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In this conversation, Bruce Siegel shares his journey through various leadership roles and the importance of navigating the space between agreement and alignment in organizations. He discusses the significance of a beginner's mindset, the challenges of business development, and the trade-offs leaders face in decision-making. Bruce emphasizes the need for alignment in organizations, overcoming ego, and the value of followership. He provides strategies for moving from agreement to alignment and highlights the importance of creating deeper connections within communities.
Takeaways
- Mindset shifts are crucial for personal and professional development.
- Business development is essential for success in professional services.
- A big trade-off in leadership is autonomy versus collaboration.
- Alignment in organizations is often confused with agreement.
- Ego can hinder effective leadership, you need to create a culture of openness.
- Building deeper connections within communities enhances personal fulfillment.
Creators & Guests
Host
Guest
Bruce Siegel
As a Managing Partner at Karrikins Group, Bruce lives out his passion for Making HOW Matter to leaders. Internally he leads our strategy and operations, oversees client engagements, and spends time developing our HOW Activators. His personal experience as an executive combined with his extensive work with senior leaders in client organizations makes him a high impact partner for our client executives. His cross-industry business acumen couples with a passion for human dynamics to help leaders drive alignment – and his direct and concise style drives accountability to personal growth. Bruce has worked with organizations of all sizes and in most industries. He has held executive roles in small, mid-size and Fortune 1000 companies and consulted with some of the fastest growing, most innovative global leaders and brands.
What is The Failure Gap ?
The Failure Gap podcast is hosted by Julie Williamson, Ph.D., the CEO and a Managing Partner at Karrikins Group, a Denver-based, global-serving business consultancy. Julie delves into the critical space between agreement and alignment - where even the best ideas falter without decisive action. Through candid conversations with a diverse mix of leaders, this podcast explores both the successes and failures that shape the journey of leadership. Featuring visionary leaders from companies of all sizes, from billion-dollar giants to mid-market innovators, to scrappy start-ups, The Failure Gap uncovers the real-life challenges of transforming ideas into impactful outcomes. Tune in to learn how top leaders bridge the gap and drive meaningful progress in their organizations.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (00:00.152)
Hello and welcome to the Failure Gap, where we love talking with people about navigating the space between agreement and alignment. Today we're joined by Bruce Siegel. He's an old friend and colleague of mine, and he's currently my business partner at Karrikins & Group Bruce, thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Julie. Wonderful to be here. Bruce, you have had such an interesting career that has brought you to this point. Maybe you could give people a sense of some of the twists and turns along the way that have landed you as a managing partner at Karrikins & Group. Okay, well,
I would go all the way back to college. I made a decision to get a management information systems degree. And remarkably, on day one, and probably for the first year of my employment, I used everything I learned at college. And it was very rare. And all of my friends, when I talked to them, were marveled at the fact that all of the things that I did in college paid dividends in my work environment.
And with that, I got into a lot of leading edge technology. So for the first probably eight or so years of my career, I was working on leading edge technology when developing cobalt systems on the PC was leading edge. So I'm aging myself a bit there. But progressively continue to stay on the leading edge of technology, doing object-oriented based things, doing windows based things. And the reason I bring that up is about
10 or 12 years into my career, had an opportunity to move to Europe to start and run a pan-European e-business practice. And all of that pre-work in working in leading edge technology and helping clients and my colleagues understand how to use technology, I had the opportunity, and this was 1996, to move to Europe to a country and a culture that I didn't know anything about.
And quite honestly, a business model and a set of technology that I didn't know anything about either. I was gifted and given the opportunity to select individuals from across the European practice and brought together about 30 individuals. No two or three were from the same country, but these were some of the smartest individuals working in Europe for this systems integrator.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (02:25.684)
And we together over three years developed an e-business practice that was at the leading edge again. And it allowed me to understand how do you lead individuals that come from very different cultures and how do you help clients understand how to take advantage of something that didn't exist. And it was just a wonderful opportunity to develop my leadership skills. When I moved back to the US, I leveraged those, got into strategy.
work, got into human capital work. And really, it's everything that I did up to that point brought me to Kerikin's group in helping develop this organization, co-lead this organization in a space that is quite a white space where helping clients understand how they lead and how important how they lead is to the success of their organization.
