Leading With Values in the Age of AI With Kevin Clark
- Rise25 webmaster@rise25media.com
- 5 days ago
- 37 min read
Kevin Clark is the President and Federation Leader at Content Evolution, a global federation of companies and professionals. Before Content Evolution, he served as the Director of Brand and Values Experience at IBM, where he stewarded the company’s ThinkPad notebook computers. Kevin holds multiple board and advisory positions and is the co-author of several books and journal articles on collective intelligence and human interaction.
Here's a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[3:56] Kevin Clark describes how his family’s history with IBM shaped his career path
[7:15] Lessons on building professional communities and saying goodbye with grace
[12:10] Kevin’s 3V model: Values, Value, and Valuation
[13:58] How character and competence form the foundation for sound judgment
[18:39] Why AI should enhance human character and collective intelligence rather than replace them
[23:41] How scheduling personal time fuels creativity and balance
[28:40] The importance of clear communication and focus in leadership and M&A
[33:33] Kevin talks about his role as IBM’s first ThinkPad Brand Steward
[39:40] How Content Evolution helps organizations transition from best to next practices
[49:13] Kevin introduces Platform UX and its approach to uncovering new revenue sources
In this episode…
With technology evolving, many organizations struggle to keep their people, purpose, and innovation aligned. As automation and AI reshape entire industries, leaders must maintain human connection and sound judgment. How can businesses adapt while staying true to their core values?
According to leadership and brand expert Kevin Clark, the key lies in aligning values, character, and competence to achieve lasting growth. Organizations must nurture judgment and humanity even as AI becomes more capable, turning technology into a tool that amplifies rather than replaces human insight. Kevin also urges leaders to intentionally schedule personal time to fuel creativity and prevent burnout, helping them make smarter, more purposeful decisions.
In this episode of The Tao of Pizza Podcast, Mark Hiddleson chats with Kevin Clark, President and Federation Leader at Content Evolution, about blending human values with innovation. Kevin discusses his 3V model of Values, Value, and Valuation, what he learned from leading the ThinkPad brand at IBM, and how AI can inspire creativity and collective intelligence.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Specialized Storage Solutions, Inc. contact phone: 707-732-3892
Mark Hiddleson's email: markhiddleson@aol.com
Collective Intelligence in the Age of AI by Kevin Clark and Kyle Shannon
The International Society for Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP)
“The Power of Human Centered Innovation with Michele Carroll” on The Tao of Pizza Podcast
Quotable Moments:
“You have to be able to say goodbye with grace. We teach people how to onboard.”
“Values create the ability to deliver value into the marketplace, and the result is high valuation.”
“Competency is increasingly available on demand through systems. What organizations need to develop now is character.”
“If you’re using this technology and you’re not having fun, you’re doing something wrong.”
“Be intentional and move from being just successful to being significant. That’s where you want to go.”
Action Steps:
Align values before pursuing growth: When values drive business decisions, the resulting value and valuation are more sustainable and trusted. This alignment strengthens long-term relationships with employees, partners, and customers.
Encourage experimentation with AI: Create safe spaces where teams can explore new tools and approaches without fear of failure. This fosters innovation, curiosity, and cultural adaptability as technology evolves.
Protect personal time intentionally: Schedule personal and creative time as rigorously as business meetings. Doing so prevents burnout and allows space for insight and innovation to emerge naturally.
Build communities that last beyond employment: Help employees depart with grace and gratitude, reinforcing long-term connections and a strong professional network. These alumni relationships can yield partnerships, referrals, and valuable future collaborations.
Focus on character as much as competence: As automation increases, human character — judgment, empathy, and integrity — becomes a company’s greatest differentiator. Cultivating these traits builds resilience and trust across the organization.
Sponsor for this episode:
This episode is brought to you by Specialized Storage Solutions Inc.
Listen...
I have been in the logistics and storage industry for several decades. I know I don’t look that old, but it's true.
We provide industry-leading warehouse storage solutions nationwide.
So basically, if you have a warehouse that needs Rack, Shelving, Carts, Conveyors, or Mezzanines, we help with....design engineering, installations, inspections, and repairs to help clients optimize their logistics operations.
Sometimes people don’t even realize that we can actually help with permit acquisition services.
We take a holistic look at your entire business supply chain ecosystem to develop the resources for continually improving your operation.
To learn more, visit specialracks.com or give us a call at (707) 732-3892. One of the best ways to learn more about our products and services is to follow us on Instagram. And there’s a link on our website to do that.
I will even give you my personal email address for podcast listeners, so email me at markhiddleson@aol.com if you’re ready to take your warehouse storage and retrieval systems to the next level.
Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:01
Welcome to The Tao of Pizza where we feature top logistics leaders, entrepreneurs and supply chain innovators and share their inspiring stories with a holistic twist.
