13/02/12 - 13h57

Mark Taylor

Mark is a results-oriented executive with 35 year history as an accomplished CEO and corporate manager and also a retired CEO that founded several companies.

Background

• Current Aspects of the Brazilian Economy
• Doing Business During Economic Crisis
• Doing Business in New York City
• Leadership Strategies

Interview

Tom Reaoch:

Today I have a special guest from New York City who was recently in São Paulo where we were able to meet for a quite enjoyable lunch and a great conversation. Mark Taylor is a results-oriented executive with 35 year history as an accomplished CEO and corporate manager. He presently runs “think tanks” for CEOs in Manhattan as a chair for Vistage International. He’s also a retired CEO that founded several companies. Mark is a certified national speaker with Vistage International, and his workshop on Tribal Leadership has been ranked as one of the best in the country. Mark also delivers workshops, training and retreats for companies that want to facilitate corporate change based on the models and processes of Tribal Leadership and he’s has been designated as a CultureSync™ Approved Tribal Leader and facilitates the Tribal Leadership Intensive public course on the Tribal Leadership Methodology for CultureSync. So with that Mark, once again welcome to Talk2Brazil.

Mark Taylor:

Thank you.

Tom Reaoch:

I was going back through our history and I just, I know you were actually our second guest when I started Talk2Brazil back in June 8th of 2009.

Mark Taylor:

Yes, I remember.

Tom Reaoch:

And that interview in that time one of the things we were talking about that I remembered were you mentioning the, coming to Brazil and having four-hour lunches and never being able to close the deal, thinking that Brazilians just talk and talk and I sort of had to justify it, I think we had a four hour lunch while you were here and I’m not sure if we closed any deal but it was certainly worthwhile for all the time that we were together.

Mark Taylor:

It was I enjoyed the time that we had together and you had the opportunity to meet my wife and my son and I had the opportunity to meet your son so it was great.

Tom Reaoch:

It was a good family encounter, what are your impressions now with Brazil because when we were together in 2009 again much of our conversation was around the economic crisis and restarting business, what was your feeling of the Brazilian atmosphere as you came this time?

Mark Taylor:

Well everything that I hear in the United States is how well Brazil is doing and certainly, you know we met at a mall that was packed with people so it sure looks like the Brazilian economy is doing well to this American.

Tom Reaoch:

That’s true and it’s not only because of the time of the year but I think that’s generally across the board and as we compare Brazil to others it, things are going well and a lot better than other places so, and so you did get that feeling?

Mark Taylor:

I did, I mean plenty of people shopping, carrying lots of bags, I mean it looks very promising.

Tom Reaoch:

And not a seat in the restaurant too, so…

Mark Taylor:

Exactly.

Tom Reaoch:

[Laughs] But for our global audience I’d like you to, I’d like to re-visit what Vistage is and how you operate with your groups in New York City.

Mark Taylor:

Vistage is the world’s largest CEO membership organization. We have 15,000 members in 16 different countries, 200 cities and I joined Vistage in 1993 as a CEO of my own company, and when I sold that company in 2005 I thought I’d learned so much from Vistage and it made such a difference in my life and I am a learning, I love to learn, I’m passionate about learning that I wondered if that maybe I could chair a Vistage group and use some of what I had learned as a way to give back to other CEOs and I applied for the job and have now been chairing since January of 2009. I think that when we talked I was just starting as a Vistage chair.

Tom Reaoch:

Okay, so your groups are going well?

Mark Taylor:

Yes, I have four groups in New York City, two for CEOs and one for professional service advisors and one for what we call “Key executives” which are like the number two people that the CEOs want to groom to take over their position someday in the future.

Tom Reaoch:

So it’s all peer level?

