Lead Better - "Burn the Boats"

0:00Good afternoon, Scott Baker. Happy Saturday to you. Indeed, Mikey. It is Saturday, March 7th. Welcome every one time for another edition of Lead Better. This is where we discuss the field note from admired leadership for the day. And we take that wisdom and we find even more wisdom in it. We let it flourish and just sort of invade all of our lives. How's that for a unknowable mission statement for today? This is still a 17. Yeah, a field note 1731. And the title is Burn the Boats. And I think everybody kind of understands that idea. It gives the illustration of Cortez and sort of, you know, look, all right, we're landing in Mexico. We're going to burn the boats. Nobody can abandon the mission. We're not going back. And so the question is, how often should leaders do that? How would they do that? If they set a new strategic plan, a new goal, and they're like, this is where we're going, everybody on. If not, you might want to start swimming,

1:05right? So I think there's a lot to get into on this because I think it's an enormously effective tactic at certain moments, but not for every moment. Yeah. So I mean, I know we make reference to it in the field note, but I think it's helpful to be able to say out loud, not just to historians who are listening in, but also because I think it actually makes the conversation richer as well. But Cortez didn't actually burn the boats. I think that Burn the Boats sounds better in an illiterative way. It's more evocative. It's a better headline than scuttle the ships, right? Because technically, in Burn the Boats, they weren't boats, and he didn't burn them, right? But scuttle the ships is it's got that illiteration. It's got but it doesn't have the same kind of, you know, commitment that is implied by it. So Burn the Boats

2:05ends up standing the test of time, even though it might not have actually been in time to begin with. So yeah, but you get the same effect like if you're going to say, let's sink the ships to the bottom of the sea so that no one can use them to escape the Cuba. Then it effectively does the same thing as now, if you see the smoke in the horizon and you're you're cowering in fear at this invading, there there's also a psychological effect to seeing that someone literally is burning the boats. So there's a scary effector. So maybe as the story was told throughout history, that's why it took hold a little bit more. But technically Cortez was providing himself some optionality by scuttle the ships instead of destroying them completely. Yeah, they sunk them. They could have they could have you know, it would have taken some effort, right? But you could have you could have brought them back up if you if you needed to now. He was also the first one to do this, you know, William the Conqueror did this when he got to England. They were outnumbered and

3:10had to make a win. Like we got to win. We got to win. We're stuck here. So let's go. So now the question is the field note then says, you know, leaders may need at times to kind of burn the boats and the examples given are when Steve Jobs came back to Apple in his early career and was kind of streamlining it says, we're not going to do this. We're not doing this. We're only focusing on these four things. And so we're and everybody's like, but what about that? And I like no, no, those are all gone. So this is a metaphorical burning of the boats. We're not doing those products anymore. We're only doing these products. We're focusing on these four, right? gives the example of read hastings at Netflix saying, all right, we're getting out of the DVD delivery system. People were like, but we're still making millions of dollars. Well, even if you see the future, at some point, you have to say, all right, is now the time? When is the time? So I think this is a a powerful point that sometimes leaders need to cut off some of those avenues backward. Now, I think there are leaders who can kind of over index and say, we're burning

4:10the boats. And actually, it's a bad move. It doesn't mean it's bad to say, this is where we're going. But if the strategy is not excellent or the execution is not excellent, then you just committed suicide, corporate suicide, right? If you, if you, if you don't actually have a pathway that says, here's why we're doing this. And so there are other ways, and even the field note says it, this is not for the every day. But think about it this way. Leaders every day are kind of closing exit ramps, right? They're saying, let's stay on this road. We're not going to get distracted over here. And so that's a different sort of metaphor, but it kind of points in the same direction. And I guess that's when the question is, when do you say, kind of this is the company moment? Like we might not make it if we don't make this work. Yeah, it definitely is rare. And it also brings up the point that the romantic idea of burn the boats, maybe is only surviving because of the number of people that do it can be looked at as exemplars because they survive through. But

5:17you're not paying attention to the 90% of people who tried it and failed, right? And so correct. David Morris in the comments points out that the phrase is benefiting from that survivorship bias simply because it's a romantic idea. And so, you know, certainly we're not recommending that this be done quarterly, right? That this be something that you look for. And, you know, the alternative actually sounds a little bit like what we mentioned four or five days ago in the field note that was written about the word escapes me real quick about. I mean, look. Oh, I think I think I know where you're going. The zero sum rule, right? Yes, right. So having the ability to say like, how do we actually reduce the work in progress so that we are able to focus on the thing? And maybe when you look at Steve Jobs,

