Simon Kingston
Appearances
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
We'll be right back with Louis Taitou. But first, we'll hear from Harpreet Khurana, our Chief Digital and Data Analytics Officer. Harpreet will discuss why it's so important that organizations commit to using AI responsibly.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Now back to our conversation with Louis. Louis, let's talk about customer and employee experience. You've already mentioned the first of your values was to be dedicated to customer success. You'll know better than we do how fickle customers can be. One bad experience is enough to turn 50% of customers off straight away and onto other brands.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
The most recent polling we've seen by Gallup suggests that employee engagement is low in the US and even lower internationally. So thinking about those two things, customer success and engagement and employee engagement, what for you are the great advantages, the great potentials of AI and Gen AI in improving those results for companies?
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Yeah, and we're seeing it in social impact too, where they're thinking both about the way in which they can achieve even better value for the scarce resources that they've got, but also thinking about the ethical dimensions of this, which loom large for quite a lot of social organizations.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Louis, that's a very powerful account of what's going on. And the implication of most of our questions so far has been asking you your view as an executive. But you've sat on multiple boards. You've moved from the board into the executive role and back again. What, for you, makes a great board? How do you go about thinking about its composition and how to define its success? I love the question.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
That's right, Hoda. Our guest today is a serial entrepreneur. He's led companies both in the digital transformation and now in AI-led change. Louis Taitou is the chairman and CEO of Coveo, which is a global provider of artificial intelligence-powered business solutions for e-commerce, customer service, and web-based applications.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
And Louis, I mean, are those sorts of effective boards, are they born or are they made? By which I mean, do you see a kind of click early on of complementary skills and experience?
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Before that, he co-founded and served as chairman and CEO of Taleo, which delivers cloud software for talent and human capital management, and was acquired by Oracle for $1.9 billion in 2012. Louis serves on the board of Alimentation Couchetard Inc., which owns and operates 16,000 Couchetard and Circle K convenience stores in 26 countries across the world.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Oh, they absolutely will. Louis, we've reached the bit of the conversation which we call the rapid fire section. So we're going to ask you a series of questions. Uh-oh. so that our listeners get to know you even better. And your job is simply to answer them as quickly as you possibly can. Are you ready?
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Besides mail, phone, and calendar, what are the three apps on your smartphone that you can't live without? Perplexity, Slack.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Do you like to focus on the journey or the destination?
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
And he also, as if that wasn't enough, sits on the board of PetalMD, a leading cloud applications provider in the medical sector.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Oh, I'm sure it's beautiful. And because our listeners are going to be enjoying this episode early in 2025, do you have any new year's resolutions you're willing to share with us?
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Louis, that was a fantastic tour d'horizon of a very successful career, but also a very interesting mix of reflections on what your success has consisted in. That defining moment early on was really interesting, rooted in relationship. And that...
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Stick-to-itiveness that you referred to both in the teams around you in executive groups, but also in the boards that you've been part of and helped to shape the grit, the curiosity, the rigor that ran as a thread through a lot of what you said. The focus on customer success. The understanding of that as a value as well as a set of technology-enabled capabilities was extraordinarily strong.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
And the challenge that you posed to people in almost every sector where customers can engage with 30% more complexity, 50% more of the time, 90% faster, that's an incredible thing to absorb. On ethics, thou shalt not use third party data is a rule that I think lots of us could reflect on.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Don't waste my time as the focus of customer need and a real understanding of that need as a leader to take risks, but not chances. And last but not least, AI tastes of maple syrup.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
So we have established that AI is really Canadian. Good.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Talking about you though, Louis, you've been a leader, a senior leader in the businesses that you've helped lead for a quarter of a century. And on the face of it, you move into those leadership roles very quickly after graduation.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Was there a moment that impelled you into that kind of leadership and defined you, what we call on this podcast, a redefiner moment for you that shaped who you became as a leader?