Mark Taylor:

It’s a peer to peer relationship which is really something that I think is remarkable. I believe as human beings we’re blind, we don’t know what we don’t know and what I‘ve discovered over the years is that it’s only through interacting with others that we’re able to see what our blind spots are and that’s what I think the Vistage groups offer is that a group of peers with you know, 12 or 15 other people that have no agenda other than helping you, we don’t have customers in the same group, we don’t have vendors, so nobody’s there to sell you anything, everyone’s there for one purpose and that’s to learn to become a better leader so if you present a challenge or an opportunity or a decision that you have to make, you’re getting an unbiased perspective from a group of people.

Tom Reaoch:

Right, and when you say becoming a better leader obviously that translated into become a more profitable business person as well because when I asked you how business was in the States, you came back to me with most of your members were doing very well.

Mark Taylor:

I think I have 50, 52 members right now and about 50 or 51 of them business is up and many of them would say business is up substantially compared to last year and you asked me if that was just New York and I did a little bit of research. As you’re probably aware Vistage does a survey every single year called the Vistage Confidence Survey and it’s the only survey of its kind, the Vistage, the CEO confidence index, it’s the nation’s largest and most comprehensive report of opinions of CEOs and what’s interesting is if you look at the results of that survey it tracks very closely with the GDP of the U.S. so I think it’s pretty accurate; but he just came out with the results of the four month quarter survey and it says 41% of CEOs recognized improved economic conditions over the previous 12 months, up from just 18% in the third quarter and 73% of CEOs are expecting revenue growth in 2012.

Tom Reaoch:

Well that’s good news.

Mark Taylor:

It is!

Tom Reaoch:

No, because from our perspective here in Brazil and I’m sure other portions, places in the world when who much of what we’re reading, hearing and sometimes seeing is sometimes the just media tends to focus on the bad points, we see how bad things are and really sometimes it’s hard to share with anybody how good things could be in different places.

Mark Taylor:

Yes.

Tom Reaoch:

And from Brazilian business person’s perspectives and business persons here wanting to do business in the States they sort of think, well there’s no business to be had and that’s not true.

Mark Taylor:

No, it’s absolutely not true. Unfortunately I think, you know the occupy Wall Street movement gets a lot of publicity and so it could give the impression globally that things are much worse off than what they really are. The recession is over, I think the research shows that it ended in 2009 so when we talked last time I think we were right at the end of the recession, but don’t find out that it’s over until afterwards.

Tom Reaoch:

[laughs] Afterwards right, everybody’s still waiting to see the indexes and the numbers to see if it’s still going down or where it’s going so then all of the business in your area is not by Brazilians going to New York and spending money.

Mark Taylor:

Well that doesn’t hurt and there are a lot of Brazilians that we see here in New York City, it does seem to be one of the popular tourist destinations and I certainly would encourage the Brazilians to continue to come here because this a great city to visit.

Tom Reaoch:

I had spoken with people in Miami and the governor of Florida was obviously in favor of reducing the visa requirement, obviously it doesn’t depend just on what the governor wants but the pressure is that, to reduce that, and I saw something very similar from New York as well because one of the major barriers still for Brazilians to get into the States is a visa. So that is a barrier, there are more Brazilians wanting to go there and spend money and both New York and Florida have shown that a significant portion of the tourist industry is based on Brazilians today.

Mark Taylor:

Yes, yes.

Tom Reaoch:

And so you see that as you walk up and down the streets in Manhattan?

Mark Taylor:

Yes, we hear Portuguese all over so it’s pretty amazing.

Tom Reaoch:

Not only are you hearing Portuguese, you hear them taking money out of their wallet and spending it. [laughs] So you hear the old fashioned cash register ringing up a sale.

Mark Taylor:

Yes, exactly.

Tom Reaoch:

We don’t have that anymore; I don’t think there are any cash registers in the States anymore are there?

Mark Taylor:

I don’t think so but credit cards; you know you see people taking out their credit cards.

Tom Reaoch:

You can’t hear people swiping, you know I can remember the cash register, the drawer opening and people bringing out change, you hardly see that anymore.

Mark Taylor:

That’s true.

Tom Reaoch:

So you’re not really sure people are spending. So New York is doing well, business is doing well and specific for the Vistage members, I think that’s the point that you mentioned of your passion about learning and does learning make leaders better?

