Speaker 1: 0:11

To tee this up. We've heard incredible things of what is happening in the world with the 17, sustainability and what Ideagen is doing as the engine of those. We've heard all the different elements, but arguably, the glue that holds this all together is one word, and that word enables everything. That word is leadership, and so for this, you are going to hear from one of the iconic leaders and I've interviewed 1,100 of the iconic leaders and you know I've interviewed 1,100 of the top CEOs. Peter is unique. He is what is called a turnaround CEO from Remington, black, decker, claro, all of these and, of course, marvel. He is the person who created this. So you are going to learn all about leadership. So let's start off with. You have these 32 leadership principles.

Speaker 2: 1:12

Talk about that. So about 20 years ago I was the CEO of Marvel and we were doing well and a group asked me to give a speech about leadership. And it was interesting because I hadn't really thought speech about leadership. And it was interesting because I hadn't really thought much about leadership. Actually, for me, life had been just one adventure after the other, kind of you know what's over the next hill I'm dying to see, and so I didn't really think about it. And I had a long flight 11 hour non-stop to China before I had to give this talk. And as I'm getting on the plane I'm getting nervous because what am I going to say, you know? And something happened on the plane I don't know if they slipped me something or whatever, but I was in a trance for nine hours and I came up with what at that point was what I called the 28 essentials of superhero leadership, and this was all things that I thought I had learned about leadership in my life. And my life has been fairly varied and I might talk about that briefly. And so when I gave the speech, then a lot of people called me can you talk to my group? And my group and my group, and then Harvard Business School wrote a case study about Marvel and I was in the first paragraph and the next thing I know all these MBA programs around the world who have bought that case became Harvard's largest selling case in history Wanted me to come and talk to them about leadership, which was a lot of fun actually, and so I've been doing these talks for over 20 years now. The 28 essentials are now 32. I've only added four in 20 years and so on, but these are behaviors, instincts, points of view on leadership. They're all one-liners. I have a copy with me If you're interested. It'll take you about two minutes to read the entire thing, but there are things that I really believe in and have seen demonstrated in other great leaders that I've been engaged with over a period of time.

Speaker 2: 3:37

I really started learning about leadership. Looking back, I'm a Vietnam veteran. I did two tours in the war as a Navy officer on a guided missile destroyer and I was privileged to serve under some great senior officers and great senior enlisted men, because we were, of course, in the Vietnam War. This was my first experience to enter countries outside of the United States and during that time we visited virtually all of the companies in Asia, australia, new Zealand. I came to love traveling and meeting people from a different culture. It became very clear to me as a young Navy officer that there was a lot to be learned, that we in America don't have it all right and there's a lot of good things to learn from other cultures around the world. And I have been addicted, I guess for a very long time now, and that's one of the reasons I'm sitting in this room. It's the international scope of this organization and what it's trying to accomplish.

Speaker 2: 4:47

A very complex situation with leadership. I've done seven turnarounds in my career. Everyone wants to talk about Marvel and we can do that, but I've also done three in Europe and they're much harder to turn around a business that's in trouble in Europe because of the social laws. But I had to adapt also to different cultures. The American parachuting into Bologna, italy, is always an interesting challenge. Or parachuting into Bonn, germany, or into Windsor, outside of London so luckily I was prepared for those things because of my past experiences. Or into Windsor, outside of London, so luckily I was prepared for those things because of my past experiences.

Speaker 2: 5:30

The only way this world is going to get better we have less good leadership in the world than maybe ever in human history. I know that that is a big statement, but just turn on your television, just talk to a friend or your family and I'm not getting political here. We are just lacking, and I'm very concerned about the young people. They are not learning leadership. You know I'm defining young as 30 and under and also I talk about you know why they're not learning leadership, and I also have a podcast starting the second season shortly which is devoted to these issues around leadership, and I interview people who are proven superb leaders and they talk about their failures. They talk about growing up. What was it growing up that started to prep them for leadership Leaders, great leaders, good leaders, are never born, never. They're always made, and so what made them? What was it? And so I think there's a lot to be learned from that, and I will now shut up.

Speaker 1: 6:49

Oh, this is great. So let's get to the core of this. So when you are in a challenging situation, you have to make a decision. Walk us through what goes through your mind, because this is really about CEO wisdom and how a leader thinks, and you've had the honor of really turning around seven great organizations. Talk about one situation you were in and what was going through, how you made the decision of what you were going to do.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Well, first of all, all the turnarounds I've gone to, the biggest single problem was leadership in the past, and I like to say that the culture of the organization was bankrupt. The company may not have been financially bankrupt, but the culture was completely wrong, and anyone in this room in my position all you would have needed as I needed was two weeks on the job to start to sense what was wrong. I may not have it all after only two weeks, but what was wrong, and so I was always very committed to writing the culture of these organizations, the value system, how people dealt with each other, how they dealt with customers, how they dealt with anyone, how they dealt with their colleagues. What did the company consider to be important to the company?

