Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More
A Conversation with Dane Hudson | Episode 511
Introduction
Hey, folks, if you’re running a business, you probably have heard about having a vision as a leader. But guess what? It takes discipline to make that happen. And today, my guest is going to help us understand that. His name is Dane Hudson. Dane, welcome to the show.
Doug. Great to be here. Thank you very much.
Meet the Guest: Dane Hudson
Dane. It’s a little bit of a tradition here on the show. Give us a quick summary of your background. What what has your life journey been about that and what got you into teaching and talking about the things you do now?
Okay. Well, I think the first thing would be my my wife, she has always called me the king or the queen maker and my career of almost 25 years as CEO. The thing I enjoyed most was creating leaders, so I knew I’d be stepping down from the CEO role. My last CEO role about six years ago, and I started creating pages, thinking about how I would support leaders on their journey.
And I blinked, and that framework grew to be 1000 pages long. And I now use that to mentor CEOs, particularly in the startup space. So founders and co-founders in the startup space. And I love it. It’s far more fun doing that than being a CEO now.
And speaking of being a CEO, you’ve had more than your fair share. I think you’ve you’ve you’ve led several enterprises. Can you hit the high points of the different industries you’ve been involved with?
Sure. I mean, I was very lucky. At the age of 22, I worked for a packaging company in Australia, and the CEO or the owner was one of the richest guys in Australia and didn’t know what to do with me. So maybe general manager at the age of 22 years old. So that was a great start to my leadership career. I also worked for 12 years with yum! Brands, so KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell. That was an amazing journey. I love that company. Love, love the things we did there.
I ran one of Australia’s largest wine companies and then I also worked in the facility services industry. So cleaning, catering and my last role, I had 200,000 employees across Asia, so that was a lot of fun.
Scaling From 100 to 1,000 Employees
I know in part of your backstory or your current framework, you you talk about a big difference for an owner founder moving from 100 employees to over a thousand. I was curious when I read that tell us, tell us what that pivot point is for you. What have you observed and what do you talk to people about on that one?
So when when businesses start up, the, the organization immediately reflects the CEO or the founder. A lot of the people, when the business are smaller are engineers, techies. They’re as passionate about the company and the vision and the purpose for the company as the founder. So it’s actually surprisingly easy to run a smaller business. Then you get to 50 people, 100 people and beyond. You’ve got multiple functions that you don’t necessarily have understanding or experiencing.
And you could lead a HR person, a finance person, a legal person, a sales team deal with boards. That’s actually one of the biggest challenges a lot of my clients have is that they struggle working with boards and investors and leveraging what boards and investors can bring. And in fact, looking at boards and investors, often as a bureaucratic hurdle. And so it’s a very different business when you move from 100 people up. It’s a very diverse business that a lot of the times the founders have never seen before.
And excuse me. And, you know, I’ve I’ve talked to people about the fact that when you’re talking about that owner founders scenario, making those shifts as the individual, that that original founder sometimes just doesn’t happen. And sometimes the, the biggest shift has to do with willing being willing to let go and, and give responsibility to another person for, for different facets of the business. And on one hand, it is a numbers game and the chief number being the hours in the day.
And if you’re the founder still trying to do everything or touch everything You run out of bandwidth really fast if the company is truly taking off. So I talk about this a lot in, In my banking days, I watched founders basically crash and burn after they scaled up to a certain level, and they hit that invisible wall of being able to make that shift and, and not, not properly choose to do so. And whether it was a lack of good advisors encouraging them to make the change or just kind of a mental roadblock in being unwilling to make that change, it’s a it was a significant and very real element.
The Relentless Student
Yeah. And I see that a lot too, Doug. So people you and your you had a corporate career. I had a very long corporate career. I saw great leaders and I saw terrible leaders. So I actually had a benchmark a lot of the time, founders coming out of a university? School or university? Or maybe they’ve worked for other startups before. They’ve done their own.
