Why New Leaders Fall Into the 90 Day Trap with Former AAA CEO Bob Darbelnet

0:00Within about 30 days of having been appointed to the CEO role in an organization that was pretty new to me, at my first board meeting, one of the board members asked me, So, Bob, what are your thoughts on the future direction of the company? And my answer was, I don't know yet. I'm still listening and learning. And fortunately, the chairman of the board at the time immediately said, Bob, that's a good answer. Let's move on. Welcome to the Revenue Builders Podcast, a weekly show featuring B2B sales leaders and executives. Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and force management co-founder John Kaplan,

0:40John Kaplan: the show takes guests in the barrel, behind the scenes with the people who've been there, done that, and seen the results. Revenue Builders covers best practices for scaling and growing your business while sharing the pitfalls to avoid.

0:57John Kaplan: Welcome to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast. I'm John Kaplan, and I'm here with my co-host, John McMahon. Today's guest started as a law student driving a road service truck in Quebec. He took the part-time job to help pay the bills, and he kept working his way up the ladder. He became CEO of the local charter and then CEO globally of AAA, one of the most trusted brands in America. When new CEOs started calling Bob Darbonet and asking what he wished he'd known before taking the job, he jotted down a few notes. The list grew to 92 topics and it became his book, The CEO's Playbook, Leading from the Boardroom to the Breakroom.

1:43John Kaplan: He's now giving the book away one chapter a week on LinkedIn because every lesson in it came from someone who helped him along the way. Really, really incredible story. If you lead a team, answer to a board, or want to someday, this conversation is for you. We get into what makes a great board member, how to bring bad news up the chain without getting burned, and why you should leave your old playbook behind when you step into a new role. We also talk about the 90-day trap, building a culture where people tell you the truth and how AAA protected a brand built on showing up when people need help.

2:25John Kaplan: Let's take a listen. So, Bob, really happy to have you here. Love your origin story. And, you know, we're going to talk about the book, CEO Playbook, Leading from the Boardroom to the Breakroom. and one of the cool things in the book is it talks about the origin story of a law student driving a road service truck to Quebec ending up running AAA as the CEO. Could you kind of share with us a little bit of just the background a little bit on how that all manifested it and then we'll get into the topics of the book. Sure, well so growing up as a teenager in the U.S. My father took a job in Quebec, and we ended up moving as a family to Quebec City when I was in my mid-teens.

3:17And eventually, I went to school there, went to law school. And during law school, I needed a job to help pay some of the expenses. And so I got a part-time job driving a road service vehicle for the club in Quebec. And that club was affiliated with AAA. and over the course of the winter I did that but then during the summer they offered me full-time work and I took that and at the end of the summer they said well we don't want to get in the way of your going to law school but if you'd like to stay we'll have you work four days a week and give you a day off a week to continue your law degree so I did that stayed with the club had a variety of different roles over the course of the first dozen years or so, and eventually got promoted to the role of CEO at that club.

4:07And I was in that role for about 10 years. And then AAA National was looking for a CEO to replace one who was retiring. And I got offered the job as CEO of AAA and moved from Quebec City to Orlando, Florida.

4:24John Kaplan: So you literally stayed in the role. Did you get the law degree? I did. Yeah. And so you stayed in the role from the from like working your way up from road service, road service truck for AAA to the CEO of the entire organization. What are just maybe some of the obvious or not obvious benefits of having that purview? There's very few CEOs that like we talk about starting in the mailroom or what have you. What are some of the advantages and if there are any disadvantages of having that tenure with an organization? Yeah, well, one of the definite advantages is you really know the business from the ground up.

5:11And road service is the core proposition that AAA offers its members. So I really had the opportunity to start in what was probably one of the most important areas in terms of the organization's relevance. and working my way up and having a variety of different jobs gave me a broad understanding of how the business worked. And I think it helped prepare me for the CEO role at the club and eventually for the CEO role at National. If there's a downside, I think it's that you don't gain the perspective that comes from working for different organizations that have different cultures and operate in a completely different space.

5:53But on balance, I think there is great benefit to having started at the bottom of the ladder. It gives you a real appreciation for what people on the front line are dealing with. So we're going to dig into the principles that you outline in this book.

6:10John Kaplan: Again, the book is called CEO Playbook, leading from the boardroom to the break room. But I want to talk a little bit about why did you write the book? Yeah, I mean, you have an incredible, I love the book. You have incredible stories in there. I don't think the book is finished. So it keeps, it sounds like it's getting bigger and bigger. Tell us a little bit about why you wrote the book and what you're doing with it, because I think it's a cool story. Yeah, well, I wrote the book almost by accident. A couple of years ago, an ex-colleague who had just been appointed to a CEO role reached out to me and said, hey, Bob, could you share with me what you wish you'd known about the CEO job before you stepped into it?

6:57and so I said well that's a good question let me think about it I'll jot some ideas down and we can get together by phone and walk through them and I probably jotted down 10 or 12 things that I thought we ought to talk about and we got on the phone and most of these things had to do with living with the board because I sensed that was what this fellow was most interested in and we had that conversation And then we turned the page and I moved on to something else. And I guess three or four months later, another ex-colleague reached out with a very similar question. And so I said, well, let me think about it.

7:36I'll get back to you. And I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. So I dragged out that original list of 10 or 12 things and thought about it a bit more. And that list turned into, say, probably 20 items. And we have this conversation with the second guy, and he was very kind and said it'd been useful. And that was the end of that, except it got me thinking about what did I forget to put on the list? and so I decided to just make a list of the things I'd forgotten and the list grew and eventually got to something like 92 topics that I thought were relevant to someone in a CEO role and that prompted me to see if I could sketch it out a little bit in more detail and that led to the book.

