Jeremy Weisz 6:51
Go as long as you want Dave
Dave Ulrich 6:53
He retired at age 55, from social service in the government, and decided to do a daily bread run. So every day he take his truck, and I have a picture of him in his truck in my house. And he go to the grocery stores where we lived in Kansas City pick up daily bread and fruit and give it to homeless shelters and places around the city. So the last 20 years of his life, every time I visited, he’s, hey, Dave, we’re going to do the bread run, I don’t want to do the bread run. But I mean, you had a grandfather who shaped you, by example, my father shaped by example, and my mother. And I think that picture of my dad going to a grocery store, that’s dad going to piggy weekly or something, and picking up day old food and taking it to those in need. at his funeral. There were hundreds of people from communities around Kansas City. And we decided to give everybody a coupon to McDonald’s in honor of my dad was very bizarre to me, by the way, that’s not a traditional funeral. So those I think are and then obviously a picture of family and next generation. So I think those life changing moments of idea icons, and people in our lives, really shaped who we are. And I think I love your idea about relationships, I relate, you know, relationships go across time and place, you don’t have to be in the same place. You don’t have to be in the same time. I’m assuming the relationship you have with your grandfather, even though I’m sure he’s passed, some time ago, that relationship is still part of who you are. And, and I think relationships move. I think two things pass over time in place. It’s relationships and ideas. And hopefully, both of those have been part of who I am. So
Jeremy Weisz 8:30
yeah, no, thanks for sharing that. And, you know, the lessons learned from your dad, one on you know, giving back. And you take that throughout your career, you know, in what you do. What is is there another lesson you learn? From your dad, observing him or your mom?
Dave Ulrich 8:48
Yeah, yeah, well, service and giving back is just my parents mantra. They, in fact, I da when I was eight, 9 10, I got tired of that, you know, let’s, why don’t we just stay home instead of going out to serve? And why do we have all these strange people staying in our house every other night? But But I hope we’re passing that on to our kids. The other is to answer the question, and I think the most important, I’ve been asked once in a while to do a commencement speech at universities for because they couldn’t find anyone else probably. But and and it’s when I coach and I have the privilege periodically of coaching. My first coaching question and the question I raised that the commencement speeches, can I answer the question, What do I want? What do I want? Because I think that question helps us recognize our strengths, our passions, our interest. In my brief interaction with you, Jeremy, you know what you want. You want to you want to foster relationships to give meaning in people’s lives. Now I put words on your ideas, but
Jeremy Weisz 9:46
sounds better when you say it. Yes.
Dave Ulrich 9:49
It means more when you do it. But I want to keep thinking about what I want and I value two things one is serving and helping others and for me, the other value I’m driven by is learning Learning, what can I do? There are some people in my field, and you’ve interviewed them, and I won’t don’t name anyone here, I don’t want to get in trouble. You can tell the time of day by their talk, because they give the same talk for 25 years. I mean, you know, oh, it’s this joke. Oh, I’m ready for it. It’s almost like going to, I was gonna say a Paul Simon concert, but I gave myself, you know what the song is going to do? So you love it? Well, that’s not me. I like to have 20 to 30% new material every year, which means my stuff’s going to be clunky and Rocky, and, and I don’t know if it’s gonna work or not. And I try to joke out and it doesn’t work twice. And I say, Okay, I won’t do that. But I love to serve and give back which you get. And I think my parents, my mom is 85 went to China with her sister friend, at 85, with no tour guide, and I said, Mom, what are you doing going to China, these two older women, and she said, I want to learn about China. Well, give me a break. That’s Anyway, those are my kind of core two things that I I hope organize my world around, giving back creating value for others and learning.
Jeremy Weisz 11:09
Dave, I’m curious, you know, growing up, what did you want to do? And then you went on to get your masters in the PhD in philosophy? What did you want to do that change? So what did you start off wanting to do? And then when you get further education, what did you want to do?
Dave Ulrich 11:26
Great question. You are such a good interviewer. I knew you would be when I looked you up. But uh, I always, for some reason, wanted to be a lawyer.
