Ep. 27- Leadership in this New Era of Disruption with Charlene Li

In this episode of the Digital First Leadership Podcast, Richard is joined by Charlene Li, a New York Times bestselling author and the Chief Research Officer at PA Consulting. They discuss how leadership needs to change, adapt, and pivot as we enter a new era of disruption. Also, what skills leaders need to adopt and how they will learn these skills, especially as we move into a new professional environment post-COVID.

You can find Charlene Li's book The Disruption Mindset on Amazon now.

Host: Richard Bliss
Guest: Charlene Li
Podcast Manager: Kimberly Smith

Follow Richard Bliss on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bliss/
Find Charlene Li on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleneli/

Transcript

Announcer: 

Welcome to Digital-First Leadership. The podcast that focuses on helping leaders and teams understand  how to master the language of social media in today's digital first world. 

Richard Bliss: 

Welcome to the show. I'm your host Richard Bliss and you're listening to this episode of Digital-First  Leadership. How we speak to those people who are influencing, talking about and identifying the trends that are happening in leadership in the world today. My guest today is Charlene Li. Charlene is a New  York Times bestselling author and she's also the Chief Research Officer at PA Consulting. Charlene,  thanks for joining me. 

Charlene Li: 

Thanks for having me. 

Richard Bliss: 

Okay. Now, before we even get going, Charlene, I've got to ask. I have not interviewed, talked to or  engaged with too many chief research officers and that seems to be a very unique role, and something I  think that you're uniquely qualified for. Is that accurate? 

Charlene Li: 

Oh, I would hope so. I've been in the research space for over 20 years and I'm excited about this new  role at PA Consulting because I can write about pretty much anything I want. And so they're trusting me  to do this and the issues I think that are pressing leaders today are these really what I call wicked  problems. These are issues that defy solution, because you can't Google what the solution's going to be. 

Charlene Li: 

So, for example, how do we actually take ESG and sustainability and build it deeply into our organization  rather than having it on the side? But that requires that we make really substantive trade-offs between  short-term gains long-term gains and our community, our employees, our customers, the climate. I  mean, these are just really hard problems to deal with [inaudible 00:01:43] We just don't have the tools  as leaders to be able to deal with these kinds of things. 

Richard Bliss: 

And PA Consulting brought you in to try to address some of these issues, didn't they? 

Charlene Li: 

They did. 

Richard Bliss: 

What are some of the things they have you researching right now? 

Charlene Li: 

So one of the things I'm doing is 181 CEOs sign the business roundtable purpose of a company, of a  corporation. And it was always in the past to maximize shareholder value. And in August of 2019, 181 CEOs signed a document saying, "No, the purpose of the organization is to maximize the stakeholder  value." So there were other stakeholders other than shareholders. And we commit to supporting  customers, employees, the community, our environment, our partners, and supply chain, as well as our  shareholders. 

Charlene Li: 

And so my summer research project is to go around and talk to each of these stakeholders in these  companies and say, "How's it going? What works? What doesn't work? We've been at this for three  years, COVID has come in the middle of this. How are you thinking about this?" How do we make these  trade-offs Because business is all about trade-offs and we never have enough budget, not enough time,  not enough people. 

Richard Bliss: 

Yeah, never enough budget. And we're seeing that, we're seeing that the corporate role of executives  and the companies is going far beyond the business, into society as a whole. And we're seeing this  around the globe, aren't we? 

Charlene Li: 

Right. And yet, how do we do this? There's no playbook for this. And yet there are playbooks. There are  examples from all around the world from back in our history. If you think about the moguls, the  Carnegies of the world, there were incredible capitalists, but they also contributed tremendously back to  their communities. How do you do this? How do you do this as a company, as a hired gun, not a family  business? 

Richard Bliss: 

Yeah. Now, you wrote The Disruption Mindset, it's been out three years and you have a new book  coming out that addresses some of the challenges this disruption that we're facing. But from a very  specific leadership standpoint. Where do you seeing that those leaders are facing these challenges? How  are they making this adjustment and what are some of the adjustments that are catching them by  surprise? 

Charlene Li: 

Sure. I wrote The Disruption Mindset right on the eve of COVID and good timing or terrible timing  depending on how you look at it. And one of the questions coming into it and out of COVID is, "Well, our  demands of leadership are so different now" as you were saying, it's so much more nuanced. I have to  think about so many things. We know that employee engagement went up when managers actually  started asking people, "How are you doing? No, no, truly. How are you doing?" And that's all it took and  yet it has gone back down because we stopped doing this. Like why does this not stick? 

