YouSaid · the spoken record

Matt Breitfelder

lines on the record: 74
first: 2023-06-26
most recent: 2023-06-26
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

“Be very clear about how you want to show up in the world and don't over rotate on other people's opinions. It's important to take in the information of other people's opinions, but be driven by your own authentic formula as your North Star.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Veterans Administration working with vets on really hard issues like PTSD. And she always used to tell me I would pay them for this job. Like this is such a deep sense of purpose. From my mom, you know, she taught me that work should be a calling and you should have a deep sense of purpose. My father taught me much more of work is an obligation and a duty that you need to fulfill the right way. And I think both lessons were equally helpful.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father from Iowa, I think what he instilled in me which I use to this day is doing things properly, the midwestern humility and sensibility, and just like show up on time. Be on time, get things done, do things the right way. It's not about you. You're in service to something. I think that's what I took away from my father. My mom's from Sweden, and so she always taught me to have a global perspective and open-minded perspective. She was raised by an immigrant carpenter who felt that his work was like the greatest calling of his life. And he instilled in me that you should find a job that gives you so much joy that you're thinking about it all the time, and that you live to practice that craft. And my mom found that same thing that her father had taught her as a therapist, and she was a therapist in the”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In my career and in my life at the pivotal moment, and she has this very unusual gift of warmth and care, and I know that she has my back, but also holding me to a higher bar than anyone else in my life and challenging my thinking. And I'm so grateful to her for that. But that mix I also learn a lot from her and want to role model what I see in her that she's so good at”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two people that stand out. When I was growing up, my best friend's father had a really interesting career where he tried a bunch of different things, and he landed on his calling at the age of sixty three as a Jungian therapist. And he was one of the older dads, and so he had already discovered this when I was growing up, and he would give me Myersbriggs tests and other things and say Matt, my one gift to you is I want to help you discover what really fits you so that you get energy from it and you can skip all the mistakes that he made to find it earlier. And that was such a great gift in my teenage years to have someone teaching me that and helping me see that and helping me find that and making it very clear that that was the goal. I'd say the second person is my wife, Jen. She helped me unpack what I really wanted to do.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the investment side, my biggest pet peeve is following the crowd. I'm trained well at Apollo. We're contrarians. The crowd is usually not interesting”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am obsessed with music. My father is an amateur jazz musician. I grew up in Chicago, so I spent my whole childhood seeing the greats, so I find music incredibly relaxing. I love improvisational music. My father's eighty four years old. He plays a Monday night gig in an Irish pub in Chicago every Monday night. He is the youngest member of his band. And he's a great inspiration to me. I'm not particularly skilled at playing, but I'm seriously considering attempting to improve my skill because it gives me great joy to be around music listening to music, participating music. So I thank my father for that gift.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“performing over and over and over again like Pete would say win forever? Okay if you want to be in the win forever business all of this stuff is on the table”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But if you have debate but not psychological safety, there's a lot of wasted energy. So some of this is about energy management. And how do you redirect that energy that could be wasted because you're triggering something psychologically in someone that's not being spent helping the team optimize or helping us invest better and better and better? I'm really interested in that. How do I reallocate that energy and move it from fight or flight or whatever is happening to something much more productive? So it comes back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And a lot of people in the investing world would say, that's just warm and fuzzy. What does that have to do with anything? I'm talking about hard things. You can reframe that and say, actually, what we're talking about today is about the hard stuff, not the soft stuff. Like, this is actually really hard. And if you care about being great, and if you care about being one of the best of all time, and if you care about”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“to understand what really drives performance. And Google's been a pioneer of this. Prasad said he at Google has taught me a lot about this. So they ran studies where at Google there's a project called Project Oxygen where their hypothesis was maybe managers are so bad we should just eliminate the role. So let's test what are the characteristics of a great manager and does it even matter? And they found what I think we'd expect them to find which is a great coder reporting to a good manager if you move them to a bad manager their performance collapses. So this actually really matters. And the number one thing in their study was managers who know how to coach, who play chess, not checkers, get better results. Their other study was called Project Aristotle, which was about what are the characteristics of a high performing team? Psychological safety must be inherent for a team to fulfill its total potentials for performance. Seems like an object.