Meet Fred Lowery

[Transcript]

00:04

Welcome to the Finding Gravitas podcast brought to you by Gravitas Detroit. Looking to become a more authentic leader. Finding Gravitas is the podcast for you. gravitas is the ultimate leadership quality that draws people in. It's an irresistible force encompassing all the traits of authentic leadership, Jr, podcast host Jan Griffiths that passionate rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales, entrepreneur, leadership coach, keynote speaker, one of the top 100 leading women in the automotive industry as she interviews some of the finest leadership minds in the quest for Gravitas.

Jan Griffiths: 00:50

In this episode, we'll explore the leadership journey of the Tennessee boy who thought he made it when he became a design and release engineer for General Motors. All but he was wrong, he was dead wrong. That was just the beginning. Meet the man who progressed from GM to Maytag, to become the Senior VP and President for Thermo Fisher scientifics Life Sciences solutions, and laboratory products business, a business with revenues in excess of $10 billion. And in April 2019, he was appointed as a member of the DuPont board of directors. And if that wasn't enough, he was recently named one of the top 22 Most Influential People in the fight against COVID 19 will explore the authentic leadership traits that make Fred Lowry, the man and the leader that he is today. Fred, welcome to the show.

Fred Lowery: 01:53

Thank you. Thank you excited to be here.

Jan Griffiths: 01:56

It has been a long time since you and I had a conversation now, hasn't it?

Fred Lowery: 02:03

It's been too long. But you know, let's don't call it that long. It wasn't that long ago, right?

Jan Griffiths: 02:09

Well, we should explain to the audience our history. Fred and I worked together at Maytag many years ago. And one of the things that I remember fondly is the day and I guess the audience would also need to understand that you came out of automotive. So did I was our first experience out of automotive. And we're walking out of Maytag headquarters one day, and I remember a saying, Oh, it's five o'clock, and we're walking out of the office. I wonder what everybody in Detroit is doing right now?

Fred Lowery: 02:47

Yeah, let's just say that it wasn't automotive. That's for sure. Two things, one I worked for you didn't, then let's be clear about it. You're my boss. At the time, though it didn't feel like we felt like it was we were great partners. We have a great time. And I will tell you the saddest day at Maytag was today. It really was. We hated to see you go.

Jan Griffiths: 03:09

Oh, thank you.

Fred Lowery: 03:11

Oh, great things come to well,

Jan Griffiths: 03:12

But I am beyond thrilled to see your success and how you have grown. And I know firsthand that you are an authentic leader because I work sitting next to you side by side every single day. So I know it to be true. So Fred Lowery. What is your story?

Fred Lowery: 03:36

Let me let me start with I'll start at the beginning. I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. So I am. I'm a Southern gentleman, by birth at least. I went to college at Tennessee Tech University, played football there and got a degree in mechanical engineering. After college, I took a work for a very short period of time and a place called Coupeville. Heating and cooling was the mechanical contractor. I spent maybe a few months there, which was a great start for me, frankly. But then General Motors came calling and I took a job in Ohio working at Packard Electric Division of General Motors, which ended up becoming part of Delphi work there for a while and then I moved up to GM truck and bus in Michigan. work there as a design release engineer. I started at GM down at Packard in operations, working operations and worked in quality engineering, moved over to product engineering. And then I got the opportunity to go and be a design release engineer at GM truck, which was an amazing job probably one of my most favorite roles historically, this part of my career. And then I left and went to went to Maytag and started there and in procurement working for you, it started out in Spark quality and that moved on to supply really shipmanagement And we got involved there and Lean Six Sigma and all those types of things. Maybe Maybe I'll tell a story about that at some point about us tearing down the walls in the office. But I'll come back to that later. I think that's a good authentic leadership conversation to have. What was it Maytag though I moved on from from from procurement work in business development, which is probably where I found something that I didn't realize that I was passionate about, but really passionate about growing businesses. As I think about how I describe myself, I'm really a business development person that that actually can run a business. And that's the way I show up every day is thinking about how we can support our customers better and one and two, how we're going to make money doing it, and how to make sure everybody's aligned around those two things. And having a great time. So that's, that's kind of the way I approach things. While in the business development, or like, got got to know a guy named Ken Boyle, we worked together very closely, I ended up moving on to more product management roles back on what we call the mothership at Maytag. So back in the brands, after doing some exciting things in business development, and can't off, we moved on to Fisher Scientific. And he called me up and said, Hey, why don't you come to Fisher Scientific when we're going to do some of the same things around business development here that we did a Maytag would love to have you part of the team. And I went to Fisher Scientific, it was a big change from an industry standpoint, you know, going from automotive to appliances was very, somewhat similar, right, they were different points in the in maturity curve. But going to scientific or life science tools company was it was very different, and a lot to learn there, can left after six months. So after six months of the person that brought me or left the company, and then six months later, Fisher Scientific was acquired by thermo electron. So I was in a new industry, really working as a staff person at that point, doing some integration works, do some operations work based on my background, we got acquired, well, I walked in, told my management the time, one of my better managers in my career, gentleman by the name of Ray Patel, I said, "Ray, I'm new to the industry. I don't have any direct reports. I'm a synergy. I'm working directly for you, I have a synergy. So this is a problem, I got to figure this out". And Ray said, Hey, give me give me 30 days, and we'll see how this thing shakes out. And probably three weeks later, he put me in a general management role as Vice President general management of our of our glass business. And from there, you know, here we sit, you know, 15 years later, and I've scaled in the organization through various GM roles, various vice president general management roles, business units, and divisions and, and now, I run one of our five business groups. My title is senior vice president and president of Life Sciences solutions, and lab products. So I'm responsible for about a third of the company, about 26,000 colleagues, you know, 10 billion or so in revenue. So that's where I've landed at this point, my career.

