YouSaid · the spoken record

Frank Blake

lines on the record: 114
first: 2018-03-15
most recent: 2018-03-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“They're like, wow, that's really useful. The first is just as I said about avoiding the echo chamber, getting outside of the echo chamber. Bernie had a great, I think one of the things that makes Home Depot such a strong culture is that one of Bernie's other early on comments to me was Look, you have a prominent job, but you don't have a significant job.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's worth listening to. And then associates also knew my email, and they'd send me, you know, hey, this isn't going well. You got to fix this, you got to fix that, whatever.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot. They're a lot. And we have a team. I mean, I think it was hugely important to do. I did it early on. I still get customer emails, but we set up an executive resolutions team. And I'm not. I learned the first weekend on the job when I mistakenly answered my phone not thinking and got a customer that those take a long time to get resolved. So we have a professional team. That goes through those and resolves them. But for me, what was useful was you see patterns and you go, okay, this is what's not going well. This is consistent. May not be numerically that percentage wise that high, but if somebody Is taking time out of their day to email the CEO saying, this is screwed up”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's a powerful way to get to learn about another person too. So, to get that sense of, oh, okay, this is what they're worried about, this is how they think it's really useful.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's other people who need help. There's a separate thing of each time kind naming two things we're grateful for. And what are we grateful for? And it could be, I'm grateful to be on Tim Ferris' podcast. I'm grateful. But it's a good. Mental exercise to say, hey, there's an enormous amount of stuff to be grateful for. And then there are people who need help. And my wife is a much more powerful prayer than I am, but I'm learning. I'm getting there.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Parenthetically worked for Habitat for Human. That was her job. And she goes to Haiti nearly every other, well, every month for a while she's going almost every other week. So she does a lot for other people, but she will mention here are the people who are in need. Here's what. So it's really helpful seeing okay, that's what she's focused on, and then it teases out from me what should I be focused on, who needs help, what should I be doing.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I suspect So the format is there are actually, there's a lectionary that tells you what readings. So there are a series of readings. So you do a reading typically from the Old Testament, the Psalms, and the New Testament. Typically how you go. So we read. And then we pray. And my prayers, I've gotten better at it because I do think to the extent you write it down or you say things, it kind of gives context. And maybe in some way it makes it more likely to happen. My prayers have tended to be, you know, I hope everything works out. And boy, am I grateful for everything? My wife would be very specific about and is very specific about this person needs help. This is what I'm going to do to try to help this person. My wife...”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I get up about a quarter of five and I'd usually been in the office by six o'clock and start reading emails. Now I don't. I still get up really early. Now instead I start by reading my wife and I, this was a habit introduced, and I'm not I struggle with the notion of an intentional God. My wife does not. My wife is a strong believer in an intentional God and we pray in the morning together. And it was awkward. You know, I'm in New England or that's just, you know, we don't, gosh, we don't do anything with anyone, that level of intimacy. And that's actually really an interesting habit to have. Because saying things aloud and hearing what's in her mind and then sort of being forced in yourself, okay, what am I grateful for? What am I seeking help for is really valuable? So that's a different kind of habit.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you're okay with that. And I'm not recommending this. This is not a good tool. But I started every day reading emails from customers. And I did that because Because in any large organization, it's really easy to get a false sense from averages and percents. And then you see, wow, we Did that badly, and it's a good marker for me of how we were doing and what we need to focus on. And that kind of management by anecdote is actually pretty powerful. But I would do that for like an hour early in the morning. I have always gotten up really, really early.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the habits are very different. Now, I think probably I had a very much because of starting Without a preset set of notions of what I was going to do at Home Depot, if you ask me what I did at the start of every day as CEO of Home Depot, no, the comparing contrasts.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every day the thing about a retail business is on your phone, they're your sales and the IT organization is saying, gee, I can give you this by the minute. No, I really don't want it. I don't want it by the minute. So that anxiety of everyday Home Depot just reported its results and they're great results. Craig Menier is the CEO now, is doing a phenomenal job, but it is that everyday pressure on delivery that's good to step away from and good to think about what are some of the other things you want to do in your life and focus some time.