Timestamped Overview

00:00 As CEO of Genentech, Bill fixed a structure that couldn’t get things done.

07:02 Introduced a leaner organizational model to Bayer employees.

10:56 How he constantly asks questions to encourage innovative solutions.

13:03 A leadership style that focuses on vision, architecture, catalysis, coaching.

15:39 Positive work environments are crucial for success.

21:11 Lessons learned from his soccer team’s phenomenal season that set new unbeaten record.

24:04 Technical skills are valuable in a career; management isn’t always necessary.

27:50 Early management adversity taught perseverance and leadership.

31:05 Transformative teams require trust, change, and self-sacrifice.

36:28 Boss’s role: serve employees, support decision-making.

39:36 Seek careers that serve and help others.

 

Full Transcript

Darren [00:00:02]:

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another exciting episode of one of one. I’m your host, Darren Gold. My guest today is Bill Anderson, the CEO of Bayer, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical and biotech companies. We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, starting with Bill’s pioneering work in radically rethinking how work gets done at scale. As CEO of Genentech Roche Pharma and now at Bayer, we talk about the sacred nature of work, the role of faith in leadership, and the secret ingredient to extraordinary leadership teams. We even touch on sports as Bayer celebrated its soccer team, Bayer Leverkusen, winning the german soccer championship earlier this year. This was a real treat for me, and I hope you enjoy my conversation with Bill Anderson. Bill, it’s so good to see you, and thank you so much for taking the time to be with me. I’m really looking forward to this conversation.

 

Bill [00:01:05]:

My pleasure, Darren. Yeah, we got, I think, 9 hours separating us in time zones, but it’s great to see you and have a chance to talk.

 

Darren [00:01:12]:

I know we’ll do a lot of catching up in this conversation, I think, as well. I wanted to take us back to 2017, which was a few months after you had taken on the role as CEO of Genentech, and you and I got professionally connected, at least for the first time. I think we had known each other prior to that. And I remember our first meeting, and I remember the conversation, and you had a very sort of an emerging view around the fact that something was broken in corporations today and a very radical, creative, innovative vision for fixing that. So I know we could probably spend our entire time talking about that, and I don’t want to because there’s so much more to you and your leadership, but I thought we’d start there. And if you wouldn’t mind sharing a little bit about what that vision was, how you actualized it at Genentech and Roche, and where you are today with what I think you call dynamic shared ownership at Bayer, and give us the sort of summary of that history would be really wonderful.

 

Bill [00:02:09]:

Yeah, it started for me when I became the CEO of Genentech, and I talked to people about how they perceive things, by the way, that the company had been incredibly successful, had gone from being a startup, was the first biotechnology startup in the world, and there we were, approaching 40 years later, and coming up on being the number one pharmaceutical company in America by sales. Pretty remarkable. And so I started asking people, well, what do you think we need to do next? And basically, people at every level, whether it was individual contributors, senior vice presidents. They said, yeah, love the company, love the mission, the science. The people are great. Can’t get anything done. We need to fix that and sort of like, oh, yeah, everything’s great, except we can’t get anything done. And if I had been brand new to the company, I might have thought, oh, let’s do some bureaucracy busting. But the problem was that I had been with the company at that point ten years, and I knew that during that time, we’d been doing nonstop bureaucracy busting. And so it’s kind of like, whoa, what do you do? And that became a, well, it led to a journey of trying to figure out, has anyone got a way out of this? I read these studies that suggest that in large organizations, the impact that people are able to make is somewhere between 30 and 50% of what they’re capable of doing. And the difference between the 30 and the 50 is just how well is the organization managed? And I was like, wow, you mean, if I do my best that I could create with the people I’m working with, we could create an environment where people can contribute half of what they’re capable of. Wow, is that good enough? So that began about a seven year journey. A lot of experiments, a lot of new approaches. We killed budgets. We cut out. Sometimes people cut out a layer. We cut out multiple layers. Spans of control. People talked about span of control of five to seven. Now, at Bayer, we’re implementing in some parts of our company span of control of 30, a 50. And you can imagine when you do that, you have to have a whole different system. But the bottom line is you build an organization around the customer, around the product, around the science, rather than building an organization around charts and functions and departments. That’s one, two, you put 95% of decisions in the hands of the people doing the work. So a lot of people think, oh, empowerment means the CEO doesn’t make the decision. The next layer down does. Or it’s two layers down. No, no, no. Empowerment means the people doing the work make the decision. So in order to do that, you got to have a whole different construct for how work gets done. So that, in a nutshell, that’s what it’s all about, Trey.

