Survive, Reset, Thrive: Wise Strategy for Sustainable Success with Dr Rebecca Homkes
Dr Rebecca Homkes - High-Growth Strategy Specialist, Author and Professor
Dr. Rebecca Homkes is high-growth strategy specialist and the founder of a boutique consultancy firm, advising CEOs and executive teams focused on growth and success through uncertainty. She is a Lecturer at the London Business School (LBS)’s Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Faculty at Duke Corporate Executive Education, Advisor and Faculty at Boston Consulting Group University, and previous Fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE)’s Centre for Economic Performance.
Dr. Homkes is the director of the Young President’s Organization (YPO) global Active Learning Program (ALP); a former partner with GrowthX, a Silicon Valley investment ecosystem and innovation consultancy; and the faculty lead of fintech scaleup accelerators. A global keynote speaker, she is a member of several advisory boards, directed the joint McKinsey & Co and LSE Centre for Economic Performance Global Management Project from 2007-2014 and has written for publications such as the Harvard Business Review, Businessweek, Fortune, and Forbes.
What does it take to not only survive in business during volatile and uncertain times, which let’s face are almost constant conditions in our modern world, but actually thrive?
In this conversation we’re unpacking the incredible research from Dr Rebecca Homkes, author of Survive, Reset and Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times.
Rebecca’s work will have even the most experienced business strategists rethinking strategy and execution during volatility. Her SRT framework, an interconnected loop, gives businesses a new model to continue growth even through the most uncertain of times - and we’ve unpacked it for you in this conversation.
More about Dr Rebecca Homkes
A Marshall Scholar, she received her PhD and MSc from the London School of Economics in International Economy. Prior to LSE, Dr. Homkes received two degrees at Indiana University: BS (Honors) in business administration alongside a BA (Honors) in Political Science where she was a Wells Scholar and graduated as the schools’ top graduate in 2005 and its sole Herman Wells Scholar. She previously served as a Fellow at the White House’s President’s Council of Economic Advisors and has worked in strategy consulting with Bain & Co. She lives between Miami, San Francisco, and London.
Learn more about Dr Homkes, and find her new book here:
Connect with Dr Rebecca Homkes on LinkedIn.
Get your copy of Survive, Reset and Thrive: Leading Breakthrough Growth Strategy in Volatile Times here.
Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Alexis Zahner: What does it take to not only survive in business during volatile and uncertain times, which let's face it, are almost constant conditions in our modern world, but actually thrive. I'm Alexa Sarna and together with my co host Sally Clark, today we're unpacking the incredible research from Dr. Rebecca Hompkiss, author of Survive, Reset and Thrive, leading breakthrough growth strategy in volatile times.
[00:00:35] Alexis Zahner: Rebecca's work will have even the most experienced business strategists rethinking strategy and execution during volatility. Her SRT framework, Survive, Reset and Thrive, is an interconnected loop, giving businesses a new model to continue growth even through the most uncertain of times. And we've unpacked it for you right here in this conversation.
[00:00:59] Alexis Zahner: Dr. Rebecca Homkes is a high growth strategy specialist and the founder of a boutique consultancy firm advising CEOs and executive teams focused on growth and success through uncertainty. She is a lecturer at the London Business School Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship. Faculty at Duke Corporate Executive Education, advisor and faculty at the Boston Consulting Group University and a previous fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance.
[00:01:30] Alexis Zahner: This conversation is illuminating and we can't wait to unpack Rebecca's Survive, Reset and Thrive framework with you. Now let's dive in.
[00:01:42] Sally Clarke: Thank you so much for being with us today. Welcome to We Are Human Leaders, Rebecca. We'd love to start by first getting to know you a little bit better, and perhaps if you can share a little bit of the journey that has brought you to the incredible work that you're doing today.
[00:01:56] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Yeah, absolutely. And once again, thanks so much for having me. Been looking forward to our conversation. So my name is Rebecca Humkess. I'm based between London, Miami and San Francisco. I am a lecturer at London Business School as well as Duke, but I spend most of my time working directly with high growth companies.
[00:02:11] Dr Rebecca Homkes: So I work with organizations who are wanting to go on a real breakthrough journey. I've been doing this for close to 15 years. Before that, I was a teacher also at the London School of Economics, where I also did my master's and PhD. And I've worked in almost all of the consulting firms as an advisor to Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey, as well as my first job out of school was at Bain.
[00:02:30] Dr Rebecca Homkes: So I had a long background in consulting and then economics, but right now very much focused on this high growth strategy journey.
[00:02:36] Sally Clarke: Incredible. It sounds like it's been, I can imagine a sort of a very natural evolution from consultancy work into sort of specifically high growth and strategy. I'm curious, sort of what, was there something in particular that drew you to the high growth arena?
