The Evolving Leader

The New CEO with Ty Wiggins

• Ty Wiggins • Season 7 • Episode 14

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In this episode of The Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Emma Sinclair talk to CEO and Executive Transition advisor Ty Wiggins. He advises leading companies on leadership transitions and executive onboarding to ensure the accelerated paths to effectiveness and is one of only a handful of people globally with a PhD in senior leadership transitions. Ty is the author of ‘The New CEO – Lessons From CEOs on How to Start Well and Perform Quickly’ (Wiley, 2024).

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.



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Jean Gomes:

In this show, we talk to Ty Wiggins, who researches and advisers on the hidden challenges facing executives transitioning to CEO as the extraordinary pressures expectation and complexity of decision making continue to mount. The role of CEO represents the peak of human drama in business. We expect almost superhuman qualities of these leaders, but all too often, it's the most basic of human frailties that come to define success or failure. This show, then, isn't just useful for aspiring CEOs, but also for those who work alongside them and will help you to better understand support and enable them. Tune into a vital conversation on The Evolving Leader. Welcome to the evolving leader. The show born from the belief that we need deeper, more accountable and more human leadership to confront the world's biggest challenges. I'm Jann Gomes

Emma Sinclair:

and I'm Emma Sinclair.

Jean Gomes:

How you feeling today Emma?

Emma Sinclair:

I'm feeling well. Thanks, Jean. I have recently just joined a new gym, so I am currently getting the benefits of evening exercise and good night's sleep. So I'm wondering how long that'll last, taking us into the festive period. But at the moment, I'm I'm enjoying that energy. So yes, I'm feeling good. Thank you. How are you feeling Jean?

Ty Wiggins:

Thank you Jean, thank you, Emma. Great to be

Jean Gomes:

I'm feeling really good. Just got back from New York, and no jet lag. So that's always a win. I'm feeling that's a, you know, like a success factor. But other than that, I'm feeling very curious, because today we're joined by Ty Wiggins. Ty is global CEO and executive transition Practice Lead at Russell Reynolds, associates the global executive search, succession and leadership performance advisory consultancy. He advises leading companies on leadership transitions and executive onboarding to ensure the here. accelerated paths to effectiveness. Ty is one of only a handful of people globally with a PhD in senior leadership

Emma Sinclair:

Good. Well, welcome to the show time, and transitions, and he caught our attention with his recent book, which we both loved, in Myanmar, the new CEO, based on research amongst the world's leading CEOs before joining Russell Rens. Tai founded converge consulting, an executive development focused firm. He lectures within the Master of Business Coaching program at University of Wollongong. And he's also spent 10 years working in the financial services industry after starting his career as a professional basketball coach, over to you. How are you feeling today? which is interesting. So Ty, welcome to The Evolving Leader.

Ty Wiggins:

I'm feeling pretty good. To record this. I'm in Sydney, so we're heading into the warmer part of the year. We're very close to the end of the year. Looking forward to to what feels like a well deserved break.

Emma Sinclair:

Well, I tell you what to kick us off today. Can you tell us a bit about your journey to what you actually do today, and maybe what inspired you to invest your career and all your time working with leaders?

Ty Wiggins:

As Jann mentioned, I started off in coaching, and I wasn't the greatest tactician, but I was a good communicator, and so I loved that aspect of of coaching. I then went into financial services, which, of course, is a natural sort of segue from from basketball coaching to financial services, and then got into business coaching and then leadership coaching. And a number of years ago, I did some work with a large organization in Australia, where they had promoted a series of leaders ahead of time due to a change, significant change in management, and this leadership transition piece was a real challenge, and I found a real passion around, you know, an aspect of business that happens all the time, but doesn't get a lot of attention. So I started to do some work. I worked in that space for about eight or nine years, and then as I got into the PhD studies, that was the area that really caught my attention. And it's not a very well studied area, but like I said, it's something that happens in organizations a lot. Just as I was finishing my PhD, Russell Reynolds was in the stage of really building out its development capability. So it was a quite a fortuitous timing for me to finish a PhD in senior leadership transitions, and for Russell Reynolds to be saying, we want to spend more of our effort and spend more time with clients on this space. And that's how I ended up to be with Russell Reynolds, where I've been now for six years.

Jean Gomes:

So before we get into your book and research. And can you give us your sense of the big picture, the role of the CEO, given the big forces of work in geopolitics and AI and just a kind of more uncertain world, what does the job look like today compared to what it looked like 10 years ago?

Ty Wiggins:

CEOs now it's it's significantly harder, and I accept that most generations would say that as they came through, but with the advancements of technology you mentioned, AI, one of the aspects that comes up a lot with CEOs is that the need to be a public figure and a public representation of the organization. And so this area of what do I comment on? What's my public persona. What's my personal persona? Where does this sort of line stop? I think is one of the things that keeps CEOs up at night and adds a lot of pressure the fact that they can be recorded at all times, at any time, so everything that they say is there forever. And I think, with challenges to technology and especially AI. You know, this is a real, a real sort of Hot Topic for CEOs, because they know that there's a large impact coming, but many of them don't have a great grasp on it. So one of the things that we're seeing is the elevation of a not digital but AI specialist, or a chief AI officer, getting really quickly elevated to the C suite, just in the fact that CEOs know, you know, if I missed the boat here, I could miss a large opportunity for the organization. But I don't quite know what the boat looks like, so I need some more people around me. So I think it's an increasingly challenging role. I think it's an increasingly public role, and from a time and a demand point of view. You know, they're working longer hours and more intensity than they were 10, 20 years ago.

