Peter High - President of Metis Strategy

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Peter High, the president of Metis Strategy, and we discuss the importance of building a network of people and finding interesting ways to connect with them, common traits that stick out amongst great leaders, and benefits you can gain from writing to articulate your thoughts. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast.

(Peter High at 00:00:36) Hey, Peter. Morning, Joel. How are you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:39) Fantastic. There you are. Hey. What's up, buddy?

(Peter High at 00:00:42) There I am.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:45) You having a good day?

(Peter High at 00:00:46) Yeah. Things are well. Thank you. Have a good day.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:49) Oh, yeah. Today is a great day. I got back from Chicago this week, and I'm very happy. I'm back in Florida, and it's warm. So one of the things I was most interested with you is the book that you've written. Like, you've written a couple books, but what's the title of the most recent one?

(Peter High at 00:01:04) It's Implementing World Class IT Strategy. And the idea behind it is really kind of a methodology for strategic planning. And so we work a lot with chief information officers, chief digital officers, chief technology officers. And, historically, anyway, though this is certainly changing, these have been—and I need to be careful, of course, because each of those roles come in so many different flavors—but the technology functions, let's say, historically, anyway, have often been very tactical organizations and have been later adopters of sound strategic planning processes. And so this book, my most recent book, provides a method for technology leaders to use in order to develop better strategic plans, ensure that those plans are helping drive the broader enterprise towards value and innovation, and is an area in which I've spent an awful lot of time in terms of advising those very same executives.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:02) Oh, that's really cool. I was actually just talking about that yesterday with the CTO of Deloitte because he does some higher-level strategy stuff.

(Peter High at 00:02:11) Interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:12) You have a book, and then in this book, you actually give, like, a framework, like a methodology, a way to think about it.

(Peter High at 00:02:18) Yeah. Indeed. Yeah. So I think it's important, you know, whether one uses my methodology or another. I think it's important to have a framework. The issue really is making sure that you have kind of an apples-to-apples comparison across plans or even across objectives for your organization. And so the way in which we think about it is, first and foremost, developing those set of objectives and minimizing them. The issue is having too many as opposed to too few. So the kind of rule of thumb we typically think of is four to six. There certainly may be cases for something outside of that band, but generally speaking, a good place to begin. And then having success metrics associated with each of those. So how do you know that you've reached your destination or how far along on that path are you? So having the metrics to help you determine that. Then a variety of levers or actions that you take. Very importantly, though, Joel, these are not projects. These are divorced of project language because projects, of course, should be interchangeable, cancellable, these sorts of things. By having those in the plans themselves, it renders them more important than they actually should be. And then success metrics associated with those tactics or actions that I've just referred to. And it's only after the development of those that you take the investments and projects or product areas and begin to align them or determine that there is a lack of alignment against that plan to determine as really the first filter of the prioritization process for the initiatives that you might pursue.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:46) So clearly, you're brilliant. I love it. You are, like, super sharp and knowledgeable. Like, you know, talking to all of these leaders, and I know you talk to a lot of people as well, but you could pick up on people really early in the conversation. And just your immediate, like, depth of knowledge tactically is awesome because I get a lot of questions about strategy. And so now, I think I have a book to refer. I'm gonna check it out for sure.

(Peter High at 00:04:12) Very kind. Very kind. I appreciate that, Joel. Thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:16) Okay. So you've got all this knowledge. You've got this book. You have a very popular podcast where you interview great technology and innovative people in the Fortune 500 space and beyond. But, like, give me the origin story. How did you fall in love with technology? I mean, video games, like, what was it?