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AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Hi, equally phenomenal, Hoda. Great to be with you.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
I think there's a wide body of thought that would suggest you're pretty successful. But what's intriguing in these conversations that Hoda and Clark and I have the privilege of having is how often leaders refer to their families, refer to the foundation years in terms of the values that help shape them. So it's interesting that you reach for that so naturally.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
And you've given us a whole set of threads which are going to draw out over the course of the next 25 or 30 minutes. But just in terms of locating where you are now, you were right at the forefront of the digital transformation when you co-founded Taleo. That gives you an amazing ability to compare how leaders were prepared for that transformation.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
wave of technology-driven change with how they are now as they face into AI. And you're obviously part of that with Caveo. But as you think about those two waves of change and transformation, how well prepared do you think leaders are for AI relative to how they were then?
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Yes, Soda, AI, it's a subject that must be on every leader's mind as they try and wrestle with the implementation of the technology, both to gain efficiencies, to enhance the quality of their business, and ultimately to grow revenues. A few leaders, I think it's fair to say, have jumped in with both feet and are making it work for them.
Redefiners
AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
Why did it take some people so long to spot that potential? And what can we learn from that delay, as it were, in advising leaders on how to respond now?
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AI or Die: A Conversation with Coveo Chairman and CEO Louis Têtu
But I think a greater number in the work that we've done are still working out what it means for them, testing and in the experimental phase, and working out where they can get most bang for their buck.
Redefiners
Redefiners Rewind: Insights and Takeaways from 2024
I always recommend that industry experience is probably the least important quality to finding a mentor. I think it's more important that you find a mentor who's actually faced the same challenges as you are facing in your role. And so when we identify mentors, we really want to get an understanding of What have they faced in their careers?
Redefiners
Redefiners Rewind: Insights and Takeaways from 2024
And how can we actually use those experiences of a mentor to support a leader who's actually facing similar challenges? And really match that to what the mentee is looking for. What are the challenges in the mentee's job? And clearly, chemistry has got to be right. Both mentor and mentee have got to feel as though they can work very effectively together.
Redefiners
Redefiners Rewind: Insights and Takeaways from 2024
They've got to feel as though they can express themselves, that they can trust each other, that they can be critical friends in many ways.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
Exactly 20 years. What I was going on to say, because I have to bear in mind you are my boss, you joined in your early teens. Yes. And of course, in that time, as we mentioned right at the beginning, you've led...
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
searchers for some of our most prestigious clients and at the most senior levels, but you've also pioneered some of the other things that we do as leadership advisors and assessment in Russell Reynolds was something that you helped create. Can you talk a bit about why that was important to you then and why it's so central to the firm strategy now?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
And as part of that, There must be a shift in some ways from a focus on individual leaders to teams of leaders. Clearly, we're never going to abandon that focus on the most senior leaders, but groups of people that we help to identify, to develop, to plan succession for. Can you talk a little bit about that, about best-in-class groups of leaders?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
Prior to taking on the CEO role, Constantine held numerous leadership roles across the firm, latterly as head of the Americas region. Now, in addition to leading the firm, he continues to advise a host of boards and CEOs for both public and private companies on the most significant leadership issues they face.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
We'll be right back with Konstantin Alexandrakis. But first, we'll hear from Erin Zollner, a managing director in our New York office. Erin will outline our latest research on the skills that leaders need in a fast-changing world.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
And now back to our conversation with Constantine. we had the opportunity to participate in one of those AI labs for the social impact sector.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
And it was fascinating, both the potential for transformation, but also to be with a group of leaders who were humble enough to be learning together at once, confessing in a way what they didn't know to each other and discovering the potential of that technology amongst other things together was a really
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
fascinating part, I think, of the access that we have providing those sorts of advisory services to people who are shaping the way the world is led.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
And you talked compellingly about that evolution of our firm into a leadership advisory business. When we think about the other parts of the body, Russell Reynolds, what else have we added? You talked about Ty Wiggins' book and the CEO transition insights that he's helping us bring to clients.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
But he's also practiced what he's preaching at a corporate level in the provision of advice on leadership development and assessment to those leaders too. And he has expertise in corporate governance, board effectiveness, and succession planning, as we'll be discussing in the course of the next 30 minutes. Konstantin, welcome to Redefine Us. Thank you, Simon. Great to be here.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
What are the other tools that we've added as we make that move ourselves to being truly the leadership advisory firm that we want to be?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
Next week, the leaders of the world, or many of them, are going to be meeting in Davos and amidst a cacophony of challenges and disruption and volatility in the world. This question is not so much cheeky as unfair, because if you knew the answer to it, you wouldn't need to go. But what do you think... is going to be on the agenda?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
What do you think is going to be foremost in the minds of that group of leaders?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
And on that... Because that links in a way to this idea that we live in an era not just of misinformation, but also active disinformation in some places. What's your advice to senior leaders about how far they can go to a gender trust that is beyond their immediate business?
