A proud workaholic, John Philbin has always known how important it is to love what you do. As the founder of Spectacular at Work, he helps companies compete + win and helps them create cultures where their people thrive. He advises CEOs and develops future business leaders around the world. He and his team coach leaders and up-and-comers, help companies determine who to hire to make their company stronger, and architect leading people processes to make sure companies have a steady flow of future leaders that fit their culture.
He works with some of the most respected companies in the world (Blue Cross Blue Shield, PWC, Aon, Reebok, McDonalds) and with companies who aspire to be great. Really any company that wants to be better at the people stuff, no matter the size or industry.
Connect with John on LinkedIn.
What You’ll Learn In This Episode
- Right time to plan for succession planning
- What does succession planning entail
- Finding the right talent to fit the roles needed to operate a successful company
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Chicago, Illinois. It’s time for Chicago Business Radio. Brought to you by Firm Space, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to firm spacecom. Now, here’s your host.
Max Kantor: [00:00:21] Hey, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kanter. And before we get started, as always, today’s show is sponsored by Firm Space, thanks to Firm Space because without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. And we got a good one for you today. On today’s show, we have the CEO and founder of Spectacular at Work. So please welcome John Philbin. Welcome to the show, John.
John Philbin: [00:00:44] Hey, thanks so much. It’s great to be here.
Max Kantor: [00:00:46] Excited to talk to you about everything you’re doing. So let’s jump right in. Tell me a little bit about Spectacular at Work.
John Philbin: [00:00:52] Oh, sure. Spectacular Work is a management consulting firm that specializes in leadership development and organizational effectiveness. And what that means is we help organizations to organize themselves effectively and to help leaders be ready to ensure that their company can compete and win.
Max Kantor: [00:01:15] Now, how did you get involved with Spectacular at Work?
John Philbin: [00:01:19] Yeah, so I founded Spectacular at Work in 2019. Just maybe a little background with that help. Sure. Yeah. So I trained as a psychologist and I was a traditional psychologist helping people with their emotional problems. And I sort of found my way into business on a part time basis. I wasn’t really that interested in it when I started. I was really interested in, again, doing clinical work and helping people with their life struggles. But I talked my way into a firm that did some consulting related to what I do now, and I like I found my life’s work. It was really pretty obvious right away that this was my field. And so that was a firm that I got started in. 25 years ago. I started a firm with this great guy, Ed Goldman from Hewitt. Some listeners might know Ed Guttman. He wrote a couple of great business books, and he and I started a firm together. We built it. I ran that for 15 years, and then I sold my majority stake before starting Spectacular at work in 2019. And along the way, I’ve worked with, you know, thousands of executives, hundreds over 100 CEOs and over 100 CFOs. And I tend to help companies at the top with leadership development and succession planning.
Max Kantor: [00:02:47] So when spectacular work goes in to a company, what are you exactly doing to help them? How are you helping your clients?
John Philbin: [00:02:56] Yeah, I think there are 2 or 3 key things we do. So one thing that we do is help them decide who the right team members are. So we have a practice that we refer to as our assessment practice, and that focuses primarily on helping companies define the kind of capabilities they need. So what kind of people do they need in order to play key leadership roles? That’s one. Then the second is helping develop the next generation of leaders, and that is a combination of leadership and succession planning and what we’re doing. There is some assessment, some coaching and a lot of 360 work. And what we do is we help leaders build a plan for themselves to be ready to take on more responsibility. And the idea behind this kind of work is that we’re accelerating the development of the highest, highest potential people in the organization. And so that’s a second thing. And then we help a lot with team effectiveness, particularly helping the leadership team come together, have a shared set of goals so that they’re working on the same thing. You know, it’s very easy, Max, for leaders to come together and believe that they’re aligned but really work at cross purposes. And so staying aligned is an important it’s really an imperative for leadership teams. And we have processes that really help leadership teams get aligned and stay aligned so that they’re really competing with. Their competitors in the marketplace not competing with each other on the leadership team.
Max Kantor: [00:05:03] And are these processes when you come in and you kind of lead these workshops or help the company like understand this, are these processes that the company can still utilize after you guys leave? So this is like long term.
John Philbin: [00:05:18] They definitely are. So what we’re doing is we are trying to build capability that remains once we’re gone. So I’m a big believer in the importance of management routines and management routines are really just the business language for habits. And what we do is we help leaders and leadership teams develop the right habits to take what they get taught and they start to implement with us and use it in the long term. There’s Max. There’s one other piece of work that’s related to that that maybe I’ll spend one minute on. And we at spectacular work, we have a partnership with a virtual reality business simulation firm, and that’s a mouthful. And what it means is we work with a firm that helps leaders practice skills by going through business simulations. So we teach leaders and help them practice the skills around things like giving feedback and getting people motivated and aligned for change, things that are changing in their organization. So and our partnership with this virtual reality business simulation firm, which is the name of that firm, is Immersion. That’s another part of our work really helping strengthen organizations capabilities.
Max Kantor: [00:07:05] You’ve talked a lot about leadership development and also you brought up a little earlier succession planning. Now, can you talk about how those two things go together, but then also how they’re two different things?