(Peter High at 00:04:36) Yeah. It was interesting. I kind of stumbled upon it. I was a history major and an economics major as an undergrad. So more traditional business background, at least on the econ side. I did a lot of the undergraduate business program at my university as well and went into consulting. And as it happened, I worked for a firm that was focused on innovation. And it was there that I really got my first major exposure to technology. So I was not kind of a programmer growing up. I was not much of a gamer, and so you wouldn't have necessarily pegged me for this field if you met me as a teenager or as a very young adult. But, you know, it's very fortuitous. So my career started in the mid-nineties when technology was really on the rise. My first job came a year after the Netscape IPO, which some people use as the sort of, you know, the starting of the real kickoff of the Internet age. And so technology was on the ascent. And as a result, I was very fortunate to be in a place where we were spending a lot of time with technology leaders and helping them develop kind of innovation processes and literally formulating some of those very innovations. And just a moment longer on this point, I also had the great good fortune of having my first exposure to CIOs. I didn't know how to spell CIO when I got out of college, but I had a chance to really work with some very progressive chief information officers. Again, I would think back to the nineteen nineties when it was almost definitively a support organization, not viewed as strategic, rarely reporting into the CEO, almost exclusively the CFO or at least most often anyway. And I had this great privilege to work with some CIOs who were really forward-thinking and seeing the power of this perch, the strategic perch they had within the organization as having the ability to help shape the strategic plans across the organization. An example I often like to give, Joel, is the—if you think of the average chief marketing officer, his or her purview is outside of the organization on the existing and potential customers of the company. The average human resources officer, their purview, their vector points inside the organization towards the employees of the organization. So they're in opposite directions as a result of that. Now in great companies, hopefully, those two executives understand the makeup of each other's plans, but it's not likely that they can go into the footnotes of each other's plans. The IT leader, by contrast, needs to breathe life into both those plans and everyone in between. And so for those really progressive leaders, in the mid-nineties and, of course, now through to today, they recognize that this is actually an extraordinarily strategic position. It's actually an approach where you can identify needs and opportunities that span multiple parts of the organization, perhaps the entire enterprise before the executives that run those different functions as different business units might recognize the breadth of that opportunity themselves. And so I had this great fortune of working with and collaborating with a number of CIOs who really got that in the early stages. And so for me, that really, from then on, I worked for another firm, kind of a McKinsey spin-off, working almost exclusively with CIOs. And then eighteen years ago, founded my business with kind of pinpointing the technology and digital executives as our clients.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:59) And that's an exciting business too because you're always getting to learn new businesses, new industry challenges. What's on your radar right now? Like, is AI a big thing? Is VR a big—like, where, what's the big conversation in your world right now?

(Peter High at 00:08:13) Yeah. You know, it's funny. So we're preparing right now for a big summit in Dallas, Texas next month, and we've been polling the fifty or so—fifty, sixty—global CIOs who'll be joining us on topics of interest. And so I've got some, you know, some recent data on this very point, Joel. And artificial intelligence continues to rise to the top. It's very interesting just how powerful and not necessarily so surprising, mind you. And it's at all sorts of different levels. There are those who've, you know, dipped their toe in the water. There are those who are already, you know, swimming the butterfly, and everything in between in terms of their sophistication and use of and implementation of artificial intelligence. You know, one of the interesting challenges of this is it really takes a village in order to do this well. In order to develop internally great artificial intelligence or data analytics, algorithm-based talent, it's very expensive and those resources can be very hard to find. If yours is a business that's in a city within the U.S., for example, that doesn't have a great preponderance of technology talent, it could be almost impossible. So it means developing an ecosystem around you. And so I think that's part of the challenge here is how do you really approach this opportunity and seize all the value from it with, you know, as creatively as you can, cobbling together an ecosystem to drive this forward. But I think, you know, most of the chief information officers, chief technology officers, and chief digital officers that I speak with, AI continues to be a significant priority for them and an area of deep curiosity. You mentioned VR. I think VR certainly has a lot of implications. I think it's probably AR. As we talk about the enterprise—consumer technology, certainly VR has already, you know, think about gamers, for example, and the great strides that have been made there. As I think about enterprise technology, it's probably AR for the foreseeable future that's going to be the bigger opportunity. I was visiting with an innovative AR company in Los Angeles earlier this year, and they were talking about the implementation of their software product in a bomb-making facility, like an explosive—I shouldn't say bomb. Explosives facility. This is explosives used for mining as opposed to war. And, you know, you can understand, like, if you're building these sorts of things, one misstep can actually mean fatalities. And so they were using AR in order to ensure that there was a technology overlay to the processes that were being implemented and ensuring that every person followed them to the letter and ultimately with the first priority being safety. And they were reducing fatalities, which, of course, you know, there's no greater value than that, human life, but also, you know, improving their processes along the way. And that's just one of, I think, a whole range of examples. I visited a Boeing plant earlier this year as well where they were showing how mechanics can begin to, you know, as complex as you can imagine these fuselages and the assembly of these major planes, and finding an issue and using AR in order to direct you to the right spot and to kind of, you know, be able to have that technology overlay, as I say, in order to do your job better and to ensure that you're following the set process appropriately. So I think that there's a lot of growth yet for AR as well within the enterprise.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:35) You brought up something when we're talking about artificial intelligence that I hadn't thought about before. So these companies want to make this transformation into this technology or adapt it to their business. But when it's newer, it's, like, it's less commoditized. Like, you don't have 10,000 AI developers sitting around waiting to be scooped up like we would now with a lot of the web technologies. We've got a lot of—I mean, I know they say the talent war and it's we know that there's more open jobs than, you know, people. But there's when there's less people in the entire ecosystem like AI, it becomes even harder to apply it to your business even if you have the dollars. Right?