8:22And while it originally was intended to be the new CEO's playbook, once I jotted down those 90 or plus items, I realized it wasn't all just about what a new CEO needs to know. It's actually what anybody who aspires to the role of CEO probably would benefit from knowing. And so I dropped the new out of the title and just called it the CEO's playbook, leading from the boardroom to the break room.

8:50John Kaplan: I got a couple of authors here. Johnny did something. Johnny, your origin is pretty similar, like people calling you and saying, hey, have you thought they ask you for advice and you keep yet. So share a little bit and ask me, ask some good author type questions here on how, you know, that process of getting it into something that you can actually publish. Well, you actually, I'm sure that Bob went through this when you start to write a book and you think I'm really going to write a book. You know, I think that the status that 99 % of people that start out to write a book don't finish the book.

9:26So it's an endeavor that's really, really difficult. And I think it was Ben Franklin that had the saying, like, at first it seems like a pleasure. and then it becomes like a master and then you become servant to it and eventually when you're just fed up it you know being a servant to it you take it and throw it out to the public so something along those lines and uh because writing a book is really difficult and even when you think you're done if you show it to other people they have all these other comments and stuff and things that you didn't think about and you got to go back and start again and i remember thinking man i think i'm like 90 done i showed it to a couple people and they were like you're like 50 i was like wow i got so much more work to do sure bob faced some of the same same issues yeah but actually i did share it with a close friend when i thought i was done and And he said, here's some ideas for how you ought to reorganize the way it is constructed.

10:40And actually, since I finished the book, I've been thinking about things I forgot to put in. And I've got another dozen or so chapters that don't have a place to go. Right. So now you think about those 92 topics that you have. and you think about that the second guy that came to you, not with more specific advice on the board, but more just general, you said he wanted the top things that a new CEO should think about. How did those top 10 things you gave that person rank compared to what you would give them now? Well, I guess obviously my list was incomplete because it went from, I guess at that point, I was maybe at 20 or 25 topics And I ended up at 92 and I found another dozen that I should have put in that I omitted.

11:29So it just grows as you create. And I think one of the things that made my task a little easier is that by design, I wanted to make these chapters short to the point and basically standalone topics that you could go and read one chapter and then skip five, six chapters and land on something else that you were interested in. So I didn't need to have that continuous theme throughout the book that takes you from one chapter, obviously, to the next. It was easier, I think, to write it because of the manner in which I constructed it. And what do you think is the toughest thing? If you had to say the top two things, three things, or the top thing, that's the toughest thing about being a CEO?

12:17Well, one of the toughest things I think is that if you haven't been a CEO and you've been in some other role, which is almost inevitable for most CEOs at some point, they're moving from a past role to a CEO role, is that you don't fully appreciate that the work is never done. The requirements of the job are continual. You're never done. You can always spend another hour on one of the topics that's on your to-do list. And so you really have to have the discipline to separate your work life from the rest of your life. And that latter role, that other life that you need to have is mission critical in terms of maintaining your balance and your perspective.

13:03So I think one of the difficult things is appreciating in advance that this new role is going to be all-consuming. and you'll have to be very disciplined in terms of separating your work life from your family life or your other endeavors. Yeah, because if you lose yourself, you lose your leadership capabilities and then you're no good to yourself or the company or your shareholders, right? Exactly. I mean, there's a true risk of burnout and becoming much less efficient because you don't have perspective. And what about feeling like a man on an island? Because as a CEO, everybody wants a piece of you.

13:40all your executives want a PCO, your employees want a PCO, your customers want a PCO, board members want a PCO, the outside world wants a PCO, the media wants a PCO. Do you sometimes, or have you ever had the feeling like, I feel sometimes like I'm a man on an island? Yeah, well, I remember early on, someone told me before I was CEO said, it's very lonely at the top. And initially, I couldn't comprehend that because I thought, well, if you're the CEO, you're surrounded by people who want to interact with you. And so you're never lonely. But the reality is that when you're the CEO, you're in a different role and you need either a coach or a truth teller, but they may not be right in your workplace.

14:26They may be remote from that. So it is lonely and you can feel like you're on an island and that you're going to have to figure it out without a lot of help. And how about chirping in your ear, like everyone that's around the CEO or almost any C-level executive, everybody wants you to see the world the way that they want you to see the world. And a lot of times it's also because they have a self-interest in the advice that they're giving you. And the difficulty must be to try to separate what are they telling me versus what their self-interest is in what they're telling me. Yeah, that's absolutely right.

15:03You need to be able to distinguish between what you may be hearing and what makes sense. I had the good fortune to be surrounded by a lot of people who had the best interest of the organization at heart and didn't have a political agenda or an axe to grind. there are always a few that don't live up to that standard. So part of the, I guess, challenge is distinguishing between the people who work with you and whose views you can trust, whose input is objective, whose intentions are honest and good from the ones that may be more political. And much of that is a function of the culture that you create within the organization.

15:45Yes. Because if you succeed at setting the proper culture for the organization, or at least influencing it, you will probably eradicate some of those lesser contributors and find yourself increasingly surrounded by people you can trust. And how about your board? Did you get a chance to make up some of the board yourself or all of the board? Or did you inherit a board and then you tried to change board members? Well, in both cases, and I think almost inevitably when you get appointed as a CEO, you're inheriting the board that just appointed you. Over time, depending on the culture of the organization, you will have a role with significance of which may vary in terms of determining who's going to be on the board.