6:20this is actually more of an example of the zero sum rule than of burning the boats, right? Now, Steve may have needed to have like this burn the boats kind of feeling ripple through the organization for the sake of motivation going through the place in the right kind of way, which you might not be able to get from deploying a zero sum rule or deploying what David calls the work in progress rule, right? And so, you know, you have like a theatrical burn the boats moments even though you're not cutting off the ability for the organization to survive if you if it doesn't work out, right? And that's always the idea in the Cortez thing is that we are risking everything on this one move that that happens very seldom, right? And so, yes. So how much of this is performative versus an actual burn the boat moments? Well, by the way, some performative stuff can

7:22cement something. I mean, wasn't there a time when Michael Dell had like a giant like truckload of competitors laptops brought to the parking lot at the Dell headquarters and then they they had like some machine crush them all as sort of be like, okay, this is what we're doing. We're crushing the competition. And you know, if you actually had the team come out to the parking lot and there was a boat there on fire, I think people would remember that and talk about it, right? And if you had your old product was inside that boat, is it birdie be like, hmm, I guess they're serious about this, right? Now, one there's a couple of things I really do want to unpack in this. And so everybody watching it, you know, I think we'll get done close to on time. But I want to get Mikey's input on this because one of the things that happens in this and I already alluded to it is this well, then what is your strategy like and what is your execution like? Because certainly Steve Jobs and what Netflix did had a very high level of precision and excellence. And it wasn't like we're going to burn the boats and then just go lurching and just trying to launch stuff like him and

8:23like, let's just try this and try this and we'll try, you know, because then that can actually be disastrous. Now, the one thing that you've brought up many times on many of our conversations in terms of particularly when conversations have gone awry and now you have to have the really difficult conversation. And we often say, you know, probably should have had about 30 conversations over the last two years before you got to this disaster point. So a lot of the times, I feel like when you get to a burn the boats moment, it's probably because the leadership wasn't paying attention enough along the way where they weren't like closing those exit ramps and keeping everybody or their own sort of predilections and saying, we're on the wrong highway. Let's shift over here slowly and get everybody. So we don't get to the burn the boats moment, right? Yeah. So a lot of times that's what happens. And I think I listened to a podcast the other day about sort of the decline of the steel industry in Pittsburgh where I live. And I got here at 93. It was kind of the end of that era. But people were like like the field that we had the other day about the Hemingway saying,

9:30how did you go bankrupt? Well, gradually, and then all of a sudden, well, how did the steel industry kind of lose its way gradually? And then all of a sudden, but they were sending warning signs of the 40s and the 60s. And there was a lot of different points where people were saying, this is kind of where things are going. And so are you ready for this? And so I think that's going to be one of those questions here, isn't it? Which is, if you're the leader who got to the burn the boats moment, you might actually have to take the responsibility in front of everybody to say, I didn't see this fast enough. I didn't heed the warnings. Or when people on the team here, we're saying, let's go in this direction. And we were like, no, let's slow down. All of a sudden, we got to go burn the boats. And you're like, well, then whose fault was that? Yeah. Okay. So that brings up in my mind, a distinction. Is burn the boats a business strategy? Or is it a motivational tactic? Now, a lot of people take both, but I think it's most of the time

10:30it's one or the other. If it's a business strategy, then that's the steel industry kind of thing that you're saying, like it's this slow motion car wreck, we all see happening. And maybe a handful of those businesses in Pittsburgh at the time kind of made a burn the boats business strategy for the sake of their organization surviving, right? But everyone knew what it was about and why it was there. Whereas other people might feel like burning the boats is, I need to get my people on board with me. And so you're you're you're burning good material that could have been sold at least in a garage sale, right? But you're burning it. Right. Right. So the reason to do that is only if you're making a motivational inspirational point, right? And I think that's where people are lost. If you're doing it for inspiration, there's not a business strategy that really

11:31backs it up. Maybe the only time it should be deployed if it's both. I'm not I'm not exactly sure, but I think a lot of times it's used as one or the other one or the other, right? Yeah. All right. There's a lot to to go into there. And let me add one more complication here at the 11 almost 12 minute moment, which is I do recall and I'm not I don't think I'll be able to remember the name. There was a Roman general who was given orders from Rome. Go to battle. This is against Hannibal. I can't remember who the general's name was, but he didn't go right at it. And he kept and they called him the delayer. I don't remember what his actual name was, but they did. They mocked him like the people in Rome were like, this guy just can't make up his mind. He's dithering. He's but what he was doing was he was exhausting the enemy and exhausting the supplies and in fact saved Rome because he didn't burn the boats, right? He did he he delayed because like this is not right. We're going to figure this out. The timing is not right. Now I think the the wisdom there

