The way we lead impacts the way people live. This world needs truly human leadership. My hope is that the wisdom that you have brought, that our team has brought, that our journey has brought, captured in this book, will equally become a book that will lay the foundation to transform from using people to achieve results to caring for people, to achieve human dignity, and give people a grounded sense of hope for the future and to validate their worth.
I'm Brent Stewart, your host. Thanks for listening. This podcast is an outreach of Barry-Wehmiller. You can find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky at Barry-Wehmiller, and find our podcast articles and videos at trulyhumanleadership.com. If you're a regular listener of this podcast, you've probably heard of Bob Chapman and Raj Sisodia's book, Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family. Well, I am pleased to be able to finally tell this audience that a revised and expanded version of this seminal book will be released October 21st. It has 75 extra pages catching readers up to Bob and Barry-Wehmiller's journey since Everybody Matters was originally released 10 years ago. There are many new stories and insights that point to the thing that we say at the top of each podcast: the way we lead impacts the way people live. You can find out all the particulars about the book and its release, download an excerpt, and see more content at everybodymattersbook.com. And on this podcast, we want to bring you a discussion that I moderated between Bob and Raj where they talk about the new version of Everybody Matters. They have a wide-ranging discussion on the need for a new version, the impact of the original version, and their hopes as this expanded edition is released into the world. The conversation is not really just about the book, but kind of where we are in terms of leadership, where we are in terms of business, where we are in terms of education, and where we are in terms of a society. And so we start things off with Bob Chapman.
Let me begin by kind of going back a notch to the purpose of the book. Clearly, we feel that we had been blessed with a vision of what leadership could be in this country that would address a lot of the issues we face in this country, and we felt compelled to share it. The original idea of the book, working with Raj, was first of all to articulate my journey from traditional management thinking to Truly Human Leadership. So that's about the first third of the book, to capture the journey, and then for the book to become how-to. So the second two-thirds in theory were how do you go from management to leadership—a how-to book. I think that was the idea of the original book.
And then we've had 10 years of tremendous exposure to the world, to all parts of our society, and the impact this message had, and we felt a need to capture that in this new edition: the tremendous learnings we've had from the reaction to the book and the ability to talk about this book in the world. So I think our goal of the next edition is to capture the healing power of this message on really all aspects of the world where people learn to care for each other as opposed to use each other to achieve goals. So again, if you think of the evolution of this transformation from these revelations I had that just naturally flowed through our leadership of Barry-Wehmiller, we didn't really know what we had. We were touched by what we had, but we didn't really know the power of what we had.
It was people like Simon Sinek and Raj, noted authors and thinkers in the world, who've helped us understand we were blessed with something very special. And I think it was Simon who said to me, "Bob, you have to share this with the world. You have got to share this with the world." And then Raj, with his incredible experience in writing Firms of Endearment, Conscious Capitalism, saw it and said, "This is a message that has to be written, and I'm going to write it." And when you see the reaction in every part of our society, in every part of the world, just to think that we sold—I was told by our publisher that 5,000 to 15,000 copies was a typical business book. The fact that this message has been validated by the sale of over 110,000 copies in seven languages around the world is a statement of genuine interest in this message as we search for kind of a North Star, something to guide us as we live in life where we learn to care for each other.
My hope for this next edition is this becomes virtually the textbook used to teach leadership in every part of our society, in every country in the world, where we learn the profound responsibility of leadership on the lives that you have the privilege to lead. The global exposure the book gave us simply amplified what Raj said when he first saw it, when Simon said that we have something here that virtually people have never seen before, where people feel valued, not to improve productivity, not to improve engagement, because that is the responsibility of leaders: to send people home each night knowing that who they are and what they do matters. And when we do that, we profoundly impact their relationship with their spouse, their kids, their health. So again, I think the amazing theme that we have for this next edition is the way we lead impacts the way people live. That is a profound statement, true of every part of our society from medical to military to government to nonprofit to business: the way we lead impacts the way people live.