Jeremy Weisz 11:34
So there really, that was the last thing I would think you would say, actually,
Dave Ulrich 11:37
well, me too. But I didn’t know any better
Jeremy Weisz 11:40
growing up, you want be
Dave Ulrich 11:41
growing up. And then I had a course at university called and somebody got me to take the courses of flute called organizational behavior. ob decades ago, when it was a new field, the professor just somehow got me. And he said, I’m not going to tell you what to write what to do what to think about. And I was an English major, because I think writing is a great discipline. And I think ideas are powerful, and it was pre law school. But Show me what you’ve learned about organization. So look at the organization where you worship, where you work, where you live, where you play your family, go to a movie, look at the organization and write an essay. So I was studying English, I still remember I was doing a book we were reading Paradise Lost by Milton. So I wrote an essay about Paradise Lost chapter two, the source of power, the basil Bob had, and I I’m going to confess here a cheating a little bit, I turned it into my English professor, and I turned it into my Organizational Behavior professor. The English professor said, That’s weird. I wrote another one. Oh, book, The ideal organization, man, William foot, why old book. And I said, organ is the ideal organization man in today’s world, and I turned it into bolts, right? Sort of cheated. My English professor said, that’s really weird. My ob professor said, that’s great. do another one. That semester, I wrote, I think 1215 page papers every week. And it could I have a disease of hypergraph. Yeah, I love to write. It’s a it’s an addiction. And he called me and he said, Dave, I didn’t tell you anything was assigned. You’ve written all these papers, what are you gonna do I want to go to law school. He said, Don’t waste your time, come into organizational behavior. So I remember I’ll finish this story. I called my mom and dad and I said, I’m going to change from law school to ob. And at first I said, oh, we’re sorry, you’re not a lawyer, but you’re going to be a doctor,
Jeremy Weisz 13:29
delivering babies.
Dave Ulrich 13:31
It’s not as high a status as chiropractic. D, but that was for you. Yeah, you’re going to be a doctor? And I said, No. It’s called organizational behavior. And they said, What is that? And I said, I don’t have a clue. I get to look at organizations and try to figure out how they work. Then I got married, I kept studying organizations. My wife has a very good psychologist, PhD from Michigan Go Blue. Again, we’ve got to say that three times. And she said, Dave, do you have OCD? And I said, I don’t think so. And he said, Dave, it’s called organization Compulsive Disorder. Every time you go somewhere, you want to improve the organization, you go to dinner, you call the manager over and say, I can improve your productivity 5% Let me tell you how you could organize the kitchen and the tables. I’ve given more advice to airlines. I wrote a note to the CEO of an airline about how they could improve and he took me off his preferred flyer list.
Jeremy Weisz 14:28
What was your What was your advice,
Dave Ulrich 14:30
a whole bunch of things about staffing and getting on flights and just a whole host of things about caring about the frequent travelers and managing costs. And I think one of them was, by the way, thank you. I forgot that letter. If you’re late 30 minutes because those of us who fly a lie being late is a pain because it affects you double my frequent flyer miles. So I’m a frequent flyer I get 1000 miles on the trip, I get 2000 if you’re late if you’re late in our Triphala if you’re late over two hours, Ours quadruped below. And then I’m starting to cheer for somebody to be late, you know, oh, yeah, I’m gonna get another 1000 miles. So, by the way, they didn’t do any of that.
Jeremy Weisz 15:10
I’m surprised he didn’t invite you. He didn’t did the person respond or, or not at all.
Dave Ulrich 15:18
He responded, and actually we had some conversations and that I pushed pretty hard. One of the things I’ve learned in one of my failures is I sometimes push beyond the other person’s willingness to engage. And it’s kind of like a chiropractor over exercising some muscles. But I’ve had that failure happen more than what
Jeremy Weisz 15:40
we’re trying to help. You know,
Dave Ulrich 15:42
I am, but I realize helping. Remember, my goal is to serve value is not defined by me, it’s by the receiver. And if I come on too strong, and they turn off all my ideas, yeah, then I’m not creating a value. So I’ve tried to learn to moderate my recommendations. I still have OCD. But it’s under control. Most days, if I if you and I went to a restaurant in Chicago somewhere, I would control myself
Jeremy Weisz 16:05
can’t help yourself.
Dave Ulrich 16:06
Yeah, well, I would control myself and not give too much advice to the to the manager owner. Anyway, that’s Thank you for letting me relive some of those experiences.
