Peter High - President of Metis Strategy and Author of the Book "Getting To Nimble"

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:02) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Peter, the president of Metis Strategy and the author of the book Getting to Nimble. And we discuss how large enterprises can digitally transform to stay competitive in modern times, why focusing on helping others is the best path for career success, and how to be a world-class executive and a great parent at the same time. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:35) This is the Modern CTO Podcast. Dude, this is great. You've been writing a book, man.

(Peter High at 00:00:49) I have. Yeah. Even finished one.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:51) Nice. What is it? Yeah. Tell me about it.

(Peter High at 00:00:54) So it's called Getting to Nimble. And the idea behind it, Joel, is for organizations, especially those, although not exclusively those born before the digital age, what are the sorts of things they need to do in order to modernize? You know, the pace of change is so dramatic now. The number of once great organizations that have fallen by the wayside due to their inability to modernize their practices is growing. And the rapid pace in which new companies are rising to take their place means that there's both creative destruction as well as creative innovation that is happening, just creation and growth that is happening such that if you're an older organization especially, you need to rethink people, processes, technology, the ecosystem that you develop, as well as your strategy in order to better compete in the modern times.

(Peter High at 00:01:46) And so that's really the thrust of the book.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:50) I've got so many questions for you. But before we go, because I know you because you were already on the podcast before and stuff, but can you give your background story real quick?

(Peter High at 00:02:01) Happy to. Happy to, Joel. Thank you. So for the past 20 years, I have run a firm called Metis Strategy that I founded. I'm based here in Washington, DC. I spend a lot of time advising technology executives, CEOs of tech companies, CIOs, CTOs, CDOs of big private sector organizations as well around the world. I'm a Forbes columnist for the past nine years, about 660 or 670 columns there. I host my own podcast as well called Technovation for the past 13 years, 560 or so of those in the can. The book that I just referenced is my third. Getting to Nimble. My first two, World Class IT and Implementing World Class IT Strategy. And then I curate a number of conferences around the world as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:48) You're the man. You're like the godfather of the technology podcast. I look up to you.

(Peter High at 00:02:54) That's very kind. It means a lot coming from you, Joel, with all that you've accomplished here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:58) I talked to Art Hu, who we both have had on a couple of times.

(Peter High at 00:03:01) Lenovo.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:02) He came on and he said, "Peter High is a master interviewer." I was like, "I know. He's awesome." You are a great speaker. I really admire Art, man. He is phenomenal at speaking.

(Peter High at 00:03:14) He is, and he's so knowledgeable. He has had such a remarkable impact at Lenovo, such an interesting company. During normal times, he spends sort of half his time in Beijing, half his time in the US. He's a font of knowledge about the economies in both places, the political and economic systems in both places. I lean on Art for a lot of knowledge.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:33) With your guests, right? You've done so many episodes. How do you keep in touch with your guests?

(Peter High at 00:03:43) Yeah. Well, a lot of them are people that I know well. And so for many of them, they'll be, although certainly not all of them, they'll be people that I've met beforehand. Maybe they've joined me in one of our conferences. Maybe I've written about them in some way. At a minimum, of course, I would have done some homework on who they are and what they do, these sorts of things.

(Peter High at 00:04:03) And, you know, on the back end of our conversations, I love to, at a minimum, follow up with them just in terms of the response that the podcast has gotten, maybe talk to them a little bit further about some of the things that they described in the podcast that I found particularly interesting or salient. And then find out other ways in which I might be helpful to them, whether it's bringing part of my ecosystem to them, introducing them to somebody who might be of interest, or providing them an insight or an answer to a question, continuing to involve them in the various things that I'm curating. Again, whether it's small or large gatherings of technology executives, have them attend, have them speak, especially if they're particularly insightful, someone like Art, for example. So there are a variety of ways in which we can engage on the other end of an interview like this.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:49) Tell me about the events that you do. I'm curious. I don't know much about them.

(Peter High at 00:04:53) Well, so we have smaller gatherings of just a handful of people that we'll do, especially during these times. We've done more of them in the past year just because there's so much that we can learn from each other. There's so much that has been new to us. Needless to say, it's great to be able to test hypotheses and assumptions and just share experiences, commiserate, you know, count blessings with as many people as we can in order to ensure that the path that we're going down, since so much of it is new and unprecedented at least within our lifetimes. I have found that gathering these sorts of executives for that kind of conversation to be really therapeutic in a variety of ways.

(Peter High at 00:05:29) So that's one thing that I might do with some frequency, and I'll gather just sort of a handful of people here and there. And then occasionally, we also do our sort of broader summits, which will be like 100 or 150 people together. And we'll have a bigger agenda, bring in some of the people that I think are the particularly good storytellers from among the people that I've gotten to know. And we'll have a series of conversations across a few different hours and, hopefully, enlighten some people who've joined us.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:57) So is this something that you do for another organization curated, or is this your company that's curating these small events?

(Peter High at 00:06:05) Both. Both. So I founded Forbes CIO Summit Series back in November 2014 and led that for about six years. I still do a lot of events for Forbes associated with a variety of different topics, but it tends to focus again on the digital technology leaders as the folks who are both on the virtual, for the time being, the virtual stages, as well as in the audience. And then I also have events that I curate that are our own as well, Metis Strategy's own digital symposiums or summits.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:35) Oh, nice. Well, when those things are happening, let me know. We can push out content and help you out.

(Peter High at 00:06:40) Thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate that, Joel. That'd be great.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:43) Yeah. Everyone that I come across, I have just found that if we just help people, then we don't know how it comes back to us, but it just comes back to us in a positive way. So it's honestly the easiest position to take.

