IAM1731 – CEO and Author Helps Transform Company Cultures Through Innovation and Investments in Workforce Growth

Why it was selected for “CBNation Architects”:  In episode IAM1594 of the I AM CEO podcast, host Gresham Harkless interviews Steven L. Blue, a leading mid-market CEO and author of five highly-acclaimed books, including “Metamorphosis: From Rust-belt to High-tech in a 21st Century World.”

With over 40 years of management, executive, consulting, and speaking experience worldwide, Steven has transformed companies into industry giants and enthralled audiences with his dynamic keynotes.

In the interview, Steven discusses his journey to becoming a CEO and author, the challenges he faced in transforming himself and his companies, and the importance of innovation and investments in workforce growth in transforming company cultures. He also shares insights into effective leadership and offers advice for entrepreneurs and business owners looking to grow their companies and create positive change.

Overall, the episode provides valuable insights into the world of business growth and the mindset and strategies needed to succeed as a CEO and author.

I AM CEO Handbook Volume 3 is HERE and it's FREE. Get your copy here: http://cbnation.co/iamceo3. Get the 100+ things that you can learn from 1600 business podcasts we recorded. Hear Gresh's story, learn the 16 business pillars from the podcast, find out about CBNation Architects and why you might be one and so much more. Did we mention it was FREE? Download it today!

Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/2022/12/24/iam1594-ceo-and-author-helps-transform-company-cultures-through-innovation-and-investments-in-workforce-growth/

Transcription:

Steven Blue Teaser 00:00

The CEO's job is to set strategy and all that kind of stuff, and then mobilize resources to achieve that. Okay, that's fine, you can get that in any textbook. But what many CEOs don't realize is what you just talked about, you have to reach into the tentacles of the organization and make sure that all of that interconnects somehow. So otherwise, it's just fluff and CEO talk. And you have to, as I said, you have to line everything up in the organization to achieve that.

Intro 00:26

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:53

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. If you've been listening this year, you know that we hit. 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories or topics or as I like to call them, the business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners, and what I like to call the CB nation architects who are looking to level up their organizations.

This month we are focused on our greatest asset, talent management and hiring. Think from great resignation to the great renovation. And if you disagree with me, maybe these episodes might be especially for you. Life and especially business has changed. It has forced those that are within organizations to look differently at talent, how it's being managed.

When we talk about change, think about it, we have to realize that business as usual is no longer here. That's evident in attracting and retaining clients, but also in setting up people within organizations to succeed. Think onboarding, think DEI- diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. How it is working from home and even going back into the office.

Things are different in this month. We are going to explore these topics by featuring CEO hacks and CEO nuggets, but also interviews that focus on these changes and how organizations can make sure they care for and attract the most valuable asset, their people. Sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO podcast.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today, I have Steven Blue of Miller Ingenuity. Steve, it's great to have you on the show.

Steven Blue 02:25

It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for the invitation.

Gresham Harkless 02:28

Yes, absolutely. The pleasure is all ours. You're doing so many phenomenal things. So before we jumped into having a great conversation, I wanted to read a little bit more about Steve, so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

With more than 40 years of management, executive consulting, and speaking experience worldwide, Miller ingenuity President and CEO Steve is a leading mid-market CEO, and a globally recognized business growth authority who has transformed companies into industry giants and enthralled audiences with his dynamic keynotes. He is the author of five highly claimed books, including Metamorphosis: From Rust Belt to High Tech in a 21st Century World.

Steve, again, excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Steven Blue 03:11

I sure am.

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Gresham Harkless 03:12

Let's get it started then. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

Steven Blue 03:20

I started off as a blue-collar kid. My mother was a waitress and my father was a mechanic and I had to get my education the long and the hard way because they couldn't afford to put me through college. So I ended up not getting my bachelor's degree until I was 40 years old. My MBA, I didn't get that until I was 52.

Of course, during all that time, I was working in industrial management for mostly big, big, big corporations. I worked my way up the ladder over the years from a factory supervisor up to middle management, up the senior management and eventually up to CEO.

During all that time, I was thinking about writing books about my ideas, and so I started writing books about what I've done. I remember Russ, my wife saw me writing my first book, and she said, what are you doing? I said, I'm writing a book. She goes, you don't know anything about writing a book. What are you gonna write about? So, then, the first book was not that great. It was self-published,

I got picked up by a big publisher along the way. Then I decided to start actually doing keynote speeches about leadership and about what I'd done. I started off the usual way, Kiwanis clubs where anybody that they can get to talk, they'll get them to talk. You know what I'm talking about?

I started working my way up. As a matter of fact, I just got an XP award out in LA a couple of weeks ago for a speech I made at Carnegie Hall in July.

Gresham Harkless 04:45

Congrats.

