Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Well, my guest today is Mike White, who served as the Chairman and CEO of DirectTV from 2010 until his retirement in 2015. Now you might recall, that's exactly the time when streaming services really took off. I mean, people were cutting the cord on traditional TV left and right and the whole media landscape got turned upside down. So what does it take to be a leader when the world is changing right before your eyes? Well, it takes a heck of a lot of resilience. And if you've ever wanted to really see what resilience looks like in action, then you're going to love this conversation. Mike doesn't lose his stride when things get tough. He knows how to see around corners and anticipate what's coming. And most importantly, he knows how to keep people going when things feel uncertain. The truth is, the world is always changing and the best leaders understand the power of resilience in a changing world. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Mike White. I understand that you're one of eight kids. How much did that influence the leader that you've become? Well, when you're the oldest of eight kids, it influences you a lot. You know, I think from the get-go, I was taught to be responsible for the others. And I was also because I was the oldest, I was always the last to be fed because my mother always said the last shall be first and the first shall be last. So, you know, you learn a lot about leadership just growing up, although there was a lot more I learned from others along the way. But always, I think your parents and your family environment teaches you a lot of core things that stay with you for life. And we're going to dig into those as we go through this conversation. I want to start out here with the, Mike, you're the first person that I've had on the podcast who had the courage to go on the hit television show Undercover Boss. Now, you went on just after you became CEO of Direct TV. How did you muster up whatever it takes to go on a show like that and put yourself out there on national television? Well, I'd seen the show and the PR people thought it would be great PR for Direct TV. And because I was new in the role, I hadn't spent a lot of time in the field with the front line. And yet, as you and I both learned at PepsiCo, we always spent time with the front line. So I thought, well, this is be a great way to connect with people. And my dad had always said everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time. And I thought, okay, what a great chance to experience that. I clearly didn't know a bunch of things when I agreed to do it. And then I was so busy until the day before I flew out to the first assignment that I didn't even know who they had picked or how they had picked the people they picked. But it wasn't a coincidence. I mean, I wouldn't say it was a setup, but they were obviously being in the media business. They were looking for stories. And as I understand that you don't get any editorial control and they decide who they're going to have you meet with. Did you have any surprises on that front? My head of operations was pretty upset and thought I was out to embarrass the company for some reason. My secretary said, ignore him. And he started yelling at me that he had seen the first clip and I didn't have my seat belt on in the truck. And I turned to him and I said, that's because you didn't have a seat belt in that truck. So go check all the trucks. We got 15,000 of them. Make sure they all have two seat belts. That's a great one. What else did you learn from that experience that you really took some action from? I think first of all, you realize those are tough jobs. Those frontline jobs, I mean, whether you're in a call center, direct TV, we had 15,000 people in a call center answering 100 million phone calls a year, or whether you're on a truck, climbing a ladder in a thunderstorm in Alabama, which I was, I mean, those are tough jobs. So I think it teaches you some empathy, first of all, for others and what they do for the company. The second thing, because we were doing the show just after we had launched a new set top box, which I thought was going great. And I got out to the field and found out that our inventories weren't really very good. And everybody was scrambling to get the new set top box. So we hadn't launched it exactly perfectly. So there was some lessons learned about that as well. I understand you started the tech appreciation day afterwards. I did. I guess I realized maybe this is my opportunity to make a statement. You know, when you're a new CEO, people are looking kind of what's the new regime? What do you stand for? And I felt like tech appreciation day. I also mandated that all the team had to get out on a truck once a year and also on a call center for a couple hours each quarter where you kind of see how the promotions were going. Well, I watched the show and you did pretty well on that call center for rookie . You know, it was pretty good. We're going to dive deeper into your leadership story in the time at Direct TV. But first, I know that now you serve on three of the most fabulous companies in the world, Bank of America, Whirlpool and Kimberly Clark. What are the big trends across these industries that you see that leaders need to focus on today? Well, technology change. I mean, I think disruptive change from technology is everywhere. And I saw it at Direct TV and you see it in financial services. You see it in how you go to market with a Whirlpool or Kimberly Clark. You see it with your marketing dollars that are all, you know, now 70% plus are spent on digital marketing. So you know, we're going through a revolution, I think, in that regard and, you know, understanding the implications of that for your particular business is just critical. It's the one thing that's everywhere, I suppose sustainability is the other thing that cuts across any business to David, I think. How do you as a leader really stay on top of what technology is today and where it's going? What advice do you have on that front? I'm