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you go well, I mean, first off, obviously not me, but wow, that is such an awesome story. And that story is replicated over and over and over and over again at Home Depot. And it was both Bernie and Camden and Arthur always talk about the Home Depot, you know, you have your mission statement and all the rest, but what it's really about is wealth generation for your associates. And it ties back to Jack's comment about leadership. At the end, you could say, wow, these people made their lives and careers from it. That provides a great perspective on the job.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, they're great. But the underlying thing is people who typically start, I come in, I'm shagging carts and a lot. Maybe I graduated from high school. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this job. And 80% of our store managers started as hourly associates. Our upper management started as hourly associates. And it's these amazing Career stories, wealth generation through starting at the bottom in retail. I was at dinner last week with a friend. This, I think, happens all the time.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The fears and worries kind of melt when you see what people are putting up with every day and doing one foot in front of the other and having a smile and being committed to the people around. And so that gave a sense of perspective that sort of put the earnings per share worries a little bit in farther focus. And they were always great for that. I mean, just amazing. Home Depot and both Bernie and Ken Arthur as well. The great stories of Home Depot. Now, why built from scratch such a great book? Why it's such a great idea. There's some crazy.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Give or take my age. And I'm complaining about my back. So she says, how are you doing? And I say something with my back. Mind you, I've flown in on a private plane, and I'm saying, you know, I got my back problems. And then I go, how are you? And she said, well, you know, it's funny that you say that about your back problem because three months ago, I fractured my spine and I had to be in traction. And it was really difficult when I started working in the store again and I was in a wheelchair. You know, we had bulky items and they have to get moved. And I'm going, I'm complaining about the little. And then she says, and I go, wow, that's amazing. And then she said, well, that wasn't the really hard part. The really hard part was I have a 12-year-old developmentally disabled son, and I had to bathe him every day and I have to get him in the bath. And that was so difficult when I was in the wheelchair.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The best thing for me, there's a great saying in retail that now has to be amended because of the internet, but the saying in retail is all truth is on the floor of the store. So now it's also online, but all truth is on the floor of the store. The best vehicle for me to deal with those worries was always spending time in the store. And I would try I don't think I didn't do it religiously every week, but I would do dinners with hourly associates whenever I, you know, wherever I was, I'd try to do one a week with hourly associates. And you pretty quickly get your problems put in perspective. And it was hugely valuable to me. And I remember the first one I did was we fly in and I'm sitting around there's this very nice woman sitting next to me.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The more crowded your story is, the more volume your store does. By and large, that correlated to a net promoter score that was a little bit lower. If you wanted the highest net promoter score, have a store that very few people went to. One customer per employee per day, exactly. And they were thrilled. And they'd take the little, you know, they give you the positive feedback. But yeah, we did it straight off of receipts and people typing in and saying they're happy or they weren't happy. And then, you know, now on the internet, obviously, a lot easier for C surveys come up all the time.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was by surveys after on the receipt in the store. And so you can immediately imagine if So, not to get into the nitty gritty. Let's get wrong with net promoter scores, but you can imagine one of the things is...”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wouldn't tell them, oh, here's the fascinating flaw in that metric and why you might not want to be committed to that. We just go, this is what we're focused on. We're focused on our net promoter score.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Internalize that as much as possible because the other part of you have to get rid of that worry. Colin Powell has a great expression I deeply believe in, which is optimism is a force multiplier. And in any organization, you got to, and this was particularly true as things were grim. You've got to drive to the optimistic side. You can't be going, you know, this really could turn out badly. But I think internally that's helpful to worry, to be thinking around the corner, to be thinking what's going to go wrong. Just as you said, get that every metric that you put in place comes with its own little seed of destruction, understanding that, being aware of it, don't tell it to anybody else. So, you know, we would, all our stores would have net promoter score.