 

Darren [00:05:28]:

So you did that as CEO of Genentech. I know you then moved to the CEO of Roche Pharmaceutical. Youre now CEO of Bayer. A little bit over a year, I think. What are you doing there? What have you discovered thats new or different? And how has it gone over the last year?

 

Bill [00:05:43]:

Well, what I found when I joined Bayer was a lot of the things that you really want to look for in a company, great people, great scientists, engineers, problem solvers, some amazing technology, intellectual property in pharmaceuticals, in crop science, in consumer health products. I mean, these are all really important areas as well in terms of meeting the needs of the world. So that’s all great. A real mission commitment. I’ve been in companies where, frankly, all the leaders cared about was making money, and all the people below them cared about, really, was surviving the culture and getting to the weekend. They’re very earnest people, very concerned about their customers, about feeding the world, about curing cancer. These are about making sure that people in poorer countries actually have access to the consumer health solutions that we take for granted. So that’s all beautiful. And if the story stopped there, you know, well, it would just be all, yeah, an easy path.

 

Darren [00:06:59]:

They probably wouldn’t need you if the story stopped there.

 

Bill [00:07:02]:

Yeah, I guess so. What I heard from people when I joined was kind of similar to what I heard, what I described in the earlier role. People just said, it’s too hard to get anything done here. You know, the level of bureaucracy, the number of different people I have to go through to get something done, to get approval, to get permission, to try to figure out what the rules are. And so basically, everyone I talked to, I said, hey, I think there’s a different way to do this. And basically, people said, bring it on. Let’s do it. And so we are attempting to do this. Something that’s a. That’s been built into some organizations from the ground up, like when they were founded, people did this instead of building out the normal bureaucracy, did something very different. There’s a company in the Netherlands that has 16,000 employees and has two managers. Okay? So that they started that way. There’s a company called hire in China. It’s a massive company, like 100,000 people. But they built this in not at the beginning, but along the way. They built out a new model, again, putting decision making with the people doing the work, putting the customer in the center, and organizing everything differently. And what we’re trying to do now at Bayer is to do this for a company of about 100,000 people, the whole company, all at once, with a system that we’ve enunciated. Here’s what it is. Here’s the elements of it. There’s a different leadership model. There’s a different way to do resource allocation. There’s different way to, how do people get performance feedback from peers instead of bosses? It’s all these elements we’re basically rolling all of this out in a pretty abbreviated period, 24 months total, something like that. We’re about nine months into it, maybe ten months now.

 

Darren [00:09:03]:

And it’s something just strikes me that it takes an enormous amount of courage and energy and discipline to take this vision and actually actualize it at scale. Given this is 150 plus year old company, what is it about Bill Anderson that got you to the place in 20 1617 where you get your first CEO role and you’re not only willing to, but you put a lot of your own effort and I stake into an initiative like this. Tell us a little bit about who you are, what makes you tick, and I think it requires a certain kind of leader and a certain type of person.

 

Bill [00:09:42]:

Well, I’ll tell you a little story.

 

Darren [00:09:44]:

Okay.

 

Bill [00:09:45]:

Do you know when you’re at some sort of a function, it could be like a church or a volunteer organization, and there’s a potluck supper where there’s a table and people put food on, everyone brings some food, and then there’s a line that forms and everyone stands there and wait to get through the line and, you know. Right.

 

Darren [00:10:05]:

Yeah.

 

Bill [00:10:06]:

I’m the kind of person, and I actually do this. And you may think this is really weird, but when that happens, I immediately I look and I see, you know, with the number of people waiting in this line and everyone’s sort of talking while they’re going through the line. You know, the program’s supposed to start in half an hour and we’re not even going to have. The line’s not even going to be through there in half an hour. So I’m the kind of person who goes, I tap someone on the shoulder, I say, come on, and we excuse ourselves and we move the table out from the wall so that people can go down both sides of the table. Okay, so I’ve always been a little nerdy that way. You might think, well, that’s not very socially acceptable or who appointed you to do that? And I’m kind of like, you know what? If there’s a better way to do it, we’re doing it.

