You don't create culture.

You create a set of circumstances where you invite people to join, where people not only are excited about what they're doing, but they feel that there's a purpose.

They see how they're contributing.

They are part of something bigger than themselves.

You're trying to create an environment where people choose to want to struggle with you.

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Welcome back to Lead the Team with number one bestselling author and in demand corporate trainer Ben Fanning.

On this podcast, the world's most innovative senior leaders share their top success strategies to motivate your direct reports, cultivate your top leaders and accelerate your career.

Let's get started.

Here's Ben hey there and welcome back.

To Lead the Team.

Today I have for you Amar Paul, who leads the North American option operations at Schneider Electric, the global energy management and automation company recently named the world's most sustainable company by Time and statistica.

Now in this role, Amber leads all operations from strategy to execution, creating impact by empowering all to make the most of our energy and resources, bridging progress and sustainability for all.

Amer came to Schneider Electric from Dell over a decade ago, knowing that the technologies that make energy more efficient and reliable would end up being critical in this very time of widespread electrification and digitalization.

Under his leadership, Schneider North America's employees are helping to lead the region through the energy transition with innovation and key partnerships that invest in the economy, bolster supply chain resiliency and empower the workforce.

Amer, welcome to Lead the team.

Thank you for having me, Ben.

Glad to be here.

So let's dive into this leading.

A company is so large and is dynamic as Schneider Electric, it involves overcoming major challenges.

And can you share a specific instance where this really cool quote, hard on the problem kind of people helped you navigate a difficult situation and ultimately achieve success?

Yeah.

Well, first of all, I have to give credit to Annette Clayton, who we just celebrated at the NIMA event last week because she was the one who coined that term, at least in our consciousness.

And I think it's a different thing to experience that when someone is doing it for you as a leader, and then you take on the responsibility to sustain that.

And I think it embodies a lot of the things we believe in.

But the most important takeaway is that you're solving for the long term.

And that other quote that says, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.

I think those two things come together.

So being kind on the people is really about ensuring that we're all works in progress.

We're all trying to get better.

No one's perfect.

And frankly, the whole point is that whatever we achieve today, we have to raise the bar tomorrow.

On the flip side, being hard on the problem means that we have to bring an intensity, a purpose, a mission orientation where this is bigger than something we're doing just for work.

Right.

And in our case, that mission is being a positive actor in terms of sustainability and climate and driving efficiency outcomes for all our customers and partners.

So that's the why.

Now, you asked about an example where it comes together, and I think there are many to pick from.

But the one that I really am proud of is when Covid happened, we were looking like everybody else, at immediate decline in demand.

And we were trying to figure out how we were going to tackle this.

And one of the realizations we came to is that it was not a financial Crisis.

It wasn't 2008, it was actually a health crisis.

And the other realization we came to is unlike some other geographies in the United States, your healthcare is tied to your job.

So we didn't feel it was appropriate to let anyone go in that early period because we didn't want people to be out there without health care.

And so then we said, okay, if we assume that we want to keep everybody, but we also need to find cost outcomes, so we're just going to tackle that with everything we have, even if it's a little absurd.

So we started with voluntary time off and then mandatory voluntary time off, which I appreciate as an oxymoron.

And then we turned around and said Fourth of July is an unpaid holiday.

And we just kept doing.

Doing these things that on their own were absurd, but because everyone agreed with the first principle that we were all going to navigate this together, everyone was bought in.

And so we were hard on the problem and kind to the people.

And at the end of that process, when our business cycle started turning around, one of the things I'm most proud of is instead of just Taking that savings and banking it.

We actually gave people their money back.

So that, for us, felt like exactly the right thing to do.

And we have plenty of examples in our business outcomes, customer outcomes, and challenges that we face as we try and invent the future where those principles still apply.

But that one always stuck home for me because it was the most collective experience we had all been through, and I'm glad to say, brought us all together as a team.

Well, how cool.

And I gotta chill hearing that story.

So I worked for Honeywell and went through.

And you're a Honeywell alumni, too, right?

I was.

I was an intern there.

So alumni maybe too rich a designation, but, yes, I had the privilege.

Okay.

I was a little more than an intern there.

I was over a decade there.

And we went through a round of furloughs and during.

During the big downturn.

And that prepared us as an organization to take advantage of the growth that came.

Because when you let go of people, it doesn't feel very good, obviously, but you also hinder your future results.

And I love the fact that you were well prepared at Schneider Electric because you.

You were kind to the people.

And that, in turn, was very kind to the business and your customers because you had an experienced staff ready to go.

But I wanted y'all to.

I don't want to downplay what he said.

The employees that were.

