Need for Speed? Earn It First

Anne: We default to seeing symptoms and wanting to resolve them, and the opportunity is to really tunnel down to the root cause.

Drew: The book is called "Move Fast and Fix Things," but a lot of it's about trust and relationships and inclusion and storytelling and great leadership things. So it feels like you could call this book "Slow Down and Fix Things."

Anne: Our point really is slow down and invest in the processes, the people, the relationships, and then you've earned the right to go as fast as you can, because you're far less likely to break things.

Drew: Hello, Renegade Marketers! If this is your first time listening, welcome. If you're a regular listener, welcome back. You're about to listen to an expert huddle, where our flocking awesome community, CMO Huddles, gets exclusive access to experts, including authors of some of the world's best-selling business books. In this episode, Anne Morriss, co-author of "Move Fast and Fix Things," turns the usual idea of speed on its head. She talks about slowing down long enough to solve the right problem, bring people with you, and make sure the right voices are in the room. From there, the goal is to move with conviction, because speed only helps when you're pointed in the right direction. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. You'll be supporting our quest to be the number one B2B marketing podcast. All right, let's dive in.

Narrator: Welcome to Renegade Marketers Unite, possibly the best weekly podcast for CMOs and everyone else looking for innovative ways to transform their brand, drive demand, and just plain cut through, proving that B2B does not mean boring to business. Here's your host and chief marketing renegade, Drew Neisser.

Drew: Our guest today is Anne Morriss, co-author of "Move Fast and Fix Things," and a longtime advisor to leaders navigating organizational transformation of every size. At a time when the CMOs are being asked to lead through, let's see, AI disruption, organizational redesign, budget pressure, and culture change all at once, Anne's work offers a practical roadmap for solving hard problems without breaking the people around you. Um, so first, Anne, how are you, and where are you this fine day?

Anne: I'm doing great, Drew, and I'm coming at you from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Drew: All right, I love it, because you're at Harvard.

Anne: Yes, it's, it's a company town, and we work for the company.

Drew: There it is. I love it. All right. Well, one of the things that we do here is, just in case our audience needs to leave early, or we need to convince them to stay, if you could list three things leaders do that actually make hard problems, which is what we're trying to solve here, worse. And if you just list them, we can go through them one at a time.

Anne: Sure. So we solve the wrong problems. Okay, number one, we rely exclusively on familiar networks, what we call the usual suspects, and we underinvest in storytelling and change communications, particularly when it comes to AI.

Drew: I love it. Okay, so obviously a big part of this is getting to the right problem. If we're starting with the wrong problem, so why one? Why do you think people focus on the wrong problem so much? And then, how do you make sure and know that you are getting to the right problem?

Anne: Yeah, I think part of it is our very well-intentioned instincts. We see a problem, we want to solve it as leaders. We want to solve it as, as good people who want to take the pain out of organizations and the experience of work. You know, one of our, our favorite quotes, I'm sure your audience has heard it before, from E.O. Wilson, who's considered the father of evolutionary biology. He was asked in a debate, just a couple, couple blocks from here at the, the Harvard Museum of Anthropology, are we going to be okay as a species? You know, it's a question on, on everyone's mind right now, and he said yes, if we're willing to look at our real problem, which he defined as the combination of prehistoric minds — he used a fancier term — but our prehistoric minds, our medieval institutions, and the technology of the gods. So it's, it's that combination that is really putting this whole human project at risk. So I think one of the problems with trying to figure out what our real problem is, is that, you know, we are using relatively simple minds, minds that really weren't, aren't adapted to the environment that we're trying to get stuff done in. So we default to seeing symptoms and wanting to resolve them, and the opportunity is to really tunnel down to the root cause. And there, there are a number of ways to do that. You know, Toyota famously used the five whys, which is, you know, starting with the problem and then asking why five times. That really gets you all the way to a truly systemic way of thinking about the problem. Truthfully, in our experience, even asking three, even asking why three times, will get you pretty close.

Drew: I'm just curious, from the, the folks that are listening in right now, how many times you actually have the patience to get to the five whys? I mean, you probably ask why once, maybe twice, and I bet, Anne, your research shows that very few get beyond that first why.

Anne: Well, I mean, yeah, that's why it's, it is such a powerful technology. The question itself, the well-crafted question, is the most underrated technology in organizations and leadership, I would argue. And I mean, it's one of the reasons that this company, Toyota, built an empire on top of embedding this kind of curiosity literally into its operating system, and it is, it is still something that most leaders and most organizations can learn from today, because we've never seen anything like it.

