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In this conversation, Julie Williamson and David Prager discuss the challenges of prioritization, building trust, and creating shared meaning within teams. David shares personal anecdotes about his leadership journey, emphasizing the need for vulnerability, accountability, and the power of making intentions visible. The discussion highlights how effective leadership can bridge gaps in understanding and foster collaboration across diverse teams.
Takeaways:
- Alignment is a learned skill that leaders can develop.
- Prioritization is often a struggle for organizations despite agreement on its importance.
- Building trust and accountability is essential for effective teamwork.
- Creating shared meaning helps unify diverse teams around common goals.
- Vulnerability in leadership fosters a culture of openness and trust.
- Caring out loud encourages team engagement.
- Psychological safety allows team members to voice concerns without fear.
- The journey to a shared purpose is more important than the statement itself.
- Diversity in leadership leads to better decision-making and business outcomes.
Creators & Guests
Host
Guest
David Prager
David formerly served on the De Beers Executive Committee as Chief Brand Officer with overall responsibility for the profile, reputation and marketing of De Beers and its brands. His experience across the contrasting luxury, lifestyle and extractive sectors gives David unique insight into the evolving expectations of consumers, the corresponding pressures on business and the power of brand purpose to propel communities, companies and clients forward.
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. (00:00.6)
Hello and welcome to the Failure Gap, where we talk with leaders about navigating the space between agreement and alignment. We always love to talk with interesting people and today we are joined by David Prager, who is in my mind, one of those people that is great at navigating spaces. He is between the US and the UK, between brand and strategy. In his former job as the Chief Brand Officer for De Beers, he was between mining and luxury goods, as if there could be a bigger space that you could imagine in...
any kind of business. David, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, Julie. I was concerned when you said I'm really glad to talk to David Prager about failure, that, but it's great to be with you and great to see you as ever. Yeah, thank you so much. you know, when we talk about the failure gap, it's actually about how rich it is to have this experience of moving from agreement that something is a good idea to alignment that we're actually getting it done.
And I've had the opportunity to see you do that firsthand with teams over the years. And I think it's really not at all about the misery of failure, but actually about the joy of success and how when we get there and we get aligned and we start doing it together, we see really great things happen. I think it's just an amazing space. Yeah. I mean, that is where the joy is. You've got a great saying that I'm going to completely butcher, but it's based on that old proverb.
Go fast, go alone, go fast, go together. You do it, Julie. Yeah, you can do it better. But I totally subscribe to it. To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together. To go far fast, get aligned. That's right. And it's in that alignment. That's where the fun is. That's where the joy is. That's what the invigorating part of my career has been. But it's a skill, huh?
It's a learned skill to get that alignment to go fast together. Yeah, I agree. It's something that all leaders can learn how to do. David, I'd love for you to take a minute and just tell us a little bit about your leadership journey and maybe how you picked up some of those skills along the way because you are great at creating alignment across a team. Sure. Well, you can tell from my funny accent. I'm from the US, from the New York area, but I've been in the UK for 20 years.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (02:23.66)
family is British, the dog is British, the house is British, but I have strong, obviously, emotional ties to America. And I think that duality has given me a real perspective. That's been really helpful for me throughout my career, understanding American culture, understanding British culture, and being able to work in between them and to build bridges.
amongst teams, amongst cultures, to understand what it's like a little bit, to be a bit of an outsider, to learn a culture, to figure out how to integrate yourself. That's a kind of learned skill that you learn through experience, but it's been hugely helpful to me as I've worked around the world, in Africa, in Europe, in Asia, and in the US, learning how empathetically to live in other people's shoes, understand their experience, seek out.
diversity of views, that's made my work better. It's made my experience more enriching. And hopefully it's meant I've been more successful in the end. I think that idea of being able to be in your own space, but also appreciate other people's spaces and how you bring that together is part of this.
skill of alignment. It's part of understanding how do we bring people forward into, not just saying, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I hope David goes and does that, but actually like, I'm going to go help David do that. That's right. people into that space. Yeah. It's tricky though. You know, it's easy to think that things are a good idea and just to, you know, kind of hope that they happen. I'm curious if there's anything in your, let's forget about work for a minute in your personal life, anything that you've ever thought, that would be a really good idea. I'd like to do that. And,
and you haven't actually been able to get quite there. I know for me, by the way, it's about learning a second language. I think a lot of people share that. I think it would be a great idea to be able to speak another language, but I have never aligned myself to the work it takes to do that. Well, so for me, as I tell my children all the time, I do, I speak American and British and that's very useful.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (04:35.298)
Gosh, I mean, there's a long list of things I would love to do. imagine myself doing, have visions of myself being really good at, and then I never get anywhere with it. I'd say the most recent example is me thinking it would be really cool to learn how to play guitar. I man, I could be that guy at the party that pulls out the guitar and plays a few chords. I didn't have to be great. I just wanted to be proficient.
