, I was just— I mean, um, I, I, I did at that time and still do think a lot about that whole issue. And that's where one of the drivers that's got me to pursue the leadership side of things, to pursue thinking about tomorrow as well as just thinking about today. And that means then building up the right talent around you, that it's not just you thinking about tomorrow, but you build a leadership team is also thinking about tomorrow. And I know something that we've talked about is, and that I'm writing about in the book, is bringing up the whole idea of periscope time. Periscope time is something that I developed an idea about a long time ago, and I pursue periscope time myself where I take time out on a regular basis to look above what's going on today and looking out on tomorrow and say, where am I going and how am I positioned to where I'm going and so forth. And I think that teams, leadership teams should be, if they're a startup, maybe they should be meeting once a week or every 2 weeks thinking about where are we today, but what things look like ahead the next month. But then when you get to a growth company, maybe you're doing that once every month. You get the leadership team and thinking about where are we today? What's it look like for the, our opportunities for tomorrow and positioning ourselves. If you become a really big company, well maybe you do it something once a quarter. You know, you take a day out with your leadership team and you think, well, where are we today? And let's look about where we are going to be tomorrow. Yeah, I love it. It, it, and it periscope just like a submarine, you know, that's, that's underwater, submersed and you're, so focused. I mean, you do one thing wrong, it could compromise the whole mission or, or everybody's lives on the submarine. Um, so, so it, it necessitates, um, a very operational, tactical, um, way, mindset, and way of, of, of behaving, right? Um, but if you really want the comprehensive sort of perspective You gotta put the periscope up, right? Right. And, uh, and so I just love that metaphor used in the context of leadership because it's really no different. Like we get so consumed with our day-to-day. There's so much pressure on leaders, right? Um, and, and that pressure just increases as a function of all the change. And, um, and uncertainty in the world. And so to be able to, um, poke your head up as an individual or as a, as a team unit, as a team unit, um, very valuable. I think something I've learned from you is that you don't just like do it when you need to do it. The, there's a discipline. To Periscope time, right? Right. And you gotta commit. You gotta commit whether it's weekly, monthly, quarterly. You've gotta commit to Periscope time. Right. And if you're gonna do Periscope time, the other thing is that, and certainly if you're gonna do it say monthly or is, I advocate that you encourage your team to take the weekend off. Do they end, they finish early on a Friday 'cause they're gonna have Periscope time on Monday. And then they use Friday to discharge and relax and relax with their family over the weekend. So by the time they come to Monday, they're really fresh and ready to think about tomorrow. Huh. So a 4-day week. Yeah. So take Friday, like use that almost to prepare. And do this once a month, you know? So, but by the time you come to Monday, your mind is much more clear and ready to think about tomorrow because you know, and the company should, in my opinion, should have a bucket so that as you're going through the month, if anybody thinks of something that should be brought up in periscope time, they're able to put it into the bucket. Okay, so by the time the team comes together on that Monday, they can look at what's in the bucket and then they can have a discussion about which of these things do we really need to focus on today to take our, unit forward. I love that. A periscope bucket. Yeah. Right. 'Cause, 'cause ideas happen all the time. Right. And you know, through the, the, the flow of work. And so to be able to just— You've not time to think about things very often, but you can say, this is something very important. Let's put that, this in the bucket. I like it. So, so Peter, in 2023, you wrote an article called The World Leadership Crisis. Right. Which was, um, really a powerful piece. And, you know, you talked about, you know, various dynamics that are converging and essentially leading to a leadership crisis. Um, you know, not just in the US or the UK, but you're seeing it almost like pervasively around the world. Right. Help us understand that? If you could just unpack a little bit of what you are seeing and why are you calling it or thinking about it as a crisis? I'm thinking about it as a crisis because there are so many forces building up and bearing in mind there's some enormous narcissists leading us. These are people who seem to be intent on just asserting their egos in such a way that it doesn't really matter to them about what's happening on in the rest of the world. And I'm concerned that we are allowing ourselves to go along with it rather than, and I start saying to myself, well, We've got to change the dynamic because we can't have narcissists as much as they're compelled to be leaders. We've got to somehow