Chapter 1: What role does ego play in continuous learning?
In my mind, what ego is, you think that you're so good at something that you stop learning.
Chapter 2: How does an engineering mindset benefit business leadership?
How does a software engineer end up as the CEO of one of the largest trucking companies in the world?
Well, I think engineering gives you a very good roadmap and a very good framework of solving problems. I have young kids and I always tell them whenever we have something that gets broken or something we want to build, I always tell them, what do engineers do? We say they build things and they fix things.
And I think in the world of business, you're dealing every day with either problems or goals you want to accomplish. And an engineering mindset gives you a framework of how to solve for these problems. If you think of the engineering design process, it's based on one identifying a problem or a goal.
Chapter 3: What strategies does Mario Harik use for talent evaluation?
Then it's about collecting a lot of data around that particular problem or goal. Then defining your requirements. Then designing and building a solution. And then eventually testing it for what the outcome would look like. And that discipline and rational thinking and data-driven analysis actually helps you in being able to run a company.
Now, the other side of that, though, is around people skills, because when you run a company, you're effectively, you have teams of people, and your goal is to make sure that they are the best versions of themselves. And applying engineering principles to that also helps a lot. So then your team becomes very data-driven.
Chapter 4: How does Mario utilize real-time data in decision-making?
Your team becomes problem solvers in terms of how being able to go from point A to point B. Again, whether it's a goal, whether it's a problem you want to solve as well. So I think these are some of the early innings in terms of as I grew in my career, engineering gave me that framework to be able to solve problems and achieve goals. Couple that with people skills.
Chapter 5: What is the importance of feedback loops in team dynamics?
This is what has enabled me to effectively run a trucking company.
Wait a second. How does that engineering mindset help you as the CEO?
As the CEO, your first goal is to actually figure out what is your overall strategy. How are you going to be able to create a lot of shareholder value? Are you going to be able to create a company that can grow earnings, that can ultimately deliver a lot of shareholder value? To be able to deliver that, as you define your strategy, you have to have a framework by which you define a strategy.
Now, once you have your strategy, you have certain elements associated with that, where you have certain KPIs that you are monitoring on a daily, weekly, monthly basis of whether you are achieving the levels of the strategy. Then from that, for every KPI, in terms of being able to define how you go from one value to another value, you need an action plan. You need a solution for that.
Chapter 6: How does Mario structure effective meetings?
So that engineering mindset is a problem-solving mindset. And whether it's defining strategy, whether it's executing on levels of your strategy, an engineering mindset is going to enable you to deliver on those outcomes over a period of time. So I think that discipline and grounding your decisions in data does help make you an effective CEO.
Now, that on its own goes at odds with being able to manage people because as an engineer, you're thinking perfection. You're thinking the process has to work just right. But the reality is people don't operate that way. So I think engineering on its own gives you a framework.
However, how you can transform or translate that framework and how you manage people and love people and believe in them and believe what's best in them is the other ingredient to be able to then enable you to deliver good outcomes.
What surprised you the most about people coming from an engineering background where things are sort of predictable
Well, first, I'll start by introspecting, looking at myself as a person. As I was growing up, I remember I always used to think that perfection is a good thing. So every time I was set to work on a certain project, on a certain task, that the outcome has to be perfect, that the outcome. And you tell yourself in your own mind these things that, you know, like, this is not good enough.
It can be better than that. Or you're building a piece of software. This piece of software has to be just exactly right.
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Chapter 7: What insights did Mario gain from his experience with Brad Jacobs?
The code has to be simple. It should not have any bugs in it. And I think the human mind typically doesn't operate in perfection. We all have our own idiosyncrasies. We all have our own biases. We all have our own way of doing things.
So for me, in terms of managing people, a lot of it goes back to looking at how they view solving a problem, how they look at the world, how they look at being able to deliver value, how they look at being able to treat others with respect. And I think what surprised me the most is that every person is different. And every person in their own way, they are beautiful.
Their mind works in a beautiful way. And being able to take their own methods, their own way of thinking, believing in what's best in them is what creates the most amount of outcome. And it's also a pleasure because then you're effectively working with a group of smart people who are finding their own way to be the best version of themselves.
And I think not applying one framework or one method to solving a problem is important.
You were employee three at XPO and you got to work with one of the greatest capital allocators and entrepreneurs of our generation in Brad Jacobs. I'm curious what you learned from him.
Well, Brad is one of a kind. He's somebody who started eight multi-billion dollar companies from scratch and in different industries. And a lot of it goes back to having a framework, a method. And he actually wrote two books where he outlines that framework in terms of how to build great companies, companies that endure the test of time.
And ultimately, the goal of a company is to create shareholder value. And these companies have created a tremendous amount of shareholder value. So I learned from him, now everything you read in the book is actually part of the framework in terms of how you think about one, setting very big goals for business, thinking outside of the box of how you can deliver a large amount of value.
And number two is actually, now in our case and the case of the companies he has built, a lot of it, the early innings was around M&A and M&A integration and how you allocate capital in a very effective way where you buy a company at a lower multiple than what your company is trading at. but a company that has a good strategic outcome for what you are trying to build as well.
But if I go back to what I learned from him, I mean, I learned a tremendous amount in more than a decade, but probably number one I would say is to always think big. Don't set small goals. Life is short.
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Chapter 8: How does Mario define success in his personal and professional life?
Number two, I would say is actually how you manage people, how you actually, who you surround yourself with, and to have a very disciplined approach to look at the people who are around you. That you have a team, because ultimately in business, you don't go at it alone. You have a group of people and you want them to work collegially as a team, as a group of people who support each other.
who want to, following a certain strategy, a certain framework, wanna go achieve great things, wanna beat the competition, wanna win. And effectively, how you surround yourself with people, how you actually create a team environment that is very constructive, how you get feedback loops.
So you're always looking at whether it's the plan or the strategy, you're always adjusting in some cases in small areas, in some cases in big areas to be able to get to better outcomes. But I would say the team dynamic and how you capture feedback loop is number two.
Talk to me about that a little more because it seems like everybody hears this, you know, who you surround yourself with matters in life and matters in work. And I would love for you to just riff on that more for a minute in terms of the quality of people.
If you look at who we hire for as an organization, but how we think about the team, the team as well. Generally, we break it down into three broad categories. And this is the work side. But some of these carry over to the personal side and who you have personal relationships with. But number one at work would be, are they good at what they do? Or do they have a high intellect?
Do they have a passion for whatever area of expertise that they have developed in? Are they really good at what they do? Number two is, are they serious about work? Are they hard workers?
And it doesn't mean that you have to work 90-hour weeks, but it means that when you wake up in the morning, do you take the mission of the company, the mission of your role to heart, where you want to actually maximize the outputs of what you do every single day? And the third one is, are you collegial?
Are you somebody who gets along with the rest of the team, who try to look for what's best in the team? And along with that come things like kindness and humility and being able to always thrive to learn and effectively always better yourself and better people who are around you.
and when you have a combination of these attributes in a person now it's not every person in different environments could behave or could have different differently or could have different outputs as well but when you put that together and you create alignment on what the mission is it's really remarkable what you can deliver if you look at sports team sports team that have one star player only but they don't have a good strong cohesive team they don't deliver a lot of value
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