LeaderImpact Podcast
LeaderImpact Podcast
Ep. 81 - Dennis Allen - Stop Chasing Success
What if everything we've been taught about leadership success is backwards? Dennis Allen, former F-15 fighter pilot and six-time CEO specializing in corporate turnarounds, delivers a provocative challenge to leaders everywhere: stop chasing success.
Drawing from his diverse career spanning military service to Wall Street-backed corporations, Allen reveals how mission—not metrics—creates lasting leadership impact.
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Welcome to the Leader Impact Podcast. We are a community of leaders with a network in over 350 cities around the world dedicated to optimizing our personal, professional and spiritual lives to have impact. This show is where we have a chance to listen and engage with leaders who are living this out. We love talking with leaders, so if you have any questions, comments or suggestions to make this show even better, please let us know. The best way to stay connected in Canada is through our newsletter at leaderimpactca or on social at Leader Impact, and if you're listening from outside of Canada, check out our website at leaderimpactcom.
Speaker 2:I'm your host, lisa Peters, and our guest today is Dennis Allen. Dennis is a six-time chief executive officer specializing in turnarounds for Wall Street-backed corporations. His CEO track includes defense industrials, pharmaceuticals, software and building materials. Specializing in leadership strategy and performance in corporate settings, dennis speaks regularly in businesses, universities, trade conferences and professional workshops. Before his career his business career Dennis was a combat-rated F-15 fighter pilot in the US Air Force. He has been a featured speaker at national conferences such as the Global Leadership Summit Europe, the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, as well as appearances on numerous US talk shows and radio stations. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book the Disciple Dilemma Rethinking and Reforming how the Church Does Discipleship. Welcome to the show, dennis.
Speaker 1:Amped to be with you, lisa, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:You know, when I read your bio, just a couple things. We're reading Span of Control, which is about a female F-15 fighter pilot, and she talks about what you can control and I'm sure you know when you're flying a fighter pilot. You only got so much. You know fantastic leadership book, so have you ever read it?
Speaker 1:Carrie Lorenz I have not read the book until you mentioned it to me, and she's a Navy fighter pilot. I'm a righteous Air Force fighter pilot, so I'm just saying Navy fighter pilot. I'm a righteous Air Force fighter pilot, so I'm just saying you know, Chevy Ford kind of thing.
Speaker 2:I'm Canadian, I don't, I don't get that, but I clearly, I clearly get the Chevy Ford Ford girl. And and also I just attended my first Apologetics Canada conference. So, wow, I loved it and I'm going to dive deeper into that. So I'm excited. I was interested to read that you spoke at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. I'm going to look into that.
Speaker 1:That's a great course Great crowd of people, a lot of fun to go to.
Speaker 2:All right. So we are going to start with you telling a little bit more about yourself, and really we want to hear about your professional journey and how you got to where you are today, and really what's important is those pivotal moments. We love to hear you know how did you get through. So if you want to share more about that, If you want to share more about that.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess the honest answer to my professional story is if you're familiar with attention deficit disorder. My resume kind of looks like that. Right, it's like this guy's all over the map. I started after university in what was my dream job. I was flying for the US Air Force and having a wonderful time. I got to be an instructor pilot and teach folks how to fly the jet really well, and that was wonderful. And then suddenly boom, medically grounded, my dream job's just gone. I've got a baby a week away from being born, I've got no job, and that was sort of the end of what I thought was my dream. So that was a sort of a wake up call.
Speaker 1:And that story had one other ominous piece to it. I was supposed to be dead in five years based on what they had diagnosed. So that's another story for another day. But what is interesting after that is stumbling out of the military and trying to find where to. I ended up becoming a dark-hearted Wall Street capitalist. I started working for the Wall Street investment bankers who buy corporations. Sometimes those companies are in trouble and they need somebody like me. I get to come in as a gig, chief executive officer, and help them get back on their feet. So I've been all over the map, lisa, with a lot of different things, and here I am talking to you, which is just one more joy for me, and unfortunately you're stuck talking to me.
