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The CEO Forum - October 2017

Steven M. Safyer, M.D.President & CEO

Montefiore Medicine LEADERSHIPINSIGHTS

Muhtar KentChairman

The Coca-Cola Company

Henrietta ForeChairman & CEO

Holsman International

Mike SutcliffGroup Chief Executive

Accenture Digital

Len GreenChairman & Founder

The Green Group

Daniel P. AmosChairman & CEO

Aflac

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Deb RussoCreative [email protected]

Kenneth D. BrownManager of CEO [email protected]

8 Muhtar Kent Chairman, Board of Directors, The Coca-Cola Company

14 Steven M. Safyer, M.D. President & CEO, Montefiore Medicine

22 Henrietta Fore Chairman & CEO, Holsman International

32 Mike Sutcliff Group Chief Executive, Accenture Digital

38 Daniel P. Amos Chairman & CEO, Aflac Incorporated

46 Len Green Chairman & Founder, The Green Group

5 From the Desk of Robert Reiss 6 Companies in this Issue

Table of Contents

54 CEO Library CEO INSIGHT 28 Leadership Leadership Lessons from Our Founding Fathers Mitchell B. Reiss, President and CEO Colonial Williamsburg Foundation 44 Corporate Culture The Culture of Noble Purpose Mehran Assadi, President and CEO National Life Group 52 Board Governance Some Things are Better for Me than Thee Nancy May, President & CEO, BoardBench Companies CEO ROUNDTABLE 30 Nothing Drives Profitability Like Great Customer Experience

56 Top CEOs Share Their Secrets Of Legendary Customer Service

EXPERT ADVICE 58 Family Offices Would You Run Your Company Without A Mission Statement? Carolann Grieve with contributions by David Herritt GenSpring

THE INTERVIEWS

The CEO Forum Teamwww.ceoforum.ceo

Robert ReissFounder, Host & [email protected]

For sponsorship or advertising opportunities contact:Bill Peters Managing Director, 203-536-1455 [email protected]

Allison BurkeDeputy [email protected]

SIXTY LEADING GLOBAL CEOs, who are part of CECP: The CEO Force for Good,

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Michael Corbat, CEO, Citi

Brian C. Cornell, Chairman & CEO, Target

Chad Dickerson, CEO, President, & Chair, Etsy

Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, President & CEO, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

F. William McNabb III, Chairman & CEO, Vanguard

Denise Morrison, President & CEO, Campbell Soup Company

Anne M. Mulcahy, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Save the Children; Former Chairman & CEO, Xerox Corporation

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First-of-their-kind presentations by corporate leaders to investors representing more than $20 trillion in assets under management took place the afternoon of the Board of Boards.

Vincent Forlenza, Chairman, President, & CEO, BD

F. William McNabb III, Chairman & CEO, Vanguard

Martin Schroeter, CFO, IBM Corporation

Mitch Barns, CEO, Nielsen

Bruce D. Broussard, President & CEO, Humana Inc.

Michael Corbat, CEO, Citi

Thomas DeRosa, CEO & Director, Welltower Inc

Anthony F. Earley, Jr., Executive Chair of the Board, PG&E Corporation

Discussant: Robert Pozen, Senior Lecturer, MIT; Former President, Fidelity Investments

THE CEO FORCE FOR GOOD

CEOs: Save the Date

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www.ceoforum.ceo The CEO Forum 5

From the Desk of Robert Reiss

I have been listening carefully to our readers of the top 10,000 CEOs in America and I’ve heard four distinct themes: 1. You greatly value hearing “unfiltered” from other CEOs. 2. You want to hear more frequently than once a quarter. 3. Ten interviews an issue are too many to read. 4. You would like some special issues centered around themes.

Based on this feedback, I am pleased to announce that this issue you hold in your hands is somewhat historic, as we are shifting from a quarterly publication to becoming month-ly. That means the 21st day of every month, we will be sending you a new issue, and from here on in containing only six features. Beginning in January 2018, we will have special issues each month with themes including: healthcare, customer experience, trans-formative CEOs, etc. If you would like our upcoming editorial calendar, just email me personally.

In this issue, we feature six leading CEOs who have long tenures enabling them to transform not only their enterprises but, in fact, society. We start off with Muhtar Kent, who after eight years as CEO of arguably the top brand in the world, Coca-Cola, is becoming Chairman. At this perfect juncture, Kent talks candidly about his leadership philosophy including overcoming challenges, managing a #1 brand and his perspective on the transition from CEO to Chairman. Next, Dr. Steven Safyer as CEO of Montefiore Medicine leads not only one of the largest, but one of the rare New York State hospital systems that has built a model and track record of significant financial success as well as clinical success. Safyer shares insight on how CEOs should think about healthcare in America which at this particular time, is clearly of significant importance.

Next is Henrietta Fore, Chairman and CEO of Holsman International, a business where her grandfather built the first reverse shift in an automobile. Fore shares a beautiful picture of the future of America including governance, cars in-cluding the potential of autonomous and flying cars… and a model for decency. Her perspective is built from a broad experience including being a CEO, the first woman to serve as Administrator of USAID, former Director of the Mint and board member of companies including Exxon and General Mills. Then Mike Sutcliff shares his insights on the fu-ture of digital. Sutcliff is in a unique position as the Group Chief Executive of Accenture Digital to hear from top CEO clients and shape insights on the true threats and opportunities of our digital world – obviously a perspective of significant importance to CEOs.

Dan Amos has been CEO of Aflac since 1990 and talks about not only the remarkable financial performance but what it takes to be recognized every year as one of the most ethical companies and best companies to work for. Amos also walks through the story of introducing the historic one-day pay, and the behind-the-scenes story of how a CEO galvanizes an entire organization to positive action. Our finale is with Len Green, arguably one of the greatest gurus on entrepreneur-ship in America. Green, for 16 years, has been the most highly rated Professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson College, author of the hit book The Entrepreneur’s Playbook, founding CEO of the leading accounting firm, The Green Group, top investor, as well as owner of 75 race horses with over 2,300 wins.

As we now are a monthly magazine, we will be having new features including Spotlight Questions in upcoming issues. Anything you would like to see in this – your CEO Forum Magazine – just let me know.

Robert Reiss

6 The CEO Forum www.ceoforum.ceo

Companies In This Issue

The Coca-Cola Company is the world’s largest beverage company, offering over 500 brands to people in more than 200 countries. Of our 21 billion-dollar brands, 19 are available in lower- or no-sugar options to help people moderate their consumption of added sugar. In addition to our namesake Coca-Cola drinks, some of our leading brands around the world include: AdeS soy-based beverages, Ayataka green tea, Dasani waters, Del Valle juices and nectars, Fanta, Georgia coffee, Gold Peak teas and coffees, Honest Tea, Minute Maid juices, Powerade sports drinks, Simply juices, smartwater, Sprite, vitaminwater, and Zico coconut water. At Coca-Cola, we’re serious about mak-ing positive contributions to the world. That starts with reducing sugar in our drinks and continuing to introduce new ones with added benefits. It also means continuously working to reduce our environmental impact, creating rewarding careers for our as-sociates and bringing economic opportunity wherever we operate. Together with our bottling partners, we employ more than 700,000 people around the world.

Montefiore Health System is one of New York’s premier academic health systems and is a recognized leader in providing exceptional quality and personalized, account-able care to approximately three million people in communities across the Bronx, West-chester and the Hudson Valley. It is comprised of 10 hospitals, including the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, Burke Rehabilitation Hospital and close to 200 outpatient care sites. The advanced clinical and translational research at its’ medical school, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, directly informs patient care and improves outcomes. From the Montefiore-Einstein Centers of Excellence in cancer, cardiology and vascular care, pediatrics, and transplantation, to its’ preeminent school-based health program, Montefiore is a fully integrated healthcare delivery system providing coordinated, com-prehensive care to patients and their families. For more information please visit www.montefiore.org. Follow us on Twitter and view us on Facebook and YouTube.

Holsman International is a manufacturing and investment company operating in the United States and international markets. This manufacturing tradition has contin-ued with the 68-year-old Stockton Products. Stockton Products sources, manufactures and distributes steel and wire products for the United States and European construction industry. The Holsman group of companies also includes Vicenza, a manufacturer of unique home hardware, and Green Express Direct, a distributor of energy-saving building products.


Accenture Digital, comprised of Accenture Analytics, Accenture Interactive and Ac-centure Mobility, offers a comprehensive portfolio of business and technology services across digital marketing, mobility and analytics. From developing digital strategies to implementing digital technologies and running digital processes on their behalf, Accen-ture Digital helps clients leverage connected and mobile devices; extract insights from data using analytics; and enrich end-customer experiences and interactions, delivering tangible results from the virtual world and driving growth. Learn more about Accenture Digital at www.accenture.com/digital.

Aflac insurance policies, for more than six decades, have given policyholders the oppor-tunity to focus on recovery, not financial stress. In the United States, Aflac is the leader in voluntary insurance sales at the worksite. Through its trailblazing One Day PaySM initia-tive, Aflac U.S. can receive, process, approve and disburse payment for eligible claims in one business day. In Japan, Aflac is the leading provider of medical and cancer insurance and insures 1 in 4 households. For 11 consecutive years, Aflac has been recognized by Ethisphere as a World’s Most Ethical Company. In 2017, Fortune magazine recognized Aflac as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For in America for the 19th consecutive year and included Aflac on its list of Most Admired Companies for the 16th time. Aflac Incorporated is a Fortune 500 company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol AFL.

The Green Group is an accounting, tax, consulting and advisory firm with a unique approach – an out of the box, entrepreneurial style of thinking. With a team of sea-soned, highly successful entrepreneurs, family business owners, real estate owners, in-vestors and specialists in IRS audits and thoroughbred racing, we see the business world through a special lens and find solutions in ways our competition simply cannot. We go beyond the typical accounting firm-client relationship and invest ourselves into under-standing the intricacies of your particular business and financial situation. Our cloud technologies allow us to be accessible to you wherever you may be. We are your trusted business advocates and advisors that will always provide you with one firm solution.

The Green Group is a New Wave of Business Advisors, with a high level of expertise and a forward-moving mentality. We create solutions, not just answers.


“I’ve always had a healthy respect for the unexpected and the unpredictable.”

Robert Reiss: Your father, Necdet Kent, was serv-ing as Turkey’s Consul General in New York whenyou were born. What did you learn from your parents that helped you build such a successful business career?

Muhtar Kent: My parents were both amazing people who imparted to me a set of timeless values. Values like honesty, integrity, respect for others, the importance of work and trying to make a difference in the world.

I had the privilege of growing up in a lot of different places, including India, Thailand, Iran, Poland and Sweden. So I learned the importance of getting to know new people, building relationships and treating everyone with dignity and respect. It was also, as things turned out, a pretty good way to grow up if you’re going to be part of a global business like Coca-Cola.

Another thing I saw in my parents was the way they worked together as true partners. I learned so much from my mother, as I did from my father. Both were equally important in making me the person I am today. And I’ve always tried to model the way they accepted each other and worked as a team in my relationship with my wife Defne.

Muhtar Kent Chairman of the Board of Directors The Coca-Cola Company


What was one challenge you were able to over-come that shaped your leadership philosophy?

A couple of things come to mind. I got my first signif-icant break in my career when I was appointed, at the age of 29, to head up a new customer relationship func-tion that covered countries across Europe. A few years later, I became director of international accounts in Eu-rope. In both of these roles, I didn’t have a lot of staff, a lot of people who directly reported to me. And so I really learned the importance of relationship-building and leading by influencing and collaborating with people. Very important lessons.

Later, I was in Europe when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet sphere of influence and control began to collapse in Eastern and Central Europe. There was no playbook for how to move forward in a geography with limited infrastructure and no easily transferable currency.

Early on, we did much of our business through counter-trade. But it was clear to us that this was an important, historical opportunity and one that wouldn’t come around again. So we worked every possible angle, met with many different people, and were ultimately able to move quickly and build the production and distribution facilities to achieve first-mover status.

We built 24 factories across 11 countries in 28 months. Even after all these years, our brands are the leaders in these markets, which are among the most innovative in our system.

From this, I learned the importance of acting with ur-gency, working with great, reliable partners and writing your own playbook when necessary.

You were CEO of Coca-Cola for almost a decade. What did you learn from that experience?

I think I’ve always had a healthy respect for the unex-pected and the unpredictable. You can sketch out a vision, develop your plans and work those plans. All those steps

are vitally important. But you also have to be ready to adapt and change your tactics and even strategies to deal with changing circumstances.

Also, relationships matter. They’ve always mattered. But, particularly when you reach a senior position of leader-ship, you need to have friends and colleagues and part-ners that you can really trust and that you can depend on to provide you with candid feedback and insights into the everyday operations of the business.

You can’t afford to get isolated or have everything shared with you in briefing documents. You have to keep talking to people, meeting with people, eating with people and getting out into the marketplace and visiting stores. That’s something that I’ve always tried to do, and I feel like I’ve always learned new things when I’ve visited stores and talked to the shop owners, managers and shoppers.

In a business like ours, you have to stay connected to the point of impact, where the currency and the product change hands.

Any insights on the dynamic of constituencies: employees, B2B customers, B2C customers, share-holders, community?

In the 21st century, if you want to create maximum value for your shareholders, you also need to create value for a host of other stakeholders. For us, this starts with our associates, bottling partners, consumers and customers, and also includes supply chain partners, NGOs, civil so-

“I was in Europe when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet sphere of influence and control began to collapse in Eastern and Central Europe. There was no playbook for how to move forward in a geography with limited infrastructure and no easily transferable currency.”

“Particularly when you reach a senior position of leadership, you need to have friends, colleagues and partners that you can really trust and that you can depend on to provide you with candid feedback and insights into the everyday operations of the business. You can’t afford to get isolated or have everything shared with you in briefing documents.”



“We committed to become water neutral by 2020 -- replenishing all of the water used in our business. We reached this goal five years early, in 2015.”

ciety organizations and governments around the world. You need to create value for all of them. And, through that, you optimize long-term sustainable value creation for shareholders.

That’s the inclusive model we embrace at Coca-Cola. It helps us keep our brands relevant and strong with consumers. No longer are we simply obligated to make great-tasting beverages. We also have to make sure the character of the business is in line with what is expected by the people who reach for our drinks more than 1.9 billion times every day.

You helped build Coca-Cola to become a true so-cietal brand deeply engaged with the global com-munity. What is the role of a Fortune 500 CEO in helping our global society and do you have any specific practices you’ve used to help achieve this?