They haven’t necessarily got role models. So often the only role models they’ve got are their parents, and so they don’t actually know what good leadership is or bad leadership is. And so just like they invest in their technical skills, they also need to invest in their leadership skills. So I talk about founders needing to be relentless students. So we hear a lot about avid learners. A relentless student is a notch up. and they’ve got to scale themselves as fast, if not faster than they’re scaling their business. And that’s bringing in a support team and who’s who. And they may not know who should be on that support team. How do I continue to grow as a leader. And if they’re not going to do that, then they’re going to be the I suppose the, the, the issue stopping the business from growing. It’s going to stop at them.
I totally agree, and in larger corporate settings, the typical thing is what do we do? We promote the the best performer on the team. We make them the supervisor or the team lead and not always thinking about could they be a good leader? You know, we we wait and see.
And for the individual what it does it it starts to create a self-fulfilling prophecy because consciously or subconsciously they start thinking, well, I got promoted because I was a good contributor and producer, so I need to double down on production or execution, and they do what they have to do with the people on their team. But still in the back of their mind, there’s a push to elevate that performance, and if they get promoted again, it gets even worse and they miss the significance of, as you said, leaning into what was your term for learning?
Relentless student.
Relentless student. I like that. It is. It’s it’s a need to continue that learning and and explore things you don’t know. Which, by the way, includes not just class, book or textbook learning, but finding mentors, you know, reaching out to others who have already achieved and succeeded and and worked with them. But let’s say and let’s turn our attention to this idea of discipline overcomes vision or is superior to vision alone.
first off, how did you come to believe in that principle?
Why Discipline Beats Vision
Well, Doug, firstly, I’m I’m an insanely disciplined person, so I’ve always had a bias to do that. I’m one of those silly people that gets up at 5:00 in the morning and goes to the gym, and and I’ve worked out that the only way I can be successful in my, in my career and what I do is actually have discipline. If you want to manage all the parts of your life, you’ve got to have discipline to manage that. So don’t get me wrong. Vision is necessary. Vision is what starts a company, gets the founder out of bed in the morning, encourages teams to join them, brings investors in. So you need you need vision. But a vision is just a destination where discipline is the roadmap to get you there. So vision is where we’re going, but what’s the roadmap? How are we planning? How are we going to get there. So you know what’s what’s the steps we need to take.
Who are the people I need to bring and bring on board? How do I actually fund this growth? What’s the timing of of the steps that I’m taking so that discipline to see all the elements and put them together piece by piece that moves you step by step by step to the vision. That’s why. That’s why discipline is so important. You need that as the roadmap to get to the vision.
I like that, and recently I was talking with a client, and we kind of ended up having a discussion about the fact that plans and action kind of go the same way. Maybe it’s the more basic underneath what you’re saying, because, you know, you can create a plan which could tie directly to your vision, but if you don’t have action and the discipline to perform the action steps, you’re not going to get anywhere. And action alone, without a plan or a vision is just being busy and burning daylight. You’re you’re not really intentional about where you’re going. So I think the vision and plan go together in the discipline and the action.
Go together to create the need for for all of that to to really move your idea forward and get the results you truly desire.
Deliberately Creating Culture
Yeah. I one element that I talk about in my book, Doug, is that the culture you need to deliberately create your culture, and that’s another example of discipline. Your culture will evolve whether you want it to or not. So you need to be deliberate and thoughtful about what what are the values we have we want in the business? How do I embed those values? And then what are the elements of culture that are going to really make our company different? And unless you’re deliberate and discipline in actually doing that, who knows what culture you’re going to end up with in the in the business.
Yeah. When two people create a relationship, there’s a culture that that emerges, whether it’s intentional or not. And it, it really involves a simple principle that I believe, and I talk to all my clients about is the fact that culture is not as mystical as some people try to make it be.