Speaker 2: 8:18

If you go to a consumer products company and 25% of the sales every year have to be new products and no one wants to go in new products because they've had a bunch of failures, that's a cultural problem, because you want your best people in new products, marketing, sales, production, quality control and on and on. You want the best there, but they don't want to go there because the culture is backwards, because they had some mistakes and past leadership fired a bunch of people All companies have missed. The greatest companies have missed on new products. It's the nature of the beast. So that would be one example going to a company. I can give you two.

Speaker 1: 9:01

Well, how about so? When you took over Marvel, it was really bankrupt. They're coming out of bankruptcy. They only had $3 million cash very little and they didn't have real estate or anything. And it was stockless, trading at 96 cents a share. So you had your back up against the wall, which is where people usually find themselves and that's where the greatest ideas come from. And what went through your mind when you started thinking of well, we happen to have all these IP characters. You know they've been dormant for three decades. What went through your mind? Did you read from someone? Did you speak with someone? Was it your board? How did you come up with the idea that let's make movies?

Speaker 2: 9:43

Well, first of all, I can't take credit for making movies. The first film, which was X-Men 1, which came out in 2000, was already filming when I showed up, so I cannot take credit for getting in film and, frankly, if all of you had been there and looked at these characters and the potential to create franchises, you would have been on board. There's no doubt about it. Okay, so you always need good people, but I would say the culture at Marvel, because of the bankruptcy and other past issues with leadership, was way too conservative. This is a company that should be the opposite of conservative.

Speaker 1: 10:31

Everyone was trying to save money on paperclips, on everything, right, Peter?

Speaker 2: 10:35

Yeah, it was just so wrong on many levels. And so you know, I would tell you. People ask me why did? Why was Marvel so successful? We went from bankruptcy to selling the business to Disney 10 years later for $4.5 billion. How did we do that?

Speaker 2: 10:57

And they may expect me to say we made great movies. We did make very good movies, but that wasn't the reason. Oh, we made great comic books, yes, but they weren't when I showed up. But you know, that wasn't the reason, it was the culture. And the culture was the following we are going to change the rules of the game. We're not going to make movies the way the big Hollywood studios do. We're not going to publish comics the way the other competitors do. We're going to change the rules of the game.

Speaker 2: 11:33

And we had, you know, hollywood was very upset with us because in many cases, we just wouldn't play the game. Here's an example Hollywood would like all the major characters to be to the castings, to be major, well-known, high-priced actors and actresses. We felt that actually all we wanted was great actors and actresses, but the heroes who were behind a mask, most of the time anyway, were the ones that were going to make the movie Hollywood at that time, and they still do a little of this. They have a phrase so-and-so will make your movie. You just have them cast So-and-so will make your movie, which is totally ridiculous, by the way, but that was part of the Hollywood culture. So if you're casting, your first movie is, you know, basically is an adventure movie with a lot of characters in it and your characters are mutants in real life in the stories, and you should cast Tom Cruise in your movie as one of the characters, and so on.

Speaker 2: 12:53

And you know we wouldn't do it and we did this on all movies. Spider-man was similar. Nobody really knew Tobey Maguire. He was the perfect cast. So you know, that's one example of changing the rules of the game. But we may start our own studio in 2005, marvel Studios. Prior to that, we were working with big studios as partners and no one believed we could be successful. How could we possibly make movies better than big studios?

Speaker 1: 13:31

Well, the rest is history, because we did it all differently yeah, uh, I'm gonna go back to culture because that's not something people probably expected to hear here. But you have I hope I don't embarrass you on this story but you remember one morning when you were walking in and you sort of walked past the secretary and everything and, based on that, talk about what that happened and how the leader's role can impact the culture so significantly.

Speaker 2: 14:00

Yeah, and this is particularly true of turnarounds, because when you are the new boss walking through the door, everyone is watching you. They're watching your body language. They're scared because they're afraid they're going to lose their jobs and some may. It's very intense and so you have to be very aware of that. The first of my leadership essentials super early is one called show positive energy from minute one. That's exactly how it reads, and all of these came from my experiences or watching other people, and this one came from the following story which robert is talking about.

Speaker 2: 14:44

So I was in my first month, uh, at a turn around. I would come in the office every day and greet the receptionist. Let's call her Irma. Irma was about 70 years old. She's a very nice white haired lady. She'd been with the company probably for 30 years. This is a multinational company. She knows everybody, including the people overseas. She knows everybody, including the people overseas, okay, and so I, every day, I made it a point to greet her and talk about something nice briefly and then whisk off into my office.