 

Darren [00:10:54]:

And people tend to follow you.

 

Bill [00:10:56]:

Yeah. But I can tell you that this story is very much, it’s not about me because all I did was I got the job and I basically asked a lot of questions. Like, for example, I asked questions when I got that feedback seven years ago from people, hey, we can’t get anything done. I just kept bugging people about it. Like, what are we going to do about that? People say, well, we need to. You know, we need to have better median etiquette. Yeah, we’ve been trying that for ten years. Didn’t do anything. Well, we need to, you know, we need to shorten the budget process. Yeah, we’ve done that three times in the last ten years. It didn’t stick and it didn’t do anything. So being a little bit obnoxious about. Okay, so tell me what it is we’re going to do differently, that we actually are going to get a different result. And just being highly dissatisfied with this idea of like, yeah, 50% of people’s impact being good enough. But I’ll tell you, the innovations along the way have been almost entirely from other people. So I just keep asking the question, like, how are we going to do this? Why is that going to be better? Is there another way? Because we work with brilliant people and somebody’s got the answer. I don’t know who it is. I’m not sure it’s crowdsourcing, by the way. We could come back. That’s a different topic, but somebody’s got the idea. And so how do you figure out who’s got it?

 

Darren [00:12:25]:

Well, it highlights, I think what I understand is this sort of vision architect catalyst coach model that I believe you pioneered at Genentech, which is redefining the role of the leader, which you just referenced. There is a role for a leader, but from what I’m hearing, you say it’s much more about having a vision, catalyzing change, coaching people to do it, and then sort of empowering people to come up with the innovation and to make things work on the ground floor. Talk a little bit about what happens to leaders in the kind of innovative structure that you’ve been pioneering and leading.

 

Bill [00:13:03]:

Yeah, first off, I did nothing create that model, vision architect catalyst coach. But I use it. That’s a good example of some, actually, I don’t even know who came up with it, but it’s good. And by the way, someone could say, well, isn’t that what leaders do, you know, vision architect catalyst coach, what’s so different about that? Yeah, it’s also what they don’t do. So in a typical hierarchy, which is 99% of large organizations, hierarchy, and managers manage and they command, they control. They decide what’s going to get done, who’s going to do it, and then they make sure that it gets done. And if it doesn’t, they punish, and if it does, they reward, and that’s management. So you notice in vision architect catalyst coach that none of that is there, that controlling function, it turns out that most organizations, especially knowledge based organizations, I mean, we have an innovation organization. We hire scientists, engineers, marketers. But these people are production people. They want to do something great. They didn’t just come to our company to fritter away their lives. And it turns out they don’t need control so much as they need a system that works for them. So leaders, then, the role of the leader, it’s kind of like that, what I described about at the potluck supper, the leader moving the table out so that two lines can go, okay, that’s architect. Yeah, that’s an architect role. You say, hey, what’s not working here? Oh, we just need two lines. Is there any reason we can’t do that? Boom. So that’s a different than a manager basically thinking that their job is to supervise everyone.

 

Darren [00:14:57]:

Yeah. The other thing that really stands out, as I’ve gotten to know you, Bill, and maybe you can talk a little bit about it, is how much this innovation, yes, it’s driven by curiosity and a impatience with 50% of our human potential, is being wasted. I’m not going to tolerate that. But what I’ve seen really, really animate you is mission, and giving customers and employees the ability to find joy, have a great experience. And in particular, I’m just struck by Bayer’s mission, health for all, hunger for none. It’s just such an incredibly inspiring mission. But can you talk a little bit about both of those things and how they animate you and how central they are to your work?

 

Bill [00:15:39]:

I think during my career, I’ve had some excellent bosses and some great situations, but I’ve also had some really not good bosses, even some hostile work environments, and just kind of sharp elbowed people thinking, I win, you lose. You win, I lose. And my positive experiences at work were so positive, but my negative experiences were quite negative. And I do feel like, wow, the leader has a really special role they play of creating that positive environment. By the way, not just, like, not a country club. I have worked in an environment like that where everyone was so focused on a great place to work, but they lost sight of the customer and the mission. No, forget about that. That doesn’t work. But a positive place that’s mission centered, but an environment where people are encouraged to help each other to accomplish the mission faster and better. And I would say it’s sacred. You know, work is a sacred thing. If you go look in the first few chapters of Genesis, boom, you got work right away. The first verse, the work, it’s a sacred thing. And that’s why the people who find their calling, who find the work that really just captures their talents and their interests, that they’re able to pour themselves into, that. It’s such a beautiful and powerful force. And I want that for everybody. I don’t want that to just be for the occasional person who gets lucky. I want that for everybody.