Well, it's been such an interesting journey, Bruce, and it seems like along the way, one of the things that you've leaned into is the opportunity to try something new and to push those boundaries a bit. That's something we often hear people say that they agree is a good idea, but it can be hard to come into alignment around that and really try and make it happen. And it seems like at different points in your career, you've had the opportunity to really do that. Yeah, very much so. Very much so. And I would say
One of the things that I utilized that might be a little bit overstated is this idea of beginner's mind. I literally didn't know what I didn't know and I walked into the opportunity as just a wonderful opportunity to see what we could do. Yeah, I think that beginner's mindset is so powerful for us both professionally and personally. you know, Bruce, I would love to hear from you a little bit about maybe some situations or times when you've
try to learn something new and succeeded and maybe where you haven't succeeded as much and what you've learned from that effort in your own life to move from agreement that something would be a good idea to do to alignment and actually making it happen or some of the struggles along the way. Yeah, I'm happy to. I think I'll start with probably a lifelong struggle. I was never comfortable around horses. My wife was always interested
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (04:43.61)
in working with horses, at least in her adult life, when she was younger. But through that, I got exposed to horses and the beauty of horses. I had an innate fear. And as an example, my wife and I would be driving down the road and we would see horses in a pasture and she would say, pull over, let's go. Let's go say hi. And she would get out and I would stay in the car. That's how afraid I
those wonderful beings I was. so this is both a success story and a haven't quite gotten there story. I don't know if I would say failure, but to this day, so 12 years ago, fast forward, we now have four horses. About 12 years ago, we got our first two horses. And then three or so years ago, we got two more. So we have four horses and we are part of
the mounted search and rescue through the sheriff's department. So we do a lot of technical riding and literally go out in pretty scary scenarios and situations looking for individuals who may be hurt or lost. And we do that on horseback. And I know every time I get on a horse, I have a tremendous amount of fear about being on that horse, even though they're my horses and I've helped train them. And so...
stepping into that fear and I wouldn't say being comfortable with that fear, but knowing that I am fearful and still doing it is part of the success where it's not, I'm not quite there yet is I still have a lot of discomfort when I'm around horses and I live with them and I use them as a first responder and volunteer work. So it's this interesting dichotomy that in literally in every, every day I face.
Thank you for sharing that Bruce. think it's such a wonderful personal story and it seems like part of what you've leaned into is a mindset shift. And that mindset shift maybe went from I'm afraid and so I'm going to hold myself back to I'm afraid and I'm going to move forward anyway. Is that fair to say from how you described that? Yeah, that is very fair. Very, very fair. mean, just even going out and feeding the horses and being so close with them and being under them.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (07:09.068)
and checking their feet and training with them, you're absolutely right. Knowing that I'm fearful and still doing it, it gives me bit of caution, which I think makes me a better rider because I honor the power that they have. And it also does hold me back a bit. But from the start of it where I wouldn't even get out of the car, I've definitely come a long way and had a lot of mindset shifts. Yeah.
Are there other mindset shifts that stand out for you? I would say on the professional side, most colleagues of mine, and I have the same, difficulty in business development. As being in professional services for 35 plus years, business development is incredibly important and literally everyone in a professional service organization typically needs to
exercise their business development skill set. It's one of those things from a mindset perspective, you've really got to get behind. And if you're even more of an expert in a given area, sometimes it's even more difficult to do business development because you feel like you should be working with clients and solving their problems, not trying to sell them something. And so from a mindset perspective, that's one that I also work on.
on a daily basis. And co-leading Karrikins & Group, it's even more important in not only doing the business development, but modeling the way for how business development should be done. Yeah, that is such a powerful mindset shift for people. And I would connect it back to your story with horses, where I think a lot of people are a little afraid of business development. And when it comes up, they might want to stay in the car. how do we get them out of the car and
make that mindset shift around this is good for the business, it's good for me, it's good for clients, and it's good for our potential clients who could really benefit from the value that we provide. Not just we being Kerikin's Group, but whatever business you happen to be in, if you believe in the solution or the product that you have, then that mindset shift into how do we get this into more people's hands, I think is a really powerful one. Yeah, I very much agree.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (09:28.792)
You know, to go back to your example, one of the things you mentioned also was search and rescue. And I happen to know that you and your wife are also involved sometimes in extracting people out of situations here in Colorado. We have trouble with wildfires and things like that. I've observed that it's easy for people to agree that it's a good idea to do things like fire mitigation. They don't always do it until suddenly it's too late. Any thoughts on a gap that's that.
visceral, right? We should do fire mitigation around our house. That's a good idea. But somehow they just never get around to it. What do you think sits behind that? Well, I think it's conflicting opinions. fire mitigation is very important to do. And people love the vegetation around their house. So I live up in the mountains and I'm in a fire zone. And I struggle with this as well.
