Bernhard Schroeder is Director, Lavin Entrepreneurship Center Programs and oversees all of the center’s undergraduate and graduate internship programs. He is a part-time Clinical Faculty, Entrepreneurship within the College of Business Administration at San Diego State University. Bern brings over 20 years of marketing and entrepreneurial experience both as a Senior Partner in a leading global marketing agency and as a former Chief Marketing Officer on the client side.
Prior to moving to San Diego, Bern was a Senior Partner in the worlds’ largest integrated marketing communications agency, CKS Partners, which in 1998 had offices in over 30 countries, more than 10,000 employees and over $1 billion in revenue. He had joined CKS in 1993 as a partner when the agency had only $3 million in revenue. In 1995, CKS Partners had its IPO (initial Public Offering) at approximately $40 million in revenue.
He has experience working with Fortune 100 firms like Apple, Nike, General Motors, American Express, Mercedes Benz ,Nikon, Kellogg’s and others as well as start-up companies. He was involved in the initial branding and marketing launches for companies like Yahoo!, Amazon, Corbis, ESPN and Travelocity. Today, he mentors more than 20 founders of companies in San Diego, San Francisco, and Austin, Texas.
His latest book, Simply Brilliant: Powerful Techniques to Unlock Your Creativity and Spark New Idea, was published by AMACOM (October 2016).
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Morris: Before discussing Simply Brilliant, a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest influence on your personal growth? How so?
Schroeder: This was actually a hard question. With reflection I would say it was my aunt who died in in her late 30’s. I had the chance to sit with her for three hours about a week before she died and she talked about regrets. All the regrets in her life. So, I vowed when I left her that I would never have any regrets. And I pursued everything in my life with that belief.
Morris: The greatest impact on your professional development? How so?
Schroeder: That’s easy. The three professional mentors in my life, at different stages, contributed so mightily to my success. The first one in my first professional job who really coached me. The second mentor really helped refine me and the third mentor really helped me become much more of a strategic thinker and doer.
Morris: Years ago, was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) that set you on the career course you continue to follow? Please explain.
Schroeder: Don’t know if it was really a turning point but I remember getting ready to graduate from college and meeting a bright 27 year old at a networking event. At the time I had two job offers, one with a marketing agency and one with a major hospital. In conversation with this person, who seemed really bright to me, he indicated that he worked for a major bank in town. I asked him what he did and was he happy. I remember his answer like it was yesterday. He said he was a commercial loan officer and that he never thought about being happy at what he did, it paid the bills. With that comment, I chose the job offer that I thought might make me happy even though the salary was 50% less than the other job offer. That simple decision put me on a path to have a remarkable marketing career.
Morris: To what extent has your formal education been invaluable to what you have accomplished in life thus far?
Schroeder: To be truthful, my formal education has not really had a significant impact on my life. Private school was through and somewhat boring. I took a break and did not go get my undergraduate degree until I was 25 years old and it seemed more like a rite of passage than anything spectacular. It did refine my communication skills and give me confidence. My graduate degree which I got in my early 50’s was really about getting a master’s degree to be able to be a lecturer at a university. It did however give me insights on how to effectively teach students.
Morris: What do you know now about the business world that you wish you knew when you went to work full-time for the first time? Why?
Schroeder: I wish I knew that anyone above me who was a manger had the same fears I did and that they could make poor decisions. I used to watch people make all kinds of decisions that I should have questioned but because they were older or had a management title, I assumed they were smarter.
Morris: Here are several of my favorite quotations to which I ask you to respond. First, from Lao-tse’s Tao Te Ching:
“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”
Schroeder: This is something I learned in the mid-part of my career. I used to think I had to do everything myself in order to be successful . Once I learned to hire smart people, trust them and give them credit for managing successful projects, my own success accelerated. I was able to lead and manage multiple teams and we all achieved great success. I believe these people felt highly empowered. The evidence is that quite a few of them went on to senior leadership positions in their careers.
Morris: From Michael Porter: “The essence of strategy is choosing what “not” to do.”
Schroeder: When we were rapidly growing our company, from $3 million to $1.2 billion over five years, learning how to say no or deciding what not to do became critical. When you are rapidly growing a company, you only need to get 2-3 things right. That means you need to avoid getting 100 things wrong. I found “focus” to be my guiding light during this time of rapid growth and wonderfully high stress.