Speaker 2:I love that. So you know it's interesting when you talk about you know the ADD and that you're all over the map in your career. Did you ever once look at your career and go like, step back and look at it and go being a fighter pilot? There's a lot of crisis. I mean you are probably dealing, and you know again, span of control you can only control so much. So I look at there's sort of that transition of going into what you called a dark carded, dark carded Wall Street CEO. You know you are going into a crisis situation. What's important? Did you ever see that? I mean I did.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I agree with you. You find that humanity has a way to just sort of mess things up. For example, in the arena of the Wall Street folks you always think about, here we have these summa cum laude, magna cum laude Harvard, yale, princeton people who are organizing businesses, but they always tend to find a way to really screw up corporations, mess up the culture of the people, and that means they're going to need leadership. They're going to need people like the folks who might be watching this podcast to be able to think about how do you step in and help people go from crisis and chaos everyone's hairs on fire into thinking about what really matters as a leader to help an organization or a group of people re-become who they were intended to be, and that, whether it's flying an airplane or running a business, that's what leaders do and that's what I hope we might explore a bit today. All right, which I mean we might explore a bit today.
Speaker 2:All right, which I mean I'll let it continue. But I mean I just look at the title of your book the Disciple Dilemma Rethinking and Reforming. You know how the church does discipleship, so I'm sure it'll be related. But anyway, so we'll continue the questions. I'll hold that for a moment.
Speaker 1:I'll park it over here the conversations that I have with a lot of folks tends to surprise people, and it goes basically like this If I could leave one line to haunt people today in our conversation, it would be stop chasing success. Stop chasing success. If you really want to have impact, if you want to be a leader with impact, what you have to pursue is a word that, when I say this word, a lot of people are going to roll their eyes. They're going to say, yeah, you know what that word is. I got it. Let's move on to something else. I'm going to say this word and if any of you glance down at your phone or you walk away from what I'm talking about, you don't understand what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:So that little provocative setup, stop chasing success and focus on this really, really important thing that we call mission. The mission who are you as a leader? Who is your organization? Why is your organization? This is the core of having impact as a leader, someone who pursues mission. That would be my pitch on best principle that we want to talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and do you have, like, where were you when you know, when you thought of your mission and you were an F-15 fighter and what was your mission when you turned it around and became the dark-hearted CEO? Do you have another story where you I mean, did you ever have to stop focusing on the success and focus on the mission, All the?
Speaker 1:time You're really enjoying that phrase. Dark-hearted too. I've noticed you use that three times on me.
Speaker 2:I've never heard it before.
Speaker 1:It kind of scares me to think that somebody actually might want to just call me to that. My wife does, but nobody else. So, yeah, I would say that the tendency for all of us is to default from what our mission is to looking good, being successful, getting what we want, gaining the things that we're after. And they're always sub mission, they were below the mission, they're under the mission and they're not the mission. And here's the problem. The problem is, if we don't pursue the mission, the mission will evaporate. So, whether you're like when I'm, when I'm flying this airplane called the F-15, it's different from Cary Lundholtz, spandek Controls F-14. That was a Navy interceptor aircraft the F-15. It's different from Cary Lundholtz Spandek Control's F-14. That was a Navy interceptor aircraft. The F-15's an air dominance fighter. Its job is to go find bad guys in the air and blow them up.
Speaker 1:We used to actually have a joke we would introduce enemy fighter pilots to Jesus. That was our mission, right? So that was a joke. It's a joke. If anybody gets really mad because I just used that joke about us blowing up enemy fighter pilots, you should blame Lisa, not me, because she invited me on this podcast. But the point of it is your mission is who you are, why you are. And in that moment, as a leader, you don't understand who you are and why you are. You can't convey to anybody else in the organization who they are, why they are, and everybody starts doing what works for them, what succeeds for them, and the organization begins to collapse. So let me give you one example. If I can't, can I give you an example of this?
Speaker 1:I'm going to give you an example at the corporate level and at the personal level. At the corporate level, there was a company that in 1999 was worth $524 billion on the New York Stock Exchange. At that time, that made it the 13th largest economy in the world largest economy in the world comparing the nations. They changed their mission from a why in other words, who they were, why they existed into a mission about what they wanted to be. They wanted to be and their mission was boundaryless we're going to be everything to everybody. It took them six years to lose 90% of their value. They went from $524 billion to $54 billion. That corporation is a US company called General Electric and that corporation has struggled to redefine who and why it is, to start rebuilding its market value Tough, tough change. And that was because they lost their mission. Now that's a corporate example of you lose your mission. Things get bad. Let me personalize it for just a moment, because this is a really, really important thing. I think to be a leader with impact For me personally. I think to be a leader with impact For me personally.
Speaker 1:I was running an organization. It was an avionics company. We built electronic black boxes for airplanes and I decided that there was a particular person in this organization who didn't kind of get me. He didn't get my vibe, didn't feel me, didn't go along with what I'm trying to get done and I sort of shifted away from the mission which is to produce these boxes.