(Peter High at 00:06:55) I think having a long-term mutual value as the way to think about this. I think the extent to which anyone senses sort of short-termism, you can sort of sniff that out and it can be successful for a time. But I think the way you described, you know, building relationships that are meant to be across years as opposed to transactional as quickly as possible is really the key. So like you, I love to talk to people and ask them, "How can I be helpful?" Not expecting to be paid for that help, but, you know, how can I make your life easier in some way? How can I introduce you to someone who would be of interest to you?

(Peter High at 00:07:37) How can I offer an insight? Is there a hypothesis you want to test? And if I have a conclusion or if I have a perspective, I'll lend it. Or if I know somebody who has an even better one, I'll do that as well. And I think if you do that enough, you know, just as I'm in some way sort of paraphrasing what you mentioned, I think if you put enough good karma out into the world, then some of that comes back in terms of revenue opportunity for your organization as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:02) Do you mention that at all in the book?

(Peter High at 00:08:05) So I talk a lot about ecosystems. I have a chapter on ecosystems. And the idea there, Joel, is that competition is much less today company to company. It is ecosystem to ecosystem. So who are you marshaling as your partners?

(Peter High at 00:08:19) And even, I mean, a lot of this is easy to explain, you know, the supply chain of an organization, the joint ventures that companies might put together in order to bring a product to life, and the contracted help that you have to fill in gaps on your team, whether it's skill gaps or a sudden need that you can't hire for readily. But that's just scratching the surface. I mean, finding these broader ecosystems, assembling them, and then putting them to work for insight and innovation is really important. And I focus on a few of those.

(Peter High at 00:08:51) First of all, customers of your company, very important to focus on that from an ecosystem perspective. You know, co-create with them, innovate with them, especially those that are the most trusted among them. I talk about the need to collaborate to a greater extent with peers. So put together your own sort of kitchen cabinet, if you will, a personal board of sorts to whom you can turn when you have a thorny problem that you need to solve, or again, a hypothesis that you want to test. Venture capitalists to understand where smart money is being spent and why, and to understand more about entrepreneurs you might wish to get to know, or at a minimum sort of their technologies that are on the rise or on the fall as the case may be.

(Peter High at 00:09:28) Executive recruiters to understand further the sort of people trends, whether it's skills on the rise, skills on the fall, or changes that are afoot. I mean, naturally, executive recruiters are also good at helping you find that next opportunity if that's of interest. But I think it's important to invest in those relationships even besides that for the wonderful insights that you can draw. And then lastly, strategic vendor partners. Really important.

(Peter High at 00:09:51) If you're going to be hiring a strategic vendor partner to do something for you, presumably you're doing so because of the wealth of experience that they have. If you're not tapping into that in some meaningful way to elicit better insights from them, well, then you're getting only part of the value you should out of those relationships. So that's how I define kind of, you know, assembling these ecosystems for greater value and greater insights and hopefully a greater pace to innovation as a result of that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:15) Okay. You mentioned individuals building up their own network. I want to dive a little bit deeper on that. Let's say the first sort of persona I want to talk to is maybe an isolated type CTO executive. Right? They're kind of new. They're growing. They don't really have a network. They know that they've heard this. How do they even start?

(Peter High at 00:10:38) How does a CTO even start? Well, actually, what's interesting about that, Joel, is the wonderful things about the personas that you and I deal with, the leaders that you and I deal with is there's so much that they have in common. There are differences, of course, across companies and industries and geographies, but there's a lot that's common there in terms of the problems that they're facing, the victories that they can claim. And I have found what's so interesting is I think, you know, I had a natural tendency in the early stages of bringing people together or thinking about, "Okay, how do I get people from the same industry all in the same room, for example?" Because there's so much that they can share.

(Peter High at 00:11:12) There's a language they have. There's metrics that they're keeping, et cetera, that'll be common. But as I fan that out, I recognize that, look, if you get a technology or digital leader of a B2B or a B2C company or a business to government, a B2G company, there's actually so much overlap in that Venn diagram in terms of the things that they're thinking about that oftentimes, you know, there's just a tremendous amount they can glean from there. And I would actually argue that in many ways, the most innovative ideas come from translating from a peer a very different application of an idea, translating that back into your environment, because after all, there's less of a chance that your competitor is thinking exactly like that at the same time. So I mention that as a backdrop to your specific question, Joel, because I think that at the end of the day, CTOs, CIOs, CDOs, they're tremendously collaborative.

(Peter High at 00:12:00) And I think, generally speaking, wish to learn from each other. That's the other kind of great insight from that is these gatherings are always very helpful because they really do like to network. They like to understand and commiserate and talk about silver linings that the blessings they can count from recent experiences and hear from each other because there's always that opportunity. You'll get that nugget, two or three that you can bring back into your own organization. But then I would say the other side of it, Joel, a thread certainly through the early part of this conversation is, you know, give to get.

(Peter High at 00:12:34) Find opportunities to be the first to reach the hand out with some value. You know, be the first to ask the question as to how can I be helpful to you without any expectation of something in return? And, you know, you do that enough, just as you said earlier. Right? You do that enough and then good things happen back for you as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:53) And selfishly, it's definitely a way to deal with stress or anxiety. Anytime I find myself focusing too much on myself or what I'm doing, I just look around and be like, who can I help? Let me go help somebody else right now. I don't want to think about me right now. So...

(Peter High at 00:13:09) Good way to think about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:10) Yeah. I don't know if it's healthy. We'll see. But it seems to be pretty good. You know, you pour into other people and you care about other people and the fact that that makes, you know, anxiety kind of go away, I don't think that's an unhealthy thing, but I'll definitely be the one to run the experiment and find out. I'll report back to you, Peter, in five years.