(Peter High at 00:12:16) That's right. That's right. Exactly right. And so, really, you do need to think about this very creatively. You know, I often talk about, as we're working with technology leaders, about the need to—I've already used the word already, but the need to build these ecosystems. It's important first and foremost for you to surround yourself with a great team. That's the first and most essential ecosystem that you'll develop. But it also means, secondly, the second concentric ring is your peer group. So who are people who have experiences comparable to yours, have organizations that are structured somewhat similarly? Maybe it's not your direct competition. There may be some challenges collaborating effectively with them, but who are companies that have enough similarities that if you talk through your opportunities and your issues that they might grind together such that you'll have a productive conversation? But then I think, you know, as you think about the concentric circles around that, it needs to also include the venture capital community to understand where smart money is being spent and why and what startups to be cognizant of and begin to partner with potentially. It also, as I mentioned, needs to include, you know, consulting firms and talent agencies and others who might be able to readily provide you with contract help where perhaps you have a paucity of internal resources to do the things that are—you know, for example, if it's AI—that help drive you towards the goals that you have in that capacity.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:37) So I'm curious to know about your company because you've been around for twenty years. Right? And you advise and work with companies on their strategy and adjusting as the market and technologies adjust. But how has technology, you know, changed your game over the past twenty years?

(Peter High at 00:13:53) Yeah. It's a great question. So we—I think as I think about the recent uses of this and some of the things that I'm most excited about, I think about learning agility. One of the things that has really been an extraordinary revolution has been the great amount of content that's being developed from a training or an education perspective. And we as advisors to the technology community—I mean, I think you can, this applies to almost anyone. I can't even think of a field where it doesn't apply. It's important for us to be lifelong learners. I think all too often, people rest on the laurels of the degree they got, and that could be fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years ago. How many of us actually, you know, the thing we studied in as an undergrad, is that central to what we're doing now, especially if it's technology? Maybe irrelevant, in fact. And so it's so important for us to continue to learn and to continue to develop the skills of tomorrow as opposed to continuing to use the skills of today and yesterday.

(Peter High at 00:14:55) And so I think one of the things that I think has been really exciting for us as a firm has been to develop the various topics that we wish to become expert in, and as we advise people on those very same topics and then develop the curricula in order to seize those opportunities, to become smart in those areas that are rising in importance for us. And I think, you know, all organizations now have the opportunity to do this and, importantly, have the opportunity to do this relatively cheaply as well, given the number of tools, the number of EdTech companies that provide great content that's leveraged out there.

(Peter High at 00:15:33) Exactly. You know this quite well. You're one of the people who's facilitating this. And so I think this becomes, I think, a really important ingredient for the future and one of the things that we're really investing in as a firm as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:45) You know, when I was doing research for the Leaderbits business that we're doing, I found that a lot of the bigger companies that are older that have been producing content for a long time, their cost structures are out of control because they came about during the revolution to video. And so they have all these very expensive people on these very old methods, and then they created these long processes to produce this content. And when I looked at their cost to produce an hour of content, I was like, are you kidding me? Like, through five hours of content, I can run my business for a month. Like, this is ridiculous.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:26) And so that gave us a real edge when entering the market as far as our margins and everything go because we're producing this value that our competitors, you know, it costs them way more to produce the same amount of value, but we can move faster. And I don't know, it was very exciting for me to see that opportunity. I was like, this is—now I know how some of these early businesses felt when they came up against the old guard. It's like, woah, we can really, really make some improvements here.