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Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
On Redefine, have you heard kind of two very distinct views when we've talked to senior leaders about social issues and whether they should be engaged with them? Some say, yes, we have to be because it's a basic principle of doing business. Others say, no, stick to your swim lane.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
Given that, as you say, trust may be the rarest and most valuable of assets in the current environment, what would your advice be to leaders about how far they should go to try and engender it?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
Now, people will understand as we enter bonus season just how unfair it is for me to be left on my own with the boss having this conversation, and Hoda owes me for abandoning me in this situation. But before we kick off and get into the serious meat of what we're going to talk about, can you tell us a little bit about your formation? not so much as a leader, but as Constantine.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
One of the other things you mentioned is the geopolitical one and the sense that we live in a slightly fracturing world at the moment. One of the things that leads to is kind of hyper-regionalization, a move away from global norms and global assumptions about how businesses and governments interact with each other. Does it seem like that to you at Russell Reynolds?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
I mean, how do you think about our business, which is a global one, but where we operate in markets that can sometimes seem to be moving apart quite dramatically politically? What's been the approach that you've taken to thinking about that and what it means for our strategy and how we empower leaders in the regions of the business?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
Constantine, as our regular listeners will know, we ask every guest on the podcast to tell us about their Redefine Our Moment podcast. an experience or a decision that shaped them critically. What was yours?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
And as a clue to what might be interesting, perhaps as you unpack that and your early formative experiences, maybe you could explain to our listeners the philotimo. concept?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
We like to end these podcasts with a series of rapid fire questions. So I'm going to ask these and ask you to answer as quickly as you can. Are you ready? These are optional, right? You can refuse to answer. I'm ready. I'm ready, Simon. Let's do it. Come on. Since this is the first episode of the new year, what are you most looking forward to in 2025, Konstantin?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
Looking back on your leadership path, possibly including Winn-Dixie, what do you wish you'd learned sooner apart from scanning?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
What's one question you often ask when hiring people?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
I can recommend a very good history festival. Final question. What advice would you give to someone with C-suite aspirations?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
Constantine, thank you for those responses. And as I think back over the last 30 minutes, there are a few themes that emerge.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
The first one that runs as a golden thread through a lot of this is that sense of solidarity, that sense of philotimo as you described it right at the beginning, the culture that's so important to you in your family background and that you bring to the way in which you think about leadership for yourself and for others.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
The communication of that was also something that you talked about consistently. As well as the evolution of our business, a move away from a focus on a transactional approach to executive search to something that is a much more holistic support for leadership, decision-making, development, both for individuals who lead businesses, businesses and other organizations and for teams of leaders.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
And that was fascinating to hear how that evolution is continuing. But I was also really struck by your rejection of my question about whether leading a people business is somehow different in type from leading other kinds of businesses.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
In your view, to paraphrase, we're all leadership businesses now and a really important insight into the way you lead and the way some of the most significant leaders we advise lead. So thank you. I think you have lived up to the advisory standard that we set ourselves in the advice that you've given to our listeners today. Thank you for finding the time and joining us on Redefiners.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
Hello everyone and welcome back to Redefiners. This is our first episode in 2025 and the kickoff for season five. I'm Simon Kingston. Hoda is unable to join me sadly today, so I'll be flying solo on today's episode, which for reasons that will become clear is slightly terrifying.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