(Peter High at 00:13:30) Hey, if it's reducing your stress, then it can't be a bad thing, Joel. And if you're making, if you're doing good things for other people, I think that is, you know, you're planting seeds across the landscape, and a lot of that will bear fruit for you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:41) Yeah. It's a better way to live life. Now I'm curious with your book. So you've written a couple books. What caused you, prompted you to write this one?

(Peter High at 00:13:52) A couple different origin stories there. One that might be particularly interesting, you'll be the judge, Joel, but is, so I was probably three years ago, and this is a CTO you should get to know if you don't know him. He's a CIO and CTO of CarMax. Shamim Mohammed is his name. Really just super talented guy. He's been in the role for quite some time now. And I was having a great conversation with him in Richmond where that company is headquartered on the record. And at the conclusion, I was asking him a question about trends. You know, what are some trends as you look, say, three years out that excite you?

(Peter High at 00:14:25) And as I recall, he offered something about blockchain and an idea about the application of machine learning back into CarMax. But he concluded his answer by saying, and I'll paraphrase, though a fairly tight paraphrase: You know, if I'm looking three years out, the pace of change today is so fast that the thing that's going to be the number one priority or curiosity may be something you and I can't even name today. And so what I really need to do is foster nimbleness in my organization. And I really liked that framing of the responsibility of the technology leader, of fostering this nimbleness and an ability to seize opportunities more readily as they present themselves, to stave off issues as they will continue to present themselves, each of those faster than ever.

(Peter High at 00:15:10) I mentioned at the outset of my book, you know, this is the fastest that business has ever been, and yet today is the slowest it will be from this point forward. And we need to kind of orient ourselves that the change is going to be coming faster and faster as the days wear on. So that concept of nimbleness, I really liked. I called the latest book "Getting to Nimble" as a result of that. And I then pursued a variety of conversations with leaders to try to suss out, and of course did a lot of thinking on my own, as to what constitutes nimbleness.

(Peter High at 00:15:40) If your goal is in fact to stop being the boat anchor that is pulling this giant ship of yours, your company, back, but instead to be the engine and the rudder, then what are the factors that will facilitate that? And thus the wheels got going, and in the ensuing months, ensuing years, the third book was born.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:58) I like it. And as we continue to talk, I'm really still trying to wrap my mind around what you do. And here's why.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:07) I'm only 33, right? My background is building some technology with a small team. Maybe, the largest one was I grew it up to 30 and then left. So I was building stuff, selling it off and leaving and building. I was really into that. And so I have never been the CTO of an enterprise who would need a strategy company or something of that nature. So with my lack of experience, I'm just trying to understand, what's a project that you've done or how do you help a company?

(Peter High at 00:16:35) Yeah, great question. So a lot of what we do on our advisory side is to bring the disciplines of business strategy to the technology function. Let me take you a little bit back in time, Joel. Wasn't that long ago. So I'm 47. I'm a bit older than you are. I started my company twenty years ago, as I mentioned, when I was 27. And when I started the company twenty years ago, the average IT organization was pretty definitively a support organization in the company that they serve. So if you were the chief technology officer or the chief information officer, you were a chief in name, but probably not a peer to the other chiefs.

(Peter High at 00:17:14) I mean, there are other chiefs that also had this sort of lesser-than status as well, but the CIO, CTO certainly was among those. And, you know, different language that they spoke, different set of capabilities. They likely had a different education than the rest of the organization. There are all sorts of stereotypes that proliferate about them being more, like, navel-gazers or being more introverted than perhaps some of the other bigger personalities that tend to become CEOs, certainly, to say nothing of CMOs and other kind of externally facing functions within the organization. And what has happened across the past couple of decades, in drips and drabs, and I'd say in the first decade of my doing these things and certainly with an unbelievable momentum in the past ten years, really because of, among other things, the consumerization of IT—devices like this that make us all technologists—all of a sudden technology became more front and center. All the more so in the past year, Joel, this whole time that your beard has been growing.

(Peter High at 00:18:08) It's been a time that CIOs, the CEOs, and CTOs have been advancing tremendously as sources of resilience for their organizations. And so as that journey has continued for this discipline to become much more strategic, to become a chief not just in name but in terms and also in prestige and deed, we brought a lot of business disciplines to the technology function to literally formulate plans, to think more strategically about the future. So where is your business as a whole going in the next three, five, two years? And what are the sorts of things as a technology leader you need to do in order to ensure that it's heading there as rapidly as possible, with as much security as possible, with a whole range of innovations, which, of course, today are increasingly at the intersection of technology and fill in the blank other discipline across the organization? So how are you fostering those partnerships with your colleagues for better insight towards innovation as well?

(Peter High at 00:19:05) And helping leaders literally formulate those plans. So what is the strategy? What is true north for our organization? And what's a way of packaging that together so that everyone, whether that's tens of people or hundreds of thousands of people, can understand what the future holds so we're all pushing in the same direction? So strategy wasn't necessarily—I would say the average IT department not so long ago was much more tactical than it was strategic.

(Peter High at 00:19:30) Now definitively, they're becoming much more strategic. And then I'll add one, or if you'll indulge me one moment longer, Joel, I'll say the other interesting change has been the primary domain of technology leaders were often, you know, identifying areas to cut costs or to foster efficiency. And now so many more of them are focused on both sides of the profit equation: revenue augmentation in the form of new products, in the form of better customer experience, et cetera, in addition to having the bottom line, the efficiency aspects to the role as well. And that's really a killer combination for those who can find that. So we do a lot of work in helping IT leaders, technology leaders, digital leaders on that journey within their organizations.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:10) And what's the smallest company you've worked with? Like, what size are they?