[00:02:49] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Well, it's interesting is that I started in economics, right? So my PhD was in economics and I was doing lots of work, just quantifying what used to be qualitative things. So starting with leadership and management and then strategy execution, and you kept having to walk back. In the chain, if you will, to like, where was the real heart of what was causing organizations to perform or not perform?
[00:03:09] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And you know, you can't really focus I learned on strategy execution without really digging into strategy And then there was something about strategy. I had to go back even more So so when I kept going kind of earlier in the chain, then I also just having richer and richer conversations And it wasn't a purposeful path, right?
[00:03:25] Dr Rebecca Homkes: I was always planning on getting my PhD and then going straight back to one of the consulting firms. And then you delayed it. You do this, you do that. And then I got a great opportunity to teach in the executive classroom at the London business school, met several young presence organization companies.
[00:03:40] Dr Rebecca Homkes: The fit was there, the culture fit, the entrepreneurial fit. Then I realized, wow, these companies are big enough to matter, but small enough that change can happen quite quickly. And that became a natural testing ground to play with these things. Then, of course, we had the post 09 crisis. Then we had Brexit.
[00:03:54] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Then we had, you know, crazy elections. And then we had COVID. So every couple of years, I just got challenged with these new, Facing right of unprecedented uncertainty and the passion just kept growing and growing over time.
[00:04:05] Alexis Zahner: Wow. Thank you, Rebecca. Now we'd love to dive into a new book today in this conversation, which is called survive, reset, thrive, leading breakthrough growth strategy in volatile times, which as you've just spoken about, couldn't be more timely and seems to be the theme of the last 15, 20 years, if we're to be honest.
[00:04:21] Alexis Zahner: Now, we'd love to explore with you, Rebecca, what are some of the key challenges that you really see businesses facing right now?
[00:04:28] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Awesome. Thanks so much, Alexis. Well, one of the first challenges I found, it's going to sound silly, but bear with me, is actually how we frame uncertainty. Is that something I realized a long time ago, way before Brexit, COVID, is that when we speak to each other about uncertainty, we tend to put a word before it.
[00:04:44] Dr Rebecca Homkes: That means it's going to be bad. Like, think about it. We ask each other, how are we going to manage uncertainty? How are we going to overcome uncertainty? How are we going to get through uncertainty? We are framing our brains. This thing is nasty. You've got to get through it. And that sets us up instantly to frame it as negative.
[00:04:59] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And if we can just start by redefining it, it actually changes everything. You know, the definition of uncertainty is a series of future events which may or may not occur. Whether or not those events are good or bad depends on what you're trying to do and how you're set up. So I start there. Let's figure out what we want to do and then get set up to take advantage of the opportunities this changing environment is going to bring us.
[00:05:21] Alexis Zahner: Wow. That's a really powerful reframe because what I love so much about that, your definition or the definition for uncertainty really speaks to the future in general. We cannot predict what may or may not happen in the future. So it sort of helps us to reframe that through the lens of opportunity rather than something, as you said, a challenge we have to overcome or manage or mitigate for.
[00:05:40] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Absolutely. And this prediction thing is a real problem. And as much as AI relates to what we need to do to lead breakthrough growth strategy, here's a trap that I'm finding with it. It's almost convincing ourselves that we can predict the future because an LLM will pump something out with such an authoritative tone.
[00:05:57] Dr Rebecca Homkes: We are even more so telling ourselves, as long as I put enough scenarios into these models, I can predict the future. We still can't. Every AI model is trained on historical data and we're facing new situations over and over again. And what I asked teams to do, and it's really the premise of what it needs to take to do well in this is.
[00:06:17] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Acknowledge you can't predict the future. And that sounds silly, but just if you think about a traditional strategy process, it's charts upon charts and graphs and graphs and scenarios. And then we lull ourselves into this false sense of complacency that we've got this, right? And if you instead shift to I'm not going to build a prediction capability with my team, I'm going to build a decision making capability with my team and I'm going to get great at making good decisions.
[00:06:39] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Even though I can't make great predictions, you are now building a capability which will last you through whatever the market or industry might throw at you.
[00:06:46] Sally Clarke: I love that. I think that's such an important point, Rebecca, especially because I think, you know, this is very innate human desire to have control, predictability.
[00:06:55] Dr Rebecca Homkes: We want to, we want to control every situation. We want to have a plan. We want that pathway to show us exactly what's going to happen next. And you've got to accept that. It's going to be a little bit uncomfortable because I can't tell you what's going to happen next, but I can help you build an organization that can grow through whatever that environment is.
[00:07:11] Sally Clarke: I love that. And this, I think, brings me very naturally to kind of the burning question that I have is really to unpack the three steps in the title of your book to survive, reset, and thrive. Can you walk us through what this might look like in, um, Handling and coping with these volatile times.
[00:07:28] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:07:29] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And the first thing is, it's a loop. It's a three part loop. And one of the key premises is that growth is a loop, not a line is that almost every strategic planning process or frankly, leadership development or training is based on a linear process or checklist. We go from stage 1, then to stage 2, then to stage 3, and we've achieved mastery, right?