Emma Sinclair:

Out of interest. Ty, thinking about those challenges, are you seeing any changes in either the demographics or the requirements of the CEO? I mean, I was fascinated reading your book, thinking, what's the appeal now for this top job still?

Ty Wiggins:

Yeah I mean, you have to ask yourself, in some cases, and I've certainly worked with a lot of individuals who were very happy at CFO or COO level and have made the conscious decision I don't want to be CEO. For many there's still that burning desire to to do that. And I find that the desire comes in two sort of areas. One is, you know, the responsibility to steer the organization and the responsibility to make those decisions, and the desire to leave something better than they found it. So I think the, you know, the the negative connotations of CEOs that we've had over the years are not as prevalent. I think me, the CEOs, especially the ones I work with, they're doing it from really, you know, well intended sort of point of view. But there are certainly a lot of people that have decided consciously, I'd rather just be number two or number three and be able to go home at certain times without people following and asking and ringing. So I think there's still an appeal for a large group of people, and we as a community certainly need the right people to step up and take this challenge. And that was part of the key aspects of the book, was, my sense was there's a lot of great CEOs who struggle in this first sort of freshman year, sophomore year, and maybe don't make it to a point where they're actually delivering on their potential, and we need them to do well. So I have this great opportunity to work with CEOs in what I term this backstage pass. So I thought it was prevalent to share that, to try and help even a handful do this a bit easier.

Emma Sinclair:

Maybe we could turn to your book, the new CEO, and you've mentioned just their starting point on what you were setting out to do with that book. You might want to expand on that. And John and I were talking, and we were wondering how you feel your book differs maybe from the other works on this topic. So Michael Watkins, first 90 days is obviously well well regarded, well understood in this area. How is your work different? And what was your What was your purpose and mission for this book.

Ty Wiggins:

So the purpose of mission was really, as I said, I've had this opportunity over the last sort of six, seven years to do a large number of CEO transitions where I've been able to support these individuals and be really close to the way they're thinking and approaching different challenges and decisions, to watch them go through the emotional highs and lows and the challenges, and, you know, then they get past it, and no one sort of talks about it. And so, you know, I have a number of clients. One in particular was quite pushy, and said, you know, you really need to share this. So that was really the push for the book, was, how do we share some of this information and sort of demystify a little bit of the challenges CEOs go through, I think, in terms of the differences to the other works. And again, I'm very keen and happy to see that more on transition gets published and published, and obviously Watkins first 90 days, I was the sort of start text for a lot of individuals. I think the key. Differences are, you know, first 90 days looks at a large degree of different levels of leadership. I'm really focused on this unique component of the CE role, the CEO role. It's a, you know, it's a unique role. It's, you know, different than people expect. And I really wanted to show the light on that component. And I think the other key difference is, you know, there's a whilst the first 90 days is a really key part for a CEO. It doesn't make or break them at junior levels. It might have a greater influence. So I think the emphasis on what they do in their first 90 or in first 100 days is really important. But for a CEO, they can still be in transition 18 months down the track. So what I really wanted to focus on is, yes, you want to have a great start. Yes, the first 100 days are important. For me. It's more about what you don't do in those first 100 days, in terms of missteps and stumbles. But then how do you get through the six months, 12 months, and then, you know, we're seeing, from a from a sort of stats point of view, this increase in CEOs being removed before month 24 at q1 this year, it got up as high as 15% of CEOs were not lasting to the 24th month. So we know that this first year contains a lot of aspects of what people do that look good in the second year, we get a sense of if it is actually good, and that's when we're getting the board sort of pulling the trigger. So how do we set CEOs up to get through that first year and really prosper into the second and third year?

Jean Gomes:

So what are the biggest surprises for the new CEO? What are the things they haven't experienced or expected in their previous progression up the career ladder.

Ty Wiggins:

I mean, there's a couple and part of the book, I did a large piece of qualitative research. I interviewed 35 CEOs, plus I did some quantitative research as well. So the top surprise that CEOs experience is generally in the culture, that the culture is not as positive as they thought it was. The second key surprise comes to the state of the business. So this is really interesting that you know, through all the research and due diligence that CEOs do to take on a role, they never get a really good understanding of the full state of the business until they get in there. So that's quite a shock. And we see that even with internals, you know, we had some really high profile internals, you know, contribute to the book, people like Ruben laguarda, who had been with Pepsi for 20 plus years and still got to the top job and said, Okay, there's a lot more here than I thought there would be. And then, in addition to those surprises, I think the role is a surprise. So as close as you get to the CEO role, and you'll read this in a lot of documentation, you don't really understand that until you experience so for people that think I know what this is going to be like, that can really rock their confidence and rock their sense of self as they step into that. So the role itself is a real challenge, as is the loneliness that they experience. And you know, this comes up a lot, and this is one of the aspects that I had probably undervalued by doing so much of the work. That was reinforced for me doing the book. And I love, you know, Carol Tommy from UPS talked about it. She came off the board, and she said people talked about the loneliness of the CEO role all the time. And she said, I thought, you know, really, how lonely can it be like you're at the top of the organization, there's people around you all the time. But she said, once she got into the role, it was extremely lonely. There were things that she couldn't share with the team, there were things she couldn't share with the board. There was a good amount of time. And this is what it's like for a lot of CEOs. They just spend in their own heads thinking about things that they can't share until it's more fully formed, or they've done more research. So countering the loneliness, if you've come out of an executive team, is another real challenge.

