15: Making the Very Complex... Awesomely Simple – John Spence
I was very fortunate to have spoken with John Spence.
John is one of the top 100 business thought leaders and one of the top 500 leadership development experts in the world.
He is an international keynote speaker and management consultant, and has written seven books on business and life success.
Along with Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Jeff Bezos, John was listed as one of American Management Association’s Leaders to Watch in 2015.
In a free-form conversation, we covered a myriad of topics, including the following: the biggest problem that companies face, the components of great cultures, the evolution of leadership in business, and potential responses to the massive technological disruption which we are now undergoing.
We had a blast. John's infectious laughter made the interview an absolute joy.
The Agile and Beyond website, agileandbeyond.co, is now live. To see the show notes for this interview, please visit the site.
And without further ado please welcome to my conversation with John Spence.
Show Notes
Business Books
- Letters to a CEO. The business book that John shared an advanced copy with me in April 2014.
Leadership
Marshall Goldsmith, Leadership Coach
- Marshall Goldsmith, #1 Executive Leadership Coach
- THE BUDDHA OF THE BOARDROOM An interview with Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker
Leonardo da Vinci
Formula for Business Success, Business Fundamentals
- [12:46] Five Fundamentals of Business Success, John Spence
- [13:40] JOHN SPENCE: A SIMPLE FORMULA FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS
- The Formula for Business Success With John Spence (videocast)
Disciplined Execution, Accountability, Delegation
- [15:13] Disciplined execution, Chapter 5, Awesomely Simple, John Spence
- Loose-Tight Controls for Business Success, John Spence
- Recap of John Spence’s key takeaways from the MIT Entrepreneurial Masters Program
- You MUST Learn to Delegate!
- [16:10] Creating MORE Accountability, John Spence
Strategic Thinking and Planning
- Awesomely Simple: 6 Strategies for Building a Successful Company, March 23, 2016, John Spence
- Strategic Thinking & Planning, by John Spence, Wharton School of Business, John Spence
- The Importance of Saying “No”, by John Spence
Introverts, Extroverts, and Ambiverts
Million Dollar Round Table
- Million Dollar Round Table, The Premier Association of Financial Professionals®
- MDRT promo John Spence
Top 100 Thought Leader
His Biggest Influences
- Roger Strickland
- Charlie Owen, Rockefeller’s Lawyer, Accountant, and Strategy Expert
- Winthrop P. Rockefeller, Billfish
- Winthrop P. Rockefeller
A Reference that I Made
Books Charlie Owen Shared with Him
- GREAT Advice From Uber-Guru Tom Peters, John Spence
- In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies Paperback – February 7, 2006 by Thomas J. Peters (Author), Robert H., Jr. Waterman (Author)
- Jim Collins
- Strategy by Porter
- Marketing by Cotter
- Sun Tzu: The Art of War
- [34:45] Co-Opetition, by Adam M. Brandenburger, Barry J. Nalebuff. John studied and loves this idea. In the interview he describes the pushback that he received from his board as a CEO in attempting to apply it in the workplace and economy.
How to Get a Job – Organizations and Resources Mentioned
- Advice On How To Ace a Job Interview, John Spence
- McKinsey and Company
- McKinsey Quarterly
- [41:28] LiquidO. A Lean-based, self-managed, fluid governance model for organizations developed by Stelio Verzera of Cocoon Projects.
- [41:28] W. L. Gore Associates. A self-managed organization which is famous for producing Gore-Tex.
Companies with Great Cultures and Good Leaders
- Billfish Foundation
- [45:25] Temkin. Examples of organizations with great cultures.
- Philadelphia Gear. They make gear boxes for nuclear submarines.
- Carl D. Rapp
Great Cultures
- [44:06] Culture = Cash, by John Spence. How best to determine if a company has a great culture, and how to build one.
- BEST PEOPLE
- BUILDING AND SUSTAINING A WINNING CULTURE, John Spence, ebook
- The Formula For Business Success, John Spence. The single most important factor in attracting top talent is your organization’s culture.
- How To Get More Customers, July 24, 2015, By John Spence
- Three Keys to a Winning Culture
- First Class Customer Service???, John Spence
- [46:25] Ten Elements of a Winning Culture by John Spence. The components of a great culture.
