Speaker A And how they how they see this and how they came about it. And what I'd like to do is maybe ask them each individually one question.
Speaker B Which is hang on.
Speaker A What caught your attention Joss, regarding a breakfast organization that made sense to you and how did that come about?
Speaker C I got this job being CEO of K Type Acceptance and I grew up as marketing sales which really you get by on kind of your knowledge on marketing field, which is basically all of BS and stuff like that. When I all of a sudden had this notion that I was responsible for 550 people's lives and careers in an organization. I was totally taken aback that I had been successful in getting a job and was absolutely unprepared to do anything. So when I heard about somebody having an interesting theory or whatever it was, I got together and was George Hardening and he gave his presentation, which made a lot of sense, seemed to bring order into my PLA client. He gave me the theory of bureaucracy to read which to this day I still recommend to people and everybody thinks they want to punish them. But I think it's great book. It made imminent sense to me about the principles also got things so I was desperate. I really felt I was totally incompetent and I wanted to have something that helped me. And this to me made sense. Like it seemed like a logical thing. That was in 1988. April, I lost a job in January. I signed your retirement on May. We restructured on September 6, 1988.
Speaker A Just was there a particular business problem you had sort of precipitated business or.
Speaker C Was you much problem? One of the things I did originally is invite everybody to coffee with President Muffins were pretty good and what I heard was 20 years, 25 years and a lot of kind of things that came clear that they wanted to contribute on more but there wasn't a space, there wasn't a room, but it wasn't the party was. And then I looked through the management ranks and I saw a lot of people who were there on experience and had a certain way of intimidating sometimes staff, whatever this and very 50s type male dominated organization. That really wasn't what I intended to run to sit in my office with eight to ten people every morning for three months, after a while you get a real sense of one people love to do more. They really would like to kind of contribute to something or feel better about coming around the corner and doing that. That was an important right to say. There was a lot of untapped potential. And so then the kind of principles that Alien had described in the book and research and et cetera, it really gave me the kind of sense of the trouble was on the top, it wasn't at the bottom. And from a business point of view I saw lots of opportunities in the marketplace. This was not a slow growing marketplace credit card business in the late 80s. If you weren't making money or if you weren't expanding, then you were previously. This was a fairly easy market. Wasn't like a rocket science to do something with it. So from a business point of view, in that end, I saw potential. From the organizational point of view, I saw that we weren't able to change or release that energy to take the opportunity.
Speaker A How did you build the enthusiasm? How did you get that going?
Speaker C I think just for me to talk to people and be approachable and walk around and be in the cafeteria and stand in line just like anybody else and have lunch and breakfast and all those kind of different things, all of a sudden they had a connection. And I think it's just my personality that just basically kind of built a trust. They said, oh, this is a different person. And I think that was a big part of I would describe. For me, this was an awakening. I became from an adolescence and adult. All of a sudden I became accountable for what I had to do and I took it serious. And so it was like an interesting transformation because I was just basically playing with BP marketing before this and that, which is dabbled now here, it felt like a serious business. I really had to do something. And so I felt when I looked in the eyes of people in the floor, I said, I'm going to get you. I want you to be enthusiastic every day. That became kind of a mission of our management team, I felt. I felt that was a really kind of great thing to do. And the rest really all the success of the financial things or whatever it is, was just the best way to stop. Once you were taking off, it was almost impossible to want to get a very successful organization. So it was an interesting transformation for me.
Speaker A I'm sure people would like to know how you started this all off. Josh, you remember the first three or four weeks, couple of months, how did you play?
Speaker C I think that basically I was a sponge. I had more conversations on more kind of different things going on at the same time. Got a lot of advice for people like don't go to the customer you need a year before you kind of can go to the dealers that may entire deals eat you alive and all sorts of things which are probably ignored. I basically meant at it with an enthusiasm that up until that time I had never taken a risk. I was just going into the pool and I was going to swim and go by. What I felt was naturally just getting information. And it really was like an intuitive kind of plunge and then getting structure and way channel and all that was a very good way in my kind of own mind to say I can deal with this in a way so that now everything becomes a small unit, level one job. Or when I look back, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. But it suited me and it really made me grow up fast. Was there some more hanging fruit that you went after? Initially, yes. I knew the card business. I came from Rock, Canada, so I was familiar with cards. You know that there's one driver in cards, which is new cards. 90% of the new spending in the next year was generated by the cards you put on the last twelve months. It's like model part that was done. So I figured out a way to convince the dealers we would be dead moment in time. Never allow anybody else to go to the store, to have hostesses in the store and sign up people's cards. We pay for the whole thing. Previously we forced them to pay for it. Said no. I'll take that. And I think we signed up like 500,000 cards within the first year, which is like next year that meant we had 20% broke. It was one of those things. I think we put on 4 million cards in four years. So the engine was just prime and that was done without anybody being reorganized or done. It was just like a technical thing. I knew organizing, making sure that I covered my behind on cash flow. I just needed immediately after solves. Because that's how you survive. This is part of business. You can't talk about all this wonderful stuff you're going to do and then in the meantime, the board members say, like first quarter not that good, it's second quarter worse. That's just reality. I know how to get results. I have a record and I prove that very bad manager. But I love the work. I love being a CEO and getting the result and doing it by hooking, by proving, by practicing everything. Because it's fun, it's really interesting. And I don't give a look. Board of directors has to give an agenda. I'm just barrel truth because that's what I believe I'm hired for and what I should be doing for employees and customers and everybody in investors always. That's why I get fired, because some stakeholders, like owners don't like happy run the business. Certainly by delegating as much as I do in the regular city kind of sense. That's very friendly to the law of people who just want to control.