And that idea of deep cultural formation is fascinating because it comes through that sense of solidarity that was clearly bred into you from a very early stage. We'll get into this a bit later, perhaps, but to what extent can that be taught and replicated in a business context? Or are you born and raised with it?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
I think we're going to loop back to that, both as it relates to us here at Russell Reynolds and the wider industry. But reverting for a second to you, from that really rich family background, how do you think your time in law school shaped you? What did it give you that you then took into your career?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
However you celebrated them, I hope you all had wonderful holidays and have had a fantastic start to the new year so far. Before we get started today, just a quick reminder to our listeners that you can find all the episodes of Redefiners and the Leadership Lounge on YouTube. And if you're currently watching Redefiners on YouTube, just hit the subscribe button below so you don't miss an episode.
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
That was going to be a question I had because I think, among colleagues, you're really respected for the clarity of your analytical capability. almost forensic legal training coming through, perhaps. Is that how you see yourself as a leader, as somebody who leads through persuasion and force of argument?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
Let's talk a bit about that. You became our CEO in 2022. Unlike some of the other people we've interviewed on Redefiners, it wasn't in the context of an emergency, it wasn't sudden, it was planned. With that in mind, how did you think about the things that you chose to do and the things you chose not to do early on in your time as CEO?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
For our audio listeners, don't forget to rate Redefiners wherever you get your podcasts. We really want to hear your feedback. Today, we've got what is in many respects a unique conversation. We're going to talk to somebody who knows firsthand what it takes to hire and develop
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
And knowing the organization as you did, were there any surprises when you became CEO? Were there things that you hadn't anticipated about about the firm, about the task that awaited you as CEO?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
And if you were to pick out a couple of those, the differences in the way you are a CEO now from how you began and how you expected, what are some of those things in terms of how you do what you do?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
And coming to the kind of business that we are, I mean, ultimately our product is the advice, the expertise that we offer to our clients. So we are the quintessential people business. What in your experience is distinctive about leading that kind of business as distinct from a manufacturing business or another sector?
Redefiners
Talking Transformational Leadership with RRA’s CEO Constantine Alexandrakis
the best in class leaders, both CEOs and of the C-suite across a whole range of industries and someone who is himself a true redefiner. He's redefining the executive search industry because our guest today is none other than our own Russell Reynolds, Chief Executive, Konstantin Alexandriakis. Constantine also serves on the firm's board of directors.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
And Lisa probably knows this, but the term of art for one of those is a Kojak. And older listeners will get the reference. And he is a total hooligan. He now lives with us for most of the year.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
We'll be right back with Lisa McGowan. But first, let's hear from Hetty Pye, leadership advisor and co-founder of RRA Artemis, a movement designed to accelerate the development of women from the world's most influential organizations into the CEO seat. Hetty will discuss our latest research on the media's representation of women CEOs.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
His name is Tiberius, obviously.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
Small dogs with emperor-like tendencies. So he's known as Tibby, but he's really a farm dog and not well suited to London life. But he spends most of his life here terrorizing passersby. So he's really, he's a thug. He's a terrible person.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
Now back to our conversation with Lisa. Lisa, thinking of the context in which you arrived as CEO at Pets at Home, like lots of retail businesses, there'd been a boom during the pandemic. You arrived after it, but no doubt at this point where in the UK, like everywhere else, there'd been a boom and then there was a cost of living crisis.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
Just as we get through the pandemic, suddenly there's a contraction in people's sense of what they're uh incomes really were and what their discretionary spend was going to look like how was that for you as as you know a first-time ceo coming into a business that's been through that how did that expansion and then potential contraction play out at pets at home
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
And what for you were the kind of signs that you were getting close to overbalancing in one direction or another? What did you develop as your kind of way of gauging that you were still on the tightrope?
