Using Data to Master the Cycles of Leadership with Carolyn Dewar, Global Practice Leader at McKinsey

Richie Cotton: Hi Carolyn, welcome to the show. 

Carolyn Dewar: Hi there. Thanks so much for having me. 

Richie Cotton: Excellent. So to begin with, I want to know what's the most common mistake you've seen CEOs make? 

Carolyn Dewar: Oh, gosh. Common mistake. I was surprised in as we did the research that two thirds of CEOs say the job is not what they thought it was.

So probably the most common mistake is thinking that it's gonna be the same as other jobs they've had before. And it turns out the trope about it's a lonely role, it's unique, is true. And so just recognizing what the job is important. 

Richie Cotton: So it's interesting you say that because I guess like everyone's got a CEO, I've I speak to quite a few of them on the show, but when I was reading your book, you had quite an interesting definition of what are the responsibilities of a CEO's not.

Absolutely everything in the company. So talk me through what does A CEO actually do? 

Carolyn Dewar: Absolutely. That was the first question we had to anchor on is what is the job. Anyway, as you can imagine, we got lots of different answers, but as we talked to all of these CEOs around the world, we kept coming back to the same six things.

Now, I wish it was two or three, it would be easier, but it turns out these are complicated jobs. There's six pieces to the job. First you align people on direction, right? Where are we going? What are we doing? You align the organization. So culture, talent team, are we mobilized to deliver. The third one is starting to be unique more to the CEO or senior roles, which is how do you lead through leaders, right?

At that level, you're not really doing, you're actually having to mobilize through others, so your leadership team becomes a big part of the role, and then the three that are maybe the most new for that role in particular. Is you manage the board, you're the public face of the company to external stakeholders, regulators, communities, and then ultimately you have to manage how you show up every day.

Where do you spend your time? How do you show up as a leader? So is those six spinning plates that we talk about, the CEOs 

Richie Cotton: that is cool, but there are like these limited responsibilities. You mentioned beforehand how you said like a lot of people like get the job wrong. It's lonely at the top.

Do you wanna talk me through how is the CEO role different to other roles? 

Carolyn Dewar: Absolutely. The rule is different. I think one of the quotes from Bill George, who had been the CEO of Medtronic for many years was if you think it's gonna be the same, or you think you've done it before, you've really just been a COO, right?

Or a P and L leader, or A CFO, the first three parts of the rule. Setting the direction, aligning the org, working to a team. Any leader has done those. So for that, the CEO role is more just bigger scale, bigger complexity. I think the other three elements of the role are the ones that are the most new or the most different, right?

Engaging with the board, not just presenting at the board meeting, but actually manage and working with them over time. All of the external stakeholder piece, I think is one that surprises a lot of CEOs, how much time that takes, how much of a role that is, and then the last piece of just juggling your own personal time and energy, right?

There are more demands than you could ever imagine. And so how are you gonna figure out what you get involved in and what you don't? 

Richie Cotton: Okay. So yeah, very interesting that if you're dealing with the board and all these other external stakeholders, you've actually got lots of bosses. You think you're at the top actually lots of people dealing with.

It's a great introduction to what do CEOs do? We've been talking for a few minutes. We haven't mentioned data once. I'm getting withdrawal symptoms. Yeah. I think one of the big things with leadership, the whole point of using data is about. Datadriven decision making. Do you have any examples of CEOs who are particularly make good use of data or they've found some benefit from being data-driven?

Carolyn Dewar: Yeah, absolutely. And I think being data-driven is coming up in all of those pieces of the role, right? If we take the setting direction in, then the team one, those are probably big uses. I would say most of the CEOs we talked to when they were talking about how do you set strategy, how do you set priorities?

It has to be informed by data. And they talk about even taking an external view and a little bit of edgy data, maybe things that are not what they would've seemed right. So Satya Nadella at Microsoft sets aside one month, one day a month, just for him to learn. And he goes out, not just his own organization's data, but data in the world, and he brings it in.

He says, what do I need to learn about what's happening? What are the trends that I might not be seeing? Because a lot of the CEO jobs. It's not just managing the day to day, you hope that's largely happening. You're the one looking around corners. You're the one looking ahead and your insights have to be informed by data and facts of what's going on in the world.