[00:07:48] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And that's actually not what the real world is. The real world is a loop, not a line. And any sort of breakthrough growth notion has to come from embracing that notion that this is not a linear checklist you will ever get to the end of. You are constantly cycling through. And I want you just to visualize like loops kind of moving forward because that's what it's going to take.
[00:08:06] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And the first stage is survive, and good survive is proactive survive. And so these thrive organizations, which I'm sure is the desire of all of your leaders to be leading one of these thrive organizations, why they are constantly thriving is they're always set up to survive. The trap that a lot of companies fall into, and there are certain industries a little more prone than others, is they swing.
[00:08:26] Dr Rebecca Homkes: When the markets swing, they do too. Interest rates low, cash free flowing, we spend like crazy, we pay more and more for talent, we assume that good times will stay, market shocks occur, furloughs, layoffs, spending freezes, and we keep think my business model keeps swinging. And thrive companies are always set up to survive, so even when there is a shock, they have less to do.
[00:08:45] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Now, sometimes you're going to get a shock, and we've lived through many of these recently, right? If you're sitting here in Europe, as some of us are, we are facing, you know, constant wars and geopolitical tensions. We, of course, not too far removed from COVID. I think we just hit the four year anniversary.
[00:08:59] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And, you know, half of the world's population is voting this year. Like, that's crazy. We have never kind of been through a situation where we're going to have these kind of market shocks. So when there is a shock, acknowledge it, and take a pause. And then I like to separate survive into what I call the basics and the power moves, right?
[00:09:15] Dr Rebecca Homkes: So the basics, easy to remember, it's the four C's. Cash, cost, customers, communication. Now many companies like to make that the five C's and add culture, which I do agree, kind of keeping that strong culture point throughout the survive phase. So you make your, you know, you go through your checklist, you build your tracker, you have strong cash flow, low fixed cost, you know, consistent and steady and transparent communication, right?
[00:09:37] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And then making sure you're not over indexing any one customer and you've got strong customer modes. But what I found is, and this is not a shockingly strategic playbook, right? This is something that's just a slightly adapted recession one. If you just do the basics and a lot of boards keep their companies stuck in the basics, you'll get stuck.
[00:09:53] Dr Rebecca Homkes: You've got to also employ some power moves such as repurposing and partnering and strengthening employee engagement and fundamentally learning faster than others. If you want to move out of survive into the reset phase.
[00:10:04] Alexis Zahner: There's a lot in that Rebecca. And I can't help, but think it reminds me of the quote.
[00:10:08] Alexis Zahner: I think it was of James clear around falling to the level of our systems. And if these organizations don't have strong systems in place, they don't have the forces considered. And. Understanding what they can get to through times of volatility like that, that it really can quickly see a company fall apart.
[00:10:26] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Yeah, absolutely. Because we lose discipline when times are good. And even if we know intuitively that these times will not last, we get caught up in our talent saying, well, if we don't pay X, you know, we won't be able to compete with these companies. You know, if we don't invest in Y, we won't be able to do this.
[00:10:43] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And there's a discipline. Now, this is not running too late. Right. But there's it's discipline versus lean is a language that I like to use that way. Again, you have less to do than others because you want to move out of that survive phase, not prematurely, but you want to move out of it and go back into the reset as soon as possible.
[00:11:00] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Because then you're, again, you're moving faster than everybody else who is still stuck and survive.
[00:11:04] Sally Clarke: I love this. And I'd love to sort of, if you can talk us through this kind of Shift from survive into reset. Is that something that sort of flows from one to the other? Is it something that happens sort of simultaneously?
[00:11:14] Sally Clarke: Tell us about how that might look.
[00:11:16] Dr Rebecca Homkes: It feels like one of those that you would be so anxious to get out that companies move prematurely. It's actually the opposite because once you're in survive, you never feel comfortable that you're. in a safe enough place you can move on to the reset. And I've actually found that, that boards of directors are a culprit here.
[00:11:36] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And, you know, this is not knocking boards. I also sit on boards. I know that both of you do as well. But a board's job is governance. And they sometimes get so concerned with the longevity of the organization, they keep it and survive way longer than it needs to. So that's why I like to say, look, Build your 4Cs in the good times.
[00:11:53] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Say, this is the minimum we need to be in these. That way, you've already ex ante built that. So when you're in survive phase, you can get to those metrics and say, okay, it's time to move. But a real power move, and actually one of my favorite cases from the book is When you actually start doing survive and reset at the same time is that a company that I love, and I've just actually recently saw is an owner of all the zoos and amusement parks in Scandinavia.
[00:12:15] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And, you know, obviously 2020, they were hit with everything, right? Because their business was live events and amusement parks and zoos, all of which were closed and then limited capacity. Now they moved faster than everybody else because they were doing survive faster than moved into reset. And what the CEO found was people's brains kept dragging the team back into survive because they weren't comfortable they'd done enough.
