Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
This is the Executive Connect Podcast - a show for the new generation of leaders. Join us as we discover unconventional leadership strategies not traditionally associated with executive roles. Our guests include upper-level C-Suite executives charting new ways to grow their organizations, successful entrepreneurs changing the way the world does business, and experts and thought leaders from fields outside of Corporate America that can bring new insights into leadership, prosperity, and personal growth - all while connecting on a human level. No one has all the answers - but by building a community of open-minded and engaged leaders we hope to give you the tools you need to help you find your own path to success.
Melissa Aarskaug (00:01.494)
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast. Today I'm excited to have Chad Foster here with us to talk about my two favorite topics, overcoming adversity and building resilience. Chad is a keynote speaker, executive dealmaker and author. He is the first blind executive to graduate from the Harvard Business School and he's written his own book, Blind Ambition, How to Win from Victim to Visionary.
and that talks about his career accomplishments. Welcome, Chad, and thank you for being here today.
Chad Foster (00:37.105)
Thank you, I appreciate you having me with you today.
Melissa Aarskaug (00:39.986)
I wanna jump right into your story. It's so interesting to me. Can you share a little bit about how you lost your eyesight and the initial challenges you faced?
Chad Foster (00:50.717)
Sure. Yeah, so when I was three years old, my parents noticed that I had a hard time seeing in really dim situations. So they took me to Duke University Medical Center, where at roughly three years old, I was diagnosed with an inherited eye condition known as retinitis pigmentosa, which in our case is sort of the hidden family eye disease. Nobody in my family had this particular problem that we knew about. Both my parents could see just fine. My siblings, my uncle's aunts, everybody could see perfectly. And so it was a bit...
unusual for me. So it was autosomal recessive. We didn't really know it at the time, but there was a genetic mutation that I carry that was extremely recessive. And I ended up manifesting that. the doctors there, they told my parents they should sign me up for a special school for the blind, but instead they chose to sign me up for soccer. So that was just sort of the, the parenting approach that they took. They didn't want me to feel like I was put in a corner. And so they let me do what
Other kids do, played sports growing up, played soccer, played football, played basketball, was able to drive a car. And then roughly at 21 years old, the process really began to accelerate. It was a little bit earlier than that, but at 21 years old, while I was in college at the University of Tennessee, everything really began fading very quickly. I had to get a medical withdrawal from my major. I was at the time studying to go into the medical field because I wanted to help other people. And then after going blind, I wasn't even sure how I was going to help myself. So.
I switched my major, major to business, lost nearly three years of work and had to reset. You know, I had to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Cause we ask kids all the time what they want to be when they grow up. And guess what? None of them say they want to be a blind person. So I had to reset and figure out what I wanted to do. And it's kind of ironic. I ended up becoming a better blind student than the inside student. I had to relearn how to learn, made the, made the Dean's list, made straight A's. fact, didn't make below an A for the rest of my time at university.
And it wasn't because I was genius, but it was because my condition forced me to internalize information instead of sort of memorizing information. I had to really digest it and internalize it and adapt to a new learning system. Being a visual learner wasn't all that helpful after I went blind. And so I had to read everything using audio. so my mom sat down and literally read every single one of my college business books to audio cassette for me. so.
Chad Foster (03:14.747)
When she moved beyond herself like that to help me at this time of need, I was inspired. I was inspired to not let her down and to make sure that all that hard work didn't go to waste. And so that was sort of the beginning of things. as you can imagine, as I'm navigating all of that, it was a very difficult time. Just the grief, the loss, the wondering what I was going to be.
mourning the death of my imagined future self because I hadn't, I had never contemplated going blind. Even though people had warned me that it could happen, I thought I was the outlier because I was at 14, I was 14 years old at a leading eye specialist in the Southeast. And they told me that what I was doing was very uncommon. The level of activity that had my life from riding motorcycles and bikes and all those things was very uncommon for people with retinitis pigmentosa.