Mark Taylor:

I believe that it does, I mean you know the old axiom about sharpening the saw, I mean you can cut down so many trees but if you don’t take time to sharpen down your saw your business isn’t going to get any better if you’re in the tree cutting business. Our results have shown, Dun and Bradstreet survey that Vistage members out-perform non-Vistage members by about a ratio of three to one so the model which was developed in the late 1950s, so it’s been proven and tested for a long time, really does produce results and I know for me it produced phenomenal results as a business owner. As a business owner, I think it takes a certain degree of courage and maybe a type “A” personality and a lot of self-confidence to go into business since it’s such a highly risky adventure, so you believe you’re right most of the time and most people aren’t going to tell you that you’re wrong. You go to a meeting – and I would be there with several of my peers and I would present what I think is a great idea and a couple of them that were bigger than I was and had more experience that I would, would being to ask questions and cause me to pause and reflect before I took action on it which prevented me from making some pretty significant mistakes and saved me a lot of money from a preventative standpoint. The connections, the advice and the resources that I got from many of the members just made me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years and it’s just unbelievable what a little connection, a different attorney or an introduction to somebody that will do business with your company and you have a whole new relationship and how it can change your trajectory.

Tom Reaoch:

That’s one thing in terms of relations what I’ve seen here in many of the companies that I also offer some training to that business persons seem to focus so intensely within their own business that sometimes they just don’t look over the fence.

Mark Taylor:

Yes, we can become myopic. I was a member of my industry group, I went to school and got my Masters in Business Administration and don’t regret any of it, it was all, you know very eye-opening for me. So what Vistage offers is real-life experience from real CEOs that are peers, that know what it is to be lonely at top, that know the risk involved in running a business, that know the hard decisions that are involved – you know, do you hire this new person or do you invest in your children’s college fund – and in they are in that same boat and it is a very, very difficult job. I realize how hard it is to do that job and that’s one of the reasons that I’m passionate about doing what I do is to help others, to help them so that they can not only be better leaders and get better results in their business but also to enhance their lives. A lot of what we learn is about ourselves; you know our emotional intelligence they say is now a predictor of success three to one and then we can become more conscious and more evolved emotionally, we treat our executives better, they treat our employees better, they treat their families better, I mean…

Tom Reaoch:

Treat the clients better and treat everybody better.

Mark Taylor:

Exactly, exactly and it spreads throughout the whole community and as complex as the world has become, and if we’re going to solve these problems I think we really need leaders like we never had before and that’s what Vistage is all about. It’s having expert speakers teach on the latest concepts and research of leaders as well as having the peer group to bounce ideas off of and to challenge you and to help you make better decisions.

Tom Reaoch:

Well you’ve also become a certified speaker in Vistage so you go beyond the borders of Manhattan and you travel the country speaking to others Vistage groups, is that correct?

Mark Taylor:

Yes, which is a fascinating experience. I am really committed to helping to transform the workplace so that really all people can flourish. I’ve experienced the sort of down-side of the corporate world where there was a lot of politics and game playing and back-stabbing and silos and you know, all of the negative, horrible stuff you see in the movies about businesses, I mean it’s not entirely made-up, it’s based on some truth. [laughs]

Tom Reaoch:

A lot of truth there, that’s true, yeah? [laughs] Real life in a big company.

Mark Taylor:

Exactly, and that’s not the way that most of the members of Vistage run their companies, most of our members are privately held companies not public companies, but nobody really teaches you how to be a great leader, how to be a great boss, I mean where do you learn that except through your own experience if you happen to have had a good mentor or teacher? A couple of years ago I read the results of the study which was published as the book “Tribal Leadership” and it was a ten-year study of 24,000 people that defined culture in five different stages and he found that if you can upgrade your level of culture, if you could move it a level up you could increase productivity by three to five times and I thought wow…

Tom Reaoch:

By culture you’re talking about the corporate culture, or your company culture or the culture within?