I think business definitely has a role to play in trying to make the world a better place and making a positive dif-ference. This, of course, is not a new concept. It goes back to the 20th century and earlier. But, today, as ex-pectations are rising for brands and for public companies, we need to make sure that we are engaged and trying to be part of the solution to various challenges.

Business can – and should be – a dynamic force for good. We can do this in the everyday course of doing business, with the value we create for small businesses and sup-pliers and all those connected to the business. We also

make a difference in our sustainability work, which must be integral to the business in order to itself be sustain-able over time. You have to be working on things that matter to the business.

When you were CEO, what were the most import-ant elements on your dashboard?

Big picture, I was focused on three things: our brands, our bottling system and our reputation.

In the world of consumer goods today, you’re always try-ing to make sure your brands are stronger and more rel-evant with each passing week, each passing quarter. So you ask yourself questions. Do we have the right brands in the right packages in the right types of stores at the right prices? Are we strengthening our existing brands with good and effective marketing? And are we creating new brands and bringing in new ones through partner-ships and acquisitions that put us in a position to keep build-ing the business for the future, as consumer tastes evolve?

Second: our bottling system. The Coca-Cola Company has traditionally focused on marketing, building customer relationships and leading our franchise system of bottling


Muhtar Kent and Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett at The Coca-Cola Company’s 2015 annual shareowners meeting.


partners. The bottlers give us the all-important local con-nection to communities as they manufacture and distrib-ute our drinks, catering to and understanding local tastes.

During my time as CEO, we were very engaged in work-ing to strengthen and align our system with a series of consolidations and ownership changes. All told, about 50 percent of our global bottling business has been im-pacted by these changes in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Af-rica, Latin America and beyond. And today we have a much stronger and more aligned bottling system, where our partners are pulling in the same direction as The Coca-Cola Company.

Third: our reputation. I wanted to make sure the rep-utation of our business was something that added val-ue to our brands and made them shine brighter in the minds of people all around the world. Obviously, there are many moving parts and initiatives that we worked on in order to enhance our brands with our actions in the marketplace and our sustainability efforts. And I think we did a lot of good in this area with things like our water replenishment work, for example. We committed to become water neutral by 2020—replenishing all of the water used in our business. We reached this goal five years early, in 2015. And we will keep pressing to do more as we grow in the years to come.

As you look at marketing as a discipline, what are the fundamentals that are core to your be-lief system and how is the digital world changing and not changing those?

The role of consumer brands is changing and changing at a very rapid pace. Even as brands continue to help people meet their everyday needs, consumers now also expect brands that they love and rely on to help solve-broader societal challenges.

So this really goes to the heart of how marketing is de-fined and how you make it come to life in the market-place. People, for example, want to live more sustain-ably. And they want to do so, at least in part, through what they buy. Which means, when we work to source, manufacture and distribute our drinks more sustainably while strengthening the communities we serve, we have a chance to bring new shine to our brands and new value to our business.

In terms of digital, it is really accelerating what has beenan ongoing transformation in marketing. A generation ago, marketing was largely a monologue, with compa-nies communicating to consumers and very little com-munication going the other way. Today’s consumers want a dialogue with the brands and businesses they turn to. And digital gives them the means to do so and the means for us to listen better and engage with people in more authentic ways. There are, of course, dangers in this, as we see on a regular basis in the news. But digital also offers unprecedented new opportunities to connect with people and build brands.

What advice do you have on managing a brand that is in the #1 position?

Arrogance is the most dangerous enemy for a brand that is currently on top. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, whether you’re in consumer goods, electron-ics, automobiles, whatever. You have to stay humble and never start to rest on your laurels or what you’ve done in the past. That’s going to get you in trouble in a hurry. As I’ve often said, you have to stay “constructively dis-content.” Things are always in motion, always in flux. You have to remain hungry and keep looking for ways to get better. And there is no standing still. You are either gaining ground or losing ground.

“ Arrogance is the most dangerous enemy for a brand that is currently on top.”

Muhtar Kent and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed toast to Coca-Cola’s 130th birthday near the location where its flagship beverage was first served on May 8, 1886. Coca-Cola marked the milestone by thanking its hometown with a $1.8 million grant to support improvements in and around down-town Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park District.



As a top executive, what are your greatest sources of learning?

One of the things I’ve tried to do throughout my career is take time to sit down and have meals with people. There’s a different dynamic in the room, one that’s more at-ease and conducive to talking and really getting to know peo-ple and their perspectives. I try to do this with colleagues, partners, customers, investors – people of all kinds and at many levels throughout our organization and others.

I’ve learned so much, I think, from these moments, when I can really focus on and listen to what others are say-ing. This is something I encourage other leaders – and future leaders – to do. We all need to take time to eat and recharge, so we might as well make the most of it and learn something new along the way.

What’s the best business book you’ve read recently?

Running on Purpose by Charles Moore is one recent book that really connects with me and the way I try to ap-proach life and business. I think it is very important to find something you can be part of that is meaningful to you, that you’re passionate about, that gives you the psychic income that comes from a larger goal than just numbers on a spreadsheet. The Coca-Cola business is about providing people with simple, affordable moments of refreshment and connection with others. I’ve always been inspired by that basic mission. In addition, we can make a positive difference for our people, partners, re-

tailers and communities. And hearing their individual and collective stories has kept me motivated and eager to do more and make more of a difference every day.

Many CEOs after a long tenure as CEO will be-come Chairman. What advice do you have to them during this transition?

Well, I’ve been chairman of the board for years, in addi-tion to being CEO. But I’d say one of the most import-ant things any CEO can do is make sure that the people coming in behind you are very well-equipped and ready.

I’m very proud of the transition in leadership we’ve made, and I feel very good about the opportunities we have to grow and succeed with James Quincey as CEO. He has a distinguished 20-year history with Coca-Cola and has led key parts of our business in Latin America and Europe. He knows our people, our brands, our bottling partners, our customers and our consumers very well. And I have every confidence in the ability of James and his leadership team to move us forward as an even stronger company and bottling system in the years to come.

How would you describe the Coca-Cola brand to-day, and what is your expectation of Coca-Cola in the future?

“One of the things I’ve tried to do throughout my career is take time to sit down and have meals with people. There’s a different dynamic in the room, one that’s more at-ease and conducive to talking and really getting to know people and their perspectives.”

“ Running on Purpose by Charles Moore is one recent book that really connects with me and the way I try to approach life and business. I think it is very important to find something you can be part of that is meaning ful to you, that you’re passionate about.”


Muhtar Kent presents a commemorative plaque to Luan Xiuju, CEO, COFCO Coca-Cola. China’s 44th Coca-Cola production facility began operations in April 2017 in Hunan Province. The COFCO Coca-Co-la Huazhong Beverages Co. Ltd. plant, the largest in Central China, is designed to house nine production lines – four for water, four for sparkling beverages and one for juice and juice drinks.


I think you have to look at the beverage brand and also the brand of the company. These are two different things, though very closely related, of course.

As a beverage, the brand has always stood for delicious refreshment, impeccable quality and broad availability. That’s what made the success of this business possible, the creation of Coca-Cola in 1886 and all the work that’s been done to build the brand since. And it all starts with great taste.

Today, the Coca-Cola brand includes the original for-mula as well as no- and low-calorie variants including Diet Coke, Coke Zero and Coca-Cola Life. And we need to make sure, going forward, that people can enjoy the special taste and refreshment of Coca-Cola, with fewer calories or no calories and with or without caffeine.

As for The Coca-Cola Company, we’re moving with speed to become a total beverage business. James has made this a top priority, and we’re building on some longstanding work to broaden and strengthen our port-folio across the board, in sparkling drinks and in juices, waters, teas, coffees, sports drinks, value-added dairy and more. This has been going on for many years, but we’re accelerating this effort to meet changing consum-er tastes and make sure we have great-tasting, refresh-ing beverages of every type that people want to enjoy throughout a given day.

Right now, we offer more than 500 brands and more than 3,500 products in markets around the world. We have 21 brands that create more than a billion dollars in re-tail sales every year, and only six of those are sparkling soft drinks. The rest are in other categories. As we move ahead, we will continue to create and acquire brands that give people more delicious beverage choices, all with the unassailable quality and widespread availability people have long expected from Coca-Cola.

Muhtar Kent joined The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta in 1978 and has held a variety of global marketing and oper-ations leadership roles throughout his career. In 2005, Kent was appointed President of Coca-Cola International, respon-sible for overseeing all operations outside of North America. In 2006, he assumed the role of President and Chief Operating Officer and in 2008 was elevated to President and CEO. He was named Chairman of the Board of Directors in 2009 and served as Chairman and CEO through April 2017.

Kent holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the University of Hull in England and a Master of Science degree in Administrative Sciences from Cass Business School in London.

Kent is a member of the board and past Co-Chair of The Consumer Goods Forum and past Chairman of the Interna-tional Business Council of the World Economic Forum. He serves on the boards of 3M, Special Olympics International, Catalyst, Cambridge China Development Trust and Emory University.

Interviewed 6/8/2017

“ Right now, we offer more than 500 brands and more than 3,500 products in markets around the world. We have 21 brands that create more than a billion dollars in retail sales every year, and only six of those are sparkling soft drinks.”



“Our model is to keep patients well.”

Steven M. Safyer, M.D. President & CEO Montefiore Medicine

Robert Reiss: Montefiore is a large organization with 11 hospitals, 38,000 people and $5.5 billion in revenue, but in the world of hospitals, there are about 5,000. How do you differentiate yourself?

Dr. Steven Safyer: Our health system is an academic medical center similar to all the great ones. It does ev-erything that these centers do but also does many things that are totally cutting-edge and that sets us apart.

We do transplants, we have a children’s hospital that’s subspecialized and has accomplished many amazing things. We have a cancer center. We have a heart center. These are nationally renowned centers that are collabora-tive with Albert Einstein College of Medicine, so they’re backed by science. They are institutes and centers that teach tomorrow’s doctors, tomorrow’s medical students, nurses, physician assistants and all the professionals to work as teams.

What makes us unique and different is that we take care of everyone who comes through our doors and we work in a footprint of four million individuals who are essen-

2016 Crain’s Event – The Future of the New York Healthcare Workforce. photo: Buck Ennis.


tially challenged and often financially in trouble and we welcome them all. We take care of everyone regardless of their means to pay.

Our payor mix is very challenging. It’s 85% governmen-tal, meaning Medicaid and Medicare, with 15% com-mercial, and most of healthcare systems in the United States that are sophisticated are dependent upon a larger commercial base to underwrite the losses in governmen-tal payments.

We have been able to deal with that because we have moved aggressively to transform the way we provide healthcare. Our model is to keep patients well. We are at risk for 450,000 of our patients and when you’re at risk, you can make more money by keeping people out of the hospital which is the right incentive. You can work hard to take care of the issues that bring people back to the hos-pital. We have a large ambulatory practice of five million visits a year and 50% of them are genuine primary care. They’re visits with family practitioners, internists, pedia-tricians, and obstetricians and gynecologists.

I’m very familiar with the New York hospital sys-tem as I’ve been a board member for one for a decade. One thing I know is almost no New York hospitals actually achieve profitability. What are you doing differently? Is it strictly that you focus on preventative or is there anything else?

Let me just point out one thing -- we’d probably be about $7 billion if we had more commercial insurance and less governmental insurance -- which is a stark statement. Our mix is lean and that has led to us figuring out how to make it work which the whole healthcare system in the United States needs to do. You can’t have 18%-19% of the GDP going to healthcare. Somehow, we have to become smarter about what we do.

Part of that is moving up on the premium stream, which we have done with these risk contracts beginning in 1995, so more money stays in healthcare. Some of it is purchasingsmarter -- our size allows us to make discounts on pur-chasing. Some of it has to do with how we work with pharmaceuticals and the drug companies because you

can’t just be going with the latest trend, you have to be prescribing what works.

Probably the most important component is moving to-wards this risk model where we are rewarded for keeping people out of the hospital when they don’t need to be in the hospital. We are penalized, as we should be, if we’re just denying care which is what managed care of the 1990’s was. It was manipulating price; it wasn’t manag-ing the care of the patient. We manage the care of the patient. That is something our whole healthcare system needs to be doing and we’re leaders in that.

You’ve acquired and brought into your model nu-merous hospitals. What is the secret with bringingorganizations in and keeping them within your culture?

When you acquire somebody, even if they’re a growing entity, there’s a cultural difference. And as you know, institutions tend to have their own cultures. We’re not overly demanding in the sense that things take time --

“We have a large ambulatory practice of five million visits a year.”

Dr. Safyer speaking at the ribbon cutting for the Montefiore Einstein Center for the Aging Brain.



take two, three, four years to be part of our culture. I look back and I see some of these institutions that came in seven, eight years ago, and you go there now and it’s completely changed places. It’s not just how it looks, it’s the culture that is there. Our culture since 1912, when we moved to the Bronx, was one of embracing the population that we serve. Now, that has essentially been immigrants for the entire history of Montefiore. If you think about it, the Bronx was the entry point in those days for Jews, other times for Irish or Italians, more recently for Puerto Ricans and Dominicans and now, West Africans. Whoever comes to America changes, but in my opinion, that migration is what has made us such a strong country. People travel here from all parts of the country for specialized care, but we take care of this population and this community. We see that as our responsibility.

You believe deeply that everyone should have an equal footing in the healthcare they receive.

I believe it is a basic human right just like public educa-tion, and the right to vote. I believe in the values in this country that embrace all. I actually believe the Statue of Liberty is a beautiful image and I think of that. It is our job to care for these patients.

Montefiore has also accomplished historic feats of medicine. For example, you had two children who had their heads conjoined.

“There have only been seven successful separations of craniopagus twins fused at the head and brain. All seven of them were done by the team at Montefiore.”

Daniel Hauben, Artist and Project Director, Bronx Artist Documentary Project; Judith Lane, project director, Bronx Artist Documentary Project; Michael Kamber, director and founder, Bronx Documentary Center and Photography Curator, Bronx Artist Documentary Project; Jodi Moise, curator, Fine Art Program and Collection, Montefiore presenting Steven M. Safyer, M.D. , president and CEO of Montefiore Medicine with a book commemorating the release of The Bronx Artist Documentary Project Book (200 color pages of Bronx artists) during the launch of the ArtViews Gallery at the Montefiore Moses Campus.



It was more than their heads. Their brains and the blood vessels were one; they were connected including the skull and the skin. There have only been seven success-ful separations of craniopagus twins fused at the head and brain. All seven of them were done by the team at Montefiore. Two of them were done here; five others were done in other countries. It was an incredibly mov-ing experience. The first two children came here from the Phillipines 12 years ago. We still take care of them -- they live in Scarsdale, they go to school and their mother is a nurse.

