Student: You talked about the characteristics of leadership and one of the things that stands out is the ability to manage change; to not only manage change but to do it and thrive in that environment. There are some of us who have that characteristic that says I am not happy unless I have the kind of that environment; to our detriment sometimes. Is that still a characteristic that’s sought after in today’s world? And if so, how would you separate those people in this room who might have that, and some have heard me say this, fire in the belly? Thank you.

Marie Williams: Well, it looks like I’ve been chosen. I think the issue is life long learning because I want that fire in the belly. I want thriving in the environment and those that have the passion look for, well, I’ve got this one knocked, what can I learn and grow and contribute and do next? Because if you keep doing the same thing that you’ve always done in the same way, you will be boring and you will die. If you look at building upon that and trying and learning different things to contribute, you keep your passion fresh and you still die. But you have lot more fun and education and contribution along the way.

Bill Nussbaum: In many of the companies we work with change is something that happens all the time and many have very difficult times dealing with changes, in particular, the management of many of the companies. It is a stressful thing to know that you are losing market share, you are not making money and you don’t know what to do about it. And to find someone who’s coming in and says, well, you really need to change the way you’ve thought about things for the last 20 or 30 years. They don’t work any more. Or they’re different. Or you have to deal with things in a different way. So many of the organizations we work with, if the leadership can’t address that, can’t wrap their arms around that kind of a thing then it is impossible to make changes throughout the organization. That’s a lot of times what has to happen in the organizations I work with. But apply that directly to me, I sort of have what you talked about, that fire in your belly. And I’ve always look for a change. I enjoy change. I like to have things kind of, well I like things stable and I like to make them that way. I sort of like to have a change every so often so I can kind of be challenged and I can kind of grow with that. That’s kind of a theme for me.

Joe Daylor: I would agree completely. It is interesting. I think there was a time where, in organizations, we could sort of choose whether or not we were going to change. So we could decide whether or not we can take on an initiative to improve our bottom line or we could decide whether or not we wanted to enter a new market or something like that. I think what we’re really faced now with is it’s not our choice any more. So if you look at my company as an example, we are in the travel business; hotels restaurants 9/11 hit and whether we liked it or not we had to change. We had to deal with the external environment. So there are no options anymore in terms of the individual involved in change. So we’ve all known and we’ve heard it before that change is going to be a constant now. We are going to be faced with it and it’d going to be one after another after another. I think that as an organization what we’ve learned is that we have to embrace the folks with the fire in their belly and we really want to create a culture that they can thrive. But in addition to that, not everybody can step up in that way. So we have to find ways sort of to bring the others along as well. For the folks that really resist the change, what we’ve found is that businesses that resist change will die of atrophy and individuals that resistant the change; well, it’s sort of self-correcting. So in the old days, we used to do all kinds of stuff to sort of focus on the nay-sayers and now we basically ignore them and it takes care of itself.

Student: But how do you identify those people with fire in their belly without them having to be obnoxious?

Joe Daylor: I think absolutely. One of the things I think you’ve heard continuously from all of us is you can’t replace the passion, you know. The passion just oozes out of folks.

Marie Williams: It’s genetic.

Bill Nussbaum: Those people, they just come forward. That’s something they have to do. One of the things we do when we are looking to make a change, like a lean manufacturing change. We act as CEO or the general manager to identify a lean champion and those are the people with fire in the belly. Those are the ones who are actually going to lead it and continually push people to gradually change their way of thinking. So we are always looking for those kinds of people.

Marie Williams: And I do think there is some self-selection with that, both with the passion and with those who are resistant to change. I get that question a lot. As you transform organizations how do you get buy-in from everyone? Well, you don’t. But once they find out that the norm is here, they either adapt or they leave. We just want them to leave when they quit. Not quit and stay.

Joe Daylor: I would add one last very quick comment to that. This recent opportunity that I have; the 3 years I’ve been at Carlson I’ve put all my energy into the fire-in-the-belly people and zero energy into the nay-sayers and it’s actually played out quite nicely and it’s a much better life to live as well. And it sort of self-corrects.