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For lawyers, everything is great, right? And you can chew over decisions for a long time, and it's very complex and full of ambiguity. If you're leading a $350,000 strong and you're coming out and your statements are in paragraphs, I mean, just you've lost it right from the... So that you kind of have to train away from. The part that's probably good is you're trained to worry. I mean, lawyers are trained. I always felt like law school trains you to worry about things that no normal human being would worry about. And so there is a value as a CEO to worry, but you got to kind of”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Could be what I think the part of, so the hurt is easier. We can start there. Yeah, so the things that I kind of had to hike away from are”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's more a matter of focus. So it was a matter of focus and in fact a, I mean, my commentary was There are some unique individuals like Jack who can run a conglomerate. And I would be deep, deep into the details of the business I worked at in GE, and Jack would still ask questions to me that I'd just slapped my head and go, oh my God, what a great question. Why didn't I think of that? I knew not me. I mean, it would take all, as I said. Just running a conglomerate is a big, big challenge. I knew I couldn't do that.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. And said, and it was, I don't think I made it that personal. I think I said, look, because the company we'd been losing market share, we were trailing our principal competitor. Said we got to be all eyes on the retail business and we got to get rid of everything that's a distraction of the retail business plus at the time so I took over right at the start of 2007 and the housing crisis was you know by that point the clouds were fairly obvious and so we knew we had to make some dramatic changes because things were going to go downhill fast and they went even more downhill and faster.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The dominant reason for me personally was and I think that this was organizationally right, but I know it was right for me individually was saying to be the best retailer in any space requires 110% of the effort. For me to be the best leader of a retailer is 110% plus of effort. No chance that I can also say, oh, and here's this other business, this great commercial industrial distribution business, I can be the best CEO in that space too, just knew that was not going to be possible. And so said we need to sell.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I did deals, so the job I ended up with at GE was doing M&A. The job I was doing at Home Depot was doing MA. We went out and we bought. A whole series of companies that were called at the time Home Depot supply that became that was the largest commercial industrial distributor in the country. But I pitched those deals to the board. So they saw me a lot. And then the first thing I did when I became CEO, I said, we need to sell this business. And we sold the business.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's in the end, you need to ask Ken Langone, who is the lead director and the other directors of Home Depot at the time. I've never really spent time asking them why I think they had seen a lot of me because I was in charge of deals. And we did a lot of M&As transactions.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No. I mean, our stores, while they're very idiosyncratic within the box, they're very similar, and we would look at, so we didn't have to get very sophisticated about on the store side on revenue per square foot. The merchandising side, you do more of that because you'd want to say what's our return on the space we're allocating to that merchandise?”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely a quote from someone. Definitely a quote from someone in a right quote because every single metric does have a germ of a problem in it. So you have to be careful. I mean, we would measure net promoter score, you know, how happy the customers are in the store. But it's always a reminder that the dominant measure is how are we doing on sales and profitability? As you move down below that on the metric side, you have to be very careful.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so every retailer, I mean, now it's commonplace, but you look at what's called net promoter score. But that, I mean, If that's an accurate Andy Grove quote, I.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not I didn't, I'll be honest. I mean, customers, I mean, that's the important thing about customer service is it takes lots of different forms. But what we weren't looking for is, and it's not like this isn't important, but we weren't looking for the story of the cashier who stopped the robber. Those are important stories, but some companies are more focused on shrink prevention and things like that. We're focused on customer service. And we had lots of different I mean, just emotionally powerful helping other people in the store phenomenal, phenomenally strong stories. But no, didn't set any guidelines.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People just should spend time thinking about what they're recognizing and celebrating. They should do it intentionally. They should have a process around it. They should do it consistently because we talk a lot about company culture, but that's what really sets the culture. It's what everybody is saying. You want to see the story. You want to see what this looks like. This is what it looks like.