And so the strategy setting is a big piece. And then I'd also say data on the people in the organization side. One of the things that surprised us is how much time CEOs spend on managing the culture and the talent of the organization. This isn't something just to be outsourced hr, although data is super important to HR as well, but how does that leadership team have real data around the talent they have?

Are they deployed well? Are they productive? Is the culture healthy? Can you measure culture? Do you treat it with, as a data driven thing as opposed to something left to chance? I think the more data could get infused into all that decision making, the better. 

Richie Cotton: Absolutely. It's interesting that people, analytics is such a big part of this 'cause I guess people, analyst is very mature, an HR team job role.

But the fact that it's so important for CEOs, that's brilliant. Bringing together people and talent 

Carolyn Dewar: and some HR groups and data groups are starting to merge, or certainly the lines are blurring as they think about all of the internal measures that matter. And that intersection is definitely happening.

And a lot of CEOs are saying, how do we treat the soft stuff that people stuff. With as much rigor and discipline as we would any operational initiative, right? You would measure it, you would set targets, you would have the data to know if it's making progress. And that was one of the big insights from these CEOs is they treat it with the same amount of data and insight.

Richie Cotton: Yeah. I guess if you've got like a production line, you can easily measure like what the productivity is on the production line, but measuring people it's a bit more nuanced and tricky. There's so many more metrics you can use. 

Carolyn Dewar: Absolutely. 

Richie Cotton: Okay. And beyond the CEO role, like how else might you want to have data used within the C-Suite?

Carolyn Dewar: I think it's so important to inform decisions broadly, especially now in period of such uncertainty, right? I was with about 150 senior leaders two weeks ago in New York, and the initial question was the world is so uncertain right now. How could we possibly. Make data decisions, how can we possibly plan everyone's in their budget cycle for 26 right now?

And I think the thing that came through that frankly gave a lot of those leaders comfort is amidst all the noise of geopolitics and world trade and tariffs and all these things. There are some things that are actually knowable and IT data that helps us make those things knowable. And so how do data scientists and others bring, yes, there's a lot of uncertainty, but let's not get too distracted by that.

There's certain trends that we can see are happening, right? We can model out what's gonna happen with tariffs. We can model out. Business decisions and what will happen under different scenarios. And I think being able to be grounded in that data gives people comfort to be able to continue to make bold choices, which they need to do right, either to protect their business or to take advantage of the opportunities that come with all of this change.

But data can be that anchor and that guiding force in all of those decisions. I, 

Richie Cotton: I, I remember speaking to an executive he was a like a sportswear manufacturer. Just when all the it was back in, was it March or April when all those, like new tariffs were kicking in? Yeah, I'd say he looked rough at the time.

There were a lot of big changes there. 

Carolyn Dewar: I think it's a really difficult time and that's where you leaders can look to their data folks to say, help be a beacon, right? A bit of a lighthouse in all of this. What's true, what's not true? Data is ultimately a source of truth, and so how do we use it to cut through the noise?

Richie Cotton: And so you mentioned one of the roles of the CEO is around setting culture. And so how do you like what's the CEO's role in creating a data-driven culture? How do you get to that dream of everyone being able to use data? 

Carolyn Dewar: I think that's a great question. I, if we come back to, I know we talked about Satya once before, but he's a leader who certainly has led a bit.

Big cultural change at Microsoft, more around learning culture, right? And how do you be learning? But data is part of that, and there's really four levers that CEOs need to think about. One is the role modeling, right? Are they walking the talk? Are there senior leaders walking the talk? If the senior leaders aren't being seen to use data in their own decision making, then why would other people do it too?

And so I think it needs to start from the top. That's job number one. I think the second lever is around. Communications and helping people understand the value that data can bring. Why it's important? What are the stories we're telling, right? All these urban legends that spread through organizations, what are the stories of when data was used and it unlocked something really extraordinary?

Are we telling those stories in our town halls in our meetings? I think the third one is more formal systems, right? Do we actually have quality data? Do we have formal data feeds? Do we have tools and access and systems that can help us use it day to day? Then the fourth one is, do we know, have the talent and the skills to be able to use it?

Sometimes as adults, we can think something's a great idea and we're all on board, but if we're not confident in our ability to use it and use it well, we come up with all kinds of excuses and reasons. It's not a good idea. And so how do you give people the safe space to start playing with data, playing with tools, having the support or the people, the dial a friend that they can call so that they feel confident being able to use data in the right way.