Julie, do you play guitar? I play a few chords. OK. So you're better. Let's just say a few years in, you're better than me. You're better than me. And I think the vision and the aspiration is much different than the nuts and bolts, what it takes to be successful at something and the action you take and the dedication required to do it well. But then.
I have visions of coolness, visions of coolness. yeah. Well, you know, David, there's still time. Not for me. I don't know. I do feel like there are some things you have to learn young. I don't know why. So, yeah, I think that's... But what you just expressed is where the heart of the matter is, right? Which is that it's easy to have that vision of it would be so cool, but the reality of what it takes to grind it out day to day is where we fall in the failure gap, right? Where we don't...
necessarily figure out how to do it or how to do it together when it comes to a team so that we move from agreement and that vision of what would be cool and actually getting it done day to day. I'm sure that you have examples though where you have thought that would be a great idea and then you've gone and done it. And I'm curious, what's something that you can think of where you thought, yeah, that would be a great idea, I'd love to do that. And then you've gone out and been able to get aligned and been able to execute on it. Yeah, you know, I've got one right now.
I'm learning to play tennis. I've never been a particularly good tennis player and I've always wanted to be better at it. And obviously wonderful activities stay in shape. And not only did I start and start with intention, but I've continued and I'm a little bit hesitant to say it on this podcast because now I'm going to play somebody in tennis. I'm not in any way saying I'm good.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (07:00.034)
But my point is I've kept with it and I'm enjoying it and I'm getting better on a week by week basis. And it's funny, if I think about those two examples, the guitar, the guitar player I am not, and the semi proficient tennis player I'm becoming, there are real differences in my approach. I think easily the most important was
I made my aspiration to learn how to play tennis well public. I stated it. told my friends, I told people at work, I said, I really want to do this. And I knew that was intentional. I knew that people were going to check in on me, ask how I was doing, challenge me, make fun of me for a little bit. I knew I then had to do it. The guitar, it was just for me. And I didn't tell anybody about it.
And so was really easy to not put in the work. And when you've got your hand around the neck of the guitar and your joints are crippled and you've got calluses and you think, this is terrible, I don't wanna do this anymore and I can't figure it out, it's really easy to stop because nobody's gonna call you on it. so for tennis, I really made sure I I stated my ambition publicly and then other people could hold me to it.
I had a coach, have a coach who makes it enjoyable, makes it fun. I've done it with my wife. So I've got a partner, I've got a team who's got a shared aspiration and shared goal. The guitar was just a solo endeavor, which was not particularly enjoyable. And so I kind of in the failure of the guitar, I picked up a different thing with strings, I guess, and figured out what did I do wrong the first time and how could I change that?
Yeah, I love those things that you're bringing up, right? Making it visible, creating some accountability, building community around it so that the habit becomes really strong, so that week to week, you're continuing to take ground. And those are, think, are all really important aspects of how you navigate through the failure gap and move from agreement that something's a good idea into alignment and actually getting it done. And you know, you also brought to mind for me, I don't know if you've seen, it's been going around on the internets, Roger Federer's
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (09:24.886)
graduation speech from last year where he talks about the power. He's arguably one of the greatest tennis players of his generation, right? And he's won, I think, over 80 % of his matches. And in the speech, he talks about the fact that he's only won, I think he says 52 % of his points. And yet he's won all of these matches. And his point really is you have to keep going, right? There's this power when you just keep going and you don't get too hung up on the points that you lose.
and you don't also get too hung up on the points that you win, but you keep putting the effort in, you keep putting the work in. And I thought that was a fascinating statistic. Absolutely. It's fascinating. I hadn't heard, I didn't know that statistic, but I'll also tell you, this is far too much time dedicated to me talking about tennis, which I'm still, I'm still a novice at, but one of the things my coach said to me was be more like Roger.
And in that he meant just calm down, just do less, just be smooth. And it was so helpful to have that kind of role model. And I guess, you know, if we parlay it to business, it's a leadership role model. It's somebody I could visualize, but I wanted to emulate who had reached the peak of his profession that I could see and take cues from. And it was very helpful. Yeah. I love the idea too of just calm down.