16:32One of the mistakes I saw a few friends make was trying to populate their board with their friends. That never works. or seldom works. And it also violates some of the basic fundamentals around proper governance. I had the good fortune to be involved with our nominating committee when we were considering board members. They would ask me for suggestions, but I never had the sole authority to determine who was going to be on the board. And frankly, I didn't want it. That's why you have a nominating and governance committee. but did sometimes you try when you did have some input sometimes you need some sort of expertise on the board right of all the disciplines in your company and you may lack that on the board and you may not have a third-party consulting company you can turn to so sometimes it's good to get somebody on the board that has that expertise and can be a partner with you in the company have you had that experience bob yeah and actually we have a very disciplined nominating process for board members that occurred each year and included assessing what were the skills that we had on the board and what were the skills that we might be lacking.

17:49We also would look at upcoming turnover. So maybe we have skill X, but that person is termed out. So as we go through the nominating process for this cycle, we need to be looking for someone who's going to be able to replace Bill or Jack or Jane or whoever who's going to be leaving and who's going to create a vacuum in terms of skill. And then we were quite disciplined in trying to make sure that we'd considered more than one possibility for incoming board members. And you get a lot of suggestions, you know, other board members are going to suggest people, often people that they know, So sometimes people -

18:29John Kaplan: He loves company. Yes. People who, you know, they may be their friends. And there too, you need to be able to say, well, thank you very much. We really appreciate that suggestion. But what we're looking for this year in terms of a skill set is X. So the person you suggested isn't quite, you know, in the target that we're looking for. We have a lot of listeners, Bob, that could benefit from a deep dive into this board conversation. So I hope you can indulge us on this. Let's just talk about kind of board member profile. You and John have been talking about that. But advice to people, your ideal board member attributes, what does it take to be a good board member?

19:17Because not everybody is a good board member.

19:21John Kaplan: And there are some people that know that about themselves, and there are some people that do not know that about themselves. So in your opinion, what have you seen? You've been in the role, you were in the role a long, long time with a number of different board members. What are some of the attributes of an ideal board member? Well, first of all, you want them to be smart. Yes. You want them to be knowledgeable, particularly in the field that you're seeking to fill with their presence at the board table. You want them to be honest. You ideally want them to not have too big an ego. The best board members I worked with were the ones that didn't have an overwhelming ego.

20:03You want a board member who is as adept at listening as they are at talking. You want a board member who knows how to establish a cordial yet candid working relationship, not only with the key senior staff, but also with the other board members. So that as a group, you have cohesiveness without having unanimity in all instances. And I think that's one of the other key attributes of a good board member. It's someone who isn't overly compelled by the view that they should go along to get along. You want a board member who is willing to stand apart from the group and offer an alternate viewpoint when an alternate viewpoint needs to be heard.

20:54And to not be shy about doing it, but be able to do it in a manner that doesn't create animosity. Yeah, sometimes when somebody does that, they can almost cause a little bit of a controversy. But the reality is, especially for the CEO, it gets the entire group to think about whether or not that has merit or does not have merit. And if it does have merit, that person just brought up something none of us were thinking about, right? Right. And actually, there's a chapter in the book about appreciate descending directors. One of the lessons that I learned from someone else early on was look at the minutes of the board that you were about to either join or report to and be on the lookout for whether everything seems to be decided unanimously.

21:45because if everything seems unanimous, there's probably a culture that doesn't foster the willingness to disagree. And you're probably lacking that viewpoint that John was just speaking about, that view that none of us have thought about, but we need to hear and need to consider. Yeah, because sometimes you can get these board members that are like professional board members. All they do is really sit on six or seven boards. They collect the fees. And they never raise any type of controversial subject, even though other board members and other employees have talked about the fact that there's this issue within the company that needs to be raised at the board level.

22:32And these people won't bring it up because they're basically professional board members. In fact, I've served on other boards where there are people who show up at every meeting, never say a word. And I guess they're just, you know, collecting their fees and going home. So maybe to add to the list of what you want in terms of a board member, you want someone who comes prepared, not only in terms of having reviewed in advance the material that you provided, but comes prepared to contribute. And also see the world just like one degree off center sometimes. Sorry, Johnny. Because if you're presenting material, or if someone at your, one of your employees is presenting the material, and the board's just going along with it, like, hey, yeah, that's great.

23:19You know, that's the way you guys do it. But no one's bringing up like, have you ever thought about it this way or that way? Then you almost wonder, like, why are we having this board meeting? Yeah. And actually, I think that points to another requirement, not on the part of the board, but on the part of management. And that is to be receptive and open-minded to the alternate viewpoint when it gets expressed. If you dismiss it or discard it or indicate through body language or otherwise that you didn't really want to hear this, you're not going to be fostering that open conversation that you really need in the boardroom.

23:58Otherwise, the board isn't adding value. What I've seen in some, you know, I've been in a lot of boards, Bob, but not the size of the boards that you have, but a lot of startup tech companies that have gone, you know, to do pretty well and have gone public and get, you know, pretty giant market caps. And what I found in the early days of a lot of these startups is the venture capitalists are involved. So you have a first time CEO. Yeah. And some of them have a tendency to not listen to all the board members. They listen to the board member that put the most amount of money in a deal. If that person all by themselves are the end all, know all.

24:43I've actually seen because the CEO pays too much attention to them, that person takes them down the wrong road. And there's nothing, you know, you even bring it up with the CEO, but they just don't listen to you because, hey, why should I listen to you? You're an independent board member. You didn't put any money in this deal, but this other guy put$50 million in, so I'm listening to him only. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And actually, I had a conversation a couple of months ago with the CEO who called me for some input. And that person was reporting to a board very similar to the one that you just described and made the point that not only that CEO, but also most members of the board deferred to the one who put the most money in.