[00:12:36] Dr Rebecca Homkes: So here's what he did. He actually modeled it on football or soccer for our Americans. And he said, look, there's offense people and there's defense people. We're going to split up. So they interviewed the team one by one. They let them choose their team, right? And there was an offense team and a defense team.
[00:12:49] Dr Rebecca Homkes: They had separate huddles. They had separate meetings. And then the reset, or the offense team, could start thinking about growth and what would it take to test and learn and experiment on the other end, knowing that In full trust that the defense team was taking care of survive and the defense team could really focus on all those survive metrics and the four C's knowing they didn't have to worry about growth.
[00:13:08] Dr Rebecca Homkes: The other team was doing it and it's so powerful. Now this only works in companies with very high levels of trust because you need to have complete trust. that the other team is living up to their commitment. But when that's there, that's super powerful because you are absolutely moving into reset faster and stronger than everybody else.
[00:13:26] Dr Rebecca Homkes: The other thing that I found more simple and tactical is just assign somebody. Assign one member of the board and one member of your team and say, you won't survive. But mindshare wise, I need to give the rest of the team explicit permission to move on. Otherwise, we will all get stuck here. So have one board member, if you have a board, one team member, that's their ownership.
[00:13:43] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Everybody else can move their brains into reset because that's, we need the growth mindset in the reset, or we won't get to the insights that we
[00:13:49] Alexis Zahner: need there. It's such a brilliant insight. And it reminds me of work Sally and I actually did just recently with a technology startup company here in Australia, where we use Edward De Bono's model of the six thinking hats.
[00:13:59] Alexis Zahner: And so often I think people can be sort of predisposed to sit in one, like a risk mitigation hat. Or needing all the facts before making a decision hat. And then, you know, we found with this particular team that there were certainly more folks in that area, but when we can almost again, keep people accountable to sitting in the possibility or the optimism hat and getting them to think outside, even what their own general scope of decision making might be, and then sort of pulling the other team along with them there as well, the results can be really, really powerful and really cool almost for the employees or the team members responsible for that to step outside their own thinking.
[00:14:33] Alexis Zahner: I love this link. It's the growth mindset. And I want to dive into this a little bit more because you've mentioned growth mindset. You've mentioned that in the survive phase, obviously teams and in particular board members might get stuck in survive. What are some of the other attributes that leaders specifically need to cultivate in order to move through that reset phase?
[00:14:50] Dr Rebecca Homkes: So once you get into the reset, I'm going to get to the skill set. But the first embracing point is the notion that reset means change, right? Reset means change. Change and you both do this every day. So, you know how hard this is as leaders. We hate change now We preach it we talk about it We get up in stages and say we're gonna embrace change.
[00:15:10] Dr Rebecca Homkes: We're gonna lead the change We're gonna adapt to change but we don't want to do it and I will tell you and this is gonna sound silly This is how real I know it is. At least once a week, a CEO or a leader, they reach out, they say, love the book, love the framework, we want to do this, but we don't want to use the word reset because the board's afraid it'll scare the team.
[00:15:28] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Or we don't really think we need to change that much. So can we use a different word? And they suggest words that they want to use. like revisit or, you know, reframe or, you know, I always took re glance over and like they're trying to soften the blow of the word reset. And it's like, just embrace that from the beginning because everything else we talk about to doing the reset well starts from the notion.
[00:15:49] Dr Rebecca Homkes: I am going to review all of the previous assumptions in our strategy with the mindset that things might have changed now, if they haven't, cause it's very rare, everything changes. Yeah. Cool, like that assumption remains, therefore that choice remains. But you've got to be open to that, because otherwise you're looking for, you know, you've got this confirmation bias that I'm going to go in assuming everything doesn't change and you don't actually want to make those.
[00:16:10] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Thrive companies are set up to change and they build it in from the very beginning. So that's the key one, is that the insights that you need are going to come from making that shift. And then another one is, You've got to shift from planning stage to preparation stage. Is when we call strategy a plan, I'm actually trying to go away from that language of calling it the strategic plan or calling it the strategic planning process because take a step back.
[00:16:35] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Our brains are not set up to do strategy. I just, we need to be very clear about this. Our brains are set up to protect us, not to be strategic. And even the word plan frames ourselves. Everything in this must happen. And that's just not the case. So from day one, you're saying things might change. So I am preparing the organization for growth, even while I'm doing some of the short term planning, and that's making decisions.
[00:16:59] Dr Rebecca Homkes: So I got to get comfortable with making decisions based on beliefs, not always waiting for facts, right? As you already mentioned this, Alexis, like, I'm not going to have perfect facts to make a decision. I've got to make decisions based on beliefs. I need to acknowledge that variables are still emerging.
