Hello, I'm Jonathan Kirschner, founder and CEO of Air
Consulting and host of a podcast about leadership.
And this is a show about the mindsets and skill sets that we
need to navigate change and shape better future.
And joining me today are three incredible people who know a
thing or two about leadership. So we have Reed Foz, Alex Wilkes
and Jamie Ramzan. So I'm going to briefly
introduce each of you. Reed has served as CEO of
National Vision for more than two decades.
Yes, you heard me right, decades guiding it from a modest optical
chain into one of the largest vision care retailers in
America. And under his leadership, the
company went public, grew to more than 1000 stores, and
became known for making quality eye care in general, but also
specifically accessible to everyone, so very, very special.
In August, Reed transitioned into the role of Executive
Chairman and continues to provide incredible strategic
support while passing the baton to National Vision's new CEO,
Alex Wilkes Woo. All right.
So Alex joined the company last year as President after senior
leadership roles at Cooper Vision, SLR Luxottica.
And across those positions, he has earned a very rich
reputation for leading both with strategic focus and also real
empathy for customers and patients.
By the way, managing those two polarities not, not 100% simple.
I'm sure we'll get into that. And joining us today is well is
author and senior executive coach Jamie Ramsden.
In addition to being one of the longest serving coaches on Air's
bench, he's a former CEO himself.
Jamie won the 2021 Coaching Leadership Award at Air, not an
easy award to win. And Jamie's been working with
Reed for the past five years and has also been working with Alex
since May. So we have three CEO's.
If you throw me into the mix, that's four CEO's on one one
podcast. And it's just a real pleasure to
be together. Guys.
Thanks so much for taking out the time to be on the show.
You got it. Look at looking forward to it.
Alex, I'm going to direct the first question to you.
All right. You've been, you've been in the
hot seat for four months now in one of the most successful
companies in in the market. I mean, we're up over 150%.
It's it's amazing. And, and not an easy year if AI
is not your business model, not an easy year for pretty much
every sector. And help us understand, let's
just start, help us understand National vision.
What do you, what do you do and why do we all need to be going
to National Vision for for our eye care?
Perfect. Well, again, thank you for the
opportunity to to share a bit of my experience in the background
and and what we're up to within the company today.
So National Vision is as you said earlier, an incredible
company that scaled over 2 decades.
We have over 12150 retail locations that provide
optometric services, glasses, contact lenses and I care to
close to 7 million American patients a year delivered
through a network of 2500 optometrists.
So we offer a ton of healthcare within the US ecosystem and we
pride ourselves on doing that through providing great value to
our our customers and patients through our series of brands.
America's Best is our most, our largest brand with over 1000
doors, Eyeglass World, which is a hyper regionalized optical
retail chain with a good presence in Florida and in the
Southwest predominantly. And then we we also are proud to
to provide optometric services within the military exchanges as
well. It's a, it's a, it's a great
business for us too. So that's the, the kind of
combination of national of national vision.
So think about us as your your quality, high quality, high
value provider of eye care and eyewear throughout throughout
the US. And they hear that right 7.
Million, close to close to 7 million patient encounters per
year. It's, it's absolutely
incredible. And, and just, you know, the,
the power of being able to see and, and, and that gift that
that so many of us have and, and to be able to, to help in that
way is just, I mean, at that scale, like it's, it's a, it's a
nice percentage of, of the country, right.
It's a category that resonates with me personally.
I mean, I've, I've been wearing glasses and contact lenses since
I was a teenager. And you know, for for those of
us who have entered the category, you know how life
changing it is to have quality eye care, quality eyewear and
the ability to to see clearly. Actually, I'm in 7th grade, you
know, I was getting headaches. I couldn't, couldn't, couldn't
quite figure it out. And, and, and lo and behold, it
was, it was. I just needed some air glasses
and probably few other things. But but that's fantastic.
Alex, thank you for, for helping us understand the incredible
landscape that you're that you're immersed in every day
read. You've led the organization for
more than two decades. I mean, you basically took it
from from infancy to this Goliath of a organization with
an IPO on that journey. Can you bring us on that, that
leadership journey and just like help us understand what it's
like, what it's like to be on a, on A2 decade plus journey.
Well, I. Guess it shows a distinct lack
of imagination. Who knows?
But first of all, Jonathan, I want to say I'm really
complimented to be invited on here, especially to, to share
this with, with Alex and with, with Jamie.
Alex, because I just could not be prouder of the work he has
done with National Vision and what he's done in such a time to
make it an ever, ever better company.
And, and Jamie, because frankly, I've learned so much from him
over the past several years. Jamie, of course, has published
that great book, Let's go. And in it he has a lot of
leadership concepts. I might just reference a few of
those because they were the without knowing the words of
them until I met Jamie. There was a lot of them that
were being demonstrated there. And one of one of Jamie's
concepts is sense making and that the a leader, one of their
core 4 roles. I think Jamie, if I'm
remembering the book right, it's sense making is one of them.
And that's that's understanding where a company is in its in its
development and helping the whole organization to understand
that as as well. So in thinking back on this,
this is the sense making of of all of that.
Yeah. I joined the company 23 years
ago. The company had just emerged
from bankruptcy and the company at that time was 400 optical
stores inside Walmart were essentially all the sales and
profits of the company. And within my first month,
Walmart informed me that they weren't planning on renewing the
leases on any of the 400 stores that were providing us all of
our sales and and profits. I call that that was not a good
day. That's a hell of a way to start
a job. Your largest?
So it just emerged from banquet see a mountain of bank post
bankruptcy debt and then we are told that in essence we were we
had we were given a death sentence.
Luckily we are going to die over time because each of the 400
stores had a different lease, but we were going to die over
time. So I think of my 23 years as
roughly 7 chapters and the 1st chapter I'd call solving the
problem the problem and we always did it with these they
quotes. The problem was that our
business was going away and and so solving that was finding a
way to find something that would go like this because our current
business was going like that. And you needed it to go like
that faster than it went like that, to not go bankrupt and and
die again. And we always did these hand
motions. It kept it very simple.
And the first stage of this was another one of Jamie's
leadership principles was community building, gathering
around a team because during the bankruptcy, in essence, people
had left her all been fired. So there was almost no
leadership team there. So there was the community
building, trying to attract people to what what they all now
referred to as the company that had no future and and trying to
get a team together with with sort of two strategies.
One was 1 was elongate the profit runway to buy ourselves
more time to solve the problem. So finding ways with what we had
to get more profit out of it so that we would have a longer time
before we hit a bankruptcy again.
And to to find some some growth vehicle that that period went
from 2002 to 2005 and 2005. We managed to attract a private
equity firm who is willing to buy us and buy the America's
Best chain, which at the time was 114 stores.
And I'll say you, you've got a great management team running a
a declining asset. We'll give you a great asset,
see if you can grow that. And so then it was a grow these
faster than the Walmart stores die.
So Chapter 2 began when we were when, when the private equity
firm bought us and bought and bought America's Best.
And, and that was about refining the America's Best concept to
make it better and then scaling the heck out of it.