Charlene Li: 

And what I realized in my conversations with leaders, they wanted to know, "How do I do this? How do I  be strong and yet vulnerable? How do I be confident and humble?" We don't have models of leadership  of how to do this. How do we know how to persist or how to pivot? How do we create change and yet  maintain and execute operationally at an excellent level?

Richard Bliss: 

You think- Go ahead. Oh, no, here's a question I have because my focus has always been on this  transition of leaders in we'll call it real time face-to-face now switching to the digital environment. Do  you think leaders somehow didn't understand the nuances of this because they had the cheat code of  being able to see a person in-person? They could see if they were physically distraught and they didn't  have to develop a certain set of tools where they actively had to ask instead. Is that a possibility there? 

Charlene Li: 

I think that was part of the reason, but I think the reality is we had been taught not to bring our  emotions to work, not to be personal, not to have connection and relationship that it's dangerous to do  that, especially because it could turn into something inappropriate. Me Too has just really drilled us into  our heads, especially for women or men working with women. And so we've stripped humanity out of  our workplaces and yet the most human thing that we want to happen is for us to be seen, to be known,  to be understood, to seen for our whole selves. 

Richard Bliss: 

Well, I got to say 

Charlene Li: 

[inaudible 00:05:58] going to think about work in a completely different way. 

Richard Bliss: 

Right. And so I got to say in our environment, so there's 10 of us in our environment and several of  them, several of my employees are single moms. And what's happened the irony here is we've moved to  a virtual environment where we've been distanced away from each other. Yet on the flip side, we have  been brought into each other's personal lives on an unprecedented scale. Where this past week we  were training a new client and both moms were presenting. And both moms have kids that Zoom  bombed the call and everybody on the call was engaged and interested, and did not have a problem to  the point then one of the attendees felt comfortable to pick up her own child and to hold that child in  her arms as she was engaging. 

Richard Bliss: 

And we would've never experienced this pre-COVID where we would've had this intimate insight into  each other's personal lives at an unprecedented level that has been ironically both distancing because  it's virtual, but so much more intimate because we've been brought into each other's homes and lives. 

Charlene Li: 

How more intimate can you be then to see each other's bedrooms? I mean, we were like seeing all  aspects of our lives and we were accepting it. And I think that really changed things for us. It's just  changed what is work? What is professional? What is that line going to be? And it was a recognition for  the very first time there is no line, it's the same person. Why are we making people draw that line and  checking things at the door? Why are we doing that? 

Richard Bliss:

Yeah, I know that my own wife this week has had to go back into the office for the first time. And she  said the first day was just pure chaos. She didn't get anything done. Work stopped because everybody's  doing the human thing, chatting, talking, seeing each other. She said day two was a little better, but the  leadership was in town. And some of these leaders have met their employees for the very first time. And  so this is a major shift for leadership. 

Richard Bliss: 

Where do you see this going? What kind of skills are leaders going to need to adopt and how are they  going to be able to learn these skills as we move into this new environment? 

Charlene Li: 

Again, the old playbooks of leadership don't work anymore. I mean, this, this whole idea like, "We've got  to be back in the office." If anything, if you have even remotely a few people working hybrid, you have  to think much more carefully now about a new type of bias, proximity bias. We talk about all these  different types of bias, gender, ethnicity, age. There's proximity now because it's so much easier to  develop a relationship with people who are close to you even just time zone close to you, not even the  same physical office. 

Charlene Li: 

So you go to favor someone who is probably not at home with young kids, typically male, typically older,  and those people are going to have an advantage now because they're coming to the office and you're  coming into the office. So we need to be very, very careful about not creating a two-tier system of  people who are in the office and other people who may be working remotely or even hybrid. 

Richard Bliss: 

I just took notes. Proximity bias. Okay. Absolutely, perfectly well said. I'm sure you've got that written  down somewhere. Okay, Charlene Li proximity bias. That's going to be my quote because that's  fantastic, because you and I both live here in the San Francisco bay area. Yet you probably have seen it  and I know I've seen it so many during the pandemic, so many leaders have taken the opportunity to  relocate because they've discovered they can lead just as effectively in a virtual environment from  anywhere, whether they've moved to Kansas or they've moved to Connecticut or where they've moved. 

Richard Bliss: 

And yet, some of these companies are now saying, "Hey, you need to come back into the office." And I  heard one person say, "Well, do the executives need to come back into the office as well, because how  come you're going to make the rank and file, but the executives now still get to have this hybrid  environment and enjoy the workspace?" So I think that's going to be a big challenge for a lot of  organizations to make that adjustment. 