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
And there must have been, I mean, in that post-pandemic period, I mean, it was a sort of perennial headline, the number of pets that had been bought during the pandemic who were being neglected or abandoned. I mean, your people must have been encountering some of that and must in a way have been the front line for some of that.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
There were a couple of things Tibby did last week that made me question that commitment, but yes.
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
It's true. And it's not just driven by my children alone. There are an extraordinary range of things. And I think we're going to talk a bit about this. The breadth of the services and the products that we procure for our pets has grown. And that, of course, includes the food. It includes the accessories. It includes those toys you've mentioned, but also thinking about their health.
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
And as that's underway, because it's an extraordinarily compelling proposition, the breadth of the offering, and clearly differentiates you from people who are merely engaged in the retail side of it. But what was the conversation with your customers like along the way? And how much did that shape the way the integration and the consumer-centric bits of that played out?
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
and thinking about preventative care in a much more systematic, much more serious way than I think was the case not so long ago. It's an important part of the pet-owning household budget.
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
And wrapped up in that purpose is a commitment to sustainability externally. And you've got some pretty punchy targets. How did you choose them? How did you decide how that component of purpose was going to be realized?
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
And on that, how do you see your role in educating and changing your customers' behavior? Because there's a fine line between informing and directing, isn't there?
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
Well, she has quite a tale to tell. Lisa McGowan, who is chief executive officer of Pets at Home. That's the UK's leading pet care business. We're going to hear a lot about that. But before joining Pets at Home in 2022, Lisa had had an extremely successful career in leadership roles at Sky, where she was chief consumer officer.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
And the currency of trust you must have is really striking, particularly at this moment in social time.
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
Is he supposed to have one of those?
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
But I mean, that could be a topic for an entirely different and longer podcast. But that idea of trust in a time when trust is at a premium, I think is fascinating and must be kind of part of what you and the board and you've touched on the board relationship a couple of times. We should just come on to that. But I mean, in a way, what you're custodians of is that trust. Yeah.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
Yeah, that's really interesting. You mentioned, Lisa, at the beginning, the kind of the transition to being a CEO and it being a different job. And that in a sense, you don't have a boss, you've got a board. Tell us a bit about how you work with the board to discern strategy for pets at home and how that dialogue happens.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
And any advice you would offer somebody else about to step into that CEO role on the board relationship in particular? Clearly a very good relationship with the chair, clearly setting the terms of engagement, but anything else or any observations that surprised you despite having been a NED yourself before?
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
And she led the whole of the consumer business there, serving more than 10 million customers and running a business with revenues of around about $10 billion. And before that, she had roles at both McKinsey and at Telewest. And alongside it, she was formerly a non-executive director at Morrison's. So she brings a breadth of executive and non-executive experience to this.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
A labby? I don't know. I've read your mother is a chef. She is. And you love cooking.
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
What is your favourite dish to cook?
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
Yoga is a great one.
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
What's the best advice you've ever been given?
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
Can I ask one bonus question, Hoda, with your permission? Yes, of course. And Lisa, with yours. How do I persuade my daughter that she doesn't really want a Syrian hamster from pets at home?