Mark Taylor:

Exactly, culture for the most part is invisible, I mean what is culture? You know it when you experience it, certainly being in Brazil the culture is a lot different than being in New York City. If you take a loud person and you put them into a church, the culture, they just start speaking more quietly, it’s invisible morays and rules. But what the study found out was how to measure the culture of an organization and then how to specifically use different strategies to move it to higher levels of performance. After I read that study I began to study it and I contacted the authors and they had a 12-week public course that they taught on tribal leadership of which now I’m one of the trainers of that course. I’ve been so excited about it and see such dramatic results in my own Vistage groups and in some of the corporate clients that we work with that I’ve gone on the Vistage speaker circuit to evangelize tribal leadership.

Tom Reaoch:

And now spreading the word.

Mark Taylor:

Now spreading the word, yes exactly.

Tom Reaoch:

And how does that fit in? How do people accept that? Talking about tribes, is that a shock to be considered as part of a tribe?

Mark Taylor:

You know when they came up with the word Tribal Leadership, tribes don’t mean like indigenous tribes, it’s just as like fish school and birds flock that as people we tribe, we hang out in groups, we’re social beings so you know you can look at see any organization and you can see that they hang out in groups, you know maybe the groups we used to talk about that hang out at the water cooler and each of these groups have different ways of operating. What we discovered in Tribal Leadership is there are five different cultures or groups which we named stage one, two, three, four and five. Stage one is at the bottom and this is only 2% of the people that we found in this study but these people are people that have a language that “Life sucks.”

Tom Reaoch:

[laughs]

Mark Taylor:

And their lives really suck, these are people in organizations that resort to vandalism and sabotage and extortion, I mean there is no management strategy there except that you want to give them a pink slip and find them a new tribe to work with. Stage two is the language and that’s one of the ways that we measure and discover what stage they’re at is to take a look at the language that people use. Stage two is “My life sucks” and if you think of the Department of Motor Vehicles if you think of the Dilbert cartoons, if you think of the TV show The Office, this is a culture of people when they’re together that their lives suck, there’s no sense of urgency, there’s kind of like apathetic victims, it’s very ineffective and that was 25% of the people we found in the study. Stage three was “I’m great” and it’s [indistinct] in quotation marks, “And you’re not!” That was 49% of the corporate population and these are people that outwork and out-think their competitors, they’re the lone warriors, typically you’ll see this in sales organizations, you’ll see it with attorneys and doctors, this is what breeds the silo effects. When you have an organization where everybody’s competing with one another and hording information and if they’re always wanting to be great, they’re not going to tell you about their mistakes. Stage four is “We’re great and they’re not” and that’s where we found that if you move from stage three to stage four that you get a three to five time increase in profit and productivity. It’s when you really have a tribe or a group of people that begin to work together as a team and they’re inspired and they’re genuine and they’re collaborative. These are companies like Zappos, like Patagonia, parts of Apple when they were doing the Macintosh project and when they were doing the I-pod project, but people that are able to establish phenomenal results and we only find that in 22% of organizations. The top of the ladder is stage five where “Life is great,” which we only found in 2% of organizations and here what we noticed was that these are people that are really committed to making a difference in the world like miraculous innovation, like, you take a look at what happened with the Chilean miners a year ago, you might say that was a stage five project where you take the smartest people in the world which are generally stage three and they got together and collaborated to make a difference that impacted history which was saving the lives of those miners. So in a nutshell that’s the results as Tribal Leadership and there’s specific leadership strategies to move somebody from stage two to stage three, from stage three to four and four to five and most of the time, you know we think that one size fits all and it’s just not true, there’s 160,000 books on leadership on Amazon right now and you need to have different strategies depending on the culture of your organization.

Tom Reaoch:

Well first identify what the culture is; sometimes you get the feeling the organizations aren’t even aware what their culture is.

Mark Taylor:

They aren’t because it’s been something up until this study that you couldn’t measure and you can’t change what you can’t measure, or you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

Tom Reaoch:

But these percentages that you just shared that’s pretty much of a bell curve, you’ve got 2% on either side and then you have 25% which is stage two, another 22 stage four and the middle’s really almost half.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah, it’s exactly a bell curve.