And frankly, we've been scaling it ever since 1st 35 stores a
year, then 55 stores a year, then 50, then, then 75 stores a
year. And we did that for the for a
very long time. The 3rd chapter began in roughly
2009. I'd call that the mergers and
acquisition and integration chapter.
During that time we bought the third largest online contact
lens business and bought a chain called Eyeglass World that was
about to go into bankruptcy itself.
So then we had three things going upward and one thing
declining. And during that time also we
convinced Walmart to, to, not to not take back our stores and to
freeze us for a time at 227 stores.
The 400 stores had gone down to that.
So that was the managed care or the the mergers and acquisition
and integration chapter. Then I'd say from 2014 through
2019, it was ever growing sophistication.
We went from a medium sized private equity firm to to KKR,
one of the largest in the world. That raises your level of
sophistication. And then it was preparing to, to
have art to go public and then to learn how to live in a public
mode. And that was ever increasing
sophistication. That was 2014 to 2019, 2020.
Guess what? A new chapter happened.
I don't know whether you remember this global pandemic
that happened in 2020 that, that, that came along.
And, and that was its own chapter in and of itself that
was closing all of our stores, determining how to reopen safely
and then maximizing that experience.
Probably our, our, our proudest period throughout all that.
I couldn't be happy with how we did that in 2020 and 2021 where
we are crazy proud. 6th chapter began in 2022 post COVID where
everything was different for our consumers and everything was
different for us. We had the same labor disruption
that everyone else was having. We had the same disruption of
healthcare providers and our consumers were feeling very,
very strapped. Very, we are very back footed
during, during that time and had to do a lot primarily around
trying to build enough capacity and, and ways to ensure we could
always give people eye exams then it but, but I would say it
was a pretty back footed period. Then Chapter 7 came in 2024 when
Alex and others joined the company.
And that was, I'd say the period of of transformation where we
took a company that had been wildly successful at replicating
a winning concept was no longer winning in the post COVID world.
And Alex and team came along and, and took that foundation,
modernized it and reconceived it for the world that we're living
in now. Those are, those are the, that
was the leadership journey. I, I would say in another
podcast, we could do the same chapters for our philanthropic
journey. That was a totally different
thing, but that's a different story.
I think that answers your question.
Wow. It's, I mean, I first of all, I,
I, my sense making is registering that a book should
be written on this. It was it.
Was very nice to have Jamie's book to help put words to a lot
of the concepts we were applying during that time.
I'll. I'll.
Say this, I'm really pleased we're doing this podcast, but we
have our sights set on acquired. Like, you know, that's once we
get, once we get an acquired podcast, then we can claim we've
made it. I love it.
You know, something that I
learned from Jamie because he's, he's provided a fair amount of
coaching whether I've asked for it or not.
And, and, and I consider him seriously as a, as, as a
consiglier. Jamie actually taught me what
that word was. I had to go watch the Godfather
afterwards to, to understand fully what, what that meant.
But you know, as CEO, I mean, I'm sure you all can relate to
this. Like, you know, you, you wake up
every day and you're trying to, you're trying to move the
needle, you're trying to grow the business.
And, and to your point read, it's like, you know, you want
more of this than this. And, and inevitably you, you,
you reconcile that it's impossible that there can't be
this happening concurrently with this.
And you just need more of this than this.
You know, more money and more than than than money going out.
You know, more good things happening in the culture then
then then not great things. And one of the things that that
Jamie always reminds me of is that growth doesn't happen in a
straight line, right? Just curious, Jamie, like if you
could expand that. I don't know if there's a
chapter in Let's Go that kind of aligns to that concept, but
that's always been very helpful for me.
Maybe the? Chapter is expand and contract
because I think when we look at the cycles that surround us in
the nature and in our patterns of our life and in the universe,
very, you know, there is so much more that's cyclical that is,
than is actually linear. And I think that that's when I
think I get people to try and understand if we put the
conditions in place for us to maximize the opportunity when
the cycle is in our favor and minimize the downside when it's
not. And actually there is
opportunity when there's a downside.
But the idea that, you know, we sort of plan for straight line
thinking and then we're shocked by the reality of seeing that
there are variables that are outside of our control and
cycles that are outside of our control.
And so really part of the role of the leader is to be able to
see them clearly and more quickly than other people, and
to adapt more quickly and more clearly than other people.
And to make sense for it, for other people and to make sure
that people, the teams and the organization are aware of the
chapter change, aware of we were doing this.
It worked well. We have moved into a new part of
the cycle. Hey everyone, let's all
recognize that and try to figure out what are the what are the
rules of engagement and the game plan to win now that this has
changed on us. So it's almost like the, you
know, the the CEO in in in this case with but but elite
leadership attribute is it's not just, you know, setting the
vision and just getting people to try to it, but it's, it's all
the bumps along the road and then helping people make meaning
of that to to really. And I guess that's when you say
sense making, is that essentially like how do we make
meaning of it? Well, here's what I'd say is,
you know, one of the things I think, and we may have talked
about this recently, but you know, normally the organization
will come to us with what we call in the the coaching world,
the presented problem. So somebody walks in our office
or they knock on the door, they send us an e-mail, they send us
a text saying, hey, here's a challenge that I have.
And it can manifest itself in various different ways.
It can be, Hey, you didn't set us up for success or hey, you're
not being fair with me versus my colleagues or hey, so it can
come in a very presented form in a way that causes us to react.
And actually part of the, the the process of great leadership,
as I see it, or as I try and encourage people to see it is
actually slowing down and understanding what's behind the
presented problem, understanding what's the motivation and then
the sense making is about, OK, we're in this context.
You presented an obstacle that you're expecting me to help you
overcome. And I can help, I can give you a
solution and walk you out the, the door to the presented
problem. But invariably, if we do that,
they'll be back in again or there'll be another request or
will be suboptimal or actually it won't give the results that
we or they're looking for. And so the idea is in this, you
know, in the, in the moments and as a leader, as Aceo, you're
constantly under time pressure. And so when how can you slow
down in order to be able to to have that conversation and to
understand the motivations of others and then make sense for
them is to build this pathway to give them the agency to go and
solve it themselves with some input from you.
And maybe that they came to you because they didn't have they
were missing something that could have been information.
It might have been a network or introduction.
It might have been it resource. It might have been a reframing
of the situation or a sense making that they didn't
currently have. But it may sometimes just be
permission and confidence to go and take the action and they
were going to take. And so if you're able to do
that, I call these the magic moments of truth, the gold
moments of truth, where the organization comes to us in some
way, shape or form with a problem that we feel obliged to
fix. And we may fix it at the surface
level and say, OK, it's Dom. But often, invariably, it comes
back to us in a different form. And that's when we realized, oh,
I didn't really see what was going on.
And so I'm encouraging people, I always encourage people to sort
of stock in that moment and say, hey, here's an opportunity to
view, to make sense of this situation for that person and to
build the bridge to connect their work back to the strategy,
the vision, the direction, the wrong.
Jamie I love that. I find personally one of the
hardest things is slowing down because there's just so many
forces. That are pushing you to speed up
right. And it's, it's like one of the
hardest things to wrap your head around as a, as a, as a CEO.