So I thought maybe I was the outlier. Maybe that's not what I had. Maybe Duke got it wrong because they couldn't diagnose it with a genetic marker like they can today. And so I had hoped and I'd hoped that they were just wrong and it wasn't going to be the case, but it turned out that it was. And so I wasn't really prepared. And so there was a lot of grief and a lot of loss there as I navigated those circumstances.
Melissa Aarskaug (04:33.228)
That's such an amazing story and thank you for sharing. The transition from personal challenges to professional success is really amazing. I want to talk a little bit about those early experiences that you mentioned and how they really shaped your approach to leadership and resilience.
Chad Foster (04:49.649)
Yeah.
Well, you know, was at a company offsite, senior leadership offsite. been about 12 years ago and we were going through a major change. was working for a large defense technology contractor. provided mission services, staffing services, technology services to the U S federal government. And I was leading our pricing strategy and solutions group at the time I was senior director over that group and working on very large deals, multi -billion dollar deals and
we were going through the post -sequester environment. And so what that means is there was a sequester that took place in Congress that cut funding for a lot of the programs that we were serving for the federal government. And so our business and many contracts went to 40 cents on the dollar. Literally, from one day to the next, the budget from the client became 40 cents on the dollar. And so we had to do some things that were unusual to run the business. There were some things that we had to do.
related to benefits that we had to address. And so it was, it was difficult for a lot of people. They were looking at legacy benefits that they'd been granted and we were living in this new world and things were changing. And I remember thinking to myself that I had been really kind of holding other people or viewing their ability to navigate these situations based on my own lens.
meaning their level of resilience. I was using my own lens to think about it because we had a lot of people on my team who were struggling with these changes. And I thought, I kept thinking to myself, wow, this is not that big of a deal. We ought to be able to navigate this. And then I had that aha moment, this epiphany that, wait, I've been judging everybody else's level of resilience based on my own lived experiences, which is.
Chad Foster (06:45.329)
You know, it's very unfair because not everybody's gone through what I've been through. I've had some significant things that happened to me that have given me the level of resilience and determination and persistence and ability to thrive in some challenging circumstances. And many of these people hadn't had those. And that was a real aha moment for me, a real epiphany to where I learned that leadership is not about meeting people where you think they should be. It's about meeting people where they are.
on that transition curve and helping them along that transition curve with a combination of empathy and understanding and inspiration and leadership and accountability. And it's this blend of all these things that can help get people through that transition curve. And a lot of people will make that turn in the transition curve. Some people won't, some people, it's just not time for them to make that turn or they just can't do it. But if you use the empathy, you meet people where they are.
You inspire them with your own story and your willingness to be there and be present with them, still holding them accountable and yourself accountable and move people along. think you can get the maximum impact with your entire team.
Melissa Aarskaug (07:55.938)
Yeah, that's great. Great piece of wisdom there is really meeting people where they are. I think that's spot on. I want to talk about, I love technology, also a technologist. Let's talk a little bit about building a career in technology and how you manage to direct financial strategies, resulting in more than 45 billion in contracts at Red Hat and IBM. Can you share a little bit about that?
Chad Foster (08:08.54)
Mm
Chad Foster (08:22.141)
Yeah. So, I, at the time I was in the defense IT space. I was working for a company, SRA international. And before that I'd done commercial outsourcing at a company named CSC computer sciences corp. And I was working on large multi -billion dollar commercial outsourcing transactions and totally blind. I'm coming in there, blind guy with a dog. And they're looking at me like, how's this blind guy going to do all the work that we have to do in this very complex financial modeling set. So we had a set of Excel models that was about 115 files.
for a single region within each of these files, had, I don't know, 10, 15 tabs, thousands of calculations, and everybody was wondering how's the blind guy gonna do this? Is the dog gonna help him? And what they didn't realize is that my blindness actually gave me an advantage because just to be able to use those Excel models, I had to learn how to write code to engineer my software, my screen reading software, so that it would talk to Microsoft Excel in what's called the document object model, the DOM, the backend library.
