Picture this, you're the brand new CEO standing before hundreds of employees from two merging companies.

Everyone's watching to see how you'll balance authority with authenticity.

Most leaders would tighten their grip on control.

But what happens when the boldest move you can make is to let go?

That was the crossroads facing Jason Liu.

The company I was running was one of the larger tech companies in central Europe.

It was merged with a large company in the US and so really understanding where they're coming from, understanding their customs, it really creates a sense that this person is obviously looking out for the whole country.

That type of buy in is critical.

That one act of courage didn't just break the ice, it redefined how he would lead.

From that moment forward, you have to.

Understand your environment and what you're trying to accomplish.

The culture I'm trying to always build are high energy to really ignite growth.

And to transform the business through courage and connection.

Jason discovered that leadership isn't about control, it's about creating energy that inspires people to follow.

You'll discover how he shifted from managing outcomes to multiplying impact across 30 countries.

We'll dive into how he fuels that energy daily, the mindset that keeps him grounded through change, and how he turned his personal vision into a force that fuels a century old brand's momentum.

A key part of it is the brand, but also articulating the vision.

Once you have that voice, that unique vision, then it made sense for me to be one of the lead sellers of that and people can buy into that vision of not just your employees, but also your customers.

That's courage over control.

And it might just be the boldest leadership lesson of all.

Welcome back to Lead the Team.

I'm your host Ben Fanning and this conversation that you're going to hear is meant to challenge, inspire and ripple out.

It's not just a podcast.

It's a positive movement to build better leaders.

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This helps more bold leaders discover the show and keeps the mission alive.

Enjoy.

We ran one of the largest tech companies in Central Europe, which was based in Austria.

I think one of my more enjoyable stories is I remember my first day about 20 years ago.

I think the first couple of weeks in that Austrian company, they had a big customer event in Munich at Oktoberfest.

I had to dress at Lederhose.

Imagine the Asian guy in Lederhose and you don't quite see it.

Very often.

But they did, as a joke, they actually threw me in front of the entire crowd.

It was like 5,000 folks.

You don't forget those type of events.

But I think they, they appreciated it.

Yeah, so they appreciate it.

And it was funny and fun in the moment.

What did you notice afterwards, like, before and after?

In this case, the company I was running was, was one of the larger, you know, tech companies in Central Europe, the largest, you know, tech company in Austria, but it was merged with a large company in the US And I was the first incoming CEO.

And as you might imagine, there's, there's always a lot of trepidation when you're a German company that, that's been out there for decades with American CEO coming in and so really understanding where they're coming from, understanding their customs, it really creates immediately, I think, a sense that this person is obviously looking out for the whole country, not just here, to kind of look at it from one perspective.

And so I think getting that type of, kind of buy in from the folks in kind of the key countries is critical.

What's your advice for leaders or maybe what are the questions that they should be thinking about to sort of humanize their, their leadership approach in terms of what they like?

You already broke down one distinction.

Where are you, I guess, in terms of age and generational gap?

If you're a really young person coming into an organization and in a leadership role and there are a lot of senior people there, maybe jumping on stage with a leader hose, that may not be the best option, but.

Well, I think that's exactly right, Ben.

I think what I would.

I think you kind of captured some elements of it.

I think you obviously have to understand your environment and what you're trying to accomplish.

And when you're, if you're, you know, a young CEO, as I was, you know, a couple of decades ago, you know, you have to probably err on the side of being more, more professional, but as you get older, you can be more, you know, comfortable and bring out more of your personality.

And I think, you know, the culture I'm trying to always build are high energy, you know, high performance cultures.

And so you obviously want to drive that and be tough, but you also want to show your personal side because I think people appreciate and feel connected when that leader is accessible and is down to earth and is really trying to, trying to drive the betterment of the company rather than just, you know, their personal gain.

Do you see yourself as the primary energy generator for the organization?

I'm kind of Brought in by, you know, typically a lot of the PE funds, the top tier PE funds to really ignite growth and to transform the business.

And so to do that often, oftentimes you have to change the culture.

A lot of times these cultures have been there for decades.

There's been some good aspects of the culture, but there's some complacency set in.

And so how do you bring in a much more high energy, high performance culture?

As I said, I think a lot of it comes from leading from the top, you know, leading from the front.

That's the way I like to be, is, is to do that in that way.

And it's not just with our employees, it's also with customers.