Mark Hiddleson 0:14
Mark Hiddleson here, host of The Tao of Pizza Podcast, where I talk with top industry innovators in the warehousing, logistics and supply chain business with a holistic twist. Now, before I introduce today's guest, this episode is brought to you by specialized Storage Solutions, Inc, now. I've been in the logistics and storage industry for several decades, which either means I started when I was in kindergarten, or I've just aged really well. We provide industry leading warehouse storage solutions nationwide. So basically what that means, if you have a warehouse, it needs rack shelving, cards, conveyors or mezzanines. We help with the design, engineering, installation, inspections and repairs to help our clients optimize their logistics operations. And it's funny, Kevin, sometimes people don't even realize we can actually help with the permit acquisition services. Yeah, we deal with the red tape so that you don't have to. We like to take a holistic look at your entire business supply chain ecosystem to develop the resources for continually improving your operation. To learn more. Visit specialracks.com or give us a call at 707-732-3892. And just for podcast listeners, I give out my personal email. It's Markhiddleson@AOL. Yes, I still use AOL, and yes, I'm proud of it. So if you're ready to take your warehouse and storage and retrieval systems to the next level, drop me a line, and I got one more shout out. I have to give a shout out to Michele Carroll for introducing me to today's guest. Michele is president of CarrollCo Marketing, where they specialize in sectors like logistics, supply chain management, high tech and software. Their services include market entry, brand building, website design, public relations and integrated marketing campaigns. She is also the executive director of isip, the International Society of service innovation professionals, and she was a great guest on the podcast a few years ago. So thank you, Michele. Today, we're joined by Kevin Clark. Kevin is an award-winning business innovator, serial entrepreneur and the first brand steward for ThinkPad notebook computers, originally, IBM, today, Lenovo. He is Director emigres emeritus. It's important IBM brand and values experience and co-author of Collective Intelligence in the Age of AI, Humanity in Motion, and Healthcare, Robotics and Well-Being, 10s of billions of dollars of intangible brand value have been managed by Kevin. Today, Kevin is president and Federation leader of Content Evolution, CEO of Platform UX, and chairman and CEO of Choice Flows. He advises leaders on emerging trends at the intersection of people and technology, and holds several board positions, both fiduciary and advisory. Kevin, welcome to The Tao of Pizza.
Kevin Clark 3:28
Well, great to be with you. Yeah, I have to say something about Michele. She's a great leader. Her and I have worked on nonprofit organizations since I was early in my career, probably 25 years of hosting four or five meetings a year with 40 to 50 people, or maybe more a couple 100. And I just love connecting with Michele, and I'm glad she connected us and the International Society of service, innovation professionals is very lucky to have Michele as a as a professional leader.
Mark Hiddleson 3:40
Yeah, awesome. And a little bit later, I want to ask you about your involvement in ISSIP, because that's another way we met. But, but first, share a little bit about your background, maybe where you grew up. But how did you become involved with IBM?
Kevin Clark 3:56
Well, got involved with IBM over the kitchen table. My dad worked for the company, right? So together, we put in 68 years of collective service right to the IBM Corporation. And you know, when I, you know, got to the point where I could retire, I said, Yeah, three quarters of the company, you know, or probably closer to two thirds of the company, that's probably enough service from the Clark household, all right, and family. So I he was the director of executive resources, which is the internal headhunting function to find the talent that was going to be occupying the top seats in the corporation. So he had to present to the board of directors a couple of times a year about replacement tables and succession planning and things of that nature. So quite interesting. That was his terminal assignment. But when we were younger. Showing up. It was a branch manager circuit, and we were following transaction processing, you know, from saber airlines reservation system, Saber that was programmed in Tulsa, and then eventually they moved to Dallas, Fort Worth, and he took a job in Kansas City, and they say, Hey, Harley, we need you in Memphis, right? Why? Because this outfit, Holiday Inn wants a reservation system for people you know to be able to book a hotel or a motel room right in advance. Yeah. So, you know, it was an interesting, you know, interesting life. And I'll tell you one other thing, I grew up as the son of a person who was the son of a track foreman for the Santa Fe Railroad, right? And so Harley and Sybil were, you know, they would build track. They build enough track every once in a while, either in northern Oklahoma or southern Kansas, that they would change schools, and that would happen every two or three weeks, right as they those, they were progressing right across the plains. And so you want to talk about, you know, pace of change is incredible, right? You know, things are changing. So it's like, not like that, yeah. So the fact is, I kind of grew up with, you know, somebody who was used to a lot of change, and so what we're experiencing right now is a fraction of what he had to, you know, live through, you know, first through sixth grade,
Mark Hiddleson 6:39
yeah, in the personal and emotional toll that that takes on a on a young person,
Kevin Clark 6:46
well, actually, he ended up, you know, being able to make friends really fast, yeah, and then say goodbye with grace and move on to the next experience, which actually served him well right throughout
Mark Hiddleson 7:01
his life, yeah, adapting in those circumstances at a young age, build healthy, healthy coping and saying goodbye with grace. That's a that's a great one.