Sometimes that is so powerful when you're trying to navigate the failure gap, right? When things get hard, with a team especially, they're looking for leaders who can just calm down and keep figuring out how you move forward together. That's right. Yeah. Well, it has been fun to explore your tennis hobby here. And I think it's actually proven to be a great goldmine of ideas about how you navigate the failure gap. Let's see if we can pivot that and talk about that in a more
professional setting when you think about some of your work experiences, what are some of the things that you've worked on with teams or where you've seen organizations or at a corporate level or at a team level, this idea that something would be a really good idea, but it's a struggle to get into alignment and make it happen? Well, I will tell you throughout my career, the one thing we constantly tried to address and conquer and regularly felt that frankly,
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (11:49.954)
and me first of all, before anybody else. And that was the idea of prioritization, the prioritization of work, selecting what's important, doing less, but doing it better. And there's nothing there that people wouldn't agree with. know, of course, we should focus on the things that matter and you should do those things only for which you have commensurate resource. But the reality,
and the challenges and the obstacles required to actually execute a prioritization exercise and do less in an organization and be more successful at the end of it is incredibly challenging. And when we had success in doing it, it was very limited. I think that so many people are going to relate to that example, David. Prioritization for me as a consultant, and I've worked with many organizations around the
it's so consistent how often it comes up that they struggle to prioritize and then they struggle to stick with their priorities. It's really, it's a great example. I'm curious when you think about mindsets and the mindsets that leaders bring into that process. I think everybody has a mindset that it's a good idea to your point, right? People agree. It's a good idea. But they don't necessarily articulate and make visible, which was one of the things you talked about with your success with tennis, right? Is making it visible. They don't make visible.
some of the mindsets that prevent them from getting into alignment with the stated priorities. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, it is a minefield of mindsets in that prioritization by definition means we're going to do less things and we might do less of your things. We're going to do less things and therefore support functions in the business.
may not be able to support your thing. And yet you are still gonna be expected to deliver your thing. And so unless done really well and really thoughtfully, it quickly devolves in my experience into an exercise of people protecting their patch because they believe understandably, it's not a criticism, that what they're doing is really important.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (14:08.31)
and it really contributes to the overall success of the organization. And so I've found that if left to people running projects to prioritize their own project, you're not going to get the desired or required results. And rather, it takes leadership from the top to identify what the vision and the goals are, right? What the why we're doing something and what
what it is we're doing is, so that you can set the guardrails for leaders in the organization to make decisions on what should be prioritized. Without that agreement and alignment upfront, it's almost impossible to ask an organization to self-regulate itself and prioritize its own work. But if you can set the guardrails within which the prioritization has to happen, we're focused on this, we're not focused on that, then
then you can make decisions at the senior levels about what work should be done. And then those decisions can gradually trickle down throughout the rest of the organization. They can say, OK, well, we're not doing that. Therefore, we shouldn't do these things. And if we're not doing these things, therefore, we shouldn't do these things. But it also allows people to participate in the success. It's not just about what you're not doing. It's creating excitement.
around what it frees you up to do and making sure it's not a zero sum game as a leader. You're not just explaining to people what they won't be doing, what they're losing, and therefore, frankly, how their job might be at risk, but rather what it will free them up to participate in and how that will lead to greater group success and how that group success then reflects on their individual success.
Yeah, I think you've hit on a few things, David, that really struck a chord with me. One is I do think that prioritization exercises drive a scarcity mindset for leaders and they get into that. I have to compete for my resources and protect my resources in order to be successful personally and also to make sure that all of my people are taken care of. And that mindset often goes unstated. So they get into the prioritization conversation and everybody's like, yeah, that looks like a good enough list of priorities.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (16:28.856)
But in their minds, right, in the back of their minds, they're thinking, and I'm gonna hold onto all of this over here. And we see that play out a lot, that people don't verbalize, hey, if we do that, this is the impact on me and on my team. And we have to talk about that concern. I very rarely see at a most senior leadership level, really honest conversations in that space. I'll tell you another thing, Julia.
notice that in order for prioritization to work, and this was a learning for me and for, I think, my colleagues and the rest of the organization, psychological safety is critical. Because your boss can tell you, I want you to tell me the things we shouldn't be doing. Or I want you to say no to me when I come to you and ask you to do something if you don't think.
It rises up the requisite level of prioritization for you and you can't do it.