The second family came from the western part of Illi-nois. And when the mother found out that her children were conjoined, which was discovered while they were still in the womb, she searched for a solution. She just said, “I’m going to make this whole. I’m going to make this work.” She was referred to us and we brought her and her whole family here, we embraced them all, and the children are doing fantastic.

In 2008, you became CEO. How would you sum up your leadership philosophy?

You need to lead with inspiration. You need to inspire people. You need to get them to see the highest values and impact of what they could do. You have to have a vision. You certainly have to have a plan and you need to know how to get there. But the fire, the fuel, is inspiration.

You have five million ambulatory visits every year. What is the key to successful customer experience?

This is not any different from the rest of the business world. It is, in our environment, the caregivers and the professionals who are the ones that create a good expe-rience. Coming into the hospital is hard, coming to an ambulatory visit or a subspecialty visit is hard. People have worries, they have concerns. They have families. They have all kinds of things going on. That is mitigated and elevated by the people who care for you. It’s about the inspiration, it’s about how you communicate to the people who work here. I make an effort to go every-where, every year. I do town halls, I meet with people all over the organization, different parts of the organization have come in later, but you’re building a culture, and I think that is the key.

I want to ask you about Albert Einstein College of Medicine and how it informs patients through-out Montefiore.

The heart and soul of who we are is our medical school because that’s about new discoveries, science, and train-ing the doctors and PhDs of tomorrow. The medical school plays an integral role in our residency programs. We train 15,000 interns, residents, and fellows a year, a very large educational enterprise. Albert Einstein Col-lege of Medicine is one of the top rated NIH (National Institutes of Health) supported institutions in the coun-try. It is a place where many medicines have been discov-ered, and where top notch scientists are searching for the keys to unlock many diseases. Right now they’re analyz-ing Zika virus there. There’s not a realm of medicine that hasn’t been influenced by Albert Einstein College of Medicine. It really is central to who we are.

“The heart and soul of who we are is our medical school because that’s about new discoveries, science, and training the doctors and PhDs of tomorrow. The medical school plays an integral role in our residency programs. We train 15,000 interns, residents, and fellows a year.”



You’ve told me about what you’ve learned from your mother and father.

We all think about our parents and the impact they have on us. I’m lucky because it was all positive. But in retro-spect, when I think about it, my dad taught me to fight and my mother taught me what to fight for and that has guided my whole life. That’s why I’m a doctor. That’s why I’m at Montefiore. I was at Einstein. It is totally the defining approach I take to life and I think of my parents frequently. At times I wish they were still around, but they’d be quite old!

If you had a mulligan in life, what would you do differently?

That’s a great question and I’ve thought about this a lot. I’m a very loyal person, which comes from my parents as well. You can be loyal to a fault. You should support the people who work for you. You should support the people you care about and this is like family here. One thing, though, that people can really get lost in is if at some point, somebody is not performing. Earlier in my career, I had kind of a reflex to just keep trying even though I knew people weren’t performing. But my loyalty some-times clouded that judgment as a leader.

Let’s shift over to America. What can we do to improve the state of healthcare in America?

Winston Churchill once said, “America can always be counted on to do the right thing after exhausting all oth-er options.” Healthcare is one of those issues. We have really struggled with doing the right thing and how to get there. We need to create more of an awareness and an openness as to how we can get toward providing health-care for all, and providing healthcare for all at the same level. I don’t think Medicaid patients or elderly patients on Medicare are any different than young, healthy peo-ple who are working and they deserve the same quality of care. As you know, this is a contentious issue in this country. Many people and politicians think of Medicaid and Medicare as an entitlement, which has become a dirty word. It shouldn’t be a dirty word. If you’re old or you’re impaired, if you’re blind or you’re a child –you are entitled to be taken care of with the greatest dignity. That’s what Montefiore does.

What should CEOs do to help improve health-care in America?

We need a universal consensus around the issue that ev-eryone should be insured in this country. It’s not about socialism versus capitalism. It’s not about the wrong peo-ple given something they don’t deserve. It’s like public education. No one challenges the value that we need to educate our citizens for the first 12 years of school. But somehow we have come to see access to healthcare as a commodity or some sort of privilege if you can afford it. CEOs can drive the discussion and the value that all Americans deserve access to good quality medical care. It makes them better employees. It makes them more productive. It won’t happen overnight, like so many oth-er struggles for equality in this country, but it can happen if people in leadership roles fight for it. Finally, healthcare is a key issue in America right now. What’s your vision for a better healthcare system in America?

I support Universal Healthcare. My vision for a better healthcare system is based on the belief that healthcare is a right – not a privilege.

I understand that reaching this goal in our diverse nation is fraught with challenging politics, and that Medicaid and Medicare have bad reputations. But there’s no ques-



Steven M. Safyer, M.D., is President and Chief Executive Officer of Montefiore Medicine. Montefiore Medicine in-cludes Montefiore Health System, one of New York’s pre-mier academic health systems and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. An accomplished clinician, physician leader, and educator, Dr. Safyer was recognized by Modern Healthcare as 13th of the “50 Most Influential Physician Executives in Healthcare” in March 2016.

Dr. Safyer has always been deeply committed to improving healthcare for the underserved and galvanized a broad effort to stem the burgeoning epidemics of HIV and TB that were taking their greatest toll on the poor during the 1990s in New York City. A champion for a single standard of healthcare quality and access regardless of social or economic circum-stances, Dr. Safyer led the way for Montefiore to set a new standard for equitable healthcare systems.

Dr. Safyer earned his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed his internship and a resi-dency in Social Medicine at Montefiore. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, as well as a Professor of Medicine and a Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health at Ein-stein. He is a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, a founding member of The Health Management Academy and a member of the Healthcare Institute. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University.

Dr. Safyer and Robert Reiss – Interview aired: 8/13/2017

tion in my mind that all Americans should have access to affordable, quality care, with or without government help. The ACA isn’t perfect, but it was a good start and it achieved its primary goal of expanding affordable health insurance coverage. It is very hard to take care away from people, so instead, let’s build on what we’ve started!

At a certain point, we as a country have to put politics aside and focus on how we can improve our delivery sys-tems so that we are putting patients, their families, and their providers first. That is, in fact, the very foundation of Montefiore’s model.

We care for everyone, regardless of insurance. We are re-moving barriers. We are redesigning our delivery systems and driving our resources to incentivize better care so that we get better outcomes and keep people healthy. Our providers are motivated and rewarded for keeping their patients healthy. That’s what we’re doing at Montefiore.

We’ve been turning the fee-for-service model on its head for 20 years by emphasizing that if we take care of the entire community from the sickest to the healthiest, we all win.

If doctors, providers and health systems are accountable for getting people the care they need in a timely manner, we have better outcomes. We save money and they save money.

Our population health model can and should be repli-cated. It is the future. My vision is that we put our energy into building up this model, expanding it, and investing in it. It will improve lives, communities and the overall health of our country and the economy.

On that inspirational note, Steve, it’s a pleasure having you on The CEO Forum.

It’s a pleasure for me too. Thank you.

“ My dad taught me to fight and my mother taught me what to fight for and that has guided my whole life. That’s why I’m a doctor. That’s why I’m at Montefiore.”


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Local businesses can now compete globally. AT&T helps businesses everywhere deploy integrated Internet of Things solutions, including connecting irrigation sensors so farmers can decrease water usage and increase profits. Helping local businesses be small & mighty.

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“It is important for everyone to spend time serving their country.”Mark Rylance, Cate Blanch-ett, Meryl Streep, Toby Jones,

Robert Reiss: I’m trying to figure out how to sum-marize what you’ve done because you’re a philan-thropist, you’re on boards like Exxon and Gener-al Mills, you’ve been an emissary for the United States with USAID, you ran the Mint and you’re also CEO and Chairman of Holsman Internation-al. How would you sum up Henrietta Fore?

Henrietta Fore: I love the world at large. I want to make the world a better place. As I compose my life, there is a pattern of service to business, to education, to my country, and to the world.

Let’s start off with your grandfather, and his con-tributions to America.

Grandfather was an architect in Chicago and a young man at the birth of the automotive industry. He began tinkering with the automobile. This new invention would be a carriage, without horses. His automobile would be clean, reliable and go anywhere! Grandfather began to

Henrietta Fore Chairman & CEO Holsman International



invent, and for several years he built a Holsman Auto-mobile. It is interesting to see how invention occurred. Each year, models would come out with small, but im-portant improvements. In the beginning, there was just one seat, a one-gallon gasoline tank, tiller steering, and kerosene lamps on the body of the car.

Three years later, there were two seats, a seven-gallon gas-oline tank, a wheel for steering and lamps mounted on the wheels. They say, Grandfather invented reverse as a gear.

He is actually credited with inventing reverse?

Yes, horses knew how to reverse, bicycles did not have a reverse, so cars had to invent reverse. Grandfather placed the lights on the front fenders so when you turned the wheels to the right or to the left, they would illuminate 180 degrees on a dark, rural road. This was in the days when the roads were muddy and rutted dirt roads. Coun-try doctors and farmers needed automobiles that could travel over all roads, climbing uphill and down and be able to move in all weather. Grandfather was part of that early set of pioneers who thought about automotive travel. He would be as excited as I am about the idea of flying cars in our near future!

Let’s shift to your public sector work and what made you proudest.

It is important for everyone to spend time serving their country. I had the honor to serve in three areas. One area was in foreign assistance at the U.S. Agency for Interna-tional Development, where I have served several times, most recently as Administrator. The second area was in the Department of State, and the third area was in the Department of Treasury at the United States Mint.

The U.S. Agency for International Development’s mis-sion is to partner to end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies while advancing our secu-rity and prosperity. There are so many times when we feel proud to be Americans, but you feel it most strongly when there is a disaster. For instance a famine, a cyclone or an earthquake where hundreds of lives are at risk of being lost. You hope that there will always be an Ameri-can there with some food, water, and blankets, who can help you and shepherd you to safety. USAID and the American private voluntary community comes through

with that time and time again. In the Philippines, Indo-nesia, Japan, Myanmar, China, India, Pakistan, Bangla-desh, Ethiopia, Sudan, Ecuador, Brazil, the list is long, but the families and their livelihoods saved is even longer.

In the U.S. Department of State, as Undersecretary for Management, we evacuated Americans from Beirut as the city was being shelled. In those harrowing days every single person was evacuated safely by boats, by plane, and by land transport. We even added one, a baby, born on the evacuation ship from Beirut to Cyprus. It makes you very proud of the men and women serving our country. You feel you have contributed to the world around you. You have made the world a better place and that purpose-ful life is important for all of us.

During my tenure as the 37th Director of the United States Mint, we had an OSHA audit for safety. Our Sec-retary of the Treasury was Paul O’Neill, the legendary CEO of Alcoa, who pioneered good safety measures. We had violated 128 OSHA violations in our Mint in Philadelphia. This was not our value, nor our operat-ing standard as a United States government agency. We wanted to be the best that we could be, embodying all of the values that we held as a nation. We decided to shut down the Philadelphia Mint, for six weeks. All of the people in the Mint set to work shoulder to shoul-der, regardless of their departments. The Union and the Management worked together cleaning up the Mint and fixing the violations. At the end, we had built a new esprit de corps. When we reopened, we began winning awards. We turned a serious problem of OSHA viola-

1904 Holsman winning Chairman’s Trophy at Concours d’ElegancePebble Beach 2017.



tions into an area of performance-excellence in safety for the United States Mint.

We worried a great deal about shutting down the Phil-adelphia Mint as you would the main manufacturing plant of any corporation. It was the first time that it had been shut down since 1793 and it created half of the nation’s money supply. To not have money in the cash reg-isters of America would be a problem. The Denver Mint heroically picked up our workload in Philadelphia, so the system as a whole worked together. It was a moment of great pride.

You’re also currently involved with CED.

Yes. The Committee for Economic Development is a bipartisan group that has a number of smart, common

sense policy prescriptions for ways to move our country forward in the world of economics, education and health. Of the many policies we have in America, to choose some that are agreed on as bipartisan is a very good thing.

In your expansive work on boards, what lessons have you learned on governance?

Governance is important in every organization, but ev-ery organization has a different style. The large public corporations need an oversight mechanism that has a clear delineation between boards of directors and man-agement. Major strategic directions and stewardship of shareholder resources are essential shared tasks. Private-ly-held companies need governance also, but it emphasiz-es different needs. As you are strategically thinking about customers, products and people, there are more calcula-

“The Committee for Economic Development is a bipartisan group that has a number of smart, common sense policy prescriptions for ways to move our country forward in the world of economics, education and health. Of the many policies we have in America, to choose some that are agreed on as bipartisan is a very good thing.”



tions on succession planning within a family and more calculations on private financing options. In nonprofit organizations, good governance principles are required because you are carrying the trust of the public, with do-nations from foundations and the savings and generosity of individuals. The resources must focus on programs, not overhead. In the United States government, you also have important governance considerations in the over-sight responsibility of taxpayer money. The wise use and investment of taxpayers’ funds is essential.

Governance is seen differently in each of those settings, but it usually comprises oversight of the people, process-es, systems, products and services that you offered to the public at large.

From all of your board participation, what is the common thread of Henrietta Fore?

Each of us who are board members hopes that we will be wise. In every situation, you will bring the wisdom from a mixture of your education, experiences, and per-ception.The focus of a board adjusts: It is different in

times of crisis than it is when you have a well-running company in a stable industry.

Choose companies that fit your values. I look for com-panies that have high integrity, that have products that I believe in. I look for companies that have positive ap-proaches to their customers, suppliers, employees, and communities. I also look for international companies that are technologically proficient and growing strategically.

What insights do you have to the CEOs commu-nity about being most effective?

The best CEOs are open with their board, and set am-bitious goals. So often, CEOs feel that they have to meet their targets absolutely on the penny or on the date. In reality, you have to be ambitious enough, optimistic enough, about your products and services and that you

“The large public corporations need an oversight mechanism that has a clear delineation between boards of directors and management.”



“If you have not had a new and interesting idea this week, then you should stop, reflect for a moment and get one, so that creation is constantly at work in your organization.”

and your people can achieve something greater. You must convey that ambition to the board. Give yourself and your team some metrics that you can accomplish. If you miss it a little, it is better to have aimed high than it is to have aimed too low and not tried to be the best you can possibly be.

The best CEOs also address, “How to be innovative? How to create in our products and services, and in our space?” Creation is a constant activity. You must en-courage it in your people. Everyone should be creating something. If you have not had a new and interesting idea this week, then you should stop, reflect for a mo-ment and get one, so that creation is constantly at work in your organization.

How does innovation, profit and common good all tie together for CEOs?