Drew: It's interesting. I wonder if it's atavistic, in the sense that, I mean, I think about my seven-year-old self who said, "So why is the sky blue?" And, well, and then you get an answer, and you go, "Well, why is that?" And then you'd keep going, and it just became considered annoying behavior, right? And so I imagine that the resistance to that particular thing is just that we kind of got trained; it was annoying.

Anne: I mean, it's really fun to. I mean, even like a simple hiring example. So often, you know, someone will, what will present as a performance issue? Pushing on that a little bit, one, two, or three whys reveals the bigger issue, which is often the training we're investing in for employees, and then the culture and systems that we're asking them to operate in. And the power of, of pushing closer to the root, even if you don't get all the way there, is then you're solving, you're solving problems at a systems level, as opposed to managing individual performance.

Drew: So this part, this, the wrong problem, is due to sort of a lack of curiosity. Basically, it's that we're just not curious enough to keep pushing and asking to get to the root problem. So, assuming we do that, the next thing that you mention is sort of the familiar network you've surrounded yourself with. I'm going to say group of sycophants, but no, you've surrounded yourself with the people that are like you or like-minded, and therefore are not necessarily giving you the best, well-rounded information. Am I putting words in your mouth?

Anne: Yeah, you're, you're getting it. I just want to call out in the chat, people are putting some, some great examples around, you know, what are some ways to embed curiosity into an organization and really pull that kind of root-cause thinking into structures and systems and culture. So I just want to underline all of that. There are lots of people thinking deeply about this and setting teams up for success. This next one, it's, you know, back to our prehistoric minds. The fundamental truth for all of us is that we really like people who are really like us. And, you know, a simple example of this is, for, for people who tend to rise in a hierarchy, are motivated to do that, energized by the idea of leadership, we often design roles and systems for people who are also, also motivated by the same way and in the same way. In most teams, first of all, it's not a realistic expectation that you're gonna, you're gonna have the privilege of managing six to ten people who are just like you. But we're also, we're naturally drawn, we're naturally drawn to people who are like us in hiring, and when we are looking for ways to solve problems, that's the first place we go. What we see is when organizations bring some intention, and when leaders bring intention to moving outside those usual suspects — and a simple way to think of it is, you know, whatever problem you're having, if you can visualize the stakeholders involved, are all of those stakeholders somehow represented? I'll give you a very simple example of this. We're talking about Harvard and being here, and my spouse, who's on the faculty in, in her department — a few weeks ago they had an annual gathering to discuss how the senior faculty members can help the junior faculty members be more successful. And just to be clear, we love Harvard; my wife has been there for 20 years. But they had this annual conversation, and not a single member of the junior faculty was in the room. And so they made about as much progress on this problem as they had made in previous years, which was not very much. And there's some version of this happening in every organization in the world right now, and when the behavior gets embedded, we just don't see it. We just don't naturally see it. And so the invitation in this one is to be quite intentional about bringing new voices and new perspectives into the room, and then creating the space for those new voices and perspectives to contribute. And if there's any hierarchy, informal or formal, in the room when they walk in, it's not going to be a given. And so we have to do some extra work to create a setting where people are going to give us the ideas and information that we're looking for. And so that is the work of inclusion, and the foundation of that is, is psychological safety, and we can get into all of these ideas and techniques. But that's, that's directionally where you want to go: you want to bring new voices into the room, but your work isn't done. You have to set them up to actually speak freely and give you new and different information. In some cases, that's not going to be a low-stakes act.

Drew: Interesting. One of the phenomena that's happening right now because of AI is a lot of CMOs are not necessarily systems thinkers. They've got a lot of big-picture thinking, and they are good leaders, and right now, systems thinkers are at a premium. It's not necessarily the kind of inclusion that you were talking about, but it is a different type of thinker that seems to be going into that, and we have talked about — and

Anne: I would just say, Drew, if that is true for CMOs, and I don't have any unique insight to that, that would make them like most human beings, right? This is not something that we just, we do naturally well, which is why it is so powerful to bring awareness and intention to that kind of a mindset and behavior.

Drew: Yes, and by the way, we have talked a lot about psychological safety on the show in the past. In fact, the author, the woman who came up with that notion, was, was on the show, which was very cool. And

Anne: Amy, Amy Edmondson.

Drew: Yes, yes, she's

Anne: She's a dear friend of ours and has done an incredible service to the world by really shining a spotlight on the, the performance imperative. People get very confused about what psychological safety is. I think it's because of the word "safety." People assume that it is about, you know, making people cozy and comfortable at work. No, it's just removing the penalty for contribution.