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm looking at sports psychology. I'm looking at what's happening in the valley. I'm looking what's happening in the professional services firms because you're getting interesting information there. A friend of mine runs something called the neuroleadership institute. He's doing a lot of brain research and high performance. And his name is David Rock. I really respect his work because there's a lot of science on feedback. Feedback is the breakfast of champions, but poorly delivered feedback oftentimes makes performance worse, not better, because we know how humans react. And if you're not tuning into that individual human and you're treating it like an engineering problem, you're just as likely to make performance worse, not better. So those insights are really important. And if we're scientific about it, we can actually crack it because it's pretty straightforward. I think people analytics is a really helpful piece of this. So inside of companies, we're getting better at better at using our own.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As an investor, you're betting on those practices leading to outperformance. And then how does an individual stay sharp? How do your investors learn? What are your habits at those three levels? Because that's what you're investing in. And I think companies that are really good at this, and I've worked in some of the bigger ones, so at our scale, there's a number of these tools we can use. The smaller ones are really good at this because they take those things really seriously. An investor is betting on long-term outperformance. One of the other points I'd make is the toolbox is growing, but there's a lot of tools that can work. So I'm not that dogmatic about which tools you need in specific situations. The biggest question I'd be asking is, are you using tools or not using tools? And then which ones are you using tells you a lot?”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Having written a bunch of HBS cases, I guess I'd start by saying, so what did you learn from your employee survey? Like, what do you guys think you're really good at? What are your employees asking you to focus on next? And then you'll find out if they have a survey or they have a point of view or if they're balanced in their thinking. Are they seeing clearly what's working in their culture and what needs to evolve? Because that tells me a lot about the hygiene of the company and are they doing the work to make me comfortable as an investor that they understand that the goal is outperformance for decades and that we're a work in progress on that. So I'd be asking about at the three levels the organizational level, what are you doing as an organization to achieve outperformance over a long period of time? Like what are those practices? How do you run your investment teams? And how do you make sure you're mitigating your blind spots? How do your ICs work? Take me into that so I can understand your practices.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, in a smaller firm, you're not going to have a big HR team. You might even have an HR team at all. But the good news is everything I'm talking about is readily available to everyone. You know, these books that I've mentioned are easily accessible. For a firm that doesn't have an HR team, you got to use Executive Coaching. There's a number of amazing executive coaches out there who really understand asset management, who know our business, and can help you. Using 360s and employee surveys. In a small firm, you might say, oh, I don't need a survey because everyone just tells me all day long. You'd be surprised when they tell you.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, if you look at employee engagement surveys, everything correlates with the manager. So, what's happening in that person's day job is really important. So you're trying to balance these three things of the curiosity of the business so they can understand what we're trying to do and how we're trying to do it. Feeling the power of the culture regardless of what group you live in. And then three, this sense of, are we getting the team dynamic right? And I think you have to tend to that and I think it takes time.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It has a number of different elements. I think part of it is helping people understand how our business works. It's a complicated business. In some ways, it's getting more complicated. The world is changing, but people need to understand our business so, you know, it's obviously training them about that, but it's just exposing people to it. We really want people to work across the platform. And if you're working in credit, you got to understand the magic of private equity and vice versa. That's one piece. The second piece is culturally like the little things matter. The vibe we have in the cafeteria, the vibe we have in the coffee bar, the social events that we do, the ways in which we bring the team together so people can feel the power of wow, it's incredible to work with such smart, passionate people. So connecting people together on a human level, that's really important. And then I think the work that happens on a team is everything.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The golden rule is treat other people the way you want to be treated. Great way to live your life. Even better, especially as we're striving to be more and more diverse, the platinum rule is actually taking the time to understand what that person needs from you. Like, what do they need? How do they want to be treated? What drives them? What's their story? What's coming from their background and what they're contributing and how do you tailor your style as a manager to get the best out of that person for that person to feel like, okay, I belong here. I'm seen here. I can be authentic, be myself. And we love that at Apollo. We love difference. We love contrarians. We're still a small company. We're not that big. We can actually get this right. And as we become more global, we've got offices all around the world. And how do you create that culture in each place?”