lucky being on those three boards. We've had outside speakers on artificial intelligence at all three boards. So I get, you know, the benefit of that from a learning standpoint, I have my own network. I read a lot, read the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, whatever, to try to stay car at. But I think fundamentally you got to stay curious and you got to realize the world is changing and have the humility to know that maybe the way it was when you started out, it isn't exactly the same. There's certain, I think, philosophies and principles that still apply, but work from remote to pandemic, it's a very different world out there. You've worked in five different companies over the span of your career. You know, I got to ask you this one because I came across this one. So it's a little question here that I'm sure you have the answer to. What does having a baby and producing a Bain business strategy have in common? Well, back then, I mean, it shows you how the world of strategy has changed. So I mean, the topic is really strategy. And when I was at Bain and BCG was the same back in the early 1980s, a strategy study was nine months long. It's been three months studying costs, three months studying competitors and three months studying the customer. And we used to say, I guess it must take nine months to have a strategy. But, you know, that's a little facetious, except that, you know, the world of strategy today, back then it was a closed loop. You don't have to worry about globalization. Everybody played by the same rules. You're looking at experience curves for cost and whatever. And now you have to think much more holistically about the business, I think. And so I don't know how they do a strategy study today, but I'm sure as heck it 's not a nine month deal. Everything happens. I act a lot faster these days. You know, I understand that you work with presidential candidate Mitt Romney when you were at Bain. When did you pick up from him? Well, I mean, Mitt is a terrific leader. He's smart. He's articulate, good communicator. But he's also not afraid to get his hands dirty. So I mean, we had one client, Minnesota Fabrics. It was a retailing store that sold fabric, kind of like a Joanne fabric store, except it was a super store. And Mitt took it on and I ended up flying to Charlotte, you know, doing that work for Mitt. And you know, you might have looked down on that kind of a client, but not Mitt . And you know, Mitt went out of his way to take time, you know, with the CEO. And Mitt was a great supporter and teacher for me. I mean, because I didn't have an NBA, David. I didn't go to Stanford. I didn't go to Harvard. I showed up with my master's in international relations and had to learn a lot from the get-go when I got to Bay. But Mitt was a terrific teacher as well as mentor. You then went on to Avon and you mentioned that you learned the importance of really respecting everybody from the leader there. I want you to know that my mother was actually an Avon salesperson. And I remember the 40% commission that she used to rake in in the neighborhood. Share a story from your days at Avon that you learned about leading others. I had two terrific bosses, Bob Pratt and Jim Preston. Bob was the kind of EVP of strategy and administration and Jim Preston was the CEO. And all that at the beginning, Hicks Waldron was, but then Jim became CEO. And I mean, Jim is as great a people person as anybody I know. I mean, I learned from Jim about integrity and caring about the front line. I also learned how hard it is to change and transform a business. I mean, even back then, and this was in the mid-80s, we were trying to think about a different model because we knew that go-to-market system wasn't going to sustain itself. And we were trying to think out of the box. We ended up deciding to do some acquisitions of some perfume companies. And at least we were able to make it go and make them successful. But they didn't transform the company. And in the end, I was there to acquire them and to spin them back out again. And I ran the international part of that business in the meantime. But it was my first chance to get back running a business after I was the strategy guy. They asked me to go run international perfumes. And I had two Frenchmen reporting to me who weren't too happy that Jim Preston had put an American who was 30-something over them in the perfume business because they know everything and I don't know anything. And I think I won them over because I've always felt, you know, go in humble, ask a lot of questions, do a lot of listening. That doesn't mean you're not going to have a point of view. But you start out by listening and demonstrating that you care. And then it was off to PepsiCo where we worked together. And you ran the international division there and became vice chairman and CFO of the corporation. Tell us the experience at PepsiCo that you think really taught you the most. Oh, there's no question it was the implosion of the Pepsi international business. I had been moved over to be CFO of Pepsi worldwide. And I remember it was April Fool's Day, I think 1996 or something. And at the time it had been flying high. I did a presentation in May called the Five Warning Science of a Heart Attack because I could see certain things that worried me. And by that summer, we were starting to see things implode on all kinds of fronts internationally and trying to pick up the pieces, get the business back on track, working with Craig whether up in Peter Thompson, Craig used to say, Mike's in charge of the emergency room and Peter's rebuilding the capability and, you know, building that business back and living through the challenges of Venezuela flipping the Coke. I got delivered, you know, the documents from the lawyers on that one. You had a lot of tough stuff thrown at you, David, over a couple of years of challenges, including pulling out of South Africa, which was a really tough decision. I don't know if you remember the Five Warning Science, but the Five Warning Science of a Heart Attack and Business, I think