Jean Gomes:

What's, what's the psychological challenge around trying to hold all of that stuff privately and, you know, kind of separate, different audiences, who you can say, What you can't say, What? What do you think is going on there for people.

Ty Wiggins:

Well, I've seen it firsthand. There's a lot of stress, there's a lot of anxiety. You know, I talk to clients a lot about not only emotional intelligence, but emotional control. So one of the challenges of being CEO is that coming out of the C suite, you know, you're well known, but the CEO, you're the you're the main attraction. And there's lots of stories of CEOs saying something, and having people run off and create a project to deliver it, or suddenly go home to their significant others and say that the business is going under because the CEO came in and she was grumpy and said, X, Y and Z. So this pressure and the scrutiny on them, whilst all this internal turmoil is going on is a real sort of melting pot. So there's a lot around emotional control. People are looking for calmness in the leaders, in the leaders that they have. And so they have to find a place as an outlet for some of this. And so that's where people like myself and other sort of coaches, advisors, mentors, this kitchen table come. Except CEOs. When they become CEO, they should do a couple of things. They should give some outside advisors, people that will be really frank with them. They should try to find some truth tellers within the organization. And they should really make sure that they've got this support network where they can sort of vent the challenges that they've got without feeling that they're influencing or that the person has another agenda.

Emma Sinclair:

And then I'm interested by this distinction that you draw in your book between the internal CEO and those that are hired externally. And you mentioned just just then, in terms of the internals, and I was wondering what the difference is in terms of how you make a really good start, whether you've been hired externally or internally, there'll obviously be similarities. But could you help us just navigate that for a moment?

Ty Wiggins:

Yeah, absolutely so you, if you, if you talk to a board about, you know, which is better, internal or external, they'll often say both. You know, if boards could have their way, what they would like is someone who has the internal understanding that has the external objectivity. So the challenges for both sit around those two areas. When you're internal, depending on how long you've been through the organization, you're carrying a degree of a reputation. People know you, you also know the organization. So what we see internals do well is they tend to move on the senior leadership team faster that they know these individuals. They know what they need to do. Where they fall short with the senior leadership team is if they don't make those moves early, they tend to struggle to separate themselves from the team and the changing relationship from former peers to now being their boss. So that's one of the challenges that internals can have. The other things the other challenge internals can have is that they're they're lacking some of their own decisions. So some internal CEOs will talk about a reluctance to make changes to things that they know need to be changed out of some feeling of sort of guilt or obligation, because six months prior, they were part of the management team that decided this was the right thing to do. So that's that's also a challenge in terms of the internals, and this comes down to the objectivity, where they have a, obviously a clear head start, is that they understand the culture. However, once you go from C suite to CEO, your view of culture changes. It's it's less around. Is it a good or bad culture? It's more around. Does the culture align with where I want to take the organization? Because if it doesn't, then, you know, it kind of acts like a bad shopping cart. You know, it just keeps pulling you to the right the whole way through. You've got to get that culture piece aligned. If you're external, you have the benefit of ignorance. You can walk around the organization ask really dumb and obvious questions that you can't socially or in the business world once you're in the organization, but you don't understand the culture. And so that's one of the surprises, is I got in and I didn't the culture was worse or harder than I thought. So they have the objectivity that they don't have the inside track. They're also potentially less likely to move as fast on the team for a number of reasons. They come in wanting to assess the team. People tend to lift their game when there's a new leader. So you'll find people that weren't performing very well suddenly sort of putting the tie back on them and trying a little bit harder so they show up differently, and the new leader doesn't know the new CEO doesn't know the history of that, so that can delay them a little bit in terms of that as well. Plus they're making new relationships with naive executive team, but also the board. So those are some of the challenges that externals have. But you know, to your point, Emma, there's pros and cons to both. And I think the overarching aspect that we need to consider is we do tend to see more internal promotions to CEO in businesses that are performing, and more externals in businesses that aren't performing. So whilst I don't have the data around that, I've assumed that that adds the degree of difficulty to the externals just a little bit.

Jean Gomes:

What are the most common mistakes that the new CEO makes?

Ty Wiggins:

Early on, it's often things that they say or do that come back to haunt them. You know this again, the emotional control, the fact that you know people know that they have an opinion, and these are individuals that are often comfortable giving their opinion, and they feel a need to lead, so they say things early on, and the organization takes that as sort of written and started. And so a lot of work is done, often to unwind some of those early, you know, sort of comments or commentary. The other thing is that they have a bias to action. So when you step into the CEO role for the first time. It's exciting. It's likely something you've aspired to for a very long time. So as soon as you start, you have this internal pressure of, I need to prove to everyone that I'm the right person for the role. So they look for things, and they do things, and sometimes they do things really, you know, in haste, and they. Regret it, and they have to back that out. So all of these, you know, the saying the wrong thing, doing something that's, you know, not aligned to the direction, not aligned to the board's expectations, not aligned to the sort of operating rhythm of the organization, can really damage their early credibility and momentum. CEOs often ask me a similar version of that question, which is, what is the one thing I should never do? They say there isn't one thing. It's anything where you lose the confidence of the board. Because if you lose the confidence of the board, you lose your opportunity to stay in the role and deliver on the expectations that you have for yourself and that people have for you.