Speaker 2: 15:18

And one day I had a little tiff with my wife, which undoubtedly was my fault. By the way, my wife is perfect. You shouldn't have done it. Yeah, I know, I know, I, I know. But so and I was a little grumpy and I came into the office and didn't acknowledge her, walked right by her, didn't look at her. An hour later, the head of HR comes to me and says Peter, we have a major problem. There are rampant rumors we're going to have layoffs. Now I had been telling the organization rumors we're going to have layoffs. Now I had been telling the organization we weren't going to have layoffs, weren't planned at all, and so I asked them to find out how this started. And it turned out it was Irma. Irma had decided that, since I was a grump, something was wrong going on and so something bad must be happening. And then, talking to her channel of people in company oversight, they decided as a group it must be layoffs. And I had to spend the next month working with the organization to convince them, reconvince them, that we weren't having layoffs. I could have been doing something much more productive. That was my fault. I blew it.

Speaker 2: 16:37

There are times, as a leader, and not just turnarounds, when you get bad news, unexpected bad news whatever. You, as a leader, you have to be an actor, you have to be an actress, you have to be up, no matter what the news is and, frankly, at turnaround you're going to find at least I have after seven turnarounds it's always worse than you think it is when you get inside and unlearn, if you will, the truth. You do all the work looking inside from the out to try to determine whether you even want to take the job, but in the end, no matter how much work you do, you're outside and you're going to have some negative surprises. You have to be a cheerleader. You have no choice. There's no option.

Speaker 1: 17:27

When we're talking about being a cheerleader, let's talk about something that IdeaGen is always talking about and we've been hearing about it all throughout the day which is the next generation, the future leaders, and I know you have your. You've a great during season two of your podcast on leadership, which is, I guess, you go to superhero podcast.

Speaker 2: 17:48

No, Peter Cuneo dot com.

Speaker 1: 17:50

Peter Cuneo dot com. Okay, but here is the question. You have already. You've told me that there is a mistake that you see happening with the next generation of leadership, and just talk through what could be done to make that so we have the people who are leading our world.

Speaker 2: 18:11

Well, in deference to the last speakers in psychiatry, I'm going to try to make this simple, oversimplified. Let's first talk about why young people are not learning leadership. The simple reason is we learn leadership, which is instinct. It's instinct on how to work with other people, with a diversity of other people. How do we? How do we learn that? It's because you can only learn it by face-to-face experience with other human beings. You can read a book, you can listen to me, you can do a lot of things and maybe you'll pick up some tips that are helpful. But in the end, you must have diverse experiences with a diversity of people, diverse geography and so on to learn leadership. That's the only way you get instinct.

Speaker 2: 19:09

Zoom calls, phones etc. Are the enemy of learning leadership. People will say things, as we all know, on the internet. They'd never say to your face Okay. And the kids today have no defenses. They are not thin skinned, they have no skin and it's not their fault. There's nothing wrong with these kids per se.

Speaker 2: 19:32

So another problem we have is over parenting and we have a culture, particularly in the US I suspect it may exist elsewhere in the world we have what I'll call the comparison culture. Parents are comparing their kids to the kids next door, to their friends, to the other kids in school, whatever it is, and they are over-managing their lives. They're basically determining where you're going to school, who your friends will be, what sports you will play, what instrument you might play, whatever. The kids have absolutely no time to themselves. You will play what instrument you might play, whatever. The kids have absolutely no time to themselves. I learned more by lying around in my bed when I was 12 years old, thinking about life and people I met and what have you, than anything else. The kids have nothing today. Now, these are well-meaning parents, well-meaning grandparents. I'm a grandparent. I have six great-grandkids that I'm happy to say are really doing well. But it's sad.

Speaker 2: 20:40

You know how human beings basically survive. I'll give you very simple and I know again, this is not a psychiatrist, it's probably more complicated than this. Here's what I have observed. The way we survive is simply to learn our strengths and our weaknesses. We all have weaknesses and we were human. We all have strengths. The kids today never learn them and when we learn them, we have a choice. On the weaknesses, Work to get better, which might be appropriate. Other situation avoid that might be appropriate. It's really kind of, but the kids today are not learning this. They think they have no weaknesses. I'm not exaggerating the stories I hear all the time from parents and school. We talked about schools.

Speaker 1: 21:31

Guilty as charged. Keep going.

Speaker 2: 21:34

Schools, you know, are having a very tough time with this. We're losing teachers, good teachers, they can't take it anymore. Oh, you got a bad grade. I'm going this is a parent talking to the child. I'm going to go talk to your teacher. It's the teacher's fault. Oh, you didn't make the elite soccer team, the elite lacrosse team, the elite, whatever team. It's the teacher's fault. Oh, you didn't make the elite soccer team, the elite lacrosse team, the elite, whatever team. It's the coach's fault. I'm going to go talk to the coach. That goes on every day.