(Peter High at 00:20:15) We rarely work for companies less than a billion dollars in revenue. We have. So the smallest companies would—we've been doing some work in our West Coast office out of the Bay Area with what we refer to, and others have referred to, as startup-to-scale-up operations. So maybe they're in the hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, but they've gotten there very, very quickly, and they're within sight of getting to a billion dollars. In many cases, actually, interestingly enough in those cases, it's understanding, you know, oftentimes these organizations grow so fast that they have the lack of process or lack of governance of an organization that's an order of magnitude or two orders of magnitude smaller, whether you use revenue or people as the way of measuring that.

(Peter High at 00:20:57) And so a lot of what we're doing is helping them add structure so that they can more competently get from, let's say, $500 million to a billion and beyond, because that sort of point of pride of being very entrepreneurial and, you know, not having a lot of bureaucracy or red tape, all of a sudden you realize, wait a second, good governance practices are not bureaucracy or red tape. They're actually what help you go faster. An analogy I always love to use relative to that, Joel, is the brakes of the car. If you ask a person very quickly what are the brakes of the car used for, they'd say, of course, to stop the car. I would say they're used to allow you to go fast, because you can't go 70 miles per hour on the highway unless you've got great brakes, and that's what good governance does.

(Peter High at 00:21:32) So a lot of these organizations that we'll work with that are of a smaller size relative to our typical portfolio of Fortune 500 companies, as those who we advise, are oftentimes looking for that kind of guidance and counsel. How do we add more structure and governance to make sure that we are building not for where we are today or where we were yesterday, but where we'll be in five years, which will be a lot bigger than we are now?

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:53) I love it. No, I'm really starting to understand this, and we'll have to have you on again next year so I can even go deeper into understanding. I get it. Well, I get it, right? These problems emerge as they grow to a certain scale, and then you happen to solve these problems. So when people are experiencing them, they'll connect with a company like yours and rock and roll. I want to talk about some human stuff real quick. Is that okay?

(Peter High at 00:22:15) Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:15) Awesome. Okay. So these are always fun questions because I don't know how well they'll go. But I just try to be open and real and stuff. So you're very successful in your career, and with that comes financial success and that also comes freedom, which can be a little bit scary, especially the first time you start to experience, you know, financial freedom. Like, I could be doing anything I want to do. What do I do now? There's a lot of options on the table, right? So and then you start thinking about direction ahead once you've gotten that freedom, but you also think about what your purpose is in life. You'll start to think a little bit about that. Like, what's driving you? Because at the beginning, it's pretty easy. Like, at least for me, I was broke. I grew up poor. So my thing was go out there and be useful and figure out how to make money. So that was a driver.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:05) And then after you get to a certain point of making money, you're like, okay, why am I doing this, right? And so I'm curious, do you think about that, or what have your thoughts been as you've progressed through your levels of success?

(Peter High at 00:23:19) Yeah. It's a great and very deep question, Joel, to say the least. And I do think about it an awful lot. Like you, in the early stages of my career, I was, of course, hoping to make money, hoping to provide some modicum of security for myself, eventually for my wife, for my family as I got married and had children. What was the real blessing is as I grew a firm, I realized that if a lot of what I'm focused on are the most important people to me—let me speak professionally, primarily, and get into the personal side as well if you'd like to.

(Peter High at 00:23:51) But, you know, I'm blessed with a number of leaders around me who've been with me for ten years, sixteen years, you know, a good portion of the history of my firm. I've found that if I'm really focused on making them successful, my success will come. It's not like I don't focus on things I need to be doing or the next hill that I should be climbing as a leader of my firm. But if I'm also making sure that I'm planting seeds for a whole range of people within my firm, that I'm, you know, thinking about being an adviser or a trusted voice to the junior people in my team, helping them develop shortcuts towards success. You know, asking them comparable questions to the one you've just asked. You know, what do you want out of life? What are you seeking? Where do you want to be in ten years? And helping them provide some of those shortcuts based on the lessons that I have. I find that really gratifying.

(Peter High at 00:24:38) So I still to this day, across my firm, have one-on-one conversations with everyone in the firm once every six weeks, some cases more frequently than that. And a lot of it is, I'm trying to use those sessions not only to get to know each of these people and what motivates them, but also to help them, because, you know, so much of my own pathway has been facilitated by the wisdom of others. Each of us, of course, stand on the shoulders of others, whether it's our parents, our families, but certainly a series of mentors. I'm sure you would highlight a number on your path, just as I can in mine, Joel. Look, if you're standing on somebody else's shoulders, then I think it's incumbent upon you to make sure that you've got strong shoulders that others can stand on as well. So I do think an awful lot about, you know, in a people business especially, how do you make people fulfilled in the work they do? Look, not every day is going to be your favorite day. Not every assignment you have will be your favorite assignment. But I want to try to create the kind of environment where you have a lot more great days than you have less-than-great days. You have a lot more great assignments and fun work to do than you have not, the opposite of those things.

(Peter High at 00:25:41) You know, as a business leader, we have an influence on those things. And so that's where I spend a lot of my time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:46) On the personal side—so for me, and that was a great answer, by the way. I don't mean to—I just I'm so excited to ask you the next question. All right. So from a personal side, some background. So building this business the past three years, and also my youngest child is about three and a half years old. And—

(Peter High at 00:26:07) How many do you have, Joel?

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:08) I have two. I have a daughter who's about—she's turning four in September—and my son just turned two in February. So they're little banshees right now, but I love them to death. But the first three years, two and a half, three years, I pretty much ignored them because I was just trying to build this business. And I sort of justified it to myself, like, working seven days a week and all of this, that it's so I can provide security. But at the same time, I was just maturing, right? And then I saw this movie. I can't remember what it was, but I saw this business character in it and he had a lot of money and he was older, but he didn't have family, or he had some but they had no relationships.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:47) Then he sort of realized that he kind of missed out on his kids growing up. And I just decided in that moment, I do not want to be that person. So I sold my car, got a truck and a camper. I'm like, we're going to start going camping. We're going to start spending time together.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:02) I looked up—you know, I had met my wife at a church, and so we had stopped going when we had our kids. So I was like, we're going to go get involved in the community because churches, they just give back to the local community. We're going to go get back involved in the community. And I started really trying, you know, about eight to ten months. And I'm still working hard, right? But I'm taking those weekends with my family and things of that nature. But all of this to say, trying to figure out, you know, how to balance your family or how to think about your relationship with your family. What sort of evolution have you gone through?