Jeremy Weisz 16:16
That’s really interesting. I love I mean, because everyone is probably cheering at this point. Like Dave. Yeah. What else do you recommend that airlines do? Was there any other that applies to let me give an example
Dave Ulrich 16:28
that I just feel like, we’ve got to use our resources to help others. I was working with this airline in a city and it doesn’t matter what airline it happened on a Sunday morning, there was a major snowstorm. Could have been Chicago could have been Detroit, it doesn’t Milwaukee, it doesn’t matter in the Midwest. And as a result, planes couldn’t take off, they couldn’t leave the gate. So planes couldn’t land, but they didn’t land and they were stuck on the runway. This is a crisis. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s a major crisis. And the CEO is in another city. Boy, I’m trying not to name the airline because that doesn’t help anybody. But the CEO is in another city a couple hours away, is a church on Sunday morning, finds out this happened Saturday night. So 789 am, there’s people backed up in the airport, it’s causing horrible problems. People can’t get to the airport as employees. Because of the snowstorm. The CEO finds out about one o’clock, and and starts issuing orders and saying do this, do that, do this do that to try to take care of people. On Monday morning, I had a call with the CEO in and he said, Look how I respond. I said, Why the heck Didn’t you get on an airplane? Why don’t you get on an airplane during an emergency call at one o’clock and say at the airport, one hour in city B that was not the effected city a, we’re gonna fly in. And while we’re flying, I want blankets and food. I want the executives of this company to be in that airport sleeping with pass at night that came on taking care of passengers who have to spend the night in the airport, and we’re going to give food. And he said, Well, that’s not my job. And I thought, yeah, that is your job. You know, and you have an airplane, you could do it and and people were stuck on the runway for 610 12 hours with toilets plugging out because they couldn’t get to a gate. I think you’ve experienced that you drive a little stair step up and you walk off the gate, get in a bus and even with a snowstorm, you go to the thing. Yeah, we were told that that was risky, and the safety hazards and the ice. And I said, you know, when there’s a crisis, it’s an opportunity to create a new identity. And you missed an opportunity. Sunday at four o’clock, you could have been in that airport, you could have spent the night giving out blankets and foods, you could have got everybody off the airplanes, I don’t know where they would have gone but but those are the kinds of things I want to signal to executives. We have just faced the worst crisis, at least in most of our lifetime, with COVID coupled with political and social injustice and all these mix of crises. Instead of being threatened by him, why don’t we seize the opportunity to create something new? And that’s kind of that learning agenda that you asked me to talk about? By the way, soon after that he said, yeah, those are good ideas. I think I’ll go elsewhere for advice.
Jeremy Weisz 19:18
Dave you know I want to stick on that that’s a really powerful thing, which is crisis is an opportunity create a new identity, and you don’t have to name companies or people but what have you seen right now, you know, with the pandemic and all the social justice, everything happened. Any any examples you’ve seen of the crisis is created help come some companies have risen to the occasion and created a new identity.
Dave Ulrich 19:46
Let me just give a couple quick wins. And I bet you’ve seen him as well. I mean, you’ve talked to so many people. The first one that comes to mind and there’s a lot of them. Hotels and lodging is devastated. I mean, some industries are booming. I wish I about Amazon and Tesla and zoom stock a year ago, my studio with my office would look better. But hotels airlines is struggling MGM, Las Vegas owns a whole bunch of casinos and lodging. That’s what they do. Well, nobody’s coming to Las Vegas. I mean, you can’t drive for a year and so their heart. So what the executive said is, what are the core competencies we’ve got? What are we good at doing? and lodging is one of them. And gaming is one of them. You know, the other thing we do is we do food. So suddenly MGM starts doing with Uber and others distribution of food all over Las Vegas. So if you want food, our kitchens will now not surprise our guests, but they’ll supply people in Las Vegas Call up order food we’ll do we’ll do it outsource we’ll do an Uber Eats. I’ve seen other companies in our business in podcast and others move from doing a in person events. Chris Rainey in HR Leaders is one example. Chris used to manage and organize in person events. He’s now doing events, through webinars and podcasts in really creative ways. And so I’ve just seen a lot of that kind of creativity begin to pop up.