 

Darren [00:17:29]:

I hear a sense of calling in, that you’ve been called into these roles, which are very meaningful roles and at significant scale, where the decisions you make, the architecture that you put in place can have enormous ramifications. And I love this idea of treating work as sacred. And what that implies, in my sense and my understanding, is a huge responsibility to create the conditions for. For people to flourish and be at their best and demand incredibly high standards of performance. At the same time, I also know you to be a man of faith. You made the reference to Genesis, and that’s been an important part, a central part to your life, personally, professionally. Hoping you could share a little bit about faith and what it means to you, particularly in the role of CEO.

 

Bill [00:18:19]:

Well, I put it out there for our listeners. Some of our listeners may be thinking, well, yeah, I’m not really a religious person. I’m not a person of faith. I would just challenge that right off. Everybody has a faith.

 

Darren [00:18:33]:

Yeah.

 

Bill [00:18:34]:

Okay. Everybody’s believing something. Whatever that worldview is, everybody’s believing something. It’s one of the most ubiquitous characteristics of humans. So for me, it’s not really a question of whether someone has faith or not. Then the question is like, well, which faith? And I pursued my faith because I wanted to figure out what was true, what’s right, not just have a feeling, but to be able to back that up with some reason to believe. And so I started that way. What’s kept me so into it is that a walk with God, I find, is the amazing thrill that doesn’t die away. Do you know, like, you might have a goal to run a race or to get a promotion or to get a. To graduate with a degree or whatever those things are, and those are great for a few days or a few hours or whatever, but then there’s a dissatisfaction. Right. And I find I can’t find the bottom of the well with God. You know, however much I would draw from the well, there’s. There’s always more. And I don’t find that about really anything else in life, you know? So, yeah, it’s a wonderful thing.

 

Darren [00:20:04]:

It’s a really powerful way of thinking about faith, one I agree with. So within that definition, I’m certainly a man of faith myself. And I know you and I have had conversations about our different flavors or different worldviews, much of which we have in common. But I really appreciate you sharing that. I’m going to do a little bit of a right turn here and get into one of my favorite topics, which is sports and football. And for those Americans that are listening, I mean, real football, not american football, and an aspect of your role, which is you own a exceptional german professional football team buyer, Leverkusen, who had a phenomenal year this year, winning the championship and going undefeated, the first team, I believe, ever to do that in the Bundesliga. So I couldn’t help but just ask you, like, what was it like to be part of that experience in your role and what a cool part of your professional endeavor here.

 

Bill [00:20:58]:

Yeah. Well, first I just have to say that I had nothing to do with it.

 

Darren [00:21:02]:

I didn’t see you out there on the pitch.

 

Bill [00:21:04]:

Yeah, yeah. And we are talking about soccer here. I say soccer, you know, it’s true. It’s the kind of football you play with your foot.

 

Darren [00:21:11]:

Right.

 

Bill [00:21:11]:

Which can be confusing, I know, but our team, the coach, the CEO, our athletic director and the whole team and the whole staff, I mean, they just. They did everything right. And they had a phenomenal season. I think the previous record in the modern era with international play and everything, I think the previous record, I don’t know, 40 games or something without a loss, and we went 51. It’s the kind of thing, like, statistically speaking, it would be fairly unlikely for another team to beat that while I’m alive. Now, I’m older than some of our listeners, so that’s amazing. And it was done with incredible panache, including a lot of last minute goals. Goals? Like, literally with 3 seconds left or something and then a goal and just like, whoa, are you kidding? In basketball that happens all the time. But not. Not in soccer. The score is. Is one to zero and you score it at 90 minutes plus four and a half. So great group of folks. And they’ve really shown what teamwork looks like.

 

Darren [00:22:20]:

Anything you learned from that experience in terms of your own leadership?