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
I had a horrible feeling you were going to say something. Lisa, thank you for that incredibly engaging description of a very successful career, but one that also sounds like it's a lot of fun, and one where at Pets at Home you combine a real sense of purpose and commitment to the communities you serve as well as profit.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
The idea of balance seems to run as a vein through all of it, from the decision to do geography with that mix of the human and the scientific, to that point where having survived an MBA and a first child, you decide that you wanted to do as well as to advise. The
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
customer centricity of the time at telewest and at sky comes through and then that need to take what was not a burning platform but a highly successful business at pets at home and help it become the broader platform to support uh people who care for pets was really compelling the
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
advice that you gave new CEOs that it's not a quantum step as an executive, it's a completely different job with a completely different set of stakeholders and a sense that you're on and being observed all the time, I'm sure will resonate. As was that sense that you came back to a couple of times that you need to be just a step ahead of your customers, even while you listen to them.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
And in addition to all of that, she is, I believe, the proud owner of two Labradors, Freddie and Barney. And incidentally, but we might as well have it for the record, is mother to three human children as well. Yeah.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
They can't necessarily tell you they want something they haven't seen yet. That comes through and it comes through also that openness and that continuing communication in the description you have of the dialogue with your board and the art of staying non-defensive. Something I'm going to try and do when I talk to my daughter about the Syrian hamster.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
Well, yeah, he sounds like he's got a lot in common in terms of character and genital tendencies with Tibby. Indeed. But it does make you slightly doubt the science behind selective breeding. But that is not the purpose of this podcast. Lisa, as we mentioned, you became CEO at Pets at Home in 2022. But prior to that, you'd had this very interesting career at Telewest and at Sky UK.
Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
So can you talk a little bit about the sort of the journey to your current leadership role and what in the end it was that caused you to make that move into the whole pet care area?
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
I grew up with a great many pets. I think the maximum score was six cats and three dogs at one point. Oh my! Named after board games by my insane parents who had four children.
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
And when it came, I mean, how logical or different did that sort of transition to the CEO role feel? Because you've been running a big, big business, as you say. I mean,
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Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
And we now have one dog now in my family who was bought to be a companion in his old age to a lovely purebred parson, Jack Russell, that we had, who was at that point, this is three or four years ago, getting a little bit old. And so in West Cork, where I come from, we bought what was allegedly a fox terrier, but transpires to have been a cross between... a Jack Russell and a Corgi.
Redefiners
Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
Bill launched the greatest number of channels in television history, and he built a global operation of 200 channels and 20 brands, including household names like MTV, Nickelodeon, and Comedy Central. And that's just scratching the surface. He founded and chaired MTV's Staying Alive Foundation, the longest multimedia campaign to fight the AIDS epidemic.
Redefiners
Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And you're being very modest, if I may say so, in that description, because clearly that oxygen that you provided was a pretty important part of what made the change possible. And no lesser figure than the late Mikhail Gorbachev had a very special name for you. Can you tell us what it was and why he christened you in that way?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Redefiners. I'm Simon Kingston, a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates. Before we get started today's episode, just a quick reminder to our listeners that you can find all episodes of Redefiners and Leadership Lounge on YouTube.
Redefiners
Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
We'll be right back with Bill Rohde. But first, let's hear from Andrew White, a leadership advisor who specializes in executive assessment and development. Andrew will discuss why curiosity and adaptability are essential leadership traits in today's business environment.
