In today’s fast-changing world, traditional leadership models are falling short. Strategy decks gather dust, AI reshapes entire industries overnight, and C-suite executives are under pressure to respond faster, lead better, and stay human while doing it.
But what if the secret to great leadership isn’t in the latest framework or formula—but in the way you show up during moments of crisis?
That’s exactly what Ken Banta, founder of The Vanguard Network and author of Seeing Around Corners: C-Suite Wisdom from America’s Most Insightful Leaders, explores in his interview on the Inside Personal Growth podcast.
With over a decade of experience leading global turnarounds, mergers, and transformations—including at companies like Bausch & Lomb—Ken brings hard-earned wisdom and fresh perspective to the art of navigating uncertainty.
A New Kind of Leadership: Real, Grounded, and Human
Ken’s core belief is simple but radical: Leadership is not a theory—it’s a human discipline. In his book, he distills insights from hundreds of candid conversations with top executives through The Vanguard Network, a peer-driven leadership forum where PowerPoints are banned and real talk is the norm.
“Leadership isn’t about predicting the future perfectly,” Ken says. “It’s about having the self-awareness, agility, and trust to respond to it wisely.”
These aren’t just philosophical ideas. Ken has applied them on the front lines—guiding organizations through crises, cultural clashes, and even near-collapse. Whether it was merging two pharmaceutical giants from Sweden and the U.S., or coaching CEOs through supply chain meltdowns, Ken has consistently helped leaders navigate the unknown by focusing on what really matters: people, trust, and adaptability.
Key Lessons from the Podcast
Here are a few powerful takeaways from the episode that every leader—no matter their industry—can apply today:
1. Most Change Efforts Fail for One Reason
Top-down transformation fails when it doesn’t engage the people closest to the work. Successful change isn’t about glossy presentations—it’s about building alignment, trust, and a shared vision with those on the front lines.
2. Don’t Just Create Strategy—Create Movement
Ken argues that in our volatile world, long-term strategies can quickly become outdated. Instead, leaders need to execute with clarity, stay close to their people, and adapt fast.
“Your strategy should be your ability to execute and respond—not just a 3-year plan in a binder.”
3. Calm Is a Leadership Superpower
In a crisis, people don’t just need answers—they need to feel grounded. Ken emphasizes the power of executive presence: staying composed, consistent, and compassionate, even when everything feels like it’s falling apart.
4. Trust Isn’t Granted—It’s Earned
One of the most powerful ideas in the book is the difference between deserving trust and earning it. Ken shares that even senior leaders must earn the trust of their peers and teams by following through on their promises and showing integrity in small moments.
5. Talk Less, Listen More
At The Vanguard Network, leaders connect in small groups to solve real-world problems—without presentations, titles, or ego. These “no-slide” conversations foster true community and help leaders support one another through their biggest challenges.
Why This Book Matters Now
Seeing Around Corners isn’t a collection of leadership clichés—it’s a field guide for executives living in reality. Whether you’re navigating AI disruption, leading through layoffs, or trying to rebuild culture post-merger, this book offers real-world stories, grounded advice, and the kind of nuance most business books miss.
Ken’s writing is crisp, honest, and full of practical wisdom—from how to make decisions under pressure, to how to lead with optimism and realism at the same time.
Learn More & Connect with Ken
📘 Buy the book: Seeing Around Corners on Amazon
🌐 Visit: thevanguardnetwork.com
📲 Connect on LinkedIn:
🎧 Final Thought
If you’re a leader wondering how to keep your team aligned, calm, and resilient in an unpredictable world, this conversation with Ken Banta is a must-listen. You’ll walk away with not only deeper insight—but actionable tools to help you lead through the unknown with clarity, humility, and courage.
You may also refer to the transcripts below for the full transcription (not edited) of the interview.
[00:00.5]
Welcome to Inside Personal Growth Podcast Deep dive with us as we unlock the secrets to personal development, empowering you to thrive. Here. Growth isn't just a goal, it's a journey. Tune in, transform and take your life to the next level by listening to just one of our podcasts.
[00:20.0]
Well, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. Hey Ken, it's a pleasure having you and joining us today from New York we have Ken Banta on the line. And Ken is the CEO of the Vanguard Network. But we're going to be talking about his new book and you can hold it up there if you've got a copy called Seeing Around Corners, colon C suite Wisdom from America's Most Insightful Leaders.