Charlene Li: 

Well, one of the most important things about leadership is credibility and you have to model the way  and if you don't, your credibility as a leader is completely shot. It doesn't matter what your title is.  People will not follow you because they don't believe you anymore. And leadership is all about the  relationship between people who lead and the people who follow them.

Richard Bliss: 

What do you think the stumbles are going to be? Are we going to see a turnover of leaders who just  can't make this pivot? 

Charlene Li: 

I think the existing system will continue to support them. But the reality is it's not a turnover of leaders  that matters, it's a turnover of employees. People don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad leaders. 

Richard Bliss: 

Right. We've heard that one so many times and now we're starting to see that with the Great  Resignation that people are like, "I don't need this." I saw a story 

Charlene Li: 

[inaudible 00:10:41] need this. 

Richard Bliss: 

They don't need this and because they can 

Charlene Li: 

It is a competitive market out there for talent and react as if, "Oh yeah, these people will stay with us  forever. They got a good thing going." Are you kidding me? No, no, no, no, no, no. Let's wake up to  reality. This is a war for talent out there. It has not changed. 

Richard Bliss: 

It has. It's just become so much more intense. I have a daughter who just graduated from university two  weeks ago. She's going to be moving back in with me. They never leave, do they? 

Charlene Li: 

No, they never leave. 

Richard Bliss: 

And yet, I've been shocked because she majored in film editing, she's very successful, she's got  incredibly successful YouTube channel mashing up My Little pony with Hamilton soundtrack, hundreds  of thousands of views, thousands of subscribers. I said, "What are you going to do for a career?" And  this is a failure of parenting. She's like, "Well, when I move in with you, maybe I can get a job down at  the mall." And I'm like, "No, especially not in the San Francisco Bay Area. Let me introduce you to a  series of people who are desperately in need of your talents." 

Richard Bliss: 

And I think this young generation is waking up to the power they have over how they ... something that  you and I when we were, when we were coming of age in the workforce, we did not have that luxury. 

Charlene Li:

Right. And the reality is that there's also a generation right above them who came out of school during  the Great Recession. Came out of school, doing their time, but it was really hard to find a job. And  they're learning from them. It's like, "Oh my upward mobility in terms of my career and my prospects to  do well to improve my family situation and improve my living conditions and income are very limited"  because the previous generation right before them saw this. 

Charlene Li: 

So no wonder, no wonder their expectations are set really low. I mean, the way that work has changed  has completely, completely written everything, especially for skilled and creative workers like your  daughter, they can work from anywhere, do anything. And the fields are not just in entertainment. It's in  pretty much anything that has anything to do with video, communications, marketing, training, so many  places for them to work. 

Richard Bliss: 

We'll wrap up here, this has been fascinating. And I appreciate your time and that you've made this  possible for us to have this conversation. Here's one question. When you were in college, growing up,  looking at your career, where did you think that you would end up? Are you doing what you were  anticipating or is it so far beyond what you were even able to experience 

Charlene Li: 

Not even close. I mean, not even close. I grew up thinking I wanted be a doctor. I wanted to be like my  daddy, he's a doctor. And being a daughter of immigrants, Asian, that was a good, safe route. And as the  oldest child, as the daughter when I went to college and realized, "I don't want to be a doctor, I want to  go into business." My partner sat me down, he goes, "Name me one Asian American woman who's a  leader in business." I'm like, "You got a point. There were none." There was zero. There was zero. 

Charlene Li: 

There was Elaine Chao who was the Department of Transportation secretary for Ronald Reagan and that  was it as far as I could see. And he's like, "Do you really want to take this on? Do you really want to take  this on and be that kind of trailblazer?" So I'm like, "I love it. I love leading. I love running things." But I  never thought I'd be an analyst and I thought I would just do it for two years when I joined Forrester  back in 1999. And I'm still at it 23 years now going on. 

Charlene Li: 

And of course, becoming an entrepreneur, successfully exited and now in this new role. I research the  world of ideas. The influence and the impact I can have with those ideas is what really drives me. I love  creating these aha moments with people. So that's the underlying motivation for me doing this. 

Richard Bliss: 

You've given me a couple of aha moments here in just our short conversation and the time that I've got  to know you over this past year. So I really appreciate, Charlene, you coming on the show and sharing  your wisdom in insight. 

Charlene Li: 

Thank you so much for having me.

Richard Bliss: 

You've been listening to the Digital-First Leadership podcast. My guess has been Charlene Li, a New York  Times bestselling author. You can find her book The Disruption Mindset on Amazon now. And she's been  talking about how leadership is going to need to change and adapt and pivot as we enter into this new  era of disruption. Thanks for listening. Take care. 

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