[00:17:11] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And so sometimes I need to set a destined direction. rather than a specific destination, right? So instead of giving these very, very clear saying, hey, by this time and date, we're going to look exactly like this. Be comfortable saying, team, this is the direction we're going. And as we execute and as we move, and as we learn more fundamentally, we'll get clearer and clearer on where that destination actually is.
[00:17:33] Dr Rebecca Homkes: So be open to change, shift from planning to preparing and get a little bit more comfortable with being uncomfortable in some of these stages. I think
[00:17:40] Sally Clarke: this is such an important point, uh, Rebecca, and it's reminding me of a recent conversation we had with a historian, Martin Goodman, around environmental intelligence and, and context fluency, and I think it's really reflective of this ability of leaders to not be stuck in, this is what we've agreed to, therefore we must do this.
[00:17:56] Sally Clarke: Execute, but this real kind of ongoing almost. And my, you know, my Buddhist training comes in immediately when I'm thinking it's this ability to remain very present in the moment. So taking all of this preparation and this work that we do to understand as much as we can gather as much data as we can, but then not getting stuck in a particular place, really allowing that process to be very, very iterative.
[00:18:15] Sally Clarke: But as you mentioned, also, that is also, you know, the success of that I imagine is very much contingent on an environment of trust and psychological safety.
[00:18:22] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Absolutely. And a lot of these elements of not just doing the reset well, but transitioning into thrive does come down to this level of trust. And that's actually a key differentiator, right?
[00:18:32] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Of those in thrive, but this notion of not getting stuck or being on track to plan the small change I like to make. And I found that all of this, it's don't change more than one or two things at time, right? Give leaders small tips. They can integrate is we tend to start our review meetings with the question.
[00:18:48] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Are we on track to plan? Right? Because there's a sense of comfort that that strategy should be on track to plan But that makes a pretty powerful assumption that there was only one track and we got it right the first time That's not an assumption. I want to take in this environment. So I encourage leaders ask the question Has the situation changed right start the review meeting with the question?
[00:19:08] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Has the situation changed because if the situation's changed Being on track to plan may or may not be a good thing, but much more importantly reallocate that time you set aside to figure out what we should be doing now if the situation has changed. And that one change of how you start that meeting just instantly frames us to we are here to problem solve and to discuss debate and decide not just determine whether or not we're on track to plan and how we get back to it.
[00:19:34] Alexis Zahner: I think that's such a brilliant point and it actually reminds me Rebecca of work that we're fortunate to dive into last year as well with Dr. Kirsten Ferguson. One of her leadership traits that she suggested for head and heart leaders was called perspective. And to me, I think that links very closely to that.
[00:19:48] Alexis Zahner: It's the ability to have, you know, that, I guess, environmental intelligence, almost, if you will, what's going on around you. And do we need to update, rethink, reframe? change course, whatever it may be. But I think it does require that individual to accept almost the constant discomfort of we're kind of sailing in the right direction, we think.
[00:20:07] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Yes. And that goes back to, we have a direction. I might not always have a precise destination, but we have to give the wider team something because as you both know so well, the more uncertainty teams face, the more they beg their leaders for alignment, right? The more the environment around us is changing, the more we look to our leaders and say, tell me what's going on.
[00:20:28] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Tell me where we're going. And that's exactly when as a leadership team, we don't have all of the tools to get that level of clarity. So if you can switch to direction versus destination, you can give the team that guidance and alignment without prematurely anchoring to the false destination.
[00:20:43] Sally Clarke: Beautifully put. I love that idea of this kind of like false destination, which might have the short term payoff of, Giving us some level of comfort that things are going to be okay, but actually could take us in completely the wrong direction. Ultimately, if we stick to it through and see it all the way through and you know, I'd love it if you could perhaps share a couple of examples.
[00:20:59] Sally Clarke: And there's so many incredible examples in the book, of course, where you've seen leaders really be able to don't want to use a negative connotation here, but really, I guess, take the opportunity in volatility in a way that that does give rise to growth in their company.
[00:21:13] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Yeah, so there's again, there's lots of lots of examples in the book of this, you know, one of the older ones is IKEA and you might know the IKEA story is, you know, I love the IKEA story because this was a company that was a hated by their industry, right?
[00:21:26] Dr Rebecca Homkes: For being new and different and innovative. So they were essentially kicked out of the inner city. So they had to set up outside of the city. And there was this one weekend in Sweden where the VAT was going to change. The next week. And so there was lots of people shopping and they kind of knew that it would be a big shopping weekend, but not really prepared for the influx of people who were trying to spend as much as possible before Monday.
[00:21:46] Dr Rebecca Homkes: So they were so inundated with team members that the retail staff on hand actually couldn't serve the customers. So they had to say, I'm sorry, like we can't serve you like there's the warehouse. Pick up what you want. Bring it to your car. We'll check you out on the way out. And that Monday morning, These poor staff members were just cowering going back to the big box, right?