that's really fascinating. Could you rattle us off for us real quick? I mean, in that case, it was making investment bets for growth without building the capability, the talent and the organizational capability that you need. It was over leveraging them with too much debt in a number of cases and not thinking through the capital implications of that. And it was also in emerging markets, you know, if you go in with no gross margins to start with, you'll never have gross margins. You know, it's one thing if you're starting up a business, but you've got to have a sense of a price cost relationship, or it won't work. And I think having too many bets, frankly, again, when you have 100, you might as well have none as opposed to picking the three or four things you 're really going to focus on. Great insights there. I don't remember the exact wording, David. I wasn't as articulate as Enrico with his take back the street stuff, but... No, I got all those. Those are great. And then I know that you taught a five day leadership program to PepsiCo executives every summer. You know, what did you focus on? What was the major message that you had for these leaders? Well, when I started, I thought about this the other day because I still do it. Similar version, smaller with a couple of schools, universities. And I realized it was when Roger Rico took a week out to take us all to Montana to talk about change and leading change, making us watch Martin Luther King's, "I Have a Dream Speech," think about how he was trying to build alignment to a change agenda. And I thought if Roger can take a week and take, I don't know, where there are 10 of us in each program, and as you know, a whole pile of us went through it over four or five years, I said, "Then I should be able to do that for my team." And in particular, international hadn't had the same depth of training and development that the US businesses did. So I decided I would start by putting a program together when I was living in Geneva. But I knew I'm not Roger. I can't be Roger. It has to be my thinking. And I spent a lot of time working with my HR person and deciding what do you want to teach. So, you know, it's like on leadership, you got to decide what you really believe it is, because I wasn't there to teach them accounting or marketing or whatever. They can get that in other venues. And it was really thinking about that a lot, and also then deciding what the capstone for the program was going to be. As you know, people will forget what you said, but there's certain things they'll never forget. And over the 10 years I ran that program every year, I brought in one surprise guest speaker every year. It just so happened, it was the same one every year, but they were sworn to secrecy. And it was, I had watched the movie Hotel Rwanda on a flight to Hong Kong. And I called back to my PR guy Dick Detweiler, I said , find the hotel manager. It's all about leadership. And this guy was in an international setting and impossible circumstances. I thought was an incredible leader. And every year, inevitably, his talk was the highest rated talk of the program. And it was kind of the culmination of the week where we talked about value-based leadership. And unfortunately, he got kidnapped like Agami. I think he's now back in the States. His name is Paul Russo-Sabagina, but he taught me a lot about leadership. And how did you end up defining leadership for that program? For the program, it was really three parts. Leaders set the agenda, which is all about defining context, having the right perspective, looking around the corner to see where change is going, and setting priorities and a strategy. I mean, it's really strategic thinking. Taking others with you is about self-awareness. The old Socrates just starts with know thyself and self-awareness and people skills, how you connect with other people. And also the subject of organizational politics and how to avoid getting blindsided by organizational politics. And the last bucket was value-based leadership. And as I said, the closing module was always, they had to have watched the movie Hotel Rwanda. And I started a discussion about, was this guy a good leader or a bad leader before he walks in the room, and then he walks in the room. By the end of it, most people were pretty impacted. Have you ever wondered what David is thinking as he interviews our guests each week? Or have you been interested in hearing David's take on some of the questions that he asks his guests? Well, I do, and I know a lot of you do too. My name is Koolah Callahan, and together with David, I host the three more questions podcasts that airs every Monday. These episodes are just about 15 minutes, and in them, I asked David three questions that dive deeper into the themes of his episode with his guests. David shares incredible insights and stories from his career- leading young brands, and all of his answers are super practical and inspiring. Like this great insight, David shared in one of our most recent three more questions episodes. You know, one of the things I hate Koolah is this word empowerment. I just hate it when people say I want to be empowered. I just think that's BS, okay? Autonomy is earned right. I will empower you once I know you're capable of doing the job. But don't ask me to empower you before you've demonstrated that. Get the three more questions podcasts in your feed each Monday and dive even deeper into the episodes you know and love. Just subscribe to How Leaders Lead wherever you get your podcasts. And then I know you went to DirectTV, and there I know one of the first things you did was re-look the strategy. What was the process that you used to do that, Mike? DirectTV had been very well-run. My predecessor Chase Kerry had done a superb job with the business that had gone back to Fox. Like anything when you go in new, and I was coming across industry, which is never easy. So I came in wanting to learn a lot from the existing organization, but they had never really done a formal strategy process. So in that case, I heard McKinsey. It wasn't because