Jan Griffiths: 08:13

That's, that's quite a story. From the GM engineer.

Fred Lowery: 08:17

There was the Maytag days that really did it.

Jan Griffiths: 08:22

Yeah, that's what it was. I will tell you, you know, and I encourage everybody to do this. There is something about stepping outside of the industry silo that you're in.

Fred Lowery: 08:34

I agree, I think, well, first off, you don't know what you're good at, until you go somewhere where they're not good at it. And then you realize, wow, I can add so much value based on the things that I've learned. But when you when you stay in the same company, everybody knows the same things, right? So it's hard to distinguish yourself when you step outside of that. That's one thing the secondly is coming to this industry to lifesize tools has been really great for me. Totally different industry dynamics. were clearly the industry leader, but the industry is still consolidating. It's just a very different dynamic. And we are changing so fast, that we're a scale company, you know, 100 and 70 billion, billion dollar market cap company 25 billion in revenue last year. So we have a real scale in the industry. But we don't have all the business processes yet. Because we're changing so rapidly. We're acquiring companies rapidly. So there's, so we're like a new company, every year or even even maybe sometimes more frequently, so you can continue to have to have this entrepreneurial spirit. But at the same time, you're kind of building the infrastructure to support the long term growth of the company and that has been incurred credibly exciting.

Jan Griffiths: 10:01

How do you do that? I think Jeff Bezos said that he treats every day as day one. So, you know, once that complacency sets in, it's like, it's like it's over. Right? It's killer. But how do you? How do you stay on you keep that edge? How do you keep the team motivated like it sort of day one every day?

Fred Lowery: 10:21

I use this analogy, I feel like being the industry leader in an ever changing industry, is like running the 400 yard dash from Lane eight. I don't know if you saw this a couple years in the Olympics, the actual person who won the gold medal was was running from Lane eight, nobody wins in lane eight. And part of the problem is, you don't know how fast you're running. Or you don't know how fast the people behind you are running until it's too late until it's too late, you come up that fourth curve, and you're behind. Complacency is the enemy, it absolutely is the enemy, you've hit the nail on the head. And the way that you fight against complacency is with very aggressive targets in our space. It's not just complacency around being displaced by a competitor, it's, we spend more more money on r&d than over a billion dollars than anyone else in the industry. There are things that will not happen, unless we do it. There's a societal impact that we have. And there's a huge responsibility that I feel every day that we absolutely have to do our very best for the end user, for the customer for the patient. Because if we don't, it just might not happen. You've got to set really high targets. I never used the word stretch, there is no such thing as a stretch target. In my book, we set high targets and we achieve them. And that's it. There's no excuses associated with it. We only achieve our targets.

Jan Griffiths: 11:46

When you're dealing with products that are in this health, life science environment, you are dealing with things that impact people's lives, which I think really help when you're putting together a compelling vision or mission and getting a team behind it. How did that play out? During this pandemic? Were you engaged in the COVID 19? situation? Much? I got to believe you have to be right.

Fred Lowery: 12:14

Yeah, we are. I mean, I would say and I've said this internally, it's almost as if this company was put together for a time like now, it really has brought our mission to life, our mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer. And it's very specifically surrounding enabling our customers. And it's not about us, it's really about enabling them. Specifically around COVID. We were involved way back at the end of November, when the virus emerged in in China. Our next gen sequencing products were used to sequence the genome of the virus, which allowed us to work with our partners and then also allowed us entirely to develop a test, a diagnostic test for for COVID. We had the first emergency use authorization from FDA for the COVID test, the PCR COVID test, which is proven to be the gold standard in testing. And we started ramping that test in in the March timeframe from about 500,000 tests per week. And now we're up over 12 million tests a week that we're producing. And we're clearly the share leader in in COVID test globally. So we're involved on that side. But then we're also involved with the with the pharmaceutical and biotech companies working on vaccines, and antivirals, so those are our customers, and we're supplying them with research tools. And we're also supplying them with the tools and equipment used for production, and then a lot of the production raw materials. And then we also own a cdmo a contract development and contract manufacturing organization. And we're holding capacity to do the final form fill for whatever vaccine actually wins out to be the one that actually comes tomorrow, we'll put the vaccine in the final its final form, whether it's in a sterile vial or in a capsule, etc. We have been totally at the forefront and working like crazy to support our customers. But to your original question on the societal impact, it's been incredible. And I cannot tell you how proud I am of our 80,000 colleagues and the work that they've done to support the COVID relief. Can I tell you one story, you would just this is my favorite story. But there are I hate to tell it because there's so many other stories of just Herculean efforts that people are going through the instrument that we make the PCR instrument or qPCR. When we make to perform the actual test in the lab, is produced in Singapore. Well, many of our colleagues in that factory actually live in Malaysia and they come across the border as you know things go to work in Singapore. Well during the pandemic The borders are closed. And so colleagues could not cross the border. And they actually had to make a decision that if they went back to Malaysia, they wouldn't be able to come to work. But if they stayed in Singapore, they had no idea when they could go back to Malaysia. Jan, we had over 150, our colleagues, like 90 plus percent of them made the decision to stay in Singapore. Because they understood how important they knew that this product was being used to diagnose patients with COVID. And they just understood how important it was. And they said, We're going to stay here as long as, as necessary. And of course, with support from a company and you know, we did all that we can just do to support them when they stay there until the board is shut down, months, months, not weeks, over three months, away from their family during a global pandemic, supporting the societal need to manufacture instruments. What a what an amazing story. I mean, it just gives me chills thinking about it today, I cannot tell you how proud I am to work for a company where we're we're having such an impact that where our colleagues are so committed to our customer.