Jeremy Weisz 21:11
Yeah. You know, I was talking to Tom Stewart the other day, and we were talking about you. And one of the things you did he still it really influenced them. And and maybe someday if you go on his podcast, you guys can have a separate conversation. But I wanted to bring up It makes me think of when you’re working with executives or students, what is what are they remember 10 2030 years later? And I’ll tell you, I love to tell the story about Tom was talking about where you put people’s different company’s core values up at the back of the room? You know what I’m talking about? Yeah,
Dave Ulrich 21:49
yeah, it’s fine. Let me just tell That’s right. Mostly, I got the privilege and I’m honored to be on the faculty of the Ross Business School Go Blue. That’s the third time we’ve set it. We have executives come in. So I don’t work with degree students for many years. And I often say to them, put up the core values in the back of the room or your leadership competencies. And don’t put your name, can you name that company? And they can’t. what we ended up doing is generic stuff. I value innovation, collaboration, integrity, Wow, I can’t imagine a company that values that. One of the things around that value that I had those two stools, the value in service, around value is value is defined by the receiver, not the giver. That’s been a premise for decades for me. So the goal of a set of values is to create value in the marketplace. How do your values signal to your customers that you have a differentiation from somebody else? So what I love to do is to say what would a customer say innovation means to them? How would a customer defined collaboration? How would a customer defined service? I’ll give one quick example. Again, they hesitate the name companies, but the principle is so cool. A company said let me show you our values are number one value, we want to be the most profitable in our industry. Number two, we want innovation, we want collaboration. And I said let me give you a test. Go to your best customers or your your desired customers and say these are our values. What do you think? Well, you go to our customer, our number one value is to be the most profitable in the industry. No, that doesn’t really work for me. That means you’re going to charge obscene price every time you can. And they said, Wow, is that the filter for values? Yeah, the value of values is what it creates in the marketplace. So take the other two, what does innovation mean to you? And I love that simple idea of saying it’s not about what we do. It’s how what we do will help others leadership, leadership. I’m gonna get in trouble here to make a silly point. Leadership is not about authenticity. Leadership is about creating authenticity and others leadership is not about your power. It’s empowering others. It’s not about building on your strengths. It’s using your strengths to strengthen others. And when you take that I call it outside in approach that value is your show. You’re your spouse or your friends or your partner. Jeremy, how was your show today? The answer is not what you think. No offense, the answer is How did my guest I guess, how did my listeners respond? Well, for me, that’s such a powerful premise. When I give my wife a gift, who defines the value of the gift? Not me. When I was first married, I get her tickets to sporting events. Let’s go see the cubs. You know and her comment would be well you know, enjoy yourself. Know the values define and she does the same. I mean, that picture on the back I’ll show you something real quick. You like the personal. That picture on the back in my room that one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten. Here’s the picture is my kids bought me made me a book they made about 10 pictures My dad. And so this is your and so I can now sit down with those grandkids and say this is your great grandpa rich. Oh, that’s him with his truck doing his daily food. That’s him in the picture in the background. I now get it by the way, that’s my grandpa, my dad when he was old and tired. That’s me now. What an incredible book.
Jeremy Weisz 25:19
That’s amazing, because now
Dave Ulrich 25:21
I have a picture book of my dad. And even some of his drawings. He was a lunatic of some dimension. But it’s so nice. And that was one of the best gifts I’ve ever had. Because I can remember my dad and his slogans and some of the things he did. It’s really cool. The value of that gift is not that my kids did. It’s what it means to me. So that when I sit down with my grandkids, I get to introduce them to their grandfather.
Jeremy Weisz 25:48
I love it. I’m curious, your favorite authors books outside of your own because when I when I review your work, Dave and and I’m curious to what do what do people what are considered the most popular books if you’ve written you’ve written over 30 books, your your work and your philosophies remind me a lot of John Wooden I don’t know if you it’s one of my favorite people, authors, leaders of all time. And you just remind me a lot your work reminds me a lot of John Wooden’s work in that sense. Who are some of your books start with your books? Like what are what are the most popular books that people enjoy?
Dave Ulrich 26:28
I I’d rather not go to the books, I’d rather go to the ideas.
Jeremy Weisz 26:32
Okay, good.