 

Bill [00:22:23]:

Well, I think it reaffirms something that those of us who’ve been around business, this is my 35th year in business of some sort or another. One thing that I’ve seen over the years is that input doesn’t equal output. For example, with Bayer Leverkusen in this past season, our player payroll was a fraction of the. I mean, literally like a third of the payroll of the highest paid team in our league and even less than that of a number of the teams that we were where we were playing in an international play. And so with that you would think, oh, they couldn’t possibly be winning the championship or they couldn’t possibly be winning this or that, but going without a defeat and it’s just another reminder of, hey, what teamwork, what coaching, what training, the effect that has beyond just the sum of the parts.

 

Darren [00:23:24]:

Yeah, it goes back to this notion of human potential, I think, right. So when we’re operating close to 100% of our human potential, miracles can happen. And yet there’s all sorts of reasons why we don’t, structural reasons and otherwise. Maybe I could use that as a segue to talk about your own journey towards getting to your full potential. We’re never fully there. I imagine you’re not either. Share with us a little bit about the arc of your developmental journey. So when you first started in the professional world, you were obviously getting three hundred sixty s and performance reviews and what were the big challenges? What were the places you really had to take yourself on and evolve and what was the nature of that?

 

Bill [00:24:04]:

Well, one thing I mentioned is, so I was an individual contributor until I was 33 years old. And I mention that because I know a lot of people who really emphasize, I got to get that management job. And I actually think that’s a bit overrated being a manager. Okay, that’s fine. But really learning the functions like being excellent in some sort of technical skill, whether it’s science or a marketing or whatever it would be, that’s worth a lot and that never grows old. Do you know, like for example, I’m a CEO of a large company today, but the fact that I learned the finance function, that I was working as a chemical engineer, that I was working in a manufacturing plant, those experiences, they stick with you. And I only got those experiences because I was willing to move around and be an individual contributor for a long time. Now, my first management job, I thought I’m going to be a great manager. I always wanted to be a leader and I went to business school and I took management classes and I’m going to be great, right? So about one year into my first management job, I got a call from my boss who was in a different country on a Friday night, said, hey, I need you to meet me in London tomorrow, tomorrow morning, Saturday morning with the person who was the sales manager in our company because she called me today and said, either he goes or I go, okay. And I don’t have to say much more about that. But actually, shortly after that, we had a survey, like, sort of a 360 survey for all the managers in the company. And my results from the people that worked for me that, you know, they had to rate me on a number of things, put me in the bottom quartile of managers in the company. So I would say that those experiences, like that, they humbled me really fast and helped me understand that, hey, like, what made me a good individual contributor was not going to make me a good manager or leader, that I needed to learn a bunch of different stuff.

 

Darren [00:26:22]:

Was there a particular, you know, probably.

 

Bill [00:26:25]:

The dominant thing there was. As an individual contributor, I added a lot of value based on what I knew, my information, my ability to do some analysis or figure something out, solve a problem. I had to do the self talk. I had to change the self talk in the drive home from work, where I would be sort of thinking, did I add value today? What problem did I solve? What new information did I discover? I had to replace that with, how did I help my people be effective today? And literally kind of go down the list and think, what could I have done to help Sally be more effective today? What information did I share with Jack to help make sure that he could be his best? And I literally had to do that as a drill every day. And after I did that for a couple of years, I didn’t have to do it anymore because it became second nature. But, yeah, that was quite a fight.

 

Darren [00:27:35]:

Yeah. These crucible moments or setback moments that give you the opportunity to either take yourself on or not can be really big. Do you have others as you think through your career? Are there big, crucible moments that shaped who you’ve become with the nature of.

