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

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“Get better, to actually be really good at conflict and to use debate very constructively so that it's producing something good and reducing unnecessary conflict”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's all kinds of different tools, and there's three dimensions to this. There's the organizational high performance, team high performance, and then there's individual high performance. And I think you're honing in on the team component of that. So when you're trying to optimize a team, there's all kinds of tools on self-assessment. So whether using Myers-Briggs, HBDI, disk, and we used most of them in that work, where you're helping people understand what makes them tick, and then you're sharing that with the team and helping the team understand what each person's bringing to the table and how they're wired so that you can optimize the collective work. There's some really interesting work at the Harvard Negotiation Project where they have done a lot of research on difficult conversations and they have a number of models there. You basically had the people at Harvard who teach about how to optimize a negotiation, turning those tools into things that teams and companies can use.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This problem, and then they're creating a new business that actually creates the next career path for themselves. So there's plenty of personal benefit and collective benefit in that. And I just became kind of a student of how do you unlock that to chase this big opportunity?”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We would be looking at new strategic space trying to figure out How could PWC win in a new business? And the other part of the experiment was we'd take these teams of Really talented global leaders from different countries and different disciplines across the company. And we would experiment with that deliberately varied diverse team against hard problem. And so it was a dream job because I was analytically helping those folks pick apart the problem with the top leaders in our company as mentors and advisors, but then I'm also coaching them on how to deal with the inevitable conflict you have with a team with such cross cultural diversity, different perspectives, quirks, all kinds of stuff that you need to analytically figure out how we win. And then how do you help these humans win? And how do you help prevent them from killing each other? But actually pivot that conflict into an economic force where they're actually benefiting from all of that difference and they're using that debate and they're harnessing all of their strengths against”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“True. And she said, Who's Jen? I don't know what you're talking about. And I said, Oh, this is really interesting. And I was working at 20th in K in Washington, D.C. at the time. And I said, where's the job? She said, well, they're building the institute in D.C. And it said nineteenth in K. And anyway, sometimes this happens when you get a moment of clarity in your life that it just clicks and it absolutely clicked. I met the PWC folks. They're incredibly analytical, totally open minded, thinking really big, very focused on innovation, and it was the perfect place for me to go because it was just on the cutting edge.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With Italy Management Lens? Am I sitting in an HR function with a strategic lens? And I said, you know, I bet it's an HR function. I have no idea who's working on this in the world, but there's got to be somebody because it's just so obvious. It's not like it's that big of an insight. And she said, okay, great. So you should go do that. And I said, yes. And she said, write it down. And I wrote it down in a piece of paper. And I kid you not a week later, I got a call from a headhunter. And this person said, I'm recruiting for a role for PricewaterhouseCoopers, the professional services firm, and I'm looking for someone who speaks strategy and understands coaching because our CEO wants to build a very innovative approach to leadership development that incubates new businesses, drives the corporate strategy of the firm, develops our finest leaders from all around the world, and helps them unlock themselves and unlock the potential of our company. And I said, are you friend of Genesis?”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And she said, Because you're more excited about the retirement phase of your plan than your actual career. And just because you could be a CEO doesn't mean you should be a CEO. Try again. And I said, oh, all right. Let me try again. So I said, okay. Another way to look at this is I'm looking at this data and these trends and I'm looking at the opportunity of HR human capital talent management. And I think this is ready to be disrupted. You could solve the human problem and you could actually unlock a tremendous amount of performance in virtually every company on the face of the earth. And she said, okay, now that's interesting. You look fired up about that. What's the job? And I said, I have no idea. Does that mean I'm, am I sitting in a corporate strategy function?”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of tools that my mom and HBS have exposed me to that you could use to help people do that. When I had that conversation with her, she looked at me and said, oh, that's a terrible plan. And I said, I'm sorry. How is that a terrible plan?”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“the potential of your workforce and the dominant part of your market value if you're a public company is intangible in the markets assessment of your ability to outperform over a long period of time. Why aren't we more scientific about trying to solve that problem? And I'm sitting in consulting firm saying, ooh, I really want to solve that problem. I think I finally figured this out. I remember having a conversation with my wife that night and I said, God, I think I got my space. And she said, okay, great. So what do you want to do with the rest of your career? And I said, well, I think I'm a good consultant. I'm actually a good leader. I take it really seriously. I probably have a shot of becoming a CEO in this industry. I think I'd be a good CEO. And then when I retire, we should start a leadership institute together as a couple, and we should go help people live up to their potential. We could do that in communities that really need that help because most people don't live up to their potential. And there's this whole toolbox.