It's easy for the boss to say that and then she or he sounds great and magnanimous and progressive and open minded. It's a whole different thing to expect the team member to act on that and to really have trust that if they say no, that they'll be met with the same openness and enthusiasm. And that
You know, that starts with the leader, not the team member. That starts with the leader creating a kind of team of trust, a culture of trust where people know that they can say things that she or he doesn't want to hear. And it's not going to be a demerit against them or their progression. Otherwise, it becomes a competition. OK, I know we're prioritizing and this one is taking on the most. So good on them.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (18:28.36)
That becomes an arms race to nowhere. Yeah. Yeah. And I think this idea of how do we help people to be able to say no or to say yes, and I know that's misaligned with our priorities. Because I don't know about you, but I have seen people do like Cirque du Soleil level contortions.
to make something fit into the strategy, right? So this actually is part of the priority and you're just like, no, it isn't. You just want to do it. And now you've contorted it around in so that you can wedge it in. I would rather see people have that conversation that you're talking about, right? Where you can say, you know, this actually, we said these were our priorities and now we're considering doing something else and we're going to choose to be misaligned.
or we're going to choose to not do what we said we were going to do. That to me creates that space where people can have honest conversations rather than saying, how do we make this look and feel like it's part of the priorities, even though we know it isn't? Yeah, because it's okay to diverge. Opportunities will come up, risks will come up, and it's okay to diverge, but you have to be honest about that divergence. Otherwise, the entire process and the goal of what you're trying to do loses its...
loses its integrity. The other thing I would say is as a leader, it's critical that you're not outsourcing the decision. You're not outsourcing the call, right? It's not for your team member to say, no, that's not in our prioritization. It's for you, know, nobody's perfect, but in most cases to be thoughtful about the ask before you make it and not.
and not put the onus on the team member to say, we shouldn't be doing this. It's not part of our focus, not part of our prioritization. If you're asking and they're telling you that, frankly, you've probably done something wrong. And you need to reflect. Yeah. And so you need to reflect and not put the onus on them to stop because the flip side of that is, well, I told them we're in a culture where they could say no. I've asked them to do this work.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (20:47.586)
They didn't say no, therefore it's on them. And I think that to me is a kind of leadership cop out. You know, David, I think that's so insightful for leaders to hear that you have to own that responsibility of what you're asking people to do. And it actually brings to mind a safety stop that I was sitting in at De Beers many years ago, where they were talking about, this is a little bit off topic, but they were talking about texting.
Right? Texting and driving and how we're always telling people you shouldn't text and drive. And, you know, we send our teenagers off to school and tell them don't text and drive. And then what do we do the minute somebody gets out the door and we know that they're in the car and we text them. Yeah. And at some point you have to take responsibility for not texting people when you know they're driving, especially your teenagers, right? Or your colleagues or whoever it might be. If you know that they're in the car and they're driving, don't text them.
Don't put the onus on them to make that decision to pick up the phone or not pick up the phone. Instead, take responsibility for not dinging them when you know they're in that environment. And I thought that was, I thought that was, that safety stop has stuck with me. And I try now to do that and it's really hard sometimes. But it's similar to what you're saying, right? Like don't ask a question when you should be the person taking responsibility for deciding is this within our priorities or not.
That's right. That's to me the responsibility of leadership, right? you know, having the context and the presence of mind and the intentionality to not put your team member in the position where they're the one forced to arbitrate on whether they should or shouldn't do something. Now, again, you're not perfect. So hopefully you're building a culture where when they are in that situation, they're able to make...
the right choice or the choice that's consistent with what you all have aligned on. But nine times out of 10, it's really critical that the leader is the one intentional about what they ask of their people. Yeah. And I think that's that group dynamic piece that we talked about, right? How do you build a group dynamic where you can have healthy dialogue and at the end of the day, you know where the decision making sits? Yeah. Yeah. so for something, and so Julie, for something like prioritization,
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (23:09.258)
It's just, in my experience, it's like impossible to do it from the ground up because, you know, everybody's thing is the most important thing. And, and the further down you are in an organization by the very nature of your role, you won't have a 360 view of everything that's going on. And so you might say, okay, this thing I really don't like doing that I find to have no value whatsoever. And as a pain in my butt.
I'm going to make the unilateral decision that I'm going to deprioritize that and I'm not going to do it. Well, the knock-on effect is that something in the business that might be super important isn't supported and it fails. And that decision is made because that junior person wouldn't have had the full understanding, context, and 360 view of the organization. So leaders have to take the responsibility to own that prioritization.
exercise from the top. Now, of course, the challenge of that and why many leaders don't want to do it is because it's contentious. It's really contentious at the top table saying this project is more important than that project. My project is more important than your project. And so how leadership teams build the trust and common vision and common goal and sense of team success and team ownership to be able to have those hard discussions and make those decisions.
is critical, otherwise you won't be successful. Yeah, and I think that is to me one of the highest order callings for enterprise level leaders. And that's why when you move into enterprise level leadership, you have to be able to connect the dots across the company and understand what the implications are of particular decisions on other parts of the company that you might not be directly, might not have direct oversight over, but you have to understand and appreciate.
the impact of your decisions enterprise-wide. And that is really, I think, at the heart of the matter, what it means to be an enterprise leader. But I love that you're talking about how do you do that together, because that is, I think, the key to alignment is what are the mindsets that you're bringing into that prioritization exercise? What are the group dynamics that play out as you're navigating those tough and contentious conversations? What are the trade-offs that you're making visible and that you're talking through very specifically?