Redefiners
Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And now back to the conversation with Bill Rohde. The other thing that's very obvious about your career, Bill, is that you have really relished creating new channels, new media vehicles to reach audiences. And as you've just been describing, adapting the The product, the offering to those audiences to what is culturally relevant to them.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
What are some of the lessons you'd offer people thinking about innovation in their business leadership now? Because it's clearly been, it's that that's the theme, the thing at which you seem to have excelled.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And expanding on that work in the fight against HIV and AIDS, he was appointed the first ambassador of UNAIDS, and he was a founding member and chair of the Global Business Coalition on HIV-AIDS. He was also appointed the founding chair of the Global Media AIDS Initiative.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
The other obvious thing to ask you about in that phase of your career is dealing with huge personalities, both on the business side and the artists with whom you've engaged. And you've proven since that those partnerships can be used for a whole variety of purposes. public goods as well as commercial ones.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
But if you were offering advice to people dealing with big personalities, big egos, sometimes pretty volatile characters, what is it you'd say you learned? Is there a single recipe or is there a philosophy that you bring to managing those relationships?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
He served as chair of AMFAR and was appointed the first envoy for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, GAVI, which took him into a whole range of additional global public health challenges. And he was the vice chair there for a number of years, critical years, which we'll touch on in the course of the conversation.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
There's something almost biblical, Bill, about being asked to stop the sun going down. The Staying Alive Foundation, it was the beginning, as we've already touched on, of a series of aspects of your leadership in global public health, but more broadly in social impact. What was the genesis of that?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
So unsurprisingly, this is a man who has been garlanded with a host of different accolades. He's won the Emmy Founders Award. He's won Amphar's Award of Courage. He was inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame. He was the UN Global Citizen of the Year. And particularly important on this side of the Atlantic, he last year won the Winston Churchill Leadership Medal. Bill, welcome to Redefine Us.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And before we go on to that, as people look at staying alive now, I guess we would say this was an early exercise in a way in behavioral psychology, in the nudge theory of how you educate people. Because it was through a medium that was popular culture. It was the way in which you used the channel to reach those audiences with a very different tone to that which was coming from
Redefiners
Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
formal public health authorities. Was that always your intention or is that something you learned as the initiative unfolded?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And as we've mentioned before, that gave you a kind of an authority to engage in a whole series of other areas of the global public health architecture, as people refer to it. And we've talked about UNAIDS, we've talked about Amphar. Let's talk briefly about Gavi. We've had the privilege on an earlier Redefiner's podcast of talking to José Manuel Barroso and indeed to Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
Thank you, Simon. Some of that's actually true. And it's exhausting just to read it. To have lived it is amazing. Let's begin, as they say, at the beginning. The principle of public service, and in particular of military service, didn't start in your family with you.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
So we know... Regular listeners will know a little bit about Gavi, but how did you decide where you were going to invest your time? Because there must have been a whole range of other places you could have placed it, including in the wider public health and social impact sphere. So why Gavi?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And it's been a privilege for us at Russell Reynolds to serve Gavi over a number of years. And one of the things that's really striking about it, even as you just describe it, is is it's a multi-sector alliance. This is a joint effort between governments, the private sector, civil society, philanthropists.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
In a period when, to put it mildly, that kind of alliance is rare, and when sometimes the political and the social media backlash against Business apparently getting out of its swim lane and being involved in the delivery of public goods, social good, is so difficult. What's your advice? What's your advice to leaders now who want to do that, but want to avoid creating that sort of backlash?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
Tell us a little bit about the influence of your father's decorated military career on you, and indeed the influence, no doubt in a different way, of your mother's. in the formation of your character and the values that have obviously run as a seam through your career?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
I'm bringing that back to the traits that make a really good leader in that context. I mean, it's some time ago now, but you wrote an amazing book called What Makes Business Rock? And you identified in it a set of about 20 different leadership traits that you saw as being really critical traits.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
In the context we've just been talking about, Bill, which of those traits strikes you now as being really crucial? If you were rewriting that and saying, I'm going to come up with a group of five or six of those 20, which would they be, do you think?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
My favorite quote ascribed to Churchill in relation to his career was, success, he said, is defined as moving from one failure to the next with no loss of enthusiasm. And I've always tried to model myself on that. But thinking of him, we always invite our guests on Redefiners to reflect on the moment that was their Redefiner experience.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