It’s it’s simply addressing the idea, how do we want to do things? How do we how do we want to treat each other? How do we want to work together? How do we want to handle our customers and our suppliers vendors? It’s a persona that that does emerge. And I agree with you totally. It it takes influence from the top to first define the culture that is desired, and then do the work to make it happen.
The Shadow of the Leader
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you’ve got to do that every single day. I talk a lot about the concept of shadow of the leader. and that’s the positional power. And the more senior you are, everything you say and do is is exaggerated by your position, and that has a massive impact on the culture as well.
It does and spot on. I agree 100% that the a leader at any level is going to cast that shadow, and I remind people regularly that the words they speak have a much greater weight than what they might even intend them to be, because of the power of the position and the way people deem that.
And there there’s an interesting flip side of that, I believe, for junior leaders that are trying to speak up to the senior leaders, is that you? You need to kind of wade through that shadow that you’ve envisioned of that person, because at the end of the day, it’s just another human being. And yes, they’ve got the title and yes, maybe they’ve got the seniority and the experience. But when you’re dealing with an issue today, they’re fundamentally just another person and we’re all trying to row the boat together and see what we can do to make the best decision possible for the moment. So I encourage people strongly to strip away some of that aura and just talk like you’re talking to another person.
No, I agree with that. But as you would know, it’s very different in countries in the US. I think that’s more likely in Australia, UK parts or Europe Asia. It’s very hierarchical and right. James the boss or Doug’s the boss, they’re going to be, you know, they’re just going to salute the flag whether they agree with Dan or Doug or not.
And so you’ve got to be very thoughtful. And that’s what I’ve enjoyed working in Asia. And the last 2020 odd years is just the cultural differences of all these countries. And still how do you create integrated and cohesive and and leadership teams that are going to speak up? Yeah, and that’s not an easy thing to do.
Kingmakers, Queen Makers, and Mentoring
So so Dane, at the start you talked about kingmakers and queen makers. I like that idea. And how did you typically approach that, that junior member of a team that you saw with potential or even role specific responsibility. And how did you start thinking about that development plan for that person?
So when I was in the in the corporate world before I became a CEO mentor, I was always very, I suppose, deliberate about mentoring junior staff or team members coming through. And so I’d role probably have 1 or 2 people I was mentoring all the time. And in those early days. What I’m trying to work out with that individual is there’s probably three areas. One is you’re supporting someone grow in their current role.
Two, you’re maybe supporting someone who’s about to be promoted or who just has been promoted. Or three, you’re helping someone through a family or a personal issue. So those are sort of three areas that you tend to work with people. What I do when I, when I was mentoring people in the corporate space, and that’s I love struck the structure of doing that because I could focus on what are the elements of their job, where they’ve got upside or improvement opportunities. And I can talk through my journey and we can talk through what they’re struggling with. And I used to enjoy that a lot.
You know, I think that’s wonderful and kudos to you. And my audience has heard me speak frequently about the fact that I grew up the only child of a single working mom, and she had the brilliant wisdom to surround me with mentors at a young age. She had no interest in remarrying and as a consequence she substituted, which I have later believed is a much better solution. She she recruited mentors for me, and I have a whole long list from an early age of of people who came along my side and took me under their wing and taught me things and showed me things and allowed me to have questions and, and, it kind of became part of my DNA.
So as I got older, even as I went away to university, I just kind of automatically when I identified somebody that I thought could be of value. And I don’t mean that in a weird way, but, somebody that demonstrated a skill or ability that I was curious about. I had no fear of approaching them and saying, could I shadow you? Could I, you know, come sit at your feet and listen and learn and and, good leaders, what I discovered. Good leaders are more than willing to do that because they know they grew on the shoulders of others. And so when they’re approached and asked, they’re willing to pay it back. And it’s a it’s a great economy there of give and take that that really can help. And as I got further in my career, I did much the same thing. I guess I never specifically thought about it as, as an assignment or a thing that I did. I just, I just kind of naturally gravitated that way.
