Walter Isaacson

02/25/19 • 29 min

Today we're bringing you a A Call to Lead Classic—one of my favorite interviews that I've done at Call to Lead at SAP's annual Sapphire Now conference. My guest is Walter Isaacson. Talking with Walter is always head-spinning and enlightening because he is the foremost expert on leaders who also happen to be the world's smartest people. Walter's specialty is geniuses. He's written biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, and Leonardo da Vinci. He's also a very smart leader himself, having headed CNN, TIME Magazine, and the Aspen Institute. Here are 5 things that Walter said and my team and I found interesting and relatable to all of us as ever-improving leaders:

5:43 - "If you're going to be a disruptor, you have to do like Steve Jobs and occasionally let your reach exceed your grasp."

19:07 - "Making a great product innovation is hard, but what's really hard and important is making the right team who can continue to do innovation." (Steve Jobs, when he was dying, said this to Walter Isaacson.)

25:03 - "The most important talent you need is the ability to see patterns."

25:03 - "If I were talking to somebody coming into a company now, I'd say what are your passions? And I'd hope there'd be three or four or five diverse passions. And then I would say, 'What is the pattern that you've seen by being interested in so many different things?'"

26:49 "Whatever business you're in, you've got to say I'm not in the business of moving lettuce or moving packages or flying metal, [but rather] I'm in the business of applying technology to customer needs."

5:43 - "If you're going to be a disruptor, you have to do like Steve Jobs and occasionally let your reach exceed your grasp."

25:03 - "The most important talent you need is the ability to see patterns."

Previous Episode

Simon Sinek

In this week's A Call to Lead I talk with Simon Sinek. You may know Simon from his TED Talks, which are viral phenoms, or his best-selling books. Start With Why, his first book, is a guide to discovering and honing purpose to help build extraordinary teams. In his upcoming and fifth book, The Infinite Game, Simon explains how to lead in a world where the competition comes and goes, where rules are changeable, and where there is neither a finish line nor definite winners. Simon spoke about playing "the infinite game" as part of a keynote I gave kicking off the year for SAP last month, and in this podcast he talks about that and much more. Here are our team's five takeaways from the episode of A Call to Lead with Simon:

17:39 - To play the infinite game is really hard. Among all the important leadership traits, courage is No. 1. To do the right thing in the face of pressure is hard.

17:39 - Empathy is another critical leadership trait. Our common humanity matters. Whether they're customers or vendors or employees, we're dealing with human beings.

20:55 - Annual evaluations are a thing of the past, and it's not so much what the evaluation says, it's what the trend lines say. If you had a bad evaluation first and second quarter, but third and fourth quarter start to show signs of looking up, that's a good person. You’ll want to give that person a shot to keep improving.

24:10 - It's the responsibility of businesses to provide their people and their customers and their vendors a sense of purpose and a cause that we're all advancing - something that’s bigger than ourselves, and that's why all of life’s blood, sweat, and tears are worth it.

24:48 - Metrics are very important. Metrics help us measure speed and distance. But they don't indicate the end of the game.

Next Episode

Stacey Cunningham

Our new episode of A Call to Lead is my interview with Stacey Cunningham. Stacey started at the New York Stock Exchange as an intern, quit to go to culinary school, did a stint at rival NASDAQ, returned—and rose through the ranks to become the NYSE’s first-ever female president. That’s an unconventional path to the top job (yes, “president” is the top position at the NYSE), and Stacey is leading the 227-year-old company in unconventional and new ways. She’s full of career advice and leadership wisdom.

Here are five things that Stacey said and my team and I found particularly valuable:

Leadership and management are not the same thing. So being able to contribute to the path forward doesn't mean I have to have X number of people reporting in to me, so my organization is bigger. 16:43
Be yourself. If I can do my job in my own skin, that’s much easier. I think society is becoming a little more welcoming to that. 20:20
Never waste a hire. Always hire the best player you can get—and someone better than you. 21:21
When I think about the skills you have to have as a leader, you don’t have to have them all within yourself. You have to have them within your team. 20:52
Make sure that you're not such a key critical person that I can't give you an opportunity to go do something new because I can't take you out of the job you're in. 21:55

Make sure you tune into the NYSE’s very own podcast, Inside the Ice House! It’s full of great conversations with inspiring leaders and I know you’ll love it: https://www.theice.com/insights/conversations/inside-the-ice-house

You can learn more by visiting: www.sap.com/acalltolead. Tweet me @JenniferBMorgan and use the hashtag #acalltolead or e-mail us at [email protected].