get away from that type of character. Otherwise, we're going to be perpetually in difficulty from my point of view. And I just feel that even from that time, 2023, I think things are coming even more to a boiling point than they were at that particular time. How— when you— I mean, because you've been at this for over half a century, okay? That's longer than I've been living, that you've been studying leadership, writing about leadership, consulting to organizations about leadership, and then of course being a leader. Trying to be. I think trying to be is, is, uh, is, is probably the best way to describe it. Like, always, you know, because it's that part. Never stop learning. I mean, there's never stopped constant development. Have leaders always been like this? Like, do you describe like a, an increase in like narcissistic leadership today? Um, you know, when you roll it back 50 years, you know, is that— are those the dynamics you saw then? And I didn't see it in that way then. I mean, I was such a— so naive when it came to leadership at that time. So it's just been a— it's been a growth. It's been something that's grown along with me. I mean, and bearing in mind that, you know, whenever I do get caught up with people talking about leadership, It distresses them, people that I meet, very much that they don't see the leadership in the world that they want. And that causes me a great deal of pain that so many people feel that they don't have, haven't had the experience of working with a good leader. Good leaders, unfortunately are in a minority. Yes. Um, yes. And, uh, uh, a lot of people don't have a good work experience. They don't have a good life experience or whatever because they're very distressed about the leaders around them or so-called leaders. Yeah. It's very scary to think about that. Um, especially like it's scary in general. Yeah. Because you need to have good leaders for, for any successful system, right? Whether it's an organization, a nonprofit, a startup, right? A government, a civilization. And you need good leadership, right, for it to thrive. Right. But especially right now, you know, when we think about, you know, the advent of, of agentic AI and robots and where things could all go if we don't have great leadership. That's kind of a scary thought. Well, if we don't have good leadership, then I think we, I hate to think about it, but if we don't have good leadership, we're gonna have enormous problems with AI. I mean, it keeps coming back to me how after World War I and where things were in the '20s and '30s, how things got so, I mean, they went chaotic and so forth and they got so discombobulated and then we ended up with World War II because the pressure was there. I just feel that if we allow, If we allow AI to take over, I just can't see how humankind is gonna accept that. And I'm just wondering what sort of distress that's gonna create in the world, whether there's gonna be all sorts of outbursts of rioting and so forth because people are not gonna accept it. Yeah. I mean, the certain view of the world that the robots and AI is gonna come in and gonna take over and take care of everything for us. I just can't see people being willing to accept that. Yeah. And I believe that will be another crux of another world war, basically, in some form or another. I don't know how it's going to evolve, but that's my concern. It's when you're more of a historian than I am, but just before World War I, there was a World Fair where they were, you know, everybody's bringing like their innovations. And I think there were a lot of military innovations. We'd be like, wow, look at this. This is so compelling, so fascinating. And then just a few years later, that's being used to wreak destruction on a scale that nobody ever could have possibly conceived. Right. Exactly. And the megalomaniacs that existed at that time, they just couldn't wait to have a war, basically. I mean, it just took one spark and off it went. And potentially that's what could happen now. We could be having our World Fair moment right now where we're like, wow, this is so cool. This is amazing, powerful technology. Right. Yeah. But to what degree people are going to be willing to accept it, accept it in the way that certain people visualize and they visualize that they envision a big underclass. Yes. We're going to have a big underclass and I don't wonder how long that underclass is going to just sit back and accept it. Yes. I mean, Peter, at this stage in your life, you could easily be kind of living on a golf course, sipping tea, you know, reading your favorite books, playing golf, enjoying the retired life. Right. That's not the life you live right now. I mean, you do travel a whole lot and you're having a good time, but, but there is fire in your belly right now that is burning pretty hot. In terms of the urgency that you experience and feel as a result of this crisis in leadership. Right. I share that with you. I think that's right. You know, you and I spar a little bit on different things. There's, there's things that you, you know, there's premises and theses you have that, that I disagree with and vice versa. Um, we are 100% aligned that, um, the future is going to be very bleak if we don't get this right with