Speaker 1:Using these people who are really smart and really capable into this is supposed to make Dennis look really good and really powerful, because this guy was a bit abusive in the organization. He'd been tough on some women in the organization, he'd been very kind of corrosive to some of our morale and our ethics, but he was excellent in his technology. Instead of trying to help this person become the mission I decided my mission was for me to look really good and take down a bad guy, and what I really did was I crippled my organization for about six months because I lost a tremendous amount of knowledge. I'm not advocating his morals, but what I'm saying is my shift in mission lost my capacity to make the organization thrive for about six to eight months until I can get things back together again. Mission's crucial, whether it's the organizational ethos or whether it's the personal ethos. For us as leaders, does that help with?
Speaker 2:what you're asking. Yeah, yes, I think of the last podcast we had and I was interviewing a female leader from Croatia and we talked about leadership and how it is different. And when you listen to, there are so many similarities. But we talk about we've built this up in our head and we want to be. We want to be the savior, we want to be the. You know, but it's in our head that we're ruining things because of our own thoughts, our own goals, our own. You know what we want to see us, how we want to see ourselves succeed. So that's a great. I think it's always good.
Speaker 1:When you hear the story twice, maybe three, four times, starts to sink in be incredibly challenging, especially for women trying to step into leadership roles in organizations, because a lot of times, women feel like they're being discounted as they step into these roles. Is that true? Is that a dynamic that you see, with women trying to build credibility rather than some of the things?
Speaker 2:And I don't think it's just I mean, I don't think I'm just seeing it, I think it's and it's not with everybody. So you know there are, there are strong females. I feel very strong going into um, to interviews or new positions, new ideas. I have spoke to other women who, and around the world, who feel and and we also believe it could be in our heads we are building up that I'm not good enough sort of attitude. I need more credentials. When I read the job description and it's got 10 things listed, I need eight out of 10 or I am not good, Right? So it's, it's a lot of what's in our head, Whereas men are like, yeah, I got five, I'm good, you know, and, and that's confidence, and we need that, and we and then we just talked about surrounding ourselves with other women who can yes, you are good, so did that add up?
Speaker 1:That's wonderful. That's actually terrific advice, because so many men live in a silo. I'm just going to be me. I'm not going to engage or interact with anybody else. I'm supposed to be the smartest guy in the room and I think the great value of women is that they do seek counsel. That's wisdom, where, as guys, we can be kind of Luddites and just lock ourselves up in our little tunnel.
Speaker 2:I love that we seek counsel. Yes, we do. Yeah, all right, so we're going to move on to our failures and mistakes, because I think we all know we learn more from our failures and mistakes than our own successes.
Speaker 1:So if you'd be willing to share a failure or mistake that happened and what you learned from it, Well, I think one of the failures that I like to work with a lot is that story of arrogance I mentioned a little earlier. I decided to take this person out of the organization rather than trying to bring this person into the mission. That was a tremendous failure for me. I would tell you that, for me personally, my greatest single failure methodology is my impulsiveness. Right, I want to get to the end. I think some of the women that I've mentored and had in leadership roles have always, as we've talked about, seeking counsel. Sometimes they may attempt to overthink it. Well, I am excellent at underthinking it. If you had my bride in here in this room talking for a minute, she'd say he's off the diving board. Then he's going. I wonder if there's any water in the pool I'm about to jump into. I think for women, they might walk out of the diving board and go. Well, we're this high up and there's water in the pool, yes or no? Maybe we should or shouldn't jump. I'm like, oh, how do I reverse that?
Speaker 1:That's a tremendous failure, I think and again that goes back to mission failure. If you don't understand what you're trying to accomplish, you become impulsive, you become success oriented and you begin to kind of negate the things that are set up to make the organization succeed. That's one side of the polarity. The other side of the polarity is you overthink it and you're never willing to make a decision or commit or get going right. You can overthink, underthink. So my failure is impulsive underthinking. I might contrast that with in 1999, carly Fiorina took over Hewlett Packard and she said over and over again she tried to walk in that day to meet all these employees and have all the answers.
Speaker 1:Yes, she didn't know what the mission was, but she wanted to have all the answers and she said that was one of her greatest failures, because people began to realize that she was trying to be her and not the mission and that was a problem. So those are that's. You know my failures impulsiveness. Maybe other people's can lean more into being too much or too much overthought in the other direction.