(Peter High at 00:27:35) That's, again, a great question. Something I think an awful lot about, especially during in normal times. I travel a lot with my work, so it's an added—perhaps you did during times where that was more possible as well, Joel. So it's an added detail, of course, if I'm away that I'm really, you know, not with them, sometimes for several days in a week. And so a couple of things that I've worked on. Number one, and actually this is the way that I manage my business life as well as my personal life, but I try to think about how do I maximize the value in—I don't mean to make this overly Machiavellian or scientific to the way that I've designed this. But let me give you an example. When my kids were young, I would only exercise when I was with a child, pushing them in a running stroller, putting them in a pod behind my bicycle and riding with them. So exercise, which I needed to do, we all do, was by definition with a child. When I could, putting on my, I had this carrier on my shoulders, we'd go on hikes together.

(Peter High at 00:28:35) We would, so if I'm up early or if I'm up late or during a time when they're awake, my exercise would also be with a child and always with conversation, always pointing out the flower, the animal, the neighbor, etcetera, and trying to have really good meaningful conversations. You know, quantity and quality really intersect in those younger years. I would also say really important, and this is so difficult in this day and age, but being very present. When you're with your family, be with your family. When you're not, then really focus on work.

(Peter High at 00:29:08) A couple different principles I've tried to keep in my life. You know, once I'm done with work on Friday, I try not to touch work until Sunday. And so if I can get out of work at 6:00 or 6:30 on a Friday night, I try to completely turn off. The great thing about having a Saturday that's largely work-free—if you have an unbelievably busy week, then maybe lean a little bit further on your Sunday. But really try to take that Saturday as a full and the Friday evening as family time, really immersing yourself in all that they're doing.

(Peter High at 00:29:38) I certainly don't mean to say that every Sunday I'm working all day and I try to take as much of the Sunday as well. And then the other thing that I would say is I try to take the period, I'll—as perhaps you do as well, Joel—I oftentimes stop work, have dinner, spend time with the family, and then go back to work. And I've really tried to make sure that from the period of dinner until kids' bedtime, now that my kids are 15 and 13, it's a little bit of a different structure as they've got a lot of homework of their own to do. So oftentimes we'll be working right next to each other. Me on my work, they on their homework, or reading books together, etcetera.

(Peter High at 00:30:11) But really trying to have that segment of each evening that I'm here that is with them. And then I'll just let me add another detail, Joel. Probably a good statistic for you to hear as early in fatherhood as you are, but one that always rings in my ears as I contemplate these things. And this is something somebody told me, not research that I've done. I'll preface it this way.

(Peter High at 00:30:32) But apparently when one's child goes to college or leaves the nest, if they do go to college, you at that point have spent 92% of all the time you will have spent in their entire life is done. And if you think about it, that sounds unbelievable. When I was told that statistic, I was really taken aback and I was thinking about it a little bit. But if your child goes to college in a different city, if your child ends up living in a different city, as I do—I'm not in the city I grew up in—you know, maybe you'll see them on a Christmas or Thanksgiving or other holiday. Maybe you'll take a vacation with them in the summertime.

(Peter High at 00:31:08) But, you know, these are precious, precious times. And so I try to factor that in. I work very hard. I work long hours. I travel when it's safe to do so, but I really try to make sure that my kids know that when I'm with them that they have my full attention.

(Peter High at 00:31:23) I guess since you're interested, I'll add one other detail. A law school classmate of my father's—my father who passed away five years ago—this law school classmate of his is in his mid-80s now. He's been a font of knowledge for me. He's been a real source of wisdom for me.

(Peter High at 00:31:39) He's very successful himself. His brother is very successful. They seem to be very happy people from what I can tell. And I once asked him, what's the secret? What did your parents do to set you and your brother off on the journeys that you were on?

(Peter High at 00:31:52) I love, as clearly you do, Joel, asking people that are older than me for their wisdom to, again, get shortcuts in my own pathway. And what he said to me was very impactful. He said, my father always made it very—his father; his mother did not work, so he was referring to his father—my father always made it very clear that work is necessary and that there's actually joy that can come from work. And so he would explain what he was doing and why he was doing it.

(Peter High at 00:32:20) And so I was—he's speaking for himself—I was never kind of scared of a professional life. It was something I was looking forward to and seeing the joy it brought my father. And my brother and I have always taken that to heart in the way in which we thought about our careers. And that was super impactful for me, Joel, because what I would do, let's say, during traveling times, which will be here again before too long, I would imagine.

(Peter High at 00:32:42) On a Sunday evening, I'd say to my boys, you know, look. I'm gonna be traveling Monday to Thursday this week. You know, all things being equal, I'd prefer to be with you guys. But first of all, I need to do this work so we can have our house, so we can take a trip from time to time, etcetera. But at the other time, let me tell you about some of the things I'm really excited about.

(Peter High at 00:33:00) I'm gonna be interviewing this really interesting person. I'm going to learn from this other executive. I'm gonna be taking a tour of this company to see how it works. And I'd kind of let them into my world as to the things that excite me. And I'd come back on a Thursday, and they'd ask me questions.