Morris: From Isaac Asimov: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but ‘That’s odd….’”
Schroeder: I can honestly say that most of the creative or innovative things I have accomplished in my career with exceptional teams came from having an open mind and not being afraid to say we might be wrong. We often discovered a better solution while working on the current solution. You have to remain flexible and be ready to pivot because things change rapidly, and if you are paying attention and listening, then you will see something that stops you and you will say, “That’s odd.”
Morris: From Thomas Edison: “Vision without execution is hallucination.”
Schroeder: Wow. Cannot tell you how many Fortune 500 executives, and a few entrepreneurs, would lay out a vision that had absolutely no clear path or possibility of actually happening. It was as if they were wishing or seeing something that had no basis in reality. It’s sad, really, because I watched CEOs drive their companies into the ground.
Morris: Of all the greatest leaders throughout history, with which one would you most like to be closely associated for an extended weekend of one-on-one conversation? Why?
Schroeder: Tough question. There are a lot of people I could choose to be safe or appear to align myself with their brand (e.g. Steve Jobs and John F. Kennedy, to name but two). I am a real fan of early world history and with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. The leader I would like a weekend with would be Attila the Hun. His ability to organize hundreds of disparate tribes and take on the most powerful nation in the world, the Romans, is fascinating to me. How did he get everyone to fight and work together? I would like to understand his thinking and his strategy for uniting people to a common cause.
Morris: Most change initiatives either fail or fall far short of original (perhaps unrealistic) expectations. More often than not, resistance is cultural in nature, the result of what James O’Toole so aptly characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.”
Here’s my question: How best to avoid or overcome such resistance?
Schroeder: Simply put, you need great leadership and culture. By their nature change initiatives are really just a band aid for a bigger, deeply rooted problem. In other words, why do you need change initiatives? If you have great leadership and culture you are adjusting everything in the company all the time, every day. Why? Because employees feel empowered to embrace and do the right thing all the time. The company itself is then fluid and adjusts to competition and market trends and is in a state of constant change.
Morris: What are the defining characteristics of a workplace culture within which personal growth and professional development are most likely to thrive?
Schroeder: When the leaders themselves admit they don’t always have all the answers and that everyone matters. They create a culture of continual education and learning and that includes themselves. This makes everyone feel empowered to find and solve problems. And that is the core soul of a company, how well everyone, every day, solves problems. Because the very act of solving problems spark s creativity which in turn could unearth a new innovation.
Morris: Recent research indicates that, on average, less than 30% of employees in a U.S. company are actively and productively engaged. The others are either passively engaged (“mailing it in”) or actively disengaged, undermining the success of their organization? How do you explain this situation? What’s the problem?
Schroeder: The problem, quite frankly, is leadership. If leadership empowered all employees to solve problems and creatively improve the company’s products or services, then everyone is engaged. Leadership also has to make sure everyone understand the mission of the company and how that relates to everyone’s job. Lastly, leadership needs to create a mantra for only hiring people that have the skill set and believe in the mission to actually be hired. I think HR in most companies just fills positions and quite a few managers really are not on board with the mission of a company and how that relates to their everyday leadership at a department level. Employees pick up on the fact that managers are not bought into a mission so neither are they.
Morris: In your opinion, what specifically must be done immediately to increase the percentage of actively and productively engaged employees?
Schroeder: Another tough question. How do you engage the employees of 5,000 person company who don’t really feel they are on a mission? I don’t know. I do know that if I were creating a company from scratch, I would only work with amazing co-founders. We would set the guidelines for company culture, we would hire managers who believed in our mission and one of the co-founders would have to interview every single employee being considered for being hired for a culture and mission fit.
Morris: Looking ahead (let’s say) 3-5 years, what do you think will be the greatest challenge that CEOs will face? Any advice?
Schroeder: CEOs will face even more change. Markets are being disrupted faster today. New technologies are appearing every month. Competition is coming from likely and unlikely sources. I think the biggest challenge CEOs will face in the future is to figure out how to identify and hire the most creative employees possible throughout the company who can figure out how to rapidly solve problems.
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Bern invites you to check out the resources at these websites:
His website link.
http://www.bernieschroeder.com/
His LinkedIn link.