[00:48.4]
So there you go. Well, Ken, again, thank you for taking his time to talk to our listeners about your book. I'm going to let the listeners know a tad bit about you. He spent decades of time in building the experience in executive suite, having aided 11 global turnarounds, mergers and transformations for major corporations including Bosch and Lom.
[01:17.4]
This is his latest work, Seeing Around Corners. It represents a remarkable collection of insights that were drawn from hundreds of hours on one, on one interviews and exclusive high performance leadership, seminars. It's a post Hill book.
[01:34.5]
We'll put a link to it. If you look at the button below here on this video, you can press on it and it'll go right to Amazon to the book. And the book is really quite unique in its structure. It's 16 quote filled chapters that provide 360 degree of the challenges facing today's business leaders.
[01:58.0]
And believe me, there's more and more of them that we're facing all the time, Ken, and I'm sure you're aware the approach is really refreshing and practical. And he views leadership development not as an abstract theory, but as a discipline built on real world experience and proven insights.
[02:16.7]
So Ken, thanks and welcome to the show. You can look Ken up. Well, again I'm going to tell my listeners, go to the bottom here. We'll have links to his website, we'll have links to his LinkedIn, so that you can get to Ken.
[02:32.6]
So Ken, you know, you don't just show up and start a company, like you have and do the kind of work that you're doing, with executives with some level of background. And you said, and I said you had turnarounds in your experience.
[02:51.2]
How did you get here and why did you want to bring this book out now? Why do you believe it's so important that leaders get this Kind of information. Yeah. Well, first of all, thanks a lot for having me on with you.
[03:06.6]
This is terrific Experience. I guess going back, in time. I actually started out, Way back, growing Up in Europe. So I was actually born in Germany with American parents. And then Over time lived in Germany and Italy and went to college in the US I went to university at the University of Oxford in England.
[03:28.2]
I was a Rhodes scholar there. I then ultimately Went to work with Time magazine for about a decade as a foreign correspondent. And then embarked On a career of corporate Turnarounds and transformations. Which was really quite A turn From journalism to be sure.
[03:48.7]
And I Think though that Looking back, all those different experiences gave me A lot of opportunities And capabilities and the journalistic one in particular to Really Look at things in a fresh way. To be able to assess situations quickly and to Also be able to Draw quick conclusions about what we needed to do.
[04:11.7]
And those Capabilities Turned out to be really valuable in the Corporate world I was in. Because where I went was not a typical stable Environment but more companies that were in serious Trouble. And so I worked with a similar team of people for almost 15 years on a sequence of train, wreck companies.
[04:31.4]
And. And It's a great way of learning how to make change happen quickly because you don't have time for it to happen slowly. And so I think A lot of my experiences from the past actually turned out to be quite useful for those tasks. And Over those years I especially learned a lot about the role of leadership in driving change.
[04:50.5]
And also, How to transform Organizations from lower performance to higher performance. And Jumping to the present. In this book, In the past eight or nine years I've been running a group called the Vanguard Network. And we really seek to apply some of those same lessons about change and leadership roles that I experienced in the corporate world.
[05:13.9]
But doing it with a bunch of Members of these Networks that we've created of senior people. And all of those experiences, Really came to be distilled in this book. Seeing Around Corners. Good question. Why now?
[05:29.7]
I think really just a matter of serendipity. I think it's because we've had so many People in our organizations saying wouldn't it be great to distill some of that learning and knowledge that they've heard in the various situations that we've created, wouldn't that be useful for others?
[05:45.4]
As well. So, finally we pulled the trigger on developing this probably a little less than a year ago. And. And like you said, I think it's somewhat unusual book in that it's not a bunch of chapters, that are kind of didactic and telling you what you need to do. They're much more distilling the insights of People who have been in some very, very interesting situations as leaders and taking their insights and bringing them, to a much wider audience.
[06:10.7]
The other thing I think we've hopefully. I think it's good. Ken, not to interrupt you, but the reality is you interviewed all these people, but you also have this professional group which is the Vanguard Network, where all of these leaders come. So you had them at your kind of disposal.
[06:27.1]
I have a question for you though. You know, look, you. You were. You said these very dysfunctional companies that you worked in, you had to be able to figure out things quickly. Why is it that most change management, initiatives fail?
[06:43.9]
Well, you know, I think they fail because they don't really enlist the people at the working level in the change process. And so they, they often are sort of pro forma efforts that look great on paper, but they don't really engage the people who matter.
[07:00.1]
And it's sort of human nature to go for the things that are easier to do. So it's always easier to put together charts and diagrams and flowcharts around how a merger ought to occur. It's a lot harder to convey the right behaviors and the right way of thinking to put, teams together.
