Robert Jordan of Venture PR: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Uncertain & Turbulent Times

If you’re it — if you are the best Fixer Leader for your company in times of turbulence — suit up. Fixers’ mantra is velocity. Move with urgency — and calmness. Fixers excel at listening to everyone, especially from the shop floor to the admins, not just the board or fellow executives. When the go-forward plan has been agreed to there is a go-forward team and not everyone may make the cut, buying into a new, different future. Fixer leader David Johnson told us, he’s always moving into a new future that is not the same as the past — you can’t go back there — you have to make something new.

As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Robert Jordan.

Robert Jordan created Online Access, the first Internet-coverage magazine worldwide, landing on Inc’s 500 fastest-growing company list. He now leads InterimExecs RED Team (Rapid Executive Deployment), matching rock star leadership with companies seeking to achieve extraordinary results. Jordan is co-author of Right Leader Right Time: Discover Your Leadership Style for a Winning Career and Company, author of How They Did It: Billion Dollar Insights from the Heart of America, and publishing partner for Start With No, Jim Camp’s bestseller on negotiation. A lifelong Chicagoan, husband & father, he shares an Instagram account with his dog Norman: @Norman.clature.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I have launched or helped launch 20+ companies, some did great, some failed. At some point I took on a weird job title, interim CEO, had success with project-based roles, and started a worldwide organization called InterimExecs, which we’ve been growing for 15 years. It is the premier on-call leadership resource for fast growing or troubled organizations.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

So many mistakes…like buying nice furniture before we had any sales. Hiring one of my best friends, only to fire him soon after. Drastically underpricing our product. Funny (or strange?) moment: I leaped up from a sound sleep in the middle of the night, standing on the bed, and shouted “it’s a great company!” then immediately fell back asleep. So I’m told.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share more about them?

Philip Monego, arguably the first named “interim CEO” in the US — and first CEO of Yahoo — mentored me in my career and inspired us to create InterimExecs 15 years ago. He taught me how to do project based leadership roles and the power of bringing on a full team. InterimExecs RED Team is now a large collective membership around the world, and we’ve named our highest honor The Philip J. Monego Award for Excellence in Leadership.

Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your organization started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?

Running businesses and helping other owners and management teams, my co-founder Olivia Wagner and I found time and again that leadership is at the core of how organizations succeed or, more often than not, fail. Business owners often get caught up in the day-to-day and lose sight of the bigger picture, resulting in an organization without a clear purpose. Often unspoken, it can also be lonely. Our mission is to connect struggling or high-growth businesses with the right leadership to achieve extraordinary results.

Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?

To quote Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, page one: I am nothing. What I celebrate is the gift of helping connect extraordinary leaders with organizations around the world. Turns out I’m a far better rainmaker than operating executive. For example, we were contacted by Styrotek, a company in the central valley of Southern California, after the production equipment had broken down. They’d fired 150 workers and their customers had fled. We deployed an expert CEO who got the plant back up and running, rehired all the workers, and convinced the customers to come back — in 8 weeks. We interviewed that executive in our new book, Right Leader Right Time, and he told us, it all starts with listening — you have to listen to the workers on the plant floor, those are the true experts.

Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?

I suppose I’ve given up many times. There’s something powerful in the act of surrender, and discovering that releasing assumptions and preconceptions and ego freed me to think and act in a new way, get back in the game feeling refreshed and recharged.

I’m an author and I believe that books have the power to change lives. Do you have a book in your life that impacted you and inspired you to be an effective leader? Can you share a story?

My friend and business partner Jim Camp, one of the best negotiation coaches of the modern era, had a workbook for his clients. I partnered with Jim to get his workbook — his negotiation system, stories and rules — published by Random House, and it’s been a bestseller ever since. Recently I had the good fortune to be asked to record the Audible version of Start With No, and it’s been a guiding light for me over the years, in having a mission and purpose for life and for work. Jim would talk about being inspired by great leaders like Lincoln or Churchill, whose missions inspired the world.

What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?

Given all of our research into leadership style, I would say: it depends entirely on your style, whether you are wired more as Fixer, Artist, Builder, or Strategist. Challenge is a constant; Buddhists say all is chaos. The Fixer Leader is wired to run into the burning building. The Artist views the world as a blank canvas. The Builder has market domination on the brain. The Strategist is best at leading complex and large organizations. For each, their highest and best use determines their performance.

Fixer leadership types thrive in crises. They’re the type of leader that will evaluate the most critical issues and understand how to stabilize the most important needs immediately. This can range from cash burn to declining morale, but for the Fixer, velocity is the mantra.

When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?

One of the leaders we interviewed, who had grown his company from three to 2,000 employees, told us “you have to be at the center.” He meant that in the midst of chaos — even a good kind of chaos brought on by rapid growth — you as the leader must have control of yourself. He was referring to things like yoga and meditation, and more broadly a sense of being calm and collected no matter the outside circumstances, and from that, everyone around you would take their lead.