25:27John Kaplan: Yeah. There's two perspectives that we're talking about here. One is the board member's perspective. And I want to pull on that thread for a little bit. And then I want to come back to actually how to sit with the board is what you call it, Bob. And I really, there's a number of different chapters, 5, 6, 12, 13, 24. I want to talk about how you have this actually set up and you're doing a chapter on LinkedIn. We're going to come back to that because I think it's just really, really amazing. You're making this free for everybody. There's one point that I think board members need to consider is they need to be the same before they try to establish their difference.

26:15John Kaplan: And what I mean by that is somebody has a playbook and they come in, they listen, and they say, hey, this is how you should do it. when I was over here at Cisco or when I was over here at Verizon or whatever, and they tell you, that's like the kiss of death for me to the operators. Because what it says is, I don't know your business, but I don't need to understand your business. You need to be looking at things this way. And I think good board members are the ones who really try to learn the what and the how and the problems associated with what's already being done. because there's a number of different ways to skin a cat.

26:55John Kaplan: And I always find that those are the most successful board members are the ones that can say, okay, and then they ask great discovery questions. Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? And if the door is open and there's no thought about that and they can establish their difference or their expertise, they're not conflicting with anything. But it's not human nature. I think people get on boards and are like, oh, you guys are talking about the quiet board members. I've had experience with that, and I've had experience with the opposite. People are just, you know, every meeting they got to let people know what they're thinking, and they, you know, it's important for them to have the best idea in the room.

27:35John Kaplan: What advice do you have there, Bob? Well, and those people suck all the oxygen out of the room and nobody else. Well, obviously, when you're looking for board members, I think you want to look at the nature of the individual and see if there are signs that they would be like that person that you just described. But I also think that there's a role for management to play in that regard, and it relates to onboarding and orientation and how you bring someone onto the board and how much information you give them about the organization before you throw them into their first conversation with the rest of the board.

28:15And one of the things that we didn't do initially, but eventually found our way to doing was making sure that when we had a new board member, not only did we arrange for orientation provided by staff, but we would invite to that orientation session, which might last a day or two, we'd invite another board member who basically had been on the board for a while. And we would endeavor to pair the existing board member with the new board member and give them time to have conversations outside of the briefing sessions so that the briefing that the new director got wasn't just from the executive staff, but also from another board member.

29:00And I think that helps if you're dealing with the right person, that helps avoid this, well, here's how you ought to do it from the get-go from somebody who hasn't invested the time and effort to listen. Yeah. And I look at it from the other side. I actually say that person's ignorant because what they're essentially saying is every business is cookie cutter. And certainly there's commonalities across businesses. But in my mind, it's like a Venn diagram. There's going to be some commonalities and there's going to be a whole bunch of other things that are completely unique to your business. And as a board member, I have to figure those types of things out before I start to give you any input.

29:40I can't just believe that the whole world's cookie cutter. If I did, the world would be pretty freaking boring, right? Yeah. Well, and that might be something that occurs when the individual in question hasn't served on a number of boards and they haven't experienced as a board member completely different environments. where things are different, such that they would understand that it's not one size fits all. Yes, yes.

30:06John Kaplan: You have a point of view in your book, which is really kind of working with the board, the operator's experience on creating the right environment. You talk about things like when you bring a problem to the board, what else should come with it? Can you just give your advice? Because we have a lot of people listening to this that interact with boards. And I see companies that I think do this really, really well. And I see companies that don't, they set like, you know, a CRO or the leader of sales. They set them up for failure. But they're like, you know, I don't think it should be choreographed.

30:50John Kaplan: I don't think it should be. I mean, I think it should be open. I think it should be honest. But you can tell when there's not a lot of trust or confidence when the operators come in, because it's only like only so much information. How do you foster a different point of view? Well, there are a number of things. First of all, I think you need to, if you're bringing a problem to the board, they ought to be provided with background information on this at least a week or 10 days in advance of it being thrown in their lap. It ought to be clearly articulated. There ought to be ideally, and there's an exception to this, I'll come to it, but there ought to be a range of solutions.

31:34You shouldn't just say, well, here's the problem and here's what we recommend. Ideally, you ought to say, here's the problem and here are between three and five ways we could tackle this. And the outliers may be, you know, extreme and unappealing, but at least two or three of those potential solutions in the middle ought to be viable ones. And they ought to be accompanied by your assessment of the pros and cons of each of those solutions. And then ideally a recommendation that says, so here's the problem, here are the options, here are the pros and cons, and here's what we're recommending, and here's why we're recommending it.

32:12And the exception that I think in some cases is useful is what I refer to in the book is two bites at the apple. Not any problem has to be solved the first time it's presented to the board. You need to be clear if you're presenting it for discussion, not for decision, so that people understand that you're not expecting to go home with the solution. But there are cases where it makes a lot of sense to lay out the issue, invite a very open, free-flowing discussion, take a lot of notes, And then when you come back with a recommendation, you've had the benefit of hearing what the board's concerns are around the issue in advance of you formulating the recommendation.

32:57It's not unlike a legislature that doesn't adopt the bill the first time it's put in front of them. There may be a first, second, and third reading before it's finalized.

33:05John Kaplan: I like that. It's just like in sales, they say present the buyer with multiple options with an understanding of the scenarios that would make you lead to one recommendation or another. And the other thing I loved is like I've been in some board discussions where it's not clear whether they are looking for an answer. You want me to make the answer or do you want are we discussing how for you to make the answer? And I think do you have advice there for operators on how to be very clear on that? Because you said, are we discussing this or are we deciding this? Yeah, well, and I think the agenda, you're absolutely right.