Went through these furloughs in your organization, they were giving their money back.

They were.

Wow.

So how does it.

Was that the plan from the beginning or no?

No, absolutely not.

And we were clear with them that that was not the plan, because we were clear with them that we didn't know what was coming next.

Yeah.

And so we told them exactly what we were doing.

We communicated every day, and we said that we would try and find the best, most fair outcome for the circumstances we were in.

And we would expect leaders to take more of a hit than we would ask the front line to take.

But we had no idea it would work out that way.

But when it did, we felt it was important to make that adjustment.

And look, let me make one more point, right?

People often confuse kind and nice.

This is something Adam Grant talks about, and I am a firm believer in.

Nice is about avoiding a difficult conversation in the moment.

And you give people sort of obtuse feedback.

You don't say the hard things.

You're polite.

Kind actually means that you have the hard discussions.

Kind means you don't let someone waste their time.

Kind means that if you don't believe they can get to the level of performance you expect of them in that role.

You help them find something else.

Or in some cases, being kind means telling someone they don't have a future at your company.

And the reason that is kind is because if you've already come to that conclusion, letting them know you're helping them, not waste the one resource they cannot generate, which is time.

Yes.

So people, you know, don't confuse being kind and being nice when we say we're trying to be kind to the people.

That is still a high performance environment and that is still very demanding of what we expect of ourselves and each other.

But it is about being transparent and it is about being honest about where we see ourselves and where we see each of our teammates.

Wow.

An important distinction to make as a leader.

And so when you going back to sort of finishing the story, they get their money back.

What do you notice on the impact on morale, on engagement, retention when you deliver that?

All of this spiked in the right direction.

And I think more importantly, people realized that we didn't think of our teammates simply as people who worked here, but we, when we say Schneider is a great company because of its great people that we met that.

And everyone says we're a people first organization, prove it.

And I think we had the opportunity.

And I'm, I'm glad that I was privileged to be surrounded by other great leaders who helped navigate this.

But we proved it.

And, and like anything else, like a sharehold or a board or a set of customers, of course, you know, while that was an incredible outcome, people then move on and say, what have you done for me lately?

And that is only fair.

We do the same thing from a business outcome standpoint.

But in the moment, coming out of that cycle through 2122, I think it continued to galvanize the organization.

It was something I will always carry with me as something I'm incredibly proud of.

And even more so, I'm proud of the leaders that helped create those programs.

But I also want to tell people that while that story has a wonderful ending, the.

The journey was white knuckled all the way.

We didn't know where it was going, we didn't know how it was going to end.

And I think the other takeaway I tell leaders is do the right thing, even if you're not sure how it's going to end.

Because.

Because it's important that you make the best decisions with the data you have.

And it's that man in the arena quote from Roosevelt.

Right.

A lot of people can opine on Something from a distance with the hindsight, clarity of hindsight.

But when you're in the moment, all you can do is do the best you can with a set of data driven decisions and a set of moral certainty about what you're trying to achieve and just keep going.

And that's exactly what we did.

And even that element of being able to afford giving all that money back back was a decision we made very late in the process.

We felt it was the right thing to do, but the actual ability to do it didn't become clear until very late in the financial year, y'all.

That's how you lead the team right there.

And that's the reality.

Being a leader is being in the arena, not writing books, just about it.

It's about doing it.

And wow, what a, what a cool story.

And it turned out well from a business perspective and from an employee perspective.

And it's nice to be thinking of those now.

You're, you're a fan of this Peter Drucker quote, as I am.

Culture each strategy for breakfast.

So how does building a strong culture influence your leadership approach?

Well, I've thought a lot about this and there's so many wonderful definitions and so much work that's been done on this topic.

The one definition I often go back to is culture.

What is what people do when no one's looking?

I think I like that.

It's a nice, simple way to think about it.

The other way I think about it is it's the why.

It's why people go the extra mile.

It's why they believe in what they're doing and why they take care of that customer.

It's that intangible you feel, and we all relate to it.

If you've been on a Southwest Airlines flight, you'll feel that energy from everyone who works for that company.

Or if you go to a Home Depot store, you'll feel sort of how attentive people can be.

And not all experiences are perfect, but there are cultures and companies out there that create this purpose.

And I think what we're trying to do, Costco is another great example.

And it's not just at the high end.

Of course people talk about the Ritz and things like that, but I think it exists at every level.

And I think creating an environment where people not only are excited about what they're doing, but they feel that there's a purpose.

They see how they're contributing.

They are part of something bigger than themselves, I think that's super important.

And I think that capacity allows you to adjust strategy and pivot as the world gets more and more volatile.