[07:20.9]
And especially when it's mergers and integrations. But you know, almost any change activity, people tend to get very tribal. They tend to see it as us and them. And so one of the challenges is how do you get people to see it as kind, of we and we.
[07:36.4]
How do you. How do you create a sense of unity instead of, opposition, or one of those things or just a we period, you know? Yeah, exactly. You know, I think that Richard Barrett's work is phenomenal and I was trained in that. And you know, you look at the.
[07:53.4]
You go back to kind of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, or you go back to who is a leader serving. Right. In other words, the ever, Greenleaf. Right. So. And I think those are important. And I think in your book, the title is.
[08:10.6]
We were talking about Rita McGrath. You know, same kind of title. But you're somebody who's had to see around corners pretty much all the time. When you were in these shipwreck of companies is what you said. Can you share a specific moment in your career, when you wish you had seen around a corner that blindsided you and what this taught you about your own leadership skills?
[08:41.1]
Well, there are a lot of examples of where I didn't see around corners, but probably one, that was important but at the end worked out pretty well is I, was involved in the merger of, a company called Pharmacia Corporation of Sweden and the Upjohn Company of the US which back in the day was the leading American pharmaceutical company.
[09:01.9]
But it had fallen on hard times because it didn't have a great pipeline and it had some other issues. So anyway, these two companies came together and we. What I didn't realize initially was the full degree of cultural differences between the two organizations, that were on several levels.
[09:20.2]
One of them was business culture. So the way they did things was different, but they were also different national and local cultures. And so, you had the Upjohn Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan with all of those, qualities. And you had Pharmacea Corporation of Sweden.
[09:35.5]
And what I didn't fully appreciate is the degree to which those differences were really, kind of deeply ingrained and also caused tremendous, amounts of friction. So it took some time. And, I worked together with, a new and incoming CEO on this to do what we were talking about earlier, which was how do you create that tribalism into more of a unified approach?
[09:59.0]
And several ways we went at it, but one of the most important was to just unify people around a bigger issue. And so the bigger issue was, if we didn't pull together, as they say, if we didn't hang together, we were going to hang separately. This merger was going to go down the drain.
[10:16.9]
And I think we managed to convince people that they had to set aside these internal, differences in order to have the company survive and for them to survive in the company. But, it took a lot of work. Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting you mentioned a name and I'm going to relate back because just prior to you coming on this podcast, I was speaking with Meredith Parfett and the family that owned, up John was Parfette family.
[10:43.1]
And I'm very good friends with Beau and his father, who has a company in Michigan. And so the reality is, is that I know the story. So, it, was just serendipitous that I literally hung up from A call from Beau's wife, prior to us getting on.
[11:03.9]
Now look, the Vanguard Network, you founded this and you said unfettered exchange of ideas through talking, listening and sharing. No PowerPoints allowed. And we all live in this, such a digital age now. Everything's on.
[11:19.6]
You got AI, you got all this stuff happening. So why do you think these simple human interactions have become so rare and so powerful? I think I know the answer, but I'm going to let you give me the answer. Well, you know, I think it does depend a bit on what group it is we're talking about.
[11:38.9]
And it may be that for people at a different level in an organization, it might work better to have conferences and people, presenting topics as a speaker. But I think when we're looking at people who are CEOs or C suite level individuals, which are most of our members, I think this group is really actually eager for something very different, which is a kind of peer to peer discussion around leadership topics.
[12:10.1]
And it's not that they're just shooting the breeze. I think they're learning from each other about situations. They're hearing how someone else solved a very complicated, difficult problem, say with their board or with people they work with or with the external environment. And so I think that aspect of it is very important.
[12:28.8]
You can't do that in a conference or a speaker driven event. The other thing, that I think is really valuable is the networking that they are able to achieve. And you know, it's possible to do that at a big event and gather around the proverbial water cooler and talk to people.
[12:46.0]
But really we make the entire event about talking to people. So they're sitting at small tables or virtual rooms if it's a digital discussion. And they're basically talking with each other for 45 minutes or for a half day. And I think, it sounds very simple, but, it's not that simple to make it happen.
[13:03.5]
And on the other hand it's not that often that it occurs. Well, what you're doing is you're building community. And then I would assume that these same people are coming back again and again and again. So they're also building friendships. And one of the things is that in today's world of loneliness, great, we can all get on a podcast or we can go do a PowerPoint or we could do this or we could do that.