And, and actually, when I, when I work with CE OS and I'm
working with say new time, you know, you know, early on CE OS
versus more mature CE OS, one of the distinguishing qualities is,
is this capability of, of knowing how to operate at like
multiple gears and know when to, to like slow down to speed up,
right. Reed, you were going to, you
were going to say, well, you just think.
That, you know, we are talking about organizational sense
making and I've, I've, I've always liked the the expression
that heightened self-awareness yields heightened effectiveness.
And I think heightened organizational self-awareness
also yields heightened effectiveness.
But you know, the challenge of being ACEO in a high pressure
situation, so much of it is a mind game just with yourself,
just dealing with your managing your own brain and what it's
doing. And again, This is why it's
great to work with a coach like Jamie is.
You've got someone who, who you can open up to, who you can
share all the good and bad with. And they can.
And it raises yourself awareness and it it is helpful for you to
try to wrap your mind around the, the, the pressures that
it's it's causing for you. Well, that's a that's a really
good segue into something I'm really, really curious about and
that's CEO succession, right. So, so I'm a founder CEO.
I've been founder, I've been CEO for 16 years.
I've said 16 years of muscle memory.
If somebody asks me, you know, about air and, and, and about my
life, it's like it actually, it takes a moment for me to
separate the two. My identity is pretty, you know,
wrapped up in, in the business and stuff.
I spent a lot of time, you know, at work, but but also like these
decisions and, and a lot of the strategic decisions we made as
an organization. They've they've come from me,
right? I can't imagine not being CEOI
mean, I'm curious for you, Reed, right at like you got, you know,
2 decades of, of, of muscle memory going through those,
those 7 chapters, right? What is it been like to hand
over the baton? How?
How do you, you know, make space for somebody else?
It is a really interesting journey and has been quite a
learning experience. And as you could imagine,
you're, you're managing yourself because I, I, I think one point
in time you use the word identity and your identity does
become sort of sort of enmeshed. There were, there were two sort
of big moments for me in this journey.
You know, on the plus side, there were, there was a lot of
longevity and tenure in a lot of folks in the organization, which
says a lot about keeping people and, and memory and that.
And in a, in an, in a time and place when winning was about
replicating winning formulas, that was wonderful because you
wanted people who really understood how to make the
recipe and not to put in things in the recipe that didn't work
and all that. So in and frankly, peak pre
COVID, a lot of success for a lot of businesses was if you've
got a winning business model and you can replicate it, well, you
can win. And that was a lot of our
success. The challenge is in a
transformational era that can actually hold you back because
there are a lot of people who just naturally say, well, can't
we keep doing what used to work? And that's fine, but if it
doesn't work anymore, then it's actually a handicap.
But human psychology is, I wanted the way it used to be,
even if the recipe isn't turning out as well as as it was.
So, so I had there was a lot of tenure, a lot of longevity, lot
of dedication in that way, but also many were retiring and
some, it was probably the right moment for to move on because we
had this tension during the, the chapter where the post COVID
chapter where we were backfooted and there was this tension
between do we go forward and transform or do we try to do it
the old way? And, and this was an ongoing
tension that, that was one conversation.
The other conversation was with, with Jamie around the same
period where he said, you know, Reid, your, your legacy has two
different points to it. Your legacy is about about what
you do until you leave the organization, whether you're CEO
or not. And it's also about what happens
in the aftermath, after your departure and in the
conversation. Of course, great leaders don't
leave, leave organizations that fall apart the day they they
leave. And you know what, what's the
natural instinct of all of us as parents?
You want your children to do better than you do, right?
You don't you don't want to say I was great and boy, my kids
screwed up. They didn't get anything.
You know, you, you want the next generations and, and, and
bearing in mind that your legacy is not about just the time, your
CEO, but the time, the time until you leave the company and
also what happens afterwards. And you know, I think Jack
Welch's image is tarnished by the fact that the company never
did as well afterwards. It didn't go from strength to
strength. Our company, National Vision is
going from strength to strength because they're Alex's
leadership and the, the team he is, he has brought in.
But but I'll add one thing it, it has been a journey of in
terms of my own mind managing my maturity.
Like there's a natural feeling of defensiveness, new people
come in and frankly, it's very hard to transform a business if
you've been running it for 23 years or 16 years.
Jonathan just saying because because the thing you think you
fixed two years ago, you bring in some fresh eyes and they say,
wait a minute, that's not fixed. I thought I thought I fixed it
two years ago. Or they come in and there was
something you really believed in and they point out not and you
the the maturity comes in A not being defensive and and B
encouraging them to transform and and feeling great that their
success is actually also your success.
Although it's their success. It's great, you know, but but
it's a like so much, it's a mind game.
But in this period of time, I actually personally am very
proud of that there. You know, I, Jamie and Alex know
I very much like Broadway musicals and the communications
they have. There's a line in there's a song
in Hamilton. It's about George Washington
leaving the presidency and going back to to Mount Vernon and, and
the song is called Teach Them how to Say Goodbye.
And, and I'm I'm hoping that there's a little bit of that in
this so. Wow.
Well, first of all, I'm going to have my my podcast staff and the
podcast with that with that song.
So we'll make sure that that gets gets included here.
And by the way. I could only do it if because I
got the the right successor in Alex, who waltzed in with a real
vision, a transformational vision that was a winner.
His first day was a strategy day and he he was not a I'm going to
sit back 90 days and watch. He was a let's go.
He he jumped, he jumped right in and and it things it, it was
great from there. Yeah.
Well, I would, I would actually. So there's so much in what you
just shared read and, and that that piece on maturation,
because you know, you could you go buy a book on CEO succession
and, and there's like, you know, the playbook, but like that
piece on maturation is a internal process of, of
essentially like relinquishing ego and aligning yourself to
what's best for the organization.
And it's a really, really hard thing.
I've coached number of leaders, you know, going through a
succession process and when it doesn't work, it's because that
maturation didn't happen. You could follow all the steps
and in any of the playbooks if that maturation piece doesn't
happen in parallel, it just it just doesn't work.
There's a term I use in my head which is called becoming
audience. OK, so because Alex is the is
the key player right now, he is the player and and I am stepping
back and in most meetings that he's kind enough, he's kind
enough to invite me to most everything.
I try to become audience. I'll I'll share things with him
quietly the two of us, but audience and think of think of a
soccer field. Who's on that soccer field?
The grandparents, they're not out there playing, but they're
actually also, but they are playing an important role.
That kid out there on the field knows his grandparents are
watching and both the kid wants to sort of make the grandparents
proud. And when things aren't going
great, the grandparents can be very soothing.
The grant that that grandparent who is audience on the soccer
field, they're actually playing an important role, being
audience they're but they're not.
They're not the key players in any way, shape or form.
Audience I I love that. Thank you, Reed.
Alex, I'm just curious. OK, so.
So you've come into a kitchen with a winning recipe and so now
you have to make and I'm sure so, so there's just tons of
legacy and winning recipes. And yet I'm sure there's aspects
of the business that you see like Tariq's point, like there's
things that you see that he doesn't see, right?