I believe getting out and meeting customers is just absolutely a critical component of being a strong leader and transforming a business.

What are you doing to keep your own energy up as a executive?

You know, you are almost a high powered athlete in the sense that you've got to make sure that you're in the right, you know, mind, body, spirit, so then you can give to the organization and give, give to, to your employees and customers.

And so a lot of that is obviously being in great physical shape, but also obviously preparing yourself mentally.

And I can spend some time, you know, as I said, if you're listeners are interested.

But a lot of it is putting yourself every day in the right mindset, in the right energy level to be on right and to be at your highest performance.

You're a busy guy.

Where are you finding time to work out, to do all these, nourish these other dimensions?

Because you got a lot of people depending on you, it's probably hard to find the hours in the day.

So how do you manage it?

I think a lot of it is obviously being disciplined about it.

What I do every day is I run three to five miles every day and then I work out quite a bit.

And I do that in part because I want to keep my physical energy up.

But you also want to obviously make sure that you're mentally there and having uninterrupted time.

Where I'm running for 30 minutes, I can think through the day, think through, get myself mentally prepared, be in a meditative state, I think ensures that I'm always at the right point every day and I'm on point in the meetings as well.

So let's talk a little bit about AI here.

What are leaders doing wrong with AI and how has it changed leadership from your perspective?

My unique view on it is a couple fold.

One is that I do think you know, when you think about I, you know, have the classic manager background in the sense I was, you know, I spent several years in management consulting and then I got my MBA from Wharton.

And so I think I've grown up in that early on was classically trained, but in that type of mindset is around, you know, what I call manager mode.

And that's all about how you build proper spans of control and how you obviously empower all of your teammates.

I think in the world of AI, what you're starting to have to really focus on is the concept of multipliers, individuals that not just impact things 1x but 100x.

And you're starting to see that with some of the pay packages obviously offered, you know, the 100 million doll pay packages that Mena is offering AI engineers.

But I see that in my own company is I spend almost as much time trying to identify multipliers, people that had outsized impacts on the business.

And how do you cultivate that?

Of course you want to put up your traditional kind of HR system to really lift up your thousands of employees.

But I think now more and more time is being spent on those multipliers.

And I think in the AI, they have now the tools where they can not just impact the business 9x, you're talking 900x because these individuals can then start applying AI to obviously drive more efficiency or drive better decision making or drive more scale.

And so I think that's the big thing that people are going to have to start thinking about is you still want to have your more classic management approach to the broader employee base.

But then how do you start identifying those multiplayers that are really going to needle move Your business, I think is really increasingly now something that's changing in the world of AI.

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Yeah, the big takeaway there is huge for me.

It's like, hey, don't just think about control and how you're going to organize the company.

It's about finding those leverage points and accentuating them with AI.

If you bring that Classic business school approach.

You're going to miss out because you're so focused on, okay, these are my groups, these are my functions.

Well, maybe you've got somebody in between these functions that can really be an AI opportunity accelerator.

What are the how.

What are your.

What are the way.

What's the way that you're thinking about identifying who those people are?

When you're in a business of scale, the folks that tend to get identified as rewarded are folks that tend to be strong contributors, but they tend to be people that conform to the system.

Right.

Sometimes outliers tend to be, you know, they tend to break the rules, not all the rules, and, but they tend to be a little bit more difficult to work with because they're trying to push the boundaries and maybe they get frustrated.

You can't use normal HR techniques, just, you know, going through performance reviews and, you know, kind of doing a traditional assessment.

And so what I'm trying to do in my company and part of it is getting my leaders to start being able to be aware of the types of roles in which you need an outsized player.

There's, you know, we've done a lot with our business to identify where the areas we're trying to grow, which are the areas that we're trying to just really continue to, to maintain.

And so you try to identify like where the roles where you need that outsize impact.

And then you try to identify people that can fill that role.

And I'm getting them to kind of question, what does great look like?

I in the past it was, you know, kind of steady Eddies, you know, like folks that always could just do the job.

Now I'm saying you want people like that, but you also, in those really critical, impactual roles, you want someone that's going to maybe be much more entrepreneurial and break some rules and really drive a level of scale and creativity that's out there.

And so part of this is educating your leadership organization on what is a multiplier and how they could potentially make outsized impacts.

And part of it is myself as a leader.

This is founder mode, is I get deep into an organization.

I don't just do a chain of command.