[13:25.6]
But when do we actually break bread with somebody and become a friend? And then if you really needed something Somebody would be there. That's a true community. And I would say the way that the Vanguard Network is designed is to truly build true community, which is the kind of community that I'm talking about.
[13:44.4]
Would that be an observation? I'd be correct. Yeah, pretty much. You know, I mean whether they become friends or very good colleagues, I guess it's just a matter of semantics maybe. But what happens for sure is that after a period of time, I think these individuals become pretty comfortable picking up the phone, or the zoom, after these meetings and checking in to talk about stuff.
[14:06.6]
And we've had a number of situations where one person was leading a role and they basically identified their successor through sitting next to them at dinner at one of our events. Saved everyone a lot of time and effort. There's also lots of examples, where people really decided to work through a problem that they had in their role, during the source, during the course of one of the sessions that we have with the people at their table.
[14:35.4]
And we actually have a session sometimes called Solve My Problem. And very interesting approach where we get people sitting next to each other to spend 10 to 15 minutes talking about a problem that's on their mind with the person next to them and then get a little bit of feedback and then hear from that individual what they would do in this situation and then turn tables and do the same thing.
[14:54.7]
Very simple technique, technique, but it allows people to, you know, as you can imagine, really learn concrete, step forward and at the same time develop a relationship with somebody. Maybe you don't know that. Well. That goes back to the old Native American tradition. When you pass the talking stick, let the ground and let people talk.
[15:13.3]
And the reality is that's when you can relate and relate back to them what they heard. And then if you're asking for a solution, hopefully find a solution. Sometimes you just want to talk about the problem. You know we talk about guys always trying to solve our wives problems and they said they weren't looking for a solution, they just wanted somebody to hear them.
[15:36.7]
I think that part is so true and I think sometimes people just need to be heard because it's lonely at the top and they do want to talk to somebody about what's going on. And, and this brings me to this question. You said you write that strategy is somewhat overrated, that having a three year strategy can be meaningless in today's world.
[15:58.0]
Well, we're seeing that now. Yes. How should leaders balance long term vision? With the agility needed for rapid change. I just had a gentleman who wrote book on innovation. He's a professor at Michigan's, University of Michigan.
[16:16.8]
And he said, look, if today and under our environment, both economically, politically, educationally, things that are happening, if you can't learn to live in ambiguity, you're going to have a really big challenge. And in our times, while all of these institutions are being shaken up, there is no new form yet.
[16:41.4]
So that ambiguity is that form. Would you agree with, this professor's statement? Yeah, I think so. First of all, in terms of that situation of what do you do about strategy these days? I do think, not that strategy isn't important in certain ways, but I think it's sometimes been overrated as something that people need to spend a lot of time on.
[17:04.8]
And as you know, there are some corporations that have entire strategy departments that work on strategy year round. And I'm not sure that that's always necessary. Perhaps. I think what's more important is have a clear sense of where you're going and then being able to adapt, and change quickly, as you move through the world toward that goal.
[17:28.5]
And that's different than having a very structured strategy. It's more having a set of of approaches to problems, which is a different way of thinking. And I also have found, in my own experience that the people who often know the most about what you need to do and where you need to be going and in fact how you see around corners to get there, are the people who are at the working level because they're the ones who are in touch with the customers.
[17:55.1]
They're the people who are in touch with reality. They're the ones who are in touch with the manufacturing work. And you know, these are pretty smart people. And they have usually very very important insights on the way things really are. There's a book by Ram Sharan, Well, he's a strategy, but really a kind of directional guru, called Confronting Reality.
[18:17.3]
And I think there's probably nothing more important than truly confronting reality, meaning understanding what the true state of things is and also how it's changing. And those people at the front lines, often know more about that than anyone else. Again, during many of these, in fact all of these turnarounds and.
[18:35.7]
And transformations that I was involved in, we made a point of talking directly with the salespeople and the people in manufacturing and the other people at the front lines to get their advice about what's going on and what's needed, had two effects, you know, one is you learn a lot. And secondly, they start to have a lot more respect for leadership because they're being asked and they're being heard.
[18:56.1]
Yeah, exactly. That's. I think, you know, this interaction that needs to occur, like what you're doing inside your group. Now. One of the things that you discuss is the importance of realistic optimism versus blind optimism.
[19:12.2]
In the book, how can leaders cultivate this balance, especially when they need to inspire confidence during uncertain times? I mean, we're talking about people. I was listening to some of the stories on the news. How do I even predict my shipments or my, raw materials at this particular point?