Speaker 2:Yes, as as I will speak for myself, um, overthink, because you know we want to. We want to think and think and think until it's perfect, and we, we, we love perfection, which we need to let go of, and we're all working on that. And then you just answered. You know, um, the CEO walks in and she wants to have all the answers. We want to have all the answers, we want to look perfect, we want to look like we know it, we have it all together. You know we have the answers. So I think, a lot of our listeners can resonate with that.
Speaker 1:I think everyone can resonate with that. But Colin Powell, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Bush administration, bush II, was a four-star general in the Army and he used to give leadership lectures and one of his impact statements was you'll never know more than 40% of what you need to know to make a decision. Get to 40%, make a choice. I think that helps think both sides, because I'm usually good at 1% and some people want to get to 90%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, oh, I love that think both sides, because I'm usually good at 1% and some people want to get to 90, you know, yeah, yeah, oh, I love that. So then we think of leaders who, if you want to be a great leader, surround yourself with people who know more than you.
Speaker 1:Wonderful advice.
Speaker 2:You've got a great team around you, but I think we all think we need to be the smartest person in the room as leaders and we don't need to be.
Speaker 1:We need to lead the people. I love that. Lose the job security problem of be the smartest guy and hire people better than you. That's great advice, Lisa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd like to think we're there, women, we know to do that and we can always use a little reassurance or reminding. Now I know that you are aware of leader impact and you know that we want to go grow personally, professionally and spiritually for increasing impact, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to share a practical example of how you bring in the spiritual, how it makes a practical difference in your life.
Speaker 1:That's a great question. Let me start with this statement. There is a tremendous amount of insignificance. People are always trying to become significant. I want to have fame and fortune and power. A real leader my suggestion today. Maybe people get mad about me saying it this way, but a real leader doesn't want any of that. A real leader is trying to understand terms like meaning, purpose, identity. In other words, what is my personal mission? Why am I here? Who am I? What are my skills, strengths and capabilities?
Speaker 1:Spiritually, one of the greatest vacuums that we have in the world today and I see this when I'm around the world as well as in North America talking with organizations and people is people don't know who they are. So here's an example. I would take Matthew 20, verse 26. Jesus is making a statement like if you want to be a great leader, you got to be a servant. If you want to be first, you have to be a slave, because the son of man this is Jesus talking about himself didn't come to be served. This is weird. God is not there to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom. That's a beautiful definition of a leader.
Speaker 1:Now, if I walk in to your typical commercial organization, and I quote this passage people are going to freak out, but I want you to think men and women as leaders. Your job actually is if you don't bring the spiritual to the table, your personal professional is a vacuous wasteland. All you will ever want to pursue is success and the things of identity that are meaningless. Fame, fortune, power those things are meaningless. There's plenty of books about people who got those and said there's nothing there. The top of that mountain is empty. This spiritual idea is your mission. You have a mission. You actually have a calling. You have a destiny and if you get what this is like this quote out of Matthew 20, verse 26, now you're starting to get who you are and why you are, and now you start to have impact as a leader.
Speaker 2:Lovely. I have a saying up on my kitchen table and it's not biblical, but I mean it's not from the Bible to quote, but it just talks about we are called to use our talents. We are gifted with talents and we need to find them. And you talked earlier stop chasing the success of others. Everyone has talents. Find yours, find your mission. So I appreciate that. That was good. So at Leader Impact, we are dedicated to leaders having a lasting impact Lasting.
Speaker 1:So as you continue to go through this amazing journey of your life, have you considered what you want your faith legacy to be when you leave this world? Yeah, my rehabilitation process for the last 50 years has been about trying to exit the idea of significance and to encounter the idea of what is my real mission. Who am I? Why am I? So the faith legacy if I could write my own script and my kids tell me I'm not, they're going to put my tombstone up for me.
Speaker 1:But if I could write my own script, I would say this and here's a weird phrase coming at people and write Lisa and ask her what in the world did he mean by this? Your legacy as a leader is to be a disciple. Who makes disciples. Who makes disciples? The joke the way I acronym that's D W, m, d, w M D disciples who make disciples. Who make disciples. Do you know who you are and do you know how you're supposed to help other people form an understanding of who they are? If I could leave that behind impacting one or two, who would impact one or two? I'm a pretty happy camper. I have that real idea of purpose and meaning. I think that would be my wish for me if I could write my script.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel on my heart is the Great Commission, which is what you're talking about. Is it Matthew 27?
Speaker 1:Matthew 28, verse 19. You're right in there.