Drew: Yeah, okay. So let's talk about the third one. I, I think it was under-investing in — I wrote something cryptic, but I think I'm missing a detail. So what was the third one from the beginning that we, that people often get wrong?

Anne: Yeah, I would, and it's hard to focus on three, but what made it to the top for me in thinking about this, this great question, was under-investing in storytelling.

Drew: Oh, right, and change

Anne: communications, particularly around AI in this moment. I think we are telling a terrible story in most organizations about this technology, and it's a, it's a big opportunity cost.

Drew: Yeah, and so let's break this down. First, before we get into the AI aspect, but just, I want to — the one thing that most CMOs sort of share and believe is the importance of good storytelling. You talk a lot about not only being able to tell good stories, but the importance of consistency. And I felt like that was worth putting sort of a pin in and reminding folks that we get bored with our own words a lot faster than others do, you know, and, and so you might change campaigns or change sort of focus well before you've reached the saturation point where you need to. Talk a little bit about that from, from your standpoint.

Anne: Yeah, and what I would say is, you know, because you asked about this — this is a question about leaders in general, not CMOs. I would say this is a superpower of, of so many CMOs, and I think where we're seeing this, this muscle underused and underdeveloped, is in other leadership roles in the organization. We, we have approached this in our work often under the mantle of change leadership and good change stories, and in our experience, good change stories have a, have a pretty stable architecture. So they honor the past. You know, you're, you're meeting people where they are. In my experience, people aren't afraid of change; they're afraid of things getting worse. So often, where we coach people to start is — yes, your beautiful mind is distracted by all the problems you need to solve and all the things you want to change — but you got to start with all the things you're not going to change, right? Which is all the, the, the good that is here that you want to preserve. So you want to start there. You want to give people a really compelling change mandate, a persuasive answer to, like, why do we now have to do things differently, and then a rigorous and optimistic path to a better shared future. So when, when we do this hard work, when we jump off this cliff together into the unknown, what is then, like, what is then better on the other side of all this uncertainty and risk and hard work? And I know we're not talking about AI yet, but this is, this is the part of the story that is not going well inside most organizations — of, like, what is going to, what, what is in it for all of us to absorb all of this pain and change and uncertainty, and figure out this new technology? It's

Drew: funny, because I'm on the board of a nonprofit, and we were talking about the impact of AI and why it was important to embrace it. And one of the senior people just said, "Well, why can't we just hire more people?" Like, and I, and I thought, "Wow, okay, I better pause and, and do this." But let's go through the how, in the context of AI specifically. Do we honor the past when we're completely looking at a new — a lot of us are talking about a completely different structure and organizational design, different skill sets on the team. The change mandate is coming from the investors; it's just saying, "Hey, we're going to need more revenue per employee, so you're going to have to be a ton more efficient." And in the best case, it's the company — the CMOs are looking at it: "We've got a team of 20. We're going to make that team work like they were, you know, 60 people." So we're not — we're going to grow the company, but we're not going to add people. And then others are already talking about, "We were 70, now we're 28. Yay!" So how, in this change-mandate world, do we present a rigorous and optimistic path when that path may very well be, "Sorry, you're not part of this new future"?