How do you do this? Like I want to hear from your
side. How do you decide you know what?
What do we keep the same and what do we preserve?
What do we disrupt or or begin to experiment on?
And how do we manage a transition like this?
Maybe you could help us understand CEO succession from
your perspective. Reed and I have known each other
for quite some time. Like we, you know, I, I was in
the industry, Reed and I were on a, on an industry board
together. So we, we, we knew each other.
We were friendly. Reid was a a sounding board to
me as I was thinking about career changes throughout my
earlier tenure. And even though stylistically
Reid and I are different more than we are alike, However, we
share a really strong set of core principles and values.
And I think, you know, even just taking that back when I think
about like, why are transition is worked so well, it is because
of this, this ideal that we have embraced and appreciated each
other's differences. And, and Reed has certainly
embraced my, my kind of leadership and personality
nuances that are, are, I think are, are fairly different from
the stylistic mode of the organization historically.
And that has helped to kind of drive the, the, the business in
a, in a different direction. And so a, a bit of the advantage
I had too, was knowing the national Vision story, both as a
kind of competitor from my previous employer, from a
supplier to National Vision from my previous employer's
perspective. So I, I had a, a strong thesis
coming into the company about what needed to evolve that
wasn't necessarily evolving where we had, as we had coined
it, we were a very strong analog rigid replicator of a winning
recipe. But the consumer had evolved,
the needs of the optical category had had evolved and
the, the brand experiences, the, the approach to marketing, the
approach to merchandising hadn't necessarily evolved in a dynamic
way to meet the consumer where the consumer now was in the
20/4/2024 time period. So coming into the, the, you
know, the the business, you know, I talked about, you know,
change in degrees of of pivot and this was not 180° kind of
turn around situation, but it was a business model that
probably needed a 90° turn of the dial in almost every way.
So Reid and I talk a lot about this rapid modernization of
national vision and some of it is symbolic in nature, but some
of it is bringing in real capability that has helped us to
be faster, smarter, more assertive and ultimately meet
the consumer where the consumer now is.
So over the last, you know, 12 months, we've made some some
substantial changes to the leadership team Reid was talking
about. There were, you know, there were
people on the on the team that frankly weren't going to be the
right players on the soccer field for this next match that
we were going to play. And I think, you know, one of
one of the the leadership lessons learned I've had over
the years is, you know, you can identify fairly quickly if you
have a player on the team who can play the game, go forward.
And if you have a player that with a little bit of coaching
can contribute. Or if you have a player that
might have all the talent in the world, but is not a cultural fit
for the type of game you want to play.
And make that decision really fast, whether or not those team
members are going to be able to, to continue to play on your
team, go forward because otherwise it's just going to
ultimately slow you down. So coming into this, coming into
this business, I did have a, a fairly clear thesis on the
things that we needed to evolve and in the, in the order that
they needed to evolve. And over the last 12 months
we've been, we've been playing that playbook out.
I love that, Alex. I mean, I, I, I, I took
particular note to the word rapid because sometimes people
will say, right, If you read like the first 90 days or either
there's some philosophies that would say, you know, don't
disrupt the apple cart, you know, on, on, on day one or, you
know, within those first 90 days, like spend that time
connecting, understanding, you know, touring, listening.
But, but, you know, it sounds like that wasn't necessarily the
approach from, from your perspective there.
There was a like part of why this has been successful and
we're seeing such incredible growth right now.
I would argue it might have to do something with this
rapidness. Anything you'd want to elaborate
on there? I certainly.
Think it was an advantage that I came from the industry, right?
That I came from the optical retail industry, that I, I knew
this category inside and, and out, right.
I use this term, I call it the belly math of the business,
which is, you know, if you see, if you see something, you can
immediately internalize it and run it through your belly math
and you know what's going on. And you know, I didn't have to
learn new belly math for this business, right?
I mean, it was, you know, from pretty clear from, from the
trajectory of the business and where there were challenges to,
to rapidly identify where some of the where some of the
challenge exists and where some of the the friction points were
that needed to be to be addressed.
So that was certainly an advantage in in, you know,
coming in with with a a strong, you know, strong thesis of
things that and the order in which they needed to be to be
addressed. And, you know, I, I don't have,
you know, it's funny. Reed was talking about the seven
chapters and, you know, over the last, you know, couple days in
New York, I've been I've actually been talking to
investors about the eras of the of 2425 and 26.
And you know, I said, you know, you can roughly think of 25 as
think about our business as a chess board.
And in 25 we move probably 70% of our chess pieces into the
right position that we wanted the chess pieces to be in.
Of those 70% chess pieces, we probably put 50% of those pieces
in motion to start attacking the things that we wanted to attack.
But there's still another 30% of chess pieces that we have yet to
move and certainly haven't moved in a position to to kind of to
attack it at the moment. But we have our game strategy,
We have our our plan baked of what what that's going to, what
that's going going to look like. So also thinking about, yes, we
did move things rapidly and with urgency, but the team has also
built a fairly substantial longitudinal game plan for how
we're going to attack the business over multiple years.
And we've been very, very deliberate about ideas that are
additive to the consumer and additive to the business.
But these are some ideas that we're not going to touch and
work on until 2026 or 2027 and being disciplined about not
chasing some of those things until we've until we've moved
our other pieces and gotten leverage out of the other pieces
that we've we've moved, we've moved in place first.
One of my favorite chapters from a book, The Hard Thing about
Hard Things by Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz.
It's I think the chapter is called, it's in.
You know, we're we're playing we're playing chess, not
checkers, right when we're CEO, I introduced you a strategic and
that was probably the most strategic description of a
strategy. 50% of this wow, it's pretty, pretty impressive and it
is interesting like great CEO's are doing something really
incredible. They're living in the present
with informed by what's happened in the past.
But there's also this like plain of consciousness where you're
living like in the future and you're doing it all at once.
It's, it's pretty impressive. I love that.
So, so maybe just like just to get really concrete and, and
practical, you know, there's a lot of CEO's who are, who are
going through this and, and not having as, as much fun or as
success. And there's a lot of CEO's that
that will be going through CEO succession.
I, I want to ask you, you know, Reed and Alex 1st and then
Jamie, I'd just love to get your perspective as well, you know,
what advice would you give to CE OS going through this?
Yeah. You know, I think it is back to
what I, I'll, I'll anchor back to what I said previously,
having this transition dynamic where you have a really deep
respect for one another, both the, the, the, the differences
and similarities and shared vision.
It that is so critical and crucial to this, to this
relationship. And, and, you know, Reid and I
agreed early on that, you know, if there were ever like things
that were foot faults, we'd pull each other to the side, we'd
talk about them. We wouldn't do it in front of
the team. We'd have meals together where
we could, you know, where we would share our insights, we
would share our, our beliefs. But then ultimately, you know,
I, I, I'll just give all the credit in the world to read
right. He, he has said this is you're
running the company. I will give you my, my advice.
I'll give you my counsel. But when he says I'm, I'm
sharing this with you for you to do with as you see fit.
It's a sincere you do with it as you see fit.
And I sincerely sometimes will do nothing with the things that
Rita said, you know, do with what you see fit.