Tom Reaoch:

But you do see that based on your training you can move people, I’m not saying up, you can move them over so you can get them from stage three to stage four and increase the 2% of that “Life is great.”

Mark Taylor:

Yes, I’ve definitely seen them and what we shoot for is we shoot for moving people from stage three to stage four since that’s where most of the companies are and that’s a dramatic increase is to move them into stage four and I have seen results in as little as three months but on average in six months which is to me, phenomenal, because after being a Vistage member since 1993 I’ve heard hundreds of speakers and every month we have a speaker give an expert workshop that teach us to be a better leader and a lot of the ideas that you get are good but how many of them are ideas that you can actually implement and change your business in three to six months?

Tom Reaoch:

And track and prove and show that…

Mark Taylor:

And track and prove and show.

Tom Reaoch:

And that profit is better.

Mark Taylor:

And profit goes up, productivity goes up, absenteeism goes down, people become more engaged, people become happier, the friction that you typically see amongst executives on teams disappears; I mean it really is amazing to watch it in action.

Tom Reaoch:

But what do you do, do you get in the room fill it up with people and give them all a shot of happy juice or something? What makes this happen?

Mark Taylor:

Well, you know specifically after teaching them about the five different stages so that they can identify what stage they are and then identify specific leadership strategies, we teach them about them the structure of relationships which was the second area that we measured in the study. A stage three structure of a relationship is what we call a hub and spoke structure and this is a structure that I learned about when I went to MBA school. I don’t know if it’s the structure of businesses in Brazil, so you can comment on that but in the U.S. you typically have like the CEO that is the hub and then you have the spokes, you have like chief financial officer, you have a chief operations officer, a chief marketing officer, a chief technology officer and they all report to the CEO and the CEO meets with each of them one-to-one, you know once a week to hear what [are] their goals and objectives, give them feedback and when he has a meeting with all of them they all kind of have their own silos and turf that they protect and they kind of compete with each other almost for, you know the CEO’s attention. Is that similar in Brazil?

Tom Reaoch:

Yeah, I’d say, yes because a lot of the influence, and you mentioned the MBA, a lot of the corporate training is following that same mindset. The companies that I worked for were set up exactly that way and that’s it and then when you get into the Brazilian companies that aren’t multi-nationals, even in the family run businesses, then the figure of the CEO is the owner and that owner has his hub and spoke and he has his protected people, he has those people who bring him information that he trusts and whatever and it’s the same thing, it’s always that one-on-one and many times even in the family businesses here it’s part of the structure not to get people together, they don’t want that sharing, they want to keep everybody sort of separate.

Mark Taylor:

In the dark and…

Tom Reaoch:

Well yeah, in the dark, but you know come to me, talk to me and I’ll go and talk, and I don’t even go to talk to you, I want you to come here, let me know what’s happening and what you see and then that’s probably where most of the people feel that their life sucks.

Mark Taylor:

Yes, yes, that’s the kind of structure that makes, and you know and it goes from level to level so I’m in the center, I’m great and if you report to me your life sucks because you’re almost a victim of my directives and my way of doing things and if you have a suggestion on how to improve things, I get to decide whether or not it’s right or wrong.

Tom Reaoch:

And if I’m one of these spokes and I’m the conduit to the CEO or to the business owner and I’m great, you’re not then that’s, just keeps the whole thing going.