Let me give you an example for two boards that you have

not mentioned. One is Essilor, a French company that is the largest eyeglass lens manufacturer in the world. You could be focusing on how to make a better eyeglass, how to machine the edges better, how to make it bigger or smaller or to make it darker or lighter. Instead, they said, “We want to provide vision for the world.” One billion people now have corrective eyeglasses, three billion need corrective lenses and every one of us, all seven billion, we all need sunglasses to help protect our eyes from sun.

If that becomes your mission as a company, you then say, “Well then, how could I create affordable simple eyeglass-es for the world?” Essilor created a program called Eye Mitra. It started in the villages of India, where individ-uals would carry backpacks filled with frames and lenses that are machined so that they could go into the right or the left eyeglass. You can do your eye prescription with an iPhone. I can give you a pair of eyeglasses for $10 and it means that a school child can read a book, a tailor can sew a shirt, a mechanic can work into late middle age.



Henrietta Fore and Robert Reiss – Interview aired 6/13/17

Ms. Fore is Chair and CEO of Holsman International, a manufacturing and investment company. She serves on the Boards of Essilor International SA, Exxon Mobil Corpora-tion, General Mills, and Theravance Biopharma Inc. She is Global Co-Chair of Asia Society and Chair of the Middle East Investment Initiative. Ms. Fore serves on the Boards of the Aspen Institute, Center for Strategic and Internation-al Studies, Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy and Center for Global Development. She is a member of the CEO, C200, CFR, WomenCorporateDirectors, and YPO/WPO.

Ms. Fore served as Administrator of USAID and Director of US Foreign Assistance, holding the equivalent rank as Deputy Secretary of State. Formerly, the Under Secretary of State for Management. Prior, Ms. Fore was the 37th Di-rector of the United States Mint, Department of Treasury.

Ms. Fore has a BA from Wellesley College and a MS from University of Northern Colorado.

Ms. Fore is a lemon and avocado rancher in Santa Barba-ra, CA, a keen sailor, and a collector of antique Holsman Automobiles.

It means that you are bringing vision to the world. It makes you a company that is focused on profit and yet you are doing something for the larger good.

A second board I am on is Theravance Biopharma and we thought, “What was the most important disease that we could conquer?” We chose pulmonary disease to alle-viate COPD. If you cannot breathe, life cannot exist. The company discovers, develops and commercializes small molecule medicines. It is a business purpose, but it is for a greater common good.

What is your hope for society?

I hope we look for the common good. In our work as CEOs and community volunteers, let us work on issues much larger than ourselves. Let us work for a better world for our families, our communities and our nations.

It’s been a pleasure, Henrietta. I do want to say for everyone as a CEO, be open with your board, and don’t be afraid to aim high.

Absolutely, Robert.


CEO Insight Leadership

Leadership Lessons from OurFounding Fathers By Mitchell B. Reiss, President and CEO of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia.

Most mornings I wake up in an 18th-century house amid301 acres of meticulously restored and reconstructed gardens, homes and other historic buildings. Outside, I often hear fifers and drummers practicing in the dis-tance. I may run into George Washington or Thomas Jefferson on my way to work. Or school groups that trav-eled hundreds of miles to visit.

Such are the experiences I get to enjoy as president and CEO of Colonial Williamsburg. Every day I can listen to our talented costumed interpreters share America’s en-during stories with our guests, who challenge us, question us, engage and have fun with us. They explore with us the complex question of what it means to be an American.

This is more than intellectual backdrop for me. The ora-tions of James Madison, Patrick Henry and other found-ers are not aphorisms set in amber. Their words, and this history, have offered me guidance and strength as I have tackled an ambitious turnaround to save Colonial Williamsburg.

This critical need became obvious when I arrived in late 2014. Everywhere were danger signs: declining visitation, mushrooming overhead costs, a dwindling endowment, declining deferred maintenance, and big debts coming due. Fearing the risks and discomforts of change, we had been continuing business as usual. So what did our founding history teach me?

It starts with the very values that grew and took flight in this 18th-century crucible of revolutionary thought and

debate: liberty, equality, human rights -- values that came to underpin our government and society. In Colonial Wil-liamsburg today, these values reclaim their meaning.

It was clear to me that what our organization needed most was a return to our fundamental values, and the core mission that launched Colonial Williamsburg in the first place. No more could we overspend on spin-off businesses that had been failing for years. No longer could we prop up programs catering to vocal but small audiences. We needed to focus on what we had always done best, and valued most: public history, preservation and education. The rest was mostly noise, and it was costing us.

Perhaps the greatest lesson I drew from Williamsburg’s earliest leaders: the importance of courage. Leading a company out of financial crisis is not for the faint of heart. Jobs, sadly, have been lost here. It’s painful, and I’ve lost friends in the process. But the ship is turning. I sleep better knowing this American treasure will endure as a result.

The qualities that make a visit here so memorable, and the values that have been so inspiring for me, are the same that work for other CEOs and their companies.

At Colonial Williamsburg, Jefferson dines with board members and shares his vision for the country. George Washington recalls the inner resolve he had to summon to endure the bitterness of Valley Forge’s winter, and the sight of his suffering soldiers. You can raise a glass with the Marquis de Lafayette, while imbibing his unsinkable optimism about freedom and liberty.


Mitchell B. Reiss is President and CEO of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the world’s largest living history museum. Previously, Reiss was President of Washington Col-lege and practiced law at Covington & Burling. Reiss has also served at the White House and State Department and is a leading expert on American foreign policy.

Mitchell B. Reiss, President & CEOColonial Williamsburg, P.O. Box 1776, Williamsburg, VA 23187 Tel: #757-220-7200, Fax: #757-220-7727

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what some other CEOs on our own Board have said about this unique experience.

From Thomas Farrell, the President and CEO of Do-minion Resources: “Listening to George Washington recollect the pain and sacrifices of battle, and James Madison and Patrick Henry debate with such passion how to build a new government – these experiences drew us closer together. By the end of our retreat, the entire group was more aware, and felt more connected to an historic tradition of leadership in this country. And we were eager to play our own parts.” From Jo Ann Jenkins, AARP’s CEO: “What could be more inspiring than the stories of America’s original vi-sionaries, and the courage they showed in the face of such long odds? After three days of being immersed in the sights, sounds, and eloquent words of a burgeoning nation, we left Williamsburg feeling energized, embold-ened. We were ready to move mountains.” From John Luke, CEO and Chairman of WestRock: “Hearing Thomas Jefferson speak about the founding values that built this country -- in this historic setting, where these values launched a revolution -- was transfor-mative, for me and our entire Board.”

And consider this from Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard: “Having served on many Boards, I know the setting can make a big difference in the out-come of the meeting. It is impossible to attend a meet-ing at Colonial Williamsburg without thinking about how to lead, what ideas will matter and their impact over the long-term.” So please come visit. Enjoy your own revolutionary ex-perience!


CEO Roundtable Customer Experience

According To Top CEOs:

Nothing Drives Profitability Like

Great Customer Experience

Sam Walton said, “The goal as a company is to have cus-tomer service that is not just the best but legendary.” To better understand legendary customer service, on June 23, 2017, I moderated a roundtable discussion at the world’s largest academic customer experience conference, The Frontiers In Service Symposium hosted by Fordham University. We discussed great customer experience today and tomorrow and insights on how leaders think. The three executives were:

• Adam Goldstein, President, Royal Caribbean Cruises. The company created the first smart ship in the industry as its 49 ships and 65,000 employees have reinvented the travel experience. http://www.royalcaribbean.com

• Sharon John, President and CEO, Build-A-Bear Workshop, which offers the “only interactive, make your own stuffed animal retail-entertainment experience” and has been on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list 9 consecutive years. http://www.buildabear.com

• Dan Hesse, former CEO, Sprint. Hesse has a history of achievement including turning Sprint into the #1 customer service company in wireless and the most improved US company in customer satisfaction in any industry according to the ACSI, and having been named “Most Influential Person in Mobile Technology” by Lap- top Magazine (Steve Jobs was #2). http://www.danhesse.com

Robert Reiss: What is the one word that describes the changing customer experience?

Adam Goldstein: Excalibur: Be the company that pulls the sword out of the stone. The question is, how do we do digital enablement in a non-intrusive way that benefits our customers? How do we arm employees with even more information through digital and artificial intelligence that saves them time rather than producing more work?

Sharon John: Storytelling: Tech for tech sake will not be a solution. Build-A-Bear has consumer permission to engage in a different way in order to expand beyond retail and move into more of a content property. Even our unique retail experience can drive story with the po-tential for Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality to be woven into the Build-A-Bear customer experience.

Dan Hesse: Mobile: Customers increasingly prefer to provide “self-care” on their mobile devices. Also, with wireless chips a part of so many products, the 24x7 al-ways-connected “internet of things” is changing relation-ships between companies and their customers, providing more opportunity for customer intimacy. And, video cam-eras on phones capture the customer experience for all to see as we witnessed with the United Airlines incident.

Reiss: What’s the core of your customer experience model?

John: “Adding a little more heart to life” is our mission statement, and that folds into everything we do, but it is by allowing children of all ages to be empowered and engaged to build an emotional connection with our

At The Frontiers In Service Symposium hosted by Fordham University. Frontiers Conference 6.23.17, Fordham University: Adam Goldstein, Sharon John, Dan Hesse, Robert Reiss


brand beyond a stuffed animal that drives our guest expe-rience model. It is the emotional moments, like our icon-ic heart ceremony, that we have provided one guest at a time though the creation of each of our 160 million furry friends we have made over the past 20 years that enables our success and that can eventually allow the company to evolve into new areas of revenue such as intellectual property and out-bound licensing.

Goldstein: Whatever it takes for our customers to have the dream vacation they paid for. The #1 generator of positive reviews comes from the service of the wait staff and the stateroom attendants. I give credit to our compa-ny’s first management team for instilling a commitment to guest satisfaction that has remained a vital part of the company’s success.

Hesse: Nothing drives profitability like great customer experience. Great customer service costs less. In wireless, there are two key drivers that determine the customer ex-perience, the quality of the network and customer service. When I got there, we didn’t have money to invest in the net-work, so we focused on customer service. To make improve-ments quickly, align compensation and rewards. We made every employee’s compensation, regardless of department, dependent on improvements in churn and reducing calls to customer care. To show everyone how important this was, the customer experience became the first subject on our team meeting agendas. We used hard data from the “rea-son codes” from why customers were calling to determine root causes of customer dissatisfaction and assign clear ac-countability for removing these pain points. We also greatly simplified our business, eliminating 85% of our rate plan combinations to make it easier for our sales associates and care reps to work with customers. Nothing is simpler to cus-tomers than the concept of “unlimited”, so we introduced the industry’s first unlimited plan, “Simply Everything” in 2008 along with a service called “Ready Now” in our stores where we showed customers, one-on-one, how to use their new smartphones, which were a new product at the time. Spending a little more time in the store at the front end eliminated calls regarding how to use the phone’s features later on. We also got all departments involved via “Thank You Thursdays,” where we’d get together in locations across the country and write our customers hand-written thank you notes. We found that customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction create a virtuous cycle.

Reiss: What advice do you have as to how leaders and executives think and how to approach them with ideas?

Hesse: If you want to connect to a CEO, make sure you know what is most important to him or her and to their company. Listen to or read the transcript of the last earnings call. Translate your message into the specific terms, metrics, and language the CEO used on the call. The proposals that interested me were ones that specifi-cally addressed and quantified improvements in my stat-ed focus areas, like EBITDA, average revenue per user, churn, net promoter score or customer lifetime value. We were receptive to new ideas coming from inside and outside the company, as our culture emphasized innova-tion and creating what we called “nukes” or bold ideas to stay ahead in our fast-moving industry. In my last two years, we were being granted an average of over two US patents every business day.

John: Don’t waste the CEO’s time. Come up with an intriguing angle on your idea for the executive. Bring a solution. Understand the role of the position. The CEO must become a master of connecting the dots, he or she needs to see across the company and understand how issues in one area may affect others. The CEO must also sometimes be a change agent, the enabler of the ma-chine. So think through your idea with these things in mind.

Goldstein: As the leader you need to understand where the energy is flowing and if you need to re-direct the flow. It is an extraordinary undertaking for the CEO to change direction from the status-quo. People must be open to new ideas that can supersede or at least be integrated with previous approaches to the experience. One of the main challenges in implementing fundamental changes that need to happen: convincing people change is necessary when the company is already successful.

… In summary, as you seek enterprise growth, focus on the customer experience as the key driver. And to me what’s most exciting about our digital future is how tech-nology, including machine learning and augmented in-telligence (AI), will actually become essential enablers to help us humanize and personalize the customer experi-ence to the next level.


We are intensely focused oncreating value for our clientsfirst and foremost and we want client relationships that last10 or 20 years.”

On whom do you have an acting crush?

Mark Rylance, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Toby

Jones, Adrian Lester. And, of course, Jim Norton.

What was your most memorable survival job?

Working in Harrods’ packing department in the ’70s

“ Robert Reiss: Accenture Digital has about 41,000 employees and $9.5 billion in revenue. Talk about the organization.

Mike Sutcliff: We’re the digital natives inside of Accen-ture that’s helping all of Accenture go digital. We have ex-perts in Accenture Interactive which is our digital market-ing agency, and we have a large number of data scientists in Accenture Analytics who work with big data, artificial intelligence and other types of advanced analytics. We also have experts in mobility who work with both mobile devices as well as IoT and the Industrial Internet.

You’ve had 18 acquisitions since 2013. How do you incorporate so many people into the culture of Accenture?

First of all, we have a broad culture. We have about 400,000 people at Accenture and what we were trying to do is bring new skills, a different type of DNA, bringing in capabilities that we haven’t had in the past. What we thought we should do is instead of indoctrinating those people into the existing culture of Accenture, we wanted to start with sharing core values and make sure we got that right. Then we wanted to create something that we call a culture of cultures.

Mike Sutcliff Group Chief Executive Accenture Digital


A culture of cultures?

Yes, our culture of cultures is the ability for people here to respect the fact that we want diversity in experience and diversity in thinking. Sometimes that means people have a different way to work. They may dress differently, they may work in different work spaces, they may have a different approach to how they solve problems. We want to allow experimentation across the entire enterprise. We aren’t necessarily looking to bring those acquisitions in and have them work the way we’ve worked in the past. We want to let them infect our culture with their new DNA and see if we can all get better together.

You will allow the 18 companies you acquired to each try their new DNA. The only thing that is sacred are the core values?

Exactly.

How about the mission?