Speaker A My way up.
Speaker C I don't employ myself. I like to get back into honestly, I find I try it. I enjoy I've seen more people grow up with me to accept experience. Yeah. That to me is much more legacy for my bank because that I find fascinating. When people speak to me and say that was the best job, that's the biggest problem.
Speaker B Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A Well, that's an interesting point. Here's another question. For you talking to a brand new CEO, guys who's been appointed. And he said, well, I heard a little bit about this requisite program.
Speaker C Based on your experience. I totally agree with the notion of showing how an organization can model, but I really kind of want to know if the person really wants to change, do they really commit it, or is it just a nice thing to do so that I can show I have activity and then really do whatever they want to anyway? I really would want to know and understand the person and say, is this person, like, for real? Or is it just a nice conversation to have? And they can say to the board members of and give it the label, which is what I think a lot of people do. So I wouldn't want to kind of say anything more than saying, well, there are resources. Here are some people that help you. Here are some people you can talk to that have done this. But I really test the person to see what kind of result they have. Because once you start and once you do it, if you don't do it right, why bother?
Speaker A So those are the kind of things.
Speaker C You should be talking about. Yeah. I really think you have to go in this with conviction, with courage, with assistance, because everybody in the organization will find an excuse of why this particular part of the TV doesn't fly for them or this. You have to be very stubborn. Production But I had to hold on. Five years of assaults by my own people, and they were dear to me, whatever it is. They all believed they were operating at one level higher than they were. And they would constantly beg me to make them the vice president or director or whatever it was. And I kept saying no. And to this day, I think people still think I was wrong. Of course. I think I'm right.
Speaker B Don't you have the kind of thing.
Speaker C It is a very crucial you have to hold on to the integrity of the system as soon as you start compromising and all things you really are foregoing the opportunity to make the organization. What do you think made Rob and you guys different from many other guys having the same positions that have seen this theory? Really say this is the way it works, but still they don't go ahead and pull the implement and what is it that they don't have or you do have? I think that your personal kind of style and who you are has a lot to do with how you implement and how you do things, because you have to be comfortable as you putting your person in front of an organization saying, I'm going to tell you we can go there, and there's different ways of getting there. I certainly don't think that I would recommend anybody to do exactly the way.
Speaker A I did or anybody else.
Speaker C Because if you're not comfortable in your skin, then as a leader, people will say, that person isn't really talking to us from their heart or from their passion or anything like that, and they're not comfortable. So you have to find your own comfort level. I think that that's a very personal kind of decision. And you can't kind of be that good an actor. I think in front of your organization by every day. You're there to fake it. You have to be real. You have to be the same person in your church, in your home. So I think it depends on who it is. And I would say for a large bank and what Rob has done, I think it's quite remarkable because bankers by definition are low risk people. That's just part of the business. That's what they're taught. So I think that's quite remarkable.
Speaker A Any question out there?
Speaker B I'm Jerry Grace. I like to make an observation and then ask a question. About six years ago when I was asked by the CEO, Ford whether this concept works for all companies or not, and what was the differentiator around those companies I've worked with that have been successful and those not? I told them I'd have to think about it. The next day I said, I have five answers to add to your three. The first is the CEO has to value leadership. In the UK, they call it band management. If you don't value leadership. I think you've all been implying that. I don't think it happens. Second is you said they have to be intellectually curious because this is not a walk in the park. The third is that they have to value all of the behaviors of leadership, of adding value, because if they don't model it, it's not seen. The fourth is that they have to be prepared to make the investment in the systems and the training and stick with it. And the fifth, which is often the hardest, is that they have to be prepared to hold their subordinate managers accountable for being effective managers. That's often the stickler, I find. Now, the question is, my belief is that you folks are in the vast minority. I believe there's probably no more than ten or 15% of senior executives that satisfy the criteria as you do. And it's my belief that it will not be until the Mark Van Cleese of the world have demonstrated to the boards that this is the only way to ensure the ethical increasing of shareholder value, that it has to be the boards that will insist and require that the CEOs implement it. I don't think that the CEOs in general are the clients that we need to convince. I think it has to be the board. That's what I want to pose as.
Speaker C A question that's going to take another century. Look, it's a collegial board. There might be one person who says, I believe, how do you convince other people without evidence. So I think you call it start from the other side, which is get CEOs in place and division heads with superior results so that people say it's competitive advantage to get somebody who influences because that's the only way that a board that doesn't have knowledge of personally doing this will be convinced that this is a better recruitment process to get there. Also, I mean, I've seen boards and I have no belief that they'll ever come to enlightened decision like this without being forced to.
Speaker B 85% of CEOs still will not embrace it.
Speaker C Says it's too hard, and that's fair and that's life. So the 15% of us have a marketplace.
Speaker B Purple SA.