Jan Griffiths: 16:23

I think that that's also a testament to your leadership. I know that you are going to go all. I mean, obviously they're they're great human beings, right with a tremendous value system and commitment to the good of others of all others. But Fred, it takes great leadership for people to to feel that way and to want to do that. What in your mind? Let's let's talk about your that is the ultimate of a high performance team, right, a team that will do anything for each other and for the cause. What in your mind is the most important trait of a high performance team, outside of a pandemic environment in a normal environment?

Fred Lowery: 17:08

You know, I think just starting with you thinking about teams, there's a couple of things I think about, one is getting the best talent. I really believe that when you're going to put the team together, you don't. And I'm very conscious about this, when sometimes you gotta Hey, I gotta get a team for this. And sometimes leaders like well, let me find the person that's not doing anything. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I want you want the best people give me the best person they can work with. So I really think it starts with getting the very best talent, given them really, really clear direction. But then you got to get out of the way. You know, hey, I'm here to support you, but I'm gonna get out of your way. And what that really means is, you're responsible for the result, you're you got to empower them. Say you, we got this team of great people. This is what we're trying to do these objectives, little direction, go have at it, let me know if if I can help or how I can help. And I think that is the that's the real trick is to make sure people realize. And I always see this lightbulb go go on in people's heads, especially early in their careers, we say, Hey, you're the team. You can do whatever you want. And they're like, You mean I can, I can do whatever I want. Yeah, you're accountable for it. Whatever, whatever you want. You guys get figured you guys figure it out, let us know. And I think that's the thing that I love about a good team is once they realize that they can, it's on them, right? They can figure it out. You see the cream rise to the top see people this, they all of these things that have been inhibiting them go away. And they come up with just the most miraculous things. So that really excites me. And, you know, I really think of building people in teams as being the highest order of a leader is to watch people grow and make sure that teams are growing. I mean, of course, you have to hold people accountable. But you really need to give them a lot of empowerment, otherwise you won't get the best won't get the best outcome.

Jan Griffiths: 19:11

And one of the things I loved about Maytag is that at the time, Terry Carlson was the CEO of Maytag, and we worked for Cherry. And he really empowered us. He basically said, you know, here, here it is, this is what we got to do have at it. He knew that we needed a bit more of the automotive infrastructure in there, but not too much that we tried to make Maytag an automotive company because that wouldn't work. And he knew that we could figure out how to make that work and he let us go at it.

Fred Lowery: 19:45

I look at leaders that are scaling in the organization. Usually you can point to a place in their password early on. They had the opportunity to put their fingerprints on something I asked We think that's a big part of developing leaders is giving them the order. You go figure this out, or maybe a part of Team, you guys go figure it out. And we don't know what we don't know what the right answer is. And you're going to come back and tell us now we're obviously going to challenge you and ask questions, why is this right, and you're going to have the facts and data behind it. And all those types things. But I think that having that accountability early in your career really gives you a chance to develop as a leader, and then you just hit repeat, right, you do the same for you do the same for the folks that that are on your team, you give them the order and give them the empowerment, if you will give them a responsibility to make a difference. And you got to trust them, you got to trust them to do it.

Jan Griffiths: 20:45

You're right. And in Maytag we literally did tear down the walls didn't you?

Fred Lowery: 20:52

You know, that set the tone for our group at Maytag and a little background Maytag was was very conservative. I mean, you know, your office literally could be a certain size based on your level. If you were a director, you could get one picture on the wall of your vice president, you can get to, of course, those those pictures came from the company stash of artwork was very conservative, quite conservative, right? I mean, why am I making? I'm probably not doing the justice. And literally, our office, there were two of us in office was next to our managers, obviously, was was there. And we literally tore the wall down in between.

Jan Griffiths: 21:34

And I remember them saying, Are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you want to do this? Yeah!

Fred Lowery: 21:44

I thought it was great. And it just really set the tone for pay. It's not business as usual here. And we are going to work together as a team. And we are going to do something really special. That hasn't been done here before. So we were we were young enough and brazen enough. And I don't know if we were smart or stupid at the time. But it all seemed to work out.

Jan Griffiths: 22:07

Well, we knew it was right, we knew was the right thing to do. And we felt safe doing it. And that's what leaders have to do today is create that environment. I mean, I felt that as long as we were doing something that we believed in, that we did it for the right reasons we were true and authentic about it, that Terry would support us. And that's how I felt, I mean, I felt like I could take on the world. And

Fred Lowery: 22:31

I tell you what, you've you've really hit the nail on the head. And I like to think about this issue of air cover, or really driving accountability low and organization saying, Hey, we believe in you, and we're going to empower you. A lot of that has to do with the environment you create around Honesty and trust. And in order to get to trust, I think you have to start with honest vertical communication, both good and bad, both up and down. And I really forced that issue. You know, personally, but from what from my leaders to say, we have to be very clear and as transparent as we possibly can be with our teams, because that's what we need them to be. We need them to be very clear, and very transparent, vertically. Otherwise, we can't make good decisions. If bad news doesn't travel up quickly, we're going to lose. If we only get good news. And people are trying to hide the bad stuff, you know, we're gonna lose and but at the same time, as bad news comes up and we you know, we beat people to death because of it, then we're still we're still gonna lose, you have to create that safe environment where, listen, I'm going to be as transparent as possible with you and tell you exactly what I'm thinking in love. Not in nine, not in a you know, not in a hey, I'm, I'm beating you over the head with a stick. But I'm going to tell you exactly where what I see and what I think. And I expect the same in return. And we're going to take that information and make the very best decisions for our customers the very best decision for for our business, we're going to allocate resources in the very best way to drive success and support our colleagues. And that is that is the trick is create that environment where people are willing or willing to be honest, all the time.