And so I was able to allow my software to communicate with Excel. And that gave me a really deep understanding of not only how to use Excel, but how to automate a lot of the work that we were doing. And so I became an expert with our financial modeling system pretty quickly. And before you know it, I was building automation tools that the whole team used to save a bunch of hours each week. And so that gave us time to do the analysis that we had to do to drive the right costing and
and pricing structure on these large commercial outsourcing deals. And shortly after that, I was hired by a company to direct the strategy for their $2 billion acquisition with the government. And it was with the TSA. And so I've worked there for a period of time. And I think the rubber really started meeting the road for me. I won some large deals at Computer Sciences Corp and did some great things at the next Fed IT company, Unisys is the name.
And then ended up at SRA International where most of the contracts came in. That's where really the price to win analysis, understanding what the market is willing to pay for a particular basket of services. In this case, it was a normalized statement of work. What's the market price? Whether that's based on competitive data, based on parametric analysis, based on industry analyst data and understanding what's the customer's willingness to pay, their appetite for savings.
Chad Foster (10:45.787)
the current run rate, what are they currently paying for all those services? I was uniquely qualified to have a vantage point of all of those things, including things like the empirical staffing estimates that we needed. How many people do we need to do the work based on the performance work statement or the statement of work? And how much do we need to pay them? And what sort of margins do we need to earn to cover not only overhead, but profit? And how do we actually make money after we win this large, multi -billion dollar contract that on a piece of paper at the point of sale has a P &L?
of single digit gross margins. How do we get that up to 30 or 40 % gross margins? And so that was really my superpower was building a pre -sales, a point of sale and a post sales execution model that tied all these elements together. How do we influence the customer to buy our services? How do we influence the RFP? How do we win the RFP? And then how do we build enough levers in the contract so that we can maximize profit and revenue over a period of time? And so that was really where most of those billions of dollars of contracts came in.
Then obviously I joined Red Hat, led our global deal desk organization when I joined the company back in 2016. Won the largest ever deal in history of the company, a cross -functional team that I was leading when I joined and then later went on to become the VP leading the corporate finance team that closed the sale of the company to IBM and the largest ever software acquisition, which was a $34 billion transaction.
Melissa Aarskaug (12:10.146)
That's amazing. I love what you shared. think you've had some setbacks and you've had some maybe more challenging situations than people just walking in and sitting into a meeting. And I love what you were saying is you've never let it stop you from achieving anything that you had set out to achieve. so I want to talk a little bit about what resilience means to you and how it's played in your life. And then kind of secondary talking a little bit about
blind ambition and really some of the core messages and takeaways from that book and maybe even some nuggets of wisdom you can share with our listeners.
Chad Foster (12:50.321)
Yeah, to me, resilience is almost an overplayed term. think a lot of people talk a lot about resilience, but not a whole lot about what it means. And so for me, it tends to sound a little bit like a platitude, know, Hey, resilience is trying harder and not giving up. And while both of those are byproducts of resilience, you know, they're not particularly helpful when you're in the middle of that change curve. And so what I like to do when I'm speaking to corporate audiences or trade industry associations or sports teams is I want to empower them.
by understanding and breaking down the anatomy of resilience so that they understand what they can do to shift their mindset and attach themselves differently to a basket of circumstances so they can derive their own internal motivation and unwillingness to give up. And so I do that by distilling the five pillars of resilience. And I have a lot of storytelling that I arrange around this to exemplify, but just real quickly, I'll go over the five pillars of resilience as I...
as I found them in my own lived human experience. Now these aren't things that I read in book somewhere. This is my own human experience where I've cultivated these. And so the first pillar is learning that you get to choose your response. You don't always get to choose the cards that you are dealt in life, but you alone get to choose how you play your cards. The second pillar is you have to learn to tell yourself the right stories. Now I could have chosen to tell myself that I went blind because I've got terrible luck.