33:52You need to be very clear about what you're looking for. And one of the ways of making that abundantly clear is how you structure the agenda. And you have a section of the agenda where there are items that are presented for discussion and decision. And then there may be a section of the agenda where items show up that are presented for discussion. We don't intend to make a decision on this today, but we want to brief you on it, get your input, we'll bring it back later. And then there are items on the agenda that can be under a different heading that might be, these are just FYIs. There's no decision required today, no decision required tomorrow.

34:30We want you to be aware of this information. So the manner in which you structure the layout of the agenda, I think, makes a big difference. And then being very, very clear as you go through each of those items, is this here for a decision? Is it here for discussion? Is it just FYI? And we used to include on our agendas, and I have done this in other organizations more recently, items that are on the agenda. We don't intend to discuss them. There will be no presentation, but there's advanced material here. So don't come to the meeting thinking you didn't need to read this because we're going to explain it.

35:08It's on the agenda as an FYI, but no presentation planned. So if you want to know what that's about, don't skip reading the advanced material.

35:19Good one. Hey, Bob, what about being a CEO? And the saying is that bad news travels uphill slowly. How do you, as a CEO, try to make sure that it doesn't travel so slowly uphill? Yeah. Well, actually, there's a chapter in the book about that, which is report bad news in a timely manner, but verify it first. So if there is bad news of consequence that you're aware of, I think you owe it to the board members to make them aware of it before they hear it from someone else. It's in your best interest that they hear it from you first. And I wouldn't wait for the board meeting that may be two or three weeks out or a month or more out to do that.

36:09I would do it in between board meetings. And I think the important thing is to distinguish between what we're absolutely sure about and what we're still investigating. You know, that old saying, if it sounds too good to be true, well, it probably isn't. I was guided by the thought that if it sounds too bad to be true, it may not be accurate either. It may not be quite as bad as it first looks. So I think the obligation that you have is to make sure that the board is made aware of what you know in a timely manner. It might not be the same day you hear it, but it certainly ought to be within a day or two.

36:48And if you need to parse between here are the things that we are relatively certain about and here are aspects of this issue that we're still investigating or evaluating, evaluating, I would make that distinction so that the board members aren't jumping to a conclusion that you haven't yet reached. But again, do it in a timely manner and then follow through promptly with more information as you gain it. What about bad news, not that has to go up to the board level, but bad news that just takes the time to get to you as the CEO internally? Yeah, well, there's always at risk. And I think it has a lot to do with the culture that you create.

37:28Have you made your people comfortable with the idea that they can come to you with bad news? I had a boss at one point, if I went in to see him and I said, hey, I've got good news and bad news, he would invariably say, start with the bad news. And he was signaling to me that he wasn't afraid of bad news. So I think if you want your people to be sharing bad news with you promptly, you need to make sure that they understand that they can do that and you're not going to shoot the messenger, that you're going to be interested in how you can solve the problem more so than how you can lay blame on somebody's doorstep.

38:09Yeah. Now, as being the CEO, I want to switch onto this other side where there's a lot of salespeople that want to get to the C-level and maybe even the CEO. And what we typically talk about in sales is we have to find someone that's a champion for us that can get us to the CEO or the C-level. And that champion typically needs to have authority, meaning they might be on the org chart. But most important, they have to have political influence, either deep domain experience in the subject matter, or they have to have political power. And that political power, deep domain experience, can give them access to the CEO because the CEO has to make decisions.

39:02And a lot of times they might go right to their executive team, but a lot of times they may go three, four, five levels down because somebody You might have the right expertise in that area. So did you as a CEO have different, let's say, influencers or champions throughout your organization that you would depend upon for certain specific decisions where you'd get their opinions? Yeah. So are we focusing here on how, in my role, I would be informed and make decisions about who we were going to promote? who you were going to promote or maybe you're going to make a big decision on maybe buying a 10 million dollar something or a 20 million dollar piece of software and you need and the decision at that level because the dollars are so high it's gonna that stuff's gonna hit your desk and now you're gonna say well wait a second first of all i gotta make sure we're making the right decision right two if i'm gonna implement this i gotta make sure i take the risk out of it and Who am I going to hold accountable to making sure that they de-risk this type of decision?

40:14Well, so to take the latter first, if we're going to make an important decision, as CEO, you want to be as well-informed as possible. And you're going to reach out, or you should reach out, to the people or the person in your organization who can guide you on that. And it would be unfortunate if you had someone reporting to you that you didn't trust for at least their specific area of responsibility. So depending on what the nature of the issue is, you should have a direct report that you have sufficient confidence in to be guided by that person on a specific issue that falls within their area of responsibility.

40:55But in addition to that, if you're lucky, and I was lucky, you probably have other direct reports whose area of responsibility this is not, but whose judgment you trust. And so rather than rely on just one VP telling you this is the right way to go, you might have that conversation both with a VP who is responsible for the area in question and with one or two of your other executives whose judgment you trust beyond their area of responsibility. So, yes, you want to be able to rely on the people in your organization to give you guidance. And sometimes you don't just want one viewpoint. You want more than one.

41:38As it relates to the issue of people who want to move up through the organization, we had a pretty disciplined annual process of reviewing the top two tiers of the org chart with the officer group as a whole. So we had in total about eight officers, including myself. And once a year, we would spend at least a day and sometimes we spent more than a day going through the entire top two levels of the org chart. and discussing as a group each of the individuals who were on that or in those tiers of the Orchard. For succession planning, right? For succession planning and as part of the performance review.