it was McKinsey. It was a woman, Laura Corb, who was a real expert in telcos, telecom, media, that whole space, which I wasn't. And we had a good working relationship. So I had McKinsey in. But again, it starts with defining the right questions. You know, and the first question on my mind was, how come we're trading at six times e-ba-da when Pepsi bottling group traded at seven and a half, and our return on capital was 26% and Pepsi bottling groups was about eight. So you had to kind of decide what is it in the valuation that's not working, and can you change it? And then second, looking at where is this business changing? And so it's hard to believe, but when I went to DirecTV, Netflix was still sending stuff out in red envelop es. But you could see the world was beginning to change, and that you couldn't just have a service that was the television in the living room. You had to be able to watch it on an iPad or an iPhone or whatever, although most of the video streaming really didn't take off till 2013-14. And I got there in 2010. But defining the right questions, I think, is the first and foremost thing, and then looking at your competition and trying to understand your strengths and weaknesses is what your biggest opportunities and threats are. Was there anything that you discovered about the business that really surprised you? Well, the whole negotiation with the media companies for rights fees is like nothing I'd ever seen. Anybody who talks about win-win negotiations, forget it. I mean, it is a very tough, tough part of the business. And the media companies back then, they have a lot less leverage today with streaming. But back then, if you want ESPN, then you've got to give them Dizzy, ABC, and a whole bunch of other channels that nobody will watch. That's just how it worked. It was a bundling game. And it was very tough. And you had to constantly try and figure out if license fees, which were 60% of our costs are growing 7% a year, then I got to be pricing at 4.5% a year. With my consumer background, I'm like, that's not going to end well with consumers. And so that was probably the biggest surprise, David. On the positive side, I was impressed with the quality of the people. The branding, the marketing was superb. I had two superb guys doing marketing and a great agency that we worked with. And I would say we had a lot of brand equity to start with. We had the best service in the industry. We had the best sound, the best picture. I mean, we had a lot of assets. The challenge was the world was about to change even more than I mean, I knew it was changing, but even I wouldn't have predicted it. The billions in streaming losses that the media companies are now running. Yeah, I don't think anybody could have predicted that. And I also understand in the early days, you're boarded already made the decision to sell your Latin American direct TV business. But you reverse course. And I was thinking, you know, there probably is a lot of really good reasons to do that. But that's still pretty tough to do when the board's already made the decision and you're the new CEO. How'd you do that? I wouldn't say the board had made the decision. I would say at least one member of the board had been public that we should spin out Latin America. Those first three months I was CEO. The first thing I felt was we didn't have a great growth portfolio, right? We had the core business in the US and Latin America, I thought was our biggest growth engine because the streaming issues and some of the other issues , even the content costs were not as severe in Latin America. So I thought it was our best growth opportunity number one. Number two, because we were we had such an underleveraged balance sheet, I was going to buy back shares. And you know, again, some of the training I'd gotten from being C FO PepsiCo, you know, I got there with trading at six times Z but you can borrow at 2%. We had no debt and we're spinning out a billion dollars of free cash flow a year. So over the five years , I think we bought back half the shares. And that was a big win for shareholders in being able to do it consistently over five years. Absolutely. You know, and I also know that in your leadership seminar, which you give to MBAs at Boston College and Johns Hopkins, you say leaders need to understand decision-making blind spots in the boardroom. You know, what are some of those blind spots? I think it's no different than the Bay of Pigs invasion. You know, when you get groupthink going on and sometimes we're all a bit guilty of looking at an opportunity, oftentimes an acquisition, with rose-colored glasses and not asking tough enough questions. And I've been guilty of it. I mean, I, you know, Rope will made a major European acquisition that's been a complete bust. And I knew internationally, you know, I should have asked more questions. I should have known better. But I think the blind spots that you run into is that are we looking at reality and the change that's coming at us? Are we moving fast enough that we got to get out of our comfort zone? And I think great boards are both collegial, but also open to discussion and pushback and dialogue. And I think it's the balance of those two that can occasionally get out of wh ack in a boardroom as a Ken and any other circumstance. I mean, in that case, David, I used ther mos actually as the case study for what went wrong, you know, with their boardroom, but they weren 't a public company either. So yeah, but you think about the board that they had, you know, people like George Scholz on the board and, you know, these people are supposed to be so wise. And yet this happens right in front of their nose, you know, that really, I think, blows everybody away. You know, one of the things you say that a CEO has got to do and you say it's really important for them to do it is is to own the customer. You know, how do you go about doing that? In the case of, of direct TV and even Pepsi, you've got millions of customers. But it starts with making sure you understand the customer. What do they want? And how good a job