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“that virtually every company on earth does these surveys where you're asking someone, are you not engaged in your job, mildly engaged in your job Highly engaged in your job. And so obviously the goal should be we're all in the right jobs, we're fired up, ready to go, we're passionate, and we're not leaving anything on the table. That should be the goal for everyone. Only 20% of people rate themselves in that category. So I looked at that as someone who's trained in economics and said, okay, this is an 80% failure rate. Something is not working in the world of talent management if most people are not in a job where they feel fired up and ready to go. As an economist, I'd also look at a third. Let's throw a third number at this. The intangible value of the market value of companies is like seventy or eighty percent. And most of that value is about the markets perception of your talent and your culture and your ability to continue to create value for a long period of time. So if you have an 80% failure rate in maximizing”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go into consulting. And the interesting thing that happens in consulting was I'm swimming in data, I'm looking at things analytically, and I'm noticing other interesting patterns. So there's a lot of research on the failure rate of corporate strategies, and there's a lot of research on employee engagement. Two of the numbers that in that moment where these big light bulb moments where, okay, so the failure rate of most new corporate strategies is roughly 70% and all the studies that have been done on this. Why? Almost always the root cause of that failure is about talent decisions about culture, about humans not wanting to go in a different direction, and the company's inability to solve that human problem. And then when you look at employee engagement, and we have rich data sets on this, and all those studies showed that when you measure employee engagement, which is a self-assessment,”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting, what if I could find a job where I was doing that 100% of the time? That might be like the best job in the world and the best career in the world. But in that era of HBS and I graduated twenty odd years ago, there weren't any HR classes. HR was not seen as a profession to anyone from HBS would ever go into, and HR functions had been positioned as administrative, not strategic. And I wasn't exposed to opportunities in that space, but I had in the back of my mind boy, that would make a lot of sense. Like, I've got to figure this out at some point, what drives successful businesses and what drives successful humans to their highest levels of performance. I should have had this hypothesis in the back of my mind, I just didn't know how to find it, just like with my advisor in college, it was kind of dancing around the sweet spot. Same thing happened when I was graduating from HBS, and I did what most HBS grads do, which is”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The biggest observation I had was as someone well trained by my mother to be interested in what makes people tick, is I noticed this pattern across the CEOs who came to visit our classroom. And the pattern was they tended to land on human capital, talent, and culture as the most important part of their job and the most fulfilling part of their job, and particularly some of the retired CEOs would say My legacy, my impact, the long game part of my work was talent and culture because that stuff could live on or those people I developed would thrive for many years to come and I feel proud of that and that's created sustainable value in my company the most sustainable impact. And the best CEOs would say and I spend an entire day every week focused on these issues. And I remember sitting in those classrooms saying, God, that sounds just so.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I definitely had a different background than most of my classmates, which I think is part of the magic of any business school, certainly is the magic of HBS. So I was soaking in just as many lessons from my classmates and seizing the opportunity to say, okay, what's it really like to work in investment banking? Okay, what's it really like to work in McKinsey? Okay, what's it really like to work at Procter& Gamble in Hungary? And you're picking up all those lessons and it's just giving you this great perspective. And then at HBS, in two years you're doing five hundred cases. And so you're getting exposed to every possible type of business. And then the other great privilege is you're meeting incredible business leaders. And so I was directly doing cases with some of the most renowned CEOs of all time in my classroom with eighty people, debating them about their own business, which is such an extraordinary experience and such a privilege to be part of it.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're sitting at business school with a different prior work history and a different call it meta objective of where you want to get potentially than a lot of the people around you. How did you think about using that experience to pivot to where you've gotten today?”