It starts from the example you set as a leader. We’ve found three common pillars that apply whether your leadership style is Fixer, Artist, Builder or Strategist. Those three pillars are: doubling down within your highest and best use; superior collaboration; and what we term “no hiding,” meaning that your authentic self must be first and foremost. Here’s a terrible and real example we just heard about hiding — in plain sight. A CEO of a public company with thousands of employees was exhorting everyone on an all-hands-on-deck zoom call to get back to full time in-office work in their headquarters, no more remote work. Everyone on the call knew that this CEO lived thousands of miles from the HQ and never consistently showed up. What kind of leadership example is that?

What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?

It’s best to be forthcoming when communicating difficult news. Neither party benefits from hearing only part of the bad news. Full transparency and honesty is essential.

Fixer leaders tend to be quite adept at sharing bad news. Fixers are usually straight shooters who tell it like it is, finding that brutal honesty is necessary to move the needle.

How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?

Managers can’t and won’t make predictions about the future, but good leaders will and do. Making ambitious plans starts with having a vision of the company and their product’s future. One definition of sound mental health is the ability to plan — and act — even in the face of uncertainty and an ambiguous future.

Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?

The most resilient companies, those that can survive in tough times and thrive in most any economic storm, have strong teams with complementary skill sets and a nimble sense of understanding the dangers they face, the strengths they need to capitalize on, and the opportunities they should seize. Teams that intentionally work to strengthen each other’s highest and best use simply perform better.

Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?

• Business leaders staying with a company for too long — Good leaders know when their time is up and have completed their mission. Sheryl Sandberg was arguably the greatest COO in the past 15 years in any industry. Her only problem was violating a cardinal rule of Builders: don’t outlast your tenure; don’t stay past accomplishing market domination.
• Businesses putting the wrong leadership style in charge, such as a leader who doesn’t eat, sleep, breathe “turnaround” — during a crisis.
• Ernest Hemingway’s character in The Sun Also Rises said he went bust two ways, gradually and then suddenly. Many company owners would rather die than be shown to be wrong in their business judgment.

Businesses should have a regular process — you could call this a health scorecard for a company — to evaluate their needs and the way they are deploying their leadership team. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of leaders can help businesses select the best leader for the challenge at hand.

Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.

• Fearlessly self-analyze: are you the best person for the current need and for your current role. One of the bravest CEOs we interviewed for Right Leader Right Time, Andy Crestodina, decided he was not best in the CEO role or as chief salesman at his company, Orbit Media, and so recruited a more capable person. Andy still owned the company, but he became a thought leader on content marketing, with no one reporting to him. Orbit sales skyrocketed. And Andy is now one of the foremost recognized experts in the world in his field.
• If you’re it — if you are the best Fixer Leader for your company in times of turbulence — suit up. Fixers’ mantra is velocity. Move with urgency — and calmness. Fixers excel at listening to everyone, especially from the shop floor to the admins, not just the board or fellow executives. When the go-forward plan has been agreed to there is a go-forward team and not everyone may make the cut, buying into a new, different future. Fixer leader David Johnson told us, he’s always moving into a new future that is not the same as the past — you can’t go back there — you have to make something new.
• If your organization could benefit from a stronger Fixer, is that person within your ranks now? If so, elevate them. If not, bring in an outsider. The beauty of the modern world is that this kind of expertise on demand exists and is ready to help on an as–needed basis, without permanent addition to your overhead. We were called by the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, which has a portfolio of companies not unlike a PE fund’s portfolio. They needed new leadership, fast. We brought in an expert CEO who figured out quickly which businesses needed to be expanded, as well as a few that simply weren’t ever going to perform up to snuff. They needed the perspective of an outsider, not from the tribe or elected council leadership, to take charge. The results proved to be astounding, with tribal leadership telling us the trajectory of their community had been improved “for generations” with value created in many millions of dollars upside.
• Seek the turning point. Expert Fixer leaders tell us there is an arc — a moment when the go-forward team no longer needs as much guidance. As Michelle Barnes, expert Fixer and currently head of Human Services for the State of Colorado, told us, “Everyone’s not only bought into the new mission, they are practicing and implementing it better than if told again and again what to do with every new decision.” They start running with the ball and the sense of a single person who is leading the pivot shifts to the team owning it. This is a moment of structural change and signals that things are likely going to get better.
• Post-crisis, if you’ve taken on outside Fixer resources, they need to move. They should not stay, no matter how comfortable and trusted, no matter how much you’ve grown to like working with each other. As public company CEO Jim Dolan told us, “If I put a Fixer into one of my companies and it’s not broken, he’ll break it. Just so he can fix it.”

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Alone you do it, but you don’t do it alone.

I’ve been in leadership roles for years, and it can be lonely. This quote is a reminder that, yes, I have agency and need to act, but really, I’m not doing this solo, and nothing great is ever accomplished alone, it’s always a team, and I’ve always been blessed with wonderful people helping me along. One of our mantras for InterimExecs RED Team is this: we have each other’s back.

How can our readers further follow your work?

You can visit our website at interimexecs.com and follow us on our social channels:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/association-of-interim-executives/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/interim_execs

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/interimexecs

You can also purchase Right Leader Right Time here: https://www.amazon.com/Right-Leader-Time-Discover-Leadership/dp/1722505672

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!