We used to have 10 year strategic plans.

We don't do that anymore.

Because there are things we want to achieve over a decade.

There are things that we need to impact our customers in our communities over a long period of time.

But exactly how we're going to do it is going to change because the conditions in which we operate change.

But the foundation for why we do those things, why we show up the way we do, why we push ourselves to be better, why we care, is all part of that culture you're trying to build.

And I think you don't create culture.

You create a set of circumstances where you invite people to join you and you can dictate strategy, though that's never wise, but you can be more prescriptive there.

But culture is an invitation to be part of something.

And I think that's what you're trying to do.

You're trying to create an environment where people choose to want to struggle with you, to whatever you're trying to achieve.

Yeah, I like that.

And it's what happens when you're not there.

How's everybody behaving?

How are they treating each other?

How are they treating the customer?

And like you said, are they going the extra mile?

We had people in our service team that inevitably you'll hear stories about a customer had a downtime event, they'll grab a piece of equipment and drive six hours to make sure they can solve the problem.

And while we don't want every interaction to require heroic save, the fact that people intrinsically are willing to do the right thing to take care of our partners and our customers, that's something we're very proud of and something we want to keep investing in.

And that sort of unwritten, unspoken belief systems about what the right thing to do is, is a good way to think about culture.

Yeah.

So there for leaders to think about.

When you're not there, would your team member jump in the car and go drive six hours to take them apart or not?

Yeah.

Without you telling them to do it.

Yeah, exactly.

That last part is super important.

That last part is the key.

It's, it's.

They believe it's the right thing to do because they understand the mission and they understand what we're trying to do.

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That's beneleads.com apply going through your introduction, your background, right, you had a good tenure with Dell, then you made a big jump.

What was.

Maybe tell us, like, what were you thinking about then?

Because I think it sounds like you saw some opportunity in this industry.

So I'm curious about the opportunity to get into this space at Schneider Electric.

But what were you reading and doing at the time at Dell to allow you to see that this was going to be a big.

I get asked this question a lot, Ben.

And again, with the clarity of hindsight and with a degree of revisionist history, I could come up with a very eloquent answer about the foresight I had about electrification and the digital transformation of industry and understanding the impact it would have.

But that is only partially true.

And like most human decisions, it was a combination of things I was thinking through intellectually and things I felt emotionally.

So, first of all, I was incredibly lucky and it was a privilege of a lifetime to join Dell when I did, to work with the people I worked with, the company took unbelievable risks on me as a young, young person, as a young leader.

And I will forever be grateful to have been part of that organization.

After 13 years there, having lived in the US and in Europe, a lot of the leaders that I had grown up with started either moving to other companies or retiring, or they were just no longer at Dell for a number of different reasons.

And Dell itself had gone from sort of a place where it knew exactly what it was doing as an operating company to a period where it was competitively more challenging.

And this is around when the company was thinking of going private and had since, of course, reemerged in a much more successful.

And its best days are absolutely ahead of it.

But it was a period of sort of reimagination, restructuring of the company.

And the first lesson I can share from that is people are not loyal to your company.

They are loyal to other people at your company.

Emotional relationships are between people.

And so the people I had grown up with had moved.

And so it felt like a new company, even though it was the only company I had worked at.

The second thing was I wanted to be at the beginning of something.

I joined Dell when the PC revolution was well underway, and Dell had already been incredibly successful with its business model in that space.

And I felt like I was not there for that beginning period.

People who had been Dell in the late 80s and early 90s, talked about this period of immense growth and also reimagination of how an entire industry could work.

And that sounded super exciting.

And there were other things we were working on that I had the privilege to be part of, but nothing quite that foundational.

So I was looking to come in where something was still not certain and where that future had to be defined.

I was looking for something that had purpose and meaning beyond just the business outcomes.

Right.

Why were we doing something?

How did it matter?

And I think over time, as I discovered what Schneider Electric does, that purpose really spoke to me.

But back to the very personal side, this opportunity allowed me to come home to Chicago, and my parents still lived there, and the time my brother, briefly was living here as well, and the whole family was going to come together.

So.

And that had nothing to do with any big career evaluation.

Right.

And the reason I tell that story to people is, you know, after a successful career, you will look back and you.

I hope that people are able to say they enjoyed the journey as much as the destination.

And when I talk to people that perhaps have a bit more regret than others, all of us have some, I suppose the ones that completely sort of compromised the journey, they did whatever they felt they had to, all in pursuit of a singular destination.

When they finally achieve it, it somehow doesn't have the satisfying outcome they were hoping for.

Right.

So I think there's no work life, balance.