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (25:35.628)
So you can't just say, we're trading off, you know, short-term versus long-term revenue, just by means of example, very common trade-off, but really getting deeper and like we're trading my project for your project. And I don't like that. And how do you have that conversation? Yeah. And so I have to have trust, belief not only that rationally it's the right thing to do for the business, but I have to have trust that in doing so, I'm not personally going to be penalized.
My career will not be set back in any way. And that's a super mature leadership team that can have that discussion and not all of them can. I will tell you at De Beers, where we were really successful was I think gaining joint ownership for problems. And for instance, on the mining side, if I was...
person accountable for the De Beers brand, how we sell diamonds in the world, and the reputation of that brand. Obviously, most of our reputational challenges or sustainability challenges originate or are generated in the mining world at the operational side of the business. And the leaders of operations have incredibly difficult jobs, challenging conditions, and don't have a lot of time.
for ancillary things beyond the direct operations that they're accountable for. But what we were able to do both through hard conversations, but also building relationships was agree that I was as accountable for their ability to discover and recover diamonds as they are for protecting the reputation of those diamonds to allow us to sell them into a global market.
And once we have that shared accountability, their problems were my problems, my problems were their problems, it opened up a different orientation for how we could have discussions about the solutions we might solve together at the top table. And we were quite successful at doing it. Yeah, I think it's one of those examples of successfully moving from agreement that that sounds like a good idea, that we all have shared accountability.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (27:58.21)
to being able to move into alignment and to start working as enterprise leaders with that level of appreciation and connection. I'm just curious, are there a couple of things that really stand out to you that you feel like happened that created that sense of connection across the enterprise? Because it is a very different, like everything from digging in the ground to sitting on whatever the street is in London where you're selling very fancy jewelry, right? You have all of these very different contexts.
and being able to stitch that together in an effective way, what drove some of the visibility and connection that you think helped turn the corner on that idea of shared accountability? Yeah, I think the first and foremost was the building of relationships through physical presence. So me being on the ground at operations and operational leaders being in consumer markets.
And in COVID, that was extraordinarily difficult. So companies, think, coming out of COVID obviously had the immediate challenges of collaboration. But I think they also probably still are affected by the challenges of relationship building and trust building that comes with it and being able to almost, not literally, but almost literally, stand in your colleagues' shoes, understand the challenges they have.
Park your challenges at the door. That's the key. It's not, you know, that old saying of you're listening until you're waiting to speak, but really parking your challenges at the door and spending real time with understanding your colleagues' challenges and being a partner to them and trying to address them through whatever it is your own particular skill set is. So building relationships, physical presence to allow you to build trust.
spending time to understand the problem, demonstrating curiosity, demonstrating dependability, that they could depend on you, not necessarily to come up with the solution of the problem, but to care about the problem. I always say you can tell what somebody cares about based on what they're thinking about before they go to bed. Are they really concerned for an employee, for their growth, for their development?
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (30:20.512)
project, a team, somebody that's got a difficult problem, is it niggling at me as much as it's niggling at them? Are you sending them a text and saying, what about this? Have you thought about that? How can I help with this? I think that curiosity, that isn't fake, it's real. You give yourself over to it, I think comes across as genuine and opens up those lines where you get that back, I think.
I think another thing David that I've observed in you is this ability to also invite people in to what you're doing without giving up control and without giving up your decision rights or anything else, but to invite people in to understand. So, know, Stephen Covey says seek first to understand and then to be understood. And I think you're speaking a lot about that seeking to understand and to be understood is also really important and how you do that.