Dave Ulrich 26:34
One of the things I feel good about it? Well, I should say you’d say what’s the books I’ve read, I’m looking at my desk. This is the book I read, which is scripture, I I’m willing to say that in a public way. without pushing that on anyone I find I find values in the legacy in the Old Testament, the Muslim, the Jewish, whatever tradition you come from, there are great stories there that are that are meaningful, but I love in books to find a few ideas that will translate and one of the things I feel good about I’ve been able to write about leadership. What does it mean to become a more effective leader? And again, the theme is, leadership is not what I do. It’s how would I do helps others do what they do better? I’ve been able to write about talent. What do you do to get the best out of your people? I love the work. You mentioned earlier Topgrading Brad Smart, who kind of founded some of that. And yeah, how do you help people fulfill their potential? My favorite topic, in most cases is organizations. How do you rethink and redefine the organization where you live in work that OCD, compulsive? And then the fourth area is human resources. So how do you build the HR agenda in a company to deliver what we call it human capability, talent, leadership and organization. And I hope the ideas are fresh. There are some authors I read and I’ve read their first three books and I go, I can read number four and five right now i mean is it’s almost like watching an episode, I shouldn’t confess this, I sometimes watch TV. And I’ve watched a television show that’s popular. And my if somebody watches this in 10 years, they’ll not know it, but NCIS, which is a really fun escape show. And it’s always fun to know how many minutes before I know the end of the story, because the plot is always the same. But I still watch it because it’s a great escape. But uh, but I think I hope my books and talent leadership organization in HR bring a set of fresh ideas around that creation of value for others, and some fresh ways of thinking. That’s my hope, as I as I tried to keep on writing, and pushing
Jeremy Weisz 28:34
I want to talk about patterns of ideas. When we were talking before the interview I was I said, you know, you’ve had this amazing breath this career, I’d love to talk about some of the organizations you’ve gone into and helped. And you’re like, there’s so many. And like, there’s actually patterns that you see when you’re helping your organization. So I’d love for you to talk about a few of the patterns like common patterns that you see when helping organizations.
Dave Ulrich 29:03
The one pattern that again, it’s really scary to have a career and have one major idea. By the way, my PhD decades ago was in numerical taxonomy. If anyone knows what it is, I’ll send them a free book, if anyone cares, I’ll send them to taxonomy is the science of simplicity. It was in math and statistics. And how do you take complicated phenomena and come up with simple and I that’s been my career is how do you simplify leadership organization, talent, HR. So one of the patterns I’ve seen is values defined by the receiver I said that we call it outside in. So when you create a company’s culture, and everybody’s Gaga about culture, Peter Drucker was attributed to have said, culture eats strategy for lunch. By the way, we discovered he never said that. And my takeaway is if you have a great quote, tell the world that Albert Einstein or Peter Drucker said it because then everybody will repeat it.
Jeremy Weisz 29:59
Oh, I was just gonna say As simple as that I was just when you said this simplicity. I’m like, there is. There is a quote by Albert Einstein about something about everything she made as simple as possible, but no simpler. So it reminded me of
Dave Ulrich 30:12
any Mayor made if he
Jeremy Weisz 30:13
said that Right, exactly.
Dave Ulrich 30:14
But it doesn’t matter. I mean, by the way, if you said Dr. Jeremy white said, relationships are the key to your future, you know that we get a few quotes. But Albert Einstein said, And anyway, so why do I go through that I love simplicity. And the simple idea that I try to push is outside in, what’s the value of what you do for someone else. So in building a culture, everybody says, We want to create a culture, it’s our route, that’s our values. It’s the roots of the tree. I’m suggesting, let’s evolve that, let’s learn, let’s go to the next step. value is not the roots of your tree. It’s the leaves and branches. It’s how customers perceive your value. So back to the example of that company, what is collaboration? What does innovation mean to the customer? Disney has a great scent that probably shouldn’t start naming companies, many companies have a great sense of internal values. But the power of those values is when they change customers behavior. I go spend an enormous amount of money at Disney with my family. Because I value the magic that Disney create. That’s not an accident. They have created an internal culture tied to an external identity. their reputation in the marketplace defines their internal culture. We bought it we did a book called leadership brand, the same issue. A lot of companies have competencies of leaders that exercise we do at Michigan, where you put them on the wall, name that company. Well, that’s not very helpful. What is it? We want to be known for the marketplace? Disney service to Google innovation, apple, great service and innovation? Do your internal leaders behaviors reflect those promises to customers? talent, want to be the employer of choice? We’ve all heard that people are our most important asset, I would change both. We want to be the employer of choice of employees, our customers would choose if your customer could choose your executives, would they choose you? I asked that in one company and in a senior executive said, How could our customers choose us? They don’t know us. And they said there’s an insight that they should know our people, our most important asset know, our people are our customers most important asset? How do you filter our people through the lens of a customer? So that’s a message I hope Oh, by the way, we keep pushing that over and over again. And it’s it’s not easy that? How do you decide the value that’s created? Because of what we do for somebody else?
