Is Everyone Born a Strategist? Ganzorig Ulziibayar Explains

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to another expert insight interview. My name is John golden from Sales Pop Online, Sales magazine and covera, formerly pipeliner CRM, joining you as usual from a sunny San Diego. And today, I'm delighted to be joined from Chicago, Illinois by Ganzorg Ulzibayer. How you doing, Gonzorg?

Speaker A: Thank you, John, for having me here today. I'm good.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And, and this is, this is a unique one for us. Uh, you grew up, uh, herding on the Mongolian steppes. The. The same landscape that produced history's most effective strategies. You became a CEO at 27, built and led companies. As founding chairman, you have, and you've spent two decades teaching strategy. You founded the World Financial History Museum, which houses over 1,000 artifacts spanning two millennia. Alongside your business career, you pursued 15 years of independent research into subconscious foundations of strategic judgment. You're the founding chairman of the Mandal Financial Group, uh, World Economic Forum, young global leader and the author of Strategy is attitude, the missing half of strategy.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: Do you have spare time at all? No.

Speaker A: Oh, uh, no. Like everyone else, I have good weekends and.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, so let's talk about this. So, uh, growing up herding on the Mongolian on the steps, right? How did those early experiences, how did they shape your concept of strategy long before you studied it formally? I mean, how did that influence or what were you learning from that experience that has really influenced your thinking on strategy since?

Speaker A: Yeah. So, uh, I mean, nomads helped to create some of the largest empires in the world last 3,000 years, like China. Uh, uh, nomads, nomadic warriors from Mongolia, like Genghis Khan. Maybe some of our listeners would already know. So Genghis Khan, like him, many strategists, they unified China and established modern day Russia, India, as we know today. And many of the large empires actually founded by the strategists, just like the way the modern big corporations are founded by, uh, the strategists of our own time, like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Jeep Bezos. So, yes, strategies, in my opinion, is a, um, very important figure, you know, in human society. But then nobody actually talks about it. It's strategies. Uh, now it's like a process. It's some tools and frameworks and blue oceans, you know, all those things. Uh, so why the steppe produces, um, disproportionately large number of, uh, strategists is, I think it's about the felt responsibility. It's like, uh. Because when I was, uh, like five or six years old, I started riding horse and then herded animals, uh, 10, 15 kilometers away from home alone. So it's like you're hurting your, uh, animals, your assets. Right. And you're protecting them. And you're constantly exposed to risk. Nobody's there to help you. There's no this, I like to say, boxed environment. Right. So it's like a protected little shell that we have so our kids are not exposed to risks. So yeah, I think this felt responsibility, uh, is one of the key components in when you want to become a strategist. So yeah, I think that's how it relates to my experience.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I would agree to you. And I think, I mean, yeah, because strategist is a term that's thrown around a lot, but it's kind of, as you said, if you, if you ask 10 different people for their definition of what a strategist was and what they did, you'd probably get 10 different answers. Ah. And so I think it's underrated, but also ill defined often. Um, but let's talk a little bit about on the attitude. So you became a CEO at 27, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: How much, how much did attitude help you as opposed to, you know, obviously 27, your experience is limited or whatever and your thing. So how did attitude help you overcome maybe some of what people would consider the deficiencies you didn't have at the time?

Speaker A: Yeah. So thanks for this question. Actually, John, you are one of the few experts, uh, who would understand strategy at its fullest because, uh, you are one of the foremost sales experts. And then I, uh, think from business domains, sales is one of the very few domains that strategies like, um, it's revealed. Right. M. Because strategy is always revealed by or uh, proven by its results. So in sales you just cannot, you know, um, window dress results just. It speaks for its own. So thanks for this question. Uh, I think, uh, during my last 20 years experience as a CEO, I grew to become sort of a, uh, turnaround specialist. So I turned around many companies, uh, mostly as a startup or a big corporations, multi billion dollar banks in trouble. So because there are so many pressures, you know, like uh, there's a bad reputation, financial statement is wrong, employee morale is low, customer loyalty declined, everybody's running away. So you need a tremendous subconscious power to overcome all those challenges, you know, because, uh, the pressure is so much that you could break up, break down anytime, you know, so. So I quickly realized these strategy frameworks are all fine, but strategy, um, academics, they no longer talk about the strategist herself. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: The human mind, because human mind is malleable. But then it's flexible. But at the same time that means it's vulnerable. Vulnerable to outside attacks, all those corporate politics, these pressures, those challenges. So I quickly realized strategy was more about like subconscious level, uh, attitudes or uh, orientations rather than these frameworks. And this felt responsibility that I felt, uh, growing up, since I was a child, uh, since I was a little child, um, I think it sort of, sort of revived or awakened inside me when I became first CEO because I started trying all those, of experimenting all those different frameworks, those courses attended, those executive courses, etc. But then it's really about, uh, your subconscious attitudes, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I think. No, and I think that's really key. And as you said, I think strategy is often looked at as a process. Right. And as you said, there are different models and frameworks you can use, um, and all of that thing. But at the same time, if, say, for instance, like say with some of the companies that you had to work in that were distressed or maybe they're having problems, part of the strategist's job also, as you said, it's attitude related because part of it is you have to convince people, you have to introduce maybe unpopular ideas, maybe you have to basically say, I'm sorry your baby is ugly. And, but we can, we can fix it. But you know, things that it's much easier to hide behind the process. Process than it is to, you know, really confront the other part of it, which is the more difficult part, I think.