42:22Okay, right. And the person to whom Joe or Jill or Jane or Mary reported took the lead on presenting what they thought were the strengths and weaknesses, if any, of the individual. But the entire group participated in the conversation. And it really mattered when we were doing performance reviews and handing out performance rewards or salary compensation issues. Because we would have that group of officers bless all of the increases for those top two tiers and their performance reviews. so that it was done as a group with the understanding that if I came, if I was one of the VPs and I came in and said, I think we ought to give Billy, you know, this raise and this performance rating and the rest of the officers thought that was crazy because of what they had seen.

43:20I didn't have the authority to do that without at least running it by the whole group.

43:26John Kaplan: But you also made them work it out because the jungle self corrects. So if somebody's going to be, what I love about that strategy is there's only so much to go around. So if somebody's going to come and feel strongly about something, they have to have a point of view that works well with a group of people. And I don't think leaders do that very well. They're like, well, they do it one-on-one and then they'll say, well, I don't think, you know, we're going to have a problem because that's going to set a precedent in XYZ persons group. And I've always respected leader more to say, let's get everybody together and talk about what you want to do because there's only so much we can do.

44:11John Kaplan: and then collectively we'll make some decisions. And you really see people's character, not in the one-on-one conversation, but in the conversations with the group and how you get things done. It's more difficult. I'd say it's almost 100 % more difficult, but it's so much more powerful to let, I call it the jungle self-correcting. Well, and I think each of the members of the officer group in that type of annual process learns a lot. They become much better at assessing their people because they know they're going to have to share their assessment. And they become much better at coming prepared to explain why they think that Jill needs this larger than average increase.

44:56John Kaplan: And the reason for giving Jill that increase better be more than just your department. It should be a benefit. It should be a company should be a huge beneficiary at that. because I have a lot of conversations with people telling me, hey, we got to up Jill's pay because we're going to lose her. Okay, well, all right. That's one conversation. Yeah. But what impact is that going to have on the company? And I think that leaders that try to have those as one-on-one, everything as one-on-one conversations. Okay, I will give you a little bit here. I don't want you to be upset with me, Bob, because you have somebody that you need to keep.

45:36John Kaplan: And I'll keep scoring my head. I gave you one there. And I think that's just exhausting for the leader. Do you have advice on how you can push that back without creating consensus rule? Yeah. Well, I think you do it by having a structured process that you repeat, and it gets probably better each time you repeat it. And folks know that this is the way it's going to work. And one of the goals that you're seeking through that process, I think, is a reasonable degree of internal equity where, you know, all the people who report over to Jack aren't, you know, living the high life. And the people who report over to Bill are, you know, getting thrown under the bus.

46:25And, you know, so internal equity is important. It would never be perfect, but that's one of the ways of getting at it.

46:35John Kaplan: Johnny, I want to have a conversation about stepping into the role and being prepared to making sure you're prepared. But I don't want to change gear before I clear the topic with you. Are you good to change gear? Yeah, I have a couple more different topics I'd like to talk to Bob about also. So one of the ones that I loved about the book was this concept of thinking about how you step into the role. And I think in the appendix, especially in the presence before plans, there's some really cool topics that you brought to mind here. Like when I think about stepping into a new role, this is for everybody listening, no matter who you are, no matter what your role is.

47:17John Kaplan: When you step into a new role, I thought these were really, really relevant. Presence before plans, you had like the 90-day trap and you had something called like prepare to shift gears. And so, like, we're in October now. A lot of people are getting ready or thinking about what they're going to do in the next. They're looking for promotions. They're looking for growth. Can you tell me the best advice that you share in the book, you know, making sure that you're not bringing old playbooks in? Some of these principles that you are, how to best think about entering into a new role. Okay. Well, let's start with presence before plans, meeting people before you start managing.

47:59And this is a function of if you're coming into the organization from outside. It assumes that you've been promoted to a role in a new organization and the people there don't really know you. And if that's the case, then my belief is and my experience is that you really need to hold off on making decisions and place your emphasis on getting to know the people who are there and allowing them to get to know you. Cause them to become familiar with what's important to you. And so that they learn about you before they hear what you plan to do. If you've been in the organization and you just got promoted, this may be slightly less important because people probably already know you, at least to some degree, because you've been around for a while.

48:53The 90-day trap issue is about thinking that within the first 90 days, you have to have a new strategy and be prepared to roll it out. And I think that's a terrible mistake. Again, unless you've been with the organization for a long time, if there was a long transition from being the chief operating officer to stepping into the CEO role, and you've been schooled on all this for six months or a year, then you might come prepared with a plan that you've been working on for some time. But if your promotion is more recent than that, you really don't want to fall into that 90-day trap of thinking you need to show up with a brand new strategy or a significantly different strategy.

49:43People aren't going to believe that that's built on knowledge of the organization. They're going to think you're flying by the seat of your pants. And the trap is you may think you need to come prepared. and I've almost fallen into that trap. In fact, one of the parts of the book is within about 30 days of having been appointed to the CEO role in an organization that was pretty new to me. At my first board meeting, one of the board members asked me, so Bob, what are your thoughts on the future direction of the company? And my answer was, I don't know yet. I'm still listening and learning. And fortunately, the chairman of the board at the time immediately said, Bob, that's a good answer.

50:30Let's move on. I know there was a lot of interest in where I thought we ought to take things, but I guess I was still in my honeymoon. And they gave me a break and let me spend a bit more time learning and listening before feeling that I had to roll out a new strategy.