Jeremy Weisz 32:47
I love it. And one of the things that struck Tom Stewart day with that, that exercise was was not only that, people couldn’t tell which core values were theirs. But you had put up other companies without telling people?
Dave Ulrich 33:04
Yeah, right. I don’t want to be duplicitous. But yeah, I mean, when you’re trying to teach a message, let me give two other things I’ve done teaching that may be helpful for those who listen, because it anchors it. Yeah. When people come to our programs at Michigan Go Blue. Number four. We say What are you here for I want to learn how to change culture. I want to learn how to build executive comp, I want to learn how to build leaders, I want to learn how to, and I always put it on the board and say why put behind what you want to learn two words, so that I want to learn how to change our culture so that our strategy works, do another so that so that we win in the marketplace. And until you’re so that links what you want to get good at to the marketplace. And the marketplace, could be a customer could be an investor could be a community, you’re not going to have sustainable success. I want to build better executive compensation. I want to hire better top grading. Why? So that our strategy happens why so that we succeed in the marketplace. The second thing I’ve done in teaching that I really love lately, and it is scary, you would appreciate this, I hope you’re doing a kind of now, teaching without a net. I go into a class of 20 or 30. executives, the topic is culture, talent, leadership, executive compensation, whatever it is. Take just an instead of giving people a case study, which we love to do, let me teach you a lot about a company you don’t know or care about. I say to them take five minutes. What’s the biggest problem your company is wrestling with in this topic? globalization, innovation, collaboration, culture. They write them down. Sure, let’s post them. In the next three to four hours, you will have a recommendation for you. You’re not going to learn about another company you’re going to learn about you. So I’ve listed the 10 or 20 issues, they fall into three or four buckets. Good. Let’s go to the first bucket, your struggle With how do we attract the right talent as we go into emerging markets? I don’t know a lot about that. But let’s spend the next hour on it. What have you tried what’s worked? I call that learning solutions. The goal of learning is to give people a solution to their problem, not your solution. And we co create, when I shared that with other faculty go, Are you nuts? Yeah, I want to know what joke to tell a 1010. And I go, I don’t even know what topic I’m going to be on a 1010. But I’m going to trust the class executives, and I’m going to trust myself to co create that’s that passion for learning. Let’s create a learning solution. And then at the end of the hour, the end of the half day or day, go back to your problem. Did you find something that will help you solve your problem? The theory and I’m sorry, by the way, you’ve let me talk. Our field is enamored with benchmarking. How do I compare to someone else? Are we Namur? With best practice? We’ve even said it today. Tell me the company whose best out? I think we got to move beyond that into guidance for your practice. How do I help you solve your problem? How do I give you guidance for what you can do? I think benchmarking is good. I love you know, or am. I’m pretty heavy. You’re not heavy. I love going to Samoa where I just labeled a culture. I love going to a country where my heaviness is now average. But that’s not helpful. Best practice, somebody says, here’s the diet idea, you should go do it. No, that works for you. That was terrific. You should do that. How do I find what works for me? And I think that logic of not benchmarking or best practice obsession. And most of the books I’ve written a bit about that here’s a benchmark, here’s the best practice. I’m now obsessed with guidance. How do I help you solve the issues? I bet you get this, you’ve been a chiropractor, I’ve got to ask you a question. Does the same solution work for every patient?
Jeremy Weisz 36:56
No, no, no, I
Dave Ulrich 36:57
mean, the best practice for patient one, two, and three may not be the best practice for four. And if you’re a gifted chiropractor, you recognize you know, what I did before isn’t going to work. And somebody comes in says, Well, my chiropractor did this adjustment. would you do it? I hope your wisdom is Let’s find out. Is that going to help you anyway? I don’t think we do that enough. In our field. I think we get enamored tell me the stories tell me the benchmark helped me figure out what works for me. I call that learning solutions into teaching.