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the great thing about it is you take that. So you say Frank wants to send a note out, then this is where having an organization is great because then you say, okay, here's how we're going to do it. The stores are going to submit stories of great customer service, and the store will submit that to the district, and the district will take its best stories and the district's best stories go to the regions, and then the regions all submit them to me. So I hope the better store managers were recognizing every single story that they forwarded onto the district and were making a celebration with their associates in that store. Same with the districts and same with the regents so that it reinforced itself. So it's not just the one note. The entire process. It's why, as I say, the”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who were the story? We'd retell the story with the associates. I mean, so there'd be one of these every single week. We did little books of great associate customer service stories. If you go into stories, you'll see people with badges and recognition. You just don't communicate. You can write a memo to someone and think it gets down through an organization, but it doesn't. It's when you pull people out and say, here, this is what this person did that was extraordinary. You tell a story around it, and everyone remembers that story, that person's thrilled and everybody else is going, I want a story told about me too. I'm doing that kind of stuff as well, and it builds on itself.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Than anything else. So, in addition, I mean, the notes were kind of my thing, but we also did a video every single week of great customer service. And we put it in that same break room TV.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People respond to being recognized. I learned this from, so early in my career, I worked for George Bush dad when he was vice president. And it's a great thing to work for, I mean, he's a wonderful human being working for the vice president is great because it's a very small staff. So you can actually see what he does. And at the time, so this is 1981, ages and ages ago, no computers, but he would come into the office and type out notes. And you knew that he was typing the notes because the E would be slightly off and the white out. But as a staff member, when you got a note from the vice president, you were walking on water. I mean, you just felt like everything was great. And I believe that we learn more from those positive stories and recognition.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wondered about the power of that, but early on I was walking a store, and an associate came up to me and said, gee, would you mind rewriting the note that you sent me? And I said, no, sure, no problem. But why? And he said, well, we were all convinced that it was a RoboPen note. And so we put it underwater and it leaked, it ran, and so would you write me another one?”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Service was what we were after. Customer service is such a vague, right, such a vague term. And I would write 100 to 200 notes every Sunday. And we had a whole process for rolling up the Jane Jack did blank and it would roll up from the store to the district. Send the note out and sign my name. And there's a long, I have a long thing about note writing and why note writing is so important. Let's get into it. Okay, but so.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was actually one of my biggest learnings of the time as CEO was the importance of celebration. In fact, what I tell people now is every business person knows the saying that you get what you measure. I'd say there's an important, maybe even more important corollary. You get what you celebrate. People, just as you say, they reference off of the stories, they reference off of when you reward someone and make a point of it, that actually sticks in the mind long after other things have forgotten. At Depot, we did a lot, in fact, spent a lot of time on this. Personally, I would spend every Sunday afternoon writing notes to hourly associates. So for us customers.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then they'd go, Oh my gosh, Frank knows that the project isn't working. I guess we better say something. And so that would actually prompt a conversation. While if you said, how's everything going in any organization of any size there's only one right answer when the boss says, how's everything going? The answer is it's going great. You're awesome. Please go. pull out from people You know every once in a while somebody would say, why do you say it's not working? Great, but more often than not it would be, oh, well, here's what's not happening here are the issues.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's one of the most important things. So I have a long discussion around what the inverted pyramid means. But one of the things it means is that everything that's important, as the CEO, everything that's important is happening above you. With the customers and the frontline associates and the folks who work in the organization. So you've got to figure out a way to effectively listen and effectively get them to communicate to you. I learned actually from a board member at Home Depot this may be more unique to retail to doing this, but it worked. The best way to do that is if I was walking in a store and we had a particular project, my comment would be why isn't Project X working?”