Yeah.
Well, you obviously had a very progressive mother dug for her to come up.
A very great way to support you on on your on your journey. Yeah, I think it’s it’s a critical part mentoring people coming through. So I dedicate a whole chapter in my book to actually how as the leader, you need to grow your team and through through mentoring approaches, through even giving appraisals, having structure to an appraisal. And you know, how how do you actually give someone constructive and difficult feedback. And so that’s that’s a really important part because in a business, people want to interact with the CEO, they want to interact and they want to learn. And if you as the leader aren’t going to teach them and develop them, they’re going to go somewhere else.
How to Give Effective Feedback
Let’s let’s talk about that giving of the feedback. I think that for many, either the the giver or the recipient, it it’s it’s a tough conversation to have a plain and simple. So what do you advise people on as you’re mentoring them and showing them? What? Is there a framework or a methodology or a principle that you believe in?
Yeah.
So I think about so two elements what I appreciate and how you can be more effective. And I know there’s a term for that some people use I won’t use that term, but it’s one of the three or 4 or 5 things that I appreciate about you Doug. And it’s a conversation. And I actually write this down on a piece of paper. Type it in obviously a zoom call. I can share it by share, line by line. And I have a conversation about the behavior, leadership behaviors that you’re performing that are having a positive impact on the business. And so I’m really clear because I’m trying to get you to understand, okay, those those are the things I need to do more of. And then I say, okay, Doug, there’s probably three areas where you can be even more impactful in your role. And I try to be very specific with what those leadership behaviors are with examples. And and again, it’s a conversation. It’s not beating someone up and saying, hey, you’re doing great.
and, and we use the word but far too much. It needs to be. And these are the things that you can do where you’re going to have even more impact. Hey, and, Doug, I’m the same. I had problems early on in my career with this too. And so you sort of connect with the staff. So it’s about focusing on behaviors that you want them to replicate and do more of, and behave is where they need to improve or competencies where they need to improve in. So that’s a very simple conversation. But I’ve had leaders that I’ve worked with that still have that piece of paper from 20 years ago that I gave up. Right. And so it’s about how you actually deliver the message and and the power of the message. Yeah. Well, I got. Yeah, that makes sense.
Okay.
Building Your Own Leadership Framework
I think it’s interesting as as people move into roles of responsibility, where leadership becomes an element and a significant element of what they could and should be doing in the role.
I think it’s important for people to pause and do the work to build their own foundation and framework, defining the leader they think they want to be that because, you know, there’s a bunch of books out there. I’ve got several I wrote myself, and there’s a bunch of books out there that have ideas about good practices and good principles of leadership and not but, but and at the end of the day, we need to pick our own. We need to find our own way. And and that helps immediately develop the The authenticity aspect of leadership. Be authentic. Be real. Be relatable. And if you if you yourself don’t really know what that is, you’re you’re you know, it’s going to show up in your day to day presence. So the faster someone who has emerged in or been appointed or selected into a management slot and given that power of position, it’s it’s critically important, I believe, that they begin to work to really lock in on the idea of who do I really want to be as a leader? And there’s a lot of words you can put on it, and that’s great and wonderful, but you got to do it.
You have to be disciplined to make that happen. And then as you work with mentors, guides, other colleagues, you can determine what needs to be adjusted and you know, what needs to be strengthened or or dialed back. And you can calibrate everything along the way.
Authenticity: What Can You Copy?
Yeah. I love the way you spoke about authenticity. So one of the things I did early on in my career, probably right from the outset, is I created a spreadsheet, and every boss I ever worked for, I put in that spreadsheet. What would I copy? What would I not copy? And I did that for 15 years and I developed, okay, these are the things I would copy, but what can I authentically copy? It’s a really important thing. So and I continue to encourage leaders keep doing that, keep observing leaders in in in business, in sport, in community and family and politics. Identify people and think, what can I authentically copy? So I’ll give you an example. Doug, most people would have heard of Richard Branson, and he always was great in terms of entering events.