You know, we moved into the mountains on two plus acres of pine trees. And yet very regularly, I need to cut down trees or limb them up. And in doing so, you reduce the privacy that you have because you're exposing yourself more to the street. And even though the street's a little bit away with our acreage, but it's a conflict of desires. You have a desire to stay safe. If a fire comes through your neighborhood,
and you have a desire to live in a natural setting and you want to enjoy that. And so it's a trade off that you've got to navigate that we navigate all the times and my neighbors navigate all the time as well. I think in the end, the mitigation should at least some form of that mitigation should have priority because in some ways it's life and death or loss of property. You know, trade offs are so hard, aren't they?
But you very much are. Yeah. And I know you probably see that in business as well. You've shared a mindset example around business development. I'm curious when you reflect back on different clients that you've worked with or a Kerikans group, what are some of the tradeoffs that you see people really struggling with in a business setting? One that I see quite often is especially very successful, high performing leaders is this idea of
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (11:52.448)
a trade-off between autonomy and working with their peers. One way we might call it vertical leadership, how do they have autonomy in running their business vertically as opposed to having to collaborate with their peers to potentially drive enterprise goals? And that trade-off of what's more important, where should I put my time, where should I my resources? Should I look at my own individual metrics that I'm being measured on?
or look at the company metrics and what's more important. And so many times we work with clients around how do they balance that and how do they work better with their peers to drive enterprise value as opposed to individual value. That is such an important topic for so many executive leadership teams. In your mind, what helps an executive to move through that mindset of autonomy or maybe
I'm making my best contribution by making sure that my area of the business is in order versus being a part of a bigger team. What are some of the things that people have to work through around that? I think they've got to work through their own ego. They've got to work through the fear of not knowing. They've got to work through the fact that they may not advance something that is dear to them or really important to them on their own agenda.
and have to give up something to potentially gain something in a longer term perspective. And I think one of the ways to break through that barrier is just to voice those mindsets or those concerns and bring your peers into that dialogue because they are most likely having the same challenges. Definitely a shared set of challenges in many organizations.
We see that at the most senior levels. I think it comes down into lower levels in the organization as well. Any experiences or observations around how those newer enterprise leaders sometimes are grappling with mindset shifts that need to happen or trade-offs that they need to make in different ways as they step up in leadership? Yeah, mean, if you think about it at the most senior levels, it's definitely happening at the lower levels. And there's an added
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (14:14.572)
they aspire to being at a more senior level. So they're looking sometimes more at their own individual performance as a way of making a mark for themselves and a name for themselves so that they can advance to more senior level. And it's really working with them in giving them the understanding that actually helping your colleagues achieve more.
is actually viewed more impressively if you want to get to that next level. That it's not just your individual achievements, but how do you help a team achieve things, or how do you help the enterprise achieve things, because that's what's expected at a higher level. And so it's one, the most senior leaders modeling that way, and two, working with the next level down or leaders within the organization of how do you help them create alignment to things.
that are bigger than themselves and not just their own goals and objectives. So important. If you had a piece of advice for a new enterprise leader, someone who's just stepping into that, what's the one thing you would tell them to make sure that they do as they step into that role? Can I give you two? Sure. You can give me three. I would say two main things. One, try. You need to...
Try new things and if you don't try new things, you're not gonna advance. You're not gonna one, be able to help other people do things because they may be stuck in their own status quo. And so you need to try new things. So that would be the first thing is continue to try new things, even if you're afraid of it, even if you're afraid of failing or being embarrassed or being hurt, you still need to try new things. You need to do it judiciously, but try new things. The second,
thing part A and part B is be candid. Be candid with yourself and honest with yourself and be candid with the people you work with. That is the best way to build a fellowship and trust and really start expanding your community and that's how great things get done. So be candid with yourself and others and your colleagues and try new things. Great advice, great suggestions for someone
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (16:35.904)
If anyone out there who's listening is stepping into one of those new enterprise roles, great things to lean into. Bruce, let's shift gears back to the idea of leading an organization through times of transformation, specifically around agreement and alignment. Often we hear people have big ambitions that sound really good and everybody agrees that's the direction that the business should go. And yet they struggle to get into alignment and to make it happen.
Do have a good example of maybe a client that you've worked with or even internally with a company you've worked with where you've seen that play out? man, so many examples. I would say confusing agreement for alignment is rampant in the professional space. It's rampant in human dynamics. So what would be one example that I would want to pull on?