leadership. Right. Yeah. And I'm very concerned about the political leadership, in my opinion, is not taking enough of a leadership role in this to formulate, okay, if we need, if we have AI and it certainly has advantages and capabilities, but let's find the right way to work AI along with people that, I mean, we just had the Pope put out that, you know, that he felt that the way AI is Right now it's anti-human kind. Anti-human. Yeah. Interesting. Anti-human. Anti-human. Well, the way it's set right now. And you, if you listen to some of the people from Silicon Valley, they pretty well written people off because they believe these systems could be more superior than people. So to hell with the people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, of course, you know, my position, our position at Air Consulting and and I think you and I share this sort of ideology as well, is that it's not AI, it's not human, it's the hybrid. It's the partnership between AI and human that ultimately is the path, right? And— But that's gonna require leadership but it's gonna require leadership, right? 'Cause we're always going to, you know, default to the path of least resistance, which is just delegating something off and not using our brain, right? Right. And saying, all right, this AI can take care of all this, it's gonna do, and then we will, you know, consciously or accidentally or unconsciously cede our control— to— Well, because as somebody said way back in the 18th century, there's no expedient that man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking. Okay. You know? Yeah. Which is true when you think about it. I presume that is more relevant than ever right now, right? And that's the lure of AI. Okay, we don't have to think. AI's gonna do it for us. AI's got it. But I mean, unless we work with it in a smart way, we're in for a lot of trouble. I do have a lot of curiosity around the distinction between management and leadership. And that's something that you talk a lot about in the book. Yeah. You call it conventional management. Right. Conventional management. Yeah. Versus enlightened leadership. Right. And I guess maybe you could help us just, you could frame up those two concepts, conventional management, enlightened leadership, and just help us understand like what should leaders strive to be doing in order to become more effective, more enlightened? Right. Well, the thing is that with conventional management, I talk about they follow the what I call the CIGFAM system. And CIGFAM. Yeah. With an S or a C? C-I-G-F-A-M. Okay. CIGFAM. So, and the C stands for competition. Competition. We get people to compete against each other. Okay. I is incentives. We give people incentives all the time to make them work harder. Okay. We give them G, which is for goals. Goals. We're constantly giving them goals. And F is for fear. We use an element of fear to mobilize people. And then the other thing is the M is for measurement. We're constantly measuring everything, measuring people against things. And so SIGFAM, when you think about it, competition, incentives, goals, fear, and then, oh, I missed out one, A, which is accountability. Accountability. Okay. And then M, which is measurement. These are all extrinsic motivators. They're things that we bring to pressure people to work as hard as we want them to work. Yes. It's like beating up people, whipping them all the time. We used, that's what the conventional managers use. They use that so that people have to do what's required. Okay. Whereas, so to me, conventional management is about getting people to do things and they have to do it. But it's all through these sort of external Pressures. Pressures that we bring on people. And that of course creates tremendous dissension within society. I mean, we have tremendous dissension in society right now. And a lot of that is because all the pressure that we put on people as opposed to enlightened leadership, which is using extrinsic motivators, which come in the form of PCAM. P is for purpose. You give people a real purpose that they can really identify with. And then E is for equality, that you treat people with respect, that you treat them as equal and decent people. And then A is giving them a sense of achievement and accomplishment because everybody wants to achieve something, accomplish something. And C is for camaraderie. Okay, that they're in an environment where they enjoy working with their colleagues. That's the C. And then we get the A, which is, which we give them a sense of autonomy. We delegate and we give them empowerment, autonomy and empowerment. And then of course, the final M, we give them the knowledge that they need that they need to do what they have to do. Okay. We use these intrinsic motivators because these PCAM factors are factors within people that naturally motivates them to want to do it. So now we create an environment where, which is a want-to environment versus a have-to environment. And that's really what my book is going to be about. Creating a culture which is instead of a have-to culture, we create a want-to culture. And through that, we will then get an optimum performance from our organization because everybody wants to do their best. A want-to culture. Yeah, a want-to, not a have-to. Rather