Jan Griffiths: 24:29

Yeah, it's a it's a magic and then you see people who are sometimes quiet in meetings, you know, if you see other people not necessarily the leader, but when you see other people encourage the input from others. I saw I didn't actually see it I was giving a presentation to Flagstar bank and one of their the women in the audience was talking about one of the VPs and she said that he you know, often in a in a country This room in a boardroom type situation is the people that sit at the table. And then there's a ring of chairs on the front seats in the back right? In the back, right. And the people who don't feel either feel like they don't belong or don't want to participate sit back there. And you see a lot of women will sit back. So not this one. But they, and this woman said, and she, we were talking about that in this in this situation. And she said, I just want to let you know that Greg, the other day in a meeting, stood up from the table, sat in the back and gave his seat to her. And she was at least three or four levels below him. Right. And I thought, wow, you know, they say actions speak louder than words, that is action, for inclusiveness for diversity. It was all right there. And one simple act.

Fred Lowery: 25:55

Yeah, you know, the other thing I've seen in some organizations is this tendency to have pre meetings. So you have like a pre meeting, before the before the meeting to get the work out the kinks, and so that the meeting itself is very well orchestrated, that there's nothing, there's no surprises at the meeting, that, you know, everybody knows what everybody else is gonna say in the meeting. And, you know, I say, that's huge waste, you know, I'm a lean guy, you know, why are we having a pre meeting, for a meeting, let's just have one meeting. And if you create an environment where people are honest, and where you're comfortable with the truth coming out, and you know, that everybody's gonna, gonna speak their version of the truth with their giving you their lens with a view on the situation, you don't need to have a pre meeting. In fact, you don't want to have a premium because you're gonna miss something in the real meeting, because in the pre meeting, things get weeded out, though, we don't want to talk about that we don't we don't want to air our dirty laundry or whatever. So I think it's, I think it's just one of those things that we all have to fight against, and really be comfortable living in a world where, and I say this all the time, where, hey, I mean, I have all the right answers. As a matter of fact, I'm sure I don't have all the right answers. I want to surround myself with the smartest people who, collectively, we're going to build to whatever that whatever that true north is, what are the right answer is, in that situation. I think getting engagement from everyone, as you point out, especially taking advantage of the fact that you have a diverse team. And then secondly, making sure that you have an environment where everybody feels like they can bring their best self and be honest, you know, just a point on diversity if I if I can, and I guess I will, because I've got the mic right now. So as you know, I've never met a mic I didn't like but if your team's not diverse, you don't have the best team. That's not that's a fact. That's not from, that's not a Fred Lowery opinion. It's a fact you can read the study by McKinsey called diversity matters, if you want to prove it to yourself. But if you're a leader, and everybody's from the same school, if everybody looks like you, if you're a white man, and everybody's your team's a white man, if you're Indian, and everybody on your team is from India, whatever, whatever that dimension is, if you don't have diversity on your team, you're not getting the best result. I don't care how good the result is. It's not the best result. So if you want to have a great team, you better make sure you've got different opinions, you got people with different experiences, and that every single one of those people on that team feel comfortable speaking up and being the very best.

Jan Griffiths: 28:49

Yes, and diversity is a great topic. And we often talk about diversity in terms of either gender, or race. Those are the two areas that we tend to focus on the most. But one area of diversity that we don't talk about a lot, and that is ageism. And I love to see a team of people that's got some some nice, young, raw talent, right? Plus some seasoned people on people in the middle. And I started mentoring a young woman in my last job, and it evolved to very much a reverse mentoring type of situation. She was mentoring me as much as I was mentoring her. And I would love to see the day where we get away from this idea that the more senior person you know, is the mentor because they have all this knowledge and wisdom to impart. Whereas the younger people just have a totally different fresh ideas that come in with more technology, to really embrace that. I'd love to see leadership, embrace that part of diversity more than we're seeing right now.

Fred Lowery: 29:59

One of the things that We are millennials, employee resource group. I started several years ago, maybe three, four years ago now is a reverse mentoring program. The millennials are the mentors. And those of us who are becoming more senior in the organization and an age or their mentees, we go for a specific period of time, I think it's nine months. And we map out just like a real mentorship program. And we map out some areas we want to focus on. And, and we do that, and I've had a couple of different mentors, and through the reverse mentoring program, and we focused on things like social media, but we've also focused on things around how do we interact with our customers differently? You know, because our customers have a lot of millennials, right. So it's been really great from a business standpoint, but also great for me from a personal standpoint, as well.

Jan Griffiths: 30:51

And Millennials are getting old now. It's about Gen Z.

Fred Lowery: 30:54

Yeah

Jan Griffiths: 30:54

Gen Z is coming through baby big time.

Fred Lowery: 30:57

Right. You're right.

Jan Griffiths: 30:58

And they are different, again, from millennials.

Fred Lowery: 31:01

Absolutely. And I think you mentioned technology. I think the fact that Gen Z Millennials grew up with a different a different set of technologies that we did, I think it's really important as to how do we, how do we interact with our customers in the right way? How do we interact internally in the right way to drive the most effective outcomes? I think the pandemic has been a great example of where technologies have kind of taken center stage that really existed, it full stop in very capable ways. We just weren't using them. To the extent that we are now I'm super excited about the productivity that is driving, but also the effectiveness that we're seeing with customers, I tell you, and we're I'm sorry, we're so far off topic leadership. But this is a leadership discussion.

Jan Griffiths: 31:50

No, this is this is important. We, we'd love to hear about what you've learned during the pandemic.