There's just life and your family and your outcomes and your personal goals and your professional goals are all part of one ticking clock.

And finding the best way to balance them or make sure you nurture all parts of it is the advice I would give.

And so for me, it was exactly that decision.

Best decision I ever made.

My nephew was born a month before I joined Schneider, and I got to be the cool uncle for the first five, six years of his life before he moved away to New York and my parents were there.

And so, yeah, it worked out great.

And professionally, looking back, I could not have imagined the pace of change in the world from what's happened with EVs and batteries, to what's happening with data centers now, to the fact that we're talking about the grid in the newspapers every day, which is not something we were doing.

So I would love to tell you that I had an insight into all of that.

I had a glimmer of what it could be, but the connectivity and impact of the energy systems that we're now having is just a super exciting place to be.

And we're just getting started that interestingly.

That'S not where I thought that story was going to go because most people don't become in a president of a, of a huge company for to have a better personal life.

That's a lot of, that's all work.

But it's interesting how it all came together.

And I suspect your personal life supports your professional life and vice versa.

Look, I believe that's true and I think, I think, I think the one, Jeff Bezos has this mantra that he says he wants to minimize regret.

I like that framework.

Right.

And so just ask yourself and look, there's no right answer.

There's no perfect answer.

There's only the answer that works for you and that moment in your life.

And in that moment in my life, being close to my family was super important.

And this decision was solely based on that.

But this decision probably happened because that was a positive variable.

And I knew that whatever would happen, being close to my family wasn't something I was going to regret.

And I think those choices that allow you to sort of enjoy the journey so that you can keep going.

Because here's the other hard part.

You never arrive right.

There is no, hey, we're perfect.

I'm the best executive I can be.

Everything's awesome.

Our results were great.

Tomorrow you got to wake up and do it all over again.

So this is a journey you're on with no destination.

There is no ticker tape parade, there's no finish line.

They're just milestones.

And so you have to get super comfortable enjoying the journey.

And that one journey includes your personal life, your professional life, your own development, your team development.

And so if you think of it from that perspective, then it's a little bit easier to sort of have a framework that allows you to really think about your return on invested time.

Because everything else is fungible, but the one thing you can't get and you don't know how much you have is time.

Yeah.

And putting in electric terms, that's a non renewable asset.

Indeed.

Indeed.

Yeah.

And it's interesting the time guy with the electricity guy coming at it.

So let's, let's, let's talk about electricity and Schneider Electric and the infrastructure because it is really, it's changed so much.

And I'm, I'm thinking about the people listening right now.

What do they need to be keeping in mind across various industries or the questions they need to be asking themselves about the kinds of stuff that you guys are into at Schneider Electric and.

What they well, look, I think.

I think there are a couple of big headlines to think about.

First headline is the energy demands of the world are only going to go up.

Second headline is that if we just did that the way we've solved it, we will continue to accelerate the impacts on climate change and extreme weather.

And we're all experiencing it as we speak.

I've lived in Chicago for a long time.

I can't remember the last time it was 75 degrees in November.

And the data is irrefutable on this point.

Our climate is warming and we have to find ways to manage that more effectively.

The other thing is, if you think back to the 1990s, or as kids call it now, the late 19th century, which makes me feel particularly old if you think back to that period, that was the beginning of connecting people.

And the last 20 years have been about connecting people, but we've also started connecting things.

And this intersection of technologies, of IoT and digital transformation of industries, interconnection of AI, the massive expansion in data center capacity because of the electrification of everything that moves, transport of cars, buses, and then the conversion of homeowners from consumers of energy to prosumers of energy and the reimagination of the grid, all of those things are big, massive technology transformations.

If you think of today's energy system, it was actually built about 100 years ago.

I live across the street from Navy Pier.

If you know your history, Navy Pier was built as part of the World's Fair as a demonstration of electricity.

It was called the City of Lights.

And the breakthrough technology they were talking about a hundred some years ago was electricity.

So the current systems we have, the architectures we have, are at least 70 years in many years, almost a century old.

And now we have an opportunity to reinvent them with the understanding of the connectivity of the Internet, with the understanding of the power of AI, with understanding of what distributed systems working with central systems can do.

And so imagine a world where every hospital has its own energy generation system.

Imagine a world where every home can consume energy, but also store energy and sell energy back to the grid.

Imagine, if you like, what your phone does today.

It has a cellular network which is the primary pipe with which it gets data, but also has a WI FI network, which is a local pipe.

Imagine your energy system having a similar sort of duality with a distributed system which is closer to WI fi, and a central system which is the grid.

And I would further that this is in the national interest to be a leader in developing these new technologies.