than feeling as though they're forced into it. How do you, so SIGFAM is a have-to culture. PCAM is a want-to. There's intrinsic motivation. Is there ever a situation where you could have 100% PCAM with zero SIGFAM, or is it about like 80/20 or 70/30? Like, should, should a leader be striving to have some conventional management? Like, is that necessary? No, I do accept both dimensions. Yes, I do accept both my men's An extreme SIGFAM is when you're in an emergency, when people really, you know— We're in a crisis. There's a crisis and you really got to, everybody's got to focus and whether they want to or not, they've just got to buckle down and get it done. Okay. And that's probably an extreme SIGFAM situation, but then they could be situations like that. But I think on, by and large, I would like to see companies working where the PKAMP is more than the SIGFAM. Yes. Okay. And the SIGFAM does of course create a certain amount of structure systems and so forth. We need that in order to keep things relatively stable. If we had too much PKAMP, things could get a little bit out of, get a bit chaotic basically. So as I've said with with leadership and management, it's the same as driving a car. To me, management is the brake and leadership is the accelerator. So if you really want to build momentum, you bring leadership to the party. If you want to slow things down, you bring management to the party. Okay, just the same as when you're driving a car. Wow. And if I could get if we could educate, from my point of view, executives to know the difference between the two. So depending on what they want and how they want it to be, they know when to apply the gas and when to apply the brake. Yes. Yes. But we don't have that clarity right now. Right. Right. So one thing is you do need stability and structure. Right. But that is not how you thrive, right? That's not how you, you grow sustainably, right? You grow through the PCAM and through that enlightened leadership momentum that that builds. Yes. Tell me that. So, so that, that's like very instructive as far as like individual leadership and how to be, you know, essentially like A highly effective leader. Um, when you step back and look at organizations and successful organizations, um, versus unsuccessful, um, or declining organizations, you, you bring up something in your book about the five, the five curses, right? So the five curses, I guess it's five curses of conventional management, or is it five curses in general? They're very, they're very, uh, compatible with conventional Andrew, tell us about these 5 curses. And then presumably, are there 5 antidotes as well to the curses? Just help us understand. Well, from my point of view, the 5 curses are bureaucracy, hierarchy, efficiency think, negative messaging, and corruption. And corruption. Those are the 5 curses that we have. In business and organizational life today. That's what we've grown up with. And I would like to see that through enlightened leadership that we have antidotes to that. So instead of bureaucracy, we put much more emphasis on two-way communication. So we don't need a bureaucracy to force people down. We cause people to go in the right direction because of the communication. We actually have real dialogue. With the tools that we have today, AI and all computers and everything, we have tremendous communication tools that we can work with people in a much more dynamic way rather than put them into a structure, a bureaucratic structure. So hierarchical communication would be, you would think of that as one-way? Communication? Well, today in conventional management, I do believe it's one-way communication. One-way communication. I need you to do this. I want this done. Okay, that's one way. Two-way communication is where you get together with a group of people and say, what could we achieve together? What would we like to do together? Where would we like to go together? Where would we like to be tomorrow? And you can have an enormously wonderful discussion out of that and then come to some consensus. And then if you do it in the right way, I mean, you as a leader will be left in the room. They'll all be gone to go and take care of it, basically. You're left behind to watch and see what happens. Okay, so that's one antidote is two-way communication. Right. Give me, what are some other ones that— Well, then we have with hierarchy, I talk about instead of having heterarchies. Okay. Okay. Is where people sit on the pinnacle and they drive the organization with SIGFAM. Obviously, that's how they make, that's how we've been doing it for a long time. Whereas I'm talking about heterarchy is where the leader is at the center and is orchestrating rather like an orchestra leader is orchestrating the music, if you like, is organizing, working with the people around them to say, okay, Let's talk about, we're gonna focus outside of ourselves. What is there out there that we could do and how can we collaborate together? So much more collaborative rather than trying to drive. It's an orchestrating role rather than a driving role. It's beautiful. Yeah. I mean, when I think about an organizational chart, traditional organizational chart, you know, you wouldn't see that leader at the top. And, you know, your next