But instead I chose to tell myself that I went blind because I'm one of the very few people on the planet who has the strength and the toughness to overcome that and use it to help other people. Now technically both of these stories can be true, but one story frames me as a victim. But the second story is a better story and it reframes my disability into my strength. It turns my blindness into my superpower because I've told myself that I went blind because I'm mentally strong enough
to deal with it. So it attaches new meaning to my circumstances. The third pillar is visualizing greatness. And sometimes we have to do that even in unfavorable circumstances. I had to figure out how to make the blind look good, is the bottom line. And if I couldn't do that, then my odds of moving towards acceptance and thriving were next to zero. Now, the fourth pillar is where mindset meets action. We have to get comfortable with discomfort because if you were never getting outside of your comfort zone,
Chad Foster (15:13.351)
then you're not growing. Life begins outside of your comfort zone. And the fifth pillar is every perceived disadvantage offers us some advantage if we use it in the right context. So you have to take advantage of your disadvantages.
Melissa Aarskaug (15:30.754)
That's great. I love what you said. And I also know that you're an athlete as well outside of just being a corporate athlete and you're also an actual athlete. So let's talk a little bit about kind of what you were saying about how you help corporate audiences and athletes really pull apart and develop resiliency and uncertainty, right? Whatever it may be personally, professionally that they're struggling with. Can you share a little bit more about that?
Chad Foster (15:38.929)
Yeah.
Chad Foster (15:42.246)
Yeah.
Chad Foster (15:59.805)
think, yeah, sports are a great metaphor, whether it's downhill skiing, I love to downhill ski, and there's a lot to be said about the growth that you have to have when you're learning how to downhill ski. I learned how to ski at 38 years old, totally blind, had never skied before. There was a lot of falling that took place, a lot of figuring out how I was going to do it. And I just, I wanted to learn how to ski more than I wanted to avoid falling. But every opportunity on the slope,
was a chance to grow and expand and really ride the edge of my comfort zone. And so now, I'm a black diamond skier. I've skied some double blacks before, obviously not being able to see. And I think that's great. And it helps me on a seasonal basis. I don't live in the mountains with access to a ski slope year round. So one of the things that I've gotten into recently to help tide me over, if you will, and it's really become a way of life for me.
And to me, it embodies get comfortable with this comfort, but I've started training in Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu a little less than three years ago. got my Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu purple belt this year because I'm just, so honestly, I'm so addicted to it. go six, seven days a week. If I'm in town, I'm training every day. It's, it's something that's really hard to put into words because it forces you to grow. It forces you to be uncomfortable.
The first few times somebody puts you in a chokehold and you don't have a way out of that chokehold, it's terrifying. You know, it feels like your head's going inside a vacuum cleaner bag. But a funny thing happens, you learn over time to settle into the terror. You learn to get really relaxed and just lay down in the fear and lay down in the discomfort and to just soak up the terror. And when you learn to do that, a funny thing happens. Eventually you'll start learning
that instead of panicking and having your adrenaline take over, you learn to control your breathing and to bring your heart rate down and to step through the fear and start calmly looking for a way out. And ironically, a lot of times those seemingly inescapable chokeholds that we find ourselves in actually do have a way out. If we can just stay calm enough to look for them and you you don't have to be on the mat fighting somebody to appreciate that. Maybe something in your personal life or your professional life feels like it has you.
Chad Foster (18:18.949)
in a choke hold, but if you learn to get comfortable with this comfort, you'll start to crave it. And then your comfort zone will start to expand and that's because you're expanding. And so I found that when I get more comfortable with this comfort, the more growth and expansion I get to enjoy and the more innovation I can create, the more innovation happens around me because we're all just getting a little bit outside of our comfort zone and great things can happen when you get outside your comfort zone. Because if you're in your comfort zone,
To me, comfort zones are another word for complacency and nothing great ever happens with being complacent.
Melissa Aarskaug (18:55.424)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's really well said, Chad, is searching for places to be uncomfortable, whether it's, like you mentioned, a sport that you're passionate about, or maybe even your circle of influence, your friends, are they challenging your thinking? What are they talking about? Are they just talking about, you know, politics or the things that are challenging the world today? Are they actually talking about things and expanding your mind and...