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obsessed with how to figure that out. Mark loves the Peter Drucker quote of culture each strategy for breakfast. So as CEO, he's incredibly focused on your exact question. We're hiring all these new areas of expertise as we grow. How do we make sure we're not diluting what's special about the place and the magic of our model and our winning formula? We wanted it to still feel like a small village where you have a personal touch, where you know your colleagues, where you care about your colleagues, where it feels like a small company, but where we can take on some of the hardest, biggest investment challenges in the world. And how could both things be true? And I think a lot about personal touch, I think a lot about P. Carroll's concept of I need to learn the learner. I need to learn what makes this person tick, which reminds me so much of what my mom taught me. And it's actually not the golden rule. It's a higher bar than that.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's humbling, just like the Marshall Goldsmith of what got you here and got you there. How do we need to change and how do we need to evolve and what's missing from the culture that would make it stronger and better? And if our goal is we want to be the best place to work in this space, we want to be the best in the world at what we do. We want to be the best place to be a partner in financial services. The other thing is when I joined, we had roughly a thousand employees at Apollo, and today we have over 2,500. We've attracted incredible people with new ideas, and that's been great for the culture, especially in these new businesses where we needed more expertise. That's really exciting because you can harness all of that new energy and those new ideas into the co-creation process.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, it's been an amazing run. I think merging with Athene and creating a whole new approach to the industry, bringing together alternatives asset management and retirement services with Mark Rowan, our CEO's vision for the industry and for Apollo has been amazing because his vision for the future and how much we could grow in private credit and capital solutions and all of these new areas under the Venn diagnostram between what Apollo is great at, Mark has a very clear sense of where he sees the puck going in the industry and where he wants Apollo to focus. And my job is to use all these tools to say, okay, great. How do we get the right people focused on that and then how do we optimize at that company level, team level and individual level that we've got people fired on all cylinders that were co-creating the culture that the next generation will thrive in.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As long as you do the work, as long as you're prepared, as long as you approach those conversations in the right way, as long as you keep an open mind that we're going to figure out the answer together, it's almost like a deal team mindset of how we crack these hard investment problems. The Talent Culture problems can be approached in exactly the same way. And I think that's worked really well.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think both had reputations for being challenging. And I think Larry had always been tough on HR and Scott's. I just saw that as an interesting challenge. And to say, wow, what an incredible track record. How do you achieve such great results? I want to help them figure out how do you keep evolving, what's missing in the culture, what is the next generation want? How is the industry changing? How is our business model changing? And I found an incredible group of people who were just so smart, so collaborative, so used to solving problems and debating things together and co-creating. So the co-creation point was really natural coming to Apollo and really high bar that you got to know what you're talking about. You got to be able to have real conviction at one of our values at Apollo is challenge convention. You know, our coffee bar is called the contrarian cafe. We love people with different ideas. We love people who are challenging our thinking. So when I figured that out about the culture, I said, oh, this is great because I'm challenging the thinking. And that's respect.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just like at BlackRock, need to see the data, need to see it actually work. The theory is kind of interesting. The impact is what we're looking for. I was just exhilarated by the opportunity to work with the folks at Apollo and take a run at this.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Been at BlackRock for eight years, we'd build something really special. I had a great run there. I think I was just ready for my next challenge and I had learned this work at PWC. I'd help build it with AJ at MasterCard. I'd help build it at BlackRock. I wanted to do it again. And I was really attracted to Apollo and the alternative space. What an extraordinarily smart group of people. And I felt like the alternatives industry's been late to this. So as management was late and I think Altz was also late as a group of companies. And I felt like, okay, after eight years at BlackRock, I think I've learned how to do this. This is a different business model, but it's in the same kind of family. You're applying human capital tools in service of grain investment performance and great commercial performance. And I found my colleagues at Apollo really open minded, much more humble than I would have expected in alternatives.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Happens to every company, it happens to every team, and it happens to every human. So if we know that happens and we're fighting against that every single day, and when you look at good to great in that study, and there's been a number of other studies and they basically show the same thing, is you want to create a flywheel that's constantly challenging and constantly reinventing. And when Collins looked at the behaviors underneath that, he's basically showing that the behaviors they saw in the CEOs and the leaders who outperformed over decades, the thing he isolated was fierce resolve and humility together. I think you just see in the highest performing people where they're more open than their peers because they're looking for where the edge is going to come from. And I think having worked in asset management for 10 plus years now, I think the best investors are obsessed with investing, but they're also obsessed with team construction and the tools of optimizing a team.