(Peter High at 00:16:57) No, no, I think, you know, one of the lessons from that, I think, is sometimes constraint can be your friend.

(Peter High at 00:17:03) I think a lot of large organizations, they develop, they're incredibly successful, they grow, their budgets grow along with them. And the assumptions for how they spend, where they spend, and how much they spend—it's always sort of relative to what we did last year. So we spent this much, let's add 5% or 3% and make that the budget for this year. And it's interesting. I was visiting a startup a couple months ago with a bunch of Fortune 500 CIOs, and this was an organization of about 15. They had a great group of, a list of clients they'd already put together. They were doing extraordinarily innovative things. And one of the CIOs of one of these Fortune 500 companies, you know, at the conclusion of the meeting said, "Gosh, I need to bring my team here and show them what 15 people can do, because there's not a project that's proposed in our company where people are not asking for an additional 50 people or at least some sort of multiplier above what we already have, because there's the assumption that, look, we can't do this with what we have right now." And this, I think, is in some ways the beauty of the startup or the small firm—is, in fact, that nimbleness that executives at larger companies need to find ways to capture some of that same magic and not just be sort of beholden to the past assumptions in terms of how you spend, where you spend, and how much you spend.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:35) I wanted to talk a little bit about leadership, because—well, and I want to tell you, tell about the podcast first. So go ahead. Could you tell everybody what the podcast is that you have? Because I love it.

(Peter High at 00:18:44) Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that, Joel. So the podcast is called Technovation, Technovation with Peter High, and we've been around for ten and a half years. We're very early in this game. I'm very proud to say we're going to have our four hundredth podcast in a few weeks. It will be with Michael Lewis, the author. And it has been just a great opportunity to ensure that I'm in regular conversation with people who are shaping the technology landscape in a variety of different ways. You know, Joel, like you, I don't have a boss. I've not had a boss since I was 27, and I need to seek mentors in creative places. And this is—I certainly won't say this is the reason I got into this, but one of the great things about being in conversation with smart people on a regular basis is understanding what good looks like and how that changes, understanding who has deep insights. You know, I've heard that topic before, I've never heard it put that way. And to continue to sort of sharpen the knives by understanding what new innovative practices are emerging or what new areas of curiosity great leaders are beginning to contemplate. And so the real gift of the podcast has been these many technology leaders, CEOs of big companies, CEOs of startups, venture capitalists, authors, academics, and understanding how the tech landscape is evolving as a result of this. And so it's been a wonderful, like this one, a great, you know, sort of long form conversation where we really can peel back beyond several layers and get to not only the interesting practices and insights of each individual, but also, you know, how did they do that? What was the inspiration to the idea that they are pursuing? How are they engaging and exciting their teams to do difficult work? So it's really been a wonderful gift that keeps on giving, as it were.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:42) So have you noticed some common traits or trends between these great people as you've talked with them over the years? Are there some things that stand out? Like, what stands out?

(Peter High at 00:20:54) Yeah. So I think part of it, to reiterate a point we've already raised but in a new way, I think part of it is an insatiable curiosity. I think there are—you know, I once heard that your favorite music is the music from the period you were in college. Somehow your mind kind of goes back to, you know, that was just such a fun time, and this was the soundtrack of my life during that really fun time. And I think professionally, sometimes there's a period of creativity, and then perhaps that passes. And that's—you sort of become set in your ways. You know, you calcify a little bit around the things that you do well, and it's quite easy to not push yourself then to get past that or frankly to cannibalize the great idea you came up with ten or fifteen years ago. And I think the great leaders are the ones who are constantly pushing. I'll give you a quick story if I can.