Fred Lowery: 31:57

One of my observations has been I spend a lot of time with customers. I kind of split my time between time of the frontline that would be our sales, our sales teams and colleagues that work in operations in touch our products. But then the rest of my time was with customers. And then I tried to keep the administrative time to as low as possible, as you might imagine, knowing me well, being able to have a video call with a customer. When I'm sitting in my living room, and she's sitting in her living room, or her office, there's no corporate walls there where I've been on a plane, and I showed up at her office, and there's other people in the room, and we're sitting in a conference room, and we're very formal. It's been amazing how we have connected differently, and more productively in the video space. Not to mention the fact that logistically, I can just see more customers, I can just talk to more customers, we can get on the phone for for the video for 15 minutes and work through an issue that would have taken us weeks because we personally have been trying to schedule the schedule the meeting, so we both could actually be face to face. So I've found this to be incredibly valuable toward making deeper connections with customers. And in the volume of visits. And this makes the same comments are the same for internal. I'm doing more skip level meetings, I got together a group of from our single use business eyebrow processing business that's really involved with developing products for COVID. They've done an amazing job. And in just increasing production and getting things out the door. I got together with a few of the ops leaders could have sent him a note in a normal world cinema note and say, Hey, congrats. Thanks for just an email. Let's get him on a video call. Talk to him. 15 minutes. Thank you, guys. Thanks so much. You know, you guys are making a huge difference. What a great team you are, hey, what's on your mind? What else? What should I know? What should I do anything, anything you need, anything I can do to be helpful? I mean, how much more productive is that than passing a few emails back and forth. Think about the personal touch. Even though a handwritten note is is amazing, really having some face to face interaction and seeing the look in their eyes. I used to call them the shiny eyes. Whether people are smiling or not, do they have that really shiny I like man I this is the best place to work. Driving that as a leader is is incredibly important. I think we can use we can use technology to do it in a way that maybe was available that we just didn't take advantage of in the past. So I'm very excited about that.

Jan Griffiths: 34:35

What has it done for speed of decision making within the business since the pandemic I've had several clients share with me that they've they've made decisions, you know, it's taken it's gone through five steps rather than 15.

Fred Lowery: 34:49

Oddly enough, we started the year we started the year with an annual leadership meeting on top, top 300 Plus executives and one of the themes of that meeting this year was speed at scale, really, us thinking about the fact that we are getting larger as a company. We believe that scale matters. But we don't want scale to become bureaucracy and we don't become slow in front of our customers. Now, these are these types of things. And we were talking about driving speed at scale over a period of time, little did we know there was going to be a global pandemic, that just totally changed the clock speed of a company, where we went from and again, and again, these are products that have a huge societal impact. We went from having conversations around, let's set a meeting up and look at your calendar to look at your watch. Yeah, when can we were all watch time now, you know, so when, when can we talk about this in the next hour. It's just been incredible. And the other thing is not just being the speed at which we've been able to make decisions, which has been impressive. There's been a speed at which we've been able to bring things to market and scale and that thing that's been really impressive, you know, what else, it's deciding who actually needs to be involved in making a decision. We had an example where someone was relocating. And there was a, there needed to be an exception to the relocation policy, this decision had to go through multiple layers of management to get approved. And then we're talking about a 1000s of dollars of decision not to, you know, not millions of dollars, we went from that taking weeks to making decisions, million dollar decisions, multimillion dollar decisions around investing in to scale up in different areas, in hours, like literally going for weeks on something that, you know, in the scheme of things doesn't matter as much to we're making decisions on how to make an impact, how to get products out, and what do we got to spend capital in hours? Versus what will take us, you know, weeks and the past, it really boils down to what information do I need to make a decision, and who really needs to make that decision? I am super excited about those things sticking as we go for I think it's a huge competitor, the companies that get this get this right, will have a huge advantage in the future.

Jan Griffiths: 37:24

But how do you do that? Fred, how do you make sure that these things stay in the culture moving forward? And you know, people will have a tendency to want to go back to their old routines? Right? I mean, not everybody, but there's going to be a group of people that will want to do that. How do you say no, this is the way we're going to do business moving forward? How do you ingrain that in your culture now?

Fred Lowery: 37:50

Yeah, I think you build it into your accountability structures is really the first. That's the ultimate thing you do. But but as far as the messaging, I think, starts there, it starts with, I don't talk about a future state, this is the state. This is the new normal, there is no future state new normal. As far as I can tell, we're in normal, and it will be normal until it changes and then that will be normal. And just become you becoming comfortable with with the reality, as it stands today, and building process, building making decisions around the information you have, at this very moment. The reality is, the world is so dynamic now, and had we had this conversation a year ago, even before COVID, we would have said the world is very dynamic. Now, that's not that's not going to change. This is it, this is our reality. And what's the very best way we can manage in this reality? And that's, that's that's the starting point around that. And then, you know, secondly is it's what is what's your lesson I talked about accountability. It's what's your reward? Who are we rewarding, rewarding the team's for perfection or rewarding them for speed? Right?

Jan Griffiths: 39:09

Yeah. Good point.

Fred Lowery: 39:11

Are we rewarding the team that that killed, killed 10 projects? Are we rewarding the team that kept the one that that wasn't quite perfect, right? What do you reward? And I believe in our current state, we're celebrating some of course supporting our customers but being able to do it at speed with speed and scale. If you do those things, hold people accountable. Talk about what success looks like in your reward structure. I think you have a much better chance of it becoming a part of your culture.

Jan Griffiths: 39:45

Gravitas is a word that means different things to different people. And I define Gravitas as the hallmark of authentic leadership. What is gravitas to you?