level, next level, next level. This is leader in the middle, and then the people around them all facing outwards to the market or the customers they're going to be serving. Wow, that's a beautiful, um, very, very illustrative of the concept. Uh, okay, so that, that would be antidote number 2: heterarchy rather than hierarchy, right? Okay, okay. And then we have, uh, We have efficiency. Of course, the opposite to efficiency is effectiveness. And efficiency is to me, from my way of seeing it, is very much about squeezing, cutting costs, minimizing, not doing things on the cheap and so forth. Whereas effectiveness is much more about innovation, elegance, breakthroughs, because organizations are constantly, as they grow, they come up against obstacles and difficulties where they can grow and they have to find a breakthrough. Efficiency won't get you there. Effectiveness will. Effectiveness thinking will help you to create the breakthroughs that you need to make to go to the next phase, basically. Efficiency important, but it's not going to get you to the breakthrough. No. I mean, if you have too much efficiency, in my opinion, you will drive the organization to its end. It will go, gradually you will kill it. Like squeezes the soul out of the organization. The thing that hurts me most is some, a country like England where I'm from, if you, we know what England was, an empire and so forth. 100 years ago. But because of the two world wars, it cost them so much money and people. I mean, England lost so much talent in two wars as well as lost so much money. And since that time, all we've been trying to do is everything on the cheap so that we can survive. That's what the English, and that's why the English economy is going down and down and down. It's not going. If you were to read some of the things I read coming across on LinkedIn by people in England that are so frustrated at the country going nowhere because England's been trying to do everything. So what's the curse then out of the 5 curses that they're sort of falling prey to? Would you say it's, I guess, efficiency? Efficiency. Trying to do everything. As opposed to effectiveness. That's the antidote. And then of course we have negative messaging. Which is about allowing people in the company to run down their colleagues, to run down their company, being negative about why this is not right and that's not right rather than having a more optimistic flavor. And there are those people who like to be negative and perhaps we have to weed those out of our organization because they're a curse on the organization. And then eventually, of course, we get to corruption. And corruption is not just about money, is corruption in decisions and taking care of yourselves. And so not that we can be perfect, but we need to have a decent level of integrity in a company. Yes. In order to succeed. When you think about these 5 curses and antidote, let's call 'em like pairings. Well, they're not pairings, they're, you know, I guess opposites of each other. But is there one in particular that comes to mind as being like most damaging or consequential in terms of the antidote? Well, from my point of view, I believe efficiency. Efficiency. Yeah. So, uh-huh. Because I feel, I feel I constantly feel frustrated that all we hear about is efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. In some cases, of course, they're using the word efficiency when they should be using the word effectiveness, quite frankly. But we've just got obsessed with the word efficiency. But to me, efficiency is also a euphemism for the word profit. We don't talk about profit anymore, we talk about efficiency. Instead. Yes. So it's a much more acceptable word because when you think about it, efficiency is a euphemism for profit. And not that I'm against that. I mean, any company needs a degree of profit to get the sort of support and investors and so forth that they want. But you can overdo it to the point where you're killing the company rather than helping it, basically. Wow. So that to me is one of the biggest curses, which of course goes along with another thing that I, is the whole issue of numbers over people. Numbers over people. Right. That we are obsessed with numbers. We've become obsessed. Even from my point of view, when I think back to 30 or 40 years ago and where we've come since then, we are much more numbers obsessed now than we were 40 or 50 years ago. And that's because in my opinion, we've allowed the financial people to take the helm. Yeah. Well, it's really like tricky because an organization, you know, grows to a certain size and, you know, for many reasons, an organization will choose to IPO and go onto the public markets. And then what you see is in order to keep being successful, you have to engage in some of these curses, right? Especially the efficiency piece, right? Like you've got to, You've got to be profitable. And it is— I'm not so sure about that because in fact, when you see the way that companies grow, they grow in a spiral fashion. Okay, say more. Right. They grow in a— it's like a growing spiral. Or if you have efficiency, it's a downward spiral. If you have effectiveness, it's an upward spiral. But the thing is, as it goes through each loop, it comes to a point where