are we doing? When I got to direct TV, we had all these accolades for having the best service in the industry. But the industry is notoriously terrible at service and hated the cable business. And so I thought sometimes you you learn something by changing the metric. So we ended up bringing in a net promoter score to start assessing how well we were servicing customers. And you start asking different questions and one question leads to another. So in one case, where we were looking at early installs and new customers, we found out that they were calling in in the first two months, something like eight times. Well, if they're calling it eight times, this is because you didn't do it right the first time. And you can all of a sudden start to not only look at what does it take to become a passionate promoter of the brand as a customer, but also who are the customers that hate you and why. So you get two agendas working on detractors. You know, what do we need to fix? And then what do we need to do better to get more passionate about, you know, customers for the products that we sell. But in any business, everyone's a little different. You know, the direct TV business is quite different than selling Pepsi and and and Lay's potato chips. But but in both cases, you got to have a great product. You got to have a good distribution system and you better understand the different customer segments that are out there. And you made major strides though, in terms of improving your customer service to direct TV. You know, how do you do that? I mean, how do you, okay, so you got the facts that said, hey, you can do a lot better. But what do you what do you do to put in place the things that really move the needle on the net promoter score? Because as I understand it, you improved dramatically. We did. And we put a central team together that was going to own the customer experience. And we started out, as I said, we changed the metrics to start looking at net promoter score and measuring it. We also changed the metrics for the front line . And we changed the incentives for the front line. You know, people do what they're incented to do. And so, and there were a couple of cases where in the pilot that we were doing with technicians, where we were trying to get them to do something different in the field, you know, they came to me and they wanted to do a bonus. And I said, fine, look, you both recognize folks , catch them doing good things like you always did at Yum. And at the same time, you know, financial incentives can go a long way. And that helped us a lot in changing the incentives for the tax. And kind of making it a front line driven effort to really change how we surface the customer. And then you got to start mapping out the whole customer experience, you know, which in the case of direct TV was quite complex from the initial phone call to signing them up to getting the install right the first time to then, you know, issues they would have with their bill. I mean, we, the bill was so confusing, nobody could understand it. I think the industry liked it that way. So we took nine months to redo the whole bill. So a customer would understand what changed, why did it change, where are my incentives and rebates, you know, all the questions that were pretty common and typical from the customer. But it was clear to David that boy, it's a never ending journey. I mean, as great as we did on trying to rethink the customer experience, there's a lot of moving parts, you know, and when you have a big army, like we did with technicians and call center operators, getting them all to kind of sing the hymn together takes a lot of work, a lot of systems reengineering, a lot of retraining that we did and change in incentives. I also know that you're a huge believer in just the power of culture. And if you had to pick one behavior besides integrity that you'd want to have in every company that you might lead, what would it be and why? Speak with truth and candor. You know, and it was my experience from the Pepsi International blow up that we weren't as candid with ourselves about what was working, what wasn't working. And you see people, I've asked the question on org health surveys different ways. Are you comfortable bringing bad news to the boss? You know, that's as simple as you can make it in a culture like that. You know, you're going to hear about things. It 's also about being open, curious, being a lifelong learner. But I would at its core, it's having an open culture where everyone feels comfortable to bring their whole selves to work, but it's also comfortable speaking up, you know, if they have a concern or a question. I'm blessed to have Wendy, my wife is that she's my number one truth teller. I could tell you that. So it 's mine. So it's great. You know, I got to ask you, how do you think about competition at direct TV versus Pepsi? I mean, you know, the two wildly different categories. They are, but there was some things about direct TV that were much more similar to Pepsi than anybody realized when they hired me. First and foremost, they're both challenge your mindsets. You know, you're not number one. We don't have as much money as Comcast. Pepsi doesn't have as much money as Coke. So you got to work harder, you got to be more entrepreneurial, you got to be more creative, you got to find different ways to compete. And I think the passion was the same at direct TV as it was at Pepsi in that sense. And I think it's, you know, it's unique at both companies to have that amount of passion for performing and for making a difference. They were more similar than you ever would have imagined, plus the front line. You know, Frito-Lay, I don't know, used to have 15,000 workers driving a truck to deliver the chips, you know, at direct TV. I used to say we had their brother, you know, we had 15,000 technicians, high school educated, driving the truck doing the install, you know, different, but a similar demographic and a similar dynamic in terms of how you go about connecting and listening to them. Yeah, you know, Pepsi wanted to kill Coke. It