Fred Lowery: 40:00

You know, when I think about Gravitas, I think it's about how you show up. And that's not just the physical conversation, it's really the manner of which you are able to inspire or influence the outcome of a situation, by your presence being there, whether it's physical presence, or whatever your presence is, how that shows up to people. And what does that mean toward inspiring or influencing the outcome and the way you influence the outcome is how you influence the people, how you inspire the people, right? The outcome. In my mind, the outcomes are a totally people dependent. And I talked earlier about having the best people but it's not about having the best people is having the best people, and them being their very best self every single day. I know we talk about getting the best people, but I want everybody to be their very best self every day. I think leaders that are able to do that. Sometimes we you hear people talk about this person, she's she's a winner. She says she's got it, she's a winner, or he's a winner. And I think some of that is, is in this word, gravitas. There are people that you just want to follow, like immediately know, we know that we know they're going in the right direction. And you know, what happens is it's this inspiration, this influence allows people to be their best self, but it also gives them permission to expend their discretionary energy toward whatever the outcome, whatever the outcome needs to be. I always have this we have this discussion about continuing to be successful. And man, are we driving the team too hard. And I think that's, that's loser thinking. In my mind, like, the best teams work hard. What I mean, when he when he's talking about the dot that we think about a sports analogy, the dynasties, they work hard, they work, they work hard, so they can win. So I want people that on the team that want to work hard, they enjoy working hard, they want to work smarter, too, of course. So I'm not I'm not suggesting waste any waste there. But But I don't ever feel like I don't ever feel like we're pushing too hard to manufacture. I'm worried about the other side. I don't want people to get bored. I want to challenge people that want to be challenged that they feel like there's another peak decline. And my job as a leader is just to point to the peaks to say, hey, there's another there's another peak over there. Let's go get it. What do you need to get there? To me that's that's the grace is not necessarily the leader this I don't know that that means you got to be rah rah out front and screaming and hollering I think you can you can be quiet leaders show up in a way that really gives really inspires people to be their best selves, and gives them whatever they whatever they might need, in order to unlock that discretionary energy to go climb that next peak. And that's what gravitas says to me.

Jan Griffiths: 43:19

Yeah, yeah. Well said.

Fred Lowery: 43:22

You know, I would just I have to say this. Mark Casper, our CEO is is an amazing leader. He's a very humble person. And very thoughtful, brilliant. Obviously, when you talk to him, you realize that he is so specific about the words that he uses, he doesn't waste a word ever. So an intentional is the word that that's the word I'm looking for. He's so very intentional, in a very understated way. But it absolutely reflects amazing gravitas. When he says something that's like, got it, we have to do it. And I think that's, you know, we all have to find our way we don't we, you know, we don't coach style. It's not about style. It's about impact. Right, right. And the only thing I would say about gravitas, it really is just about leadership is authentic leadership. It's about caring about people. Someone once asked me, how do you how do you convince people that you care? And I said, Well, you just got to care about it. There's there is no, there is no convincing people that you care.

Jan Griffiths: 44:31

Isn't no faking it either. either. It's coming from the heart or it isn't.

Fred Lowery: 44:36

Yeah, there's there's no faking it. You just You just have to care about people. And if you care about people, then you'll get better outcomes. We saw this recently and this is something that we all know of course, but in our employee involvement survey, we do an annual survey. There's a question on the survey. It's something like that. I'm paraphrasing, but it's a question that says, Do I believe that my ideas about improving the company are listened to basically, do I believe my manager listens to the ideas that I have about improving the company? And what we saw is that colleagues that scored low on that question to answer that question with a very low score. They also answered questions about, Do I have a career here? Who have a career here? They answer that question, that low score, do I believe in the continuous improvement process? Here? They answer that one at a low score? Do I respect my manager? The answer that question that low score. So in essence, if colleagues don't feel heard, and we're not talking about heard, and if they're being heard in the area around improving the company, so that's something that clearly people should be heard in. And we have a continuous improvement process called practical process improvement, which are a ppi, which is all about hearing those ideas from from our colleagues. And if people don't feel heard that area says I'm not going to be a great employee. That's not on the colleague that's on the leader. That's the leaders issue to change to make sure people on your team feel like their ideas matter.

Jan Griffiths: 46:19

And you know, Fred, if you talk to half the leaders out there and say, it's really important that you listen to people on your team, most of them a goal. Yeah, I listen to the people on my team all the time. Of course, I had a rude awakening around about 2010, I think it was, and I was in a leadership role. And there was a survey that came out. It wasn't a 360, it was more of an employee engagement survey. And it was the same kind of thing, right? And I received some feedback that they said that I, I would cut people off mid sentence, I wouldn't let them finish their thought, because I was so excited to jump to the next stage or the answer or the next step. And I felt like I already had it, what they were trying to communicate that I would I would move forward. I never never meant it to you. No, I never. I was mortified when I thought that they were hurt by my behavior. And I if you'd asked me if I was a good listener to sit, oh, I'm wondering, yes, I'm a good listener. And when I got that feedback, it shook me to my core. And after that is very, very careful. Because you as a leader, you may think that you've heard everything and you got it. And you started to move the conversation somewhere else. But be careful, you know, you have to let the person finish and articulate their complete thought. Before you, you respond.