Raj, it's not often that authors get the opportunity to go back and revisit their work. You've written several books, and you have an idea, you execute it, and you kind of move on to the next idea because you're always moving forward. And you actually are now getting the opportunity to revisit two of your books, not just ours, but you're also working on a new version of Conscious Capitalism. What was it like for you to go back to the original book and do some revisions, because you did get the opportunity to rephrase things differently than you had done the first time around, and then also to continue the story that had been set 10 years ago?
Yeah, it is an interesting process. I did do a second edition of Firms of Endearment as well, actually, so that was the first experience of that sort. My friend Ed Freeman says you never really finish a book; you just at some point abandon it to the publisher, because every time you look at it, you're going to make it better or you're going to add something to it because we're always evolving and our perspectives are enlarging. And so it's not always that you get that opportunity. Usually books are one and done. But I think these books, because they did make an impact, there's a timelessness to these. Some books are timely and others are timeless. And this book, I think, is both. I think it's timely and timeless because the need for healing in the world is even greater today, and the need for this message is more acute today than it was 10 years ago. It's always been important.
And so I think framing it in the context of where we are—as we know, the world is shifting very, very rapidly, and we still need to keep a focus on the people and keep what's important at the center. So I think that is an important and timeless message. The way that I talk about this in my talks and interactions, I say everybody matters and everybody needs to win, right? In this world of business, everybody connected to our company should thrive and should be on a pathway towards growth and fulfillment because they're connected to our company. And if somebody is not, if some group of people is not, then we have to go back and say, "Why is that?" So I think that message, again, is very universal. It achieved a certain level of visibility with the first book, way beyond what most books do, but I think there's a level even beyond that that we're hoping now with this edition of the book to reach—to even a wider audience that really needs it. The world really needs this message.
Raj, I wanted to ask a question. You shared with me a couple of times when you got exposed to Truly Human Leadership how it impacted your view of conscious capitalism. With 10 years now of the evolution of conscious capitalism and the evolution of Truly Human Leadership, where do these align, and where is there more power if you could bring the two thoughts together? Conscious capitalism, Truly Human Leadership—where's the power of those two coming together?
When I first got to know you, Bob, and became exposed to the Barry-Wehmiller story, I realized that it was a deepening of the conscious capitalism pillars on at least two of the four dimensions, and maybe all four really, but certainly on purpose. The traditional thinking about purpose is that it's always about something you're doing for the customer, right? You're solving a customer need in a compelling way, and that's of course important. That's how you achieve viability in the marketplace, by solving a real problem that customers have. But what I realized through Barry-Wehmiller is that your people can be your purpose as well. And that, in fact, every company has people, and if you had to choose between a people-centered purpose and a product-centered purpose—you should not have to choose, but the people-centered purpose always matters more, or it comes first, right?
I use the analogy of an airplane with two engines: there's the people engine and there's the product engine. Now, an airplane can fly on just one engine, but ideally you want both of those working together. But if you had to pick one, you would pick the people because that's universal. And so I think that was one: that purpose can be very much embedded in your people. Because some companies make cutting-edge things that really change people's lives; others make products that are essential necessities, but they don't necessarily excite or inspire just by virtue of what they are, the products themselves. And so there are many, many companies in that part of the economy, but they all have people. And when you can root your purpose in your people as well, that universalizes this message. So that's a big impact of Everybody Matters and Barry-Wehmiller: to say conscious capitalism is not a luxury good for the Whole Foods and the Patagonias of the world, that this is something that is important and works in manufacturing, and not just extremely high-tech manufacturing, but sort of mainstream manufacturing, smaller companies around the world, in so many countries that you're in.
