Dot Connector Blog

Note from Regis: This is Part II of a three-part interview with Mark Stevens, best-selling author of Your Marketing Sucks, Your Management Sucks, and God is a Salesman. Mark is also CEO of MSCO, a results-driven management and marketing firm.  Read Part I here.

Regis: Are there two or three leaders who have consistently challenged you and your thinking?

Mark Stevens:

My Dad. He was a salesman.  He always told me not to believe anything anybody tells me, just because they are telling me.  And, [he taught me] to stop and say “well now, is that actually true?”

He taught me that the higher up the totem pole the person is, in terms of power and authority, the more likely we are to believe at face value what they have to say.

- Mark Stevens

That is really where he would turn on the skepticism jets: he’d say “wait a minute, you are believing that person simply because they have the titled of Senior Vice President or Czar of the Americas?” Ask yourself Mark, “does that really make sense to you? And, what is his or her reason for saying it?”  He taught me that.

Carl Icahn. I’ve spent a lot of time with Carl Icahn.  He never took a business course in his life, and yet he is the smartest guy I have ever met.  I have met a lot of really smart, successful people that we have worked with at MSCO.  Carl was the smartest.

Instead of looking at business through the eyes of famous business leaders – Carl was a chess champion at Princeton and a Philosophy major – he looks at business through the eyes of a chess player, and through the eyes of the great philosophers. We would be talking, and I would ask him a question about some deal he was working on, and he would say, “this is what Socrates would say in this case.”  He never said, “this is what Alfred Sloan would say.”

So, I learned and understood that greatness often comes from looking at things through a prism, your own kind of prism.  Carl looks at life through the chess / philosophy prism.

- Mark Stevens

I think the reason that Carl wins so often is because he was used to making eleven moves in advance.  The average CEO he goes after now, even somebody as smart as Jerry Yang [CEO of Yahoo!], thinks two or three moves ahead, four maybe.  When you are a competitor, Carl is thinking eleven moves ahead.  He is always going to win.

I gave a speech in Berlin this past October.  Every year, Siemens invites 180 of the most important CEOs in the world to Berlin for something they call Ascent, which is the premiere CEO conference in the world.  After I spoke, we all went on a boat ride and to dinner at this unusual warehouse that was turned into a restaurant.  The former world chess champion, Vladimir Kramnik, was talking and he said “You know, when I was going up the ranks of Grand Master, in the middle of a match I used to – and I would plan this – I would make a really stupid move on purpose, and it would completely throw off my opponent.  I had to already have my plan for extracting myself from the problem I created for myself, but the [opponent] would be so stunned, that it would throw him back on his heels.”  He used this as his strategy for becoming the champion of the world.  I found that to be fascinating.

So, Carl taught me that look at things through the prism that you really find helpful, not the common one, necessarily.

Sir Issac Newton. There are two things that Newton taught me.  He didn’t mean it for business, but he said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction [and a body in motion stays in motion].

For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

You know,  on your job Reg – and anybody else that reads this interview – someone is going to have a great day, one day next week, or the week after.  They are going to sign a big deal, they are going to have a promotion, something is going to be great.  I always say to my clients, my team members at MSCO, and my sons.  Watch out for Newton!  I don’t want to damper your spirits today, but Newton’s coming.

A body in motion stays in motion.

Leaders are driven.  They don’t look for balance.  They stay in motion.  They are not liked by the lowest common denominator.  You can’t stop them.  You can’t pin them down.  You can chop their legs off, and they will crawl through the ground.  They are not stopping.

A body at rest, does it stay at rest?  You know some people like that in your job, and I know them too.  You can’t rouse them.  Nothing will rouse them because they don’t have the drive.  You can’t rely on them to forge any of your projects, because they won’t carry the ball.  I don’t wish them ill will.  But, you have know that as you figure out your own success equations and who will actually support you in any project, or dream, or passion that you have.

We only have one life Reg, one life, one life – and we should strive to achieve something significant in it.  We should have somebody look back and say, “I learned something from that guy or that women.”  He or she left a stamp – something that changed people’s thinking.  Something that changed the way they do business.  Something that changed the way they do parenting.  Something!

Just don’t go through this life from cradle to grave going to work, going through the motions, watching television, eating a piece of pie, and going to sleep.

- Mark Stevens

And that is what most people do.  Sorry to say, but that is what it is.

Regis: I couldn’t agree more.  And I think that drive is what separates leaders from people who do not want to lead.  Do you feel like there are ways to bring people across that gap?  Can that be learned?

Mark Stevens: No, you can’t learn passion.  It’s impossible.  There is a way to bring them across the gap, and that is a leader.  A leader inspires.  People who do not have the DNA to be driven will ‘take the hill’ when inspired by a leader. They will never do it on their own.  They will say “that’s a nice hill.”  They will never do it on their own.  That’s exactly what a leader does, that’s a great question, because our whole conversation boils down to that.

A great leader, without threats and without bribes, gets people who are not driven on their own to effectively accomplish a mission.

- Mark Stevens

That is what a leader does, and [the people being lead] feel good about because they did it effectively.  They never would have taken the hill on their own.  They would have looked at the hill.  They would have sat on the bench, with a sandwich, looking at the hill.  But the leader is so dynamic, and because he or she wants to take the hill, that they want to go take it.

Great leaders don’t have to pay people lots of money.  People should be rewarded for what they do, but when you are working with a poor leader, you want to get paid a lot because it’s the only reward you have.  When you are in the company of somebody amazing, the amount of pay you get becomes minimally important.

You see great actors and actresses that want to work in Woody Allen movies and Robert Altman movies – and they’ll take tiny paychecks – because they want to be with a leader.

- Mark Stevens

If they are making some dumb-ass movie, the check can’t be big enough.  You do not have to bribe people or threaten people if you are a leader.  If you bribe or threaten them, It doesn’t really work anyway.

It’s so magically wonderful to watch a leader work.  I believe in things that are greater than some of their parts, so you start to go into another dimension when somebody is a great leader.  And people want to – for some mystical, chemical, magical reason – want to do something with that person, and that’s extraordinary.

Stay tuned for more from Mark Stevens: In Part III, you’ll learn why there is a disconnect between Marketing and Sales, and Mark’s thoughts on Social Media Marketing.

• Leadership Skills: Unconventional Thinking [Mark Stevens Interview - Part III]
• Leadership Skills: Unconventional Thinking [Mark Stevens Interview - Part I]
• Leadership Skills: Perseverance [Todd Albery Interview]
• Your Marketing Sucks by Mark Stevens – Book Review and Favorite Ideas
• God is a Salesman by Mark Stevens – Book Review and Favorite Ideas

Posted in: Leadership, Personal Development