Speaker A: Yeah, just like sales, you know, because sales is one of the strategic domains. And yeah, uh, I also wrote a book, uh, on sales, uh, five, six years ago. So I mean, just like sales, uh, I think it's, it's everything you do as a strategist is about selling your ideas, your visions, your beliefs, your products, you know, to your employees, your shareholders, most importantly your customers. So people, uh, last 4 million years, the evolution granted us this ability to read one another subconsciously at an instant, 1/10 of a second. Right. So we are designed to gauge this, um, threat or is it an amicable relationship as soon as we see each other. So you would know that. And in sales, the sales is closed before it even starts. Right. I tell all my salespeople, I mean, no matter how, uh, much memorization you do about the product, features, etcetera, but it's about your subconscious. Because your customer, the moment he or she sees you, the sales is done. Right. So strategists, I think it's not about. Because these modern business schools is mostly talking about, like, how to influence people, motivate people, inspire people. But I think it's. It's like maybe 90% about changing yourself. Yeah, um, it's about yourself. So you really gotta be this like, uh, benevolent, uh, good willing, you know, like a positive human being trying to make a change to help the lives of your customers, your staff, your shareholders. You come across such a person and they would sense it. Right. So that's what I have witnessed throughout the last 20 years. And this is stronger than like, uh, 20 or 50 strategy frameworks combined, actually.

Speaker B: M. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm not. I was just writing it down here because, um. No, I totally agree with you. And I think one of the biggest failures that happens is self awareness. And, and as you said, because you need to be able to live this and then, so you need to be able to see how you are perceived and how you operate and stuff. So there's a level of self awareness if you want to be good, if you want to succeed in anything, in sales and in strategy, whatever. Knowing yourself is really, is the starting point.

Speaker A: Yes. Know thyself. Uh, from ancient Greek inscription, right?

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. And it just shows you the wisdom of the ages. You see, I'm. I have to say, not to go off topic, but I always laugh sometimes when people, and especially younger people, they'll say, oh, yeah, I can't stand. History's boring. I don't like history. I don't want anything like this. And I was, I would say to them, well, you know, it's the easiest way to, uh, learn about what your future might look like is by studying history. Because the lessons of history tend to. Tend to repeat, maybe not in the same way, but in different ways. But if you ignore it, and it's the same, and I think it's the same in business too, is that, you know, you have to do the work first and you have to study things first and then make your recommendations.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. As John, uh, you discussed during one of your podcasts, for example, AI is never going to replace humans. You know, I mean, because humans are cheap supercomputers. Actually we have 8 billion of them. So it's about how to utilize human subconscious powers, not about. So AI is just a tool. Humans have not changed humans. Uh, there's this. There hasn't been just enough time for us, uh, to evolutionary change, you know, into something else, something like a monsters or some retard. So, yeah, we are here, we'll be here. AI is just a tool.

Speaker B: So, so explain to me, because for some People like they want, they won't understand that when you say strategy belongs in the unconscious mind, which, or the subconscious mind, unconscious, sometimes it's in the unconscious one too, but in the subconscious mind. And uh, and as you said, that's not something really AI can really tap into right now because the, the subconscious mind. And we're humans, so all sorts of craziness goes on. That's not. You couldn't pattern match if you tried. Um, but Ted, talk to me a little bit about why you believe strategy belongs in the subconscious mind. Especially for somebody who might be going, huh, huh?