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anything we're talking about in coaching. P Carroll, you're either winning the games or you're not winning the games. And any business has a scorecard of that. In investing, we have a very clear scorecard. And just like in sports, I think what you're trying to do is to optimize the controllable factors and try to reduce your stress on the non-controllable factors. Surprise, surprise, a team that's firing at all cylinders and it's really working and has really good constructive conflict. In my experience you just saw better invest in performance over and over again. I'm a big fan of Jim Collins' Good to Great. The goal for any company is outperformance over a long period of time. That book is so interesting because even though it's a bit twenty years ago or something, the concept is really durable because the goal of any company is to outperform over a long period of time. And reversion to the mean is an almost unstoppable force.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you translate the improvements in how the team is functioning and the perceptions of how they feel about the team to performance in BlackRock's case in the public markets, where it's not clear that the stocks and bonds are talking to the team and how they're functioning?”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Accept it and to be treated with care and respect and clarity that they don't want to go in that from to, or that doesn't really work for them. They can't do their best work in that. What I'm trying to do as a coach is create a real sense of clarity, of caring that I care about these people. I want them to succeed my intention is to help them do the best work of their lives and to figure out how do they do that here? How do they do that on that team in this company”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're saying, hey, it's okay to be stuck. That happens to all of us, normalize it. I think another important part of this is clarity. When people are struggling, they can get stuck in that emotion. And I think our job as coaches is to say, okay, okay, let's honor that emotion. Let's listen to that emotion. But what's underneath that? Where is that coming from? What are you actually worried about? Ron Heifitz, who wrote Adaptive Leadership has this wonderful phrase of like, you need to get on the balcony. So if you get on the balcony of what's happening, you're in the play. When you're in the play, it's kind of hard to see it. The task of anyone in a struggling team is how do I get on the balcony and try to look at this objectively from an arm's length perspective? Clarify it, and then be really clear about are people willing to do the work and sign up for what we all agree needs to happen or not. And then even if there's people on the team where it's not going to work out or that person's struggling and they're just not a fit for a team or a fit for the company, if you do that work in the right way, they're the first people to understand that.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then six to 12 months later, you do the survey again, and they tell you how it's going, keep yourself really honest about it. You're normalizing that we're all a work in progress and we're actually trying to be the best in the world at what we're doing. And that's really hard.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What are people validating that you should double down on? And what are people asking you to change? Don't ever focus on more than three things maximum because you need to be able to walk around thinking about it all day long and staying really open. Do the work of change. Ask people for suggestions and then six months, twelve months later, take another 360 and you either improve the perception or you didn't. Really helpful information. On an employee survey, very similarly, people will tell you, especially if they trust you and you keep the results confidential, they'll tell you exactly what they're thinking. And you can see on an employee survey which teams appear to be struggling and which ones don't. And you can hone in where you see the team that's struggling. Why is that team struggling? What is going on in that team where they're not optimizing what they're capable of? And you go in and you reset it, you get the team to recommit to a new direction.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two tools that work for every company on Earth are an annual employee engagement survey and three hundred sixty feedback. And it sounds obvious. The employee survey is when your people tell you what they think is working, what's not working, and whether you agree with what they're saying or not, you should show them the respect to listen to that information and sit with it and really understand where they're coming from so you can be deliberate about the changes you want to make. And then 360 feedback is what are your peers and colleagues who work most closely with you? What are they seeing that works and doesn't work? And I'm a big believer in, let's keep this really simple. How about pre and post three hundred sixty and how about pre and post employee survey? Great thing about both things is they flag the perceptions of people, which may not be a reality you agree with, but those are perceptions. That's really important and helpful information. So if an individual needs to change and they get a 360, come out of that 360.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd love to have you walk through an example of a team, a business unit that you worked with that wasn't working, that you saw through to some type of measurable impact, because ultimately this business is about performance.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“kept us honest because these things had to be really commercial and really focused and really tailored. So I was really good at the toolbox and always looking for new tools and testing new tools. But the business leaders cared about the company and wanted to make it better.