Speaker 2:As you say, that it just, and I believe that's why I ended up at the Apologetics Canada conference. I am led by my faith, but apologetics is led by evidence, that there is evidence to support the Bible and it's incredible, and so I understand the legacy you want to leave and I do like your comment trying to exit the idea of significance. We look at when we're out on lunches business lunches and people have their phones out and it's like what, what are you doing? And they're scrolling social media to look to maybe post themselves having lunch or, you know, posting that they are significant. They are somewhere where you want to be or you know, we, we let go of the significance.
Speaker 2:That was a, it was a great line I'm. I wrote that down. That's going to go on my table. Exit the significance, the idea of significance. So before I ask my last question, I want to talk a little bit about if you can tell us more about your book, which is the Disciple Dilemma. But you also have a podcast, so I want to hear more about this because I'm looking for a new one. I mean, besides Leader Impact Podcast, I'm looking for a new one.
Speaker 1:Hear more about this because I'm looking for a new one. I mean, besides Leader Impact Podcast, I'm looking for a new one which is a great podcast. Leader Impact is a great podcast. When I was in Oxford, a group of CEOs were together with a group of theologians in Oxford and the deal was to be invited to this. You had to agree to give a talk or write a paper or whatever. I said, yeah, sure, I can do that. When I got there, they said what you're talking about with discipleship and the history of the church and how we don't get it as leaders in the church. You're going to write a book. And I said I don't write books. I don't want to do books. They said you're going to write a book.
Speaker 1:So these theological thugs made me write a book called the Disciple Dilemma. It's about leadership and how the leadership of the church has failed to understand, how it's crippling making the mission clear to people in the church. In other words, the same thing that screws up corporate organizations has infected the church and dilutes our ability to do what Jesus told us like in Matthew 28,. This is your mission. So we wrote the Disciple Dilemma. If you want to see what we're up to, you can go to thediscipledilemmacom. Dilemma is with one L for those of you who might want to be like I am impulsive, but thediscipledilemmacom, and you can see blogs and podcasts. We've had a lot of great people Lisa, I hope I can snag you to get on one of our podcasts to talk as well but a lot of fun talking about how, as a church, human beings, we've tripped up what it means to lead and every one of us is actually called to lead. So that's who we are, that's what we're up to, and come see what we're doing.
Speaker 2:I will. I will definitely tune into the podcast right away.
Speaker 1:To our last question. We always love asking our guests what, in defining the greatest joy, that's not the word happiness. The idea of joy is transcendent to circumstances. Happiness is circumstantial. Joy is transcendent. What really amps me up, makes me just laugh and feel good, is when I can talk with people like we have today, lisa, about meaning and purpose and identity. Who are you, why are you and why that has such an impact on leaders in the world, much like your good ministry is doing. By the way, lisa, I don't know if a lot of people know this, but you donate your time to helping people have an impact as leaders. Thank you for what you're doing in your ministry at Leader Impact.
Speaker 2:You right, welcome, thank you. Um uh. I love the idea of um uh, happiness is is circumstantial, whereas joy is everlasting. And when I think of your greatest joy, I go right back to the your impact. Right, you love to see people. Well, you're making an impact to every person you touch, and you've made an impact to me today, and I'm going to tune in and I hope our listeners will walk away with something today. So I just appreciate you joining us, dennis, if anyone does. I mean you've talked about the Disciple Dilemma If anyone wants to contact you, can they do that through your website or LinkedIn, or what would be the best way to engage with you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so info at thediscipledilemmacom will get you connected with all of us even my ADD connection, I'll see it as well, but the website and then we have a YouTube channel and you can surf and see what we're up to out there. We'd love to have you all come either attack or engage in what's going on.
Speaker 2:I always like to find out a little bit more before I send my first email, so I love that. I am going to go watch some more YouTubes and your podcast. So thank you again, dennis. I hope everyone has enjoyed this, but thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1:Blessings in your ministry, Lisa. Thank you.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, if you're part of Leader Impact, you can always discuss or share this podcast with your group. And if you're not yet part of leader impact, would like to find out more and grow your leadership, find our podcast page on our website at leader impactca and check out our free leadership assessment. You can also check out groups available in canada at leader impactca or, if you're listening from anywhere else in the world, check out leader impactcom or get in touch with us by email info at leader impactca and we will connect you. And if you like this podcast, please leave us a comment, give us a rating or review. This will help other global leaders find our podcast. Thank you for engaging with us and remember impact starts with you.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