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Relationships in multi dimensional ways. And then the third thing is it's a long game. So in trade negotiations, the decisions you're making will resonate and reverberate for decades. And sometimes it takes years to get deals done, which is pretty frustrating when you're in the middle of it. But if you realize you're working a long game and your goal is to in our case to benefit US companies to help them thrive, but also to do good things for the global economy if you believe in free trade, that would be net beneficial more broadly, that taking the time and putting in the energy so that you could hardwire those changes for decades to come and create economic benefit to lots and lots of people? I always went into those meetings when I was frustrated about the short term, trying to remind myself of it's a long game.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a rule of threes person, so I'll try to articulate it in three. Number one is preparation. These are very complicated negotiations because you're looking at all kinds of economic factors, you're looking at growth rates, you're looking at what could possibly be mutually beneficial. You're trying to understand who you're sitting across the table with. We wanted to go into those discussions knowing everything, every possible facet inside and out. What wonderful training as a twenty two twenty three twenty four year old? The second thing was building strong relationships with the folks on the other side of the table. So getting to know them, breaking bread with them, building the good will that you knew you were going to need when it got down to the finer points that were going to be the toughest. Because every negotiation would kind of live or die on those finer hard points. And so investing in the relationship was incredibly important and thinking about those.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I knew that wasn't my long-term calling. It was just a chapter. And then went to business school, hoping that being exposed to other additional ideas and broadening my perspective would lead me to the ultimate path.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out of college I immediately went to grad school at the London School of Economics. I was really interested in trade and the psychology of trade negotiations. I wrote a thesis about that when I was at LSE and then a number of things fell into place where I ended up working in DC at the US Department of Commerce as a junior international trade negotiator, which meant that I was in the room for some really pivotal moments that were happening during that era, the birth of the WTO, China joining the WTO, the introduction of the euro currency, being part of that and soaking that up and learning a lot about negotiation and about the art of the deal, what did other countries want? What did the US want? What was the common ground of those positions? And how did you figure out how to do that? I found riveting, spent four years doing that.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A couple of insights. One was I just thought economics assumed rationality and that didn't really make sense. So there had to be like a twist on economics that I was really curious about. The other observation as I reflect back in it, when I took Psych 101, the difference between my mother's passion and my own was she was very focused on restoring people to health. And looking back at it, I realized, oh, my vocation's much more helping healthy people perform at the highest possible levels.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not in the most linear way. When I got to college, I immediately sat down with my advisor and talked to him about this, and I said, thinking about double majoring in economics and psychology. And he looked at me and he said, oh, that's not a thing. And unfortunately, maybe I asked that question in the wrong era I was just talking to the wrong person. Oftentimes reflect on that and wish I had discovered behavioral economics or organizational psychology when I was 18, but I didn't. That conversation led me to”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I learned those two languages. I'm equally passionate about those two things, and I kind of operate in the intersection of those two worlds.”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's not the most linear path, like most people I think are shaped by my parents. I kind of consider my vocation being developed out of that Venn diagram of my two parents. So my father was an entrepreneur and my mother's a therapist. And he instilled in me a passion for business, a passion for problem solving, how you grow a business, the challenges of growing a business, and the curiosity about what makes businesses tick, how you get it right, how you get it wrong. And my mom instilled in me the curiosity of psychology. What makes human beings tick? How do we help this person get better? She still laughs about giving me Myers Briggs when I was ten years old and talking about the treatment programs of her patients and she literally like bounce ideas off of me as a kid. I was my father's permanent intern every weekend and I was like her thought partner in therapy. And I think in many ways my career is simply that I”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My guest on today's show is Matt Reitfelder, a partner in global head of human capital at Apollo Global Management, where he focuses on attracting and developing extraordinary talent and creating an innovative, high-performance culture. Matt previously served as chief talent officer and member of the operating committee at BlackRock and as the co-author of numerous Harvard Business School case studies on leadership. Our conversation covers Matt's upbringing at the intersection of business and psychology, lessons from high-stakes negotiations working for the U.S. Department of Commerce, and is passed to a career focusing on the intersection of business performance and unlocking human potential. Along the way, we discuss techniques to optimize teams, individuals, and organizations that maps employed at BlackRock and Apollo, and close discussing how to apply these tools to smaller organizations and to”
2023-06-26 · Capital Allocators · Matt Breitfelder – Optimizing Investment Performance through Human Capital (Capital Allocators, EP.323) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source