And so that Intersection of automating and really bringing the right solutions to scale the human effort, the digitization of electrical infrastructure so we can have the right ability to assess, predict and optimize.

And the transition from dirtier energy sources to electrification.

Electrifying everything in our processes, I think is one of the most foundational changes in our energy system.

And that is what we're working on.

And we think we affect pretty much every part of what all of us do.

Today in the United States, 4 out of 10 homes have Schneider content in them, keeping them safe and reliable.

Every day.

In the United States, if you get up in the morning, you cannot go more than six hours without interfacing with a data center powered by Schneider Electric.

If you buy goods that are imported in the US a good chance is about 40% of them come through the port of LA, which is the only electrified port in the country, and that was done by Schneider Electric.

And if you go to jfk, which will be the most electrified airport in the world or certainly in the US that work is being done by Schneider Electric.

So we are part of that invisible system.

People don't really think about their energy.

They flip a switch and the lights come on.

But as you go through storms and weather events, you start realizing that that doesn't always happen.

And making our infrastructure more resilient, more independent, and more technically advanced is exactly the challenge and the mission all of us are on.

So what can leaders, what should leaders be asking themselves to take advantage of this technology?

Well, first of all, you know, I get a lot of questions about, oh, isn't this much more expensive?

And I think that's not true.

Remember, energy efficiency has two words in it, and second word is efficiency.

And efficiency is reduction of waste.

So when we deploy energy efficiency programs, we're just trying to reduce waste.

And what leaders should be thinking about is do they understand how much waste they have in their system?

How much energy are you wasting in your factories?

How much energy are you wasting in your buildings?

How could you transform those environments to be more efficient?

And visibility is a starting point.

Once you understand that, then you have to start deploying technologies that help you reduce it.

And we are building technologies with payback periods on the high end in the 10 years, but many in the mid to low single digits in terms of how quickly you can get return on that investment.

So these things are built to stand up to the scrutiny of financial returns as well as giving flexibility and resilience in operations.

The tech sector, which I had the privilege of being part of, does A very good job of inventing a future and getting people excited about it before it's fully ready.

Think of the discussions we're having about AI, Right.

We're all waiting for it to these amazing things.

It's not quite there yet.

It'll certainly get there.

The industrial sector invents the future, but doesn't tell people enough about it.

So one that's interesting one, and I'm sure you can relate to that from your time at Honeywell.

So one takeaway that I would give business leaders listening to this is challenge your teams to understand what is technically possible today.

Because you will be surprised that the limitation to change is not the technology or the business models.

It is the thing we all fight, which is, well, we've always done it this way.

And so really being the forcing function to say we want both.

We want a more sustainable, more carbon efficient operation and we want it to be more cost effective.

And you can absolutely demand that.

And the technologies exist to make that happen.

Not just from Schneider, but from the entire industry.

Yeah, I love that first point about, number one, what's the energy waste and really bringing visibility to that before you start taking action.

And then what's technically possible?

I can totally resonate with that.

Yeah.

People aren't aware and so they just sit with the status quo and thus never make progress.

So two great questions for this, Amar.

This has been so much fun.

So down the road, when you retire one day as a great executive, what do you hope your leadership legacy will have been?

I think that I was always interested in people finding their best.

That they were always pushing themselves to get 1% better.

That that pursuit was in itself the goal not arriving.

And that we created a space where everybody could do that.

That we demanded that people take pride in everything they do.

And that we had an environment where we really cared for each other and we cared for the customers and partners we were working with.

Right.

And I think if you can achieve those things where you're on a mission, you're constantly getting better and you're bringing people along and that's the environment you've created, I think that matters more.

We can talk about how big or profitable, but those are just outcomes.

Right.

And frankly, there'll always be someone bigger and more profitable and, you know, and businesses will change.

If you look at The S&P 500, the businesses that were the largest 50 years ago, many of them don't exist today.

So if you're really thinking about long term, creating environments of culture, creating other leaders, creating leaders that actually create better companies and better cultures, I think that matters and I think those are learned behaviors.

So it's really about the environment you help create, it's about the leadership mindsets you help create, and it's about helping people be the best that they can be.

John Wooden, that famous basketball coach, once said that the best players who played for him no one has ever heard of because they had this incredible work ethic.

Now they lacked the God given gifts that some of the players that we have heard of had.

But he didn't consider those players the best because he judged the best someone could do based on how much they achieved of their potential.

And so creating an organization where everyone is reaching for their full potential I think would be a wonderful way to think about the impact one has.

A great note to hang this up on, man.

Great job today, Amar.

A lot of fun, sir.

Thank you Ben.

Great to be here.

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