Fred Lowery: 47:52

Yeah, I'm trying not to cut you off after you just gave me that story. Because I think that's certainly one of my development opportunities is cutting people off. But I think it is about, it's about listening. But, but it's also about giving really good feedback. It's, hey, I listened to you, I heard you. Were going to think about that idea. I'll get back to you and let you know. Or, hey, that's an amazing idea. I'm going to have Jim follow up with you. And let's see how we can move that to execution. Oh, that's a great idea. Unfortunately, that was not the priority right now. We're going to put that in the parking list and revisited in six months. How about this, make sure you ping me and ping me in six months. And I think that will be the one that we work on next. It's about the it's about the feedback and the follow up around that that says, Oh, my Oh, my goodness, what I say actually does matter. It's the kind of stuff when people get people I think I don't think leaders get this. Sometimes we talk about the dinner table impact. We show up as leaders, people go home and they say hey, you know such such came to our factory today. Hey, I had I had a meeting with such as I was on a zoom call with with such a such, how about this? Do you know I had an idea, you know, that idea I was telling you about last week? I got I mustered up enough enough nerve to say it. And you know what? They said we're gonna think about it in six months.

Jan Griffiths: 49:24

Yeah, yeah.

Fred Lowery: 49:26

This, this is the power that we have as leaders. You know what that I do have that we're actually going to do it. I'm going to talk to the to the CFO next week, we're going to, we're going to talk about it. Now think of that, think about that person bringing the next idea. And the next idea and the next idea. Yeah, and versus the it's contagious. Its contagious versus versus the opposite. Or think about the person that think about the here's here's the super This is a superpower. This is a super secret. Think about the person in the meeting that did not share their idea. Somebody else shares their ideas. We go, Hey, we gotta move that one to execution. Thanks, man. Thanks so much for that. No people sit around the table. I sit up, I should have said something.

Jan Griffiths: 50:10

Yeah, no, that's right. I mean,

Fred Lowery: 50:14

Bob's ideal and he's an idiot. Next time, I'm gonna say some.

Jan Griffiths: 50:20

That's so true.

Fred Lowery: 50:22

And that is, those are the things that change the culture. That dynamic can consistently thriving, a environment where people are expected to just speak up, and people are rewarded for speaking up and not shunned for speaking up. That's the thing that ultimately changes changes the culture in a positive direction.

Jan Griffiths: 50:47

Yes, yes, it absolutely does. I'm gonna switch you to a more personal note right now. How do you start your day, because I'm always intrigued as to how successful leaders start their day.

Fred Lowery: 51:04

I wake up about 5:45. Without without the alarm so far, unless something bad happened the night before, but you know, 5:45am up. Before I get out of bed, I reach over grab my phone. This is this is very personal information. Jan, wow. I reached over grabbed my phone. And I scan through my emails. Every so often, there's a few that I can process right away something from AIPAC or something from from Europe that's going on, I can answer right away. So I do that for, you know, 15 minutes, and then I'm up at six and go through my routine of getting ready. Sometimes I do work out in the morning, I watch CNBC, usually in the mornings, or CNN, sometimes. So I'm able to get kind of a view of what you know what's in the news for the day, if there's something that I need to need to read. And then, you know, here's a COVID thing, I didn't used to do this, I used to not eat breakfast, which is not a healthy thing to do. So I've started doing during COVID. I've started doing a smoothie every morning. So I have a smoothie, which gives me a little give me one more servings of greens for the day, and take my body's vitamins drink or drink a glass of water and then get the car to go to work. So that's kind of what I'm doing these mornings.

Jan Griffiths: 52:34

What do you do to get your head in the right place in the morning? Because you know, they say reaching for your phone is the worst thing you could possibly do right away, right? Yeah. It's no judgement, everybody's different. You do what works for you.

Fred Lowery: 52:50

You can judge me but that's what I'm that's exactly what I do. Right now, I do have one morning meeting. That's our stay. I'm responsible for co leading the corporate incident response team where we look at every COVID case or suspected case. So I actually have a morning meeting. But in my normal life, I don't schedule any meetings for at least an hour after I arrive in the office. So I give myself the first hour and get a cup of coffee, sit down. I used to go through my day the night before and get prepared. But then it gives me another chance to kind of flip through today. If there's any work product I need to get out, I can I can do that. Or I can think about something, it may give me a chance to think more critically about something that I really like to have about an hour in the morning before I have to jump into a meeting with people and get, you know, to start to start talking. So usually, I need a little bit of quiet time and then and then go from there.

Jan Griffiths: 53:49

Yeah, I think that's a really good practice. Because I know that in my time in the corporate world, there's this need, you sort of feel like you have to be in meetings or busy doing busy work all the time. And now, in the last couple of years, I learned that creating that whitespace to, to think and connect is so vitally important.

Fred Lowery: 54:12

It's very important and you know, my normal life, I try to travel a lot, right? So whether I'm in the office or not, I try to have that whitespace in the morning, whether I'm in the office or not, I try to have a break for lunch. Now oftentimes at lunch I will spend it with it's a great opportunity to spend it with with someone on a topic but but there's still a break from you know, I'm not in front of a computer I'm not in a quote unquote meeting but a lot of people and then before I leave the day, I have some quiet time for myself where that's where I kind of get organized for the next day, reflect on day kind of follow up on any you know, any specific action items I need to get out right away. But I try not to just do it once a day I try to get you know a few spots of whitespace where I got some time for myself. Um In order to stay organized, but also stay focused on what's what's what's most important?

Jan Griffiths: 55:07

Yeah, that's good, good plan. So looking back at your life, what advice would you give your 25 year old self in today's environment?