Our mission is to work with our clients to improve the way the world works and lives. Most of the acquisitions that have joined us have joined because they’re excited about that mission. They want to work with clients on interest-ing problems and they want to be able to go home at night and tell their wife and kids, “I worked on something that was interesting today, and I worked with clients who’ve got interesting problems that I can help solve.”

When you look at the organization, how would you define your core leadership values?

Our first one is that we are intensely focused on creating value for our clients first and foremost and we want client relationships that last 10 or 20 years. We’re not here for a short-term project; we’re here to do the heavy lifting that creates real value for clients. We want an open and transparent culture, we want people to be able to talk to anybody at Accenture, whether you’re a brand new ana-lyst or somebody who’s joined us as a managing director

with a new skill. We want you to be able to build your personal network based on your passion in the areas that you really want to work on. We have a very wide open culture of networking and what we call communities of interest, both personal and professional.

What does community of interest really mean?

It could be, for example, a community of people we have who are ex-military. They believe that the mili-tary experience in culture that they bring to Accenture is something they share and they want to continue to share. They may have a personal community of interest around ex-military. We may have a professional commu-nity of interest around people trying to learn artificial intelligence or, specifically within artificial intelligence, how to apply machine learning to visualization questions.

Are there any other unique practices that you have here?

Probably the most unique practice is that we have al-ways operated as one global company. We move people around the world. We move assets, ideas, capabilities to where our clients need them. We have always positioned Accenture as the company that people should be able to depend on to help them truly scale on a global basis. Re-gardless of where the ideas originate, we want to be able to help clients make it happen on a global basis.

As one of the founders of Accenture Digital, what was the original vision?

“Our culture of cultures is the ability for people here to respect the fact that we want diversity in experience and diversity in thinking.”



The objective when we established Accenture Digital was to help all of Accenture rotate to the new – “new” meaning new digital technologies. It was to help learn cloud, learn infrastructure and security services and how they were going to be applied. We do that as part of our operations business. On the other side, it was to real-ly think about strategy -- how is digital going to impact what we call predictable change or disruption in differ-ent industries. We worked with The World Economic Forum to study industries and look at what we would describe as a predictable disruption in that industry.Whether it’s going from strategy and consulting through technology and operations, what we really wanted to do with Accenture Digital was prepare us for the next gen-eration of change.We’re happy with the fact that it has gone reasonably well. The challenges, the pace of inno-vation continues to accelerate and what we’re trying to do is keep up with that acceleration.

What is predictable disruption of industry?

It’s really about looking across a wide range of indus-tries and anticipating where the next wave of digital dis-ruption will occur and how industries should react to it. We’ve already seen massive disruption in industries like retail, hospitality and taxis & car services by digital na-tive companies that are unencumbered by legacy or tra-ditional business models. We know disruption will take hold in many other industries as well so the question for many established players is “what can I do about it?”

Those are the conversations I’m having with CEOs and clients all the time.

Talk about Accenture Interactive, which is now the largest digital agency in the world. We don’t really buy advertising, that’s not the business that we’re in. The business we’re in is creating experiences. We want to create the best experiences in the world, whether it’s a citizen interacting with their government, wheth-er it’s a patient interacting with a healthcare provider, whether it’s a student trying to learn or whether it’s some-body in a sporting event trying to have a fun experience or somebody shopping and having a commercial experience. We want to be able to work with clients across industries to say, “Let’s take these digital tools and techniques and apply them to create a better experience.”

What are the key elements to a great customer experience?

The first one is personalization -- understanding the customer intention and giving a personalized response. The second is what we call adaptability -- understand-ing how to adapt the experience as customers work with you over time, really understanding their behaviors and their preferences and then you can adapt your service to those preferences and create a more intimate experience with the customer. Then I think empathy comes next.It’s really understanding what customers are trying to do, what’s the real underlying intention and making sure that you’re continuing to innovate around that experi-ence over time.

What’s an example of how you’re helping a client change their customer experience?We currently have a client who’s in the cruise industry. If you’ve ever been on a cruise, you’ll know that sometimes there are friction points in terms of giving your pass-port when you get on the boat, getting registered into


“Probably the most unique practice is that we have always operated as one global company. We move people around the world. We move assets, ideas, capabilities to where our clients need them.”


the room, getting your schedule set for going to offshore excursions, et cetera. They have created a vision that says there will be no waiting when you’re on the cruise. There will be no friction points. They’re going to dy-namically reallocate the staff, they’re going to use digital tools to understand presence, they’re going to add bea-cons and sensors so that they understand exactly where every person on the ship is and they’re going to allow you to demonstrate your preferences while you’re on the cruise so that they can serve you better. That is a massive undertaking. We call it a living service --it’s a service that learns and adapts while it’s interacting with you. What they’re trying to create is a living service that’s serving 50,000 people to create a much better experience across multiple ships and then say, “If that works, let’s do it for 500,000 people.”

On a personal note, was there any challenge that you’ve faced, overcame and learned from?

I entered the financial services market here in North America with perfect timing in 2008, as we were going into the financial meltdown. We had a stable business that had been here for about a decade that all of a sud-den blew up. Most of our clients blew up -- they were be-ing taken over or absorbed by other clients. There was a massive change going on in the industry. What it taught us was that there was a unique opportunity, even in the midst of that big structural change, that was occurring in the industry to apply innovation and find the next gen-eration of growth.

We got to work with clients that were all blue chip names, the largest banks, the largest insurance companies, the largest brokerage firms, and wealth and asset manage-ment firms and really ask the question, “How are you going to create value for the future?”

What we learned was that we could innovate and find success in the future even in the midst of massive struc-tural change.

Over the past 12 months, what do you see as the most impactful technology change?It’s our ability to create a two-way interaction with the customer that actually occurs in real time. What has happened in the world of marketing is we’ve moved from mass marketing to a very personalized segmented

marketing approach. That’s easy when all you’re trying to do is broadcast data out. What’s much more difficult is to say it’s not just to broadcast out, it’s an interaction with the customer and it’s the ability to understand what’s happening and adjust to it in real time and we now have the tools that allow us to do that.

What is an example of digital innovation that impressed you?

A great example is the cutting-edge innovation center we created in Dublin. We call it The Dock and it’s a place where we have brought together designers, devel-opers and industry experts who experiment and co-cre-ate with clients, ecosystem partners, start-ups, universi-ties and others to solve some of the biggest challenges facing businesses, governments and consumers. Under-pinning our work at The Dock is the digital disruption that is fundamentally changing industries and consumer behaviors in unprecedented ways, and so we’re focused on the application of innovative technologies such as ar-tificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT and advanced analytics to help our clients better navigate their digital transformation journeys.

I’ve heard the term Digital Revolution. What’s your take on that?

We are a technology optimist. We believe we’re early in the curve of figuring out how this combinatorial effect of low cost storage, low cost compute, low cost band-width and ubiquitous access devices is going to allow us to create new solutions. I would say it’s probably not a revolution as much as an evolution and we’re in the early stages of that evolution. We think it’s going to be even more exciting in the next five years.

Five years from now, if we sit down again, what will have happened that hasn’t happened already?

You will see the cost of technology to continue to drop at a record rate. The result of that is we will be able to actually create business models that wouldn’t be eco-

“What we learned was that we could innovate and find success in the future even in the midst of massive structural change.”



nomically sustainable today. That means our imagina-tion and what’s possible in healthcare, what’s possible in education, what’s possible with the fan experience is going to come to life. As digital advances, we’re going to see brand new experiences working at scale in a cost-ef-fective manner that will excite people and allow them to lead a more creative life.

What do you see as the future of AI?

The first thing is we believe that we’re in the early innings of understanding how artificial intelligence can be applied to lots of different areas of the business.There is a term in the industry right now that AI is the new UI. What that really means is that we’re going to apply artificial intelli-gence to make interactions with technology seem much more natural. You’ve started to see, for example, Alexa or Siri or other voice interfaces act as a bridge between you and the internet. Now you can say, “What’s the weather tomorrow?” and it will tell you what the weather is going to be tomorrow. Then you could follow up and say, “Is it going to rain in Seattle on Thursday?”

It’s really about ease and simplicity, right?

Exactly. It’s about creating a natural interaction. When we say AI is the new UI, what we mean is we just want to make technology feel more natural, but we can go well beyond that with artificial intelligence. We can start to do optimization or the scale that humans just couldn’t process. We can take big data, we can do massive paral-lel processing, we can optimize a global supply chain and create an uplift in the efficiency of a large infrastructure

business even in an environment that a human couldn’t understand. For example, we have an energy client that we assisted to help optimize one of their production plans. We have 3,000 artificial intelligent agents operat-ing in the plant today and we’re just getting started. We are less than 50% through the work. That’s 3,000 opti-mization routines constantly into learning and getting better every single day and helping the plant operator understand something they’ve never been able to under-stand before.

Will there be a point when all of a sudden hu-mans become not that necessary and machines take over everything?

We don’t think so. We think that artificial intelligence really gets classified into two sets of applications: narrow band and general artificial intelligence. Narrow band ar-tificial intelligence is a very narrowly defined set off prob-lems such as, “Can I recognize that image?” or “Can I process your voice?” Those will become enablers of lots of improvements in the underlying business processes and the operating models that people deploy. Then we have generalized artificial intelligence where we see ar-tificial intelligence start to be able to solve problems like diagnose medical disease patterns. We think what’s go-ing to happen is we’re going to see technology designed to allow humans to do what humans are uniquely good at which is apply judgment, learn, interface and interact in a way that feels and is human.

How is the Internet of Things going to impact that?

The Internet of Things basically allows us to instrument an environment and understand what’s happening at a level we’ve never had in the past. If we can put 5,000 sensors in a building, we can understand how many peo-ple are using the conference room, whether the lights need to be on or off, whether we need to precondition that room or not with air conditioning. We can see a lot

“There is a term in the industry right now that AI is the new UI. What that really means is that we’re going to apply artificial intelligence to make interactions with technology seem much more natural.”



more information. If we look at precision agriculture, we can take a drone and fly it over a field and we can get information on pest infestations, we can look at water levels, we can look at the growth rate of plants and we can see things that we haven’t been able to see before. With that new instrumentation and that new data flow coming at us, we can start to optimize and to improve the conditions at a level that we wouldn’t be able to do without all those instruments.

What is your advice to CEOs on how to navigate through our digital future?

The first thing is to recognize the difference between two questions they could ask.The first question a CEO could ask is, “How do I take digital technology and use it to im-prove my existing operating model?” If you do that, you can generate tremendous value in the business. Having said that, that’s the wrong question to ask.

Really?

The right question, the second question, they should be asking is not, “How do I take digital technology to im-prove my existing operation?” The real question is, “If I think about the mission statement of my company and I think about how I deliver against that mission statement and I could design from scratch an organization that was going to succeed at that mission: better education, better health, etc., how would I use digital technology to cre-ate a new operating model that’s fundamentally more effective than the one that I’ve seen in the past?” That’s where we see digital disruption happening at scale.

One sentence that sums up your leadership phi-losophy…

Our leadership model is focusing on what’s right for the customer, what’s right for our clients, and how we im-prove the lives of people around the world.

Mike, a pleasure having you on The CEO Forum.

Thank you very much, Robert. I’ve enjoyed being here.

Mike Sutcliff and Robert Reiss – Interview aired: 8/01/2017

Mike Sutcliff is group chief executive of Accenture Digital. Mike helps clients create or react to digital disruption across industries around the world. He builds teams capable of ap-plying digital platforms, technologies, and techniques to imag-ine and deliver better experiences and more profitable business models. Mike leads Accenture Digital’s 41,000+ employees responsible helping Accenture pivot to become a digital business. This includes creating leading edge solutions and pioneering client engagements in digital marketing, experience design, com-merce & content solutions, advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, mobile applications, the internet of things, block chain, artificial and augmented reality, smart products, and smart manufacturing. Connect on LinkedIn. Connect on Twit-ter @MikeSutcliff.



“In today’s world, once you build a brand, you’ve got to protect it.”Mark Rylance, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Toby

Jones, Adrian Lester. And, of course, Jim Norton.

What was your most memorable survival job?

Working in Harrods’ packing department in the ’70s

when I was a student for no money a week, packing up

very expensive pieces of elegant crockery to be sent to

very exotic places.

How do you typically prepare for an audition?

Daniel P. Amos Chairman & CEO Aflac Incorporated

Robert Reiss: Aflac’s branding and growth is a true case study of success. First, explain the name Aflac.

Dan Amos: There were two companies: American Fam-ily Life Insurance Company and American Family Life Assurance Company. When we had American Family, people couldn’t tell which company was which. As long as we were regional in nature, it didn’t matter much because the insurance company American Family was located in Madison, Wisconsin and predominantly wrote in that area while we wrote predominantly in the south.

As we decided to really go national, we realized we could not continue with the American Family name because of the conflict we would have with American Family In-surance. Also, an interesting point is there are over 200 insurance companies that start with “American” and there are 50 that start with “Family” so it would never be a name that would be remembered. We ultimately came up with “Aflac.” Another reason for choosing “Aflac” is that if you change your name, you have to submit your license to the insurance regulators in the state and you


“In determining the potential of the Aflac duck, I used what I call the three principles of risk management in insurance: don’t risk a lot for a little; don’t risk more than you can

afford to lose; and consider the odds.”

could potentially be out of business. We didn’t want that to happen, so the acronym is how we were able to do that.

After doing that, you took a significant risk in get-ting the name Aflac to gain market recognition.

We spent 10 years starting with Aflac and trying to get brand recognition. We took it from 2% to 10%. We found that people were having trouble pronouncing Aflac. Be-cause the A was uppercase, they wanted to call it “Ayyy - flak.” One of the things we did with national advertising is we always had an Aflac trivia on almost everything we sponsored. Any sporting events that you think of, you saw the Aflac trivia. It was to get the name pronounced over and over to get the consumers to where they un-derstood it, but nothing affected how you pronounced it until we did the campaign with the Aflac duck.

We were taking a big chance with the Aflac duck be-cause if you really think about it, we were making fun of our name, and by having a duck quack the name, no one would ever have dreamed that it would work. We tested it, and with this testing it came out that in the past, we had commercials that tested pretty well for us. The way you test is you test it in the financial services, not just insurance. Insurance is a very old, tough category to move much because there are not as many interactions versus in banking where you’re doing checking accounts, etc. and you’re always involved with the bank in some fashion. With insurance, you may buy a policy and then not use it or interact with the company for quite a while.