Kevin Clark 7:15
You know? Well, that's what I was trying to teach when I was for the chairman's office, trying to help later in my career, develop relationships with people and create an ecosystem. You might think of it like a University Alumni Association of Former people. And I said I did the research. And you know what the key is to making that work is one you have to tell people while they're employed that this is a benefit of employment, right, that you're part of a special group of people that that this will benefit you for the rest of your life. Where do you hear that? Well, if you go to one of the major universities, right, if you you know work early career at McKinsey or one of the top consulting firms, they say, Yeah, you're part of the club, you know. And you know, professional courtesies will be granted for and I said, the second thing is, you have to be able to say goodbye with grace, right? We teach people how to, you know, on board and how to manage people, but you don't talk about departure, right? Whether it's retirement or, you know, it's, you know, departure for cause or somebody has a better opportunity. I said, you have to, I said, you're not going to build this community of people unless they want to continue to be affiliated with each other. And that that last moment was actually a thanks for being here. All right, we know you're going on to something better, or something that's a better fit for you. Yeah,
Mark Hiddleson 8:51
that's amazing. So I've had really, the most, I don't know, the most significant, it just reminds me what you're sharing. When I started my own company, I was with another company for eight years, and I learned so much. And I my loved my boss, and I mean, love it like unconditional, high regard. It taught me so many things. But I there was a new opportunity. I was going to be a little bit of a competitor. One of the reasons I left it was a new niche, but I googled it two weeks ahead of time, like, how do you quote with class? And this was 2004 and so I wrote everything down, I did everything and it still, it didn't end perfectly. It wasn't graceful on both ends, but I will say, eight years later, you know, after trying to reconnect, we were able to make that graceful connection. So I would also add to that, it's never, never too late to have a really,
Kevin Clark 9:42
no, it's not. And you know when you, when you think about it, you know you're, you're inside of a community of people that you've chosen because, you know you applied, it looks like a fit, right? And so you're going to, you know you're going to be there or. But you're connected to a lot of things. I mean, you're in, you know, the business of supply chain management. I like to think more of value chain than supply chain, because you know, when you think about it, if you know, just supplying each other across a continuum, things coming in, we add some value to it, and we sell it to other people. If your values are aligned, and you're choosing people, not just on price, but on the their character, their judgment, their ability to serve you well, right with without lots of disruption and management that they're kind of in the same zone that you are, then that manifests right out in the world in some very positive ways. When you're misaligned, you end up with a problem like Takata air bags in Japan, all right, where there's one person, there's one company over here, and they're not making this the way that you want to, and it affects an entire industry, not just, you know, one thing, and you kind of go, oh, we had to recall all the Japanese cars for a particular period of time because, you know, this doesn't save your life. It puts shrapnel in your face. You know, if it, you know if it goes off, well, that's that's not aligned, okay, if you know anything about, I've done a lot of business in Japan, but if you know Kaizen and lean and Kanban and all those other kinds of things that are, you know, total quality management things you want to have suppliers that are giving you, things that you have a lot of confidence in, Right? Yeah, and that is not based on the lowest cost supplier. Yeah, you want the highest confidence supplier that you can get at the best price as a secondary attribute. So that's me. All right, I've done research in the area, and dyatically, I can look at, you know how well values and value is being transmitted through a system.
Mark Hiddleson 12:08
I love, I love systems thinking and,
Kevin Clark 12:10
yeah, I mean, think about that. Values create the ability to deliver value into the marketplace, and the result is high valuation, right? So your company is worth more, or if it's publicly traded, if it's private, you know your internal rate of return is up. And if you're a not for profit, it's that you have access to resources that are sustainable to support your mission. Okay? All measurable? Yeah, that's the 3v model. Values, value valuation. The 3d Oh, 3v 3v I created this 3v model that is a virtuous progression. And if you try to go backwards and say, This is how much money we want to make, right? And how do we? How do we do that? How do we create something that'll make that money? And, you know, we'll align ourselves any way that we have to to, you know, to do it, it doesn't work. Yeah, yeah. You have to go from, you know, shared values to delivering value, to having that valuation as an outcome.
Mark Hiddleson 13:20
So how long would you say so you've been studying this one of my frustrations, I guess early I started. I studied holistic I got my master's degree in holistic health education when I was in my late 20, early 30s. I guess I was 35 when I got my master's degree in I was shocked by values or trust that was seen as, like, soft skills, like our values or personal or, you know, integrity, basically, to get in the game, you had to have things like integrity, honesty, but, but values, when would you say that started to shift? Or have you seen that shift? Or from, from your perspective, how long have companies
Kevin Clark 13:58
and organizations been looking let me go back to the kitchen table for a second. All right, remember, I told you I learned stuff over the kitchen table. Well, my dad used to put these replacement tables. It was a big organization chart with Velcro on it, and he could move pictures around on it and tell a story about, well, you know, if Charlie, you know, leaves the company or gets hit by a truck or whatever. Here's our ready candidate, you know, that can come in. And here's the person that, in two years, is our ideal candidate that we're developing. And here are some other people that are competing from other places in the world. You know, women, people who've served in the armed forces, people who you know, have, you know, different ethnic backgrounds, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, the fact is, you know, he would be able to tell that story. And I said, Dad, what are you looking for? You know, what's the thing that you think is important, judgment? I'm looking for a person who has height, judgment. And I didn't ask it that day, but it wasn't too far along with I said, Well, what is that? Okay? You know, what was that? Com? He said, it's two things. It's character and competence, right? It's, can I trust you, right? Can I, can I have faith in right? Your ability, you know, to do things that are both, you know, you know, like Seventh Generation wisdom, you know, from an American Indian right point of view, is, it's good for the tribe right now, and it's good seven generations from now, right? It's so it's, a temporally good decision, right on some transcendent basis, and we think you know what you're talking about. We think you know what you're doing, right when you when you lead? Well, turns out later, I have seen similar kinds of things when you describe teaming for the Army Rangers or the you know, the you know, the seals, all right, Navy SEALs, right? All those fast reaction teams. When they choose their team leader themselves, they do it themselves. Is they don't care about the competence component. They care about character, right? Can we trust this guy, right? To take us into the assignments, right? And we have all the other competencies, you know, we got the sniper, and we got the other, you know, whatever, when you think about it, in the era that we're moving forward in competency is increasingly available on demand through systems, whether it's a platform or robotics process automation or machine learning or AI or you know, we're going to be able to call upon it in the moment that we need it. So what do organizations need to develop character? We're going to have to be spending a lot more time as this on demand. Stuff you know, starts to, you know, become available. What is the human element? It's, you know, these systems, including, you know, whatever you think about the current stage of AI, they're not conscious, and they don't have character. Yeah, they're fast. They do a lot of things. And so we should be using those tools. But at the end of the day, it should be amplifying, you know, the humaneness of the character of both the individuals and, you know, the organization itself, so that in aggregate, you have better situation of awareness and judgment collectively, you know. So that takes you back to collective intelligence. Look, and now, okay, I did. I wrote a book about collective intelligence with Kyle Shannon, and it's this is the future of us thinking together, having access to all this human knowledge, increasingly accessible in the blink of an eye, but the way to use it it that is actually an intelligent use, as opposed to a, you know, passive, you know that we become increasingly passive. Oh, yeah, I can just do it. Is you become more interested you you're able to spend what 10 attention you have in ways that are more purposeful.