(Peter High at 00:21:52) Joel, one of the great technology practitioners in the country is the CIO of FedEx, a guy named Rob Carter. And, you know, FedEx is one of these extraordinary stories. Fred Smith, the founder who is still there in his mid-seventies, still is the CEO of the company. I had a chance to spend a little time with him a few years ago, and he told the story of its founding. And I always was curious—there's this famous story of the idea of FedEx first being formulated in an economics class that he took at Yale, where the students were asked to develop an idea for a business. And he developed a rudimentary version of FedEx, and I believe he got a C on the paper. And as he tells the story, he doesn't really sweat the hits to his GPA these days. But anyway, from the very—this is in the 1960s that he was in college. He founded the firm in the early 1970s. And from the get-go, the whole idea behind it was that technology was on the ascent, and he would ride that in terms of its ability to help with logistics, help his whole dictum that the information about the package is more important than the package itself. And from the get-go, he's had a series of extraordinarily strong chief information officers who've always reported directly to him. Some have gone on to become CEOs of other businesses, in fact. Anyway, back to Rob Carter. Rob has been in the role for, I think, it's a decade and a half now, and it dawned on him, this is maybe seven years ago, that the very source of the company's success would be the source of its downfall if they didn't modernize. So technology was really kind of the core, the crown jewel or jewels, as the case may be, within the organization. But because they were not modernizing, because they were continuing to build on older technology, eventually, it would become untenable. And what an extraordinary insight—the very things that he was responsible for that were, one could argue, some of the greatest things that the company brought to bear, the value it was creating, the reason why it had such an extraordinary track record in beating the market stock performance-wise. And he realized, wait a second, those things that I should be so proud of, I won't be if we don't make some changes. And so he, through Fred, through the board, justified this modernization of the technology and becoming more cloud-centric, developing standards to a greater extent, developing the whole idea of microservices that are more interchangeable and more secure in the process as well. You know, and more fully modernizing the practices, both, you know, the combination of people practices, processes, as well as the technology itself, and has derived extraordinary value in that journey, that multiyear journey that continues now since, I say, seven or maybe even eight years now through that process. I shared a stage with him about a month ago, where I gave him—we have an award as part of the Forbes CIO Summit Series, which I executive produce, and talked a bit about that journey and how the activities and in some cases, very hard work that he and his team have done have laid the path for them to now innovate at a pace that would not have been possible had they not gone through that journey. And I think that's really where technology leaders need to focus their attention. It's actually the topic of my next book, in fact.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:19) Oh, you got—what's the next book?

(Peter High at 00:25:22) What's the title again? Yeah, it's called Getting to Nimble. And the whole idea is that, you know, especially digital immigrant organizations, if you will, those pre the Netscape IPO, for instance, those that are a generation or more old, they need to modernize people practices, processes, and technologies in order to ensure that you are not stuck in the past, that you're not building on a castle made on the sand, so that you are, in fact, developing something that's going to be more sustainable. You can't fully future-proof your organization, but you should strive to do the sorts of things that at least head in that direction.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:59) I really like the title because it's not agile, but it's got that—it's such a cool creative way to say, you know, talk about flexibility. Right? Getting nimble. I like that.

(Peter High at 00:26:15) Thank you. I appreciate that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:17) You're no stranger to writing. You've written several books. The next book—by the way, do we have a release date? Do we know when it's going to be out?

(Peter High at 00:26:23) It'll probably be 2020. We don't have a specific date. Yeah, it's still—yeah, sometime in 2020. Probably in the first half, I hope, anyway.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:31) Okay. First—we'll say first half.

(Peter High at 00:26:33) If my editor is listening, I never said.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:37) Well, we'll—we'll not—

(Peter High at 00:26:38) We'll just—

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:39) But you write a lot. Like, this is not—you've written several books, you've got this new one coming out. You've also written extensively for Forbes and all sorts of other publications. What have you learned about writing in your career? Obviously, what I've learned is that it's very important as far as, like, even if I didn't put the writings out, the act of having to articulate my ideas and get them out smoothly has been tremendously helpful to me. I did it, of course, trying to write my first book, learning how to do that. But for you, how has it helped shape your career? What have you learned from writing?