 

Bill [00:27:50]:

Those one early management job. I just moved my whole family to a new country. Literally, my first day in the office, I got a letter from the government that essentially they weren’t going to reimburse our only product, which essentially meant was pretty much curtains for our company in the country, which meant the employees that I was responsible for, all the jobs would go away. And I thought, that’s not good. That’s a bad Monday, right? And I thought, well, we gotta fight. This is not right. Like, these patients, they need this medicine and serious disease, lifelong, debilitating disease. Patients aren’t going to have access to the only therapy that’ll help them. The people are going to lose their jobs. That’s not acceptable. And there was lots of people giving all the reasons why there was nothing we could do. And what did I learn from that experience? By the way. So, yeah, that began a two year fight, and it ended in victory for the patients, for the company, for the employees. I learned two early lessons there. One lesson I learned was, hey, when you get an answer that’s the wrong answer. If you’re pretty convinced it’s the wrong answer, then, man, you got to fight for the right answer. And don’t listen to the people who say all the reasons why it’s not possible. It’s never been done before or, no, that’s not how the system works. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to learn the system or figure out you have to be smart, but you gotta go to battle and you gotta put it all on the line. The other thing I learned was, wow, people will rally to fight for something we’re fighting for. We had, I think we had about 15 employees at the time that happened, and I don’t think during the course of that fight, we didn’t lose anyone. I thought, you know, I thought, oh, half the employees are going to leave because they’re going to think, hey, what am I doing here? There’s something else better. You know, I don’t want to lose my job. And I figured we’d lose lots of people. But you know what people are? You got to give people credit if they see, hey, this is something worth fighting for. And I take this personally. I’m going to do something about it. I’m going to be a part of this. People want to be a part of something great. And leaders always need to understand that.

 

Darren [00:30:39]:

The picture of who you are and how you lead is beginning to get revealed at least a little bit more completely for me, given these moments, I’m also curious, these last seven to ten years of being in the role of CEO or being close to being in the role of CEO and, really, positions of senior leadership, anything within that era of Bill’s leadership that was particularly crucible in nature for you?

 

Bill [00:31:05]:

Yeah. I mean, one thing that happened, I’ve had a chance to be on some teams that were really excellent. You know, just great teamwork, self sacrifice, trust, deep mutual trust. And having tasted of what that looks like, you know, wow, I’m just not willing to settle for anything less. And I do think I saw relatively little of that in my first, whatever, 20 years working. And I do think people are way too quick to settle. And, yeah. And I’ve seen people really, yeah. Transform themselves. That’s what it takes. Do you know what? When you have a team like that, and, Darren, you know this because you’re in this business of transforming leaders, of leaders, transforming themselves. When you have a great team like that, it’s because the individuals underwent significant change. They decided to show up differently. They understood, for example, typical leadership teams of large companies. You have this competitive dynamic that is not helping the firm, that is not helping the people. The competition is cancer, the competition is hunger, not the competition. Isn’t the person sitting around the table with me on my team. And when you get a group of people together who all are 100% bought in, not just to the concept, but they’re willing to challenge their personal beliefs, their limiting beliefs, and their behaviors in a way that unleashes that level of trust and partnership and joyous. Together, you have a whole different level of performance, speed, impact, decisiveness. And that’s gold. No pun intended.

 

Darren [00:33:19]:

Darren, thank you. Yeah. We like to say you can’t transform a company unless you’re willing to transform yourself. And that is so particularly true for CEO and senior team. I’ve seen you be a leader willing to do that and demand that of the people that are on your team. Yeah, it’s really, I think, an important point also, just curious about mentors and the role that they’ve played in your life. Maybe specific conversations that happened that really landed for you in a certain way or particular people and the roles that they’ve played in your life as you think through your career, any that come to mind.

 

Bill [00:33:55]:

You know, it’s funny. It’s probably not what most people would expect, but I would say the people who’ve most profoundly shaped me and changed me at work are the people who worked for me. And I had some people who, golly, I just. And I won’t name them by name, but their names stand out. Right? Okay. They liked me, they respected me, but they weren’t willing to leave me how I was. You know, they would just object to, hey, Bill, you’re talking too much. Or, hey, Bill, we get the idea. Like, have you already made up your mind about this, or are you still open? Because if you’ve already made up your mind, don’t waste our time with this dialogue. And if you’re still open, then maybe you need to show it a little more.

 

Darren [00:34:46]:

Yeah.

 

Bill [00:34:47]:

Right? And so that’s. Wow. It’s that kind of shaping. Or one manager who basically said, bill, I can tell you’re convicted about your ideas, but there’s a lot of smart people in the room. So state your idea once, and if other people like it and they pick it up, then maybe it’s something you want to run with. But if you say it once and nobody seems interested, you need to shut up and listen, see what other ideas are coming. That’s very practical, that’s measurable. Did I say my idea twice? That’s different than saying it once. It’s not very ambiguous.