Emma Sinclair:

Ty, in your book, when he was talking about the saying the wrong thing, I was really struck by bling wolves and soup story. I wonder if you could just bring that to life, just for the state of what you mean by even saying the wrong thing, just it made me smile.

Ty Wiggins:

Yeah so almost every CEO I've worked with has a story like this, and they're all equally humorous. And I put these two in because I thought they shed the light on on just how careful you need to be. And the chicken noodle soup story is a CEO who had been with the organization for 20 plus years and had got in early, gone into the cafeteria and was just making sort of chit chat and asked what the soup of the day was, and the person behind the cafeteria said, It's chicken noodle soup. And he just casually said, I love chicken noodle soup, and walked off. And three months later, one of his assistants came and said, you know, you need to go down to the cafeteria and tell them that you like something other than chicken noodle soup, because they've made it every single day for three months, and the rest of the organization are about to pick at your office. So he thought, obviously, he thought this was quite humorous, but what he was able to do, which was really effective, he went down to the cafeteria and spoke at length to whoever was there about the recent glut of chicken noodle soup and etc, etc. But what he was able to do was turn it into what we call in coaching, a bit of an anchor. So whenever he's in a meeting that he gets a lot of nodding heads and no challenge, he'll step back and say, Hang on. Is this another chicken noodle soup moment? Is this where I've said something and you've all just agreed? The other example is, I knew a first time CEO, and she was formerly a CMO, and so she's completely aware of the style guide for this large British franchise business. When she walks into a business, it early and just sees a blue wall, and so that's a nice color of blue, recognizing it wasn't in the style guide. It's not what it's supposed to be. By the time she got to the third or fourth store, they were running around trying to match the Pantone color and find the blue and buy paint to paint it before she got to the store. So that's how fast things had traveled. And in both cases, neither of these CEOs remember at the time making this comment, you know, Ron Williams sort of summed it up really well, but he said, you know, a CEO's casual utterances can result in concrete buildings. And his example is he said something in a meeting, and it turned into a $20 million project that he stuck. He he was able to stop it right at the last minute, but he had said something like, this might be something we could do. And they were down the down the path of sort of committing $20 million to it. So most CEOs have this experience, and this talks to the microscopic attention level that they get being CEO.

Emma Sinclair:

I think they were great examples, just for the responsibility of even your impact on what you say, there's to that, as you say, that completely microscopic level of detail. Thank you for bringing those to life. You mentioned another thing in there in terms of mistakes, and one of the largest ones being losing the confidence of the board. And I wonder if you could just bring that relationship to life a little bit in terms of what you've learned about optimizing, sort of that critical stakeholder group and that relationship between CEO and board.

Ty Wiggins:

If you're a CEO that's stepping into a into a new role as CEO with a board and you haven't done this before, then you'll likely find that the board interaction and relationship is different to what you have experienced at the C suite. So many senior executives have good board exposure. You know, they come up and present their board reports, they interact, they might even sit through a lot of it, but that shifts significantly when you become the CEO. So for most of our careers, we go through organizations with one individual boss, and then when you get to CEO, you have sort of 357, 13 bosses. So that dynamic is very different, and they have different levels of interest in the organization and attentiveness. So what I've seen work really, really well is that CEOs early in the piece spend a lot of time forming those early relationships with the board. So when I did the research and I asked CEOs at 18 to 24 months, what would you do differently if you had this transition again, the top answer, which we would all expect, is, I'd move faster on my team. The second answer is, I would work. Carter to build better and more effective relationships with the board early on. So what happens if they don't do that? When they then go to make changes to the organization, they don't have the board support? So you'll see some of the people that mentioned in the book actually went to each director's homes and spent a full day, in some cases two days with them, getting to know them, getting to know their perspective on the organization, their expectations for the CEO, their perspectives on the board, the board dynamic, their role in that the board's role in the business, really spending the time to form that relationship. Because if you do that early, when you come to make changes, you've laid good foundation. But if you don't on your struggle, the other aspects, which you'll hear a lot of CEOs talk about, is transparency with the board. You know, there's a couple of great rules. You know, if in doubt, share, you know, you don't want to keep things away from the board. The board has specific roles, top of which is to hire and fire you as CEO. But you know, up there is also the government sending responsibility to to grow the organization. And the other rule of thumb is never surprise your chair. So don't go into a board meeting with information that you've not yet shared with the chair. That's one of the early areas where CEOs conference can really get knocked and I've had a number of phone calls over the last two years with people that have you know this just sort of came up. It was a bit on the fly. Took it to the board, meeting the chair, and I ended up in a bit of a stout so that's quite important as well. So having a really good relationship with the chair, spending regular time and having opportunity with each directors, each of the directors spending time early to form those relationships. Those are some of what I see, sort of best practice in getting a good start with the board.