[00:22:06] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Trying to justify why they had forced customers to do this, how they were going to make it right, and Real sign of growth mindset the question instead was not how can we fix this going forward? The question instead was well, how did the customers react and there was this pause and they were able to say well They actually Loved it, right?
[00:22:24] Dr Rebecca Homkes: It was faster It was better like they kind of got some enjoyment out of it and the difference in those two questions changed the trajectory of The company right from how are we going to fix this to how did they react? So I love that story and another one about just given the constant You adaptation that we need is there's a company called Gordon Food Service based in the U.
[00:22:43] Dr Rebecca Homkes: S. and they're a multi billion dollar company, one of the largest private companies in the U. S. You think, oh, big companies can't be agile, big companies can't change. Well, they went through survive as other companies did. Anything that touched restaurants, of course, had a big survive period in 2020, but that industry of food distribution runs on very small margins, right?
[00:23:02] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Small resource allocation decisions in the wrong way could have big ramifications for it. Any company in that industry including them so they went into this notion of constant belief testing is they took all of their top most Critical beliefs about how customers would return what they're prioritizing in terms of deliveries And you know was local sustainable organic still a trend and were they doing limited menus?
[00:23:23] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And how are they going to deal with kind of the the grub hubs and the uber eats? They turned all their top beliefs into a multiple choice question surveyed 30 000 restaurants Every quarter, which they still do, and then use all of that live data to make all of these micro adjustments and adaptations to their strategy, which allow them to move faster and better out of it than any others.
[00:23:42] Dr Rebecca Homkes: So this notion of we've got these beliefs, these beliefs are forming our choices, but these beliefs are still evolving, and we're going to actively test them even as we're executing our strategy.
[00:23:50] Alexis Zahner: I think that's a scientific mind to take to it, Rebecca, because to me, it's, you know, when we're testing a hypothesis, we're looking at all the assumptions that we've made about a particular scenario.
[00:24:01] Alexis Zahner: And our goal is to disprove those to see whether or not what we think is a viable outcome. And I think that's such a scientific mind to take to that. It makes me feel as though as a company, It's not a case of whether we were right or wrong and having that sort of ego attachment to what we thought was going to be the plan and rather taking it as every new piece of information is an opportunity to improve.
[00:24:22] Alexis Zahner: And by virtue of that, we're making ourselves more adaptable. We're getting closer to the customer. We're able to meet their needs and we're potentially able to find new products and services or distribution channels that we did not even know might exist in our market, which is such a cool way to sort of disrupt the market.
[00:24:37] Alexis Zahner: The way that we think about business, you know, thriving again after that survival phase.
[00:24:42] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Exactly that. Exactly that. That we're making choices based on beliefs. And these thrive companies are those who are knowing that I'm making choices based on beliefs. I'm resourcing based on these. So while I'm executing, I'm going to be parallel pathing.
[00:24:56] Dr Rebecca Homkes: testing of these beliefs. And as I get new information and learnings from the market, I'm going to bring them in. You know, we sometimes romanticize, you know, big pivots, right? Or these big, massive changes that organizations make. The most powerful changes are those constant micro adjustments and adaptations that is external eyes.
[00:25:14] Dr Rebecca Homkes: We don't even often see in real time, but these companies are constantly evolving and adapting as they're adjusting those beliefs. That's where you see the truth thrive. There will always be one or two case studies of the big pivots, but the real power is his core. And
[00:25:28] Sally Clarke: I imagine those really big pivots often occur when a company has actually not really been doing that sort of ongoing work, and then they have to make this sort of big, dramatic pivot.
[00:25:37] Sally Clarke: Hopefully it works out, but it's actually perhaps the more under the radar, gentle course correcting that is actually the marker of a truly thriving company.
[00:25:44] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Absolutely. So I've actually named those. So I've named those the hard reset, where as you're going through things, you realize that everything is changing.
[00:25:51] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Everything has changed that you need to do what's called a hard reset and say, Well, actually, I can't move out of this reset phase in a couple of weeks or months as normal. I need to repair the organization that we need to reset everything. Our beliefs have fundamentally changed our where to plan how to win choice of fundamentally change.
[00:26:08] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Where we need to go in the future is fundamentally different. Therefore, we need to give ourselves time to do all of that before prematurely putting a new list of priorities on there. Now there's wonderful case studies of companies who did this. Ducati, the motorcycle company, Burberry, the fashion company, Dell computers are all companies that I write about in the book, most of whom I know personally, but a hard reset is not the goal.
[00:26:28] Dr Rebecca Homkes: The goal is these constant adjustments and adaptations as the
[00:26:31] Alexis Zahner: markets around us are evolving. Rebecca, it sounds like one of the key Mistakes leaders make when facing uncertainty and volatility is staying stuck in that belief system. Now I imagine as a CEO of a company, it would take quite a lot more time and energy to constantly be looking at where we need to make these micro adjustments rather than staying in the status quo.