was pretty simple who our who the enemy was. And then direct TV, the industry was exploding. You 're getting competitors coming in from everywhere. How do you get your people to see how the world was moving? Well, it changed. It changed while I was there. And I mean, just as a measure of, it used to be, you could set a strategy for at least five years at direct TV. I rebooted the strategy at least five times in five years. So when I went, it was pretty clear it was dish and it was Comcast. Full stop. Okay. All of the other stuff was later on when you started seeing what was happening with Netflix, Google, Amazon, you name it, and all of a sudden, you're in a whole different world where there aren't easy answers, to be honest with you. And I would say it was a little easier when I went because the first couple years, it was pretty clear. It was Charlie Ergun and Dish and it was, you know, it was Comcast. Over time, that started a shift with Verizon, AT&T, we had a whole bunch of competitors. And you had to start thinking about it. And my goodness today, you know, you've got so many alternatives out there as to how you get your media. I think that'd be a really tough challenge for any CEO. You know, Mike is one of several guests I've had on over the years who spent time at PepsiCo. And let's face it, you just can't talk about leadership at PepsiCo without talking about the great Indra Nui. I've had the pleasure of working alongside Indra for years, and I love how she always strives to elevate others. From my perspective, one of the things that I 've gotten the most satisfaction, it's not an award, it's not giving them a little certificate or whatever. When I write letters to parents of some of my executives, and I tell the parents, what a great job their son or daughter is doing, that recognition is worth more than money, stock grants, hugs, tickets, anything. Because at the end of the day, and I go back to where I started, when your parents say to you, I am so proud of you. And your boss just wrote to me saying that you are awesome. And the look on their face, you know, is worth a million dollars. Listen to my entire conversation with Indra, all the way back on episode nine, here on How Leaders Lead. You know, we both worked for Craig Weatherup when he was at Pepsi, and he always described you as he said, you're one of the best negotiators he'd ever, ever been around. Do you have any rules for negotiation? Or what's your concept when you go into a negotiation? I appreciate Craig's compliment, but I'm not sure I ever felt that way when it was a directive he'd be negotiating with Kraft and Goodell and the NFL or anybody else. You know, I did have a couple of things. So one, I learned from Enrico, which is if you're doing an acquisition or buying anything, and I would say the same applied to our negotiations on content, know your walk away. You might not tell anybody, but you better know what your walk away is, first and foremost, when you go into it to avoid the emotion of the deal taken over. So nowhere you're going to draw the line and say, okay, I'm out. Number one, the second thing I did, and again, I learned this from a coach, Marty Selman, is I put my watch on my right wrist instead of my left, I'm left handed. It's on my left wrist, but I'd put it on my right wrist just slows you down in a discussion to breathe and listen to what's being said. And the third thing I learned was make sure you get the right question. I mean, at direct TV at one point, my guys were negotiating with Oprah, the Oprah network, and they weren't happy with how negotiations were going, and I remember they came into my office and I said to them, you guys are asking the wrong question and they looked at me like, what? I said, look, the question isn't, are we going to drop the Oprah network? Because I'm going to answer it for you right now. The answer is no, we're not. Okay, period, full stop. So therefore, the question is, how do I get the best price relative to Comcast or anybody else? So I may not like the price, but I want it to be competitive and fair. And so I think making sure your team is asking, because it's easy to get into the emotion of the moment, are they asking the right question and thinking hol istically about what you're trying to get to? You were direct TV for five years. You bought back half the stock, you know, the shareholder, you know, benefited greatly from your leadership. And then you end up selling direct TV for a great price to AT&T in 2015. You gave them this at the time, it was very high performing business, but the acquisition has been described by many as one of the worst acquisitions of all time. What was the biggest reason why direct TV failed under the AT&T umbrella? The world changed. Now, I've always felt when you're selling your business, you better, you only sell it once. So make sure you want to sell it and we had a lot of discussions with the board. And I was clear in my mind that for a couple of reasons, I was concerned about direct TV's future as a standalone business and streaming and not being able to turn it into an internet company. The cable guys could say, all right, I'm an internet company, I sell internet, I don't care about paid TV. I couldn't do that. We were solely a paid TV provider. And so I was really clear that it was time to sell if we had the right opportunity and the right offer. And you could say they overpaid for it. They didn't overpay for it relative to what it was trading at. I mean, I think we sold it eight times e-padah and we had been trading at six. So it wasn't that. I think it's just the world changed much faster than they ever realized. And to be honest with you, even I wouldn't have guessed that sports ratings would fall through the floor, that the media companies would be losing a billion dollars plus a year, each of them on streaming and not being able to figure out how to protect the core model that they had before. I 'd also say it's a bad luck. I mean, bad timing and bad luck more than anything. And it also makes you a little humble because you realize there