Anne: Yeah. Well, let's, let's break it down, Drew. This is a really, really important conversation. So, if we just use our overly simplistic structure here, what does honoring the past look like in this moment? So, unless you're burning the whole organization down and starting over, there are some things you are preserving, tangible and intangible. That may be the mission of the organization, the values of the organization — you're not firing everyone. Their capabilities as an organization — what is it that we are holding onto? And often we'll think about this at the level of kind of mindset and behavior. Like, yeah, you might be, you might be reimagining the way work happens, all of the structures, the organization itself — all of that is on the table. But you are still creating more value for your customers than you're capturing. You're still pursuing a shared mission. You are still getting out there and solving problems, not just for the company, but for the stakeholders that you are in service of. So, all of those places are really important conversations to have internally right now, because the other part of, of this story that I think is critical for leaders to be aware of is this: the story that people are hearing outside of your organization about this technology is v1, is draft one, and the story they're hearing is that the robots are going to come and steal all of, all of your stuff, and all of your security, and all of your jobs, and all of your children's jobs, and everything that you hold dear and is familiar to you — it is all going away. So that's the story they're hearing outside the company, outside the doors of the company, and they're coming to work, and they are asking for confirmation: is this true? And back to our prehistoric minds, all ambiguous information is interpreted negatively through the human brain. All ambiguous information is interpreted negatively. So, if that's not the story you want your employees to be operating within inside your organization, then you have to give us an alternative. And we would coach you to start with all of the things that aren't changing, because we are asking people to absorb a ton of change. So, let's add language to all of these things: our values, our vision, our value proposition, the customers that we are setting out to serve. Gallup just did this really interesting research on what people want from their leaders right now. Everyone was kind of expecting, you know, like, stability — it's so crazy, and the world is so uncertain, and people were expecting stability to be at the top of the list. Stability was like a distant four. Number one, by far, like with no competition in sight, was hope. People wanted to feel hope. And so this kind of an arc, where you start with, "Okay, let me tell you what's not changing," but let me tell you the more interesting part of the story, which is, we're going to go on this ride together to figure it out. Do I know exactly how it's going to feel? I do not. Do I know exactly what's going to happen? I don't. But at the other side, here's what we're trying to solve for: is we are doing even — we're having even more impact. You know, we have to, we have to get in touch with the, like, the nobility of what we've come together inside this organization to go do. So here's where we're going, and then here's why we're changing. And so when we coach people through this, we really want you to hit on all three of those points.

Drew: Would you do me a favor and go talk to all the PE firms out there in the world? I don't think I've ever heard the word "nobility" and the notion of business as a force for good — it is simply about what is the EBITDA going to be in year five.

Anne: That's their job. I understand where that story is coming from, and as leaders, it is our responsibility to translate that mandate into a story that's going to get ourselves out of bed in the morning, and all the people that we're trying to lead, because that moves no one. And I can tell you, when that becomes the raison d'être of the organization — the data is very clear about this, and we can talk about specific examples. Toyota is one of them. When this company moved away from creating incredible vehicles, you know, for more and more people on the planet and at an accessible price point with impeccable execution — you know that that is, there is deep nobility to that mission — and when that company lost its way, it's because it started solving for the bottom line. I would argue that's what happened with Boeing, when it got wobbly: they started solving for the bottom line. They put people at the top of the organization who didn't totally understand and had not totally lived the nobility of the effort and the nobility of that mission, and they're finding their way back now. And Toyota did the same: they found their way back to the nobility of that mission. It's fine for the people writing the checks to say that we need a return; that's their job. It is our job as leaders to translate that into a story and a reality that's going to be deeply energizing and meaningful to the human beings who are coming to work for us every day.

Drew: Yes, it's so funny that human beings—because there is some conversation, or at least we've had some—are where people are putting bots onto org charts. And I'm going to put that aside because I have this question. So your book—the book is called "Move Fast and Fix Things"—but a lot of it's about trust and relationships and inclusion and storytelling and great leadership things. So it feels like you could call this book "Slow Down and Fix Things." Why not?

Anne: Yeah, I love that. Yeah, probably a more accurate title is, you know, "Slow Down So You Can Fix Things Faster." It's not as sexy a title, Drew. I don't think anyone on this call would let us put that on the cover of the book. But our point really is: slow down and invest in the processes, the people, the relationships that are going to allow you to go faster and really move at the so-called speed of change. So the Navy SEALs have a mantra: slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. And that's really the central idea of the book and the logic of what we're trying to lay out—what does it look like to really invest in, you know, what Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao wrote in a great book called "The Friction Project," which I recommend to everyone on this call. And it's a beautiful metaphor. You know, at the beginning, we lay out a five-step process. At the beginning of the process, you're creating good friction. You're slowing yourselves down to make sure you're solving the right problem. You are running smart experiments. You're getting the right people around the table to make the plan even better. And then you're putting it into a form—this kind of structured change story—in a form that people can really absorb, and then you've earned the right to go as fast as you can because you're far less likely to break things. And so you're right to call us out on the title. It's important to look a little bit more closely because we're not saying just start sprinting. In fact, we're saying the opposite. And what we're solving for is the idea of solving problems at a faster metabolic rate. Which actually, when you do that, instead of the anxiety that a lot of people are feeling at work, the main emotion that we see when people really click into the logic of this is actually a great deal of relief, higher confidence, more clarity, people going to work and dwelling in possibility. That's what we really want people to feel in the workplace right now. We think it's entirely possible, and where most people are is the opposite: high anxiety, high uncertainty, a culture of fear, defaulting to a protective security mindset at a moment when possibility is really exploding.