And I know that's OK, but he's he also knows it's OK and that
I'm not if he's giving me the stimulus, I'm not just like,
let's say I don't do anything with it.
It's not like I ignore it. I process it.
It goes through, it goes through the calculator, it goes through
the belly math and everything is, you know, everything is, is
considered. And I think and I think Reid
having that trust in me that that has made all all the
difference in the world. The second piece that I think
has been so, so critical. And one of the reasons that that
we have been able to to move fast is, you know, Reed's legacy
of a humble, truly leader, servant, sorry, servant leader,
leader within the organization. You can't put a price on the
goodwill and a price on the kind of cultural power that that
places on and, and responsibility that that puts on
Reed's shoulders. Him getting out in front of the
team and saying, hey, I embrace this, I support this.
I genuinely am supportive of this, of this transformation
strategy helps put people at ease.
And they said, OK, you know, it's, it's going to be OK.
We can buy into this. We can adapt to this new way of
thinking that is in some cases very counter to what they've
been been used to. But.
Having Reed's support and having his his not only blessing but
but cheering on of the team, I think it's just helped it help
it all go so much, help it all go so much faster.
I, I love that that those are, those are some incredible
Nuggets. I, I think about, you know, so
you know, you kind of like set some norms between you, you
know, how to, how you're going to behave.
There's these sort of rituals that you built in to like, not
only like build and grow trust, but maintain it, you know,
through dinners. But then like the shared values.
That's really what's striking me.
It's like you might have differences in like perspectives
and strategy, but it's it's the the shared values that really
makes it all hum. And then of course, you know,
even even if you had all that, but Reed was kind of giving
permission, maybe overtly, but then like unconsciously pulling
back or doing things like, and I've seen that by the way, then
then that could make it messy, right?
But what I'm hearing is that like reads full hearted support
and saying you got this, right, That that that was that's
actually crucial. That's a crucial ingredient to
this. There is something.
Also, that was gosh, it seems like an eternity ago now, but
when I first joined the company and you know, I mean, I think it
was pretty obvious that this I joined with the intention of
this succession that it was going to occur.
But Reid was even more overt with the team, right?
I mean, it wasn't like this was a he said we are going to run
the company under this idea of two in a box.
So it wasn't like did did you know the chief pick your chief
title person, report to Reid or report to Alex.
They had an accountability to, to both of us and, and you know,
Reid setting that as the the standard for how we will, we
will run. I think not.
I think I know made a huge different big difference because
it it allowed for well, it ensured there wasn't any
ambiguity in terms of what the direction to the organization
was going to be. And.
It that happened on day one in front of the leadership team.
We said we're going to keep it, you know, to the leadership
team, but it's it's although you've heard it never works,
it's going to work this time. And regardless, AS2AS in box day
one. And yeah, I'll also add Alex is
a low ego guy. It would be very easy for
someone to walk in and say, oh, that old guy, he he cast a wide
shadow. I think I'm going to get him out
of here. And frankly, by not doing that,
it did allow me to use my social capital for his changes to say
this is going to be this is good.
This is what we have to do. This is the only way forward.
And and I will say this also, it's nice that so many of the
things he did worked real well. That's always good.
You know, that helps. But so, you know, advice I'd
give to CE OS is plant a lot of seeds there.
Were there sort of a few things? I always had one board member,
the head of the non government committee, who I would say, hey,
if I go under a bus, here are a couple people you could call.
And Alex was very much on that list.
I called right after that, that, that fun lunch in Rockefeller
Center at Alex and said put him on the list.
But there were people I had brought into lesser rules in the
hopes that over years they might evolve and they did not work
out. So, so you know, it's you're,
it's often not, not the first thing you're planted in in
different ways. And that was years ago.
We, we, I went, I sought out Joel Anderson, who was the CEO
of Five Below, now CEO of Petco, because I had heard he was the
best example of founder transition in a public sphere.
And he was the one who said, he said make sure to have a meal
just the two of you start that meal with a did I do anything to
piss you off this week? Did you do anything to piss me
off this week? And frankly, I, I don't think
Alex and I ever did do anything to piss each other off.
But it was nice to know that once a week we'd ask each other
the the question. Yeah.
Never disagree in public. I, I know we're sitting there in
one meeting once in Texas that I think it was Dallas, Alex, we're
in this one meeting and it was pretty clear that we were about
to evolve to a disagree agreement.
And we said, hey, you know, Alex and I are going to go for a
walk. You guys wait here.
We came back. Nobody even knew what, where
anybody was. We came back and we said, oh,
we're doing this. OK, great.
But it was, it was all done. It didn't even take long once
the two of us. But playing it out in public,
oh, that would have been very, very bad.
But I, I do, I do think it's important.
I will text him during meetings. I will write him emails saying
prioritize this if you want to and where you want to.
You do not need to respond to me on this.
Here are some thoughts. I do believe most great brains
percolate on things. So, you know, again, I don't
expect response to these things. I know he's read them and
they're perking up, percolating on them.
Sometimes we chat about them, sometimes not.
But he's got the pressure on his shoulders now.
I know what that pressure is, but he's got to prioritize this
first, this this later. So the pressure is his.
I'm a free consultant. I can say, hey, I know a few
things about this, think about this.
But if he's to be held accountable, he has to be able
to pick and choose that what what he wants to do and what
what not want to do. So I do think that's, that's
that's really important. And again, the other advice to
CE OS is you're there to make your successor successful.
I've defined my job as executive chair as to do everything
possible to make Alex and the CFO successful, to make the two
of them successful. And that that is the only job
description I have right now. I, I, I love that.
That's, that's fantastic. And you know, we talked, there's
so many like different leadership attributes or
leadership skills. I mean, in, in our taxonomy at
air, it's, there's 45 leadership skills.
That's all, you know, that's a lot of things to, to learn and,
and develop. The one thing we don't
necessarily talk about so much is is, you know, sustainability
beyond the leader, him or herself, right?
And, and, and that is actually like a really important part of
being a successful leader. So just something for us to, to
contemplate here. I, I, I just love this advice.
Like go do the dinner. It's just, I mean, I know how we
all know on this call we're four CE OS like how busy you can get
and you got like, you know, 3 or 4 fire hoses pointed at you at
any given time. A couple fires here, a couple
wonderful things here and like, oh, by the way, like family and
all sorts of other things. And it's like to just take out
that time. It it, it really requires, you
know, intentionality. I'd.
Say it's also really just important for the first year.
Then you figured out a rhythm. You figured out you, you've,
you've got a code almost, you know, at that point, it's.
Even an unspoken code for sure. And, and, and again, I think
there's, there's been a, not only are we in a period of rapid
transformation as a company, we are in a period of rapidly
adapting new ways of working. And that has also been AI think
a significant shift for the organization.
And it's been, you know, I, again, I've known Reed for over
a decade. Reed used to say, hey, to work
at National Vision, your, your head has to be on the pillow in
Atlanta every night. And that was a, for many years,
a long held belief. And as Reid and I started
talking about that, you know, back in last summer and we
started to talk about what could a, what could a workforce look
like and a team that is possibly a bit more distributed and a bit
more hybrid. And oh, by the way, here's the
types of tools we can use and the rhythm we could create and
the type of talent we could get access to.