And I remember there was a video of him riding a bike from his hotel to the spaceship when he flew off in Virgin Galactica. Of course, as a PR stunt. But the oldest form of transport with one of the newest. And so we had a conference in Singapore and in Asia. There’s they’ve got this lion debt, and you get dressed up as a lion and the lion goes through. Now they’re professionals that do that. I actually did that myself in front of 600 people. I was because I was the host of the conference. And then I got up on stage and took off the hat and and people sort of cheered when they realised it was me and that wasn’t showing off. That was just trying to create a memorable moment for the participants. And so that’s something I could authentically copy from Richard Branson in my own way. And so it’s really important to identify things that you think you can do, and that will have an impact as a leader. But it’s also something you can do quite naturally.
Right. Right.
And I believe, and I’ve certainly had the time on the clock to observe this over literally several decades. I think more than ever, today’s work world, the younger people that are out there, their their meters for authenticity are off the chart. You know, they’re they they can detect the fake it til you make it leader and many times actually score that against you. And and you know, part of being authentic is just to own up to the fact that in a particular moment, you may not know a good answer. You, you, you may not know what is happening. And being real and authentic about admitting that and calling it out and and letting it work Its natural way is very important because, again, you know, the sensitivity to that person that’s fake is is really off the chart. And I think people don’t suffer that for long. So if you’re in a leadership role, you know, finding that true deep authenticity and that kind of anchor that you can rely upon, I think is very vital.
Yeah. You use the term, you know, we’re all human earlier that, you know, we are we we did we make mistakes even. You know, when you’re the CEO, you’re not perfect all the time. You don’t say the right thing all the time. and but if you do that the majority of the time, then you also get some credibility.
Right from.
The organization.
Right, right.
The Core Elements of Disciplined Execution
What? back. Back to the discipline idea. I know there’s a lot of tools and, you know, checklist and check boxes and calendars and things like that. But really, at the core of that, Dane, what is what are some of the significant elements of really turning on that, that key discipline for execution?
Yeah. So there are what. Let me start. The first thing is actually making the decision, making the decision that I’m going to actually implement more discipline in my life. And it could start off in small ways. It might it might be actually, I actually want to lead a healthier life.
And so I need to get more exercise. Now, if you try to get up at 5:00 in the morning and go to the gym every morning as your starter, that’s probably not going to fly. And so you got to think maybe it’s a walk on a Sunday morning. So when you’re establishing discipline, do things in small steps, that’s really important. And then that’ll actually get some momentum going as you go down that path. The second thing in terms of, I suppose, being a discipline leader I talk a lot about is being a role model, that the shadow of the leader concept, that you’re being watched constantly. And just be aware that that in everything I do, I need I need to be a role model. I may not get it right perfectly every minute of every day, but 95% of the time I’ve got to be I’ve got to be a pretty good role model for the team. And then the last area, as I said, is be this relentless student and and ensure that you do not give up on your leadership learning journey.
So if you can maybe keep those elements we’re being each day you’re being deliberate in what you’re doing. If you can also be very thoughtful about how you role model your behaviors. And then that third element is keep investing in leadership skills, reading great books like the ones you’ve written, and maybe they’ll take my book too and keep learning podcasts, etc. I keep learning. Really important part of being a disciplined leader.
Self-Accountability and Daily Reflection
You know. Related to that, as you said, setting out and creating the the disciplines that you deem important, I think there’s an element of accountability there, accountability to self. And I’ll give you an example. I talked about building a personal leadership framework. When I have clients that do that work, then the next immediate step is to think about a daily discipline. At the end of your workday, 5 or 10 minutes is. All it takes is to make a quick recap of the moments you had during the day and ask yourself the question, did I demonstrate one of these elements of my leadership framework? And if I if I took advantage of the moment to demonstrate that, how strong was it? You know, was it weak, was it strong? Was it good? Did I learn something? Do I need to calibrate? And by.