Drew: Interesting. One of the things I just have to say this quote out loud because I just love it—you write that leadership is the practice of imperfect humans leading imperfect humans, and I just wanted to say that because I thought it was such a great way of expressing the challenge that we all face.

Ad Break: We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. This show is brought to you by CMO Huddles, the only marketing community dedicated to B2B greatness, and that donates 1% of revenue to the Global Penguin Society. Why? Well, it turns out that B2B CMOs and penguins have a lot in common. Both are highly curious and remarkable problem solvers. Both prevail in harsh environments by working together with peers, and both are remarkably mediagenic. And just as a group of penguins is called a huddle, our community of over 300 B2B marketing leaders huddle together to gain confidence, colleagues, and coverage. If you're a B2B CMO, why not dive into CMO Huddles by registering for our free starter program on CMOHuddles.com. Hope to see you in a huddle soon.

Drew: Let's move on to this notion of trust, and you talk about trust wobbles. Talk a little bit about what a trust wobble is and why so many leaders miss them until it's too late.

Anne: Yeah, well, the jumping-off point for the trust wobble discussion is that quote, Drew. It is just accepting that we are coming at this practice of leadership as an imperfect human, and what we're trying to get people to do in our work is invite them to, frankly, care less. You know, to just accept that as the starting point here, and get really curious about the implications. So the metaphor we'll sometimes use is less time in the mirror and more time looking out the window at what you came to do and the people you came to serve. So, as part of that conversation, we often start with trust because it is so foundational to the success of teams and organizations and to your ability to have impact as a leader. Leadership is fundamentally a relational practice, and so you know that trust is the foundation for any successful relationship. So, in order to build more trust tomorrow than we did today, we have to kind of pop the hood on how trust operates and the way trust works. And this is a very stable architecture. It goes all the way back to Aristotle's logos, pathos, ethos. It's that I am more likely to trust you, Drew, if I believe that you can do the job. So, if I believe that you are making reasonable decisions at a baseline level of competence, we call that logic. It is not enough. I also have to believe that I'm interacting with a real version of you, that your thoughts and actions and emotions are all fundamentally aligned. So we call that authenticity. It's still not enough. I also have to believe that you're not just in it for you—you also are invested in my success and well-being. Often, you know, this is happening in the workplace, so you want me to also be successful on the job. So when all those things are firing, all three of those trust pillars are strong, trust is a very reliable byproduct, and everyone on this call who's deciding to spend any of their time to come and be a part of this conversation—the chances are good that you are trusted the vast majority of the time. But the pattern we also see among high-achieving people and people everywhere is that all of us lose trust some of the time, or fail to build as much trust as might have been possible in a moment or in a relationship. And when that happens, it's not that all three of these trust pillars collapse at once—one of them tends to get a little wobbly, and there tends to be a pattern for each of us in that it's the same one that tends to get wobbly again and again. And so we invite people, when we do this work, to think back on the last couple of times—and for some of you, you're going to have to really think hard because this is rare in your life—but think back on those moments when you lost trust or didn't get as far as you could have. Which of these three on this drop-down menu? There are only three: logic, authenticity, or empathy. Which of these three got a little shaky on you from the perspective of the other person? So your logic might have been sound in your own head, but from their perspective, did they have trouble accessing it? And so that's the work. And that's the bad news in the work. The good news is that all of us tend to have a superpower on that drop-down menu, so one of these three tends to be rock solid. We call it your anchor, and the invitation, the exploration, is really: what's your wobble, and what's your anchor? And that's a standard trust diagnostic.

Drew: Interesting, and I feel like logic, authenticity, and empathy are actually the components of great brands that are trusted, and so if you've sort of looked at that and said, "Wow, my marketing plan is to help with the logic and the rational part, and it's to demonstrate the authenticity that we own a space, and then that we actually care about a problem that you care about too"—it is, but we rarely frame marketing's goal in those kinds of contexts, but that's what we're doing. We're trying to—100%.

Anne: 100% true. I mean, what's really interesting about this framework is that it also scales to the level of teams, organizations, brands. We see the same patterns, and what you just flagged is 100% right.

Drew: So I wonder, then—it'll be interesting as folks think about their brands, their companies, what the wobble would be and what the anchor is, if they have any wobbles, and how they could fix that.

Anne: It's awesome homework from this conversation. Do it with yourself, and if you're not sure what the answer is, ask your loved ones. They will be delighted to tell you what your wobble is, but then also—

Anne: Do it from the perspective of your brand and your most important customers, from their perspective. What's the strongest and what's the weakest on that list?