Mark Taylor:

It keeps the whole thing going and that’s what the breakdown is so what we found in stage four relationships was they met in triads, in groups of three and I have an engineering background and as you’re aware you need a minimum of three points to make a stable structure. This is also true in relationships because in a dyadic relationship, in a one-to-one relationship when it’s just you and me, it’s whoever has the power is really the one that’s going to be the top dog or the winner. So if you’re the boss you have the power, you’re always going to win whenever you choose to. It’s very rare that you’re going to empower me, somebody working for you to do it my way. What’s going to change that? We add a third person, so we add Joe in here and the three of us are talking and now Joe and I are saying, “Tom, you should consider this, it’s going to be better for the business, these are what the benefits are, A, B, C and D,” chances are you’re going to be more open to it if it’s just me, and that’s what I found in the triads. Now if you can create a peer-to-peer-to-peer relationship that’s where I’ve seen the amazing results where there’s no person of authority that’s the boss so it’s like the CEO creating these relationships on the executive team, or actually what I’ve been doing with the CEOs here in New York City is that I’ve given them the option instead of meeting one-to-one to meet in groups of three and now they have a peer-to-peer-to-peer relationship and it’s just amazing the level of authenticity, the level of directness, the level of honesty, the level of listening, the level of accountability, everything goes up. Does it make sense why?

Tom Reaoch:

Sure it does, you can’t have a tug of war with three.

Mark Taylor:

Right, that‘s true and if you have three of them and it’s more than just three people in a relationship, it’s three people that are generally working on a common project and are working based on shared values verses working on the personalities of the relationship, so for example I had a hospital and they had a operations officer, a technology officer and a financial officer that used to always fight like dogs and cats at meetings right?

Tom Reaoch:

[laughs] That could be in any structure, those persons always fight.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah, they always seem to fight, they have you know, their own perspectives, they have, you know almost inherent reasons that they have different conflicts so we worked with them with Tribal Leadership, the CEO put them in a triad, they had a project that they had to implement these new electronic medical records and they had a timeframe, a budget and we coached tem to work together authentically with respect and with the spirit of collaboration; those were the values that they were going to work from and all of the sudden they produced the results, it was a one-for-all, all-for-one like the three musketeers triad, they were able to succeed and now they get along famously, it’s just unbelievable the transformation that’s taken place on that executive team.

Tom Reaoch:

And they at the same time like each other more.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah, definitely they respect…

Tom Reaoch:

As people, so the personal level relationship also is enhanced.

Mark Taylor:

Exactly.

Tom Reaoch:

I think that’s generally what I see in companies many times is there’s not the personal professional respect amongst peer members, amongst groups. That’s hard to get over, but just putting the three together and with your coaching and with these, implementing the values as you mentioned, that makes the change.

Mark Taylor:

That is, in ten minutes part of what makes the change. Obviously a lot more goes into it than that but that’s what happens is that it shifts the balance of power in a relationship so you have three people that are working together verses three people are working against one another.

Tom Reaoch:

But also in that you do need a CEO who understands that this needs to be done so there’s still the top down in this.

Mark Taylor:

It works better if you have a CEO that wants to have this done, I mean we’ve worked with some corporate clients that we were hired to come in and work with executive teams and these are some of the largest companies in the world, multi-multi-billion dollar multi-national companies and there’s this one team that we worked with that has 12 executives and you know, “I’m so great that I have three PhDs and you only have two,” is the time of executives on this team, I mean very, very smart individuals. But we put them in the triads, had them each work on projects that were above and beyond their areas of responsibilities and again, they showed dramatic results. Just for an example in one of the measures that people use is how great of a work place somebody has and you can measure it on a one to a 100 scale. They were ending up in the 50s and so they went around and asked everyone what could we do to have a better place to work and engage the employees more and people said paint the walls and have better food in the cafeteria and change our chairs, nothing really worked. But by working with that executive team, we saw changes in three months that made it go from 50 to 80, dramatic increases.

Tom Reaoch:

In three months.

Mark Taylor:

In three months having executives working together in a collaborative way, reducing the friction, reducing the politics and creating a place that people wanted to work for.

Tom Reaoch:

And they’d roll up their sleeves and do it.

Mark Taylor:

And they roll up their sleeves and do it and they love it.

Tom Reaoch:

All right, so then we take everybody to that level which is step five of “Life is great.”