[00:26:51] Alexis Zahner: So that would be a big reason why it would be nice and comfortable to just sit right where we are. What other mistakes, other than staying stuck in these beliefs, do you see leaders making that stop them from getting to this thrive phase?
[00:27:04] Dr Rebecca Homkes: There's so many of them. Thank you for asking. So, I wanted to write a chapter in the book called, Why You Won't Do This, because that's my personality.
[00:27:12] Dr Rebecca Homkes: It's like, I'm gonna tell you, this is a playbook, but I'm gonna wrap it up by basically saying, why you're not going to do it. And of course, the publisher says, no, no, no, we've got to make everything positive. So, the chapter now has some very, very nice name, like, Leadership Traps, right? But it was originally called, Why You Won't Do This, and just walked through all of the reasons that I saw.
[00:27:30] Dr Rebecca Homkes: You know, one is this notion of paralysis, right? That. Let's just wait. Let's just wait until we know more, until we get more information. And I'm sitting in London here today, one of the places that I live, and I really see this in UK companies, right? And we've just had so many major shocks to this economy, from Brexit to COVID to elections, that there's almost always this notion and strategy that let's wait until we know more.
[00:27:52] Dr Rebecca Homkes: So there's Constant paralysis, right? Another is what I call, like, I've got this. And it's almost delusion. And you have a leader who successfully got through 01, or successfully got through 08, or successfully got through Brexit, or successfully got through a war, and it's like, I've got crisis. I'm a wartime leader, right?
[00:28:08] Dr Rebecca Homkes: I've got this. Well, that's, that's, that's, Difficult because the playbook that worked in the previous crisis is unlikely to be perfectly adaptable to the current one But we assume because we've led through one crisis. We've got the next one So I call that i've got this another one, which is kind of hidden But one of the real culprits alexis is called I call it false air cover And here's where the ceo will say things like Like, you know, I know we need to do the reset, but the team's too busy.
[00:28:32] Dr Rebecca Homkes: You know, the team just needs to do their job. You know, the team's just got so much on their plate that either they take care of it themselves or they keep waiting. And I call it false air cover because having worked with so many organizations, the team is desperate. To dedicate the hours slash days, and this is hours or days, not months, to talking about what we should be doing instead.
[00:28:52] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And sometimes CEOs need to get out of the way of their team who is desperate to be strategic and do some of these aspects kind of moving forward. And then another one is just rushing it. Like this notion of let's just get on with it. is actually a trap when facing uncertainty, because yes, you should not stay in this constant analysis paralysis, but you need to make sure you've teased out the insights.
[00:29:11] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Otherwise you run the risk of rubber stamping, just slightly rephrase version of what you were doing before.
[00:29:16] Sally Clarke: Really interesting. These kinds of different sort of approaches that CEOs take often from, I think, sort of. Probably driven by a fear of change, you know, really starting to shift and open their minds to the possibilities, but particularly, I'm thinking of the kind of, sometimes we need to have friction to slow things down.
[00:29:30] Sally Clarke: So to make sure that we're not rushing into these decisions, but also sometimes there is that kind of, perhaps a lack of humility on the part of some CEOs who are simply, I've been here, done this. I know, you know, and that kind of. That bravado that can really start to get us unstuck. As a former lawyer, I have to think of a lot of the sort of professional services, my background that I come from where there's a lot of risk mitigation and risk aversion and compliance time thinking, which is important to have on a board, of course, you know, but it's also, you know, sort of coming back to what you spoke to earlier, I really love this very explicit articulation that we are giving ourselves permission to rethink things, to reset, to reevaluate.
[00:30:05] Sally Clarke: And so even the things that perhaps we're quite attached to, or the kind of like the. thing on the shelf that we haven't actually really questioned for 20 years, but it just because it's there, but actually starting to have that courage and allowing the team to sort of also let their minds loose on it as well can be such an incredibly transformative experience, I imagine, for the team and potentially also for the company
[00:30:24] Dr Rebecca Homkes: and communicating your beliefs gives you permission to change.
[00:30:28] Dr Rebecca Homkes: They're saying we've made these choices. based on these beliefs, but I'm being heads up from the very beginning. If and when these beliefs are challenged, we might change something that we're doing. And we are so obsessed with communication. Well, in some companies, I'm sure you have dozens of stories of ones who haven't even gotten there that we are trying to simplify the message to the point that it's not helpful.
[00:30:47] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And if you just communicate the strategic priorities and you skip the step of communicating the beliefs, you have just shut yourselves off with a permission gap to change where if you do the communication, the strategy, Hey, here's the evolving situation. Here's our top. Five or six beliefs of how this is going to evolve based on these beliefs.
[00:31:02] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Here's what we're doing. I have now given myself permission to change because the organization is also heads up watching these things evolve and they know if, and when they get challenged, we might change something we're doing. And that's powerful because you've also just recruited a bunch more testers.