was some good luck involved in my timing. Well, it sounds like you're pretty prescient. You're talking to the board about how, hey, the future could be really tough. And if we're ever going to sell it, this is probably the right time. And if we sell it, we got to give it to a huge competitor that can compete. And this is the time. So you're being a little humble here, I think. It seems like you had good timing for good reason. Well, you make your luck sometimes. But I'm also humble enough to realize, if I was trying to run it today, we wouldn't put the same performance up on the board. It's a tough, tough business and a tough business model. I totally agree with that. You led businesses that had to counter major consumer shifts. You had a huge decline in carbonated soft drinks, which we both weathered that storm as leaders. And then you went through the whole court cutting issue. How do you lead, Mike, when the wind is against your sail? I think that there are some differences. The first and foremost, you've got to be straight with your organization. I think you could say define reality, but you've got to be straight and yet you 've got to be optimistic and positive, right? You've got to provide people hope and a positive view of the future. But you also can't just ignore reality. And so it's a much trickier balance for a leader, I think, and how you both provide the positive sense of confidence and direction and where you're going. But at the same time, be honest with them about reality and what the challenges are. I mean, and that doesn't mean doom and gloom, but I mean being straight. Also being transparent and clear about what direction you're taking and why and where you need them to help. You know, this has been so much fun, Mike. And I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. So are you ready for this? Sure. Okay. What are the three words that best describe you? People would say smart, intense. And I hope they'd say caring too. Who would play you in a movie? Maybe Michael J. Fox, because he's short and I'm short. Speaking of movies, what is your favorite movie? Well, I just saw up in the hammer. That was terrific. But my all time favorite would be Dr. Chicago. I loved off in a hammer too. That was that's the best one I've seen in 10 years. Yeah. You know, if you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be ? I'd have loved to have been in the US Senate and been at politics, but not the way politics is these days. So what's your biggest pet peeve? You know, I'm probably not the most patient person in the world for folks that don't try hard. You don't have to be a genius. You got to put some sweat into it and work hard at stuff. Favorite soft drink? Pepsi. Favorite snack chip? Cool ranch Doritos. Favorite TV show? Mad Men. The best gift you ever received in education. If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Jazz piano. I played jazz piano. Something about you a few people would know. I played jazz piano and pop piano too. I thought that would be good. That's the end of the lightning round. Well done. That's great. You talk about what you call your 60 40 formula for leadership. Explain 60% self confident and 40% to be humble enough to know what you don't know and and be open to learning. From your experience, Mike, why do you think leaders derail ego? I once heard Callaway asked the same question for my chairman of PepsiCo and he said it's your ego. And I think you can derail for a lot of reasons. I mean, I think I usually have four of them. You get sideways with your peers or your team or your boss. You get blindsided by politics. You get the wrong strategy or you lose the culture that you want in the organization. But it's your ego that you got to manage. I know you have a great partnership with your wife Sue. What 's the best leadership advice she ever gave you? Listen, she would say, I don't listen. One of the things that I learned that you didn't, I wasn't aware of this, but you made for all the leadership off sites that you had. You made volunteering a big component of what you and your team did as part of that off site. Give us an example of what you did and what the outcome was. Well, when I went to DirecTV, we did some things with the Heart Association and some other things, but they weren't as directly applicable to the business. And I got involved with the LA partnership for schools, which because you couldn't do charter schools in LA, this is the politics. We did get them to agree to take the bottom third of the schools, the worst performing schools and let the private sector help, help provide money to pay principals more, whatever else. So I got pretty involved in that. Mayor Villa Raghosa was the mayor at the time and he was incredible to work with. And because that was such a good cause and it was local for us, because we were based in Los Angeles. I also found you develop better leaders. If you got people involved in a nonprofit situation where you can't tell everybody what to do, you actually have to listen, you have to learn a bit about humanity, you have to build empathy in a totally different environment. And it really clicked with the organization. So I think one off site, we ended up painting at inner city school. We got the painting, painted murals and painted rooms and did everything. And it was, I just realized it was reinforcing the culture and the values. And it was also developing talent at the same time. You know, you talk about the importance of having a hip pocket skill as you move up the ladder. And yours was obviously finance. You came up consulting and then finance work and strategy and you were a guru on that front. But a lot of people can't make that shift from being a finance person into a general manager role. And yet you were able to really become a great consumer marketer. And you know, that you made that the real rallying cry for your organization. What advice can you give to leaders who want to move into that general manager role, particularly from a finance perspective? Look, I majored in Russian and English literature. So I wasn't