12:32applies to both the burn the boats moment and to the when do you delay because a lot of times if you jump too fast on in terms of your corporate decision making and you've heard me say this before oftentimes and I heard this lesson when I was in television and somebody in the 90s early 90s was saying we think about this like the settlers going across the the United States. They can see the Rocky Mountains a long time before they reached the Rocky Mountains, right? And so he said our competitors. This was the chief financial officer of the Hearst Corporation in I don't know the 90 1992 maybe. No, actually, no, it was later than that. It was more like 2000. You know early 2000s and I'd been I'd been there a while. And he said many of our competitors will say, Oh, here's the digital future. We could say even now. Here's the AI future. Some people will be like, we got to go now. This is all happening. It's going to be chain. Everything's going to change in six months could be, right? But you also know that some what the Hearst guy was saying was

13:33our competitors are going to jump and bet the house and bet the farm bet the kids college and they're going to they're going to jump too early. They just because the future is clear doesn't mean that it's near. And so some people were burning the boats back then. Some people may be doing that now. And then their view was like we'll buy up the you know the the people that fail. There will buy up their equipment. Now I think the Hearst corporation made a lot of bad decisions back then themselves. But I think people can gut check that now to say I got to really think this through to say what do I really know about what's happening now? What my market opportunity is. And so I can bring that clarity without having to bring all of the downsides that come around without having a lot of optionality because we often say in the admired leadership leaders are always looking for optionality. And a lot of the time they're making decisions at the very last moment. And then they will make the very fast decision to move with expediency when it's like no this is the time. But you got to be really clear on that. And I don't think you can make that decision

14:35if you have a mediocre strategy and a mediocre execution plan because then you're going to burn your ideas as well as your boats. Yeah so again you're talking about this as a metaphor for a business strategy and a metaphor for a go-to-market strategy which is different than your business strategy and your marketing plan like you're talking about it in three different ways. And this is this is why I think that the metaphor maybe isn't as helpful right to be able to say and again I said it in the comments earlier it's not the type of thing that you want to write down that shows up in your culture deck. It's not a principle that you're saying we're the type of organization that burns the boats right. No one should say that that would be mishandled but there I think most of the time when a burn the boat moment happens it's because of market forces that are outside of your control and maybe you've got a little bit of clarity about things happening. I think the most

15:41prescient example are probably not the ones that are written in the field note but you're still mill one in about Pittsburgh. Yeah right. Out of their control market forces like those that just kind of stuck with it and said we're going to bear down and I mean they maybe were able to give their employees jobs for another few years but them as organizations didn't really survive the ways that those who burned the boats by pivoting their entire organization early because they saw the writing on the wall they survived but they're not they're not doing steel anymore right right they survive for completely different reasons so well look in the end the okay no go ahead but the field note ends with you know sort of the admonition that as in all endeavors commitment begins where excuse is end and that is a fundamental truth and we do know that that is exactly what is happening here in the thesis of this field note we know that corporate commitment individual commitment really can't have escape routes right like you have to kind of really focus that so

16:47leaders should be in the business of removing options and sometimes we talked about this leader standing in in for their team to say we're not adding another responsibility to this team if a higher order comes down or if we do we're taking something away so subtraction is a part of that and so when we look at this idea about burning boats sometimes the boat to burn is just the comfortable past that we had the ideas that were working so well for us we were comfortable but if we have these vague goals and all kinds of of accountability problems those are the things to clean up and then if you get to that moment you know where you are William the conquerer and you're outnumbered and your corporate you know identity is at stake and even existence is at stake then at that moment and everybody sees it and holds hands together and says this is the time we got it we're going to jettison all this and we're all in on this then that's a really empowering moment for the team and for the organization and and there's no real clear pathway on when that should happen because technically netflix and read hastings had streaming and DVD offers

17:50going out at the same time for a couple of years before yes there was exactly right yeah yeah there there definitely was there was a phase over time for all of that right that's good I like this optionality yeah it's a great conversation on like the balance between burning the boats and maintaining your optionality different for every situation but definitely worth a conversation internally if you need one all right great thanks uh we'll talk again tomorrow when that field thanks everyone