Richie Cotton: Lots of great ideas there. So I love the idea that leaders really should be like walking the walk and actually making use of data themselves. But that last point also that. People need to have the skills and need to overcome any hesitancy they have around using data like often, it can be quite scary.

So I guess that leads into the other thing you mentioned that CEOs are also responsible for setting a learning culture. Can you talk me through what that involves? 

Carolyn Dewar: Similar ideas, right? How do you shift from a know-it-all culture to a learn it all culture? I think many of us have been part of organizations where the smartest person in the room or the one.

In the negative view, the one who hoards the data, hoards the insight, because that's a source of power. Everyone has to come to you. You're that linchpin if you're the only one who knows the information. That is a very limiting view as we think about organizations needing to innovate. Share data and be great.

So instead, how do you make the heroes, the people who share data, use it, spread it widely as opposed to keep it to themselves? I think systems can help with that. I think, again, the role modeling, who are the people that are out there making data as a learning tool for everyone. There's an element of learning where you're not afraid to experiment, right?

And to test and learn. If everything has to be perfect right away, that's you tend not to learn in the spaces where you've done it a hundred times before and you know what the outcome will be. And so how do we create learning cultures informed by data in ways that we can test and learn, but then look at the markers quickly and say, okay, it's working.

It's not, we need to pivot. You don't wanna just let something that's not working drag on forever either, and you need to be willing to make those calls. 

Richie Cotton: Absolutely. I don't, I do the I guess you tend to try and experiment it in ways where you think you know what the outcome's gonna be.

It's maybe a bad habit. It's we're doing a test, but we think we know what's gonna happen and actually you gonna learn more if you. Get out your comfort zone bit. Absolutely. Alright we've got a lot of people from the audience who work on data teams. So talk me through what's that relationship between the data team and the CEO?

How can data practitioners support the CEO or the C-suite? 

Carolyn Dewar: I think in the C-suite broadly, they are playing a more and more important role as data teams, right? Sometimes it's backward looking or at least present day. They can inform the dashboards the cockpit if you will, that leadership team is looking at to say.

What's working well, what's not, and even more importantly, if there's an indicator that's not looking great, how do we use data to understand the root cause? What's behind it? What do we need? I think we've all heard about watermelon indicators, right? They look green until you dig in and it turns out they're red, right?

I think data could be that truth teller and can bring it in to help people, especially senior leaders, really have a robust understanding of what's going on in the business. That would be one piece. There's a second hold piece about being future looking, but I think even that first piece is so important.

Richie Cotton: I haven't heard that term watermelon indicator before. That's a good one. I'm have to remember that. Yeah. Metrics. Green on the outside. Were on the inside. Nasty. Surprise. Okay. So I guess related to this you can have kind some kind of data strategy as part of your data team, but then it's gotta align with the business strategy.

Talk me through how do those things get aligned or how do you make sure that they work together? 

Carolyn Dewar: I think the data strategy and the business strategy coming together and the talent strategy, I would say are all incredibly important. Many are in the midst of planning right now, right? It's budget and planning season.

How are those plans being synced up? Are they being created in parallel and then you staple them together at the end and hope it all adds up? Are you having those conversations and obviously having data folks involved early in the business decision making and the talent planning, so that data is used to inform those strategies, but also so the data leadership teams can see where the business is going and be able to plan what's the highest and best use of what they should be developing.

What would be helpful, I think with data and analytics and AI and all of these things right now, everyone's learning together. So in some ways, the data teams might be able to let the business know that there's opportunities they might not have thought of. They're not just the net receiver, they're also a, an input into the planning, and that should be a two-way conversation.

Richie Cotton: Absolutely. Yeah. I guess the trick then is you don't want them, the have different plans be stapled together, as you mentioned, but you don't want the business team to make their plan. Then the data team's oh we'll just. Do whatever we need to do to support this. They wanna be active in some sense.

Carolyn Dewar: Absolutely. It needs to be two-way street all the way along. 

Richie Cotton: Yeah. Do you have any sense of what the processes look like for that? What sort of business support do you need for that to happen or organizational structures? 

Carolyn Dewar: That's a good question. I think as we think about a lot of the really important partnering functions, whether they're data or technology and others, having an ongoing conversation with the business is so important.

