In a recent Q&A interview with Marshall University as part of the HERD 20-20 webinar…
Moves The Needle & Brad D. Smith Podcast Recap
In a recent interview with Moves The Needle, Brad D. Smith shares his experience as a leader, educator, and executive. Brad speaks about what an empathic and productive leader looks like for businesses and beyond. With a rich personal history of meeting challenges in the workplace and changing executive roles, he talks about what makes a leader effective when helping produce innovation and while cultivating these skills in others.
According to Brad, one of the most important approaches to leading a successful company starts with asking goal-based questions that help distribute innovation throughout a company instead of centralizing it into just one or two groups. Brad also speaks to teaching experimentation processes to employees with the expectation that failure is just as much a part of the innovation and learning process as success. With the right experimentation models, expectations become more realistic and each employee has the ability to contribute to the company and customer wellbeing.
For a snapshot of the interview’s topics, read the following timestamp guide:
01:34 – Brad D. Smith introduction
03:32: – How to create an environment for productive self disruption and the advantages of it
07:02 – What defines the Brad D. Smith leadership style
15:42 – Authentic leadership and letting employees know that you care
21:08 – How leaders can teach skills by leading with questions
22:58 – How Brad became CEO at Intuit
23:53 – The leadership difference between needing to change and leaving a mark on something
28:01 – The importance of creating a learning environment where people treat success and failure the same way
36:24 – Tradeoffs between delivering the numbers today and planning the company’s future
44:47 – How to motivate innovators and distribute innovation in a large company
46:44 – Brad about creating a Founder’s mindset to balance interests of the company and the customer
49:57 – Actual innovation vs. false signaling
51:58 – How Brad gained insight about his “Why”