(Peter High at 00:27:13) It's really been essential. I mentioned that first firm that I joined out of undergrad, and one of the really extraordinary things about that firm was almost every senior leader of that organization was a combination PhD and MBA. Extraordinary. I don't have either of those, by the way, so I didn't follow that. But one of the things that was really that made an enormous impression on me was the sanctity of writing. Anyone who is a PhD, obviously, is going to do a tremendous amount of writing—your thesis, the whole notion, especially if you were ever contemplating an academic path, the whole "publish or perish" mantra. And what I saw was tremendous advantage derived by writing, especially in book form. And so it was a goal of mine from very early in my career. And the idea really is, not unlike the insights that I shared from the podcast, which I'm sure you share, Joel, as well—it gives you reason from time to time to step back from your day-to-day, contemplate what have I learned. What have I learned that has a broader shelf life here? What have I learned that I think really applies across companies, across industries, across geographies? Is there a methodology that I might share here so that there are steps that others might follow in order to emulate the practices of the best practitioners? And you're right, I think the act of writing itself is itself—I mean, it's in some ways the fundamental intellectual exercise. Stopping, contemplating, putting, you know, either a pen on paper or fingers on keyboard and developing the stories that will hopefully compel others to change in a positive way. And, you know, for me, as I know for you as well, Joel, my first book was really a sea change for me. We had a very nice practice. Our firm was founded in '01. My first book came out at the end of '09. You know, we were growing nicely, and I was fortunate that it was a book that was well received. And in the year following its coming out, 40% of our revenue somehow tracked back to the book itself. So what I like to say about books, if you do your job right, you work very hard on them. You publish it, and then it goes to work for you. And I think that is—I can't underscore enough the importance of that if you are somebody who wants to get your ideas out into the world and ultimately develop a bit of a pipeline that comes to you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:46) You said it perfectly. I don't even have anything to add. I will share a small story.

(Peter High at 00:29:51) Wait, wait, wait.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:51) The first book, I had no idea. Like, I just knew I had these ideas that were and I just had to get them out there. So I did the best I could. And then I got, of course, feedback. So I learned how people—what they expect from a book. So there were different types of people and they expect different things from it. So then now that I'm starting the second book, I understand how to satisfy both halves of the equation. But one thing that I learned from web design for so many years and app design that I have applied to the book, and feel free to play with this, but I wrote all the sales copy prior to writing the outline for the second book. So all the things I would want someone to say, like a critic to say—I wrote the reviews of what they would say about the book. And then from that, I worked backwards to determine the chapters because we only ever take away two or three big ideas from a book. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:49) Because it's just the way our memory works. So I said, alright, let's figure out what's the nicest, coolest things people could say about the book, and then let's work backwards from that. Whereas my first book, I was like, here's all the ideas I want to get out, and let's push them all out. And so I don't know how it's going to come out because it's not out yet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:07) But so this is in the middle part that we're at right now, so this is going to either be awesome or horrible. But I will let you know how it goes.

(Peter High at 00:31:15) Please do. I'll look forward to that. I'll look forward to hearing how that turns out for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:21) It works well for the products because what would happen is I would early on in my career of making technology, I would build with all this cool stuff, and then I'd try to go figure out how to market it and write a sales page and come up with what features are we going to advertise on the website. And then I realized that was kind of backwards. It's really hard. Then you found out you've got to make new features or you've got to simplify them so that you have something that's more sellable. And then, of course, you know, that was like fifteen years ago.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:48) Now everybody knows you talk to the customer first and then work backwards from that.

(Peter High at 00:31:51) But it wasn't so obvious then.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:51) Yeah, exactly.

(Peter High at 00:31:55) So it was actually all the pain from then that allowed now to be more simple. But yeah, I just applied cross-domain logic, and I'll let you know how it goes. When's the next time you're speaking? I know you do a lot of speaking. Is it in Texas, you said, in a couple months you have an event?

(Peter High at 00:32:14) So yeah, I probably speak maybe three or three-ish times a month on average, something along those lines, two or three, let's say. It kind of comes in waves. I also produce a few conferences I mentioned. I've been producing Forbes CIO Summit series since 2014, and so we do multiple events of those. And so I have more of a hand in the shaping of the agenda and determining who's on stage and all those sorts of things.