You know, that adaptability was tremendous.
And I think when you look at this the, the the speed to which
we have achieved some of the transformation objectives and
the results, it has also been enabled by this, by this more
nimble distributed but very entrepreneurial and startup type
work mentality. Well, I definitely want to dig
into that more. Yeah, maybe we could.
Jamie, I do want to get your advice, but since we're on this
topic of distributed workforce and and the pretty dramatic
change, I am just, I'm just curious like, you know, how is
that working, you know, going from, you know, being an in
office culture to, I mean, Alex, I mean, are you even in you
don't look like you're in the office.
I'm currently in New York. Because I was in AI, was in
investor meetings, but I'm I'm in the office.
Explain. The philosophy Alex Explain
explain because it's a great philosophy and and pretty
ingenious so. You know, one, we said, OK, as a
business we we spend historically we'd spend millions
of dollars a year relocating people and we would spend a lot
of money on recruiter fees to find people who were, you know,
met the job spec and who would be willing to relocate to
Atlanta. We said, OK, well, you know,
maybe through our networks, we could find other talented people
who would be great for the role who have category expertise, but
maybe the location. That was kind of the that was
the starting point of this, this ideal.
Then we said, you know, other things have changed post COVID.
The way people work on teams has changed.
They're not just for meetings. You can use Teams to do to
deliver content and if I think that Teams use correctly can be
an incredibly powerful tool and and a little bit contrary to how
Teams is used in other places. Having a Teams meeting that's a
business review that's content rich where everyone is virtual
and paying attention to the one speaker and focused on nothing
but the one slide or the one piece of information that's on
the screen, I think allows for a real rich acknowledgement and
understanding of the content that's being discussed.
So that was so these are kind of some of the, the, the, the
stimulus that, you know, we were thinking about, we were talking
about. So, so we said, all right,
listen, what if we, what if we actually looked at a year and we
said we're going to schedule, we're going to be purposeful
about our weeks and we're going to create a week that is a
virtual week that is going to be structured around content rich
deep dives. And we're going to have a week,
a month that we plan out through 26 where we bring all senior
directors and above, regardless of where they are.
We bring them to the office in Atlanta and we are delivered
about the agenda. We, we have small team meetings
and we schedule everything from happy hours to team based
events. And we've really become
prescriptive about how this rhythm works.
So that has been what we've implemented and it has worked
fantastically. And you know, Reid and I joke
about this. We're like, you know,
collaboration week is, is really my, my Trojan horse to get
people to work from 8:00 in the morning till 10:00 at night,
right? Because they start in the
morning and then obviously, you know, they're, they, they go on
to dinner and we're still talking about work stuff, you
know, until 10:00 at night, but in a bit more of a social
setting. Then we put some rules in place
around like even when we're in the office, like if you don't
have more than 70% of participants ready to be in a
room, then everyone goes on teams.
So you're not creating a dynamic where there's, you know, some,
you know, where there's five people in a conference room and
five people on teams, right. So, you know, it, it sounds odd,
but like putting a bit of rigidity and process and
structure has actually been incredibly freeing for the
organization because it's in that predictability and in that
structure that it creates the connection points that people
were worried about not having if you worked in a distributed way.
Because it's all very, you're like, Oh yeah, I see how I'm
going to get the same kind of connection points to play
business along the way throughout the cadence of of the
month I've. Also noticed in non
collaboration weeks, Alex tends to have the larger team meetings
on Fridays. I guess he wants to know whether
people are there on Fridays and they're all there because yeah,
but I think that's pretty conscious as.
Well, I, I will say there was a text message from Reed that I
think might have been the closest I've ever gotten from a
mandate, which is Alex, you really think we got to schedule
these deep dive meetings still at 4:00 on a Friday?
And I'm like, all right, point, point taken after. 7 hours of
them let's. Let's let's ratchet that back.
But but it is something really I think what the structure again
what the structure has allowed is predictable connection points
that we have not lost a beat by not having people all kind of Co
located continuously. And and Jonathan to to bring
this up to the umbrella thought of of some of the things you
started with. All of us have hired lots of
people in our lives. All of us have brought in people
to our organizations, and isn't one of the great joys of running
a company and of leadership? When you bring in somebody for
any given role and they start doing things, you think, Oh my
God, I wish I thought of that. What a great idea.
I wish I could. I wish that had occurred to me.
I've got the right person in that role because I am learning
by watching them do their thing. That is the great joy.
And Alex has brought so many things where I said, wow, I, I
didn't, I would not have thought of that.
It's such a great idea. It's, it is, isn't it wonderful?
And again, that's that is the joy of of leadership, getting to
watch people come in and teach you things in their new roles.
It's really cool. I, I love it.
I, and actually this is reminding me of was we had Peter
Capelli, who's like the, you know, the HR guru.
I, I consider him the guru of HR And you know, I've been been
researching, writing, speaking on, on HR as he's over here at
Wharton. And you know, you, you would
think that, you know, being virtual and, and remote or
hybrid, that that that's like really easy.
But actually the, the organizations that are actually
successful with a, a virtual first or hybrid model, it's not
because they just said like, OK, just do your work and, and be
flexible. They actually have a lot of
structure and expectations set and norms set.
So, you know, to your point out, you were like, oh, it sounds
kind of weird, but that's actually the critical ingredient
to success. Otherwise you start to see a
degradation in culture and, and sort of the haphazardness of
like, you know, come go when you want.
So I I just love the intentionality and the
expectations that you that you set.
And, and I think that that is as silly as it may sound, it is
probably why it it works so well.
What's? Interesting.
Like to me, even as an observer of our collaboration week, when
we mandate that that entire team is together, you, you compact a
bunch of energy and ideas in a, a short, short kind of time
frame. It almost forces you to be
nimble and fast and make decisions and come to alignment.
Because you know, you, you have this finite amount of time to
kind of land the plane on this thing.
And then you have two or three weeks to kind of go work it
before everyone's back together. So in a, in a, in a funny way,
you know, re re teases me, you know that I'm a, I'm a Peloton
addict. Peloton ANU.
It one of my favorite genres of, of Peloton classes are the are
the hit classes, the high, high intensity interval training.
And so I was talking to a pal of mine from outside the company
about, you know, this and he's like, he's like Alex.
You basically turn your work calendar into like a hit
training class like you do high intensity.
High. Intensity, low intensity and
then back to high intensity. So you basically count the rise
of business around how you like to around how you like to
exercise too. So I thought it was a fun
observation. I absolutely.
Love that. I absolutely love that.
Well, I want to actually, I want to hear from Jamie, who has
coached both of you, you know? So Jamie coaching Reed for five
years, coaching you Alex for for, you know, almost a half
year now. And Jamie, what's it been like
from the vantage point of a coach who is also Aceo?
How is this experience been for you?
The. The.