- The Three Archetypes of Business Culture, John Spence
- John Spence On Leadership and The Best Work Cultures (video)
Life-Work Balance
- Searching for Work-Life Balance, By: John Spence
- The Three Keys to Success in Life and Career, June 30, 2014, By John Spence
- Plateauing: Redefining Success at Work, October 5, 2006, By John Spence
Leadership Styles
- The Future of Leadership, by John Spence
- Two BIG Leadership Trends, John Spence
- Leadership Styles That No Longer Work, John Spence
- Success Quotes: 51 Ways Ordinary People Reached World-Class, John Spence
- Advanced Leadership Workbook, John Spence
- The Servant as Leader Pamphlet, by Robert K. Greenleaf (Author)
Vision, Mission, and Values
- Vision, Mission, and Values: More Than Words On Paper, August 17, 2015, By John Spence
- “Making an Impact” Tops the List of What Matters Most to Millennial Talent – Income Comes in Last (This was the article which I mentioned.)
The Future of Leadership
- Leader of the Future = EQ + Technology (Abundance 360), August 3, 2016 By John Spence
- What Makes a Great Leader in the Future? (Abundance 360), Published on August 3, 2016
- Three BIG Ideas On The Future Of Business, February 21, 2015, By John Spence
- Leading in a time of disruptive change, John Spence, THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND BUSINESS SCHOOLGRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
- The Future of Innovation, by John Spence, International Speaker and Business Consultant
Abundance 360
- New technologies disrupt every business (and person) in the world in the next 10 years (Abundance 360), John Spence
- Three BIG Ideas On The Future Of Business (Abundance 360), February 21, 2015, By John Spence
- How Larry Page, Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey overcame their fear of failure, Adam Grant
Rise of the Robots / Jobloss
- Will your job be replaced by a robot?. According to an Oxford study, around 50% of all jobs will be replaced by robots in the next 20 years. With this tool, you can check the prediction of over 700 jobs.
- 10 Jobs that Won’t Be Taken By Robots…Yet (The Fiscal Times)
Robotic Nurses
- Could our future nurses and caregivers be robots?, February 27, 2016, Alec Ross, Author & Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins
- Japan to Create More User-Friendly Elderly Care Robots, By RT Staff November 20, 2015. The Japanese government said some of the elderly care robots built have been too large and too expensive.
- The Future of Robot Caregivers, JULY 19, 2014, By LOUISE ARONS
Robot Bartenders
Professional Listeners / Professional Job Loss Comforters
Robot Hotels
- Japan’s robot hotel opens its (automatic) doors, January 12, 2016, By Maggie Hiufu Wong, CNN. Japan opens world’s first robot hotel
- Inside the Japanese Hotel Staffed by Robots (video), Motherboard
- Checking in to Japan’s first Android Hotel – The future is closer than it appears
- Inside Japan’s first robot-staffed hotel. Henn-na, said to be the world’s first hotel run by robots, turns out to need a surprising amount of human intervention – except where you would most like it
Self-Driving Trucks
- Self-driving trucks: what’s the future for America’s 3.5 million truckers? (Guardian). The race is on to get driverless trucks on the roads, and experts say the impact on professional drivers ‘is going to be huge’
Unconditional Basic (Minimum) Income
- Freakonomics Radio: Is the World Ready for a Guaranteed Basic Income?
- Review of my talk “Basic Income is a Necessity” – examiner.com, Yanis Varoufakis
- Yanis Varoufakis | TED Talks | Capitalism will eat democracy — unless we speak up
Pilotless Airplanes
- Flying Solo, FROM SLATE, NEW AMERICA, AND ASU, By Steve Casner Having one pilot in the cockpit might be scarier than having none.
- Second machine age is here: Fedex is planning on having all of its 600+ planes pilot less by 2020. 30 Oct 2015, gene poor, @PoorGene
Gainesville, University of Florida, Skeeters Big Biscuits
- University of Florida
- Randy Reese, University of Florida and U.S. Olympic Swim Coach
- Dara Torres
- Anthony Nesty
- Anthony Nesty wins 100 meter butterfly (Olympics)
- Skeeters Commercial – Gainesville, Florida 1986
- Legacy of Skeeters Lives On Years After Closing
Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, John!
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