Drew: Where's your wobble? All right, there it is—where's your wobble? So, I love this notion that stood out to me: failing with enthusiasm. That sort of fits with some of what Amy Edmondson was talking about. Maybe you could share a story of what that looks like. You know, since we talk about storytelling, it'd be great to have a story there.

Anne: Yeah, and Amy—I'm sure you had this conversation with Amy as well—who just wrote a beautiful book called "The Right Kind of Wrong," where she really ran after the idea that one of the challenges with failure inside organizations of high-achieving people is that we code all failure as bad, even though intelligent failure—you know, the so-called right kind of wrong—is a huge accelerant to learning, growth, and performance. And so, if we can figure out how to code intelligent failures differently, it's a very big unlock for teams. My favorite simple example of failing with enthusiasm is James Dyson, when he was starting his famous vacuum company. He developed 5,127 prototypes before he stumbled on the one that he launched this empire with—5,127. Most of us, back to our prehistoric minds, don't get past five. You know, we're in a fetal position. And so imagine adding two zeros to that number—what kind of possibility opens up for people, as leaders, as teams? You know, we sometimes call it "getting off the porch," and we love working with entrepreneurs for so many reasons. Also, because they're personally inspiring to me in the following sense: if you think of an opportunity as a house, and you walk up—you know, you walk up onto the front porch because that's the logical way into the house—and you try the door, and when it's locked, most seasoned entrepreneurs will walk down the porch relatively quickly, try the back door. If the back door's locked, they'll try the windows. If the windows are locked, they'll rappel up to the roof. And it's just a very natural process. And a lot of us get stuck on the porch. And so to me, part of failing well is staying in motion through those setbacks in our lives and in our professional experiences, telling a productive story around those setbacks, and really pausing to reflect and learn and figure out: okay, what is signal and noise here? And often there's a ton of emotion in the way of that kind of reflection, which is why the expression "failing with enthusiasm" is so powerful and so provocative—because the idea of pairing failure with enthusiasm is very counterintuitive to most of

Drew: Us. It is. I love it. I think of Edison and all those iterations of things, and, you know, almost every famous inventor had to go through that process. But I also know a lot of folks who just—that sort of cliché, don't you know—they see solutions instead of problems. They just do, and they get there. But there's issues with that if you're the only one who's seeing it. But let's go on to this notion of organizational trust pitfalls. You mentioned tolerance for misalignment and delusions of meritocracy, and those feel—those are just such interesting ideas.

Anne: Yeah,

Drew: They're particularly dangerous right now because we're in this rapid-change moment. So talk a little bit about that, and maybe even in the context of AI.

Anne: You know, back to this idea that the architecture of trust scales to more complex organisms like teams—one of the wobbles, one of the team trust wobbles that we are seeing in organizations today, is delusions of meritocracy, in the following sense: a company will say, "We are a meritocracy. All you have to do is put your head down and work hard, and you will be rewarded. Please be patient." And yet, people look around and they see that there are a group of people who are advancing through different rules, and it's not because they're better. And it may just be, you know, maybe they're better at the game of politics, or maybe—back to the usual suspects and familiar networks—maybe they are part of those networks, and so they're getting opportunity. They're getting stretch assignments more easily than other people. We would label that—just like the leaders are imperfect, all organizations are imperfect, all teams are imperfect—and so what we want you to do is bring curiosity to the question: well, where are the imperfections, and what are the costs? And less time on the judgment of it all. The research is really interesting around curiosity and judgment—they literally can't coexist in the human mind. And so there's so much power in the intentional pivot to say, "I'm going to not be in judgment in this moment. I'm going to choose curiosity on the path to really solving the problem." So when we see organizations wobbling around meritocracy, a lot of the solution is like, "Well, let's bring structure to these things that have been very informal." So a stretch assignment—let's bring structure to how we just, you know—and visibility and transparency to how we decide when to throw people into the deep end. Or let's bring new kinds of structure to the hiring process. Or let's make components of advancement more data-driven—you know, data is your friend, data really will set us free on a lot of these challenges. Can we make some of these processes much more data-driven? Can we capture the data? Can we use it to make sure that we are rooting out bias wherever we can? Because bias is going to get in the way of us seeing situations clearly and making the best decision for the organization and the team. So that's the meritocracy

Drew: One. Okay,

Anne: And then I think, close to the hearts probably of the people on this call, the misalignment—which is another authenticity wobble. One of the classic examples of this is your sales and marketing team writing checks that your product can't cash, and that's one of the fastest ways to lose trust with the marketplace, because everyone can see that these things aren't connected. And instead of working that out with your customers at the table, if you can bring some of that friction-removal process into the lower-stakes environment of an internal meeting before you're getting the party started, it can have really big impacts on customer trust.