(Peter High at 00:32:39) And we have a conference of our own that's coming out next month as I say as well. So those are especially fun because it gives us a chance to, again, take what we've learned. And what I like to think, the way I like to think about it, Joel, is if my writing—I do about a hundred columns in Forbes a year—and if that's kind of like the album, then the greatest hits go on stage. It's another reason why the volume of conversation is very fortuitous as it allows for, you know, again, understanding who not only has a great story to tell, but who also tells that story very well. And it's, you know, sort of continuing to have that ear for that and then, you know, finding the venues for those people to be on stage is really satisfying.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:23) Oh, nice. Well, when I come across some—I've got a library. We keep spreadsheets of all of our guests, and then we make notes about them. So I'll gladly share that if you want access to any of our people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:35) We've got—I've had some people on that are just exceptional storytellers, but also extremely bright technically. Yeah. They're also the ones that are most busy.

(Peter High at 00:33:46) Yeah. Of course. Of course.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:49) So as we start to wrap up here, I'm curious. If you could go back all the way back to when you're in college, learning history, if you give yourself a piece of advice, right, that would just one piece of advice that would last your entire career, what would that be? What would that look like?

(Peter High at 00:34:05) Yeah. That's, I think it's a great question, and there are two ways in which I'd like to tackle that, Joel. On the one hand, I'd love to go back to my younger self and, you know, push for and emphasize what I think I've done a decent job at, but as I mentioned before, continuing to learn, continuing to push for new areas of knowledge, and be that lifelong learner. The other side of that is, you know, I used to say when asked a question akin to that, Joel, I would say, I'd love to go back and tell that guy that things are going to end up pretty well. Not that I've reached any sort of end or that I should consider what success that our firm has had to date as something that is going to continue ad infinitum.

(Peter High at 00:34:48) But I do think, so I used to say I would love to go back and, you know, think about all the trials and tribulations of founding a firm and the trying times of downturns of the economy and so on that it's going to end up okay. But on the other hand, I actually, as I think about that more thoroughly, I wouldn't want to mention that to my younger self because it is those trials and tribulations that are so extraordinarily important. That insecurity that, in all forms, you know, personal insecurity, but just even financial insecurity of those early days were really important propellants to, you know, ensure that we were bringing our A game, that we were creating new ideas, that we were striving to do our best work in some cases during the most difficult times. And so it's funny. In some ways, I'm not so sure that I would want to go back to him and share too much advice because I'd worry that I'd offer, whisper that in my ear and then find in my present self that things aren't quite as rosy as they were because of a false confidence that I shouldn't be given.

(Peter High at 00:35:51) So, slight nuance in the answer to your question.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:54) Dude, I'm getting goosebumps right now because I've had so many people come on, and they'd say, oh, they would tell their past selves, like, relax. It'll be okay. You'll make it. And every time I hear that, it scares the life out of me because I feel like if I just ease up, if I don't give every ounce I have, then I won't go as far as I know I could go.

(Peter High at 00:36:15) Exactly right. Exactly right. Yeah. And I think your future success is dependent upon in some ways that lack of certainty. Right? Anything that's going to quell your ambition is not something you should seek. And so, frankly, as I say, that uncertainty, that insecurity, those other attributes are in fact your friend if you're an entrepreneur. Being able to push through those and continue to do your best work. You know, my first book was written largely in 2008, which was the worst year—as for so many services firms—the worst year in our firm's history. So in some ways, one of the things I've always been very proud of is as a firm during difficult times, we just, we, as I mentioned before, we strive to do some of our best and most creative work, and we use any downtime that we have from a client work perspective to, as I mentioned before, sit back, reflect, and focus on some of those internal activities, intellectual activities, writing activities to ensure that we are, you know, investing in the sorts of things that will pay dividends once growth continues again.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:20) Right. Isn't that beautiful, though, how life naturally works? As business isn't as intense, you have more time to do things like create more materials that will ultimately make business more intense.

(Peter High at 00:37:33) That's right. And there's a reason, Joel. I mean, there's so much that's been written, certainly not my insight—but although it is my experience—so many businesses are founded during downturns. Ours was founded in '01, as I mentioned earlier, the year of 9/11, the year after the bubble bursting on the first Internet revolution, and that was trying times. My income in '01 was a quarter of what it was in 2000. And, but in some ways, it was because of that, because work wasn't being poured over me that I needed to really think creatively about, so how do we go about this? Who do we seek? Where do we focus our attention? How do we develop creative marketing in an environment where people are not necessarily readily handing out dollars for advisory work? And, you know, a lot of great ideas that sustained us were developed in that, and a lot of it was because of that uncertainty of a downturn in the economy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:27) Yeah. And then you realize, you know, well, what's going through my mind right now is if I was in a down market, I would start writing content about how to stay lean, like, make the most of your resources. Right? Because that's what people are looking for. So you've got to pay attention to attention.