50:48John Kaplan: One of the things in the book that was really relevant for me was this. And I struggled with this. I think John actually gave me feedback saying like how many people he thought I could manage because I was focusing on doing their job. and I wasn't doing that. I was doing it because of my comfort level and my trust level. And you cover this in the book when you talk about when a new leader steps in and rescues things and doesn't allow natural courses of action provided they're not catastrophic to take place. I myself has suffered from this, not rescuing things, but going to my natural default mode, which is in front of a customer, solve a problem, great selling, but I also had to lead.

51:36John Kaplan: I had to let the organization grow. You talk about it a little bit in the book. The advice shared us a little bit stepping into the new role on how to let some things go and how hard it is to let some of those things go that we either like or that we're really good at. Well, and I think we're all tempted to go to our comfort zone. And if I've been the VP of sales and I get appointed to the CEO role. You know, my old playbook is sales and how to rescue, you know, sales that we might otherwise lose. But I'm not the VP of sales in the new organization. I'm the CEO or I have some other role. I need to make sure that I don't bring my old playbook into my new role.

52:24And I also need to make sure that I don't step in in a manner that causes the people that report to me to think I don't trust them to solve the problem. I should probably under those circumstances, bring in the VP for sales and maybe another key player and say, help me understand what we're dealing with. Tell me how you plan to address this. Is there anything that I can do to make it easier for you. But don't step in and try and solve the problem. You're sending the wrong signal to your crew. And ultimately, you're sending the wrong signal to the client or the clients because they're going to start to believe that if they have a problem with the VP of sales, that's okay.

53:10They can go to the CEO and they'll get what they need or what they want. So making sure that you leave the old playbook behind is really mission critical.

53:18John Kaplan: And Johnny, in our world, we see technical founders that have brilliant capability and technology. I mean, truly brilliant capability. Think they know how to sell. and they think they know how to sell or they have a limited background in go-to-market. What is your advice, John, to those leaders that, along with Bob is saying, and how to step into that role when you're really trying to scale and go-to-market? Because we call it the crazy technical founder syndrome. It's not a knock, but that's just a moniker that we put on where we have a technical founder or a founder that is using an old playbook, either a technology playbook, a product playbook, or what have you, to further go to market.

54:12John Kaplan: And I know you've advised a ton of CEOs on this. What are some of the big things that come out? Some of them take to it and some of them don't. I mean, I think the issue these days with a lot of these tech founders is some of them, like you said, are just brilliant. They're off the charts brainpower. So everybody told them they were gifted in college. They went to some bigger company, and they were 24, 25 years old, and everybody told them, oh, you know, what are you doing here? You're so smart. They go get an idea and start developing some product, and they get$50 or$100 million from the venture capitalists who are fawning all over them and telling them how great they are.

54:55And everybody around you has constantly told you how smart and how brilliant you are, then you think, well, then I must know how to do sales and I must know how to do client success and I must know how to do marketing. And that's what they think until they get beat around the head and shoulders. Now, what happens is as CEO early on, they have the title, they know the product and they can go out there and it's because they know the product and they know the title, they have the title, they can raise money and they can sell one or two deals. So then they think, well, this is pretty easy. They don't understand to scale a company and hire salespeople and train them and develop them so they have the knowledge that you have in your head.

55:36That's a pretty difficult task. so and bob you started in driving the trucks who understood the company better than you

55:47John Kaplan: and what challenges did you have letting go like you understood for over a decade or more the nuances of how the company works and how it worked in the past and what were some of the challenges that you had letting go as you took the top seat as you kept going up inside the company? Yeah, I'm not sure I had that type of difficulty because I never considered myself to be overly smart. I always figured that if I've been given a new role, there's a lot to learn. And, you know, whatever may have worked last year may not work in this new role. So I think I benefited from having multiple roles over the, you know, I had like five or six different assignments over the first 10 or 12 years, they were substantially different.

56:37There was virtually nothing that I could or very little that I could carry from one to the other in terms of expertise. I mean, there might be basics like, you know, how do you relate to people? How do you assess performance? How do you plan? But in terms of the specific knowledge required of the role, I was landing in new territory almost every time. So there was a lot to learn. how did you handle like giant shifts like these days we've seen giant shifts in technology that can just really set a company back if they don't respond in the right way so you you had the cloud which is a big shift around you know 20 years ago then you have all the cyber issues now you got the ai issues did you rely on if you didn't have because some people in your organization may not understand any of that.

57:26So did you rely on third party consultants to try to help you figure out how we can respond to this? Number one, and number two, how it might affect our brand and what we need to do to continue to keep our brand, you know, with all these, you know, different changes in technology? Yeah, well, so technology was not my long suit. That wasn't an area that I, There were others where I felt more comfortable in technology, but I was of the view that as the CEO, my first obligation was to make sure that I either am or become reasonably conversant in the subject matter. That means I need to reach out to the right people to get briefed.

58:09I need to know what are the right questions to ask. I need to have a basic, I don't need to be able to write code, but I need to have a basic understanding of what is the potential of this new technology, how could it benefit us, what might be the risks associated with pursuing it, and so on. So I needed to level up my knowledge of that area. Second, I needed to make sure that we had the smartest people we could find and afford in that space reporting to me and guiding our efforts. So hiring the right talent in terms of technology, if we're talking technology. And then the third thing that I thought was really important was they're going to be running into a lot of these experts that we hire or bring in or promote.