(Peter High at 00:33:13) What was that guy that you talked about? What was he like? What was that factory that you went to see, to get a tour? What was that like? And all of a sudden, there's kind of a different kind of connection that they're learning from the early age as to what work should entail.

(Peter High at 00:33:25) And that's really, it's made a lot of difference, I must say.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:28) You're blowing my mind, Peter. What that does is it takes work from being this reason why dad's not there to this relationship of them understanding and getting to know you better. You've turned it—brilliant. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:46) You've turned it completely. You can't just be working by talking to them about it. And you know what? It's really just that extra little bit. One thing that stuck with me early on when I had kids was I heard somebody say something along the lines of the one rule that they had when raising their kid was when the kid walks up to them and needs them, that they'll just pay attention to them, full attention.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:09) They won't be like, oh, you know, go away. Because often the kid only wants you for like five minutes. They have very short attention spans. They want you to chase them around the room or pretend to eat the fake pizza or whatever it is. And so I started doing that with the kids.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:24) I mean, I'll tell you what, it's so true. Every time, you know, they walk up to me and they want something, it's less than a five-minute interaction and then they're off doing their own thing, playing with their toys for, you know, 20 or 30 minutes. So rather than looking at the interruptions of the kids interrupting me from working as a negative, I'm just like, oh, this is gonna be five minutes. It's gonna be a quick little memory with them and they won't grow up to be a serial killer.

(Peter High at 00:34:50) And the funny thing too, and Joel, maybe your experience was like this pre-COVID, but the fact that we're all in quarantine, I think we all have so much more—there's so much more forgiveness for the fact that a child might run into your room or mine, you know, or a pet or, you know, I think one of the—there have been a lot of blessings and silver linings to what has been such an unfortunate circumstance. And it has been, I think, just a greater degree of humanity in many ways. Right? A recognition that, look, I'm at home right now. Perhaps you are as well.

(Peter High at 00:35:18) And, you know, I've got—one of my sons is in school. The other one's downstairs right now. There's a chance he could come into this room and, you know, just as somebody might walk into yours. And that's just how life works these days. And I think there's something really, really beautiful about that, frankly, that we have a different level of acceptance and even of expectation that, look, you know, this is who I am, who my family is.

(Peter High at 00:35:39) Here's where I live. You know? There's something really nice about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:43) Yeah. Definitely. And it looks really cool. What is that behind you? How did you design that? What is it?

(Peter High at 00:35:48) I wish I designed that. No. I used cash to get this. It's an Indian piece, and it's a room divider. It hides the fact that I'm working in a room that has a bed behind me, but I do kind of like the effect.

(Peter High at 00:36:00) It's sort of, you know, covers up—instead of a different kind of background, it works well for me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:05) Oh, that is super cool because to me, it looks like a 90-degree angle and that's the corner and there's two walls coming together. That is just really professionally done walls. Like, you went to a Catholic cathedral type thing and said, come do that over here. But room divider, the moment you said it, I get it. This is fake.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:23) Yeah. Actually, this is a fake wall right over here. It's a piece of foam with some wallpaper type stuff stuck onto it. We got it Home Depot. And, yeah. So our producer, Jay, he made it. And I just photoshopped something. I was like, can we make the studio look like this?

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:42) And our office has been completely empty. So I just come into an empty office, which is like five minutes from my house. I felt really bad during the lockdown because everyone I knew, they couldn't go to their office because they work at big companies or they had so many employees that they felt like it would be irresponsible to be the only one to go. But I'm over here. My wife and I are hiring a babysitter, and we're like, we just need 10 minutes from the kids on Saturday.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:09) We're gonna go over to the office. So, yeah.

(Peter High at 00:37:12) That's funny.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:13) Yeah. Sorry. Off topic. Hey. Do you ever talk about the conversation, like imposter syndrome? Have you heard this yet?

(Peter High at 00:37:22) Am I familiar with the idea of imposter syndrome? Yeah. I've got some familiarity with it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:27) I've been trying to understand it better because I knew imposter as an evil thing. Like, I was pretending to be someone else to do evil. I thought that was the definition and everyone's going around saying, oh, I have imposter syndrome, I'm not good enough and I'm like, I'm confused about the meaning of imposter apparently. So I think it's just one of those things that has multiple meanings. Society kinda just ran off with it and it became this other thing. But to me, it just sounds like anxiety.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:53) When I hear people talk about it, they're like, oh, I feel like I'm not good enough or whatever it may be. That's the chief complaint or I don't deserve the success. And I'm like, that just sounds like general anxiety or self-doubt. It sounds like self-doubt is what you're describing. But apparently, I—the reason I'm bringing it up is because I talked about it for like two or three years saying I don't get imposter syndrome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:16) And then the other day somebody connected the imposter syndrome with the concept of self-doubt. And I was like, that's what it is. It's just what people did was they just—you know, how we do as humans, we rebrand words from generation to generation. We have new words for the same things. This generation has called self-doubt imposter syndrome when it relates to professionalism. At least that's my current thought.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:41) I didn't know if you had a better perspective on that.

(Peter High at 00:38:44) No. I mean, I think a corollary to that or related point would be kind of the fake it till you make it concept. Right? All of us, you know, each of our experiences adds something to our capabilities. Right?

(Peter High at 00:38:58) And when you're an ambitious 22-year-old, you may be incredibly bright, but you don't yet have a lot of world experience. And you're—I recall my own frustration early in my career trying to think, gosh, how do I—when do I have enough experience to go do something on my own, for instance? And, you know, there's that sort of angst there. Now the other side of it is, I think all of us are in situations where we feel like we may be out of our depth. Should I be in this conversation?