Mark Hiddleson 18:39
Share an example, like, so would you say, like, we're finding, I mean, I'm think some of the ways that we're using, I mean, chat JpT is, I was on a podcast where they were asking leaders, what's your top 10, or what's your favorite book, favorite app, and I can forget what the other one, but on the app, they're like, you can't say chat, B T, B T. Can't say slack. You can't say online. I was like, I thought it was on the cutting edge, because I'm using slack. But what are some of the ways where you see that using AI and spending more time and so then all I can instantly generate the result I need to, you know, write this letter, do this outline for this project. Or what are some examples of digging deeper that you think would be good to share here?
Kevin Clark 19:24
I answer your question in a slightly orthogonal way. You know, we're going to kind of go over here and then we'll, we'll come back. Okay? Is the first time you were exposed to this, or you've watched someone you know, see, you know, oh, look, it's writing a poem. Look, it's making a picture, right? You know, whatever is, our research says most people go, Wow, that's cool, right? That's the first reaction that you have to exposure to this technology. Here you try. It okay, and you you know, and you know, a shiver goes up your spine that this, this is incredible, right? Then the follow up is, so when was the first time you had that experience at work with AI? Hasn't happened. Okay? So what's the difference between seeing it for the first time and experiencing it that that way. And why isn't that happening in the workplace? Well, we have routines. We have all kinds of things that we've ritualized. And the the fact is, you might even be in an industry like banking or finance where there are FINRA regulations, they say, Please don't bring that to work. Don't touch our system. All right, it's it, you know, this is a sacred temple of data, right? That, you know, is okay. I get it. So, yeah, exactly. So the point is, we have, you know, in our CO lab that's been in existence for about three years. We developed this thing called Wow. Ai, right? And it's like research says, you know, people have that experience, so change the culture in your workplace so that people can start to feel like they have permission in certain spaces to do rapid prototyping and experimentation, so that they can have that wow themselves, right? That they start to feel very comfortable in this space. And look, if you're using this technology, you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong.
Mark Hiddleson 21:33
It is. It's my I got chills. When you said you get chills, yeah, I mean,
Kevin Clark 21:40
you do. So you have to create a permissioning structure and safe spaces and and ability for this to manifest in the workplace. And so many times they said, Well, if they want me to use it, they'll give me the tools. It'll be top down, you know, and, you know, I'll do whatever the procedures are well, that is not going to lead to joy. And the dirty secret to my career was, you know, people have been paying me for my hobbies for decades, right? Because I like what I do. I have a something I call getting paid twice. Yes, I'll take your money. All right, thank you for that part of this. But also, increasingly, because these are my businesses now, right? Is, if it isn't interesting, fun or entertaining, then I don't want to do it, right? I mean, I'm well past just wanting to do something, because you can give me money for it. I have so much attention left in my life, and I'm going to spend it in ways that are both and right, that are billable and are beautiful problems to solve, right that I'm interested
Mark Hiddleson 23:05
in, or I've even found, and I think you're an alpine skier, right as I remember, I love it. A lot of the insights, the big ahas I've had about projects and breakthroughs when I was either surfing or skiing, and then you're like, boom, I just got chills again. Well, you have this idea that a customer has been working on. He's just like, I'm gonna call Chris when I get back in the car, because I just thought of something. I'm like, and I'm gonna charge him a lot more for this time, because I'm surfing and then I'm solving your problems out here. Is that kind of what you're talking about? Absolutely, I mean, whole state. And you're just like, Wait
Kevin Clark 23:41
a minute. I have a minute, I have a database of ideas, all right, you know, knowledge base of things that I'm that are hypotheses and, you know, partially explored theses, you know, where there's, you know, enough information that I'm getting confident about it. And I would say a third of those came from the backs of envelopes when I was on vacation or the back of a receipt at a restaurant. Because, you know, you just get, I go to bed all right with, you know, one of these, you know, voice recorders, because I'll have an idea in the middle of the night, instead of trying to, I got to remember this when I wake up in the morning, I just record it. And, you know, sometimes it's gibberish and it's not worth pursuing, and sometimes a great idea, right? But, yeah, I mean, those down times can be very productive. What you need to be able to do is not go back to work because you had a good idea, right? Is you need, I had a time management person probably five years into my career, come in as a guest speaker. You know, for larger team, you. And I remember one thing from that talk, and it was, you have to schedule your personal time as aggressively as you schedule your business time, otherwise, your business calendar will continue to eat away at your personal time, right? So, you know, be very intentional about scheduling the personal things that you want to do and get done, so that those become communicated communicable. That sounds like a disease, doesn't it? But a communicable barrier to someone who wants to say and he's like, No, I'm sorry. You know, I've scheduled time with a family to do this, right? But I can offer you that. Okay, I can't talk to you on Saturday, but I could talk to you at Sunday, Sunday afternoon, after five, and most people you know will accept the