the company feels it's not growing anymore. And of course, we can use some of the conventional management tools that have been used, downsizing or rightsizing or some of those things rather than— and each one of those cycles is what I call a reinvention cycle. Companies have to go through reinvention cycles. They have to reinvent themselves. They come to a point where they're not growing. That things are not going in the way they want, they have to reinvent themselves. And by reinventing themselves, they find new strategies, they find a different way of working, they upgrade in certain areas and so forth so that they can now move forward again. I see. So, so it's never, a company's never just growing in a straight line. No. Right. It's, it's more like these spirals and they, they get Bigger and bigger, bigger and bigger, right? Like this. Okay. And, um, and so that, that would imply then that an organization, you know, is successful today, reaches a point where it's not growing anymore. Uh-huh. Okay. So now they have to go through this reinvention cycle. There's a reinvention cycle. Reinvent it. Reeducating your people, looking at the products that you're doing and say, Do we need to come up with different— we need to reinvent, we need to come up with different products, different services that the market has changed to some extent. So we have to adapt ourselves in a different way. But again, if we educate our people, they will work with us to find the next cycle. And in fact, one of the things that I talk about right at the beginning of my book is how In fact, we have a very structured way of growing whereby we project what we want to do, then we plan, then we organize. Yes. Then we direct everything appropriately and then control everything to make sure that— So we project the numbers that we want, we plan for the numbers that we want, We organize for the numbers that we want, we direct for the numbers that we want, and then we control everything to make sure that those numbers are accomplished. Okay. It's all around the numbers. Okay. Yes. Whereas with the leaders, they have a different thing where they envision opportunities. Yes. And then they position themselves to take advantage of those opportunities. And then they engage their people to pursue those opportunities with them. And then they go to other people, who else do we need to collaborate with to pursue these opportunities? And then eventually they will orchestrate everything to pursue those opportunities. And now you create a cyclical approach where the company, from my point of view, in all intents and purposes, is winding itself up. Wow. Is winding itself up. That's, that's beautiful. That's, I, you know, when you described that, the first word that came to my, my head was energy, right? In that ladder model where it's these, these loops that, that continue to grow. Oh, and right. Um, it, it's, there's, there's like this, um, flywheel momentum. Yes. That gets created through intrinsic motivation, right? Whereas in the former, you know, where it's very sort of conventional management, um, it's like, here's what I need you to do, here's how we're going to measure it, here's how the cadence of our check-ins and our accountability, right? Um, and to force you to do this to, to some degree. And if you don't do it, right, then you're right, you know, that's the fear in, in, uh, in SIGFAM. So, um, very different approaches. And, um, and that's what enlightened leadership is about— taking this, uh, more cyclical approach to building a company rather than a structured— well, I'd rather be on that ship. But I will say that, you know, in all the organizations and leaders that I work with, um, it is at least a 50-50 You know, balance, but usually it's flipped, right? There's usually more conventional management than enlightened leadership. Right. And I think, you know, I think the call to action here is, hey, let's, let's flip that from 70/30 conventional management, enlightened leadership. Let's flip it. But 70%. When you look at those companies that are really successful. Yes. And there are. Companies out there, it's because the leadership is there. There's more leadership in the company than management. Yes, basically. Well, Peter, we're coming towards the end of the podcast and your experiences as a Boy Scout, a soldier, a captain in the British military, a very successful consultant and entrepreneur because you built up a huge part of the practice. And then, and then, you know, founding your own practice, writing tons of articles, a book, and now a second one on the way. Yeah. When you take that over a half a century experiential wisdom and I ask you the question, so what is leadership actually? What comes to mind? Well, to me it comes down to those 5 characteristics I've talked about earlier, which is about leadership is about vision. Yes. Leadership is about integrity that people can trust you and go with you. And even in difficult times, they trust you, so they still go with you even in more difficult times. Courage, that if you're pursuing tomorrow, it takes— there's a lot of uncertainty out there and it takes a certain amount of courage to pursue things when you don't clearly know absolutely this is the way it's going to be. Yes. Okay. And