(Peter High at 00:38:40) That's exactly right. Yeah. Very well said. Very well said.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:43) So what are you most excited about today? Like, what's—why are you springing out of bed in the morning? What are you looking forward to?

(Peter High at 00:38:51) You know, one of the things I love is in conversations like this one, Joel, with people who are really kind of plugged in and curious and not only—and, you know, certainly, this is a great example in your case—who are not just great speakers but great listeners. What really excites me is our own ecosystem. Forgive me for using that term yet again. We'll make it like a drinking game, how many times I'll say that. But one of the things that I think is so important is developing a network of people and finding interesting ways to connect them.

(Peter High at 00:39:25) You know, you mentioned such a great idea as you develop these conversations, the database you're keeping as to the insights that people are drawing out, perhaps your own evaluation as to who's strong or less strong as the case may be on different topics. You know, I think it's essential to do so. One of the things which we talked about AI earlier, Joel, and I think in services businesses, AI is going to be an enormous threat. There's going to be an awful lot, but the plane on which value is created is getting higher and higher and higher because of the degree to which algorithms can help foster better decision making. It used to be that a person had to manually manipulate vast amounts of data before decisions could be made, and there were people, maybe armies of people, in fact, doing that work.

(Peter High at 00:40:11) And increasingly, it's going to be the technology that will do that, needless to say. And that's going to come for services businesses. It already is. But what helps—and I get, as I mentioned earlier, there's no future-proofing of any business—but what helps guard against that is developing connections between people, putting yourself at the center of interesting conversations, garnering an insight from one person or learning about a new area of curiosity or fear as the case may be of one individual and saying, you know what? I know somebody who's six months ahead of you in the journey that you're hoping to go through. Let me put you in touch with them so that you can avoid the pitfalls that they've experienced and seize more rapidly the opportunities that they have garnered in that six month lead that they have on you. And the more you are creating those connections, the more value you're creating for multiple people, and it shines a halo above you for having done so in the process while, hopefully, also contributing to your own edification, your own education, as to, as I mentioned earlier, what good looks like and what great practices are and so on. So from my perspective, I'm just, I'm always excited to meet new people and find ways to think about, you know, how can I add interesting value to this person and put them in touch with and connect them with others who are going to be a value to them and vice versa? And I think the more we do those, the more we can really propel organizations and individuals forward in the process.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:39) I love it. Learning, being useful, connecting others, relationships. Yeah. Those are the reasons why I like it. That's why I get out of bed in the morning too. I like it a lot.

(Peter High at 00:41:50) Yeah. We're kindred spirits.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:52) 100%. So I'm guaranteeing you right now, there's people listening, and they're pumped up. They like you. They'll have questions for you. How can they connect with you? What's the best way to reach out? What's your website? What's your Twitter? Your LinkedIn?

(Peter High at 00:42:09) Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate you asking. So, Twitter. I'm at Peter A. High. Would love to hear from anyone through that. You can find me at Metis Strategy, M-E-T-I-S, strategy dot com. My email address is just peter dot high before that. Would love to hear from anyone who would like to hear in greater depth about anything that I've discussed or any questions that this might lead to for people. So I really appreciate you asking, Joel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:36) Thank you so much for coming on and sharing the advice.

(Peter High at 00:42:39) Oh, it's a pleasure, Joel. I really appreciate your interest. I'm a fan of the work that you're doing as well. So please keep up the good work, and I hope that we can keep our conversation and dialogue going.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:47) Yeah. I'm going to find some excuse to run into one of your conferences so we can say hello.

(Peter High at 00:42:52) Please do. That'd be wonderful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:54) Alright. Talk soon, Peter.

(Peter High at 00:42:56) Alright. Thank you so much, Joel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:59) Bye.

(Peter High at 00:43:04) Bye.