Jean Gomes:

Yeah, and this kind of points to the time that the CEO spends across all the different competing commitments, because getting that CEO's schedule right is hugely important. How should they think about where they manage their time and focus differently? What do you advise people on getting that delicate balance optimized.

Ty Wiggins:

Well I think it changes as you go through. So when I work with clients, we sort of look at these transition milestones, and we are looking at, you know, the first couple of weeks, first couple of months, etc, and that where they allocate their time will be different. One of the things for CEOs to consider, and this is something that came out of the research as well. Was when we asked, How long do you spend each week on board or board related activities? The average was 25% so if you're a CEO about to become or you're about to become CEO, and I'm telling you, you'll lose a day and a half a week to board activities. It seriously inhibits your ability to get things done. So there's the pressure on their time, the demands for people to spend time with them, the need for them to walk around and be present and talk and communicate, puts a lot of pressure on the things that they need to be doing. So there's a lot around you know, CEOs should do only the things that they can do, and for each organization, that's a little bit nuanced, as it is for each CEO, but CEO should really be thinking about, you know, where they have a unique contribution, there's a lot that they can do, but doesn't mean that they should do it. So if somebody else can be making that decision, if someone else can be driving that execution as CEO, you really need to reconsider why you're spending time in these areas. And one of the concerns that boards often talk to me about early on is the new CEO comes in. There's lots of things to fix. Fixing things is a bit of a endorphin hit. You know, you feel good because you're the new person. You're coming in and fixing stuff. So they get trapped in the fixing and they say things to me like, I just need to fix this division, and then I can do the things I need to do, and then I just need to fix this. So the boards will come to me and say, so our concern is that we have the most expensive coo in the market. When is this person going to become the CEO? So this is a real challenge for them to sort of come in and out of the operational aspects and resist the temptation to do whatever they were doing previously. That got them to be so successful, that got them to be the CEO, and realize that they really need to find this bit where they have a unique contribution.

Emma Sinclair:

What are some of the real, practical things that people can actually do or can to make that happen for themselves, so that they're actually using their diary in the best way or using their time in the best way?

Ty Wiggins:

Diary management, having someone that works with you, from an assistant or a Chief of Staff, front of you, someone that really controls that is incredibly valuable. Having somebody who pushes back on the many requests for meetings, your great Ty has been invited, but you're having an assistant or a Chief of Staff says, What is Ty's contributions is, why do you want him at this meeting? Because if he's just there to listen. And you can give us an update. So that type of diary management and and and discipline is really, really important. And the other thing is, is blocking out the time that they need to do, the things that they need to do, one of which is spending time thinking about the business. So another concern boards come to me with is they look at the CEOs diary or calendar, and they're back to back from seven o'clock until eight o'clock at night in meetings. And their question to me is, when is this individual thinking about business? Because only the CEO thinks about the business in terms of the long term, thinks about the challenges of the resource allocation between the Bau and the now versus the future. So they can't tell us that they do it on planes or in taxis or on the weekends when they're walking the dog. They need to have time for that. So setting up a calendar that has some of those blocked times is really important, and then spending time really, really early on to get comfortable delegating, you know. So the other aspect is sometimes you'll see this, and you see this across leaders in general, so that their ability to add value gets in the way of them letting go of things. When Marshall Goldsmith talks about this a lot, sort of a leadership pixie dust, you know, I can make something go from 90 to 93% that I reduce the person's commitment to do it by 50% so just because I can again doesn't mean I should. So there's a real discipline to that, being a new CEO.

Emma Sinclair:

And maybe just to build on that too. So we've talked, obviously about time and and discipline around that. But there's also an element in there, in terms of your own self management, for your energy and sustainability, what is your research? And I asked about what good looks like there for senior leaders and execs.

Ty Wiggins:

One of the early points about, you know, what to make it difficult about CEOs now, the expectation that they are, you know, they do all of these things is important. You know, we want someone who works hard but also has time for their family. We want someone who attends these things but turns up over here and travels, but there's still a time. So the expectations I want to be near superhuman in that sense, is a lot exercise and fitness is absolutely imperative for all senior leaders, CEOs, especially. So one of the things that I coach people around really early is don't drop that exercise raising. In fact, you need to sort of pick that up. This is a job where you need to be in good physical condition to be able to be effective. You can walk through the motions and so forth, and you can do the long days. But if you're not healthy and fit, it's very, very difficult. And then, you know, there's a constant reminder, I think, to CEOs, that they're very important, very important people. However, they're probably most important at home. They're irreplaceable at home, to be fair, in the workplace, they're replaceable. So there's a balance around that. And so what you'll see in transition is there's this period of six to nine months where they just throw themselves in the role, trying to get up to speed, trying to deliver. And so they put everything to the sideline there. And there needs to be balanced. There really needs to be balanced. Because, you know, long gone are the days of do as I say, not as I do. People are watching the CEO, and they're watching the CEO in terms of those behaviors to set the standards for their for how they operate and how the organization operates.

Jean Gomes:

Can we talk about this delicate art of building the top team, particularly when you're you know, when you're either rising above or you've got to choose as a new person who's going to make it, who might need to go. How do you kind of do that assessment, and then how do you move past that and build the trust necessary to lead that top team?