I think many organizations, we've got a couple that are working on this, are going through what we call operating model shifts. And some of these can be pretty seismic, where, as I mentioned at the start of this conversation, individuals may need to give up some autonomy. As organizations change their operating model to consolidate functions, to merge business units, to look at key account strategies where
One account is serviced by multiple business units. And so in this operating model shifts, it's easy to agree to, yes, it's good for the business to have a consolidated centralized engineering group or an HR group or a finance group. And yet the leaders of the various business units look at and say, well, I need my own CFO because otherwise I won't be able to manage the financials.
of my business well enough, or I need to keep this customer contained within my own business unit because I don't know if the other business units are going to be able to deliver the high quality and high standards. So they can agree to it in a meeting, nod their head. Yes, it would be really good to cut costs or drive more revenue through these operating model shifts. But they hit at the heart of who we are as leaders.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (18:58.316)
may take away some control that we have, our autonomy, our influence, our authority. And so it's very difficult to align. It's difficult for individuals to change their behaviors and change their decisions so that it is actually in concert with the operating model changes. Yeah, I think you keep coming back to this idea of ego and how we show up as leaders and what we think defines us as a leader. And I think that's so interesting, Bruce, because
that is something that holds us back in life and it holds us back organizationally as a team member too. And I'm thinking also about your example with horses, right? And this idea that you were, I don't know if it was ego, I don't know if I would call it ego, but there is something that for you defined who you were as a person, as someone who's hesitant around horses. And reclaiming that space and redefining that narrative is incredibly difficult to do.
Yeah, I would agree with there, Julie. And I would also say there was a control issue there. Horses are big, powerful beings. And so you don't have control over them. changing the mindset that I needed to control them, I want to influence them, but I can't control them. They're 1,200 pounds. Their ability to move through my hands at a moment's notice.
is infinite. And so how do I become a leader with my horses so that they respect me and they look towards me and they allow me to influence them? I would say in addition to the mindset shift that you mentioned. Yeah, so they're willing to follow. Correct. Yeah, yeah. One of the things that I've noticed at times is speaking of followership is that people
A lot of people in the world want to be leaders and somehow we've as a society made it almost a bad thing to be a follower. And yet in organizations, if people aren't willing to follow sometimes and lead other times and to balance that, then it's very difficult to transform the organization. You talk about operating models, it goes to that quite a bit. Curious about your thoughts on
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (21:19.042)
The idea that it might be easy to agree that we need to be able to follow sometimes and lead other times, but it's very difficult to actually align our behaviors to that. Any observations or thoughts on that or examples of where you might have seen that? Yeah, I mean, I think I think it is very difficult. I think this idea and ego gets in the way identity gets in the way. In reality, some of the best leaders follow what I would consider and what's called more of a servant leader mindset where
They are helping others achieve great things by also achieving their own great things. But this idea of how do you help others? How do you lead from behind? Which, you you just think about how do you lead from behind? You're trying to put together two different opposing things potentially in your mind. But the fact of the matter is, many servant leaders have gotten much further than individuals who think
They've got all the answers and they want everyone to follow them. those leaders understand the fluidity that's required that there are times that yes, they absolutely have to be out front. And there are probably more times that they can lead from behind. They can develop individuals. They can cheer those individuals on. They can show them where they may have made mistakes and how they can improve on it. But it's about the collective success.
not about their making their own mark in the world. Yeah, and I think at the same time it is through that that you make your mark in the world. Absolutely. Yes, you're absolutely right. That makes sense. Bruce, if you were talking with an executive team right now that was struggling with moving from agreement to alignment on a big transformation, what would be the two or three or however many things you want to choose? What would be the most important things that you would tell them to focus on?
For one, I would say let's go around the room and talk and label and name all the things we're avoiding. What are the conversations and topics we're avoiding? What are the decisions we're avoiding? Let's just go catalog them. Let's not try to get into it, but let's catalog them. And then let's use that as our agenda for many meetings to come depending on how long that list is. Because
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (23:44.852)
If you do a really good job in just cataloging those things that are being avoided and then you attend to them at a later date, there's less attribution to those things and you're not creating a link between the topic and yourself or the topic and somebody else that might be avoiding it. So one of the big gaps that I see in leadership teams is there are so many conversations that are being avoided.
avoided or decisions that are being avoided and they never get addressed. So this idea of cataloging them in a non-threatening way can be very powerful to help individuals and groups move from agreement to alignment. Because a lot of times that gap in between agreement to alignment are those things that they're not discussing, those decisions that they're not making. So that would be one thing I would suggest in that.