So or your belief system, I love kind of all that you said there and So kind of switching more back to the the personal or professional side of things What advice do you have for professionals who are facing their own blind spots or challenges in their life currently?
Chad Foster (19:43.453)
Well, I think the first thing is recognizing that, you know, all the effort and all the work and all the determination really gets diluted unless you get your mind in the right place, the mindset that you show up with. And so when your mindset shifts in a way that's consistent with what I talked about in terms of resilience, the, the, choices that you're making, the narratives that you're creating, the vision that you have and your willingness to
make progress towards that vision. You know, it's the meaning that we attach to our circumstances is so important. It's what gives us motivation. You know, I've done a lot of things in the corporate world, but I think, you know, making sure that you get really clear on why you're doing what you're doing. What's the bigger picture that you're going after in your work? Because there's a lot going on out there. Change is coming at us at a pace like it's never been before.
The velocity of change is unlike anything we've seen in recent history. Every time we turn around, we've got something new coming at us. And so why is it that you're doing what you're doing? Why are you doing the work that you're doing? The reason that I've started doing what I'm doing is because I am really connected with my mission, my purpose, my true North as Bill George calls it, whom I studied with it at Harvard. It really is having that linkage to why we do what we do. And when you can really distill
your mission and what you do and how it links to your overall purpose. It makes all the hard work almost effortless. know, I don't now what I do. It doesn't feel like a job. doesn't feel like work. It just feels like it's fun. And it's the reason that I'm on the planet. So I think getting really clear about the mindset that you show up with, not only in terms of the anatomy of resilience, which I talked about earlier, but the overall mission and how what you're doing contributes to that mission.
Because it is true that when we can attach what we do to something that's greater than ourselves, the impact that we can have when we move beyond ourselves in service of other people, that's when we can summon the courage, the persistence, and the determination to continue to show up and do the hard work that we need to do to move the needle.
Melissa Aarskaug (22:00.918)
That's fantastic. I agree. was a runner myself and I was a sprinter. And a lot of times, know, sprinters have to have that extra grit at the end across the finish line. And that separates the winners, you know, first place from fifth place. And so I think what you're talking about is really, if you don't know why you're doing something and you're just doing it, you're not going to have that extra grit, that extra push forward when things get tough, because they will get tough.
Chad Foster (22:12.706)
yeah.
Melissa Aarskaug (22:29.122)
for all of us personally and professionally, it's really having the grit and understanding of where you're going and why. And that's why there's so many people that go into entrepreneurship and very few people that last in entrepreneurship. Because like you said, you really got to focus on your mindset, what you're telling yourself, why you're doing things, and it will be tough. So I really love all of that.
Chad Foster (22:29.274)
yeah.
Chad Foster (22:51.121)
Yeah. Yeah. If you're doing it for the wrong reasons, you're not going to have the persistence. Like if I got into speaking because I wanted to make money doing that, building a speaking business is really hard. And if you're just doing it for monetary or transactional reasons, you're probably not going to have the grit to be able to persist. But if you're doing it for the deeper reasons beyond the transaction, the meaning, the purpose, the contribution to society, helping people navigate their own challenges, like it just...
It makes all the hard work feel very light and it's easy to show up and do that hard
Melissa Aarskaug (23:26.496)
Yeah, and I love that. I agree. think people see through it too, right, Chad? People see if you're really, you know, true to what you say, they can sense, you know, if you're doing things for the right reason. You mentioned at the beginning, empathy, people can, you know, people can see when people are being empathetic and because it shows, it shows in your body language, it shows in what you're saying and how you're speaking. And so if you don't have that true north and you don't really
Chad Foster (23:38.172)
Yep.
Chad Foster (23:49.223)
Yeah? Yeah?
Melissa Aarskaug (23:55.682)
you're doing things for the wrong reason, people see it, right? And then they don't trust what you're saying and what you're doing. So I love that. I wanna talk a little bit about the future of maybe industry trends and from your perspective, what industry trends do you see as the most significant for the future of technology and leadership? Kind of both of them.