Drew: Okay, so let's talk about difficult people decisions, because this is a moment where I think there are, for example—AI adoption. Let's say you have 100 employees working for you right now. You could probably look at an adoption curve where you have, you know, 10 to 20% who are all in and going and killing it, and you've got 10 to 20%, maybe even 30%, who have a moral objection to it, who are afraid of it, who are not adopting it. And honestly, you know, my perspective on this is really clear that there is no such thing as a knowledge worker moving ahead that isn't using these tools one way or another, so there's going to be some difficult people decisions just in that framework alone—who's going to move into this new org design? But I think a number of folks, because they are generous souls, are postponing some difficult decisions. So, talk about how you advise folks when it comes to leaders working through difficult decisions.

Anne: Yeah, and these are some of the most difficult decisions that any leader will confront. You know, we work with a population that rarely has regret—you know, it's just not a common emotion. But when it happens, it is most often linked to a lack of urgency around people decisions, or, you know, a dragging of the feet, often for very beautiful reasons. So this is not—there are no pithy rules for this one. When we coach people through this, where I will push them is in running the numbers on keeping someone in a seat. Often we are very aware of the cost of them continuing—the cost of performance, the cost maybe to the team. Sometimes, you know, the relationships are fraying around them, and we see all that, and that is factored in. What's often missing from the equation—so that kind of the downside, we're very clear about the downside of leaving people there—what we often don't factor in, in a rigorous way, is the upside of replacing them with somebody who can really excel in the role. And so I think the work around this is being very clear-eyed about the downside and upside of making a change. Speaking of pithy, it's possible to say this

Anne: Without it landing that way. But often, you know, keeping someone in that role is in the way of them going on a continued journey in their own life towards work where they're really going to thrive, right? Because often they are not—it is not lost on them that they are showing up in a role where they are not being seen, valued, or secure, which are the core human needs we all have. And so, I would really encourage people to think of themselves as really partnering with this person on their continued evolution. And what is your role in this moment to keep them going?

Drew: Yeah, there's two things I wanted—this really reminded me of: the downside isn't just that they aren't necessarily adopting the technology and therefore will be less productive. It is that they are going to be misaligned with the rest of the team, and the rest of the team is actually going to see, "Well, why is this person still getting away with this?" if you will. And there is that—it can be a drag. I tell this story because it's a friend that was working for me. This was many, many years ago in the advertising business. He was a very thoughtful slow talker, slow walker, which in the advertising business was just—fundamentally, recognition of this was not going to work. He went on to have a wonderful career, and it's—I mean—I felt like it was a Seinfeld moment before Seinfeld. But sometimes you do people a favor. Most of the time, you do them a favor if they are not going to have a future, to help them see that sooner rather than later. You talk about this notion—we talked about storytelling a little bit up front, we talked about repetition—but there's this notion of you're sick of hearing yourself saying something. And then I remember, I have one other question that I want to ask: talk a little bit about why that repetition—in the "we're changing, we have a big story to tell"—why do we have to just keep hammering it home?

Anne: Because there is so much noise in and outside the organization that repetition of message has never been more powerful. It has always been very powerful. It has always been underinvested in. The cost of not doing it now is higher than ever because of all the noise. I mean, even the way we've organized work—and I'm delighted to see the pendulum swinging back a little bit on this—but 45 Slack channels and, you know, 12 meetings in a day with no time to pause, and the way we have set up work, which I think is partly the long tail of COVID, we've just created an environment where it is very hard for people to retain the one thing. And, back to our prehistoric minds, it's always been hard for us. And so it is the job of leadership to be brutally clear about priorities and help people link their work to those priorities, and then repeat that message over and over and over again. And as I write in the book, one of my favorite campaigns of all time is still T-Mobile's Uncarrier campaign. I think the company seems to agree, because they have resurrected this. But what's so powerful about it? You know, when they first launched this, this was a point in American history where the thing that united us as a people was how much we hated our cell phone providers. And so this was a company that was deciding to compete in a totally different way, with a completely different set of values, and be of service in a really new way to their customers. It was as complicated a plan as any other telecom was operating with, but they figured out how to distill the essence of it down to a single word—a single word—and it was very powerful for the market because we got it. But what was even more helpful about it was everyone inside the company understood in an instant what the game plan was.