Ty Wiggins:

Building the top team and getting the right top team in place is usually the top priority for most CEOs, and it is still the most common regret that they didn't do that quickly enough. CEOs being senior leaders, have a fairly refined internal tool for assessment. So they often know pretty quickly what they think about the individual and the capability. They will often supplement that with assessment. You know, Hans Vestberg at Verizon did a great job. He put 200 plus people through an assessment because he wanted to have an apples for apples measurement. He wanted to remove his bias. He wanted to remove the bias at HR, but he did it very, very quickly and and then started moving people around, because he found that certain people were the right people in the wrong roles. When you come to the executive team, most CEOs will come in and very quickly get a good read on, yes, this is the person for the role for my team or no, they're not. And sometimes in teams, we have people's roles, they get designed around the individual, and it's very difficult to replace that, so they have to look at the structure as well, moving quickly on that gut feel. And you. Psychological assessment, if you use it, is really, really important. I'm yet to have a client who had a view of somebody early that then realized that it was completely the opposite six months later, more often than not, they're saying things like, I knew my gut told me this is the right person. So changing a CEO will bring change to the organization, you need to move on those changes as quickly as you can. When we looked at the data, we worked out it was taking on average 2.8 months for CEOs to make the first change to the C suite. It was taking 9.3 months to get the team in place, and that was taking 11 to 14 months before the team was performing in the CEO's view. So that's almost the whole year before, before the one of the most important levers you have a CEO is pulled effectively. So you need to get on this really, really quickly. And like I said, the CEO change drives change. We expect that. So make that assessment. Some of the tactics you can use is to increase the cadence of senior leadership team meetings, I advise people to have off sites really early to make sure that and have an off site where the CEO is not doing all the talking. Have people present. Have them present in pairs. Have them present in groups. Get a real read early on on not only their individual capability and motivation, but how they work together as a team?

Emma Sinclair:

Can I just ask a question that literally on that last word that you came up with, which is in terms of individuals motivations and getting a read, is there an Is there a good way of doing that? How do you gain How do you bring motivation as a topic early on to understand that within your top team?

Ty Wiggins:

Spending time with people, one on one, individually. Sorry. Early on is quite helpful. You tend to find that early on, people will be often more candid when you're brand new, and then that backs off. So before you've been there too long, people are likely to tell you some home truths. So having conversations, especially if you think about when a CEO comes in externally, and two or three of the existing C suite went for the role and were unsuccessful. To not raise that is quite dangerous. Everyone's had that experience. So sitting down on the other saying, Listen, I am saying you went for the role you're unsuccessful. How are you feeling about this? How does that change your long term career objectives? Is this still the right position, still right role, still right organization for you? Sometimes you can have really candid, upfront, enormous conversations early on. That helps. Other than that, you know it comes also back to trusting your gut. So CEOs will come and they say, Listen, I think this person is just white anting everything you do. And so what do you think? Or do you know, well, a criminal. Okay, so we know that's going on. We either need to confront it, or you need to make you need to take some action on that. So understanding their motivations, understanding their interests, their long term goals, the sooner you can do that, the sooner you can make a really good assessment of is this the right person? And the question that I ask almost every client, because most clients get to a point where they, um, and her over a particular person or a couple of people, is knowing what you know now, would you rehire them for the role? And it's normally a like, a right? No, okay, well, then we need to start moving on that. Or it's an unequivocal yes, or it's, uh, maybe, maybe, you know, we need to do a bit more work so you can work out quickly what that is. But you need to make these decisions really quickly, and most of the CEOs will have made those through their internal diagnostic really quickly.

Emma Sinclair:

And can we just talk a little bit about the second and third time and beyond CEO because this book, obviously you talk a lot about that new that new CEO role, but that more seasoned individuals aren't immune to the mistakes of first, first time CEOs. So what would you say some of the blind spots for an individual who's done the role before and feels they can do it again?

Ty Wiggins:

I think that the key blind spots will be around anything that provided great success the first time around. You know, we get quite wedded to, you know, last time I turned right, it was fantastic. So you've really got to push me to turn left. So am I looking at it objectively? Have I come in with a playbook? So this is when you hear feedback from organizations that the new CEOs come in and say, listen back at Company X, here's what we did, and here's the playbook, and let's get going. When the people go, Well, hang on, everyone thinks they're nuanced, that one thinks the organization's different, but there are aspects that need to be modified. So How flexible are they? And I think as you get to third, fourth and fifth, the more successful they've been, the sort of tighter this little the playbook is, so they're potentially more resistant to change. So I think there can be this sort of tipping point of one, two. Three challenge. I'm still a bit learning agile, and then I'm really locked into this process. And sometimes boys will put the person in because they know they just roll this process out, and we know it will work. So I think that's one of the blind spots, one of the things we found in the data, which was really interesting, and we haven't quite completely solved for it yet, so we want to do some more research. But second time CEOs talk about the fact that they regret not moving faster on the senior leadership team for the first time, but then when we look at the actual dates have changed, they move slower as a group than first time CEOs. So Well, my view at this point, and again, we're going to do some more research, is, I think it sits in the camp of almost like a moral hazard. You know, when when seat belts were made compulsory, car crashes went up because now we thought we were covered. We're fine. I've already identified it, so I don't need to do anything about it. And so they said, I know this is important. I've already said it, but yet, then they sort of put it to the side. So I think that's one of those challenges around I've been here before. On a positive aspect, one of the things that I think second time and third time CEOs do so much better than first time CEOs is that they realize early on that everything around the financials and the operating model they can read over a weekend. They can get briefed by the CFO or the CEO like they can digest that very, very quickly. If they want to be successful with this organization, it's going to come down to the people, and they need to understand what the people feel and think and what aspects of the culture are holding them back. So when you look at the first 30 days of a first time CEO, it's normally half an hour back to back meetings, with very little cut through and a lot of time spent trying to get up to speed on the financials. Second and third time, they're having 90 to two hour long meetings, letting people talk themselves out. And then they've got a break between the meetings so they can digest in lights, and then they're going again, so they're not actually putting their fingers in the business. They're just meeting with people because they know that if they can understand, you know, everything they need to understand that's really important for the organization is trapped in the people. It's not necessarily in the spreadsheets.