Chad Foster (24:00.029)
They absolutely do.
Chad Foster (24:24.251)
I don't know how you talk about future trends of technology without mentioning, mentioning artificial intelligence. It's, everywhere you go, whether it's chat, GPT or Tesla's work with self -driving cars and the data they're collecting. And yeah, every, everywhere you look artificial intelligence is showing up and a lot of fear out there about what that's going to do to jobs and those sorts of things. But, that kind of plays into leadership. How do you.
as a leader, keep everybody's mindset or help everybody have the right mindset to harness the advantages of artificial intelligence, but still have the human centered approach to leadership. And, you know, certainly, you know, leading AI, like how do you, how do you lead a machine learning platform? Right. It's obviously a very human oriented experience. And so how do you, how do you bring the people through
the experience of harnessing artificial intelligence so that they can do better, more productive, more efficient, more meaningful work. And I think that really is the essence of what we've been talking about, the empathy that it takes to lead people through change, having the resilient mindset of showing up when you can't change the circumstances. AI is here, it's coming, it's going to continue to play a more significant role.
in our lives and so we can't run away from it. So how do we run towards it in a way and harness it so that we can use it to better our work and to better our lives and to better our organizational value? And so to me, that really is the key is helping everybody understand that it's not something that we need to fear. It's something that can improve the situation. And so how do we utilize artificial intelligence so that we can do our jobs more effectively and we can...
you know, maybe do different things. If you're looking at doing the same thing that you've always done and AI comes in and it could be very disruptive for your job. So if you're unwilling to learn new things and figure out how to harness AI to do your job, you know, you probably are right to have some fear and some anxiety because I don't think any of our jobs are going to be the same as what they were. And think that's a good thing. If you're looking at learning and a new thing and dealing with changes, my gosh, what am I going to do?
Chad Foster (26:43.569)
You know, it's going to be a scary time. And I think it's just having this commitment to lifelong learning and self reinvention and being comfortable with the discomfort and knowing that growth is just on the other side of fear and anxiety and really settling into that. And as a leader, helping people understand that. And how do you build a culture in your organization, on your team, where discomfort is kind of welcomed and it's kind of normal. And that's where disruption and innovation can really become a competitive advantage.
Melissa Aarskaug (27:15.168)
That's a great, great kind of segue into what I wanted to ask you next is, you're a lot of different things, right? You're an author, you're a leader, you're an athlete, you're a husband, you're all these things. Now, how do you stay ahead and really keep your competitive edge? Is there a certain practice you run through? And because you are ahead of things and on top of things. And so what kind of are some...
tips of staying ahead and keeping your competitive edge in whatever field you're in.
Chad Foster (27:50.237)
To me, it's just knowing my formula for my best self. What's going to keep my energy levels high? And I know what that is for me. To me, it involves regular exercise. So I weight train four or five days a week. I train in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu six, seven days a week. I take time for myself in the mornings, you know, to get my headspace clear. I know if I take care of myself and I can show up for other people and I can have the energy levels to do the hard work that I need to do. But if I don't...
take care of myself, I shortchange myself, I don't put myself in the best possible headspace by taking care of myself mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, all those things, and I'll never be able to be there for my employer, for my team, for my wife, for my kids, all these other things. So yes, I wear a lot of hats, but I think knowing your formula for your best self is crucial and making sure that you give yourself the spaciousness and permission to execute that formula for your best self on a consistent basis.
Melissa Aarskaug (28:45.484)
I love it, that's a great answer, Chad. In closing, any final thoughts? I know we covered a lot of ground, you shared a lot of tips and tricks and nuggets of wisdom. Is there anything we may have missed that you wanna share with our listeners?
Chad Foster (29:02.383)
No, I don't think we've, there's anything that we missed. I think just to reiterate, know, probably the single most important thing is make sure you control the stories that you tell yourself because you will become your stories. So make sure you're choosing those carefully.
Melissa Aarskaug (29:17.858)
That's great. Thank you so much, Chad, for being here. I know you're a busy man. That's the Executive Connect podcast.