(Peter High at 00:39:25) Should I be leading this thing? Should—am I right for this promotion? It's actually kind of interesting. Not that I'm the greatest scholar of Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In," but this has been highlighted as a difference in the way in which men and women oftentimes manage their careers. That men will seek a promotion when they are at 75% of the experience necessary for the next level, whereas a woman will wait until she has 100% of that experience. And, you know, a lot of what Sheryl Sandberg proposes in her book is that women ought to seek those opportunities of being willing—my words, not hers, but of having that sort of fake it till you make it.

(Peter High at 00:40:09) You know, don't fake it when you've got 10% of the experience, but recognize that there's a lot that, you know, you can finish off that final 20% once you're in the role. You know, lean towards that role and seek to get it. And so, yeah, I mean, I think all of us are in situations all the time where we wonder, gosh, am I the right person to be doing this? Am I the right person? Is this the room I'm supposed to be in?

(Peter High at 00:40:33) Hopefully, we encounter enough experiences to recognize, you know, there aren't too many rooms—I may not be the smartest person in the room. I may not be the best storyteller in the room. I may not be the one who's adding the most value in this room, but hopefully, you have enough experiences to recognize, you know, look. I'm gonna make it. I've been—I'm in this room, and I'll make my contribution to it.

(Peter High at 00:40:51) And I think it's important for us to push ourselves. You know, there's also a lot of research around people that have some kind of trauma while they're growing up, whether it's a parent that passed away, divorce of parents, economic hardship, etcetera, that oftentimes getting through some of that—not that you would wish any of those things necessarily upon someone, but making it through some of those things gives them the confidence to recognize, wow, I can really get past a lot. For me, my parents divorced when I was 10, and it was very traumatic to be perfectly candid, Joel. I feel like there are very few periods of my adult life that are as difficult as what I experienced as a 10-, 11-, 12-year-old.

(Peter High at 00:41:41) What I've come to realize is having gotten through that, having gotten to the other side of it successfully with a lot of help from other people. Right? But it's given me confidence to recognize, look, I can face down the next challenge. It's not going to be nearly as difficult as what my 10-year-old self went through. And I think so long as we accrue those kinds of experiences and have enough—can create the distance to analyze ourselves in that way to recognize, gosh, you know, I should be proud of that thing that I did or that new accomplishment or I didn't think I could do that and it turns out I can, then all of a sudden, I think perhaps the whole notion of the imposter syndrome starts to fade away a little bit as we gain more confidence.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:19) Yes. My parents separated, divorced when I was 11. And then at 12, I got hit by a car and I was in a wheelchair for a year. Yeah. And I had to go through the process of learning to walk again.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:30) And then it left me with a limp that I had for about a decade until this one person at an office brought it up and I didn't even realize I was doing it. And then I started going to physical therapy for several years to get rid of the limp because I didn't want to be that guy. I was like, if I knew I had this before, I would have attempted to fix it. And so, yeah, I accredit a lot of my success to difficult moments. My sister-in-law asked me to speak to her kids about playing in the streets.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:58) I was hit by the car playing in the street, and about not doing it or being extra careful. She was telling how bad it was. And she asked me to do all of this stuff. And I said, I'm sorry, Vicky. I've been going around for the past year touring in countries telling everybody about how this is the reason I'm successful.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:13) I was like, I don't think I've got a lot of content for them other than it's kind of painful and disruptive for a year, but it'll turn you into an entirely different person. Because you get—it's really clear, when your parents divorce, it becomes clear that there's two paths. You either let the situation crush you or you own it. And you have to figure out how to own this and move it forward. And you can't—you don't want to be the person going around for a lifetime blaming a scenario that happened years before.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:43) You want to go around being the person that says these difficult things happen. I overcame them, you know, beat the odds, and now I'm a better person for it. And so you just kind of have to make it black and white like that and choose who you want to be.

(Peter High at 00:43:55) Amen. Very well said. Very, very well said. I wholeheartedly agree.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:58) Yeah. And then my brother and sister, they didn't have that much difficulty. And I noticed that when my mom passed away about three or four years ago, we were all in the room. And it was pretty unexpected, but we got to be there to say goodbye. And they were way more torn up than I was at the time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:16) And I just felt the sense, like, alright, I'll be strong and help them through this. And then I had my moment later. Right? But it just was this—it's a weird thing when we talk about leadership. And sometimes moments just happen and I almost feel like the character in a movie. The events just occurring and sometimes you just have to step up and be that person and, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:39) I don't know. I'm very off topic here. Sorry, buddy. This is great, though. I like you so much, Peter.

(Peter High at 00:44:46) Likewise, Joel. I appreciate it. What a deep conversation it's been.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:50) Yeah. Let's wrap up with talking a little bit more about the book. I want to push the book for you. I like your thoughts. I find myself as a person—I heard Simon Sinek discuss once, he said he likes to bring great ideas forward and I like to find really smart people and help amplify that. So in the book, if you had—you give talks all the time. So you understand that when the person walks out of that hearing you speak for an hour, in three weeks, they're going to remember maybe two concepts and then a month, they're going to maybe remember one thing that you said.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:24) Right? Because it's just how we forget information. So when I give my talks, I think about the top two or three things that I want the people to remember in six weeks. And I basically just hammer on those different ways. In this book, it's a long-winded way to get to this. In this book, what's the one takeaway that you want people to have in six months after they read it?

(Peter High at 00:45:43) So I think the one constant in life and certainly in business is change. We need to be accepting of the fact, despite the fact that change is not something that most of us crave. We like our routines. We like having the certain thing we do at this time of day at that certain place, for example. Those are sources of comfort for us. And yet, by getting too into our routines professionally, it can have really critical and dire consequences.

(Peter High at 00:46:15) The best performing stock in the S&P 500 of the 1980s was Circuit City. Circuit City as a retailer in the 1980s is pre-just-in-time inventories. Stores were expensive. The capital allocations in a business like that were significant, and yet they developed a business model that was revolutionary. A person would come in—a consumer electronics business—would come in for a television and go out with a VHS VCR, peripherals to help with sound.