And I do think there are some ideas that you're mentioning around physical presence and like being there on the ground, but also inviting people into your space and into your world and giving them that experience so that they can connect the dots as well, right? And you're not, there's something about that that feels really important when you're trying to drive alignment. Yeah, I think so. And as well, particularly for new colleagues, it's a surprise. Surprise is helpful, you know, people.
didn't expect you to show up in a way that you've shown up with real curiosity or a real willingness and openness, as you say, Julie, to invite people in and ask for their opinions and value those opinions in a genuine way. I think it's disarming and invites, you know, people say, well, this is how things are done here. I get it, you know, seeking out diverse views from people, putting together different types of teams.
that you wouldn't necessarily expect to come together on a problem, doing it demonstrably so that other people can see it and your role modeling it for an organization. I think all of those things help set up a culture where you say, this is the open-mindedness that comes with this organization. This is how we solve problems. You know, David, one of the things that's coming to mind for me when we think about group dynamics and how groups work together is that often people want to get to where you're talking about, where there's shared accountability.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (32:44.402)
And they try and do it in a big catalytic event. So they have a big meeting in a fancy place and they bring everybody together and you spend 12 hours listening to amazing speakers and having breakouts and doing all this stuff. And then they stop and then they're like, okay, well, check the box. That's done. Now we're all in it together. Right. And one of the things that we know at Carrickans Group, and I think that you have this ethos too, is that those have a time and place, but
you still have to do the work consistently. Any thoughts on that? Yeah. You're so right. And the only reason I'm chuckling is because I know you and I have talked about this before many times. When we developed a new purpose statement for De Beers back in 2019, De Beers had gone for many years and evolved into a very different
organization without revisiting its purpose and vision statement. And we felt it was time. There was enough turnover in the organization, enough time has passed, the ownership of the business had changed, that we need to rethink and restate what the reason to be is existed in the world, what our purpose was. We had an event toward the end of 2019.
where we had everything you would expect to launch a new purpose statement. Balloons and t-shirts and posters and people in funny hats and photo booths. All the things you need to get people really excited to market something, to launch something. But that wasn't the purpose, the zenith of our purpose journey. That was just a point in time that we felt it was important to do.
In fact, we had started about eight months earlier. And the, always say with our purpose statement, the statement wasn't the point, it was the journey to get there. Because, you know, you can get a few clever copywriters in the room for a week and come up with fantastic, really pithy, really catchy purpose statements. Probably even come up with the one we wrote, which I happen to think is really good, Make Life Brilliant.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (35:06.968)
But the reason the journey is more important than the statement itself is because of what we did. We conducted focus groups around the world at our operations in Africa, in the US, in Canada, in Asia, in Europe. And we asked people about the organization. We asked people about what motivates them. We asked people about why they do the work they do. We asked people about
what makes them proud to tell their kids about. We asked them about when they go to the pub with their friends after work, what do they like to brag about? What gets the most response? What stirs them? And we convened a steering group of people from the organization, from every part of the organization, whether they were exploring for diamonds in a place like Angola or they were running a retail shop in Shanghai. And we asked them to sift through without a filter.
the reactions we got from these focus groups. Now, these weren't the most senior people in the organization, but they were people that we found were optimistic, were invested in the organization, and could represent their parts of the business. And what we were looking for was what creates commonality amongst all of these disparate parts of De Beers, be it exploration or mining.
or trading or luxury retail or marketing or design or engineering. And in the end, it was this idea of creating something really special, creating brilliance for people. Now that could be brilliance for the community in which you are mining. It could be brilliance for your kids that you're putting through university. It could be brilliance for the couple.
that buys a diamond to represent their engagement or their marriage. But it was brilliance in all of its different forms. And that was something that really tied the organization together, make life brilliant. But as I said, in that event we had at the end of 2019, it was less about the phrase and it was more about the meaning behind it. And what we had replaying back to the organization,
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (37:27.66)
what we had heard and the excitement that started then and then carried forward was an excitement that we're all engaged in a really meaningful endeavor that people from all around the world are engaged in. And that to people was really motivating and really exciting and it was super successful and became really important when we hit something unforeseen like COVID only a few months later.
because it helped informed how the organization showed up in that crisis, particularly amongst our communities and with our people. If we're about making life brilliant, what does that mean? What does that actually mean on the ground in our communities that were under such risk from the pandemic? What does it mean for our employees who are being asked to work in retail operations in potentially dangerous situations?
And so it was a great guiding force and showing employees that it was a kind of North Star for us through that crisis only deepened their attachment to it and their love of it. I think what you're really getting at, David, is the importance of creating shared meaning. It's not just what it means to you or what it means to me, but what meaning do we share around that idea of make life brilliant in this case? And that takes time and it takes consistency.