That was one. The second one was on leadership. The traditional view of leadership, and even for us in conscious capitalism, was that it's really about what happens during working hours and how we can make that a better experience all around. But what I learned at Barry-Wehmiller is that leadership is about what happens to people in their lives, and what happens to their families, and what happens to their children. And the phrases that you use: "Leadership is the stewardship of the lives entrusted to us," "Everybody is somebody's precious child," "We measure success by the way we touch the lives of people"—these are all very profound statements, and they are a reframing of the sacred act of leadership, that you do have people's well-being and their futures in your hands whether you choose to acknowledge that or not. And therefore, treating it as that sacred duty deepens the role of the leader and the impact that the leader has on people's lives. So really expanding the scope of leadership and the consequences of good or bad leadership on people.
I think the culture element, as you mentioned, is pretty much in the foreground here. It's one of the four pillars, but I think recognizing that your employees are your first stakeholders, and if you don't treat them well, then your customers are not going to be happy and nobody's going to be happy. So I think that's an illustration that Barry-Wehmiller provides of the power of doing that. Traditional businesses put profit at the center, and then people are somewhere in the orbit around that, where serving the well-being of people only matters if it serves profit. But I think putting people at the center and then aligning your business around that so that your financial performance also is rooted in the fact that people are well taken care of—they're empowered, they're innovative, they're creative, they're held accountable, they're cared for—all of that comes together very, very powerfully.
Many businesses say, "Let's focus on the numbers, and then we will figure out the people side of things." I think what you do is you focus on the people, and they say, "We are going to make sure the numbers also work very well," but starting with the people. So those are some of the learnings that I've had through this experience with Barry-Wehmiller and with you. And then, as you know, it really inspired me to think about business as healing, which came out of a conversation with you a few years after the book was out already. You were up for another one of your whirlwind eight-day trips of seeing 15 companies and potentially acquiring eight to 10 more companies that year. And I said, "Bob, last time I looked, you had 108 companies and you had 26 children and grandchildren. When the number of companies exceeds the number of children and grandchildren, isn't it enough? Don't you feel you've done enough? Certainly you have enough."
And I'll never forget what you said to me. You said, "Raj, I don't know how much time I have left. And at the end, I will not be proud of the machines we built or the money we made, but the lives that we touched. And I want to touch as many lives as we can through this empowering message, this loving message." And then I said, "You're not growing a business. You are spreading a healing ministry. There are towns and there are companies that are waiting for you to come because they don't have a future without that. Those companies could die, and those people's lives would be uprooted." And so that's really the idea of business as healing: that when you have a way of doing business that really makes people's lives better, gives them a future, enhances the community, does all of those wonderful things, there's an obligation to grow. You're growing for the right reasons, because you've got a healing modality and a message and a way of being that people need, because suffering is real out there.
Many companies have a compulsion to grow: "We have to add 10, 20% every year. We have to increase margins. We have to cut costs." It becomes like a never-ending sort of a treadmill. People get more and more stressed out and burned out. And it's really ego-driven. It's like what I call empire-building energy. There's no end to empire-building energy because it doesn't matter if you conquer the whole world, you still think you don't have enough. Whereas a healing ministry is very different than empire building: here you are spreading love and care and reducing suffering in the world. So that was a very, very powerful realization for me, which then led to the book The Healing Organization, where Barry-Wehmiller is one of about 22 stories of companies that are in a way following that. They each are doing it in somewhat different ways, and some are focusing on healing their customers or the environment or whatever it might be. But that meta-frame of healing became very central to my thinking about business as a result of that experience.
Raj, thank you for sharing that. That was beautiful. Because you come from a totally different background from us, but it so much aligns with the fundamentals of your journey and my journey. As you know, we summarize it: I remember, and you captured it a bit, when I was interviewed by some organizational development professors for an hour and a half, and at the end of it they said, "You're the first CEO that never talked about your product." And I said, "I've been talking about our product for the last hour and a half. It's our people. I won't go to my grave proud of the machinery we built. I'll go to my grave proud of the people who built that machinery." Which caught them completely off guard, because we tend to define our companies as our product.