(Peter High at 00:46:45) And all of a sudden, these things they didn't even know they needed are making their way back to their house. The company was so successful that in the 1990s, they birthed several different other companies: a financial services company, believe it or not, a technology company, and the aforementioned CarMax came out of Circuit City. In 2001, Circuit City was featured in one of the best-selling business books of all time, Jim Collins' Good to Great, one of 15, I believe it is, companies that were profiled in that book as having some secrets in terms of the pathway to go from good performance to great performance. That was 2001. Joel, in 2009, the company was liquidated.

(Peter High at 00:47:20) This is not a good company. This is one of the best companies, the best performing stock of the 1980s, and considered and included in Good to Great in the 2000s. And later that decade, it ceases to exist. This is going to be happening more and more as a result of organizations not making the changes that are necessary. Now, thankfully, there are so many great examples that are the counter to that.

(Peter High at 00:47:44) Businesses that appear to be heading into a death spiral or at least languishing for a period, who have been able to reinvent themselves, to recognize that they needed to be their own biggest competitor and cannibalize some of the things that they hold dearly. Companies like Domino's Pizza, who over the course of the past decade-plus has a better stock performance than Amazon, Facebook, Google, or Apple, believe it or not. And so much of that can go back to the fact that they had a remarkable digital transformation. And what I love to say to people upon giving the fuller version of that story as is told in the book, Joel, is if a pizza company based in suburban Detroit can do that, then why can't yours? And so I hope that people take the lessons, both of the once great companies that are no longer here for their inability to change and those that appeared to perhaps be following them to a similar fate, but did in fact change and undertake steps that others can easily emulate.

(Peter High at 00:48:44) I provide the entire framework as to how one does these things in the book itself, that there is a pathway towards a more sustainable excellence in your performance and therefore a successful business for the foreseeable future.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:57) I love that. I love that. So well presented. You start with the dark one and then you flip it around to the positive. I love—I can't believe that. That's a fun fact for me. CarMax came from Circuit City.

(Peter High at 00:49:09) It did. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:11) Is there anything else? How did that happen? Do you know the details?

(Peter High at 00:49:15) Yeah. So that's the interesting thing. The organization was so successful, and they had such an enormous windfall that they were thinking to themselves, what else can we get into? And CarMax, you know that business, I'm sure. Right? So it's the selling of cars. They were great at selling consumer electronics. So they got into another field associated with that that they thought—where there was some room for some creative thinking. Clearly, they were correct as that business is doing very well right now. But what's interesting—the further details of what I describe in the book, Joel, is while they were founding all these other businesses, Best Buy developed the Geek Squad almost the same year, actually.

(Peter High at 00:49:53) It was a year difference from when CarMax was developed. So whereas this company that was legendary in terms of their customer experience and the wisdom of their sales associates to upsell you on the peripherals to the thing that you came in to buy, now all of a sudden the main competitor will do what they did and then bring it all to your house. You know, as consumer electronics proliferate and become much more complex, don't you worry about setting it up. Let's have my employees come and set it up while your feet are up on the coffee table. And so Best Buy doubled down on customer experience in ways that Circuit City didn't by virtue of these other investments in other areas that they were focused on, rather than focusing on their traditional knitting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:36) Brilliant. Man, this is great. Peter, we made a podcast, man. How do you feel?

(Peter High at 00:50:42) That's good. Great conversation. Always good to be with you, Joel. I appreciate you taking some time with me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:46) Is there anything that we want to get out there that we didn't get out there?

(Peter High at 00:50:52) No. I mean, I think we probed a lot of great things. If people are interested, I would be delighted for them to read my new book, Getting to Nimble. I would love to get their feedback on it. I would also—if anyone is inspired as a result of the conversation to reach out, they're most welcome to through LinkedIn, through Twitter.

(Peter High at 00:51:12) I'm at Peter A High at Twitter. But, Joel, as always, it's a pleasure to speak with you. I appreciate you taking time with me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:19) Yes. Dude, I feel good. When you write these books—last question I have for you. When you're writing these books, do you put your best information possible in here, or do you leave something to be desired so they contact you?

(Peter High at 00:51:33) So this is a fantastic question, Joel. You always want to have your best information in there. And in fact, if anything, you want to err on the side of putting enough in there that some people will never contact you. There are a lot of people that operate in developing a book in saying, look, I'll give them 20% and they'll come to me for the 80%. Let me make a dramatic example.

(Peter High at 00:51:56) And the point is, look, if in the 20% I can't piece together what it is you're talking about, I can't see myself in the stories you're telling, I don't understand how the methodology that you're describing works—I'm, forget contacting you, I'm putting the book down. Right? And so what you want to do is it needs to be magnetic enough so that people are charging right through from the front cover to the back and hungry for more information. I'd like to get into the weeds of what was described here. You know, hopefully, if you've written a good book—if tens of thousands of people are going to be reading it, then most of them will never be in touch with you, and that's perfectly fine. But you want to get to the point where a lot of people are buying that book such that some number of them are going to reach out to understand what you can do for them or how to engage or just to reach out to say hello, which is in itself very gratifying.

(Peter High at 00:52:48) So, yes, I would say make sure the best stories are in there. What I always say, Joel, is the many conversations that I have—conversations like this one where an interesting person is interviewing me, the many interviews that I do speaking to 200 some global technology executives annually—that's an album that I'm building. The greatest hits go into my book. And that's the way to think about that. Make sure that you are putting absolutely the best stories possible in there because that's what sells the books.

(Peter High at 00:53:16) You want to have a lot of books going out into the world so that it's working while you're sleeping.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:21) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.