Framework around this if we're since making is that we're
talking about planned succession and that's a different scenario
from unplanned succession. And so part of reading our
conversation Reid and I3 four years ago was the difference
between you know leaving or succeeding, bringing on your
successor 3 weeks or three months before you're asked to
leave versus after you're asked to leave.
There's a very different feeling around that scenario right.
So if you're able to build that succession, because I work with
folks who are brought into organizations where somebody's
had to leave or been asked to leave, that's a very different
situation for what we have here. And if you think about
continuity, what we've talked about like the desire to have
that continuity and the value that we've got in two people
working really, really well together to respect the values
and the culture that it has existed, but also to see the
organization with new eyes, then you could argue that we would
want to have planned succession, right.
And so, you know, part of if I think about the, the framing
again, you talked about the 1st 90 days of the 1st 100 days
started and I always think about the last 100 days and I did this
myself when I was the chief exec is like, what is the legacy?
I'm going to leave at some point because at some point I'm going
to leave. And so, you know, part of how do
I develop A-Team a high performing team, You start
there, how about building systems and structures and
processes that help to get the best out of the team
individually and collectively. That would be a second piece.
But the last thing I would say here, and I think we spoke to it
earlier on, and I think to me it's a hallmark of all great
leaders. And I'll say that Alex and Reid
are two exceptional leaders. But the hallmark of great
leaders is that they say when things go well, like with this
individual and they're doing well, or when things go well for
the team, it's because of them. And when they don't go well,
it's because of me. And so not in a way that
advocates their accountability or advocates their
responsibility or assumes more than we need to, but just
understanding that we may have missed something that's created
the conditions for somebody to do their greatest work.
And that we may have access to information or resources, We
will be able to create the conditions for somebody to
really do their best work. And if that isn't the case, let
me at least examine those variables and see if I could
change something in that, because I can see the pattern
from my vantage point, just like the coach on the sideline of our
famous soccer game now is like, I can see how the game is being
played. I could be playing somebody in
the wrong position. My, I could, they could have too
much scope or responsibility. I could have them working in the
wrong mindset. And I think really that sort of
neurodivergent populations that require different criteria to be
able to do their greatest work. And I think we're going to see
more and more of this in the conversation.
How are we getting people to be able to do their best work,
whether it's in the office, whether it's in a hybrid
situation or, or other ones. And so I, I just want to
encourage people to think about it.
Part of the reason for success here is we've got 2 exceptional
leaders. Alex is the right person at the
right time in this organization. Reid has also been very
intentional about seeing his legacy as being through Alex and
with Alex, and also when if Alex comes across a challenge so that
Reid can assume some of the responsibility of how do I help
Alex and the team and Alex can do this too, how can I help the
team to do their best work? Natalie is an exceptional
hallmark of great leaders. They say when it goes wrong,
it's because of me. When it goes well, it's because
of them, not because it does, but because that mindset gives
people the freedom. It gives people the cover.
It gives people the collaborative sense of support
and encouragement that somebody's got my back and
they're helping me to see it differently.
Instead of just saying you haven't done this properly, it
needs to be better. I'm just pushing that downhill.
We see that too often. And that to me is what the
difference between a transactional leader, right, or
manager, even, and a transformational leader.
A tree. That's, that's amazing.
Jamie, I, I'm so obviously I'm a huge fan of your book.
Let's go. You know, when you think about
that book and all the chapters, you know which, which really
represents, you know, the, the, your, your philosophy on
leadership, both from your experience as, as ACEO, as a
coach and, and, and life what, what concept is most salient,
like what comes up as being hyper relevant when you think
about Reed and Alex and the work you've, you've done.
You know, you want to hear from these two gentlemen.
You don't need to hear so much from me.
My job is to frame. But there was one, there's one
called Perform, Prepare, Recover, which talks about, you
know, we normally spend 60% of our time performing, 30%
preparing and 10% recovering. And we'd extended that
conversation, Reid and I to think about where are you
spending your energy? Is it tactical, short term,
medium term, long term? And I said, well, what happened
if we flip that? If you spent 10% on the
day-to-day, 30% on the 9:00 to 12:00 and 60% on the 12 plus.
And I think that von Veed, you can speak to this.
He ended up agreeing. We sort of negotiated A303030,
which is numerically gone, but it was a good agreement.
But just even just think about where am I spending my time and
energy as the CEO? There are only, there are
certain things that only you can see and only you can do.
And so if you're dragged down into the organization like most
people are by the day-to-day fires, like the gravity pulls
you into the organization, then you may not be future proofing,
you know your business against the vagaries that are out there.
So that would be #1 read. I mean, you can talk to that too
if you like. I'd just like to say that when a
business is going well, you have the luxury of thinking more long
term and when when it's not. It it's.
It's harder. I'm not sure I ever got to the
3030 thirty we negotiated, but I would also say we started
working together at the end of the really good era and at the
beginning of what I call the very backfooted chapter and the
backfooted chapter. You just inherently get shorter
term. What has been wonderful is when
Alex arrived, you know, in terms of your your, your rule of
future shaping. Alex has been able to bring a, a
longer term orientation to the business through his approaches
and and ideas. Then, then, then I was, I was
able to, but again, I had AI, had a working model that I could
replicate really well and replicate well into the future.
So success when we went IPO was look at the last few years.
We're going to just keep doing that and it's going to keep
working. And it did till the end of 21
when it stopped working. And then the second one,
Jonathan, would be about the stories you tell because all
great leaders, we have two exceptional storytellers with us
today, right? They're too great.
And I find that that ability to be able to really, when you
think about sort of, you know, leadership, future shaping is
about being able to look into the future and tell a compelling
story that galvanizes a group of people to want to build a better
future, right? But the ability to be able to
tell a story, right? And we're telling, you know, the
story is evolving now under Alex's watch.
The story is evolving about what we used to be.
The chapters closed, now we're evolving the story.
But the storyteller, the values that underpin the organization,
the culture that we bring, the impact that we have in for
people across the country, 7 million plus people across the
country and accounting, you know, the storytelling
capabilities of a leader are something that I think is
absolutely critical. And so not just the story we
could tell about ourselves, with the stories that we tell about
the team and our teammates, the stories we tell about the world
that we live in. And then the most compelling
story of all. It's just the one about the
future. I love that.
And obviously you have to be a great sense maker because that's
that's sort of the this the this story forming.
And then it's the articulation of that, which is the
storytelling itself. Right?
Read. Yeah, sitting.
On the sidelines watching the game, you have an ability to see
the story unfolding. And frankly, it's one thing if
Alex is telling the story, and that's an important part, but
it's another thing and gives an added validity if somebody else
is telling the story and and even pointing out bits of the
story to folks from the sidelines.
Amazing. All right, so we're moving into
this is my version of the Lightning round.
So I'm not Jim Cramer and we're not talking stocks.
We're talking leadership on a podcast about leadership.
And so lightning round on leadership.
OK, it's it's it's Q4, December 2025.
We're moving into 26. Alex, I know you're already in
26 in your head. We got we got AI innovation
curve going like this. We have a pretty confusing
economy. There's a lot of stuff going on.
You know, geopolitically, there's a there's an interesting
consumer right now in in in the US.