And you know what it takes? It takes all of the things that you're doing for tennis that you didn't do for guitar. Right. Showing up, doing the work week after week and continuing to stay committed to building a shared meaning as you go forward. What does it mean in this context? What does it mean in this other context? What does it mean as we're making decisions? What does it mean as we're orienting towards addressing a pandemic? Whatever it might be, how do you navigate that shared meaning?
and not just what it means to you individually. That's right. I think that's right, Julie. Yeah. Such a wonderful example and actually is, I think, a success story for moving from agreement to alignment. The idea that it be great if we were more joined up as a leadership team at the most senior levels and we were able to spread that through the company and then doing the work to dig in from a purpose statement perspective and bring it to life and not just have it be copyright words that some clever person came up with.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (39:51.502)
Although, you know, there's, again, a time and a place for that when it comes, especially to marketing. Yeah. Pithy is important. We don't underestimate pithy, but the, you know, like good marketing, has to have substance behind it. I'll tell you, Julia, another success story that comes to mind that I think De Beers has really done well with and taken hold of, and that is the movement behind diversity and inclusion.
I'll tell you a number of years ago, nearly just under 10 years ago, we looked at our Exco, we looked at our Exco and our senior leadership team and we realized we have a product obviously that's 99 % purchased by and worn by and owned by women. And at the time, I think exactly 0 % of our Exco, most senior team had women on.
And that was not by design, but it was certainly a problem. And I think to the credit of the business at the time, it really understood that problem. It understood it not as a brand problem or a reputational problem. It understood it as a business performance problem. It understood that however we had gotten ourselves into that situation, it couldn't be a good thing that we were so detached.
potentially from understanding what our clients' experience was. And we knew that a more diverse leadership team meant different points of view, more experience, more resilience. All of those things we all know come with a more diverse organization. And so we set out intentionally as if we were addressing not as if.
because we were addressing a business challenge, we set out very intentionally setting ourselves targets and milestones, changing policies and frameworks, but really going beyond that and changing mindsets. And so when things were going right in a particular project or wrong in a particular project, the first thing I would hear out of our CEO's mouth at the time was to the leader of that project, tell me about the team.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (42:15.212)
Right. Because he wanted to understand what was the makeup of the team. Were you seeking diverse opinions and experiences and point of views? And more often than not, I would say nine times out of 10, if there was a challenge on a project, there was also a challenge with the team, with the makeup of the team. so, know, Julie, I think you've heard me say it's a truism in business. You tend to care about the things your boss cares about. And so.
And so, you know, he took it upon himself to not only really care, but demonstrate how important this issue was to the success of the commercial success of the organization. And fast forward a number of years, something like 35 to 40 % of our ex-co is, or their ex-co, I've left two beers now, but their ex-co is women and were...
around the same numbers for senior leadership. And there's still work to do, but it's a great credit how in a relatively short span of time, those numbers have completely flipped from what they were and the organization is better. It's smarter, it's more resilient, it's more creative. Not because there are more women, but because there is a more diverse makeup of opinions and points of view coming into our decision-making process.
Yeah, I think absolutely we saw huge progress around something that a lot of organizations agree with. It would be a good idea, but they don't actually move into alignment. And you hit on something that I think is really interesting there, which is the importance that you have to care out loud. You can't just care about it. You have to say out loud and you have to ask questions that help people focus on getting into alignment around what as a leader, as a senior leader, or in this case, the CEO really wanted to see happen.
in order to create the business results that he was committed to. And so by creating that space to say out loud, here's what I care about, I think he fundamentally shifted the approach that other leaders in the organization were taking. That's right. mean, it came to a point where people knew if they were going into that XCO meeting or the meeting with the CEO, that question was going to be asked. And so what that did, whether they were personally invested or not,
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (44:37.888)
is it made them think differently about their hiring, their recruitment, their team makeup, because they knew they were gonna have to answer the question. And that was the kind of trigger point for a transformation that continues to this day. Yeah, exciting stuff. Well, David, I could talk to you about this stuff forever, but why don't we pull it together? And I'm curious if you just have like a top five list or top three list, if somebody were to say to you, I need to get this team aligned to doing things differently.
what would you tell that person to do? Well, caring out loud is a good one. I think as you just said, caring, being willing to be the leader that is outwardly optimistic. You know, I always say to my, even to my kids, it's all right to be a skeptic, but not a cynic. Because cynics in an organization, I think can be poisonous. Skepticism is really healthy, but skepticism mixed with...