Steven Blue 04:45

And it was actually my second xp award. I got the first one for a speech keynote address I made at the United Nations a couple of years ago. So what I've done is I've taken my examples. I'm a CEO that's been there and done that and so when I tell you how to quadruple profit in your company, I've done it.

So I'm not a university professor and I'm not an academic. I've actually done these things and I found over the years that my fellow CEOs, I never met a CEO that if you said, can I show you how to quadruple your profit, would say no I'm not interested.

Gresham Harkless 05:17

Yeah, absolutely. And I know most CEOs and people are listening to this, and understand that success leads to clues. So getting that opportunity to be around and definitely of course, hear from the success that you've been able to have is something that they would love to take a bite out of.

Steven Blue 05:29

Yep. Yep. I found a very receptive audience. One of the things I talk about a lot in all of my books, and it's a thread that's come in every success I've had is the importance of culture.

It used to be, and I'm sure you know this too, used to be, you talked to CEO about culture at a far they'd give you a deer in the headlights look. What is that? Now these days they're beginning to understand the importance of culture and it weaves its way through everything.

Gresham Harkless 05:56

Yeah, absolutely. I think that everything that's happened since the pandemic has brought it even further to light, and being able to try to attract clients, keep talent, all those things, plays such a big part in the culture that you have.

Steven Blue 06:07

That raises a point, I'll just make quickly the so-called quiet quitting phenomenon. Then you hear about people who have been quietly quitting for over 20 years. There are plenty of Harvard and other university studies that bear this out but it never got a lot of media attention till somebody put a name on it, right?

The way to avoid quiet quitting is by respecting your employees and not only respecting the people who work for you but making sure that people respect each other in an organization. That's really key because, in all these studies and surveys, people were more interested in respect than they were in pay and promotions and in benefits. And you know what? Respect doesn't cost a damn thing.

Gresham Harkless 06:51

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So is that a lot of what you're doing with Miller Ingenuity is being able to help bring that awareness to the CEOs and leaders of these organizations?

Steven Blue 07:00

Yeah, and I use my own company and I've had several companies. I use my own company as an example. I'll give you one example. We wanted to become more innovative a number of years ago, quite a few years ago. We had an R&D department and of course they're innovative, that's what they get paid to do. But I wanted the entire workforce to have an engine of innovation. So white collar and blue collar.

I hired the former Chief Creativity officer of the QVC network to come in and teach the principles of innovation starting with the building blocks of brainstorming to every single employee. He rolled shotgun with us coming in and out every other week to make sure we got it, make sure we understood it, and every single employee got it. Then I said, okay, I'm gonna give every single employee the time and the freedom to go out and innovate.

In the beginning we'd say, okay, here's a problem we want you to work on, or, here's an opportunity we want you to work on. Fast forward five or six years after that, they do it all by themselves. Now our employees decide what they wanna work on, when they work on it, what and who they wanna work on it with. And it's amazing the output that you get if you give people the freedom to do that.

Gresham Harkless 08:12

Nice. So would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce, which can be for yourself individually, the organization, or a combination of both.

But is it that ability to be able to understand and see the force for the trees, really understand what organizations should be doing or maybe should have as a goal. But furthermore, to be able to understand how that manifests itself in each part of the organization, do you feel like that's part of the secret sauce?

Steven Blue 08:38

Yeah, it really is because, of course, everybody knows, it's no secret the CEO's job is to set direction, CEO's job is to set strategy and all that kind of stuff, and then to mobilize resources to achieve that. Okay, that's fine, you can get that in any textbook. But what many CEOs don't realize is what you just talked about. You have to reach into the tentacles of the organization and make sure that all of that interconnects somehow. So otherwise, it's just fluff and CEO talk. And as I said, you have to line everything up in the organization to achieve that including firing if people aren't on board with the initiatives.

You give them coaching, give them counseling, you give them an opportunity to change all that kind of stuff. That when I make a proclamation, I intend to back it up. And so that's what I mean by you've got to reach in the tentacles of the organization. You can't just let your supervisors do it and your other leaders do it because they may not quite be on board with your initiative and you need to know whether they are or not.

Gresham Harkless 09:32

Awesome. Awesome, awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Steven Blue 09:43

I could give you the names of three people. Will that work?

Gresham Harkless 09:47

That'll do.

Steven Blue 09:48

Tony Robbins, everybody knows Tony Robbins. Jay Abraham, some of your younger listeners may and then Harvey McKay would be the third. Some of your younger viewers might not know him, but Harvey is a seven-times New York Times bestselling author and professional speaker. Everybody knows what Tony Robbins does. Jay Abraham, I think they used to call him the 10 million dollar Man.