Mark Taylor:

Well when we move to “Life is great” what we work with companies is on something that we call a noble cause. A noble cause is something that changes the world, that advances humanity; that is something that completely inspires you. One of my very first jobs that I got I was hired as a Fire Safety Consultant was my job title and we…

Tom Reaoch:

Fire safety consultant?

Mark Taylor:

Yes, we had a badge that said, “I save lives for a living” and that was our noble cause. Now I didn’t know it at the time but what I was doing I was selling fire alarms to homeowners, but I saved lives for a living. I knew that I saved lives because about three months after I started working there one of the families that I had protected from fire had a fire, the fire alarms went off and saved their life and they wrote a letter to the president of the company and he gave me that letter as well as a medal of honor for being instrumental in the saving of human lives in front of all the people of the entire company in Las Vegas and I was just so motivated, so inspired by it that I became one of the top sales people of the company, but for me it wasn’t about the sales, it was about really making a difference in the world…

Tom Reaoch:

About the cause.

Mark Taylor:

That’s what a noble cause is; it’s a cause that makes a difference in the world. So like when we interviewed the CEO of [Am Jan / Amgen] and asked him “Who’s your competition?” He said, “Cancer.” Their cause was to eliminate cancer in the world, it wasn’t some other company. That’s what a noble cause is and when we find that noble cause for our organizations every person is inspired and we believe in it and it’s authentic, unbelievable results occur.

Tom Reaoch:

This weekend I saw on Discovery channel here a program on Google and you know how Google was set up and how they’re running and to that point that you just made that one of the commitments that they’ve made as a corporation, that they want to obviously gather all of the intelligence and information in the world but they do want to use that to better people’s lives, and that’s it; so why are we doing all of this? And that’s the point, we want to make the world better, what that means in the timeframe so that is the cause and you can see that really people do roll up their sleeves and do tug in the right direction to make things better.

Mark Taylor:

Absolutely.

Tom Reaoch:

That’s great, now what are your plans with this for Brazil as we mentioned, is this something you’d like to bring to Brazil now?

Mark Taylor:

Well as you know my wife is a Brazileira, she has a partner that is also Brazilian and they are now talking to several business owners and organizations in Brazil where they want to implement similar projects to what we’ve done in the United States to see if we can get similar results with Brazilian businesses. The book has been published into Portuguese although I‘m not sure how well the translation is but we have several very progressive companies in Brazil that are in conversations right now about bringing Tribal Leadership there.

Tom Reaoch:

Yeah, because I’m sure that if you were to make a study you would probably find similar types of percentages in each one of these levels that you mentioned.

Mark Taylor:

Yes.

Tom Reaoch:

And maybe a little bit more at the bottom line because generally speaking people do become depressed because of certain situations and then they start where their life sucks …

Mark Taylor:

Right and many people’s lives do suck.

Tom Reaoch:

And that’s contagious, that’s very contagious.

Mark Taylor:

It is contagious and we think that that percentage went up dramatically during the financial crisis when people lost their homes, when people lost their cars, when people lost their jobs, I mean, their lives really suck and so how do you take a group of people, a culture who’s lives suck and they’re in that kind of life change and feeling depressed and sad and angry and you think that, you know a motivational speaker is going to change them? Do you think that a strategy of having them walk on hot coals and yell affirmations that ‘I’m the greatest’ is the right strategy?

Tom Reaoch:

[laughs] It doesn’t work.

Mark Taylor:

Yeah, all strategies don’t work. All leadership strategies don’t work. It depends on the culture and where the people are. What we found does work at stage two as just to distinguish an example is that at stage two we need to find people that do want to get better so maybe their lives suck but they show some degree of ambition and we work with them to give them projects that they can succeed at and we praise them and acknowledge them as they have their successes. It’s like one of the first management books I ever read was to catch people doing things right, that was the one minute manager and that was one of his philosophies was to catch people doing things right. And you really want to do that, you want them to move towards stage three where they see that they’re great and the more that you can do that the greater the effectiveness of that person’s going to be and then once they move into stage three others are going to see that they were able to learn and grow and be able to do it and it’s going to begin to shift the culture.