It's just a whole, you know, confluence of factors that make
leadership, not checkers, but but more conducive to chess.
And something we talk a lot about it air is that, you know,
change, which used to happen in sort of episodic ways and then
more accelerated ways. Change seems to be now just like
a constant. It's like we're living in
change. So, you know, having laid out
that landscape, what advice, you know, would you give leaders?
You know, when you when you think about, you know, the year
ahead and the times you know that we're in and where things
are trending, what advice would you give leaders?
And, and maybe I'll give each of you, you know, up to two minutes
to, to share some parting advice for leaders.
Don't accept. Don't accept the status quo.
Really understand your your customer, your consumer, your
business. Be willing to challenge past
assumptions. Get to an insight that you may
not have had before that allows you to take advantage of a
nuance in your business, the market, the macro, whatever, and
focus on once you've once you've kind of nailed those insights,
then focus on on execution. Remove roadblocks along the way.
Be very deliberate on what you're going to focus on and
what you might not. You know, you can't juggle 17
balls and you got to be mindful of you're going to let some drop
and that's OK. And but once they're on the
ground, continue to focus on the balls you're juggling and don't
don't think about those that have dropped and just just keep
those that are going up in the air and, you know, keep just
hyper, hyper focused. I love that it's OK for a couple
drop balls to drop in so far as we are being conscious about
letting those drop and focused on the balls in the air.
That is as beautiful advice as and, and in an ideal world you
would have read on the sidelines cheering you on, you know, as
you're juggling. Amazing.
That's awesome advice, Alex read.
Well, you know, Jamie referenced this a moment ago, the
conversation where where I I went to him and said and said,
hey, the learning this concept of 6030 ten, that an
organization should spend 60% of its time on the year ahead, 30%
on to the three years and 10% on the period thereafter.
Jamie then came back to me and said, yeah, that's the
organization, but you as CEO should flip it 10% on the next
year, 30% to 3 and 60% beyond that.
I don't believe in this day and age that's possible to achieve.
But, but in my relationship with Alex, there have been sort of
chapters of this, you know, the 1st chapter was his presidency
and evolving to take over as CEO, that the next chapter was
sort of, I think he became CEO on August 1 and we, we sort of
agreed he had this big investor presentation in mid November.
He said, why don't we say now there's this chapter of, of Alex
is new to CEO and, and, and sort of rallying Wall Street around
this and, and, and why don't we make sure everything goes
beautifully for that investor Day thing.
And frankly, Alex and I are getting together next week to
say, OK, what's the next chapter in our relationship here?
How can we do that? And, and for me, I preview of
what we're going to talk about next week.
Alex is, should I be working now on much longer term things?
I, I do think now Jamie, I probably could in this role do
103060 not in Alex's role. And I don't think Alex can do
103060 for a great many years. It really has to be going so
well and still a great, great aspiration.
But I think it is figuring out how to balance the long term and
the and the near term that's that's so hard in this
transformational age. AI is not going to make us a ton
of money in the next six months to a year, but to ignore it will
kill us. We have a lot of big strategies
that can be useful to us and big value creators a a a couple
years from now, but that it's figuring out how to progress
them now with while still delivering next year's plan or
Wall Street really wants next next quarter to be really good.
You know that. And, and so making sure that
we're delivering on, on those pieces.
So, so it's it's just getting that balance right short term
and long term. I I love that, Yeah.
Whether it's 303030303060, that one, that one add up, 2020
sixty, Yeah. However you do it, you got to do
it. Meaning you got to be
intentional about delineating between, you know, the the
immediate, the short term and the long term and but the more.
Success you have as Alex is delivering now, the more you get
your you, you buy yourself the opportunity to think longer
term. Yeah, and and.
Again, I'll just, I'll just sorry, I'll just share.
You know, to me, at the end of the day, strategy is as simple
as it's about choice. It's about what choices you're
going to make. Back to the analogy of what
balls you're going to drop. That's both a short term and a
long term has to be a long term point of view.
You know, I my advice to anyone stepping into this role, you get
a job like this, you've earned a job like this.
You probably have pretty good instincts.
Stick with your like, stick to your guts, stick to your
instincts. They're not going to lead you
astray. They've gotten you this far.
I I think people when they when doubt starts to creep in and
outside forces start to creep in and external stimulus that might
take you in a different path. Yeah, I've seen, you know,
friends fail because of those externalities versus sticking to
your *NSYNC, your playbook certainly being, you know,
influenced. But if you have a strong
conviction on something, then you know have strong resolve and
see it through. I I love that I mean it it's
it's appreciating our intuition or or as as you know, this new
term that I've learned our belly math I I I absolutely love that
Alex love that Jamie, your last when I.
Wrote the book 20 years ago. We were in the midst of a
technological revolution at the time.
That's what we were told. All the articles were saying the
same things that I'm hearing today.
And I wrote the book as the antidote to that, which is about
leadership. If strategy is about choice,
Alex, then leadership is about people.
And so you don't ever forget the people run your organizations
and people buy from your organizations.
And so it's so easy to get consumed and think every
generation thinks it's special. We think that we're in really
radical times and there is a lot of uncertainty for sure.
But this piece of research is really interesting.
That said 1880 to 1920 was actually more disruptive than
1980 to 2020. And so because of the
introduction of automobile, radio, car, TV, electric light
bulb, etcetera, etcetera. And so you know we're building
on the top of that. And So what can seem uncertain
actually, as we gravitate toward back towards what people needs
are, what are people's needs, because you'll be serving a
person at the end of the day of whatever organization you're in.
And so technology can enable that and it can help you to be
effective and efficient at that. It can help you to optimize, but
it may not help you to actualize both yourself, your team, and
the consumers who buy from you. And so keep that in mind as you
move forward. Don't get distracted by the
noise. Focus on what you do well.
And you know, who knows? You could be like National
Vision. Now, you know, as as the oldest
person here, I'll take the final word if there is a final word.
And this is we, I used to do a lot of meetings with new store
managers and new new optometrists who came to us.
And I always ended with the same thing.
It's, it's, and it's the same advice I give to all leaders is
do work that you're proud of. Tried is the greatest litmus
test for any decision. When you're faced with a
decision saying which Rd. would I be prouder of?
And generally that road takes you to the right place.
And it's just such a great, a great guide.
So my the best piece of advice I can get of anyone is do work
that you can be really proud of and aim high.
Do work that you can be really proud of and aim high.
That is a perfect way to conclude our podcast on
leadership right now. Gentlemen, thank you so much for
sharing your, your stories, your wisdom for, for being a little
vulnerable. And this was just fantastic.
I, I took so many pointers away from this and, and this notion
of optimization versus actualization.
Jamie, that's a, that's a long walk, you know, contemplation
there. And, and, and really this idea
of, of like the art of how to say goodbye.
Will will end the podcast with that, with that song.
You know, it's, if you don't get that right, you can't say hello.
And it's it's really a beautiful see it happening and unfolding
in such a beautiful way. So thank you very much, Reed,
Alex and Jamie and and and looking forward to A to a Part 2
on on philanthropy. OK, anytime previous both on.
Yeah. All right, you guys.
Great to see you.