Mark Hiddleson 25:52
counter. Yeah, we did that for years. My early career, I was because my boss, one of the reasons I loved him, he did give me that advice, and I've been a work from Homer. I know that's become popular in the past five years, but I was working for home in the late 90s, and people would say, how do you maintain focus to stay at work? And my answer was always, You know what? It's easy for me to stay focused on work. What's hard for me is to turn it off at five o'clock and not be back sneaking back into the home office at midnight, at 130 that was the I didn't have to give myself any communicable barriers to go to work. It had to be exactly like you're saying, like,
Kevin Clark 26:30
Yes, and I, and I worked for an insomniac at one point in my career. Oh, really great person. All right, you know, very smart, and would wake up at 130 or two o'clock in the morning and start throwing down ideas, right? And I would, you know, turn on my email and look at what I had to do. And there would be 18 ideas or to do's. And I, you know, eventually. And it was pretty quick. I said, you know, you know, I can't do all the things that you're giving me that I, you know when I open up my mail every morning. So you know what I'm going to do. Here's the deal, and you tell me if you like it or not. Actually, I'm going to pick the ones that I like, right? And I'm going to work on those. And then, if one of them is really important to you, ask and remind me that you want to know about that he's a deal, all right? And, you know what? Nine times out of 10, you know, he never followed up, right? Yeah, just the stuff that I was interested in was what I went and, you know, bought, you know, would report and back. And I said, you remember that idea? Here it is okay. And it worked out, like, like a charm, because that gave me the out to basically ignore, you know, stuff and not feel like I had to act on every one
Mark Hiddleson 27:57
of them. Yeah, I love the way you commuted, you communicated that too, because it's like, here's what I love about you send me. You didn't say, hey, it sucks that you sent me 18 things and I only want to do three. The way you framed it is was beautiful. And I think that's a beautiful way of communicating. And I think great leaders I might be wrong about this is my own up. I think great leaders are coming up with 18 ideas, and counting on their team to pick three that they love and give the leader an opportunity. Is like, hey, if I missed one, and this was a 10 to you, you know and share. But otherwise, I'm going to run with these three, and I would be delighted coming back with results.
Kevin Clark 28:40
Okay, so two things. One is most M A deals start with a conversation between two leaders, and they say, Hey, you know what? You know, we could, we could bring these companies together, you know, whatever the it could be a merger, it could be an acquisition, it could be whatever. But, you know, you go back and you communicate. Hey, I want you to evaluate. All right, the you know, do this quietly, all right, but take a look at whether, if we came together, what this would do by the time that message gets to the staff, people who are going to do the work. It's the boss wants to do this. Figure out how to make it happen, right? And that wasn't the request. The request was evaluate it. And by the time it gets there, it's, it's a mandate, right? And so a lot of M A deals, you know, pick up inertia through miscommunication of intention, right? And that's a problem, because I could have told you the day that Daimler Chrysler was announced right, that that's what wasn't going to work, right, that Stuttgart and Detroit were not on the same page from a management style in. Engineering or anything else, right? It may have been looked good on a spreadsheet, but it wasn't going to last, right? It was kind of for in my head, you know, without cultural due diligence, it was dead on arrival, you know, when I first found out about it. So of course, that turned out to be right, but I'm not always right. But yeah, it was, second is that there's an article that's called what service businesses must do, you know, to get things right. Think that's the title. And inside of that, there's a huge, great insight, which is, you have to decide what you're not going to do well, because at the end of the day, you only have so many resources, and you have to focus the resources on what you're going to be known for, As opposed to working the list of things that people are complaining about early days, you know, we installed a lot of Microsoft software on those think pads, right? And let me tell you what the ability was for a user to call Microsoft and get help. It was not good.
Mark Hiddleson 31:24
It is, I have a team. I'm still using the think pad. That's one of the things I told my team. And we recall I called it the PC because I have a I have a MacBook Air Pro. I use that for certain things, but I run my business and everything. I always called it the PC. And their dad is not a PC dad. So we started calling it the think pad.