Jeremy Weisz 37:25
Yeah, no, I love what you said there because you trust the process of CO creation and learning by solutions, you know, without a net.
Dave Ulrich 37:34
Right? And sometimes, I don’t know, what should we do with compensation in China? Oh, that’s a really good idea. And inevitably, somebody has an idea. But then if they don’t have an AI, by the way, that’s where you live. If you’re an HR head, you just got assigned China and you got a compensation problem. So how are we going to solve that? Sometimes? I’ve said, Good. None of us know that. Go spend the next 10 minutes in groups on Google. Back, what have we learned? By the way, I’m trying to teach people the process of solving problems, not just going to the solution. And sometimes I think that Google’s solution is really cool. Let’s go get a team. Let’s go look at compensation. And try I mean, I pick a rather obscene that I could pick a what’s the latest trend in healthcare in blank, blank, blank, I don’t know in healthcare benefits. We have a class of 30 that’s formed five teams, go on Google spend the next 20 minutes, what have you found, let’s come back and co create a solution. That’s what you’re going to probably have to do when you’re back at home. And now I want to model some of that learning creation process. Anyway. Thank you.
Jeremy Weisz 38:40
Yeah. Dave? No, I feel it. It parallels you know, how you talk about leadership as well. Because if people have people, you know, reporting to them, for people are leading, and they just trying to answer all their questions, as opposed to co creation, you know, it’s probably the same thing, right?
Dave Ulrich 38:59
You know, I have the luxury periodically, Jeremy of coaching leaders, and they say, what’s one of your top 10 tips, one of my tips, ask people the question, What do you think? What do you think somebody comes to you with a problem? They probably thought about the problem even more than you. And so they say, Oh, I’m really struggling with this. What do you think? What do you think? That doesn’t abdicate your ability as a leader to make a choice? But what do you think give people the opportunity? Again, value is defined by the receiver the solution is what they’re going to come up with. And and then what are the options? what’s going to work best? And I just I love what you’re saying. I think that value defined by the other and learning are those those pillars, if you will, have tried to help us figure out what we can do next.
Jeremy Weisz 39:44
Yeah. Dave, I have one last question for you. First of all, thank you so much. And you are you asked to ask you
Dave Ulrich 39:51
Do I am I am, I hope I model learning. I looked at your website. I was just overwhelmed with the number of people you’ve talked to with your story. Your videos, especially your grandfather, I I watched that yesterday and God Pirie, just feeling the experience that is so tragic that he experienced. So if you were to pick one meta message, and this is not scripted, they just say when I want people to rise up when I want people to be inspired the names of your company? What’s a message I’m hearing that cuts across? It’s not one episode, it’s not one experience? What’s a kind of my meta messages creating value for others and learning? Is there a meta message for you that just jumps out of some of those experiences you’ve had?
Jeremy Weisz 40:36
You know, from the interviews? You mean?
Dave Ulrich 40:38
Yeah. From your interviews or other experiences?
Jeremy Weisz 40:40
Yeah, I mean, it goes back to taking a long term approach to relationships. I mean, it goes back to relationships, you know, people know, not a transactional approach a long term approach, whether it’s, you know, someone thinking about, I’m going to do business with this person or not. And they just throw that out the window and just pretend, you know, life is life is long, but life is short. And so you will meet at another time under other circumstances. And this probably happens in, in large corporations where someone moves over to another organization, they want to pull their best relationships over with them. And I find just treat it as a long, long relationship don’t. And that’s for me, you know, when I think of across all the interviews is the most valuable thing is mentorship, like finding people who are doing what you want to do, and also embody how you want to be so not just someone who’s whatever successful in health or career, but does their life look like something that you want to also embody, like successful marriage successful thing, like all those things,
Dave Ulrich 41:54
you know, I love it. You’re, you’re known as the most friendly person, by the way, I’ve got a page, you know, it’s just trying to learn, and I’ve circled in purple relationships. I will think about that, I will put that into my hopper and say, How am I doing on that, and I love the idea of creating those relationships. The research on that is powerful. You’ve seen the Harvard research by folks, the biggest predictor of happiness in our life is the set of relationships we have that we carry, and but you’ve anchored that with your with your your point of view. Thank you.