Drew: Yeah, and as marketers, I think we can all appreciate it when you get to that moment where the marketing actually drives behavior and culture change. It's a phenomenal thing. And I wanted to sort of ask, as the last question on this area, because one of the stories that really struck me was the Hubert Joly story at Best Buy—because it turned out the real problem, and that's what we're talking about, is identifying the real problem that you need to solve, and it turned out it was culture.

Anne: Yeah,

Drew: And maybe you could share this story. And I was curious how often, in your research, is culture actually the thing that's broken?

Anne: Well, much of the time, at minimum, it's an opportunity—I'll give you that as the headline. But yeah, I love the story of Best—there's so many lessons in Best Buy's turnaround. You should definitely invite Hubert on the show. He's a beautiful Frenchman with a beautiful accent. He will tell you the story of his life. So, Hubert Joly—that is my vote for an upcoming guest—and he writes about this, he really teaches about it, he's really thought deeply about what he learned and what's transferable to other leaders doing hard things. But when he got there, at the time, there was this phenomenon called showrooming, which is where customers would go into Best Buy and get a fantastic education from the, you know, expensive salespeople on the floor about all the TVs and appliances and everything that they were selling, and then they would go home and order the cheapest version they could find from Amazon. And so, you know, back to root cause analysis—he solved the symptom of the problem relatively quickly. So they figured out how to essentially compete on price with Amazon, so customers would have less of a price incentive to go and do this. But as he dug into his mandate to turn this company around, what he discovered was that there was a very transactional culture, and, you know, your customers and your markets are going to meet you at the frequency that you are operating as a brand and as a team, and customers were meeting Best Buy at this very transactional place. So of course they were going to go—there was nothing in the way of them then going and buying from somewhere else. And so part of what he did was restore the nobility of this work, which, you know, he described as—essentially, like the mission they kind of got to together, you know, Joly and his employees together—was to really figure out how to use technology to make the lives of their customers better. And as they got in touch with this and started evolving every part of the company in that direction, they were able to transform their relationship with their customers, and the performance of the business followed.

Drew: I love it. Yeah, and I've heard similar things about Microsoft, in a very similar way, when there was a transition from one leader to, most recently, Nadella. But anyway, we're out of time, and so I want to, as we wrap up—what are two key takeaways you want every CMO listening today to remember?

Anne: And I want to thank everyone in the chat too, particularly JD Dillon, who was dropping lots of fantastic links as we went. Yeah, I mean, I can't overstate the power of choosing curiosity over judgment in every aspect of your life, in every relationship in your life. If you really lean into this, it will change everything for you. I don't believe I'm overstating that. And, you know, embrace your flawed, gorgeous, imperfect self, and then use that as a jumping-off point to go solve problems and make the world better.

Drew: Wow. Okay—curiosity over judgment, embrace your imperfections. Of course, you need to know what they are. So, Anne Morriss, thank you for joining us. Anne, for folks who want to keep learning from you, your work, your ideas, what's the best way for them to engage with you?

Anne: So, we also have a podcast—after you're done listening to this one, and only after you're done listening to this one—we have a podcast called "Fixable" that we do with the fabulous TED team. And my co-author and better half, Frances Frei, hosts free weekly office hours where she'll do 20 minutes of a teach-in at six in the morning for international folks, and at noon every Friday, and guests come on all the time—20 minutes of a teach-in, and then, you know, 40 minutes of discussion, and it's really fun. And thousands of people are showing up, and we are having a ton of fun putting this out in the world. So you can find out everything we're up to at AnneAndFrances.com.

Drew: I love it. And this is not the only book that you've written. In fact, you referenced your earlier book, and I suspect we're going to need to get you back on the show to talk about that and the updated thinking on that. Anne Morriss, thank you so much for joining us.

Anne: My pleasure. This is really fun. Delighted to come back.

Drew: If you're a B2B CMO and you want to hear more conversations like this one, find out if you qualify to join our community of sharing, caring, and daring CMOs at CMOHuddles.com.

Show Credits

Renegade Marketers Unite is written and directed by Drew Neisser. Hey, that's me! This show is produced by Melissa Caffrey, Laura Parkyn, and Ishar Cuevas. The music is by the amazing Burns Twins and the intro Voice Over is Linda Cornelius. To find the transcripts of all episodes, suggest future guests, or learn more about B2B branding, CMO Huddles, or my CMO coaching service, check out renegade.com. I'm your host, Drew Neisser. And until next time, keep those Renegade thinking caps on and strong!