optimism and a sense of vision and purpose are critical. So you've got to care out loud. You've got to be energetic. You've got to hold the energy sometimes of a team and that's not always easy to do. And you've got to, think, as a leader, we haven't talked that much about it, but know,
Vulnerability is hugely powerful as a leader. Being confident in what you don't know and expressing that out loud allows others to do the same and allows them to operate in a place of trust where they can hold up their hand and ask questions. And inevitably, when people are honest about their capabilities,
and feel that they can be honest, you get to hopefully a better result. I love all three of those things around, say, making it out, carrying out loud, right? Like making things visible. Don't just let it sit inside your own head. That's right. And the idea of being really vulnerable and inviting people in to your world and into your conversation. And I'm going to just call out one more that you mentioned earlier, and that is presence. I know that in a world where we can do a lot virtually,
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (47:01.61)
It's tempting sometimes to stay on the screen, but I do believe that there are times when it makes sense to show up and really see other people's environments. And I know there's a lot of debate right now about back to work and nine to five, Monday through Friday at the office. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is being in somebody else's world in a really strategic and purposeful way. And I think that you reflected on that in some of the things that you were talking about as you built the purpose statement.
How do we really understand the context that people sit in? Yeah. and it's almost truly more powerful now because you do have the option of doing it on the screen. And if you demonstrate the curiosity and the care for walking in the other person's shoes, understanding and owning their problem as if it is your own by being there, not just by clicking into a meeting, I think it's hugely powerful. I agree. Well, David, if you could get some...
group in your life, a team, the family, the world, whatever it might be to align to something. What would it be? It doesn't have to be huge or it can be, it can be small. What would you love to get someone in your world aligned to? Well, I'll tell you. Yeah, I'll give you two perhaps, two quick ones. The one I always say to my kids to the point where they're now rolling their eyes. But I say life is 1090.
10 % what happens to you and 90 % how you react to it. And so, you know, not being a victim, understanding that you control not the things that happen to you, but how you react to them, your positivity around them, whether you're willing to work the problems that are in front of you or you become paralyzed by them and...
is really important to me and really important for me to instill to my kids. And then I think for them, but also for business, I think if I could wave a magic wand, I would wave the benefit of the doubt magic wand. And I would ask that people go into any sort of business engagement giving their
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (49:23.01)
counterparty benefit of the doubt. Often we go into meetings, certainly myself included, with assumptions. Assumptions of what the other side is after, assumptions of what their motives are, assumptions of their brilliance or their stupidity, or why would they have done this, or how could they have made that decision. And what I've found in my experience is usually, not always, but usually there's a darn good reason they made that decision.
because of a context that you can't immediately see in front of you. And if you give people the benefit of the doubt that most people are good people trying to make the right decisions in an imperfect world with an imperfect amount of information at their disposal, then I think you engage with them in a far more open and generous way where the two sides are not immediately in defensive modes, but you're more likely to understand
and then ultimately own each other's problems as your own. And it's from there that you can get to solutions. Well, I think that David, this has been really wonderful for people to hear your perspective as someone who has moved from agreement to alignment on some big enterprise level goals and also seen the struggle with things like prioritization. There is no right solution there. You've just got to keep at it and keep working at it.
And I think a lot of organizations do struggle with that particular gap between agreement and alignment on prioritization. And I'm sure that your tennis game is getting a lot better because of your consistency in practice and you're showing up. You've made it visible. You're holding yourself accountable. You have a coach who is supporting you. You're doing a lot of the things that we do even in our personal lives, but also in the workplace in order to move from agreement to alignment and really see these good ideas come to life.
I just have to say that if your teenagers are rolling their eyes at you, I think that's a success metric. So, yeah, I think that means you're being successful. So good job there. I think you judge the radius of the role is the level of success you have. Julia, know you won't want me to, but if I could just say, it's a constant learning process throughout your career.
Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (51:40.13)
become a leader at a young age, I think, tend to be ill-equipped or unequipped in how to navigate some of these dynamics. And you learn and you learn the hard way. You learn by failing. And, you I would say it's a failure only if you haven't learned from it. And, you know, if you can learn from it, then ultimately the whole endeavor is a success because that failure contributed to it.
you have been throughout my career, or at least the decade or so that we've known each other, a real guide, a spirit animal for helping me understand how to learn from it and how to approach challenges within an organization in a way that's self-reflective first, understanding the ways I can change my behavior to get a better outcome without expecting anything from anybody before that.
And that's made me, think, a better leader and it's made the job more fun. It's made the job more joyful and more fulfilling. So I always love working with you and I'm always better for it. Well, David, thank you so much for that. And likewise, I have learned so much from you and have so enjoyed being on this experience of growth and development with you. So thank you for inviting me into that. And thank you for participating in the FailureGap podcast. This has been a great conversation. I know our listeners are going to have a...
have a lot of really great takeaways from it and I appreciate your time and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thanks, Julie. See you soon.