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They'll either work or they don't work, but if they work we'll use them more and if they don't work we'll try something else. This industry has such smart people who are open-minded, but they're also really skeptical, so it's a high bar. And like anyone, they have to use these tools, work with them, try them, and see for themselves that they work. And then you create a poll, and then they're your greatest advocates. So I think if anything, what I really learned there was this was all about co-creation. We didn't build anything alone. We had an incredible HR team. We attracted incredible HR talent who all wanted to be part of that because they could feel that we were doing something pioneering and different. Every single project we did was co sponsored by the DPHR expert and a business leader who got it, who was interested in it, who was open minded about it, who cared about it, who wanted to do something in that space, and was willing to experiment with us. So everything was co-created, which also”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The great thing about BlackRock is its founder-led company. They had had a winning formula. I think part of BlackRock's story is about M and A. So I think like most startups, they were skeptical about HR and skeptical about what we're talking about. And that skepticism is actually really helpful in a way because there's a really high bar to say, okay, BlackRock's been really successful. Why do they need to do any of this? Because it's basically working. I think the team at BlackRock became more and more open because as they were buying these big companies and integrating them, I think it became clear that the challenges were new and different in scaling required other tools. And I think it created more openness. This skepticism, I think, is one of their superpowers. So I embraced that skepticism and said, okay, great. Let's look at these spots where you know you need help and it's not working and we need to optimize. And let's just try some tools.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of work and we should help each other introduce these tools because they're really good for the industry and they're only going to make these companies more and more successful.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the same era. So they just weren't exposed to it. And that's surprising and interesting, but it's also an unbelievable opportunity. And I put my energy around, okay, if I'm the first person to introduce some of these ideas, I'm happy to do that. What a privilege because these tools will knock their socks off because they work, not because I'm special or I'm doing anything particularly special. I'm just playing the role of coach and trying to understand what the company really needs, what drives it, and then say, okay, which tools might work for this particular strategy or this particular culture or this particular situation. And I've certainly banded together with the progressive innovative HR leaders and coaches all across as a management since the day I started in this industry because I just want to spend time with the people that are trying to do the same type.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After PWC I spent five years at MasterCard for their CEO transition when Ajibanga took over, and that was a big transformation in an industry that was more tech and financial services and working with AJ to help optimize that culture and drive more innovation which he was spectacularly successful at, and he now just took over the World Bank, where I'm sure he'll do great things as well. It was a really good bridge into asset management. To your point, everything we're talking about is in relatively recently introduced in asset management. I found it really interesting that asset management was so late in considering these tools. And that's frustrating in a way because it's so surprising for such smart people in this industry to not be thinking about this. I think the fact that HBS and Wharton and Stanford and all the top business schools have also been laid to it didn't help because most of the leaders of these firms were educated.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Asset management has long had the mantra that money managers may not be good people managers. How did you find your way from doing this in a real business where leadership and management tends to be more valued than we've seen historically in asset management?”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you don't, that's not good. But I think Pete's idea is if that person feels psychologically safe, then they accept the coaching. They know exactly what they need to get done. And if they know I have their back, and if they're doing the work on self-talk and all of these other techniques to clear your mind and get yourself into peak performance mode, then I don't want to leave anything on the table. And so I'm so inspired by that space and there's other coaches that have other techniques. But if in the corporate world we have an 80% failure rate of people rating themselves a five, why wouldn't I be in that space to try to equip every single person who works in our company with the tools that work for them and the customization and personalization is really important because we're all unique humans, we all have different drivers and strengths. You have to honor that and respect that and focus on that if you really want to help that human.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sports psychologist, Tim Galway, who wrote the Inner Game of Tennis, and Michael Murphy who wrote The Kingdom of Golf. And if you look at those books, those are about clarifying your mindset, having a system, being really disciplined around that system, and understanding that the mental game and the inner game, as Tim describes so well in his work, is just as important as the physical side. I think Pete has set up a system with the Seahawks that is all about competing at the highest levels for a long period of time. So if anything, my job and the task of HR is how do I help a company outperform over a long period of time?”