then of course, humility to not believe that whatever you've come up with, that is it, that's the holy grail because there's always going to be things that you haven't considered and you need to be mindful of. And then of course, wisdom, being able to draw off whatever experiences that you've had to be able to say, well, this feels right or that feels right or that feels wrong. And so forth. Yes. One of the, the most fun parts of, of, um, kind of collaborating with you, you know, as you're— as you've been writing this, this incredible book coming out. And, and just for the listeners, what the title of the book— well, the, the title of the book is, uh, The Effective Leader. The Effective Leader: Transform from Have To to want-to cultures. Ah, have to to want-to cultures. Cultures, um, for, um, optimum venture performance. Beautiful. I love that. Going from have to to want-to cultures. Cultures. One of the most fun parts of our conversations has been, you know, me kind of pressure testing And, and you saying, you know what, this is where I'm not changing. Like, this is 100%. But then other, other parts of you saying, you know what, let me give that a think. That's a really good point. And seeing how you have, um, sort of negotiated between sort of the, uh, like core aspects of, of of your thesis and ideology around leadership and where you are very compelled to adapt. And given the vast knowledge and wisdom and experiences that you have over the last half century, to be still a learner is, inspiring to me, but also speaks to your humility, which is one of those 5 core leadership capabilities. I guess, you know, Peter, when I think of you, you know, I think of so many things and you have so many concepts, P-CAMP, SIGVAM, conventional management, enlightened leadership. Enlightened leadership is really, you know, if you said what's like the buzzword, what's What do you know Peter for? Enlightened leadership is what, what comes to mind for me. And, you know, I guess, you know, as, as we kind of, um, wrap on this podcast episode, what is one practical piece of advice you would give to our listeners? You know, we've got a lot of leaders, uh, scholars of leadership, emerging leaders. Who watch this podcast, what should they be doing on Monday? Well, I mean, one of the things is to have a very clear idea of what management is and what leadership is. The distinction. That distinction. When you have that distinction, it comes back to the metaphor of driving the car. You can do amazing things with the car when you can use the brake and you can use the accelerator. You can get it to perform in the way that you want it to. When you clearly understand what management is and what leadership is, then you have that possibility as well. You know when to apply leadership and when to apply management. And one of the things that caused me to write the book is I constantly saw, would hear that management was a very concrete thing, but leadership was very soft. Yes. And I don't see it that way. I mean, to me, leadership is just as concrete as management is. And until we get people to understand leadership is a vital, concrete thing as much as management is, and that we have these two capabilities, and if we can use those in the right way, I believe we could be much more successful. My feeling is even if we had learned to do these things, we may not have even needed AI. Huh. But we're— AI has come along because organizations don't think they're getting the performance they want. Fascinating. So they've— so AI has become a tool because Because I believe so many executives find it frustrating to work with people. Huh, that's fascinating. Yeah. And so something like AI to them is a godsend that they can use this to deal with this awkward character called people. And but on the other hand, if you can lead people correctly, they are a wonderful resource. They are a marvelous resource. They can do incredible incredible things if you give them the opportunity. Peter, that is a big thought. I mean, you know how much of a proponent I am of AI. So now I have to think, I have to sleep on this one. I can't agree with you outright, but it is a big thought, this idea that AI in some ways is like, it compensates for the inadequacy, lack of leadership, of leadership. Uh, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, you know, that's like, um, you know, a smoke a cigar, walk around the block kind of big deep thinking idea there. That's really interesting. Yeah. Wow. Okay, well, I just want to thank you so much, Peter, for being here, for coming out to Philadelphia to join us on a podcast about leadership. I'm excited for the world. I'm excited for myself. Selfishly, uh, to get my hands on the book, um, and to continue in the lifelong pursuit of effectiveness. Yeah. Um, which is, uh, as I like to say, it's a muscle and you stop going to the gym, that muscle goes away. So, uh, very good metaphor. So, so I'm, I'm looking forward to, uh, to having your book in my hands, uh, right. As soon as possible. Right. So, uh, thank you so much again, Peter, and thank you everybody for, um, for enjoy— for joining us on this, um, incredibly engaging, um, thought-provoking session, uh, on a podcast about leadership. And we'll look forward to our next time.