It's opening up and being more available. There's a big concept around being more vulnerable. I like to talk about it about like being more available and more open. Vulnerability brings in a lot of other emotion. So if leaders can be more available and more open, I think that starts setting the stage for what we would consider allowing for quality conversations and really encouraging
the group from a group dynamic perspective to get into those quality conversations. And the avoided topics and the quality conversations go hand in hand. So I think those are two things that are pretty simple to agree to to do and in many cases difficult to align to. But once you step into it there's a lot of freedom within that. Yeah I really like that reframing Bruce of moving from being vulnerable to being available. I think that
is in and of itself a mindset shift for people who might even struggle with the idea of vulnerability as a leader and how to apply that. And so this idea of making yourself available for a lot of different kinds of things really strikes a chord. So thank you for sharing that. And I think this idea of having the courage to notice a name as we like to call it, these unspoken truths around what's getting in the way of transformation, whether that's a.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (26:09.686)
I don't want to give up control or we're not willing to make that investment or issues around prioritization, the list goes on. But being able to name those really is powerful for people. I think it is something that takes courage for leaders sometimes, but if you can push through and do that, you can definitely see amazing results just from that exercise. So I appreciate you bringing that forward as well.
Anything good? Yeah, I was gonna say one of the things that you said reminded me of something else is take small steps. You don't need to make a quantum leap in how you're interacting with your leadership team or make huge changes in your habits. Take small steps. Many small steps will get you there faster and probably go farther than trying to make one big leap.
Yeah, and I think as you know, part of our philosophy around even the work we do to move executive teams from agreement to alignment is all about doing it in reasonably sized chunks rather than trying to get it all done in one big capital.
Agreed. Bruce, what do you love most about the work from Karrikins & Scroop and the impact that Karrikins & Scroop has in the world? We are affecting so many lives. We as an organization, every individual and collectively, we are on a mission to make how matter. And that is how leaders lead matters. And if leaders can come together and be deliberate about defining how they lead,
There is no stopping them. They can, as a team, deliver on their most ambitious goals and really take a company much further than anyone might have thought. And so this idea of making how matter for us is something that we wake up every day. And I am so proud of the impact we've had. We can literally put our hand on our hearts and say, we have affected so many lives.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (28:21.582)
The leadership teams we are working with are running, in some cases, Fortune 500 companies with tens of thousands of employees, all those families. We are making the work environment that they come to every day better by starting with the most senior leaders, by looking at what lever can the leaders pull that would have the biggest impact.
on the success of the organization and the environment that those employees work in within that company. And we do that exceptionally well. Great. Thank you so much, Bruce. All right, time for my last question for you, which is if you could get some group of people in your world aligned to something, whether it's your family, friends, community, company, clients, colleagues, whatever it might be, what would be something that you would love to see people aligned to and take on together?
So I'm going to go actually more personal for myself. What I would like to get aligned to is developing deeper connections with the people around me, my colleagues and my friends. I think at least from my own experience, I continue to agree with myself that it would be really that it's important to develop deeper friendships. And I'm not setting aside the time.
for myself and model the way for the group of friends in the community that I have is to spend more time in reaching out and connecting, getting together in person and having fun. And that's what I would like to do to build more alignment in the community of people that I'm within. And I'd like to model the way in that. Bruce, I think that's such an amazing commitment to articulate for yourself.
You are in a demographic that struggles with that quite honestly, right? There is an epidemic of people feeling disconnected from people who they would consider to be friends or community members. And so I really applaud you for saying that out loud. We talked about that earlier. You mentioned notice and name and be willing to say it. And I think about your encouragement to middle or to up and coming enterprise leaders to try. And so I'm gonna encourage you back.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (30:46.082)
to say try and we'll check in maybe next year and see how it's going. I think this has brought us full circle and a lot of the really great things that you've brought to life around the importance of understanding the space between agreement and alignment and being intentional about how you step into that space, navigating the mindsets that you have to shift, the trade-offs that you might need to make differently and the ways in which at an enterprise level in business, you can start to see across the business and not just.
within your own functional area. And as an individual in a personal setting, how you can really challenge yourself to navigate something like a fear or an uncertainty in a different way and show up in that space with a new mindset and a fresh way of taking it on. So thank you so much for sharing so much of yourself and also what you're doing with clients. You're right, the work is amazing. The impact is phenomenal. So I'm really proud to be able to call you a business partner and to be able to work with you every day.
Thank you so much, Bruce, for being here. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you, Julie. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Everybody, just a reminder, if you enjoyed this conversation, please click to subscribe and like, and feel free to reach out if you have any comments or ideas. Thanks so much, and we'll see you next time.