I talk to everyone in the organization and I try to identify this talent myself and I try to hand pick some of these folks and, and pull them up and put them in the type of roles that I think are really going to contribute to the business.

Can you share a time where you're able to identify one of those multipliers?

And once you and when you did, and maybe you made some changes, you were able to allow them to, I guess, accelerate their results from it.

One of the biggest things that we were trying to identify is someone to really kind of really lead us from a product vision perspective.

We had a strong engineering leader, but he was really great about building product.

But what product to build was really key, and that's a really hard thing to find, is someone that can actually bring that product vision.

And I didn't identify anyone in the company, but what I did do is identify the startup where we like the star, really like the CEO even better.

And so we bought the company in part because of the CEO, which I put into ultimately elevated him to actually become our product visionary.

And I'll tell you, that made all the difference in the world.

And as I said, that's where you've got to sometimes be creative.

You don't have someone in your organization.

Maybe it's an acquisition where you bring in and you identify that talent and then promote that person in the organization that way.

You have a book out and we know, as you mentioned, Wood McKenzie has been around for 100 years and here you come with your book and you're making that conscious decision to bring your personal brand out front.

You're not just leading from the office behind the brand.

What's your philosophy on this book project and what's your philosophy in terms of a leader putting their personal brand out front alongside their corporate brand?

I grew up in mid Missouri, you know, so I'm a small town kind of guy right where I grew up.

And so I'm not the one that naturally feels like I need to like have the spotlight on me.

But when you think about it, like at Wood McKinsey, we have an incredible brand.

It's 100 plus year brand, but I think the brand, we're trying to refresh and reinvigorate the brand.

Right?

And we're also trying to bring an incredible company with the largest amount of proprietary data and the greatest researchers in the market into the world of AI.

So my background is in tech and data.

And so a lot of this is how do you take that company and move it into the world of AI?

And so that's where the personal brand is important, is the more my leadership approach and style gets associated with the company, it's easy to understand how wood McKenzie now is going to be now much more competitive and become a leader in the world of AI because in many ways we're kind of mixing our own brands, right?

And so part of the Idea of the book is to put out a vision of where the energy markets are going.

But, you know, as I said, you know, to me the most important thing is, is the success of the company.

And if, if I can help from my personal brand, help improve that with the company, that's great.

But.

But ultimately you also need a spokesperson.

You need someone that can kind of sell the vision.

And it's not just myself, it's our co author, Sun Flowers.

We're promoting the book.

We're also promoting kind of this vision that we have that how we want to change the energy market.

When you join Wood McKenzie was it sort of understood that, hey, Jason's a thought leadership guy.

He's going to be out there.

And the expectation was going to be that you were going to be bringing all of your, you know, like your powerful personal brand, like with the company.

Or is that something you came to later after you started and you're like, hey, based on what I'm seeing, this is what we need to do.

I don't think that there's a desire I have to, like, promote myself for the sake of that.

I think, as you might imagine, after this many companies, you have certain tools you have in your tool belt that, you know, work.

You also have concepts and playbooks that you use.

And I have, you know, used, you know, a book in previous growth companies to really ignite the brand.

And so what I would say is that, you know, ultimately I was brought into Wood McKinsey to help really grow the business faster and to help, you know, improve and drive the brand into the 21st century of AI.

And ultimately there became a real concept that we had which, you know, this book talks about.

I encourage everyone to read it@woodmac.com it just so happened that once you had that voice, that unique vision, then it made sense for me to be one of the lead sellers of that.

If I didn't have something to say that I thought was really going to add value, then there's no reason to promote that.

But ultimately, once you come up with a substance or a vision that is, you think, very compelling, there needs to be someone that sells it.

And I think, obviously I feel like I'm pretty effective at doing that.

There's been a lot of fun today and it's been a very.

Lots of good tidbits in here.

What's your parting message for our audience, our listeners?

Oh, you know, I'd say, Ben, I'd say what I would say that the two things that I live by is a growth mindset.

And then tough love.

And if you can throw on some high energy on top of that, I think you've captured me.

So I think that's what I would tell you in this world of ever changing lack of predictability, have that, you know, that growth mindset, which is obviously being willing to try and learn and develop new things and then obviously have that grit and tenacity as well.

And then when you couple that with tough love and high energy, I think you get a really great recipe.

Thanks for joining us today, Jason.

Thank you, Ben.

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