59:00They're going to be fighting a lot of battles. They're going to be running into a lot of obstacles. And one of my roles as CEO is to bulldoze the terrain so that they can actually do what they need to do with a minimal amount of interference. Because things like that can cut across the entire organization, not just one silo. Exactly. And then the fourth thing that I always thought was my responsibility was to create a culture where we're willing to innovate, where we're willing to take risk, where these experts that we've hired and who are coming forward with new ideas or proposals for implementing new technology are operating in a culture where we embrace the possibility that we need to make a radical change.

59:48And that's really a function of the culture of the enterprise and how you tolerate risk, how you reward risk takers, and how you avoid punishing people who were diligent in their efforts but made a mistake. Yeah. And Bob, talk a little bit about brands. I mean, AAA, really, it's got a great brand. Yes. Can you talk a little bit about maybe the pillars of trying to protect and grow the brand? Yeah. Well, part of the AAA brand strength comes from road service. We used to think of road service as being sort of the halo that sits on top of the entire organization because road service is a business of rescuing people in a time of need.

1:00:39And because the AAA model is a prepaid model, people are paying for membership at the beginning of the year. When you come out to rescue them, you don't need them to pay you to do that. That's a benefit that they're entitled to. So not only are you rescuing people in a time of need, but you're not asking them to pay you at that point in time for your services. And I think that creates an entirely different dynamic, both for the member and actually for the employee. The employee who's interacting with a member at the roadside, rescuing them and not asking them to pay, has a much more gratifying experience with the member than would be the case if they show up with their handout looking for a payment.

1:01:27So the brand promise really originates with and is powered by the promise of a rescue at the roadside if you need it. And then it expands into other areas like insurance and travel and financial services. But the driver of the brand was, and as far as I know, still is road service. something like 90 % of the people who join, join for road service and something like 90 % of the people who renew, renew first and foremost for that. Well, you've done a great, I mean, a great job. You go to these AAA offices and you found a way to continually increase revenues because you have all these other services in the AAA offices and they, at least the ones I've experienced, They're very well run.

1:02:15Well, thank you.

1:02:16John Kaplan: You were my first GPS, Bob. The trip ticks that you used to do. I had those when I was trying to get someplace in an early sales career when we didn't have the, God forbid, I could open the map, but I couldn't refold it. It was my problem. So talk a little bit about how you decided to expand into these offices, into these different, you know, revenue streams. You know, part of that predates me. Most of it predates me. By the time I became the CEO, we already were active in most of those areas, certainly travel and insurance. So I wouldn't take credit for that. But I think those who preceded me, and I guess I saw it too, was that we want to keep the membership as affordable as possible.

1:03:05So we need to have collateral sources of revenue that allow us to maintain a high profile, run road service in a very efficient manner, and still pay the rent and the benefits that we need to pay to make the business work. So collateral revenue was important and offering it in a manner which fosters trust in the brand was also important. And we would never, at least not knowingly, engage in a commercial activity that put the brand at risk. It wasn't worth it. There was too much riding on the loyalty of the membership to decide, well, let's offer some less than desirable product just because it's profitable.

1:03:53It has to stand on its own in terms of value. Otherwise, we don't want to offer it. And I think that contributed the strength of the brand at the same time. Yeah, very strong brand. Very strong brand recognition.

1:04:06John Kaplan: You have done something really cool here. And one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on is you put your book in a format that's free. And I think it's, and how you explained it to me was just like, you wrote it to help people. One of the ways that, you know, people can find you is you're putting a chapter. Well, I'll let you talk about like, why did you decide to do it? Why did you just, we know why you wrote it. Why did you decide to put it in the format that you're putting it in? And how can people get access to it? Yeah. Well, so there's not a lesson in that book that I didn't learn from somebody else.

1:04:49There's not an opportunity I got that wasn't the result of a mentor, you know, creating an opportunity for me. So I owe a lot to a lot of people. And once I'd finished writing the book, I figured, well, you know, sure, if somebody wants to buy the book to have it all in one piece, that's fine. But I'm going to post a chapter a week on LinkedIn and let people get it without having to pay for it if they want to, because that's the way the content of that book came to me. It was given to me by other people who either showed me the right way or helped me get out of trouble when I was in trouble or gave me an opportunity.

1:05:28So my thought was I'm not doing this to get speaking engagements. I'm not writing the book to build a consulting business. I wanted just to give it back. So that's why it's free for the taking on LinkedIn. And there are still people buying it because some people don't want to wait. It's going to take me two years to put the whole book out at a chapter a week. So there are people who don't want to wait two years and they're buying the book and they want it all in one place.

1:05:57John Kaplan: And where can we get it? CEO playbook leading from the boardroom to the break room. Where can we get it? We want to get it now. Where can we get it? The easiest place is probably Amazon because I published it with Amazon. But it's also in bookstores or available through booksellers because it also got published via Ingram Sparks. And then how can we find you on LinkedIn? in? I just look for either the CEO's playbook or Bob Darbleday and I'll show up and all the content that I posted should be available there if you land on my profile. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you for being with us, buddy. I really, really commend you for the effort.

1:06:40John Kaplan: I found it fascinating. You provided me a copy of it and there wasn't a chapter that I, what you said is it's short enough to be able to keep my attention on a topic, but then because of the way that it was presented, I can also go into the glossary. I can find situational learning that I need and go right to that without missing anything. So I really, really commend the way you did it, and I found it really, really fantastic. Well done. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, And this has been a pleasure. I've enjoyed this. Same here, buddy. Thank you, Bob Darbel May. I hope I pronunciated that right, Bob.

1:07:24You did, absolutely. And it's not an easy one to pronounce. Thank you, John Kaplan. And thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast.

1:07:39John Kaplan: Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe. rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out forcemanagement.com for more information.