You, I could, I suspect could pick from a number of points in your career, but what if you had to think of a very defining moment, what was it?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
To go from the vast bill to the micro, we've come to the part of our conversation which... is one where we like to bombard our guests with some rapid fire questions.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
Well, definitely not from you in my experience. The first one, describe yourself in only three words.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
Definitely not a stupid answer. As we've touched on, you've met an extraordinary range of other leaders, the celebrities, the artists, the world leaders we've touched on, and many more. If you could have dinner with any artist who you haven't met in the course of your career, either alive or dead,
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
If someone was to write a song about your life, And who knows, maybe they already have. But if they were to write another song about your life, Bill, what genre would it be? Rock, metal, hip hop, country?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
What's a piece of advice that you received early on that stuck with you?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
Yeah. Pick your favorite decade.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
Yeah.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
He's not an actor. Yeah, but I don't think he'd say no to the chance to start his career now. Yeah. And then a final question, and maybe this isn't a quickfire question, but we talked a bit about your historical sense, your fascination with leaders of the past. We talked about Winston Churchill a bit, but
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
If you were to pick one other than Churchill, another leader from the past who has lessons to teach us today, who would it be?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
Bill Rohde, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Redefiners. A number of things come through incredibly clearly. The quality of your character, the centrality of the idea of character and purpose to your definition of
Redefiners
Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
leadership, whether that's reflecting and respecting local cultures in your time at MTV, or whether it's what drove you to play the leadership roles you did in global public health and to use the channel of media in all of its constantly reinvented forms to educate, inform, and support people in some of the toughest situations in the world. It really shone through all the way through.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
The discipline to do as a leadership principle, the merit of forgiveness as we think about ourselves as leaders, the people we lead, and indeed us as a collective reflecting on our civil society and political leaders, incredibly important.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And the humility with which you talk about your own leadership and the encounters you've had with great leaders, all of that applicable to leaders, I think, in a whole host of different contexts and a ray of sunshine in a slightly bleak world just at the moment. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure. Thank you.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And you then took something of that work ethic into your own early military career. You were at West Point yourself. You served in Vietnam. You were serially decorated for your service there. What do you think you took from that experience into your business life?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And what about the experience of being in combat in a conflict situation?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And studies and our own experience teach us that the companies that really engage in adding to their communities and sometimes to the global community are stronger and more successful in the long term. Our guest today is someone who's been an embodiment of that philosophy and has put the concept of doing good is good for business into action on a really global and international scale.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And the transition from that, I mean, two points of transition, as you say, the return to a society that was not necessarily welcoming and the decision to move into a business sector that in some ways, and this is a glib observation, but it's almost as opposed culturally to to the military on the face of it, as you can imagine, the kind of the culture of media and of rock music.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
I mean, it's quite a long way from the discipline of West Point, isn't it? Tell us a bit about those two transitions, because they must have been formative.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And that, I think people will be struck by that analogy, that comparison. We talk a lot when we talk about leadership, about being your authentic self. How long did it take before you were able to talk openly about the value of your military training in a commercial context?
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
Not just a redefiner, he's a definer of at least one of the industries through which he's moved, as we'll hear. And when it comes to corporate social impact, he's someone who's guided a global media company to redefine how people think about and act, particularly on urgent public health issues.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
So the link between HBO and HBS may be stronger than people... realize if we, if we pick up the narrative, I mean, you, you then go and you lead MTV Europe, which is.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
in a sense, commercially a startup at the point in which you take over, but also at a moment of extraordinary change, particularly in Eastern Europe, where all manner of people, not just the usual competitors, must have opposed the idea of everything MTV represented in terms of Western values or the absence of them, as some of them might have thought.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
Tell us a little bit about that experience and how you approached that as a leadership challenge.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
He's also somebody I've had the privilege of getting to know as a client and as a guide over a number of years, and I have immense respect for what he's achieved in the course of his career. It's a real pleasure to welcome Bill Rohde to Redefine Us today. He's the former chair and CEO of MTV International.
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Music with a Mission: Former MTV International Chairman and CEO Bill Roedy on Leading with Purpose
And in the very particular context of the late 80s and early 90s in Eastern Europe, you were right at the forefront of an extraordinary upheaval.