Speaker A: Yeah, sure, sure, yeah, this is a new idea. Yeah, of course. So speaking of difference between conscious and subconscious, uh, I think we should really look at these as a separate brain processes. So conscious mind, if we will, is a really uh, slow and everyday use of a brain. But subconscious is for a uh, complex tasks. So last 70 years strategy was really treated as a, um, as a process belonging to conscious mind. So if I would explain. It's like um, uh, executive retreats or brainstorming sessions or SWOT analysis or these data mining, data analysis, those executive committee meetings. So these are all conscious mind processes. Just remember how easily we are tired after two hours long executive committee meeting. Right. So just like that. But then subconscious mind is vastly superior. It's like a supercomputer. The memory, there's an endless memory and the processing power is hundreds of times more compared to the conscious mind. So conscious mind is like a computer from 1990s. Subconscious mind is a uh, supercomputer we own. And then many of our problems actually uh, stems from uh, the subconscious, like uh, cognitive biases, those are being discovered lately. And uh, emotions like anxiety, depression, stress, fear and survival instincts like these, egocentricity, selfishness, uh, anti teamwork, those types of things. So subconscious, until now has been studied as something anti strategy.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Something that diminishes your potential. But then at the same time it's like a uh, it's like a wild horse, wild stallion. It you can once tamed, you can use it in favor of strategy.

Speaker B: Why?

Speaker A: Because strategy is always about dealing with immense complexity. Yeah. So for that degree of complex complexity, conscious mind is not enough. That's why like 99% of the strategies around the world, uh, Fortune 500, all the big companies or governments, big infrastructure projects, they fail because they are just plans on paper. They are not strategy. They are just uh, you know, corporate politics. So that's why I'm proposing subconscious mind as a rightful place for strategy formulation and strategy execution. Just like in sales, right? Uh, sales is done through subconscious, your feelings, your um, understanding of the customers. Uh, when you do customer analysis you just read some reports but then that's not enough. You have to feel the customer's emotions. So that's subconscious. So we are, we've been already using subconscious mind effectively in sales in different businesses, but then not uh, in, in strategy as per se, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I would agree with you and I think uh, you're right because I think um, it's easy to do strategy on paper to be honest. And it's easy to do PowerPoints or whiteboarding exercises or however you do them today. Um, the harder part is when you get down to actually when you get down to as you said, the subconscious because you need to stress test these ideas. You need to, and you need to look at them and sometimes uh, as you know, gonz. Org, sometimes you just need, you need to challenge your own thinking. So you need to, sometimes you need to come up with illogical and unreasonable things just to stress test what you're doing and that, that you can't capture that on a paper.

Speaker A: That's right. Exactly. Exactly. So I uh, think um, uh and then uh, my book, um, we actually discovered the ways how to actually activate subconscious in your favor and then overcome all those negative. Because there are negative elements or negative forces within subconscious like anxiety, emotions, uh, survival instincts and cognitive biases. So how do you overcome those uh, negativities and turn your subconscious into this tremendous force in favor of strategy is uh, to the use of attitudes. M. So we actually through meta analysis uh we discovered three attitudes, uh namely the giving attitude and customer perspective attitude and the productivity attitude. And once these three attitudes are awakened because everybody is born with these attitudes, ah from the very beginning. Once these are activated, all the good things, good traits, admirable traits just um, emerge on their own like public speaking, confidence, discipline, grit, self efficacy. All those things just um, uh, uh they are just symptoms of these three attitudes. Right. So last 70 years uh, psychology has always also been discovering through leadership performance and, and um, like success studies, uh, researches some 200 admirable symptoms of a people. Then no need to chase those 200 things, just become a giver, just become a perspective taking person, just become a productive person. Then I mean you're already born with this. And then strategies is you know, within reach.

Speaker B: You know what's missing, you know what's missing from them is the it's all about me and what am I getting out of and all of that you know, so the, the ego and these uh, you know, the kind of like focus on yourself and the, you know, this is all a means to me getting something that's absent from those three.

Speaker A: Yes. Because as soon as you think about yourself, uh, like you start every sentence with I when you think or uh, when you talk, then strategy is never possible for you. Because strategy is always about other people. Your followers, your country, your community. So as a strategist, you protect them, uh, you fight for them. You actually do something good for your people. So, so egocentricity and selfishness, there's a. No. Um, for such a person, there's no place in strategy. Just like team sport. We like to play basketball. Right. So a selfish player would what. What he or she would cost to the team, we all know. So strategy is a team sport actually. So y.

Speaker B: And tell me one interesting thing is. And you pronounce his name correctly because I'll get it wrong. It's Genghis Khan. How do you, what's the proper pronunciation?

Speaker A: Genghis.

Speaker B: Genghis. Okay, so, um, so he, he obviously a phenomenal strategist, but he also instilled strategy in, in others so that it would last beyond him. Which is something that you don't tend to hear a lot from great leaders in history. You know, especially military leaders are. You don't hear a lot about them actually making sure that after they were gone that other people knew how to carry on and like be strategic the way they were. So that was, that's very different.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So I think 20 years ago I was thinking about doing Harvard MBA. And then my question was, what's the purpose of Harvard Business School?