Jeremy Weisz 42:24
Yeah, well,
Dave Ulrich 42:24
I hope you and I are forming a relationship. This is our first
Jeremy Weisz 42:28
100%
Dave Ulrich 42:29
meeting. And I hope it continues to allow me to know
Jeremy Weisz 42:32
I appreciate I appreciate
Dave Ulrich 42:33
god i page of notes. So
Jeremy Weisz 42:36
I appreciate your question. And I don’t know if anyone’s like, here’s my I don’t know if you could see this is my notes.
Dave Ulrich 42:44
Equally sloppy, you’re equally sloppy.
Jeremy Weisz 42:48
So my last question before I ask it, I want to point people to RBL.net. Check out more check out if you have listened to this. And it you know, hopefully it makes you makes me want to buy all of Dave’s 30 books over 30 books. Not that you need it. But just so it helps you and it helps your organization. It helps your people and the people in your world. So I encourage you to check out his books on Audible or Amazon or wherever you can find them. But check out RBL.net as well. Last question,
Dave Ulrich 43:17
or follow me on LinkedIn
Jeremy Weisz 43:18
or LinkedIn.
Dave Ulrich 43:19
I’ve done 30 books, I’m finding that books are sometimes a little dated by the time you write it and publish it. I post every Tuesday, a new article on LinkedIn. I looked the other day my wife said, How many have you done, I looked I’ve done 133 articles. I love LinkedIn. Because I love the dialogue. This morning, I woke up and somebody disagreed with what I posted yesterday. And so we went back and forth, by the way in the spirit of learning. And I’ve respected the opinion. I didn’t have to agree with it. But I learned something. So anyway, LinkedIn is a place you might want to fall. Yeah. Last question.
Jeremy Weisz 43:50
LinkedIn. So last question. You know, I think of when we think of some of the most important thing relationships, family, I’m curious, have a big lesson you learned we talked about your dad a big lesson you learn from your wife, like, you know, obviously, I didn’t realize she was a PhD. psychologist, so this would make it even more impactful. What is something that your wife is instilled or taught you? Because I know for me, like, the biggest influence on me is is my wife, really.
Dave Ulrich 44:28
This is the third time I’m getting emotional niska I think my wife is embodied the words that we all like to hear carrying love, empathy service. I have a wife who not only writes she’s written half a dozen books on the intersection of psychology and spirituality. I’m forgiveness and love and grace. But she lives those. I mean, she lives those with, with our children with our grandchildren with the pop ups years, hi chiropractor. You get a pop up, I need an adjustment and, and somebody, you do a pop up and you throw the table out, she gets pop ups every week of people who need help, emotionally, especially now this is a very tough emotional time. And she models I think what others talk about. And so I think she models some of those values that other people a spouse, and then to recognize that she models are mostly with me. Forgiveness, Grace patients, and my wife is a friend, the relationship that I think you must have with those that you’re closest to your wife, your children. My relationship with my wife is kind of the anchor of everything. And we are lucky to we take time to talk to each other. She got home late last night from a pretty busy day and some work she was involved with. It’s 830. At night, we sit and talk for two hours and I thought, Oh, I gotta get up for an interview in the morning. I got to think about it. Now we’re going to talk. And people look at us and say, how do you guys spend so many hours? Because we can and we’re old. And we live in Utah where it’s cold in January, you live in Chicago where it’s cold. We take January and go live on the beach in California. Not because of any event. And by the way, until this year, we’ve done it for 10 years, we’ve never invited our kids, because that’s our time. No offense are we celebrate Christmas, people have Hanukkah, Christmas, whatever. And we just need a month together and people say how does that work? And we say it’s incredible. Because we still work. I mean, work is wherever you are in this world today. But we talk, we talk and talk and talk and she models, the things that she preaches. Somebody once said, we preach the gospel and sometimes use words. And I would put that with my wife.
Jeremy Weisz 46:49
Amazing. Check out that check out RBL.net check out more interviews. Dave, thank you so much.
Dave Ulrich 46:56
Thank you Jeremy. Thank you.