[19:31.6]
Because I don't know if I can get those raw materials to make this process product that I'm making into the future. I mean, that's a real problem. And the question is, am I going to find alternative sources in other countries to be able to get these materials and all that kind of stuff?
[19:48.8]
It really comes down to somebody working through all of the things they can do, but also having someone else they can share it with to talk about it and say, well, what are you guys doing? Or what have you found? Or is there a resource? Right. Yeah.
[20:04.5]
So I think at the higher levels of leadership, it's remarkable, how little interaction of that kind people sometimes have. So we find that these interactions that we create are really valuable for that reason. You would think that a CEO spends all their time out there talking with fascinating people and learning about which directions to go that they hadn't thought about.
[20:25.4]
But the reality is they're spending an awful lot of their time with the board. They're spending a lot of time with the accounting firm. They're spending a lot of time with their own team. They're dealing with internal problems, problems, and then they go home. And so the opportunity they have to interact with peers is actually a lot more limited than you might think.
[20:40.8]
So we find that, the Vanguard, forums and other networking activities that we carry out are really important for that purpose. It's also, though, I think very, important in very complex, chaotic times like today, for your.
[20:59.7]
Your strategy in some ways to be execution, meaning that you don't spend too much time worrying about, you know, following a particular strategy. Your strategy is to execute around the immediate problems. And the other quality that I think is really, important is, you know, where qualities are agility and adaptability because those themselves, in a sense become your strategy.
[21:21.1]
You don't know exactly where things are going, but you've got to have a team and a mindset that is ready to pivot and to adapt and to change. And that's hard to instill in a very big organization. You know, big organizations tend to be like, you know, aircraft carriers.
[21:38.3]
They tend to be moving, you know, in one direction. It takes them a mile to stop. But the challenge for a leader in a place like that is to really turn this kind of organization into much more of a fighter, pilot type mentality. Very, very good point you make. And that brings me to this question.
[21:57.9]
You have a section under Crisis Decision Making where you've asked questions and the book covers eight stages of crisis extensively. Now, you could say that some companies today are experiencing this crisis.
[22:13.3]
They can't get their materials, they can't ship on time, they've got issues, even getting things in from, let's say, China or other places. When you're advising executives in a crisis mode, which you have done, you've done it many times, what's the single most important thing they need to remember when everything really kind of feels out of control?
[22:37.2]
I mean, once you do it, it's almost like a domino's effect. It's like, okay, one thing went, the next thing went, the next thing went, the next thing's right. And you see a whole supply chain just going down the tubes. And you're saying, what am I going to do? Well, I, you know, I think if you are the, the senior person in the room, you're probably your most important role is to stay calm, which is kind of hard to do when everything is piling up around you.
[23:05.7]
But really that, that, that quality, then enables other people to steady themselves and start to think through how to be agile, how to adapt to a situation. Whereas, if people are in a state of hysteria, which is really what often happens in a crisis, you really do start to lose control of your story.
[23:26.4]
And so I do think that one of the most important things that a leader can do is to bring that aura of calm. And the way you do that is not by what you say, but how you behave. So it's a matter of simply collecting yourself, and having what's called executive presence.
[23:43.7]
Being able to demonstrate that you don't know any more than anyone else does in the room, but you're confident that in the right way this team can make it. And that's perhaps, sometimes that's the distinguishing factor between really good leaders and not so good leaders is, all those things become more visible in a crisis.
[24:05.3]
And I think it's the great leaders who are able to summon that kind of, sense of calm in the midst of chaos. Well, and that reminds me a lot of, you know, when there's a triage kind of situation, right? People are saying, okay, we're going to leave these people because they're going to die anyway, and we're going to go on and move with the ones that we can, pull from the wreckage, whatever it might be, or the earthquake or whatever.
[24:31.4]
And one of your contributors mentioned that, says if you don't make the decision, you have made the decision. Right? And I think decision making in times like this is such an important role that they play.
[24:50.1]
How do you coach leaders who are paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong decision? Because anybody could enter that situation in triage and go, oh, darn, I could have saved that person or I could have saved that person. Or maybe. But they went and had to make a decision to pass by something that's gotta be pretty tough to do really well, I think, you know, for starters, fortunately, most corporate crises are not as dire as that in terms.
[25:18.1]
I get it, I use it. It's an extreme example, but. It's an extreme example. But the reason that I think, you know, it's in most situations, I think the best advice is to not be paralyzed by the need to make the best decision and instead to make a decision, which is kind of what you were just saying, and that it's okay to make mistakes.