By building just that brief accountability in the loop. You you then can go out the next day and be a little more prepared to show up and demonstrate those attributes in a, in a positive, effective way. And it’s it’s one thing to be intentional and pack your calendar with the right stuff, and even even do the things you’ve put on your calendar and your schedule. But when you’re aspiring to be a better leader there, there is an element of self accountability for, reinforcing the ideas and taking the moment by moment experience and packing that into the learning that you’re doing that.
I think that’s that’s a great concept. That self-reflection piece. So I in my book, I get at that by a I’ve got the concept of starting Monday, and it’s even in the title of the book, The Discipline Beat’s Vision and How to Be the Leader Your Company Needs starting Monday. And the reason I put that last those last two words in is, my my book is a handbook for people to be a better leader.
And it’s not just I don’t want people to read it and put it on the shelf. I want people to read it and think, what am I going to do differently on Monday? What are the changes? Just 1 or 2 changes that I’m going to start on Monday and and do something different. Don’t just read it, reflect on it as you were saying and do something different. And that’s the part of being a disciplined leader that that is so important, which is do something different. On Monday and I again, I love the way you said this, this end of day reflection. I do do something similar with with my clients as well. Yeah, sure.
Closing Thoughts and How to Connect With Dane
Well, Dana, I think we’re about up on time for today’s, sir, and it’s been a pleasure. Tell people the best way to get in touch with you.
So, you know, I’m wearing my logo where my company is impactful leadership. So if they go to my website, Impactful leadership, you can learn more about what I do and my my book Discipline Beats Vision How to Be a Leader.
Your needs starting Monday is on. It’s in bookstores, but it’s also Amazon ebook topia. eBook reads all those as well. And but probably the website if they want to get in contact with me or Dane Hudson on on LinkedIn as well. So thanks for having me on the show. Doug, I’ve enjoyed our conversation.
Yes, sir. And thank you. And as always, folks, we’re going to have that contact info in the show notes. So feel free to check that out. And this is the part of the show I’d like to remind you. We do have a video version of this episode on LinkedIn. I’m sorry. It’s yeah, it will show up on LinkedIn, but more importantly, it’s on YouTube and channel by the same name. Leadership powered by common sense. Hop over there, check out our archives. We’ve eclipsed the show number 500 a while back and got more to come. And would love to hear from you with ideas and suggestions of guests or topics we haven’t covered for you yet.
But for now we’re going to sign off, say goodbye, go out there, make it a great day.
Meet Our Guest – Dane Hudson
Dane has 25+ years as a CEO across five industries across Australia, the US, Asia and Africa, including roles as CEO of ASX-listed Australian Vintage, Regional CEO of ISS Asia Pacific (overseeing 200,000 employees), and a senior executive with Yum Restaurants International. Drawing on that experience, he shares practical frameworks business leaders can apply immediately, from building high-accountability teams and navigating board dynamics to leading through crisis and preventing founder burnout. Dane can discuss:
- The leadership myth: Vision doesn’t scale companies (discipline does)
- Why many successful founders become the bottleneck in their own companies
- The “optimism trap” that quietly destroys high-growth companies
- Why disciplined culture beats charismatic leadership
- The “Monday morning leadership” approach – hoe to turn ideas into immediate action
- Why most high-growth companies stall despite early success
- The leadership shift founders must make to scale from 100 to 1,000+ staff
Connect with Doug Thorpe
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougthorpe/
- Doug Thorpe Website: https://dougthorpe.com/
- Podcasts: https://podcasts.dougthorpe.com
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/dougthorpe_com
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/headwayexec
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/dougthorpe_com
- YouTube: https://youtube.com/@dougthorpe
- Doug AI: https://app.coachvox.ai/share/DougAI