a finance guy coming out of college and I got a master's in international relations. So I learned all my finance at Arthur Anderson. But I think a lot of people that are in finance are really good with the numbers. They're not necessarily as good on the people side. And so I think the two things that I would say you can never learn enough about. One is strategy. You know, because you got to think holistically about the organization. If you're a general manager, you got to think about the enterprise as a whole. You got to think about the long term and the short term. And so thinking about strategy and I think the second is how you take others with you. It's your people skills, how you connect, show empathy. You know, people don't care what you know until they know you care. I mean, it 's basics. Last question for you here. If you had one piece of advice you'd give to any aspiring leader, what would it be? I think it'd be two things. I think one, integrity and character comes first. No question. But second in a world of change, you got to look around the corner and skate to where the puck is going to quote Gretzky. And in this world in particular, the change has come in so fast and furious. You've got to make sure, you know, what to keep and what to change. And that's a constant challenge. I got to ask you this while you talk about change. When Blockbuster turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix, did you ever see Netflix becoming what it is today? Certainly not back then. I mean, a friend of ours, both. Was the one who made that decision. Now, Reed Hastings says he never had an offer to buy the company. But who knows? I don't think anybody realized how fast. And by the way , it was sequential, David, technology change doesn't happen all at once. People forget that in the case of Netflix, they were sending out all those red envelopes until 2012. And it was not just the internet that unlocked it. It was a combination of the telecommunications industry doing 4G and 5G, which enabled you to do video streaming. It was compression technology that changed. So they were like three or four different innovations that all of a sudden unleashed video streaming like we're doing right now. And all of a sudden, you're in a whole different world. And Netflix, they pivoted themselves. And it's not that easy. Spotify spent a billion dollars trying to get into podcasts. And they should have talked to you first because they haven't done very well at it. Well, what's really interesting is that, you know, we're talking here about Netflix, a 11-year span, you know, I mean, that seems like, you don't think that's very long. But in today's world, that's an eternity. I mean, it really is in terms of what's happened. I talked to Reed and tried to get him to merge with DirecTV because I was looking for another strategy. But Reed was too smart for that. So, well, let me tell you something, Mike, you have it all. You are incredibly smart. You are a great believer in people. You understand the value of people. You can bring it all together. And that's why you're such a great leader at all these great companies that you work for and why you're such a great board member. And it's been great catching up with you. And congratulations on your tremendous career and success. Well, I appreciate it, David. I think as I've reflected back, though, for anybody who's an aspiring leader, first of all, I think anybody can learn to be a better leader. And they aren't just born with charisma or whatever else. You can learn to be a better leader by listening to podcasts like this. But the second thing I would say is resilience. I learned the hard way when my dad died at 50 of liver cancer and my mom was left with a $25,000 life insurance policy, what resilience and taking life one day at a time was really all about. And my dad was a hero to all of us, but my mom was the real hero. That's great. Thanks for sharing that. And thanks for giving me so much of your time. I appreciate it. You know, there's a reason why big companies like Bank of America and Whirlpool want Mike on their board. I mean, he's smart as a whip, and he clearly has so much insight into people. But he also is so resilient. He knows how to stay the course, even when things get tough. Now, listen, you may not ever face the kind of headwinds that Mike faced when he was a direct TV and the Pepsi Cola company, both brands and both categories under siege by competition. But the world is always changing. And it's your job as a leader to understand those changes and to help your team navigate them. It starts with constantly looking around corners for what's next. It also means you got to define the reality of a tough situation with your team, while also giving them a clear path forward and some hope for the future. And of course, even when a lot of external factors may be out of your control, you've got to look for what you can control, like how Mike really owned that customer experience at DirecTV and improved it. So this week, I want you to carve out some time to consider the ways that the landscape in your world may be changing. What threats could be on the horizon? This kind of thinking gets overlooked a lot in the day to day, but it's vital because let's face it, unexpected changes are always the part of life and leadership. But after the day, I hope you've got some tools and insights to lead through those ups and downs without losing your stride. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders understand the power of resilience in the changing world. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Paul Serbati, the Chairman CEO of Inspiriti, which is an all-in-one HR solution company that's really changed the HR game. Always being open to a new idea that can help build your skill set. Leadership is a matter of skills and experience and growing in your attitude and your manner of interaction with other people and that we all can get better every day. So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I may get a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]