[25:36.9]
I think that, you know, for example, in the current environment of disruption, at best, and chaos perhaps is really what's going on with the markets and, and the, and world trade and other factors. You know, one, one response is to just wait and see.
[25:52.2]
And that's an easy decision to make. It's probably not the best one. Most of the time the best idea is to keep, acting with the knowledge you have at hand because it'll help you continue to keep moving forward. You'll probably make some mistakes, but you've got to get used to that. And you know, perfection is the enemy of movement really.
[26:12.3]
So that's probably the most important thing, I think, to bear in mind as a leader, that you're not going to get judged negatively, on making some mistakes, but you'll probably get judged pretty harshly. If you do nothing, you know, this, that question and your answer, brought me back to a memory of me working with a gentleman by the name of Larry Wilson.
[26:33.3]
Wilson learning he was Minnesota, you might remember Larry. And when we would do, workshops with people, we'd have this game and the board would light up and there'd be two teams, right? And it was really about. And the countdown would occur on one side.
[26:50.3]
You'd have a million dollars and it would start to go down. And it was really about how quickly people could make a decision versus being frozen, right? And what they found is when you put your foot on the squares and the buzzer went off, right?
[27:06.2]
It was like, oh, now I know where the landmine is. But I needed to find the landmine before I could actually get to the other side. And all my money ran down, right? And I thought it was just such an exceptional game because it taught not being afraid to make the decision to step on the landmine so that you could see where the landmine was, so you could chart a path across that.
[27:31.3]
And your book discusses failing fast with projects, but being slow and conscientious, with people and culture. How do leaders navigate the paradox in practice? Because what I just said, you know, it's certainly not contrary, but it is about failing fast.
[27:52.7]
So, you know, one of the people we work with very closely is a guy named Benjamin Bargetzi, who is a interesting combination of psychologist, and business leader, and coach and advisor, out of Switzerland. And Benjamin, has a lot of insights about, neurology and behavioral, psychology around why we do what we do.
[28:16.8]
And also, certain things that are inherited, from our distant past that sometimes are not a great asset. And, one of them is, the tendency to, run from problems, right?
[28:33.3]
It goes back to when there was a dinosaur in your life or a. An animal that might eat you. And so the instinctive thing is to run from danger. But, in reality, what you need to do today, is to, on one hand, realize that you need to fail quickly around a particular problem personally.
[28:55.8]
Not run from it, but confront it. And then the other thing is to also slow down and think about certain things and give them time. And those are tendencies that are probably contrary to our kind of inherited, genetic makeup. And so I guess what Ben's saying is that you can achieve a lot by having a greater understanding of some of these underlying, factors in your makeup so that you can respond to them in an effective way.
[29:21.7]
It's kind of an area of you know, in the world of psychology, of self awareness, and when you're aware of how you're wired, you'll be able to respond better. So my own feeling is that CEOs and other leaders would probably do well to spend a lot more time learning about neurology and human psychology because it'll help them understand themselves, better and it'll help them for sure understand the people around them better as leaders.
[29:51.1]
Yeah. And the whole concept we just talked about is a built in neural pathway that usually pretty strong in most people. And it's the fight or flight. So the reality is that people will say okay, I'm going to fight or I'm going to flee.
[30:08.1]
I'm going to run the other direction from this. And that is a hard wiring in most human beings as a protection mechanism. So look, we have entered a whole new era here now. And this hasn't been that long, but it's been explosive and it's the AI era and technology as AI being disruption.
[30:32.0]
You talk about disruption in the book. What human leadership qualities do you believe will become even more valuable in this next decade to come, especially with AI as it's continuing and now AGI, to actually exponentially have a huge effect on our productivity on a workforce that many now could be released from.
[31:06.7]
Where do you stand with all this and what are the people at the Vanguard Group saying about all this? Well, you know, I think first of all no one really knows. Right. It's right in the midst of the transformation. And it's like, I'm sure, you know, people who are in the midst of the beginning, of the industrial age had no idea really what was happening for the long term.
[31:26.0]
They just saw what was going on around them. But that said, I think it's got some analogies. You know, AI is a terrific tool. I think it's going to free people up in many ways to spend time on even more creative things like how to utilize AI or how to refine something that comes out of AI.
[31:44.7]
It may well displace people from tasks like let's say market research where previously you had a team of people who were doing nothing but delving into past experience or what other brands have been doing. And now you can unleash AI on that same question and get the answer very quickly.
[32:03.4]
But I think the jury's out as to whether this means that all these people are going to be permanently displaced from work or they're going to be displaced from this to take on something new. And when you think back to the Industrial Revolution, there was a lot of hardship and disruption that was caused for sure, you know, as the transition occurred between, you know, agricultural and rural economies to industrial economies.
[32:28.2]
On the other hand, a lot of people ended up finding that they had, jobs and work that was possibly more fulfilling, or at least not any less fulfilling than what they were doing before. It did, however, come together with, problems of urban life and crime and poverty.
[32:45.1]
So a mixed picture, but I don't think the world ended with the Industrial Revolution. I think it evolved. And so I'm imagining with AI that we're just going to see an evolution of, how society operates and what people do day to day.
[33:01.9]
It might be that we'll have what some people predict, which is, a kind of vast age of, non work activity that you and I are going to be released to spend time at a pool, reading a book. I don't know. I mean, I have a feeling that for people who want to be doing stuff, there'll still be plenty to do, but it's going to be very different.
[33:21.1]
So, you know, there's always, I guess the only thing that makes me think that's likely is you look back through history and every, really transformational moment in history was greeted at the time as an, as a catastrophe. And then, you know, things carried on and human life evolved in a kind of new way.
[33:38.3]
But it evolved. Yeah. And I agree with you. I don't think this is going to be catastrophic. I know some people fear it. They think it's going to take over. I think we'll work hand in hand with AI and robots and all kinds of things that we don't see today.
[33:54.6]
I mean, look, look in our military today, between Ukraine and Russia, and the amount of drones that are being used to actually fight. We didn't, you and I grew up in here. There weren't drones. Nobody knew what the hell a drone was. We didn't have an idea. But every area of technology has a new way of making things evolve.
[34:15.4]
Now, in that case, my example, hopefully less lives will be lost as a result of using drones. But the reality is, it is what it is. So look, Ken, you've facilitated hundreds of these exchanges with top executives.
[34:33.5]
And I think our listeners might want to know what's the most surprising or counterintuitive insight about leadership that's emerged from the conversations that you've had, obviously this is about seeing around corners. So you've probably got several you could report on.
[34:52.1]
But give us two or three things you think you see around corners today that a leader listening right now off of LinkedIn would want to take note of and potentially start doing something about.
[35:09.6]
Yes, so one, example certainly is, you know, looking into the future. And you know, there's a big industry out there of modeling future events and thinking about what'll happen. And what was instructive to me is that in in a similar sort of exchange that we actually conducted back when I was at one of the companies I was in sharing plow, we had a futurologist, come in and talk with us.
[35:37.1]
And he said, I'll tell you something that is sort of contrary to my profession, he said, which is that almost anything, you are told, is a future prediction and where things are going to go based on sort of what we know today is almost always going to be wrong.
[35:52.9]
And he gave as an example, the period prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which I happened to cover as a journalist when I was at Time magazine. Up to that point, no one was predicting this. They were predicting an endless cold, war.
[36:08.0]
They were predicting all kinds of spinoff problems from a cold war. No one was predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of Eastern Europe and the rise of what turned out to be jihadist, groups in the Middle East. It was not predicted by anyone.
[36:23.1]
So his point was, as a top leader, when you hear people telling you about where things are heading, be aware that very likely the right answer is different. And so that kind of leads to the seeing around corners element, which is, to not take conventional, wisdom at face value very often because it's almost always going to be wrong.
[36:44.9]
So I think that's one important, element. I'd say another comes back to where to look for insight. And you know, it's sort of that assumed wisdom that, you know, the leadership team around you is going to give you real insights into the organization.
[37:04.1]
They're going to be sort of the right people to go to for thinking through future strategy. But the problem with the people around you typically, even when you do your best to avoid this, is that there's a kind of group think element. And there's also, if you're the leader of tendency to tell you what you want to hear or to Hear from them what you've told them.
[37:24.6]
And so, you end up in an echo chamber. And so I think another big learning is to get outside of that echo chamber. It's not that the leadership team around you is invaluable. It's simply that when it comes to fresh thinking to again being able to see around corners, to be able to decide where to take things, you really need to listen to others.
[37:44.8]
It might be people several levels down in your organization or to our discussion here. It may be talking to peers in other organizations who can speak freely with you and share honest opinions about things and bring fresh points of view to your attention.