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is, people are just going to respond to you the way they think you want them to respond. So eliciting the kind of reaction that Jack did for me, which was, hey, it's okay actually to disagree with the boss. You damn well better be right. But it's a good thing to disagree with the boss is huge.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Somehow Jack got the sense within me that the path to success in the company was actually to disagree with him and be right. And that's huge because, and he would say this, I express, wow, that's so amazing in retrospect, Jack, that's so amazing. And he'd say, well, I really don't need to pay people to tell me I'm right. I need to pay people who are going to tell me where I'm wrong. But organizations are such echo chambers. And Bernie Marcus gave me a great piece of advice. He gave me tons of pieces of advice that were terrific. But I remember one of them at the start of becoming CEO. Bernie said, okay, let me tell you how this works. You're going to be sitting around a table and you're going to tell a joke. And all the folks are going to laugh. And he said, let me tell you, you're not funny.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he wasn't doing it on a kind of percentage tell me who lags and who's ahead. It was more individual by individual tell me. Describe for me their strengths and weaknesses. Go through it. And what I would say, what Jack did that particularly impresses me in retrospect because it's so hard to do. So I go into GE as a lawyer. GE is a finance engineering firm. Lawyers are, I mean, you know, we had a great legal team, but still, the lawyers are not at the top of the organizational pecking order.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the great questions were first how are you organized? I mean, because that tells a lot about what your priorities are. And second, he'd be asking about people. And I'd find myself in some instances kind of making excuses and saying, well, you know, blah, blah, blah, but not really. And then he'd just say, I mean, did you hear what you just said? What are you going to do about it? It wasn't his commentary on these people. He didn't even know them. But listening to his feeding back to me what I was saying and then saying, hey, look, you're not smart enough to do this on your own. So if you're going to do this and be successful, you've got to get the right team with you.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the eighth year, so my last time, I get to ask the question that's sort of the moron stupid question that you wouldn't dare ask earlier because you wouldn't be able to get the next meeting with Jack. So I go, okay, Jack. All of the attributes of leadership. If you had to weigh them all and pick one, what is the single most important attribute of leadership? And his answer shocked me. He said, generosity. And I wouldn't have predicted it. It kind of took me by surprise when he said it. And then when he explained it and explained how as leaders, you need to be fueled by the success of others and how that's really got to be the driving force. And I could see that as true for how he ran GE. It made a lot of sense and it stuck with me ever since as a great lesson.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the first thing he says is draw me your org chart. And we spend a day going through people. And it was probably one of the most helpful days of my time because, you know, and I recommend this for anybody, anywhere. If you find somebody that you really respect who will ask you questions and then you just listen to what you're saying, and in effect, he did that for me on the organization and the people. And then every year I do the same thing. I'd spend a day with Jack every single year. And this is jumping ahead, but I love the story so much.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this is an arc. So I become CEO of the Home Depot. I think, all right, I'm going to call Jack and I'm going to ask him for some time and kind of give me CEO 101 lessons, of which I did, and he was very nice. He was down in Florida at the time. I said, Jack, can I spend a day with you and, you know, kind of pick your brains? And he said, great. And mind you, I have done hundreds of pitches to Jack in my time at GE and I prepared so hard for this meeting with him. I could tell you the margin rate of an ant trap. I mean, I was just into all the details, all the numbers, and I go down.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Early on, and then I ended up as a direct report for Jack. Jack Welch is, I mean, the founders of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, Ken Langone, Arthur Blank, they're extraordinary people, Jack Walch is an extraordinary human being. One of the ways I would describe it is I would never take a phone call from him sitting down. The energy just immediately you stood up to provide an answer to Jack. And just, I've got a lot of, he was hugely helpful to me while I was the CEO at Home Depot, got a lot of stories around Jack. He's a hero.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I don't know that we had a lot of discussion around it, but it was clear that I was not. I just was becoming increasingly unhappy on the legal side. And while I'm not sure everybody, my family wasn't thrilled to be moving to, you know, we lived in Albany, but to be moving to upstate New York, they wrote in with it.”
2018-03-15 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT