422: How to Make Decisions, Solve Problems, and Ask Questions Like a Leader with Carly Fiorina

Well, yes, it's funny. I was at a conference for social innovation in Chicago in the summer of 2017, and one of the speakers was Baron Davis, of NBA fame and UCLA fame. Now I have to immediately say I'm not a big basketball expert, so embarrassingly I didn't even know who Baron Davis was, but half my staff was like, 'Oh my gosh, it's Baron Davis!' And so I listened to him speak, and I was captivated by what he had to say. And he listened to me speak, and apparently liked what he heard. And so we bumped into each other literally in the lobby of the Marriott on a break from this conference, and we sit down, and he says, 'You know, we should do a podcast together.' And I said, 'Oh, Baron, that would be fantastic,' because he was talking a lot about leadership, and I talk about leadership. So one thing led to another, and Baron Davis was our inaugural guest on the By Example podcast, and also brought to us an incredible additional leader named Dino Smiley. So the By Example podcast was born in the head of Baron Davis in the lobby of the Chicago Marriott in July of 2017.

What I was hoping to achieve with By Example, based on that preliminary conversation, was an opportunity to highlight for people real leaders. And the reason I love doing this, first of all, I get to talk with fascinating, wonderful people, but also because I think in this day and age we are so confused about what leadership is. We think it's position and title and fame and celebrity, and it's none of those things. And yet we also need more leadership. And so I wanted to introduce to people not just what leadership is, but who leaders are. Some of them are very famous, like Baron Davis or Colin Powell, and some of them people have never heard of, like Dino Smiley. And yet, famous or not, leadership is always about some fundamental common elements, and that's what we talk about on By Example.

Well, I would say that leadership is problem-solving. Leadership is changing the order of things for the better, which is always necessary to actually solve a problem. Leadership is about unlocking potential in others in order to change the order of things for the better, for the purpose of solving problems. And that requires many things that all of us are capable of executing against as human beings. It requires courage and character and collaboration and imagination. Some people who have position and title lead. Many people with no position and title also lead. And too frequently, people with position and title are doing many things, but they're not leading.

Well, the main message behind Find Your Way is that each of us, all of us, are capable of leadership. That finding your way in life is about solving problems that impact you and others that you collaborate with or that you care about. And that each of us can find our purpose. Each of us can practice and become adept at being courageous when we're frightened to death, having character when it would be easier to do something that is not honest or lacks integrity. That we actually must collaborate with others in order to accomplish anything, and that seeing possibilities is an essential element in making things better. That's one huge message in Find Your Way: that finding our way in life requires finding our way to leadership, not the position or the title, but the essence of leadership, which requires us to step up to the problems that surround us. And the other message is that too often people get waylaid because they invest so much in a specific plan or destination or job that they lose the path, they lose their way towards becoming a stronger, better, more effective problem-solver and leader, and happier on top of all of that.

Yes. So I had a plan when I graduated from college. My plan was to go to law school, which I did. Surprisingly to me, perhaps, I quickly discovered that I absolutely hated law school. And so the plan that I had created for my life, which my parents approved of, everyone was excited about this plan, was making me miserable. And so I quit. I was definitely off plan. More than that, I didn't have a plan. My degree was in medieval history and philosophy, so I didn't have marketable skills other than I knew how to type and file and answer the phones, because I had worked as a temporary secretary in offices while I was going to Stanford and getting my undergraduate degree. So I went to work as a secretary in a nine-person real estate firm, totally off plan. However, I stayed on path, which was: I'm going to do a good job, I'm going to ask a lot of questions, I'm going to collaborate with others, I'm not going to be afraid to try new things. And eventually that landed me in AT&T, a company of a million people. I had no plan there either. I didn't have an ambition to become a CEO. I was just trying to do a good job, which to me meant solving problems in front of me, which requires collaboration with others. And so some people would look at my life and say, 'Wow, you know, she became a CEO and she ran for president, she must have had a plan.' The truth is I never had a plan, but I never deviated from the path. And that is how I have found my way. And I hope to share some of that experience and encouragement with people in this book, because I think we hear a lot of messages from our culture and our society that you've got to have a plan. And further, I think we hear a lot of messages from our culture and those around us that not only do you have to have a plan, but you have to have a plan that everybody approves of. I mean, we spend a lot of time seeking approval. And in my case, I went off plan and was highly disapproved of as a result, and accomplished more than I ever thought possible. And the book is filled with stories of other people who have done the same.

So a couple of things. First, I'll take it out of the emotional realm for a moment and put it into the practical realm. You have a wonderful podcast about how to be awesome at your job, and so the people who come to you for advice, while they may say they are untethered from people's expectations for them, let me just say all of us are susceptible to criticism. It is in fact why problems fester. Problems fester, let's just say, at work, because the status quo has power. The way things are, even if they're unacceptable, stays the way things are, principally because when people try and change the way things are, criticism erupts. Critics abound: 'No, no, no, you can't do that. No, no, no, we've already tried it. Who do you think you are that you can tackle this?' The truth is all of us are susceptible to criticism and critique, especially if it comes from colleagues, even more if it comes from a boss. And so people can say we're totally untethered, but of course none of us are. If you want to solve a problem, if you want to solve a problem, which generally speaking is a requirement for being seen as awesome at your job or getting ahead in your job, you've got to bring value, and that means solving problems. Actually, you have to be willing to accept that challenging the status quo will cause people to criticize you, will cause people to say why they're invested in the status quo. And so I think it just starts with a fundamental recognition that to change the way things are, you have to challenge the way things are. And to challenge the way things are, you have to be prepared to accept the criticism that comes with that challenge.

Well, I would say at a very practical level, even going back to your previous question, I would say people ought to think about three things. The first is look around. The second is ask questions. And the third is find allies. And if I can expound just for a moment on each of them. Look around. One of the stories that I tell in Find Your Way is something that I learned when I was 15. I happened to be living in Ghana, West Africa. I was driving around with some friends, and there were these huge termite mounds everywhere I looked. And so I was asking about, 'Wow, this is amazing. How do these termites build these things?' Bear with me, this is relevant, and don't get nervous. And my friend said, 'Well, you know, termites, they follow the same path day after day. They move their dirt along the same path for their whole lives.' And he said, 'You know, it's funny, but people are a lot like termites.' What happens to us, I think, is we get very consumed by the day-to-day, and we put our heads down and we move our dirt and we do our work. And sometimes it's really important to pick our heads up and look around. What else is going on around you? Who else is troubled by the same problem, perhaps? Look around. See what's going on around you. See who is going on around you. Don't be a termite.

Step two: ask questions. Ask a lot of questions of a lot of people, maybe those people you discovered when you picked your head up and looked around. Because when you ask questions, as opposed to maybe telling people the answer, which sometimes as bosses we feel like we have to tell people the answer, sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is ask a question instead and listen to someone else's answer. You're always going to learn things that you can use. And the final step: find allies. As you ask questions, as you look around, you will find people with whom you can ally yourself, with whom you can collaborate, people who will step up and defend you when that criticism comes, perhaps protect you from some of that criticism, and perhaps join with you so that the group of people who are focused on solving the problem actually is bigger and more powerful than the inevitable group of people who just want to sit around and criticize but don't want anything to change.

Yes, absolutely. And I would add there's one caution to that. We are all most comfortable with people like ourselves. We are all most comfortable with people who think like we do. And so if taken to an extreme, what happens is we only talk to the people that we agree with, and that's a very dangerous place to be. You can see that happening in our culture; everyone's sort of devolving into tribes. It can happen in a work setting as well. So finding allies doesn't mean only talking to people who agree with us 100% of the time. Finding allies may mean I need to work with people who also think that this is a problem that we can solve, but who maybe have a very different point of view than I do, or an additional perspective to share with me about how to make progress.

So it's several steps for me. First is I gather as much information as I can. So that means talking to a lot of people. It may mean, depending on the subject, depending on the problem, it may mean reading a lot, but it may mean both. But gathering information, that's another way of saying pick your head up and look around and gather information, facts, perspective, data from a variety of points of view so that you have a full picture. You can't wing it, and particularly if you're tackling a tough problem, you can't go into it thinking you already know the answer. The second step, then, after that perspective gathering, information gathering, fact and data gathering, is reflection. And reflection for me is very important, to take the time after you've asked all the questions, gathered all the data, to really take the time to reflect on what you've learned and what you've heard. As you know, thinking substantially is not easy. It takes time, and you need to give yourself the time and space to have that kind of thought process. And then the final thing I would say is I get pretty analytic about it. And what I mean by that is I tend, after that period of gathering information, perspectives, and data, followed by real reflection and substantial thinking, then I tend to get pretty analytic and explicit. I write down: here's options, here's the pros and the cons of those options. I find it very, very helpful to be analytical and to be as analytical as possible and as explicit as possible. And I would say I've done this with all kinds of decisions, not just big decisions like a merger or how to run for president, but decisions like the care and treatment for my cancer. Because I think it's easy to get mushy in our thinking and our decision-making, and the more careful, thoughtful, deliberate, and intentional we can be about our reflection and our decision-making, in my experience, the more successful those decisions are.

It's such an interesting question. Well, the first thing I would say is honestly it does depend on the decision. I mean, there are some decisions that may require days, months of reflection. There are other decisions that require minutes or hours. However, I would also add that finding the time for introspection and reflection is especially difficult now because everything in our culture, and technology in particular, drives us to hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. And in fact, we've all become accustomed: 'Oh my gosh, I sent you a text, you didn't answer me in the last five minutes. I sent you an email. I mean, we need a decision right now, right now, right now.' And it is true that an imperfect but timely decision is usually better than a perfect but too late decision. And so this question of how much time is vital. However, in general, I would say hurry up and rush is always the wrong answer. So the biggest step, I think, in finding the time is to give yourself permission to take the time. You don't have to answer in the next 30 seconds. You don't have to decide just because somebody else wants a decision from you. People will have to find their way a little bit, and I have some practical suggestions, but the first and most important step is give yourself permission to take the time, to find the time to reflect before you decide.