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: What is mba? Master of Business Administration. I mean that's a politically correct like three words. But then what exactly is about. It's about strategies. Right? So you become a CEO, cfo, what do you do? You do strategy, nothing else. So okay, school, uh, for strategists. But are they successful and not seems not that, that much maybe the success rate is no more than 20%, no more than 30%. Right. So I started wondering who actually then, then was successful in preparing strategists. And then I found Genghis Khan because it seems like uh, everybody he touched become like a world level strategist. Like uh, because he created world, uh, conquering generals out of just ordinary nomadic herder people. Right.

Speaker B: So yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: So I started studying Genghis Khan and about his generals almost last 20 years. And it's a very fascinating historical lesson and I also admire Your interest in history about your earlier remarks. Very good.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, I do. And I think it's a, it's, it is, it's amazing when you look back because, I mean, all the lessons are there. I mean they're there if you, if you care, if you care to uncover them. And, and it just shows you that um, there's, you know, the depth that as you said, when you can take a nomadic farmer or herder from, from the steppes and turn them into a great military leader or great political leader in the future, you, you've gotten something. Right.

Speaker A: That's right. That's right. Yeah. His, his system was based on, uh, I would say, let me use a uh, little bit wrong words here. Ruthless meritocracy. So he would demote his only brother and then would promote an enemy slave soldier to lead the army as a general. So I mean, who else

Speaker B: make for interesting family gatherings then, huh?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Why am I not general? Come on. Because look at you, that's why.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's because that's, I mean, to be, to be like that, you have to have this servant leadership orientation. And that comes from this giving attitude.

Speaker B: Yeah. So tell me a little bit. Um, just in finally, I mean you're, you're used, your strategy school, you're trying to make strategic thinking available at scale. Tell me a little bit about that. Because, um. Yeah, because it is true. A lot of people think, you know, strategy strategists, they think it's, it's an exclusive realm that's, that's reserved for, I don't know, people who've like, got, you know, huge, huge amounts of experience and they've done all this. And I think in many ways people are intimidated by the notion of like, could I be a strategist? Could I get involved in strategy?

Speaker A: That's right. Yeah, that's right. Because we are born to, to do strategy. Like bus last 4 million years. The day we decided to hunt that huge woolly mammoth was the day, uh, the strategy was born. And because I was a misfit, uh, in the modern education system, I really hated like, uh, math and all those literature, uh, you know, all those, uh, lessons. So later on I realized that because all the time I thought there was something wrong with me, right? I was a bad guy. I was the dumb kid, right?

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: But then later on I realized that uh, there was nothing wrong with, with me it was about the system. Because system was like a, um, meat grinder. You know, they just, they wouldn't just, they, the System doesn't like colors.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: Like individualism. So, uh, then, uh, this is my strategy. Research led me, uh, to believe that everybody is born a strategist thanks to evolution. Thanks to our brain, which is same in everybody, every race, young, old, woman, man. So I really wanted to create this new education system in the world to awaken this, uh, strategy, strategic capabilities, uh, in everybody. Because when you don't have money, when you don't have technology, when you're not born into riches, when you don't have this positioning advantage, right, Then you are left with only one thing. Your. Your brain, your mind. Yeah. And your brain is designed to produce just one thing. A strategy. Because strategy is the only means that humans, uh, have that can produce disproportionate results when you have nothing. So, yeah, I really wish, uh, that, um, uh, soon we will come up with this new curriculum to teach or to awaken strategy. That's uh, that is, um, actually stripped, uh, chopped by this modern education system and this modern social media contents which most of them are very wrong and misleading and creates wrong biases, right prejudices.

Speaker B: So that's it, isn't it? And it teaches and it, and it tries to convince people that there's. There's an easy button for everything. There's a shortcut for everything. Yeah, just. Here's ten prompts. Uh, and you. You will now be the world's greatest strategist of all times.

Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker B: But this is fantastic. Thanks so much, uh, Gunzork, for all this. All of Gunzork's information will be below this video. But before we go, please do remind people about what you do.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm a strategy author. I'm the chairman of, uh, Mandal Financial Group. We are Central Asia focused insurance and capital markets group. I was a CEO last 20 years. Started as a, uh, ordinary staff, rose to a paid CEO position and then founded my own business.

Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. That's a perfect strategy. See, there's a great, great strategy career strategy there for you.

Speaker A: Yes, thank you, John. Uh, yeah, it was my pleasure.

Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you. Go. Fantastic. I love it. Thank you. And thank you for watching and listening. And I'll see you all again very soon. Thank you. There.