I was a co-producer in a film about his life at times. And as a matter of fact, I just saw Jay last week in Phoenix. At Harvey McKay's 90th birthday party, he had about 400 of his best friends join him to celebrate his 90th and the three of them have completely different views. I've done the fire walk, I don't know, four or five times. They have completely different views, and if you I've melded them together and coalesced them, I'm a mutt. I'm a hybrid of all three of those guys.

Gresham Harkless 10:37

Nice. I absolutely love that. My big belief, and I always say, the quote is, success leaves clues. I think that if you find people, and I think I even touched on a little bit when I read something last week was that we sometimes think innovation is doing something completely new. But sometimes it's when you are that mutt when you are able to coalesce each of these different things, you're able to blaze shells because you're able to see the best parts or how you can leverage each of those different aspects and thoughts from those.

Steven Blue 11:04

There's a school of thought that says and I'm sure you hear this, there's nothing new in the world. There's nothing new in the world, but how you apply it, how you use it, how you make it fit with your own circumstances that I think is the key.

Gresham Harkless 11:17

Yeah, absolutely. There's such a school of thought of being diverse, having diverse experiences and being well-read because you could sometimes take something from an entirely different industry and implement it in yours and then all of a sudden it becomes like an innovation.

Steven Blue 11:29

Yeah. Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 11:31

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO Nugget then? This is a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice I like to say. It might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Steven Blue 11:45

If whatever you're doing, you got an initiative, you're launching a company, a new product, whatever, if it doesn't scare the living daylights out of you, It isn't worth doing and you're not thinking big enough. I'll give you a really quick example. I started a trade show many, many, many years ago in Mexico. I won't bore you with the details of why I thought that was a good opportunity in any way. So after a lot of work and a lot of effort, it was the night before the trade show and all my customers were coming from the United States. This was down in Monterey, Mexico.

There was a huge snowstorm in the northeast, and I was afraid that most of them wouldn't be able to get there. I was on the hook personally, and I didn't have the money for a hundred thousand dollars in hotel guarantees and the exhibit hall guarantees and I would have been screwed if that didn't work out. I'm walking through the exhibit hall that night and I'm absolutely scared to death and I did everything right and this was an event that was beyond my control. As it turned out, the snowstorms cleared. It was a huge success, but I was scared to death.

The other thing I'll mention is just because you have one great big success, don't start thinking you're that smart because right after that, I started an internet at the time. This is 35 years ago, internet broadcast company. My inaugural broadcast was to be made from Havana, Cuba. I had to go jump through a lot of hoops to get the license, to go down there. I had to hire a film crew out of Mexico, all kinds of stuff. It was an absolute failure. I lost a ton of money out of that. But my message is because I've been so successful in that trade show, I'm thinking I can do no wrong.

In fact, you can do wrong, but you can't let that stop you from engaging in new ideas. You just have to take a chance every time.

Gresham Harkless 13:28

Absolutely. So, you touched on this as well too, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different quote and quote, CEOs on this show.

So, Steve, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Steven Blue 13:38

You have to have lots of courage. Because you have to make courageous decisions and then you have to back them up. You shouldn't think that every decision you make will be welcomed with open arms because they won't. Over the course of my career, I've been threatened. I had to hire a private security detail to protect my family. I've had to cajole my board at one time or another.

CEO is a perilous occupation. It is. And if you wanna be one or you wanna be successful, you got to strap on your flack jacket and expect to take a lot of incoming, because that's just the way it is. But you just have to Barrel your way through it and keep going.

I've gotten hate mail, I've had people drop stuff in my yard, you name it, I've had it all. One time some woman called my wife and said I was having an affair with somebody in the company, which I wasn't. It's just all manner of whenever somebody wants to change something and that's CEO's job is to change things then you're gonna get a lot of resistance. So you just have to be up for that.

Gresham Harkless 14:40

Absolutely. Absolutely. Steve, truly appreciate you for taking some time out with us today. What I wanted to do now is pass you the mic just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best they can get ahold of you, find out about all the awesome things you and team are working on.

Steven Blue 14:55

Just keep at it and how they say people who can't teach while actually writing my books has sharpened my thinking. I think the easiest way is my personal website, which links to the company. If you try to spell my company name, it's not that easy. My personal website is stevenlblue.com.

Gresham Harkless 15:13

Awesome. Awesome, awesome. We'll definitely have those links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. I think when you were saying the quote about being able to write the book and how valuable it's been for you to get that clarity, sometimes people say you can't afford to do it, but a lot of times the reality is you can't afford not to.

I think probably the spaciousness, the clarity, just getting able to think through things and be able to synthesize that is a good exercise. Imminent of itself just for any leader and person that's going through life. So, truly appreciate that last part and of course, all the awesome things that you're doing, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Steven Blue 15:46

Thank you. It was a joy to talk to you. Thank you so much.

Outro 15:49

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase. It's a community.

Check out the latest and greatest apps, books, and habits to level up your business at ceohacks.co.

This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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