A number of my clients, they'll have their business unit team, but the data or the technology people are treated as if they're a day-to-day part of that team, right? They're attending the leadership meetings, they're involved in the planning. They're involved in the decision making. I think in a lot of matrixed organizations.

It's often not clear, right? Are you more part of the data leadership? Are you more part of the business leadership? And I think the best is when you can sync those two things up. And so sometimes you'll have a data person assigned to a certain business unit, or at least involved in those conversations early.

And that's when I see it work best. It's part of a day to day. Cycle as opposed to something that just happens once a year. 

Richie Cotton: Okay. Yeah. I like the idea of just having more short term just interactions like having or at least having more frequently rather than just, oh, once a year we'll try and figure out talking to our colleagues in different teams.

Okay. I'd like to talk a little bit about careers and there's one thing in your book a phrase I hadn't heard before was called the Lake Will Begone Effect. Do you wanna tell me what that is and why it's important? 

Carolyn Dewar: I think this is all about having blind spots or do you have a realistic view of the business, the realistic view of what you're stepping into?

Do you think everything's perfect or are you willing to take views from outside and maybe counterintuitive points that shake it up a bit? I think what we found in our research is leaders who are willing to take an outside view. As opposed to just sitting around assuming everything's perfect, end up doing much, much better.

And that's one where data leaders can be a huge source of insight. How are you infusing that thinking? Those reality checks holding up the mirror sometimes to say maybe it's not exactly as you think it is. Those are important things to cut through those bias that are just natural in, in our human psyche.

Richie Cotton: Okay, so this is really it's a bias about thinking things are better than they are, so I guess. It's rose tinted glasses,

Carolyn Dewar: exactly. 

Richie Cotton: Okay. Are there any other sort of biases that you think, oh yeah. Psychological biases that you think people need to be aware of when they're considering the state of things or their career 

Carolyn Dewar: specifically to their career and their career path?

Richie Cotton: Yeah, sure, 

Carolyn Dewar: sure. Absolutely. I think there's a number of things that can get our, in our own way, right? One is. Especially if you're really thinking about your next move, right? I spend a lot of time with leaders who aspire to be A CEO or aspire to just be the next big leader in their role, and they get so fixated on what do I need to do to get the job that they either don't pay enough attention to their current job, right?

Which is the best thing you can do to prove that you're ready is deliver excellence in your current role and start acting like a big leader. They also don't invest the time to develop their own skills. To be ready to be great at the next role, right? So it's not just about getting it, it's about being good at it once, once you're there.

And so thinking through and being honest with yourself, where are you already? Super. Where do you have great skills and experience and capabilities and what might be. New learning edges for you, right? What might be new experiences that would help you stretch yourself, learn new things, get ready, and how can you use any role you're in now to get ready?

And I think about Mary Barra, who ultimately ended up as the CEO of General Motors, right? All the way from being an intern. She worked all the her way up. And one of her roles shortly before A CEO. Was actually the head of hr, which a lot of people don't think of as a natural stepping stone necessarily to the co suite.

And so her mindset in that role, rather than saying, look, why am I suddenly the head of hr? I want the big job. She said how do I bring an enterprise thinking? How do I bring a leadership mindset to this function, to this role? And she did some pretty innovative things, right? They had a 60 page dress code, for example.

She ripped it up, threw it out, and said no, our dress code is gonna be two words. Dress appropriately, and it just signaled that even as a senior leader ahead of hr, she was taking that enterprise smart cut through mindset and demonstrating that in the role she's in. I think any of us can take that high road, and actually show that we're doing the best thing for the company, not just for my function in whatever role we're in. 

Richie Cotton: That's quite a dress code manual. I 

Carolyn Dewar: know. I can't imagine all the permutations. 

Richie Cotton: No, I feel like a lot of my shirts would be banned under Exactly. Situation. But that's essentially that someone going from chief people officer to CEO I'm wondering is there.

What's the path from like chief data officer or Chief Analytics officer to C-E-O-D-D? Does that route exist? 

Carolyn Dewar: I think it's fascinating. I think historically it hasn't been the most common route, right? It's usually a P and L leader or A CFO or a country leader. I think as we go forward, having done a rotation through data and analytics.

Is gonna be a really critical skillset for any future CEO to have. So I think you still want to round it out with having some of the other functional and business experiences over time, but I think more and more it'll be crucial and the data. Leaders that show up well will be the ones who link it to the business, right?