 

Darren [00:35:33]:

Yeah. There’s something about your comment about teams and then the people that have done this for you that highlights a element of developmental maturity. Am I mature enough to let my own needs to be liked, to be safe, to be acknowledged? Can I put those aside in service of something bigger than myself? Whether it’s the mission of the company or it’s the CEO that I’m reporting to, or it’s a peer of mine that I have relationship with, but I might otherwise feel a little bit reluctant to take on in that way with deep care. And it also strikes me that what you’re up to at Bayer, 100,000 employees, this incredible company, incredible mission, is going to require that same level of developmental maturity so people are able to develop themselves in service of something much greater. Does that resonate for you? And if so, in what way?

 

Bill [00:36:28]:

For sure, it comes down to, I think this is true at any level. The job of the boss is to serve the people. I don’t know if I came up with that idea or I read it somewhere. I don’t know, this idea of sort of upside down management. But I definitely felt like that when I first got to Genentech, it was kind of unsettling because I was used to the idea of managers managing with a fairly heavy hand. And when I got there, the culture was, hey, no, no, no, the boss is there to support the people. And it was, in a way, it really threw me off balance a little bit. I liked it. It seemed like a great concept, right? But, like, ooh, you get used to doing things a certain way and how you get things done. And it was like, oh, no, that’s not how we do things. But then what I’ve learned over time is, whatever your job is, it’s sort of like, the more people who work under you, it’s actually the more people who you work for. And so if you’re in a little organization, you serve a fewer number of people, and if you’re in a large organization, you serve a lot more people. And that mindset is like the starting point. That and being on a lifelong journey. And, Darren, I think probably around the time when I met you, it’s funny, I think around that time, I thought I’d pretty much learn what there was to learn about managing in a company. Like, if you had asked me what are the next ten years going to be like, I would have said, yeah, it’s probably mostly just using the stuff I’ve learned and doing it again. And I had no idea that I would be getting turned upside down in the sense of, wow. Yeah. Like, all the change and all the things it takes to put that decision making power with the people doing the work, it makes you change everything. It’s really hard work, but we’re going really fast at bear. People want it. They want that ability to make the right call and make it faster and deliver for the customer to get that product developed faster. People want that, but it’s painful. It’s painful because jobs go away. It’s painful because everybody has to learn so much new things. And so, yeah, it’s a labor of love. And I couldn’t be more grateful for the response from the people and the leaders at Bayer. And I’m grateful to you, Darren, for the. The great coaching you’ve provided me over the years.

 

Darren [00:39:13]:

It’s been my pleasure and privilege, and my work, like you spoke about, is sacred, and it has been with you, for sure. Well, as we come to an end here, I want to just create some space for anything that you might want to add to the conversation that’s on your mind that you think is important to note, or if not even just to synthesize and summarize as we close out here.

 

Bill [00:39:36]:

I think maybe the thing that I would most just encourage people to go for is, what is that way of serving that you were made to do? How do you help the most people? Because people often ask me about career advice, career paths and things, and usually people are thinking in terms of which jobs do I need to get? And I think there’s a lot of good jobs to get, but that of, like, how do you make everybody around you more successful? It’s been my experience that the people who do that, not only do they do very well, kind of career wise, but they have the most fun doing it and they get the most satisfaction. And so, yeah, that’s something to follow.

 

Darren [00:40:32]:

Well, it’s pretty clear to me, at least, that you were made to do the work that you’re doing. And I’m just thrilled to be in this conversation, excited to see what the next ten years brings for you, for Bayer, for the world, and couldn’t be more honored to have had the chance to speak with you. So thank you, Bill. I really appreciate your time and who you are.

 

Bill [00:40:51]:

Well, keep up the great stuff, Darren. And yeah, I look forward to listening to more of your podcasts.

 

Darren [00:40:58]:

Thank you. Bill is truly a one of a kind CEO. What really came to life for me in this conversation was that he is a leader that believes everyone deserves to do their life’s best work and is committed to doing whatever it takes to make that happen for the people he serves. I look forward to being with you on the next episode of one of one. Until then, I hope you live and lead with courage, wisdom, and above all, with love.

 

One of One is produced by Erica Gerard and Podkit Productions. Music by John LaSala.