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Over the years since I graduated HBS, one of my bucket list ideas was to co author a case. And since I graduated, I've co-authored probably 20 cases and it's just been a passion project as a hobby more than anything else to just keep my thinking fresh. And I recently worked with a professor named Ranji Gulati on a case on P. Carroll. And I have a lot of respect for Pete. And he's been a real pioneer. He's been one of the most successful coaches in history. He's one of the few that's won a national championship in football and a Super Bowl. But he also had a really interesting journey and reflected a lot on his failures, was famously fired by the Patriots and replaced by Bill Belichick and coming out of that he really clarified his philosophy. He was inspired by John Wooden, who I think was one of the pioneers in this space. Pete also learned a lot from two of the icons.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who are really successful but plateau they often plateau because the confidence and ambition that got them there is exactly what holds them back from progressing any further. And Marshall Goldsmith has contributed a lot to this space. In his book What Got You Here Won't Get You There I think captures this really well, which is the curse of successful people of congratulations you made it. But if you want to keep deepening your craft, you actually have to push into harder territory and do harder personal work. Feedback is a breakfast of champions. Ask for more feedback and use more tools and put yourself in uncomfortable situations to get better and better and better. And I think sports psychology teaches us a lot about that peak performance issue of what are the habits that you need to keep pushing yourself and getting better at your craft.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What do I need to be the best? What career path fires me up the most? And then there's something about getting feedback and coaching on a constant basis. The great privilege of working in a job like this is you get to work with some of the most extraordinary successful people in the world. And I've noticed something about the most successful people. The most successful people have an unusual level of beginner's mind and humility because if they're at the frontier or edge of their profession or their craft, they know exactly what their gaps are, especially in investing, investing is a probabilistic game, so you're going to be wrong regularly. And those people are really hungry for what am I missing? What does my blind spot? What tool could I be using to get better? And they ask a lot of questions and they have this extra level of humility. You often see this pattern in rising stars.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On that first because going from an a minus to an a plus is where we should put all our energy. And going from a C to a B matters as well, depending on what your job is, but if you're a C at something, the path from C to A plus is really long, really hard, really steep, the path from A minus to A plus is usually really clear and not hard to find. So that's the starting point, but then I think there's a whole bunch of other tools available where you just root yourself and get the basics right. Let's think about when am I at my best?”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The great thing about the individual side is the toolbox gets bigger and bigger every single day. So I look at things as simple as taking Myers Briggs and thinking about how you're wired and the types of careers where you're wiring is helpful. Look at the career paths that those people tend to do, and you're going to be really excited about that list because it's natural. That's a very simple tool that's very profound. And when I'm coaching anyone, I always say read two books, do what you are, and strengths finder two point zero. When you take the strengths finder two point zero and I'm a big believer that we need to root ourselves in strengths more than anything. And I think the world of leadership development has moved from the heroic model of become a living God that's great at absolutely everything to a much more realistic model, which is we all have natural gifts, we all have natural spikes.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did this at PWC is change your location. Like just get out of that space. Because if the space is no longer productive, move to a different conference room. Move it outside. You got to get yourself into a context that is productive.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When any team gets stuck, what you're trying to do is shift the energy and reframe it. One of my signatures and my own personal style is I use humor a lot. It makes work more fun. It also helps disarm people. And sometimes you have to take that situation and just laugh about it. Are we really that fired up about this issue that doesn't really matter? And so that's probably my go-to move. Sometimes you just have to call a timeout and say, I think we're a little stuck. Let's go take a walk around the block. Let's come back in 15 minutes and let's just all recommit to shake that off. We actually did the same thing in government in those trade negotiations when you're stuck and it's getting heated. The strategic pause is helpful and you're actually just taking a break because it's no longer progressing. It's stuck and you got to shift the energy. Another move we did this in government.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a number of different tools. I think the book's called Difficult Conversations. It's about de escalating emotion and passion. Like there's a side that's dry. or all of your personal quirks and history and say, no, no, no, let's refocus that, which is totally understandable and very human and happens to all of us, and let's move it into a space that's much more constructive against the goal of the project, especially with a really diverse team, which is the whole thing all of us should be working to master in the world today.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source