Who don't just provide the data, but they help think through, here's the implication, here's the second and third order implications or issues that brings up opportunities and they think like a business leader bringing that amazing data skillset, that's gonna be really powerful. 

Richie Cotton: Absolutely. Yes.

As you, I think we've got a few chief director officers in the audience. Do you wanna give 'em a tip on what they need to do to take that next step up to CEO? 

Carolyn Dewar: I think that's a great provocation. I think the data officers who are, see themselves as a strategic business leader who get involved in the conversations with the top of the house and bring their data, but put their hat on of what's right for the company, what's right for our customers, where can we take this business, are gonna show up in really distinctive ways.

Richie Cotton: Absolutely. So it's about thinking about the other parts of the business then and showing that you have that sort of you can cope with all sides of things. 

Carolyn Dewar: Absolutely. 

Richie Cotton: Alright. More generally for people who are perhaps loaded out in the organization, they want to become leaders, what sort of mindset do you need for that?

Like what's the mental approach to leadership? 

Carolyn Dewar: I think it's great. It turns out in all the research we did with all these CEOs, 99% of it applies to any leader, right? And there was a couple of mindsets they had that really set those apart from those who do really well from the average, right?

The first, as you think about those six parts, in that case of the CEO role or whatever role you're in, the great leaders said. Not only is my job to keep those six plates spinning, but I also have an invisible role, which is as the integrator across all of those things, right? There's work in being the one who's connecting all of those pieces.

And so I think in any leadership role you can say, what are all the pieces that I'm managing day-to-day where maybe members of my team or different stakeholders see a piece of it, but I'm the only one who sees all of it. And is there leadership I can show and value I can bring? The fact that I see the whole picture and that should actually advance our thinking, advance our execution, help us get things done in a new way, that's one mindset.

I think another mindset is around being bold, right? The leaders who do exceptional things rarely do them by just being incremental or rinsing and repeating what the team's been doing before. Now to be fair you need to be bold and right. You don't wanna be bold and wrong, right? That doesn't end up well.

But if you really think about the art of the possible right now, that all these things are possible that weren't even possible a few years ago, what would it look like? What bold ideas, what new decisions, what new priorities could we set that would help us achieve something really extraordinary? And then how do you lead through that?

I think boldness was another clear mindset that comes through. 

Richie Cotton: Okay. Yeah, certainly. I mean like the, particularly the AI technologies like. There are just so many new possibilities of things you can do compared to what you could do just a few years ago or so. Yeah, I can certainly see how boldness is being rewarded at the moment.

The other aspect of being good is about identifying your weak spots. I know everyone hates self-reflection, performance season always comes around. Performance review season always comes around too fast. So talk me through, how do you identify your professional weak spots and how might you go about fixing them?

Carolyn Dewar: For a CEO for All Seasons, which is the latest book in research, we actually dug in and asked about blind spots and so we surveyed, in this case it was CEOs, their direct reports, but also their bosses, the board, and we compared the results of how the CEOs rated themselves on all these dimensions versus others.

It turns out 100% of the time, and we almost nearly get nearly never get a 100%. The CEOs rated themselves higher than their direct report. 100% of the time, and I think that's true for almost all of us as leaders, right? You don't wake up in the morning and go to work and do things that you don't think are the right thing, right?

Because you're showing up that way. You assume you're doing it well. What does that say? It says two things. One is you should listen to people on your team and create the environment where they can actually give you honest feedback. Have you created the safe space where they can call out and say, Hey, you might think that's going well.

It's not going as well as you think, or it's not landing the way or what the team actually needs is more of this and less of this, and so do you have some of those truth tellers around you who can give you that honest feedback that's so important? Sometimes there's formal tools like a 360. Even just the day-to-day conversation is really important so that you see and are made aware of blind spots that you might not have even known you had.

And then once you know what they are, whether you've identified them or your team has, how do you think about the two or three that will make the biggest difference? And set yourself some goals, right? What is something I'm gonna work on in the next week or month or quarter, and what are the things I'm going to do?

What's my development plan to actually learn and practice, get feedback. Is there someone that you can ask on your team to watch out for whether or not you're doing it? Give you feedback along the way. How do you do that in a really structured way, is the way to make the most progress 

Richie Cotton: that first step, that almost, oh I think it was all the CEOs thought they were doing better than their direct reports to, it's like the opposite imposter syndrome.

Carolyn Dewar: Yep. You have the risk of being in a bit of an echo chamber, right? As soon as you get the big job, whether it's CEO or other leadership role, your jokes become funnier. All these things, people suddenly treat you differently, but you're still the same person. I think you really need to guard against making sure people are telling you the truth, or it's easy to s, be a little bit of an ivory tower.

Richie Cotton: Absolutely. I'm now questioning. Are my jokes funny or do people just tell me that 

Carolyn Dewar: your shirts are fabulous? I can tell you that I love the color. 

Richie Cotton: Thank you. I'll take that. Wonderful. Alright. So I guess the other soft skill that I think CEOs really ought to have that's perhaps applicable to everyone is around time management.

Always a challenge when you're super busy. I guess once you get to CEO level, that's like. The real hard part. So talk me through what are your time management tips? 

Carolyn Dewar: The overriding mindset of these excellent CEOs who've done well is, and I'm not sure they all started out this way, but they've all gotten to the place where they say, only do the things that only you can do.

And what does that mean? You think about yourself as the CEO or maybe the chief data officer, whichever role you play. There's only one of you. You are a scarce resource with 24 hours in the day, seven days a week. So it is not selfish of you to say, what is the highest and best use of my next incremental hour?

And really being quite ruthless about given the skillset I bring, given the role I'm in, what are the highest value things I should be working on? And then taking a cold hard look at your calendar saying, is that actually where I'm spending my time? There are plenty of us who spend time in all kinds of meetings, as the 24th invitee, right?

Do you really need to be in those meetings? Are you there because you're worried? If you're not there, you'll be cut out of the loop. Sometimes you have to do some own self-reflection of are you showing up for the right reasons? And even if you're invited for the right reasons, are there ways for us all to be working more productively together so that we don't all need to be doubling and tripling up?

That's a huge time sink. But even in your own work time, how much are you spending on the things that you know are the priorities for the business versus just getting sucked into fire? Drills sucked into other things, and can you look at your calendars? Maybe retroactively go back for the last month.

How much was spent on firefighting versus being strategic versus developing your team? And then are some guardrails or changes you can put in place to help you say yes to the right things and no to the right things. Now, I know it's easier said than done, but the first step is admitting you have a problem.

And I think that kind of self-reflection is really important for leaders. 

Richie Cotton: Man. Yeah. I think the thing about avoiding firefighting is incredibly important. We actually just did a whole data framed episode on that recently. So yeah. For any listeners, go back and check out the, it was the Nelson ing and Don Kiva talk about how to avoid firefighting.

I think something will get a bit stuck in stuck in sometimes. I guess the thing is quite often you find a CEO, they'll have a big success in it. For a couple of years, and then suddenly everything goes disastrous. There's a level of complacency. I think sometimes you get like organizational hubris.

Talk us through, how do you avoid all that? How do you keep drive going? I guess regardless of where you are in your career. 

Carolyn Dewar: Absolutely. In the CEO for four seasons, it's those seasons we talk about, right? When you're preparing for the role, you're new in the role. Then there's the middle years, which is where we'll go the, your question.

Then you figure out how to hand over the reins. I think the middle years, in many ways, you're the most precarious, especially if you've done well because the risk is you've done well. You think, okay, I can just keep rinsing and repeating and running this play over and over, and there is a risk. You get complacent, right?

You assume that what's been working is what's gonna continue to work, and especially in a world right now when there's so much change. It's just a really dangerous mindset to have. So how do you beat the odds? How do you not be one of those folks who get a sophomore slump or things go downhill? The most important thing is to put in place mechanisms or things to ensure you think like an outsider, both you and your team, right?

If you were to walk in fresh to that role today. What would that person think? What would they say is going well? What's not going well? What external trends might they point to that you need to be paying attention to? Worst case scenario at the company level is an activist comes in and they do that for you, right?

They poke holes and pointed all the things that they think you should be focusing on. What if you did that to yourself first, you and your team, and you said if someone was a CRI critic right now. What would they see? I love the story from Michael Dell. We spent time with him. He's been a CEO since he was 19, right?

All the way through, so decades and decades as a CEO, and he went in with his leadership team and he said, imagine if in three years time there was a competitor who was in our business better than we were moving faster, delivering things for customers that they wanted. Now let's assume that we are that competitor.

For us to be the ones that are attacking our business in three years, what mindset would we have? What would we start doing today? What would we start changing? How do we disrupt ourselves? I think that idea and building it formally into your leadership team discussions, whether it's annual planning or more regularly, some teams do a simple tool.

It's a devil's advocate, right? You assign someone in the meeting when you're all agreeing and getting excited. Someone whose purposeful role and permission is to challenge. To ask the hard questions. What are we not thinking about? All of those mechanisms are incredibly important to avoid that complacency or that sophomore slump.

Richie Cotton: That does sound like a brilliant idea and I suppose is the sort of thing in like IT security. You hire teams to try and break into your networks and things. 

Carolyn Dewar: I love that example. That's perfect. The rest of the business should be doing what IT security has been doing for years. 

Richie Cotton: That's wonderful.

Although, I suppose if you're gonna be the person who asks those hard questions and starts challenging the CEO all the time, you probably wanna get consent and click. That's an official strategy first. 

Carolyn Dewar: Absolutely. And it's run in a really productive way. It's all in service of being productive. 

Richie Cotton: Part of this about changing things and keeping things going. It's all about finding the time to listen and learn new things. You mentioned takes a day every bump to, to learn new things. So how do you find the time if you're constantly busy? 

Carolyn Dewar: It's a great question and it's not easy.

It comes down to the priorities and the time management, right? If you step back and say, what are the five or six most important things you can get done this month or this quarter? If it were not for you doing them, they're not gonna get done right. And some of those will be business priorities. Some of those will be things you're driving day to day, but maybe you are the only one who can think about certain questions on behalf of the business.

And in that way, it doesn't feel self-indulgent. It actually feels like a priority. And how do you structure that time, whether you block it into your calendar, sometimes people block it in and treat it like it's a really important client meeting or stakeholder meeting, and that's your thinking time.

Different people learn different ways. It could be attending industry events, it could be attending events, round tables with people from outside of your inter industry. Maybe there's data folks in other industries that have faced things ahead of the one yours have, right? You think about. Some of my clients who are just now entering heavy regulatory environments, they say what can I learn from banking?

What can I learn from pharma? What can I learn from these industries that have already been down this path and know what it takes? And so there's different ways to learn reading, talking to people, setting aside time. The key is to make it a priority and to put it into your calendar, just like it's any other important activity that you would do as a leader.

Richie Cotton: But also the idea of just speaking to people in other industries, reading about what's going on. Outside of your own bubble, that's gonna be incredibly helpful for just yeah, continuing building the skills, getting different perspectives on things. 

Carolyn Dewar: Absolutely. A lot of times the analogy from other industries that might be further ahead than yours on certain things or face challenges already can be incredibly helpful.

And it also helps you not just repeat what your competitors are doing, it gives you these orthogonal ideas to mix it up, and those are often the breakthrough ones. 

Richie Cotton: Absolutely. So one of the sort of recurring themes of this conversation has been about, there's a lot of uncertainty at the moment.

There's some very rapid changes in business at the moment. What do you think is causing all this? Why are things upended all the time? 

Carolyn Dewar: I think it's probably for a longer conversation over wine or coffee in terms of the state of the world with the moment. But a lot of them are external shocks, right?

We are having a huge transition moment. In terms of geopolitics moving from have a single geopolitical leader to multipolar leaders around the world that are setting things. I think the uncertainty around tariffs and currency you put in or layer on, let's not forget climate change, just all the things happening in the world.

I think there's a tremendous amount happening externally right now, and part of what leaders are trying to think through is what are the implications of that for their business? How do they get ahead of some of those changes that are happening and how do we as leaders not be deer in headlights, paralyzed saying there's just too much unknown.

I can't do anything. It's actually the moment that leaders need to rise right now and say, even amidst the uncertainty, I'm gonna help lead. I'm gonna chart a path forward, knowing we may need to change, but there's clarity of the kind of the north star of where we're headed. That's what organizations are looking for from their leaders right now.

Richie Cotton: Okay. I think that's a great idea is having leaders that aren't days in headlights and stepping up to lead. What do they need to do? Like how, or in fact, for anyone, even if you're not a lead, like how do you go about keeping up in a world with big changes? 

Carolyn Dewar: I think this is where our data folks can be incredibly helpful because they can bring facts in reality to some of this, right?

And so there's a lot of talk about AI and what it's gonna do to workforces there talks about. Population. Our population is actually on the cusp of the world of going down, not up for the first time in history. Those things are somewhat knowable. There are trends that are happening where you can put the facts and say, rather than just, clutching our pearls and saying, I don't know what's happening.

Some of these things, you can see where the ball is going and how do we bring data to actually calm people down a little bit and say. Even if it's scary, even if it's new, there's some things that we, that are true and that we need to now just start thinking about what are we gonna do about it? And I think data leaders in particular can be a real cut through in all of this.

Richie Cotton: Yeah, absolutely. Amongst all the uncertainty, there are some definite known things that are happening and things that are very likely to happen. So yeah, I guess once you once you just write those down, talk about those things, it's gonna calm people down a little bit. In a world of change, do you think the skills you need to survive in, in the future are gonna be different?

Like what do you need to know about what, how do you need to change? 

Carolyn Dewar: I think there's a number of things that will continue to be enduring, right? We will still, if you go back to the initial, what is the job of leaders, right? We'll still need clear direction. We still need to think about our teams and our culture.

We still need to think about stakeholders. I think all of that remains true. If anything, the complexity of it and the pace of it is accelerating. All the more reason why you need to be crystal clear on what are you trying to get done, where are you headed, and how do you integrate all of these points of view as you go?

It requires more clarity of thought than before. And I also think we need to bring people along as change leaders, right? And so how do you help people connect the dots and see where are we going? What does it mean for me? What's in it for me? What do you need from me that's new? And we can't just assume people.

Know that. I think leaders need to be even more clear to the point of feeling repetitive. Some of the CEOs we talked to said they feel like the chief storyteller and they almost get sick of te telling over and over again the same messages and the same clarity. But I think that's important for organizations.

They need to see, they need to connect the dots between what they're doing every day and where we're headed. And that over communication is just so critical as leaders, so that people can feel like they are on the bus and they know the role they'll play. 

Richie Cotton: That is an interesting thing where you think you told the same story a thousand times and it's getting boring and that's the point when other people start listening to it.

So do you have any final advice on how to be a great leader? 

Carolyn Dewar: Final advice on how to be a great leader? That's such a good one. I think the leaders who are terrific, our less fixated on, look at me, look at my big job. Because frankly, that honeymoon period fades pretty quick. And these jobs are too hard if that's your primary motivation.

They're motivated much more by what they wanna do with the role they're in. They have a bigger vision, a bigger sense of purpose in terms of where they wanna lead their team, what they wanna get done for their customers or their investors or their stakeholders. There's some bigger. Achievement, some bigger goal that they're working towards.

And that only not only gives them the energy to persevere even when it's hard, but it brings people together and gives them the energy to do bold and exciting things. So what is that bigger picture thing that you're aiming for that can rally the troops and get people going? 

Richie Cotton: I do like the idea of having a vision, of having a thing to rally people around rather than just Hey, check out my cool job title, all that.

Absolutely. 

Carolyn Dewar: The Jo Jobs are too hard if that's all we're doing. Yeah. 

Richie Cotton: Alright, super. So finally, I always want new people's work to follow. Who's work are you interested in right now? 

Carolyn Dewar: Oh, that's such a good question. I'm thinking a lot about, there's so much talk about AI and tech and coding and all of those things that I like that counterpoint.

I'm really thinking about in a world where technology is gonna enable us to do so many things, how do we make sure this human element gets brought along? So folks who are thinking about. Philosophy and human change, and what are the implications of all of this? There's Adam Grant, Brene Brown, others who really think about where this is all leading, because I think the power will be when we bring technology and data and AI together with things that are uniquely human, that create experiences that we all love.

And so how do we make sure we're bringing those two pieces together? That's where I'm spending some of my time. 

Richie Cotton: Wonderful. Yeah. Brenda Brown in particular, like a really great thinker on people matters. So yeah. I love that. Think about what does humanity mean? In a world of high tech, 

Carolyn Dewar: we can't all be robots, right?

There's something beautiful about humanity, but I think we need to think about how these things that are come together and one plus one is going to. Three or more. As opposed to it being something that, that's contracting. 

Richie Cotton: Nice. I love that. Yeah. Some sketchy math, but it's hopefully go well.

Brilliant. Alright. Thank you so much for your time Carolyn. 

Carolyn Dewar: It's so super to talk. Thanks so much for having me.