In the financial services category, the average score was a 12. The insurance industry is much tougher -- we had only scored 12 one time in the 10 years we’d been doing commercials. However, when we tested the Aflac duck, it tested a 27. We weren’t as sophisticated as we are now in understanding advertising, and one of the things I was most scared about was we didn’t test likeability. We knew

they would know our name but we didn’t know how they would feel about it. In determining the potential of the Aflac duck, I used what I call the three principles of risk management in insurance: don’t risk a lot for a little; don’t risk more than you can afford to lose; and consider the odds. In doing that, I looked at the Aflac duck com-mercial and said, “Okay, this is going to be an expensive commercial, almost double the cost of any commercial we have ever had -- a million dollars. Can I afford to

lose the money? Yes. I don’t want to, but I can. What are the odds of it working?” Since it tested a 27, those were terrific odds. A good rule here is don’t risk more than you can afford to lose, and since we could afford to lose it again, we decided to go with it.

When we did the first Aflac Duck Commercial in 2000, Ray Romano was on TV with the number one comedy or number one show overall. We had talked to him about making a commercial for us with children building blocks on the floor and in the end, the blocks formed “Aflac.” That commercial tested an 18, so 50% better than any commercial that we’ve ever tested, and also better than the norm. The Aflac duck tested a 27, but the other commercial was more traditional in nature, so you weren’t taking a chance. My CEO friends advised me to go with the Ray Romano commercial instead of the Aflac duck because as they said, “No one ever got fired for a 50% increase.” I knew in my heart the Aflac duck was the right move. This is one of the decisions when you earn your money as a CEO. Do you go with

“My CEO friends advised me to go with the Ray Romano commercial instead of the Aflac duck because as they said, “No one ever got fired for a 50% increase.” I knew in my heart the Aflac duck was the right move.”



“ My IT people told me, ‘It will take us 18 months to accomplish, but we can actually get to one day claims payment.’ I was stunned and I said, “That is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.” So I said, ‘Let me go back.’ I went back and met with our people and said, ‘Okay, I want this taken from 18 months down to six months.’ They said, ‘Impossible.’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll stop every project we’ve got going on, move this to the top of the list and let’s get it done in six months.’ They said, ‘You’ll never do that.’ And I replied, ‘You don’t know me very well. I will stop every project.’ ”

the, “Wow, different Aflac duck thing!” or do you go with the other one? I said I would go with whatever it is if it’s in good taste, and it was a hit from the day we started.

We actually received more hits on the Internet the first week than we had the entire year before. It took off and our name recognition jumped to 40% within the first year and it jumped to 60% in the second year. By the third year, name recognition was 75%, and today, it’s over 90%. It changed our life forever, and goes to show that you should take risk in business, but you also have to manage that risk. There can’t be risk that has no end. You have to have a limit on those risks, and as such, I was willing to pull the commercial immediately if it was something that was not a hit for us, and, as you know the rest of the story today, it has been a great thing for us.

During your tenure as CEO, you’ve grown Aflac from $2.7 billion to over $20 billion.

I attribute it to products that people want and need, that we are ultimately filling a need that is out there today. The marketing aspect helps get that message out, but ul-timately, it’s a product that people want and need. Also, it’s the quality of the employees we have and how they manage the brand. In today’s world, once you build a brand, you’ve got to protect it. It is easy to lose, so pro-tecting the brand becomes the next important step.

I want to go back to your three tenets of risk management you mentioned earlier.

I learned this in college because I majored in risk man-agement in insurance. The three tenets are: don’t risk a lot of a little; don’t risk more than you can afford to lose; and consider the odds. You can use that in almost anything you do in life if you think about it.

Speaking of risk, Dan, you took a significant risk and you tried something no one else has done which is one-day pay.

First off, the insurance category is generally pretty stodgy. It doesn’t move as fast as many other industries, however we have seen this enormous acceleration in changing the business environment like we’ve never seen before, and it’s even taking place in the insurance industry.

My thought was, “Why won’t this happen with us?” I thought it would, and the most important thing is the interaction that takes place at the time of claim, because we don’t sell a tangible product. It’s not as though you are buying a television from us and you turn it on every day and decide whether or not it’s a good or a bad prod-uct. This is a promise on a piece of paper that we give to you and you won’t know how good it is until you use it.

At the time of claim, how long it takes makes an enor-mous difference. I was in a meeting with our IT people and they said to me that we have the technology to pro-cess, approve and pay a claim in one day. I said, “Say that again?” My IT people told me, “It will take us 18 months to accomplish, but we can actually get to one day claims payment.” I was stunned and I said, “That is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.” So I said, “Let me go back.” I went back and met with our people and said, “Okay, I want this taken from 18 months down to six months.” They said, “Impossible.” I said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll stop every project we’ve got going on, move this to the top of the list and let’s get it done in six months.” They said, “You’ll never do that.” And I replied, “You don’t know me very well. I will stop every project.” And sure enough, that’s exactly what I did and in six months, we had it. I was then asked to go on CNBC and Andrew Sorkin said to me, “That is really a game changer.” Sure



enough, since we’ve introduced it, last year in 2016, we did 1.7 million claims in a one day turnaround time.

Now, that excites people! But let me tell you what else is also interesting. It actually lowers our cost of doing busi-ness because it has a zero error rate. The system won’t take a claim that has a problem, so there’s no human error. Already this year, we’ve processed close to, right about 1.1 million claims. We will be somewhere around 2 to 2.2 million claims we’ll pay this year in just one day, up from 1.7 million last year. The final aspect, and to me the most important, is customer satisfaction. Ninety-five percent of the people that have used one-day pay claim say they would recommend it to other people. Nine-ty-five percent. You can’t get 95% to agree on anything and yet, they’ve agreed to that.

Must have been something getting the entire or-ganization involved and galvanized to do that.

Any time you come up with new ideas, there’s an ele-ment of resistance and it takes the top to say, “We’re going to do this.” It takes management to say this is im-portant and this is going to be something we drive, and it has to take a top priority.

There are neigh-sayers in every company. It doesn’t mat-ter who your company is, there will always be those who say, “Oh, I like the way we were doing it before. I don’t want to do it this way.” They can find something wrong with it because you have to file it a certain way, you have to do it a little bit differently. But once you learn it, it’s just like using the phone that you use today. Once you use it, you can’t think of not having it. At first, when someone hands you your new phone, you say, “Oh, I’d really rather keep the old one.” It requires management to push and to say, “Nope, not going to do it this way.”

It’s a little harder for us because our sales associates are independent contractors. They’re not salaried employ-ees that I can say, “If you don’t do this, you’re going to be fired.” They will just go license with another com-pany. You have to sell them why it’s good. You have to say, “I’m going to tell you now, your customers are going to be happier.” That’s what we have now – a happier claimant base that’s getting their money faster than ever before.

This is a sad note about America. But do you know that two-thirds of the Americans in this country cannot come up with $1,000 in cash to pay bills. Out of pocket


Dan Amos with Aflac Foundation President Kathelen Amos with a patient at the Aflac Cancer Center in Atlanta.


expenses that they weren’t expecting it and they can’t come up with it. One-third can’t come up with $500. We are able to provide the cash people need to help fill those gaps, and we are able to get it to them quickly. I had somebody in our field force say to me one time, “What’s the difference between one day and four days?” because we were always paying in four days. My answer was, “There’s no difference if you don’t need the money, but if you need the money, it’s all the difference in the world.” This person that asked me was one of my sales managers who made a lot of money, and he really hadn’t put himself in the shoes of the people that need it, and that’s what you have to do.

Dan, every single year Aflac has been recognized on the lists of Best Companies to Work For, Most Admired Companies, Most Ethical Company. What is your management philosophy that helps you achieve this?

It’s staying very focused. There’s a shotgun approach and there’s a rifle approach. What I like to do is target things that I believe will be very effective and stay with them, use them and make them work. There’s a real ten-

dency to get bold in different directions, and you can’t do that. You have to stay on target and get it done.

What’s one thing you’ve learned that you would like to share with CEOs?

I do have one piece of advice, and it’s a saying that I have, “The bad news does not improve with age.” When you have an issue that’s not good, whether it’s to tell your employees, your customers or your shareholders, the longer you wait and try to hold it back, the worse it gets.

To end, can you give one sentence answers to these five spotlight questions:The key to superior customer experience.

The key to superior customer experience is owning the policy yourself and knowing why you need it.

The biggest tech innovation of the past 12 months.

For us, it’s one-day pay.

Can you summarize your core leadership principle?

“‘The bad news does not improve with age.’ When you have an issue that’s not good, whether it’s to tell your employees, your customers or your shareholders, the longer you wait and try to hold it back, the worse it gets.”


Dan Amos poses with his own creation, the world famous Aflac Duck.


Dan Amos and Robert Reiss – Interview aired: 7/23/2017

Dan Amos is chairman and chief executive officer of Aflac In-corporated. He joined Aflac in 1973 and worked in the sales area for 10 years. In 1983, he was named president of Aflac, chief operating officer in 1987, chief executive officer of Aflac Incorporated in 1990 and chairman in 2001. Aflac is a For-tune 500 company that insures more than 50 million people worldwide. It is the leading provider of individual insurance pol-icies offered at the worksite in the United States and is the largest life insurer in Japan in terms of individual policies in force. In Japan, the company insures 1 out of 4 Japanese households.

During Mr. Amos’s tenure as CEO, revenues have grown from $2.7 billion to $22.6 billion as of Dec. 31, 2016. He also is responsible for launching the company’s national advertising program featuring the popular Aflac Duck. Today, Aflac is a top national brand and was named by FORTUNE Magazine in 2017 as one of America’s Most Admired Companies for the 16th year. Aflac has also attained the distinction of being the only insurance company to appear for 19 consecutive years on FORTUNE’S list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Under his leadership Aflac has been named to the Ethisphere Institute’s annual list of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for 11 consecutive years, the only insurance company to appear on this list every year since its inception in 2007.

In 2015 and 2016, Mr. Amos was named by the Harvard Business Review as one of the 100 Best Performing CEOs in the World.

It’s the three principles of risk management in insur-ance: don’t risk a lot for a little; don’t risk more than you can afford to lose; and consider the odds.

In hindsight, one thing you would do differently about your career.

The thing I would do differently in my career is -- gosh, that’s a hard one, because I’ve had a good career and I’ve enjoyed every bit of it. I guess I would just work harder.

And the final question: a challenge that you over-came that you were really proud of.

I think changing the name of the company and really broadening our product line and how successful that has been are things that I am really proud of. That, along with the total shareholder return, has been the key.

A real pleasure speaking with you, Dan.

Thank you, Robert. I appreciate it.


Dan Amos accepts the 2015 Salute to Greatness Award from the Dr. MartinLuther King Jr. Center in Atlanta.


CEO Insight Corporate Culture

The Culture of Noble PurposeBy Mehran Assadi, President and CEO National Life Group

Several years ago leadership gurus Kevin and Jackie Freiberg were leading a seminar with people who worked in one-hour photo shops. They asked everyone in the room, “What’s heroic about what you do?”

There were a lot of answers: “We exceed our customers’ expectations.” “The clarity of our prints is unmatched.” “Customers can count on the reliability and speed of our service.”

Finally, a woman in the back of the room stood up and said, “That’s all true, but it isn’t heroic. Our work is he-roic because we preserve people’s memories—the birth of a child, a wedding, an exotic vacation. We capture some of the most important times of people’s lives.”

There was a moment of silence. And then a murmur of excitement swept through the room as her answer struck a chord. She had pinpointed their noble cause, their rea-son for being. These folks no longer were film processors: They were memory makers.

I am a big believer in defining businesses in heroic terms. That gives workers a focus, a purpose, a mission. Tom Morris, author of If Aristotle Ran General Motors, wrote

that “Every job productive of any good can be given ei-ther a trivial description or a noble description. Ultimate motivation requires that we have in our minds a noble description of what we do.”

National Life is a mission-driven company. Ours is a he-roic industry. We provide peace of mind. We keep alive the dreams of families, the hopes of small business own-ers, and the dignity and financial independence of seniors.

In today’s world, having a noble purpose or a cause is a must have. Consumer preferences are shifting. It’s no longer enough to sell a product or a service that works. Consumers expect meaningful social impact. Edelman’s 2016 Earned Brand Results revealed that 60% of con-sumers think doing good should be a part of a brand’s DNA and 54% say they will refuse to do business with a company that does not “make the world a better place.”Employee preferences are changing as well. People to-day, especially Millennials, want to work for companies that do good. They look to companies that define them-selves in broad noble world-changing terms: Apple is in business to enrich lives, Google to organize the world’s information, and Southwest Airlines is in business to de-mocratize the skies.


Mehran Assadi has served as president and chief executive officer of National Life Group since 2009. Mr. Assadi serves on the Board of National Life and chairs the Board of Sentinel Funds. He joined National Life in September 2003 as interim chief information officer. The following year he was named interim chief operating officer, with responsibilities encompassing all of the company’s distri-bution, sales and marketing areas, as well as new business and customer service. In April of 2005, Mr. Assadi was appointed the company’s president of Life and Annuity. Since becoming president and chief executive officer in 2009 Mr. Assadi has led major growth in sales of National Life’s life and annuity products and worked to build a culture of collaboration, engagement and empowerment among employees. Before joining National Life Group, Mr. Assadi served as chief marketing officer and chief information officer at Provident Mutual in Newark, Delaware.

So how do you build a culture of cause?

1. On the top of the list is talent. Having the right competencies in the right seats is critical. As important as competence, however, is to make sure your teammates are a good cultural fit. The best companies build teams not super- stars. At National Life you can be the smartest and most proficient person in the company but if you don’t fit our culture and live our values then this is not the right place for you.

2. Great cultures are built around purpose. Make sure you can distill your purpose into a short and simple phrase that everyone can remember. Long and complicated vision and mission statements are useless. You need a rallying cry.

3. Be patient. Culture changes do not happen overnight. This is truly a journey that can take many years. The key to success is to be consistent in messaging and approach. I found that when I first started talking about our mission and our values and the importance of servant leadership, some of my teammates thought this was a passing phase that they could ignore. Their approach changed when they saw that this was something I was truly committed to.

4. Measure it. After we developed our servant leadership tenets and defined what our culture should look like then we developed a 360-type evaluation that focuses entirely on whether our leaders live our values. The results were eye-opening for some of our leaders and provided a critical new perspective for them on how they show up at work.

Changing the culture of an organization is hard work. But it is worth it.Unleashing the power and passion and energy of our colleagues has beentransformational at National Life. A collaborative and passionate andempowered workforce is a wonder to behold.


“To be successful, you have to think differently from your competition.”

Len Green Chairman & Founder The Green Group

Robert Reiss: You have covered a lot of ground as a leading authority on entrepreneurship: You run a boutique tax and accounting firm; you own and breed thoroughbred horses which have 2,300 winning races, you co-owned a horse that ran in the Kentucky Derby; you’re a highly successful in-vestor, and now you have authored the hit book, “The Entrepreneur’s Playbook.”