[38:00.5]
Not necessarily about the state of the world, but perhaps how to work with your board or how to understand yourself better. And those are rarely, insights that you're going to gain from the people who work for you directly. So those are at least two good examples. It's a good one. I remember a quote recently from Sarah McArthur, who works with Marshall Goldsmith and they co authored a book with who's the guy that used to run Boeing and then Ford.
[38:28.4]
He was involved in it as well. Oh, at Magali, Mulally and Francis Hesselblaum, the gal that ran the leader, that ran the Girl Scouts and grew it into 750,000 basic volunteers.
[38:48.8]
She used to be good friends with Peter Drucker. And this quote sat in my mind because Drucker said to her, and this was a throwaway quote with an interviewer and it was, when you look out the window, what is it that you see that I don't see, that you could actually make a difference and change something to that effect.
[39:10.2]
Right? When you look out the window, when you see around the corner, when you do the kind of things it is, what is it that you think you could do about that problem or that issue? Right? And I think Drucker at the time was just like made. He just, you know, made it up.
[39:26.3]
It became kind of a pretty famous quote because then Frances was using it all the time. And she'd say that every time someone would come to sit down with her, that's the first question she'd ask him. And I think those thought provoking questions that you ask at the Vanguard Network are really important.
[39:45.0]
And I think that is what stimulates conversation, for people to think out of the box, to actually be looking around the corners. So if you were to sit down with your younger self when you started the Vanguard Network, what piece of wisdom from the book would you share and why, what would it be, Ken?
[40:07.0]
Because you've seen everything. You've been with hundreds of CEOs, done turnarounds, you're a reporter, very interesting background in how you got here. If you were to look at all that DNA and put it all together, say here's the one thing that I could say that I think could help our listeners today that they could take away.
[40:28.0]
What would that be? Well, I mean, it's hard to distill all these things into one thing, but at least one thing out of a number of things that I would identify. That is quite an important nuance, but I think it's really important is that people talk all the time about how you need to have trust in people and we have to be granted trust, or you have to gain trust of people, people.
[40:57.6]
And I think that the really important insight that One of the CEOs I worked with, Fred Hassan, delivered was it's not about getting trust or being or deserving trust, it's earning trust.
[41:13.0]
And the insight on earning trust is that you don't, you don't gain trust until you've earned it. So for example, there are often people in a management team who say, well, you ought to trust me to do things because I have a certain role. I'm the vice president of this or the executive vice president of that.
[41:30.8]
And the point there is that you still have to earn trust to be, to be trusted. So until that happens, the CEO or someone else is going to be watching very closely and they may well do things that you feel are second guessing you because they're not yet convinced that you've earned their trust.
[41:50.6]
Once you have, they'll treat you that way. But it's a really important distinction because a lot of organizations I think, end up going in the wrong direction because people just assume that they should have trust or they should be trusted to do things and off they go. So it's an interesting one.
[42:06.2]
And the same goes for a CEO in relation to a board. A lot of CEOs I think believe that the board should trust them automatically and give them leeway. But probably wiser decision to say I'm going to earn your trust and when I have, then you'll want to let me go my own way because I'll be on the same wavelength as you and you'll know that I will do what I said.
[42:25.5]
And how do you earn Trust, you know, we all know, or we ought to know. The answer to that is really doing what you said. That is a really important point you made around trust. Because as you were speaking, I was thinking, hey, I remember interviewing Stephen R Covey for Trust and Inspire.
[42:42.8]
And, the title of the book is Trust and Inspire. How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others. And you're exactly right. It's around trust. As soon as you build that trust, you can actually build, basically a great leader, another great leader, which is what leaders should be wanting to do.
[43:03.1]
They should be wanting to build, other leaders within the company. So you bring up a really important point. Well, if you would, Ken, hold up the book. It's Seen Around Corners, and it's Ken Banta. And as we said, we're going to have a link to that book below here.
[43:20.9]
We'll also have a link to, Ken's website, and it's the Vanguard Group. You can type it in and you'll be able to get there and learn more about Ken. Thank you for your time today. Your wisdom, your thoughts and your explanation of how people now could kind of position themselves more to work in these times of ambiguity and uncertainty and actually navigate through them successfully, and come out the other side a winner.
[43:51.5]
Thanks so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me. This was great fun. Enjoyed it. Take care, Ken. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast on Inside Personal Growth. We appreciate your support.
[44:06.6]
And for more information about new podcasts, Please go to InsidePersonalGrowth.com or any of your favorite channels to listen to our podcast. Thanks again and have a wonderful day.
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