Jean Gomes:

So there's really interesting kind of knowing, doing gaps that might emerge for for the more experienced people. What do you have you learned about helping the CEO to keep learning? Because the pace of change, it's a cliche, how fast it's it's changing. But how do they learn? How do they keep up? What are the strategies that you think work best for people?

Ty Wiggins:

Having people in their camp that continue to challenge their thought process. Confirmation bias is a huge challenge for new CEOs. As soon as they get appointed, they start to form decisions and judgments on the organization. And as they come in, they look to find those things because it gives them great confidence. It feels great to find out that you thought the problem was x, and lo and behold, it's x, or that there's actually a big problem that you need to solve and that you can be the savior. So having someone see they're going hang on a minute. You said that three months ago, and you found it. Are you sure? What else do you need to be looking at what's going on here? And so getting them to stop and reflect and to break up their onboarding. So you'll see a lot of people come into the CEO role first three months, lot of meetings, touring sites, you know, locations, etc, and then they get more into the meat of the strategy and the operations, and they stop that. So doing that, and then doing a bit of the strategy, and then going and doing that again is a great way to go. Hang on a minute. This is what I thought at the beginning. So you'll hear some people talking about keeping the list at senior levels. When you join an organization, keep a list of things that seem really odd, and then watch how that list seems more normal after a couple of weeks, as you acclimatized to the organization. When I came in, I thought this was the worst thing I've seen. Now it's probably still the worst thing you've ever seen. You've just looking at it in different eyes. So how do you maintain the objectivity? How do you go back to what you thought? And then you'll see CEOs do a variety of things, you know, running exercises with the strategy and the executive team, where they get someone to come in and play an activist investor. So let's all think like this. What are we what are we missing? What are we not thinking about? Where have we got sort of blinded in, in our own thought process, and how we are we really looking at this objectively enough, or are we heading into some dose of group think. So there's a lot around that in terms of the executive team, to making sure that you don't just hire people that you like and are like you. Some of the people that really get under your skin are the best people to be on the executive team, because you need that backwards and forwards. So there's a number of things that you can do to make sure that you continue to challenge the full. Formation and the formation of your biases.

Sara Deschamps:

If the conversations we've been having on the evolving leader have helped you in any way, please head over to Apple podcasts and leave us a rating and review. Thank you for listening. Now let's get back to the conversation,

Emma Sinclair:

Thinking about the new CEO, sort of poised and ready for 2025 and beyond, given everything that's going on in the world we're like literally right now and everything we just shared in this time together, what would be your words of advice for that new CEO?

Ty Wiggins:

I think, get really clear on how you're going to start, how you're going to land into the role early messaging, early communication themes. Think about using some of the language that works really, really well as you move around the organization in those early days. Using language like what I'm learning, what I'm hearing, what people are telling me is probably the best way to test ideas without making them your own. Have themes around learning. People want to understand that you're here to learn first and then to make some of those decisions very quickly. Spend time with the board, as we mentioned, ideally before you officially start, put those hours in, because that's really important as well. And I think when you become CEO, you join this very unique group of individuals. You doing a role that nobody else can really sort of prepare you for. So one of the first groups that you need to build in terms of your network is other CEOs. So if you're a CFO, you're likely to have good network of CFOs or CMOS or CEOs, but having other CEOs is really, really important that you have some people around who are external that can talk to you about the challenges that you're facing and experiencing really early on. So all of this is in terms of preparation, because you do want to have a good start. You don't want to damage your momentum. You don't want to be retracting things or backing out initiatives and be ready for a level of busyness that you haven't experienced before, even as a very effective senior executive, people that thought that they, you know, were, you know, productivity, you know, number one, got into the CEO role and thought, wow, this is another level again.

Jean Gomes:

You've touched on a couple of points, but I'm just interested in the kind of research that you're planning to do in the in the next year or two. What's next for you?

Ty Wiggins:

The research that I did for this was for across listed, private and PE portfolio CEOs with a real bent towards the listed. I think there's more work to do with the PE CEO community. And the other thing that I'm really interested in now is that, with this up tick in CEOs being removed in that second year, and some of the research indicating that we're really clear that the shareholder value and value creation comes in year three to five and three to six. What else can we be doing to really help them through that second year? And we see this. We've seen this a bit with women CEOs as well. You know. How are we setting are we making sure that we're providing the right information? So I'm keen to do a bit more research on this, the sophomore font. What happens in the second year? What do we need to do in the first year to make sure the second year is effective? And how do we get some of these people who are going to be great CEOs through this difficult two year period, and give them the opportunity to realize their potential as CEO. So that's what I'm sort of interested in getting into.