Kevin Clark 31:44
So so, so Microsoft deselected in the early days service and support as one of the things that it was going to deliver to the marketplace directly right, which you know was would be problematic, except here's the workaround. They said, what we're going to do is we're going to create certifications for certified Microsoft techs out in the marketplace, and that's who you're going to call. So they converted an expense to the bottom line into a revenue source, because the certifications cost money, right? So that was an interesting piece of business model, Jujitsu, yeah. Today, you know, I have one of their higher level, you know, they've rescaled themselves, and I have a higher level license, and I can still talk to a human being, and they they help me, and they're actually really good, but I'm talking about before, all right, when they were running early days really lean. That's one of their that was one of their D selects, and but they had a way to still help, you know, people with their issues. And, yeah, they're clearly a successful company, so I'm not calling them on, you know, their evolution, because they've done fine for
Mark Hiddleson 33:14
themselves. Yeah, yeah. So I wanted to ask you, I'm glad you brought so what was your just? How were you involved? Because the way I've described to my team was like, Hey, I'm I'm interviewing the guy who invented the think pad, see, and so I just want you to clarify how you were involved and share
Kevin Clark 33:33
Sure, sure you're involved. I know the people who did okay, the the lead engineer in Japan. This is a Japanese, you know, product, okay, in from an engineering point of view. So, era Massa Naito Naito San was the, you know, father of ThinkPad, from an engineering point of view, and the reliability and all the things that come along with, you know, the way that it was engineered is a direct, you know, descent of his ethos and the way that he thought about things. And I still talk to him, you know, a couple of times a year. He's a great person. He's a pretty good golfer, right? And he's enjoyable to be around. The other piece was the design. The design was the direct result of working with Richard sapper, who was a legendary industrial designer, and he was out of Italy, out of Milan, but originally from Germany, and had a very strong ethos. His idea was like a Japanese bento box, right? Have you ever seen, had seen a bento box, right? You know that? You know. Moves from home and gets transported for lunch. Well, he said, Look, it's very elegant, simple on the outside, and then you open it up and there's a surprise inside. All right, you know, what meal Am I getting for the bento box? Well, the surprise was red track point for navigation. The first time that color screens had been introduced right to the marketplace. So it became iconic, and my job as the brand steward was to sit at the edge of the organization and represent the customers to the business and the business to the customers right and make sure that that iconic status didn't change in a way that people could not recognize. They had a think pen, right? So that was part of it. I got involved in a lot of crisis management in that job where, you know, we had issues, you know, the batteries were always problematic. In the early days, they would overheat, you know, rapid thermal discharge, yeah, it caught on fire, right? So, the rapid release of chemistry, Yeah, same thing, all right? And I would sit there in those meetings and say, We are not going to do a calculation about how many are going to fail before we're going to, you know, do something in the marketplace. I said, People trust us and the they trust the parent company. They have these as individual objects, or they have them as a fleet in a business. But they also have mainframe computers, and they have all kinds of other things from us. We're not going to sully the reputation of the IBM corporation by not doing the right thing immediately. So we always had a, you know, rapid response that was positive for the customer, because I'm sitting in those meetings representing that point of view, and it didn't make any difference how high up, you know, the executive was, I had the ability to call the chairman's office
Mark Hiddleson 37:11
Nice. So that's a brand steward. That was your
Kevin Clark 37:15
Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm representing the interests of not because I wasn't selling thinkpats, I was selling IBM thinkpat Right? And so there was a lot of equity, intangible equity, that was sending back to the shareholders that went on a line item, you know, on the corporate spreadsheet, along with patent revenue, licensing revenue, you know, intangible valuation. You know, when I retired IBM by inner brand, was worth $72 billion of intangible revenue. I mean valuation for, you know, current and what it meant was it was discounted future revenue, confidence that the IBM Corporation was going to be able to continue to do what it did well into the future, right? So it was a confidence measure, right? You call it brand equity, but brand equity is basically a confidence measure. Just like buying stock, if a stock has multiples on its revenue. It's those multiples are coming from confidence that you're going to be able to do this X number of years out and continue on a certain trajectory that is either linearly extrapolated as growth or as you know, exponential is growth. I mean, a lot of the AI, Nvidia, you know, things of that nature, their valuations look exponential. Okay, well, that's a lot of confidence, yeah.