To me, what we've done is changed, regardless of your economic model, whether you're creating plumbing fixtures or life-saving drugs: how do you inspire people to bring their gifts, share their gifts, and go home at night feeling that who they are and what they do matters? It doesn't matter what your product is. It matters how you treat your people and give them a sense of meaning as they come together. So again: people, purpose, and performance. It all starts with people around a purpose that inspires them. And then we have to create value. If we don't create economic and human value, we'll hurt our people. Keeping those three principles in balance—it's not one at the expense of the other; they actually feed each other.
To me, it's not about meeting the customer's needs—obviously, you need to do that to perform, that's the vote of the market. And again, you mentioned our overriding principle that came to us because we have a society that defines success as money, power, and position. And it doesn't matter how you get it as long as it's legal, because then you can write checks to charity and everybody will say you're a wonderful person, regardless of how you treated people in your journey, because we have a society around money, power, and position. Our goal was to change that dynamic and say our responsibility is to treat those people in our span of care as somebody's precious child, knowing that the way we treat them in the 40 hours a week we have them in our care will profoundly impact their health and profoundly impact the way they go home and treat their families.
The healing power you helped us see of caring for people—again, the business model you choose is not as important as the way you treat the people, because you need a good business model to give your people a good future. That's where I think it's important. In all my discussions since we wrote the book, I don't see many people thinking about: is your business model giving your people a grounded sense of hope for the future? If you're not meeting a need in society, you will lose the economic opportunity and you'll end up hurting people. So in my view, our goal is to make sure that you have a business model that the market values, and then you've got to have a culture that inspires people to embrace that purpose.
Again, it rises above whether we make a life-saving drug or we repair tires. It is about giving people a sense that who they are and what they do matters. And when you do that, it profoundly affects their life, which never occurred to me. Again, that is the biggest revelation. My education never taught me that the way I would run Barry-Wehmiller would affect people's health or affect people's personal life. But 95% of the feedback—which astounds us yet today—95% of the feedback we get in our journey is how our leadership model affects their marriage, their relationship with their kids, their health, their view of life. So I think the healing power of Truly Human Leadership so aligns with your thinking.
Again, the business model is the engine; you need a well-designed engine, but the culture is the premium fuel that allows that engine to perform to its potential. And I think that was a huge learning for us. We have a society where we talk about economic prosperity, but we need an equal dialogue on human prosperity. Because I thought if I paid you fairly with a decent benefit package and you gave me your gifts for your particular role, that was the economic exchange. And that, to me, dramatically understates the significance of the relationship when you spend 40 hours a week in my care: the impact we make on you and your life. So again, I think, Raj, together we have learned so much that could heal so much of the brokenness we see in the world.
Not just in business—we see it in healthcare, we see it in nonprofit, we see it in military. We see every part of society in every part of the world with the same issue: we just don't know how to care. Which leads me—because you're a professor, and I came to the realization, and I think you agree with me—until we change education, we will never solve this. We are going to constantly be putting Band-Aids on cancer. The foundation to cure these issues we face in the world is: education needs to bring in human skills with academic skills from kindergarten through graduate school so people learn to live together and see the beauty in diversity, not the conflict in diversity. To live in this beautifully diverse world and let that create the beauty of the world, not the conflict of the world.
Teaching human skills which we've learned, which is empathetic listening, how to see the goodness in others, recognition and celebration, and then a culture of service, seizing the opportunity to serve others—when we began teaching those around the world, the impact was profound. As you know, since we wrote the book 10 years ago, our major effort now is to motivate education to a higher calling and create tomorrow's leaders who have these human skills to care for the people that they will impact in life, whether it's at home, at work, in the community. That will heal these issues we are seeing every day in our world of conflict.
And that's been a very powerful addition, I think, to what Barry-Wehmiller has been doing in the world in the last decade. So I think that's an important part of the story that we're adding into this second edition.