Speaker 2: 22:03

I go to a restaurant and there's a five-person family, three kids and the parents, sitting at a table. They're not even talking to each other and the kids have those you know to keep them quiet at a table. They're not even talking to each other and the kids have those you know to keep them quiet. They have the little tabletop things they can play games on. They're not even talking to each other. So, and there's such strength in diversity and this is another reason I love this organization okay, because it my experiences with diversity have been phenomenally great. Virtually all of the success I've had in life came from diverse experiences and learnings and people of diversity that I worked with, that supported me, made me look good, and so you know the greatest gift my parents gave myself and my siblings we never heard a single word about another human being based on their color, their religion, their ethnic background, their sexual orientation. All we heard was there's good people and bad people in the world. You have to figure out who's who. So I grew up with none of those sacks of cement on my back that people that have these prejudices have, and and it's sad in a way, but so I was always open to to everybody.

Speaker 2: 23:37

My mother was a working mother. I grew up thinking all women work. My mother's an EMT for 30 years. After she couldn't do it physically anymore, she was the dispatcher for 10 years. So I that's what I grew up with the a working mother who kicked butt frankly. You know. She would come to the house I'm 16 years old. She'd load me in the ambulance in the back with her. She usually worked 4 to 12, and we'd go out on calls. I saw my mother in action on calls. So you know, and I just thought well, this is. You know, I was amazed when I first started to work how many people had males had trouble with working women. But there's such strength and diversity. If you want to be successful, surround yourself with all the different ideas that come from different sources. Give you power and you pick the ones you like, of course, but you want to hear them. You don't want everybody to be the same. Sorry, you got me wound up. You know what. You know you slipped something in my coffee because you know clearly.

Speaker 1: 24:58

This is what I want to say when you're thinking about leadership, what leadership is about? More than anything, it's telling the truth and speaking. What you believe and what you're noticing in Peter is he's going to say something, no matter how unpopular it is. He's calling me a bad dad now, for you know, never telling my kids their role. But he's right, he's telling the truth. That's the one thing.

Speaker 1: 25:22

The second thing that you've heard is everything is about experience and it's empirical, and you can't be a great leader unless you are connected with others and experiencing good and bad. And then the third part is making your own decision, and so I believe our time is up. I know that IdeaGen they're hitting over a quarter of a million people with all of this, and I just want to thank you, peter, and I want to thank all of IdeaGen for bringing together the top issues and understanding, when we put leadership at the center, we can drive success through every one of them. I was so inspired about the human trafficking, which is, to me, one of the most horrific things, about mental health, about sustainability, all the issues we've talked about. So, on that, do you have one final, if you could think of one word that would sum up the concept, peter, of leadership. What would that one word be?

Speaker 2: 26:31

One word no, I can't do it. Okay, I'll give you number 18.

Speaker 1: 26:37

Number 18. Oh, you're going to do number 18?

Speaker 2: 26:40

I'm doing number 18 on the 32 essentials, because I often get asked in these things because I can't obviously talk in depth about 32 in an hour. The best I can do is three or four. But I'm often asked okay, what's the hardest one of all the 18 to accomplish? What's the toughest one? And I'm going to read it to you Embrace true emotional maturity, the realization and the internalization that you can't make everyone happy. You can't accomplish turnarounds fearing others' opinions. Now I do turn around what we're talking about.

Speaker 2: 27:20

But any leader is faced with a situation that they have to change. I don't care if you're the head of the PTA, I don't care if you're in government, in religion, in the military. We can go through all the different. It doesn't have to be business. You're going to have to affect change, to improve things, and it's very hard. And most leadership failure comes from the fact that the leaders can't bring themselves to be unpopular and make difficult decisions.

Speaker 2: 27:55

Last story, real quick. So one of the turnarounds I did I walked in and this previous CEO was still in the office. Usually they're long gone and he's an older man and he'd been in the company again a long time and been the CEO for like 20 years and he shook my hand and he said to me you know, peter, I'm glad you're here. And I'm thinking, no, you can't be glad I'm here, you know. But I said to him well, why? And he said to me you'll make the changes I couldn't make. I have to give him credit. He understood. And I said what do you mean? And he said I couldn't fire my friends. It had become family after 20 years. They just couldn't do it. And leadership, in the end, the key word I will leave you with. There is a key word in my definition of leadership, but I won't tell you the whole definition. I'll just tell you the key word to be a successful leader Courage, courage.

Speaker 1: 29:10

There you have it. Thank you, Peter.