[00:31:17] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Now your leader is distributed across the board. across the organization are also helping you test these beliefs, which links to learning velocity, which is the key differentiator of thrive. It's going to sound dramatically oversimplified, but it's as simple as this, learn faster, grow faster. That companies that learn faster than others grow faster than others.
[00:31:35] Dr Rebecca Homkes: It's the key to getting out of survive. It's where you're going to set yourself apart and reset. And it's the number one differentiator and thrive is you're learning faster than others. Therefore you are growing faster than others.
[00:31:45] Sally Clarke: I love this so much. I think this is such a key point, Rebecca, and sort of to round up our conversation, I'd actually love to sort of double click on this idea of learning velocity for leaders who are listening right now and who really want to expand their own learning velocity, that of their teams, perhaps with their businesses too, what are the first steps you would advise to start to take steps in that direction?
[00:32:05] Dr Rebecca Homkes: One of the first steps to build it, and this is going to sound harsher than I mean, is acknowledge that you're probably not doing it now, right? Is that as organizations, we are fundamentally teaching organizations, not learning organizations. So we have book clubs, we have webinars, we allocate time for people to go to programs at business schools and, and keep doing that.
[00:32:24] Dr Rebecca Homkes: I teach at a business school, like very, very important. I always have to caveat, but this is all teaching. Not learning, right? And being a learning organization, like learning velocity measures the rate at which an organization generates insights, test insights, gets insight, acknowledges it's an insight, shares it, embeds it, and uses it to further performance going forward.
[00:32:44] Dr Rebecca Homkes: It's this constant loop. And let me just tell you a couple things you need to do to do it. And one of the first ones is you identify where are my critical learning loops. So, A learning loop is a repeatable activity critical for growth. So if you look at your strategic priorities, and I encourage the two of you to think about your own learning loops, right?
[00:33:00] Dr Rebecca Homkes: As you think about your strategic priorities, where are those repeatable activities critical for growth? It could be onboarding a new supplier, a new vendor, opening a new market, launching a new product. These are repeatable activities critical for growth and you identify them. And then what you're trying to do is accelerate the velocity across which you go them and reduce the friction points in friction points or when you lose learning, which are always fundamentally in the handovers and really being proactive about identifying them and then accelerating them allows you to grow faster than others.
[00:33:28] Dr Rebecca Homkes: Because every time you do that activity, you are not just doing it better, but you were doing it faster and you were embedding this knowledge in the organization. It's about fundamentally discovering information faster and quicker. Cheaper than everybody else. It's vetting out these assumptions one by one.
[00:33:42] Dr Rebecca Homkes: And Alexis, you mentioned this. It's being very methodical, right? Again, we romanticize growth like it's all about serendipity and luck and there's a bit of that there, but it's fundamentally I call it disciplined flexibility. You are being super disciplined about teasing out individual assumptions Testing individual hypotheses when you find something you move and you move then you don't wait until six months later when the planning cycle Is over so embracing that to learn faster to grow faster You've got to slow down to speed up actually got to take the pause and start building this Capability and I was with a couple high growth companies last week in Latvia and Denmark actually and I just had this insight that once you Get to a certain growth point You need to invest in the discipline of growth, not just the growth itself, right?
[00:34:21] Dr Rebecca Homkes: So you're saying, yes, I'm still growing in the market, but I'm now investing in the capability of growth, which feels like you shouldn't prioritize it then because you should just be in the market growing. But that's again, where these thrive companies set themselves apart. They invest in the discipline of growth, not just growing in
[00:34:36] Alexis Zahner: the market itself.
[00:34:38] Alexis Zahner: I think that's such a critical insight, Rebecca, because to me it sounds like it's really bedding down the behaviors that The mindsets and the systems to actually exponentially continue to grow and have that scalability built into how we learn across the systems as we're doing. So this is so, so profound.
[00:34:54] Alexis Zahner: Thank you. No, thank you. And an absolute pleasure having you with us today on We Are Human Leaders. Rebecca, we'll have to have you back again. I would love
[00:35:03] Dr Rebecca Homkes: to. That time absolutely flew by. Thank you so much for having me. I really loved our conversation. Thanks, Rebecca. Thank you.
[00:35:15] Alexis Zahner: Dr. Rebecca Homkus new book, Survive, Reset, Thrive, leading breakthrough growth strategy in volatile times, featuring her SRT framework, is now available at all major book retailers. This thoughtful guidebook to strategy execution offers courageous and forward thinking leaders a new playbook for navigating our increasingly complex and uncertain market environments.
[00:35:41] Alexis Zahner: Find out more about Rebecca and find direct links to the book in our show notes at www. wearehumanleaders.
[00:35:50] Alexis Zahner: com. Thank you for joining us in this conversation and we'll see you next time.