Emma Sinclair:

Can I ask a question as well? Just based on the unique area and population that you study as such in your research, there's obviously a huge drive, and there has been for many years, for increased diversity at CEO level, culture, gender, everything in between, and just because of the unique position you're in, what are you seeing? What's your take on how far we're progressing with that?

Ty Wiggins:

I don't think we're progressing far enough by any by any means. I think that we still have a lot to do in terms of the business community to fix the challenges around gender diversity at the lower levels, and how do we maintain support and make sure that women leaders are not leaving the organization? And then I think we need to have, you know, I better discussions around the board. So if I you know, I've been really fortunate. I have greater I think about 57% of my clients have been women CEOs, which I think speaks a lot to their willingness to do well and be supported. There's a bias still within boards. Even when we have boards that have good gender diversity, they are harder, in my view, on women CEOs. So if I use their language, they will often say things like, I need to be twice. As good to be half as you know, I need to work twice as hard to be half as good. So are we making these judgments about the CEOs in a measured light? Have the board really talked about what the measures of success are? So we have these big, lofty goals for the CEO do we carve out what success looks like at three months, six months, nine months, 12 months, 18 months, and do we score them against that? Take the senior leadership team stat for an example. I've had a number of conversations after the book came out with organizations that say, if you're telling us it takes a year to get the team working, well, we think we might have pulled the trigger on certain CEOs too early. We've judged them on the wrong measurement, and we've let go of people that would actually have done well. So there's bias within the boards. The boards need to have a really good view of, how are we going to judge this success? And, you know, hand on heart, are they setting these individuals up to succeed?

Jean Gomes:

What's your your view on the the effectiveness of boards themselves?

Ty Wiggins:

I think across the across the larger business community, the board structure and board governance works well. It's a really important aspect. It's not only you know, from the governance point of view, but also from the support of CEOs they provide. You know, we talk about this, that they're a strategic asset. If they're developed, well, if they're functional, I think, like all groups of individuals, you know, different things creep in, and some boards are more effective than others. I do have a lot of clients that go into roles and come to me and say, Listen, the board's actually not that functional. That happens quite a lot. So then they look at, okay, well, I need to actually influence that and get that moving. And that's really where the chair needs to be running that. So boards are not equal. The concept of what they're doing is fantastic and really, really important. And I think it's really up to the CEO to foster those relationships, make sure they treat it and develop it to be the strategic asset that it can be. And unfortunately, sometimes they will have to get involved in some of the dynamics of the board to make it more effective for them and for the organization.

Emma Sinclair:

And just just thinking ahead. And so we've talked about how the CEO is changing, but you're obviously in a very, again unique position of coaching the CEO. How do you think your conversations might change with that CEO population over the coming years? What is your sort of next journey of focus?

Ty Wiggins:

I think what's already changing is in addition to, you know, things like AI and the changing role of certain functions of the business, this is coming up more and more. If I think over the last two years, more time is being spent on culture and the importance of not only diagnosing and understanding the culture, but also the initiatives to make those changes. So what's the current state? What's the desired state? How important is this to track along? So I think we'll spend, you know, CEOs will spend more and more time focused on their responsibility in leading the culture and the cultural aspect. And I think this is also a growing area for boards. You know, we're seeing more accountability for boards when organizations suffer from poor culture, like in certain markets, we will see the chair removed with the CEO, because the culture of the organization has resulted in, not only bad poor performance, but, you know, other sort of negative aspects as well. So I think culture will play an even greater part, especially as we manage our way back into the office. Some organizations have three cultures, people that work always at home, people that split their children and people that work in the office. It's hard for CEOs to create a cohesive culture when some people have never met each other.

Jean Gomes:

As we we come to a close to say, thank you, Ty, this has been an amazing conversation. I think one of the things I take away from it, apart from, you know, the fact that everybody should be getting a copy of this book, is that this is not just. This book may be seen in a different light, not just for aspiring CEOs or new CEOs, but also for the people who work with them. Because I think one of the issues here that this raises is just how many of the people who are working for the CEO lack the empathy for what that role requires, and therefore, you know, what do they need to be? Who do they need to adapt to that situation. How can they best support by better understanding? And I think this book provides a really good insight into what it's like to be in that position, and therefore what I might need to do, either in the executive team or one of the direct reports that's. Into that. So I think just encourage our listeners to consider this book having a wider application.

Ty Wiggins:

I think you just sort of ended on the point that I would have added, which is part of the goal once I got into writing, it was to humanize the CEO and to drop the mantle that they're unflappable and superhuman. So I've had a lot of those comments John, that people said, Listen, it's it's harder than I thought it was. They're obviously struggling more than they're showing I want to help. And I think that's great, because there's real, you know, collective benefit in having these leaders of organizations do well. They want to do well. So how can we help them? I think that's an important part.

Jean Gomes:

Yeah, well, thank you for coming on the show and giving us a really great insight into some of the ideas here. So again, you know, if this has resonated with you, don't forget to get a copy of the new CEO by Ty Wiggins, and remember, the world is evolving a you

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Jean Gomes

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