Tom Reaoch:

It makes a whole lot of sense because exactly what we’d said a little bit before is that look at the things that are right, look at the good side and there is a whole lot of good going on and if we just tend to talk about what’s bad and unemployment and this and that, that tends to really add fire to the people where they [say] “Well life does suck” and everybody’s saying that it is and that’s the way it is.

Mark Taylor:

Right and then people become depressed and nobody buys anything and people stay home and yeah, you create what you, what you’re believing then.

Tom Reaoch:

Well, from what we said the Brazilians they think that life is good, they’re going to Florida and to New York City and spending their money so, and buying things and helping the economy but it’s also psychological and here within the country because there is so much news out that Brazil is doing well, that helps it become better.

Mark Taylor:

The danger might be that if you get a lot of people at stage three then they start competing against one another, you know ‘My way’s the right way’ and hording information from one another and all of the sudden they’re not working as a team.

Tom Reaoch:

No, I think that could be a situation here in Brazil just to think that since things are better than other places that it will be that way forever and it never is.

Mark Taylor:

Right, everything happens in cycles.

Tom Reaoch:

It does and as we see now, even in the United States things are becoming better, the unemployment has dropped, consumer spending and I guess is better, I guess the year-end season for retail in the States was better wasn’t it?

Mark Taylor:

It was, it definitely was, in the survey that we did of the CEOs not only said that they expect revenue growth but over half of the CEOs have specific plans to increase the number of the employees that they hire over the next 12 months. So unemployment will continue to go down because that is the, you know the bread and butter of this country are the small, medium sized businesses.

Tom Reaoch:

Small and medium sized. That starts getting the good feeling back. It’s like if you make the psychological change then people are more comfortable, [and I’m not just saying] just going out and spending because I don’t think [they] should just take the money and go out and buy something but to do other things, even invest in yourself, more training, more learning.

Mark Taylor:

Exactly, and then again the momentum begins to go in the other direction, a positive momentum that expands verses contracts.

Tom Reaoch:

Well that’s good so what you’re saying, even in, we were talking about business in Brazil for 2012 and 2014 and business here obviously depends on business there so from what you’re saying business is better, getting better, so things looking forward probably getting the CEOs together here in Brazil and I’m sure the response would be the same, looking down the road and increased sales, increased employment.

Mark Taylor:

Yes and you know what some of our Vistage speakers say is that you’ve got to look at the economic conditions and right now while some people are still skeptical and all the forecast looks good, now’s the time to seize the day, to seize those opportunities, to hire the top talent that’s still available out there, to expand your market place so if you’re thinking of expanding to open a business in Brazil or open a business in the U.S., now’s the time to that because as soon as it start getting good, you know prices are going to go up.

Tom Reaoch:

Right, right and the opportunities somebody will have their hand on them before so.

Mark Taylor:

Exactly, so now’s the time to get the first mover advantage.

Tom Reaoch:

So the time is right and 2012 looks promising.

Mark Taylor:

And 2012 looks like it’s going to be a great year.

Tom Reaoch:

Good, well I’m happy to hear that not only from the Brazilian side but also from the U.S. side and hopefully that will also permeate some of the rest of the world and things will generally get better for everybody.

Mark Taylor:

Exactly.

Tom Reaoch:

And then life could be great for everybody and I think that’d be the secret of success.

Mark Taylor:

Absolutely.

Tom Reaoch:

Well Mark we’re running towards the end of our program and our time and I want to thank you again not only for the very enjoyable lunch and discussion here in Brazil but now sharing this time and information with our listeners and do hope to see you again here or your wife in possible Tribal Leadership training in Brazil.

Mark Taylor:

Great, I look forward to coming to Brazil again and spreading the Tribal Leadership message to the Brazilian people.

Tom Reaoch:

And helping everybody become great.

Mark Taylor:

Exactly, exactly.

Tom Reaoch:

Well thanks again and our best to your family.

Mark Taylor:

Thank you and mine to yours.