Let’s start off though, 17 years in a row at Babson College, you earned top reviews as a teacher of entrepreneurship and that is the top entrepreneur-ial educational facility in all of America. What do you teach your students?

Len Green: As with everything, whether you’re an entrepreneur or a teacher, you have to be unique. You must think and do things differently than other people if you want to provide the best consumer experience. When I began teaching at Babson, I looked around and said, “Okay, what are most professors teaching and how


are they teaching it?” A lot of them were teaching theo-ries, formulas and business plans, all of which have some rudiments of ‘you have to do things by the book to be successful.’ To me, to be successful, you have to think differently from your competition.

I teach my students to truly think outside the box. I don’t use a book and I don’t use tests. I divide the class into teams and provide them with authentic case studies based on real businesses. The students are asked to read and solve the challenges presented in the case studies by coming up with different strategies to make the company more successful.

Some of the most fascinating experiences I had over the years is when I brought in guest entrepreneurs to speak with my students about owning a successful company. By the end of the class the roles were reversed. The students would come up with ways the company could better dif-ferentiate itself while also making more money. The guest entrepreneurs were always shocked they never thought of these ideas before because they were so caught-up in the day-to-day operations of running a business that they never stepped back to say, “How can I think differently?” It was a very give and take exercise that proved beneficial for the entrepreneurs and students alike.

Talk more about your teaching style.

It’s very important to understand that it is the students who run the class. This is a principle that entrepreneurs in business should think about for a minute. How do you get the employees to think like owners? How do you get the students to think like professors? You empower them. So, I start the year off by saying “Here is my class out-line” and then I rip it up. Then I go on to say, “Okay, what do you want to learn this semester? What areas do you want to cover?” After discussing their ideas, the students are asked to draft teams, using diversity to se-lect members, not friends. Since there is diversity in the real world working with people from different countries, races, religions and experiences, this is very helpful in finding unique ways to solve a business problem.

It is a very competitive class so the students need to be competitive. Their grade does not necessarily depend on coming up with the right answer because there is

no right answer. It depends on coming up with the best answer, the one that is unique to that company and its niche market. If you could think of any one word that codifies success for an entrepreneur, what would that one word be?

Passion. You have to have passion. If you think what you are doing is work, then you have a tough road ahead of you. It is very difficult to become successful at something you do not enjoy. If you have a 9:00 to 5:00 mentality or if you’re preoccupied with other things, you will hin-der your chances of success. You have to love it! Passion will inspire you to establish the work ethic you need to achieve the long-term success of your company.

When you wrote “The Entrepreneur’s Playbook,” what was the message you most wanted to get across?

Looking at competition is a great tool. So many people want to come up with their own idea, something that has not been thought of before. I think that’s crazy. Why not see what the competition is doing and then improve on it? Learning from experience is good but learning from someone else’s experience is even better.

How do you see what the competition is doing? In my particular case, I went around to different Barnes and Noble bookstores and said, “Okay, how many books are there on entrepreneurship and how do each of them convey their message?” Well, I quickly discovered the most common theme were books like, “Entrepreneur-ship for Dummies.” Then there were a certain number of them written about famous people, like Steve Jobs and Jack Welch; which are fascinating but may not eas-ily translate into advice for most people. There was a large portion written by PhDs, who advise you of all the formulas they think you need plus techniques in how to write a great business plan. However, none of the books really stood out to me because none of them truly dif-

“The problem with accounting is it’s always looking backwards instead of forward.”



ferentiated themselves from one another. That is when I came up with the idea of taking my teaching methods and turning them into a virtual classroom. I wanted to write a book where the reader would become a virtu-al student of mine, by completing the exercises offered after each chapter and then sending them to me for comment. I think this is one of the best ways to learn. I knew there was something unique about it when Amer-ican Management Association read the manuscript and wanted to publish it.

This comes back to your original statement about uniqueness.

Yes.

Let’s talk about The Green Group, an accounting firm with an expertise for entrepreneurs. What do entrepreneurs need most to know about ac-countants?

Many people think, “Let’s get an accountant. Everybody needs an accountant.” My dad said to me, “If nothing else, get an accounting degree even if that is all you do in life because at least you will always make a living.” Most

accountants, I’d say about 75% of them, do accounting work. They look to see what your financial results were six months or a year ago. They then form a snapshot of your financial picture and return to you with a full report. They will say, “did you realize that six months ago, here’s what your earnings were” or “a year ago, here’s what you did?” That’s wonderful but it doesn’t help the client going forward. The problem with accounting is, it’s always look-ing backwards instead of forward. Since the future is not predictable, looking back is not always helpful. Secondly, how does your accountant do a tax return? It is amazing how many accountants just input numbers into a computer program and rely on it to answer how much their client owes in taxes. As a tax planner and CPA, I try to stop and think, “Hey, what happens if I was that individual? Would I be satisfied with a computer telling me how much money I owed?” I like to sit down with my clients, review their return, and then begin planning for the year going forward. When the time comes to file the tax return it will reflect the lowest tax legally possible.

Finally, most accountants learn that one plus one equals two. Entrepreneurs say, “Well, maybe it’s 11 or maybe it’s something else.” Most accountants say they’re good

“A failure is only a failure if you don’t learn from it.”



business people because they’ve run their own account-ing firm, but how many have actually run businesses like the clients they are advising. It’s always better working with someone who’s been in the trenches before and knows the meaning behind “thinking differently.”

What’s your take on entrepreneurs being risk takers?

Entrepreneurs should not be risk takers, they should be calculated risk-takers, meaning they have the knowledge to make intelligent decisions about something, and not be afraid of F-A-I-L-U-R-E. Except for your first busi-

ness or your last business, a failure is only a failure if you don’t learn from it. Otherwise, if you learn from it, it’s not a failure. So why not take the calculated risk? What can CEOs do if they want to bring entre-preneurship and agility into their company? The most important thing for CEOs to think about is, how they can encourage their employees (renters) to think differently, like owners? Empowering them by giv-ing them the freedom to make executive decisions on important matters that add value to the company will allow them to begin to think differently and not have a 9 to 5 mentality.

Let’s talk about your experience in investments .

Early in my career, I was fortunate to meet a young man named Bill Bishop who was a genius in market-ing. Bill started SoBe Beverages, and as his accountant and advisor, I was there to listen to different things that the company did, and the success story of how he grew the company and ultimately sold it to Pepsi. After about six months and a day, Bill said, “I’m going to start up again.” He said to me, “Would you like to become an

“The most important thing for CEOs to think about is, how they can encourage their employees (renters) to think differently, like owners? Empowering them by giving them the freedom to make executive decisions on important matters that add value to the company will allow them to begin to think differently and not have a 9 to 5 mentality.”



investor this time?” Of course I said YES! Around that time unfortunately Bill’s dog, Blue, died of cancer and he said, “I’d like to start another company called Blue Buffalo Dog Food/Cat Food.” In my opinion, Blue Buf-falo took off and became a success because it was run by the most talented people, who worked harder than any of their competitors, had a unique idea and a passion to make it succeed, and were able to execute it.

Let’s shift to your horse business. You’ve had over 75 horses and you’ve had over 2,300 winners. What have you learned about winning from horseracing?

Yes, we have had 2,300 winners, but we have had many more horses that didn’t win. The horse business is a crazy business. If you win 20% of the time, you’re successful. You have to ask yourself, what do I have to do to be suc-cessful in the horse business, what is my competition do-ing and how can I do it differently.” Once you do this, you will have a greater chance of success. Robert, I’m sure you have said, “There are other CEO-type of shows out there, but what can I do to make mine different?” You’ve made

it different and unique which has resulted in successful en-trepreneurs having interest in being on your show. Now let’s talk about something really close to your heart called “Jeremy’s Heroes.”

It’s a 9/11 related charity named after Jeremy Glick who was one of the heroes of Flight 93. Growing up, Jere-my was an athlete. On September 11, Jeremy and some of his fellow passengers formed an uprising against the terrorists aboard their plane and prevented it from hit-

www.jeremysheroes.com



Len Green, Founder and Chairman of The Green Group, has had a long and distinguished career as an entrepreneur. He has been recognized nationally as a tax expert and family business consultant. Len prides himself on being a trusted business advi-sor to highly successful people who need more than just a “bean counter.”

In March 2017 Len released his first book titled “The Entre-preneur’s Playbook.” The book has become an essential guide for aspiring entrepreneurs with more than 100 proven strategies, tips, and techniques to build a radically successful business.

Len is a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Owner and President Management Program. He received his Master’s De-gree in Taxation, with Honors, from New York University and his undergraduate degree from Rutgers University (Accounting).

Len has expertise in the areas of tax and accounting, family busi-ness and succession planning. His articles have appeared in over 200 newspapers across the country, including: the New York Post, Wall Street Journal and Star Ledger. He has contributed articles to The Thoroughbred Times, Real Estate Times, Bab-son Entrepreneurial Review, Babson Alumni Magazine, Prac-ticing Law Institute “Estates and Trusts” manual, The Prac-tical Accountant, The Journal of Taxation and many others.

He is a winner of the Appel Award for outstanding contrib-utors to the entrepreneurial spirit in academia, and is listed in “Who’s Who in U.S. College Professors.” He has been on the advisory board of over a dozen family-owned businesses and consults with over 1,000 clients. His board experience includes three non-profits and a publically traded company.

Len Green and Robert Reiss. Interview aired: 8/20/2017

ting its intended Washington DC target. Jeremy’s family attributed his bravery, his ability to act under pressure and his strength, to his participation in sports. The idea of the charity was because we wanted to do something to memorialize Jeremy Glick’s name. The family did not want it to be for the family, they wanted it to be about something Jeremy was passionate about, sports. We started Jeremy’s Heroes to help at-risk youth by allowing them to participate in sports and leadership training. In return, Jeremy’s Heroes kids all give back to the commu-nity by participating in community service projects and mentoring others. Many kids who have participated in this program have finished school and college. The ded-ication and talent of The Board of Directors has helped make Jeremy’s Heroes the successful organization that it is. It’s a very beautiful thing.

Any final advice to CEOs?

There are a number of examples in the Book as well as tips, strategies, and techniques used by successful entrepreneurs. 1. Hire great people. 2. Be passionate. 3. Lead by example. Don’t just sit in your office. Walk around and empower employees to make decisions. 4. Set realistic goals. 5. Learn from your errors. 6. Reinvent yourself all the time. 7. Be prepared for the unexpected. 8. Enjoy what you’re doing, because if it’s a job, you’re really not going to do it well.

Len, a pleasure having you on The CEO Forum.

Thank you, and thank you for having me, Robert.



CEO Insight Board Governance

Some Things are Better for Methan Thee By Nancy May, President and CEO, BoardBench Companies

Okay, here are two concepts that should work together: (A) directors should be fairly compensated for their work; and (B) directors should put the interests of the company above their own. Unfortunately, they stop working when some directors don’t buy into either (or both). This hap-pens when directors perceive that the overall board com-pensation package needs updating, or, more often, when some directors feel they should get paid more than their peers, for a variety of reasons. However, doing so often means looking like you’re more interested in your own welfare than that of your peers and the company. Some have solved this through a little creativity: tack on new roles and responsibilities. Usually, these additions don’t require any more real work or add any value. Worse, in some cases, basic responsibilities actually get taken away from other directors.

For those not familiar with board compensation, it gen-erally has two flavors: membership-based and perfor-mance-based. Being compensated simply for being on the board in the form of equity grants, cash, deferred compensation, etc., is usually the same for all board members, is agreed upon and approved by sharehold-ers, and adjusted periodically. Performance-based pay means that one is compensated for how much more work is either: (A) actually done and/or; (B) what could be done (defined but never really performed). It’s in this area of “performance based” compensation that pay can be most easily manipulated. It may also indicate where directors’ priorities really lie.

What’s in a Name? More Money!One sometimes sees board titles crop up that differ from the normal “Director,” “Chairman” or “Committee Chair.” Such differing titles include Vice-Chairman, Co-Chairman (which may mean NO chairman) and Chairman Emeritus. The value these titles bring can easily be argued against. It’s also common to see Lead or Presiding Director, where the CEO and Chair are combined. However, where an inde-pendent, non-CEO Chair already exists, the addition of a “Lead Director” title seems, at best, superfluous.

If such titles are only honorary, in recognition for past long-term or superior service, they can have some place: they can soothe egos and pride, at no additional cost. That’s not to say that egos and pride should have any place in the boardroom, but it’s futile to try to keep them out. Where it smacks of being self-serving is when ad-ditional compensation comes with those titles. Boards will defend these roles when questioned. However, the prudent investor will ignore those justifications: for ev-ery one made, an equal, opposite, and convincing argu-ment can be offered against their utility and value. For example, if the Independent Chair can effectively and consistently do his/her job, there is no need for a Vice Chair or Lead. In cases when they often can’t, the board should get a new Chair instead of creating compensated additional roles. These paid, extraneous titles should be considered, by you, the shareholder, as strong clues that some directors are feathering their beds with company funds.


Nancy May, President and CEO of The BoardBench Companies, has been cited in Forbes as one of America’s governance experts. She has over 25 years’ experience as a strategic advisor to high-growth, mid-cap, and Global 100 public and private companies. BoardBench is a corporate governance, director and CEO suc-cession, and board candidate advisory firm.

BoardBench Companies, LLC5 River Road, Suite 245, Wilton, CT 06897 USATel: (203) 493.0080 Email: [email protected]

When One Committee Rules.You don’t see executive committees as much today as in the past, but they do persist. Executive Committees appear as standing, non-standing, sub-committees, or in some similar form. They originally began as a means for select directors to meet and act on behalf of the board during times between board meetings. They have also been used to provide added board support to new CEOs, and in some cases, to meet, discuss, and make preliminary decisions on major issues which then get rat-ified later by the full board. Those committees that meet more than just occasionally, and for which their mem-bers are paid, whether annually or per meeting, need to be questioned as to the value and damage that they bring to the rest of the board.

Executive committees, at best, provide only transitory value. They are pretty much obsolete, and in the worst cases, disengage non-participating directors and lead to a bifurcated board. If the temporary purpose of setting up a committee to mentor a new CEO is chosen, there may be simpler means to do so. If it works, OK, but for how long? A good CEO should get the oars into the water pretty quickly. A standing committee, that started out as a CEO asset will eventually become a crutch, or worse, a nuisance.