Mark Hiddleson 38:52
So I want to ask you a question that, yeah, go ahead. So how, and you've answered this a few different ways. I want to be a little more specific is how the lessons that you learn for working you know, large multilateral like like IBM, how does that translate to the business success you're having now? And there's a specific quote that I got off of, Content Evolution, it's Content Evolution net, right is the it is Content Evolution net. And right on the home page it says, We believe a brand invites and they experience the light we believe in listening and leading that quietly changes the world. And so I want you to share how that IBM translates kind of the companies you're working and working with now, the success stories now, and how that ties back to the success
Kevin Clark 39:40
with the book. Some of the success stories I can't tell you about, because they're confidential, so we set that aside. Let's just unpack the phrasing for a second. Yeah, the way that we're organized is listening, leading intention and attention. All right. We listen to what's happening in the marketplace, Voice of people, trends, and you know what you would call in Santa Fe Institute, you know complex adaptive systems theory language, right is that you have, you know, situational awareness of how the fitness landscape is changing right around you. You use that information to then, you know, merge with whatever your purpose is, your relevance, right to people who want to work with you, your your customers, your stakeholders, your constituents, right? The language changes whether you're doing business or you're not for profit, or you're governing, right? You know that the all the names of the characters that are being influenced change, but at the end of the day, you listen, and that creates the ability to lead, all right? You're going to, you know, have that fusion of our values with, you know, those people that we're choosing to work with we can't work with the entire planet. So it's who do we, you know, choose right to do business with, and then that creates the raw material. Can look at that as coal that you can crush under heat and pressure into a very small object, a diamond. All right? That's multifaceted. That is your brand, okay, that's your intention made manifest in the world. Can I tell you everything that we do? No, all I can do is issue an invitation to potentially, you know, work with us, and if you accept that invitation, then you know the attention that you can create and the experience that you deliver, you know, takes that brand promise and makes it dimensional. And if you're having a good experience, you go back and you can listen again. And so what sounded linear is actually circular, right? And it's a it's a system, and that's what we have the most fun with, and across each of those areas. You know the listening to the marketplace and people. You know the strategy, you know that is, you know the leadership and so on so forth. Is you can do that based on best practices, which is what most of the consulting companies sell you, right is, we'll show you how the best companies on the planet, you know, do this, and we will help you get there, which is great. Go work with them, right? We're interested in next practices. We want to understand the way it's done today, but we want to go beyond that and do something. I'll put it in military terms. Every general, right, wants to make a move that the enemy has never seen before, right? Because that's probably going to be, you know, better than doing, oh, we know what they're going to do, right? That's all you have to do is go back to the American Revolution and realize, right, that, you know, marching in formation all of a sudden was not a good play. So the, you know, the fact is, we're looking at next we have a group called in Annex, and so the next practices are what we want to deliver to our clients, right? Is, you know, look at that and do something either slightly or change your category, right, so that other people have to react to you, right? Because you're doing something that is sufficiently different that now we're going to, you know, have to adapt into the space that has been, you know, created, and it's much easier to create a category change that's highly aligned with what you know how to do. And then you say, Look, we're the incumbent, right? This is what you want, right? Great, all right, we're already there, right? And to some degree, you go back into the world of watching Apple's valuation grow, it's because they kept on creating categories of objects that, you know, people didn't know they wanted yet, yeah, but were, you know, oh, I do want that, yeah. And you know where they took that playbook from, sans the programming expertise, Sony, because the Walkman and all the other things that happened during the product era where you didn't need software, it was all, you know, hey, it's all pure in your hands. Sony was the leader of that kind of innovation.
Mark Hiddleson 44:57
And there was another company I read, the walk. Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs and they bought there was some company that had a little thing that had the little icons. It almost or actually it was just a sketch. Somebody to come up with an idea, and people just scrapped it like nobody is gonna want.
Kevin Clark 45:16
The first smartphone that was ever made in the world was the IBM Simon, yeah, and it, it didn't, didn't go any place, yeah. The first think pad that was ever made was a tablet computer. And I can tell you the category tablet. There were a lot of tablets that were made, and they all failed, fail, fail, fail, until the iPad. And the iPad worked, because people were using the iPhone, and they did what Nicholas Negroponte said at MIT Media Lab, that you know when we're going to get successful when we use this as the pointing device, not a built in pen, okay, use your finger, right? And so that was the way that you navigated iPad, iPhone, and they scaled it up to an iPad, and that's when tablet computing took off. It had some niche stuff happening in warehouses and so on, so forth, things that you know, lists that you could tap right with a stylus. But it wasn't. It wasn't popular until that and then there were all kinds of clones, all right, but Apple made it popular,
Mark Hiddleson 46:30
yeah, and I've seen construction managers using them now. And and I don't like I have one, I'm not using it, but it is because you can draw on them, you can put your notes. You can have a spreadsheet right next to me. You can, it's so you can highlight things. You can read blueprints. You can have all the blueprints on there. If you want to get to a certain page, skip to that page, blow it up, screenshot it. It's, it's stuff that would take a couple days or a week, maybe you can do right there.
Kevin Clark 46:56
I mean, we've been talking for years. You know my friend Tim beharon, who just told me the other day we're having dinner, that he's going to the Consumer Electronics Show, and this will be the 51st time that he's gone to the show. And I said, Well, you've been going for a long time, Tim. So he's leading this XR panel. I think it's on Thursday of the show. But anyway, wearables, right? Wearable displays. How long has that been a development, 30 years or more, right? And they again, they come and they go. And where do they stay? They're stickier in industrial applications than they aren't in general purpose, more involved, if it's VR with gaming, and so it will cross over when it becomes a natural interface, right for something that we want to do on a daily basis. Right now hasn't quite crossed that threshold, but it probably will. And when it does that, then we're going to have another overlay of information available to us all the time. Because I've been talking for years about, you know, the person working in confined spaces, looking at something and saying, I need the tech specs all right for this, right? And they could come up right right in front of what you're looking at without having to refer to another object. You know, if I were in the elevator repair in a business tight spaces, right? I want that information to come up right in front of me, as opposed to having to refer to another device. So it's coming. I mean, I can see it coming,