John Philbin: [00:07:18] Sure. Yeah. There is sort of a muddy line between leadership development and succession planning and leadership development in some ways is the more general term. And and the idea behind leadership development is again, this. It’s accelerating people’s readiness to take on broader responsibility. So strengthening people’s ability to take on different parts of the organization. So moving from one job to another or getting promoted and taking on significantly more responsibility and succession planning is the part of leadership development that is focused on defined roles. So helping a company. Uh, ready its candidates to be the next CEO. So all companies have a CEO, but at some point that CEO is going to move on or retire and having there’s. Lots of economic value associated with making sure that you have a steady flow of the right kind of future leaders. And many, many companies don’t spend as much time getting themselves organized to be sure that they’re going to have a good candidate or set of candidates for each job in the company. And so one of the things we help companies do and I’m sorry, one of the things we help companies do is have a ongoing process so that they have ready now successors for as many leadership jobs as possible, as many executive and senior management jobs as possible.
Max Kantor: [00:09:19] So for you, what’s the state of the art succession planning?
John Philbin: [00:09:23] Mm Yeah. The, you know, succession planning and a lot of companies looks like, uh, what we sometimes refer to as replacement planning. And that is they, they have a couple of people who they know are going to take on more responsibility in the future. They have somebody who will probably be the next CEO and they have somebody who will probably be the next CFO or the next head of HR or general counsel. And to to a lot of companies, that’s succession planning and that’s really replacement planning. And there are some real challenges associated with replacement planning, what succession planning is. Is having a clearly defined set of expectations associated with a role. Meaning we believe that our next general council really needs to have these skills. Needs to be this kind of leader and needs to have this set of expertise and background knowledge, for example. And so defining the target for future candidates to have to hit is the first step in succession planning. Really understanding what the expectations of that role are going to be in the future. And that’s the tricky part. Succession planning is about readying the organization for the future. And what a lot of companies do is they have a current CEO and they decide that the next CEO should look a lot like the current one.
John Philbin: [00:11:14] Well, the conditions are going to change over the intervening years. And so what what’s really important at the start of succession planning is having this defined set of expectations for what the role looks like. And then it’s identifying people in the organization who the leadership team and often the board of directors believe have the underlying skills that can be developed into one of those senior roles or one of those executive roles at the company. And this takes a number of forms. It usually includes some form of assessment and the there are very common forms. I mentioned earlier the 360, where you ask everyone around the individual whether or not or you ask them to paint a picture of the candidate’s strengths and development needs. Often we get involved because we have assessed thousands of executives over the years and we help identify what are the gaps between a particular candidate’s readiness now and what those requirements are for the job. So in a lot of ways, a central piece of succession planning is developing a gap analysis. And and then once you’ve developed a gap, so you have someone who has run a is financially quite literate. They have been a general manager of a division, but it’s a global company and they don’t have any experience outside running businesses outside the United States.
John Philbin: [00:13:12] And so finding ways to get the candidate. Experience. Doing things that they haven’t done before is an important part, and sometimes that means putting them in a job rotation. So moving them from the job they’re currently in into another job. And sometimes it means getting them involved in other ways in developing those skills. We’re big believers that the vast majority of of development occurs on the job, but things like executive development in at at major universities. Executive coaching, project based learning. There are a number of tools that we use that help people develop the skills now for big roles like a CEO job or any senior executive role. You’re never going to be able to give someone every experience that’s necessary to be ready. What you’re trying to do is choose the most important ones and determine whether or not the candidate is able to grow those skills over time. So that’s at the heart of succession planning. Once someone moves into a new role, then they often benefit from some support, some mentoring from someone who has had a similar role or some executive coaching and executive coaching and is a key service that we provide as well.
Max Kantor: [00:14:58] Now, John, for my final question for you, this is a question I like to ask all my guests. For you, what is the most rewarding thing about what you get to do with Spectacular at work?
John Philbin: [00:15:11] Gosh, I really have a pretty great job. So there are a number of parts, but if I could only choose one. Working with people, getting them ready for a job that they are really motivated by and really care about and are really excited about. And then when they come back to me, sometimes five and ten years later and they say that work we did set me on a path that I don’t think I could have achieved on my own. I get to work with incredibly talented people and, you know, we’re just an extra little ingredient in really talented people’s ability to take on more responsibility. That’s probably the most satisfying part of my career and the thing that’s the most motivating.
Max Kantor: [00:16:07] And John, if people want to learn more about Spectacular at work, how can they find you guys a website or social media?
John Philbin: [00:16:16] Yeah. So we are busy on LinkedIn in particular and we’re at Spectacular at work. Three words. And if people want to reach out to me, the easiest way to get me is John J. O h n at spectacular@work.com.
Max Kantor: [00:16:37] Awesome. Well, John, it was a pleasure talking with you today. I mean, your answers were so informative and so thoughtful, and I just really enjoyed talking with you about Spectacular at Work. You guys are doing a lot of good work for the community.
John Philbin: [00:16:51] Max, I really appreciate the time. Thanks for making it such an easy conversation today.
Max Kantor: [00:16:55] Anytime, John. Anytime. And thank you for listening to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kanter, and we’ll see you next time.
Intro: [00:17:06] This episode of Chicago Business Radio has been brought to you by firm space, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to firm Space.com.