What about those issues that arise between meetings? In this age, it’s quite easy to arrange quick discussions among board members either by email or teleconfer-ence. The extent of such discussions depends on what

the incorporating state or company bylaws dictate. As for selected board members meeting, holding discus-sions, and making preliminary decisions, what’s wrong with that? For certain, Executive Committees directors work harder than the rest and gain a keener understand-ing of the company. Shouldn’t the most experienced, skilled directors do (and get paid for) this extra work? Shouldn’t the rest of the board welcome that they only have to review and ratify those decisions, without the te-dious tasks of analysis, deliberation, and achieving con-sensus? But when a board member goes from being a decision-maker to nothing more than a rubber stamp, their usefulness gets lost. You wind up with a few real board members and the rest become placeholders. The company pays for 2-3 committee members’ work and

intellect while the rest are paid faces on the company’s website. It’s a great position for ex-ecutive committee members, but bad (and ex-pensive in many ways) for the board, company, and shareholders.

While the above two situations stand out, there are certainly other ways for directors to add to their pay and assured tenure. These may leave less obvious tracks, such as more frequent board meetings, adding “special’ committees that never go away, approving multiple, con-tinued stock buy backs, and so on. Is the extra money for some directors worth the reputa-tional and functional losses for the rest of the

board and company? As a CEO, in this age of “trans-parency” and ever more savvy investors, do you really need to field these additional questions? Just because it’s often been done, doesn’t mean it’s right.


Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust andGet Extraordinary Results by Judith E. GlaserThe key to success in life and business is to become a master at Conversational Intelligence. It’s not about how smart you are, but how open you are to learn new and effective power-ful conversational rituals that prime the brain for trust, partnership, and mutual success. Conversational Intelligence translates the wealth of new insights coming out of neuro-science from across the globe, and brings the science down to earth so people can under-stand and apply it in their everyday lives. Author Judith E. Glaser presents a framework for knowing what kind of conversations trigger the lower, more primitive brain; and what activates higher-level intelligences such as trust, integrity, empathy, and good judgment.

Letters to President Clinton Edited by Rabbi Menachem Genack President Clinton and the Rabbi celebrate a unique chapter in the annals of both political and religious history: a written dialogue between prominent American Orthodox Rabbi Menachem Genack and former President Bill Clinton that spanned more than 15 years. The two men first met when then-governor Clinton was just beginning his road to the White House; as their friendship deepened, the rabbi started sending Clinton brief essays highlighting spiritual insights from the Bible to help him navigate difficult decisions and issues. During his second term, the president asked Genack to write these pieces more regularly and formally, and the rabbi invited many of his distinguished acquaintances; Bible scholars, political leaders, scientists, clergy members, and laypeople, to contribute. This inspirational collection gathers more than 100 of these mini-sermons, organized by theme-expressions of the contemporary but universal messages found in the Bible’s ancient wisdom and featuring a foreword by Clinton himself.

Virtually Human: The Promise and the Peril of Digital Immortalityby Martine Rothblatt Ph.D. Virtually Human explores what the not too distant future will look like when cybercon-sciousness — simulation of the human brain via software and computer technology—be-comes part of our daily lives. Meet Bina48, the world’s most sentient robot, commissioned by Martine Rothblatt and created by Hanson Robotics. Bina48 is a nascent Mindclone of Martine’s wife that can engage in conversation, answer questions, and even have spon-taneous thoughts that are derived from multimedia data in a Mindfile created by the real Bina. If you’re active on Twitter or Facebook, share photos through Instagram, or blogging regularly, you’re already on your way to creating a Mindfile — a digital database of your thoughts, memories, feelings, and opinions that is essentially a back-up copy of your mind.

CEO Library

“One of my favorite quotes on learning is from Julia Child, ‘You’ll never know everything about anything, especially something you love.’ My love has been learning about business models and success, where I have read over 1,000 business books; following are three of those which I believe can be of great value to today’s top CEO.”


CEO Library

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Tucked away on a cul-de-sac, this is one of the most gracious homes in the warm and welcoming Twin Ridge subdivision. A fantastic2 acre lot, very level and usable; Ideal layout in this 4BR/4bath home; granite kitchen w/new appliances opens to grand familyroom with fireplace, built-ins, wet bar. French doors from formal living room and kitchen open to patio and screened porch. Hardwood throughout; Finished basement. Great floor plan for entertaining. Lots of light, quality finishes. Three car main levelgarage is just steps away from kitchen. Easy living in a wonderful home close to town, RR station, and all that Ridgefieldhas to offer! Offered at $950,000

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CEO Roundtable

Top CEOs Share Their Secrets Of Legendary Customer Service

Robert Reiss: What’s the secret behind your cus-tomer model?

John Venhuizen: We call great customer service our weapon in the world. And we take it quite seriously. In an effort to simplify, we seek to operationalize this into three buckets. First, we take all non-customer facing dai-ly tasks and streamline them operationally like a lean manufacturing process, but apply that to retail. By sim-plifying we reduce the amount of non-customer facing time so we can increase the amount of customer facing time. Second, we develop a bottoms-up schedule for our people where we align store talent with our projections for customer visits that day and tasks required to operate the store. Third is our most important bucket, which we call “operationalizing helpful.” Our customer service is everything to us and we don’t believe in leaving that up to chance. So simplification through systematized oper-ations, but always within the framework of never letting local stores lose their own local autonomy and personal-ity, which is where the real magic can happen.

Sharon O’Keefe: Here are two things we do. On the IT side, we have patient portals so a patient can connect directly to their medical record and interact with their clinician through emails or secured texting. They can schedule appointments and view their own test results. Connecting patients to their own clinical information makes it easier for them to navigate the complexities of healthcare. A second thing is “meds-to-beds,” where when someone is discharged before they leave we will fill

• David Nelms, Chairman and CEO, Discover which ranked highest for credit card customer satisfaction among U.S. credit card companies in 2015, and pioneer known for reinventing the entire credit card busness.

• Sharon O’Keefe, President, University of Chicago Medical Center, one of the leading academic medical centers in America known for its groundbreaking therapies to patients.

• John Venhuizen, President and CEO, Ace Hardware, the industry leaders with nearly 4,900 locally-owned and operated stores all across the world and winner of nine consecutive J.D. Power awards

To kick off the discussion, Jose Martinez, a customer experience expert from North Highland shared, “Top organizations are now spending 2% of revenue on cus-tomer experience, as it increasingly becomes leaders’ success engine.”

Sam Walton, the founder of the world’s largest compa-ny, Walmart, once summed up his business philosophy by stating, “The goal of a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary.”As leaders aim to achieve legendary customer service, I thought it would be fascinating to hear from CEOs of top com-panies in financial services, healthcare and retail their secrets of service. So on September 22, 2015 I had a discussion with these three service leaders about their service model, culture, and leadership philosophy:


every prescription on the spot, saving a trip to the phar-macy, and provide the patient education and instructions on how to take their meds. In fact the nursing staff within 24 or 48 hours after discharge actually calls the patient and family member to check how everything’s going and if there are any questions. This really reduces anxiety and makes people comfortable.

David Nelms: We have found a key to customer ser-vice is about customers being able to connect with the right person immediately. Many years ago, we pioneered 24-hours a day, 7 days a week customer service for the credit card business. And today, when most companies make it hard to reach a person, we do the opposite. If you have Discover Card, the very first option is to connect with a Discover employee located in the U.S. In fact, we still house all our own employees in the U.S. Then, we empower our customer service representatives to com-pletely take care of the customer.

Reiss: How do you build a culture that delivers your cus-tomer model?

Nelms: I agree with John, it starts with values. We also have a set of eight values and it’s not just something printed on the wall, it’s something everyone lives. The very first value is do the right thing, which covers a lot of ground on its own. One way our culture delivers new cus-tomer innovations is through our feedback loop system of getting positive feedback and collecting complaints. We get feedback from all different sources, so we look for pat-terns to improve our operations and products. Here’s an example of how customer feedback has helped us develop important initiatives. We started the rewards category in credit cards many years ago and are a leader in cash re-wards. In fact, we gave more than a billion dollars in 2014 in cash back to our customers. Recently our customers told us through feedback loops from our representatives, that they wanted a simplified system where you never lose rewards. So, we created a new system where customers can now redeem their earnings at any time and never lose the rewards.

Venhuizen: Our vision is to be the best, most helpful hardware stores on the planet. We focus on communi-cations, values, and behaviors. With communications, we try to permeate service into everything we talk about at

Ace with aspirational language that we’re fanatical about customer service. Nearly all of our 4,900 stores around the world are locally-owned and operated; because of that, patrons of our stores are more than customers, they’re neighbors. Ace store owners live and work, and go to church alongside members of the communities they serve. We like to say our company was built on bed-rock and that bedrock isn’t our brand or supply chain; our bedrock is the values of our owners. We believe in integrity, gratitude, humility, teamwork, and love. And yes, a 90-year-old company that sells hardware, has our highest value as love. We think when we’ve got people that love what they do and who they do it with, we’re going to outperform our competitors.

O’Keefe: We’ve reduced the concept of great culture down to just two simple things: respect for people and continuous improvement. And what we want to do is engage all of our employees, the clinical staff and the non-clinical staff in coming in every single day and look-ing for ways to improve services to patients. The respect for people is respect for each other, respect for the pa-tients, respect for the diversity of patients we serve, re-spect for their families. It really permeates everything. It creates a platform on how we expect our employees to interact with our patients or our customers. We also have behavioral standards which we call, “PRIDE Values.” We reward participation, respect, integrity, diversity and excellence in everything that we do. And we celebrate those wins and tie this into ways to show respect for peo-ple and continuous improvement.

Reiss: What is the core of your leadership philosophy?

O’Keefe: It’s all about respect for all people and spend every day trying to humanize healthcare.

Venhuizen: I would say our local Ace owners prove every day that from a leadership perspective, a servant heart is not the enemy of a profitable business but it’s the enabler of it.

Nelms: It’s pretty simple. Understand your customer and do the right thing for your customer. And some-times, the P&L may look negative but if it’s the right thing, you still do it.


Expert Advice Family Offices

Would You Run Your Company Without A Mission Statement?By Carolann Grieve with contributions by David Herritt

Many corporations go through the arduous task of cre-ating a mission statement. Why? Because they are the key to establishing a corporation’s strategic vision. Mis-sion statements play a critical role in defining why the organization exists, what its purpose is, what it is trying to accomplish for its owners, employees, shareholders and possibly for the greater good. The corporate mis-sion statement helps to determine the path for the future and serves as the beacon and roadmap for getting from here to there.

At GenSpring Family Offices, we believe mission state-ments can serve the same purpose for families of wealth. Research suggests that the odds of sustaining wealth across generations are as low as 30%.1 There are several factors which typically cause this, including a breakdown of communication and trust within the family, a lack of a family governance system, unprepared heirs and the lack of a strategic plan regarding the family’s wealth. Just as in well-run businesses, teamwork and communication are skills that are necessary for success. Open and honest communication between family members creates trust and trust helps to prevent conflict. At GenSpring, we have also observed that the level of trust among families is deepened when the family’s shared values are identi-fied and openly discussed. Personal values are the key to who we are and what is important to each of us. They are crucial when choosing a significant other, friends, a job and the community we live in. Values establish our fundamental belief system, ideals and guiding principles. Focusing on the shared values allow the family members to concentrate on the common ground and use it as the cornerstone to craft the mission statement.

GenSpring’s Sustainability Surveys utilize a process de-

veloped by preeminent values researchers, Brian Hall and Benjamin Tonna. Each person engages in the on-line sur-vey which helps to identify an individual’s personal val-ues. A confidential set of reports detailing an individual’s personal values is then reviewed with each family member separately so that they can become familiar with their val-ues and the values language. Finally, after the completion of a small set of context questions related to the family’s mission, the Sustainability system analyzes the responses from all family members’ Values Surveys to identify those values that are common across the family. These com-mon values are then discussed at a family meeting with a trained facilitator and become the foundation for the Family’s Mission Statement.

At GenSpring, we believe “the process is the solution,” that when family members participate in the process of creating a mission statement, the family will gain a greater level of clarity and understanding of the family’s values which will lead to improved teamwork and com-munication. In addition, the Family Mission Statement will provide substantial benefits over time:

• Helps individual family members gain a deeper self-awareness. • Clarifies individual and family belief systems. • Helps the family understand what energizes them, what drives their behaviors and motivates them to action. • Brings meaning to their wealth, creates alignment and establishes guidelines and a plan for the future.

Jay Hughes, one of the preeminent thought leaders in the field of family wealth believes, “To successfully pre-serve its wealth, a family must form a social compact

among its members reflecting its shared values, and each successive generation must reaffirm and readopt that social compact” (Hughes, 2004). This social com-pact is the foundation for the development of a Fami-ly Mission Statement. “A family mission statement is a combined, unified expression from all family members of what your family is all about and the principles you choose to govern your family life” (Hughes, 2004). The mission statement conveys a family’s purpose and pro-vides family members with representation in and owner-ship of the family’s direction. In our experience, simply having family members sit down to discuss their shared values and mission results in improved family cohesive-ness. Furthermore, families that not only take the time to create a values-based family mission statement, but also judiciously employ it, continually realize benefits throughout their interactions and in the process of mak-ing family decisions. As stated earlier, corporations place great value on mission statements and rely on them to define the purpose and direction of the firm. It is our

Carolann Grieve is a Family Wealth Advisor, responsible for as-sisting families with a wide variety of wealth management needs, including estate planning, tax, financial planning, fiduciary, philanthropy and family governance issues. She works closely with a client’s GenSpring Family Investment Officer and other profes-sional advisors outside of GenSpring to ensure that all aspects of a family’s wealth management plan are closely coordinated. Further, she is a long standing member of the firm’s Family Education and Governance Working Groups and is a designated Specialist in each area. In addition, Carolann chairs GenSpring’s Women & Wealth Initiative. Through this initiative Carolann works with her GenSpring colleagues to create a welcoming environment emphasiz-ing a holistic approach to financial stability, which in turn enables women to live an informed and responsible life with wealth, to feel fulfilled and empowered.

1) Source: Preparing Heirs, Roy Williams and Vic Pressier, 2003. A wealth transfer fail-ure is defined as “the involuntary removal of assets from the control of the beneficiary.

belief that a family should place an even greater value on the development of a family mission statement.

AMERICA’S STORY STARTS WITH US.AND CONTINUES WITH YOU.

MORE WAYS TO CULTIVATE YOUR COMPANY’S VISIONS & VALUES.You have to take a trip to the beginning to understand the present. It is only then that you can plan for the future.

With over 100,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor event space and an unmatched combination of attractions and activities, there’s no denying you’ll get more for your meeting when you plan with Colonial Williamsburg.

Start planning your meeting today by calling 800-822-9127, or visit www.colonialwilliamsburg.com/meetings.

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