Mark Hiddleson 48:51
so I want to keep this conversation going, but I know you have a cut off, so I'm going to, I'm going to do one last question. I'm going to leave it open to you, share a little bit about platform UX, because I participated. Sure Isaac one. I love that idea. And best way to get in touch with you if people are interested. You know, how do people connect if they want to learn more about what you're working on? Sure,
Kevin Clark 49:13
I'm glad to do it. I mean, we're inventing a lot of things we like I said. We have this, wow. Ai platform for making, you know, AI, a cultural thing inside the organization, we've got all kinds of interesting research methodologies and the listening part platform, UX, it's in the leading strategy piece. So, as I told you, you know, lots of, you know the incumbent great consulting organizations will run a diagnostic and say, Oh, look, you don't do this as well as you know others right in your category or in the marketplace, right? We can fix that, right? We don't care. So. Yeah, we just don't care. But if we run the same diagnostic, and instead of looking at things to fix, we say, Oh, look, you're really good at this. All right, if we can discover things that an organization does really well, but only for themselves, then we can pick some of those, lift them up and create a platform that creates a new source of revenue for that business. So for instance, you know one of our co founders worked with a civil engineering firm, and you know they were digging around one year and said, where's that spreadsheet for the, you know, last year, for the bonuses? Or was that, you know, who do we pay? What do we pay them? Right? And they couldn't find it, and they they had to kind of reconstruct it from memory, from every one of the managers. And it was a big pain. They said, don't want this to happen again. Let's make a bonus, you know, calculator, you know, that will give us some institutional memory on this. So they did, and they were able to take that one thing, it had a API plug into the payroll system, right? And they said, Let's sell that to everybody else. It has nothing to do with our core business, you know, we're civil engineering firm. This is, this is more of a CFO kind of thing, or an HR kind of, you know, crossover, and it became its own business. And, you know, created another, you know, stream of revenue. And if people are willing to work with us, we can identify those things, either code them into existence. Sometimes platforms don't require that, all right? You know, Jiffy Lube is a platform, but it has a cookbook that says, here's how you change oil in 10 minutes. Yeah, right, you know. So the the way that it functions and everything else is knowable. It's repeatable. It's defined. The Treasure Hunt is once you know what the topics are that you want to explore with the leadership team, they don't know everything that's going on in the company. So we create an opportunity for a threaded discussion to take place for everyone that you want to invite, that could be everybody in the company, all right, it could be Hundreds 1000s, 10s of 1000s of people. We have had previous experience as other firms, right, where those kinds of discussions have gotten up to hundreds of 1000s of people. And you know the point is, now you're discovering on certain topics where the hidden treasure is right? Because sometimes these really great processes and procedures are at a departmental level, or they're at a functional level inside a division, right? And so they have to be revealed. And this methodology allows you to do it. We only have that conversation. It's this is not persistent. It's like, one day, two days, maybe maximum three. You invite everybody. It's like senior management's listening, you know. And we're going to do something right as a result of what you tell us. People love it. I mean, they have a lot of fun. They know it's not going to be available forever, you know. So it's advertised, you know, here's when it's going to be available, and the people who want to participate do all right, you know the as they say, you know you go to army with the Army you have, right? And you know you have the participants that want to play. And then you do the final stage, which is, you take those ideas, you put them in some kind of order, you talk about how easy some of them might be, how difficult the other ones are, but the difficult ones might have a higher rate of return long term. And so you do the easy ones, you create some revenue, and you arc over into the stuff that's harder. It's very satisfying. And honestly, for leaders who are having difficulty with with budgets, and they say, you know, we just laid off all the consultants. You know, we're not doing any of that. In fact, you know, we're we're finding it hard to hold on to our own employees. Our value proposition is we can come in and do this work, and, you know, do the diagnostic, and if you're willing to work with us and sign an agreement that says that if we discover it and if we create it and take it to market, that we're both going to share in the revenue stream, we can do some of this work on our side, and you don't have to write any checks. Yeah. And it's kind of like, Oh, that's interesting, right? Now, some of the larger companies, like, there's no, if we find IP in our company, there's no way that we're going to share any revenue with you. And I said, well, either you're not going to work with us, or you're going to do it as work for hire, right? That will do this, but then you have to pay full freight, you know, for whatever it is that you want us to do, that's fine. Yeah, so any rate, that's platform UX. It's an inversion of standard consulting. That's really
Mark Hiddleson 55:30
I love it. We met. I hear any time we met through a treasure hunt and was sharing of ideas, it's, it's a beautiful I usually don't participate in things like that, because I look at the value for time invested. But Michele had invited to me. I put her on a pedestal that's above a lot of other but I'll tell you, I was thrilled to see how quickly it happened, how quickly the ideas were organized. And we're out of time. I know you have a commitment on the back end of this, so I just want to be the first to really, I've been looking forward to this interview. You've been outstanding. I want to keep it going. Want to I want to plan another round already. But thank you. Thank you for joining us on this interview. Is a lot of value here, and we'll have
Kevin Clark 56:12
thank you for inviting me. It was an enjoyable conversation. Keep keep moving in the right direction, as I like to, you know, tell people, you know, be intentional and move from being just successful to being significant. Okay, that's where you want to go, right is, you know, get outside of your own KPIs, in your own frame of reference, and get out to that bigger world of opportunities. That's kind of the underlying theme of everything we just discussed, right? And if you can do that, if you can look at that larger, you know, 360 degree view, there's a big world out there, lots of opportunities, and you can pick a few you don't have. You can't do all of them, but you can pick a few that weren't on the table before So Mark, great spending time with you today, and if you want to, we'll do it again.
Mark Hiddleson 57:07
I love it. I definitely will connect. Thank you very much.
Outro 57:11
Thanks for listening to The Tao of Pizza Podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.
Comments