Fred Lowery: 55:22

I got some advice at 25. Or maybe just before then, around my career that served me well, and someone said, hey, guess what I was still a GM, they said, You should write down the roles that you want for the next 20 years. And it really served me well, even though I didn't do all those roles. While I was at GM, I, you know, gave me a path at least to follow from a career perspective. I think the advice I would give myself, being where I am now will say, write down the personal development needs you're going to have for the next 20 years, and start ticking off that list. Because oftentimes, we think about career success and career development. And this is very important, but separate from that is personal development. And what are the things that you need to personally do? What are the skills experiences that you need in order to be ready for that career success, I think I would focus more on that and encourage myself to do that. The other one would be around connections. And maybe I'll use the word networking. But I would just maybe describe what I mean I, I would say to say, hey, Fred, young, Fred Lowery 25 year old for Lowery, become better at networking. And it's not about who you meet, it's more about or said differently. It's not about who you know, it's more about who knows you, and more importantly, what they think about you, yes. So make deep relationships with probably fewer people. And make sure those people have an incredibly positive view of you. And then you don't have to build a huge network, because you'll tap into their network, and they will become your biggest supporters. And their network will think really positively of you versus, you know, having a few folks that you are having a lot of people that you've met, but they don't really know you, and they're not your advocates at all, because they don't really know you not that you're not great. They just don't know you. So, so find, you know, smaller groups to network with and become, make sure they become real advocates for you. I think that's really good advice. And in this in this day, and age where connectivity is so much better than it was before you can do that really well. I believe. We talk about people having mentors, the way you really need to sponsors. And, you know, you don't really select your sponsors, they kind of select you. So you need to have some deep relationships, where people can feel like, hey, this person is really gonna go somewhere. And I'm committed to helping accelerate that as a sponsor. So I think the two things that that I could do differently would be, you know, centered around personal development, and really building a deeper network. Not Not, not in quantity, but in quality, and impact. And just one more thing on personal development, and just in practice, what does that mean? Scott Mitchell, I don't know if you remember Scott Mitchell from Maytag, you know, Scott, Scott Mitchell gave me some advice one day, not only walking out of the office out of the office, it's not that it wasn't like a structured, you know, a mentoring session. He just said, Hey, you ought to, you ought to really get deepen. And Elaine said, your role? Well, you already you ought to really learn everything you can about Lean, I think it'll serve you well, later. Like literally was like those two sentences. And I thought, Okay, now, I'll know Okay, I'll do it. And I can't begin to tell you, like that gem of advice did build in that, boom that putting that tool in my toolbox has changed my career.

Jan Griffiths: 59:26

Wow. Powerful.

Fred Lowery: 59:28

Totally changed my career. So when I say about personal development is one of those few things you're going to become really good at? And what do you need to become good at in order to reach a career aspirations? And if you don't know what those things are, then just find somebody who's doing what you want to do and see what see what they're really well.

Jan Griffiths: 59:45

I think now that you've said that we'll have to find out where he is fine. I'll track him down.

Fred Lowery: 59:50

He would be great on this podcast. You should you should.

Jan Griffiths: 59:55

We will track him down. Personal Development has never stopped for you Have you recently taken a board position?

Fred Lowery: 1:00:03

Yes.

Jan Griffiths: 1:00:04

Tell us about that.

Fred Lowery: 1:00:05

Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm on the board of a Dupont, which is a wonderful company. And it's an amazing board. I've been on the board for almost 18 months now. And I'd like to joke and say, I've gotten 10 years board experience and 18 months. Because there's so many things going on with the company, it's such an exciting time. And what it's allowed me to do, as you know, so understand, I've been with Thermo Fisher for 15 years, you know, so allow me to kind of pull back the covers on a leading company and actually see how they do things versus how we do things. I've learned a lot from benchmarking standpoint, and some things are great. And some things we do differently. But so that's been a great experience. It's also allowed me and the reason I'm on the board is because our CEO Mark Esper said, Hey, Fred, you should get on board, it will help you see the CEO position from a different vantage point. And it has, you know, the second thing he said was, you'll get to understand what board members are thinking about. And as a board member, you're thinking about totally different things than than you are as an operator. You know, as an operator, we're thinking about how we're going to execute this thing. And obviously, as a board member, we're thinking about, well, what's what are the real threats to the company? What are the real? What's the real value in the company? What's the real threats to the brand? You know, what does this mean for the company's longevity over the next, you know, 100 years, you know, du Pont's a 22 year old company, so, so the view is different. And it allows you to step back away from the the execution of like, how am I going to actually do this to what's right. What about the, you know, what about integrity? You know, how does that play into to our thinking, Are we doing the right things, as as a company, it's, it's been really powerful for me and made me a really a much better and much more thoughtful leader in my day job. So I would really encourage board service, and I totally see that service to all aspiring senior executive, I think it's a really important thing to do. And I also feel like being on the board, there's a lot of power, you have a lot of influence. And you know, you can make a difference, you know, the fact that you asked a question means somebody's going to have to answer it, you should be really thoughtful in. And two, I would say this, too. For those of you that don't know me, I happen to be African American. But I will say this to all of our folks who are on boards that are diverse. And maybe you're the first, the first one or the only one or the first of whatever, particularly diversity might be, I would encourage you to speak up, to speak up. And provide your perspective, because you're there because the board needs your perspective. So don't be afraid to say, Well, what about this, if nobody else says it, and even even even if they do, give your give your point of view, because it's necessary. And frankly, the Board believes is necessary. That's what that's why this one reason you're in the room. It's been, it's been great. And I really, really feel fortunate to be able to work with such a great, a great group of board members, which has been probably the final point for me, it's just the richness of the conversation and the interactions that I get with industry leaders, icons, and folks who have done it before. That's been a big part, a big part of the learning and just just a whole lot of fun to be around some folks who have been incredibly successful, but they are the best people on the planet. That's been great.

Jan Griffiths: 1:03:50

That's a wonderful way to describe board experience. Well, what's your legacy, Fred Lowery?

Fred Lowery: 1:03:59

Well, I'm not done yet. So I was still we're still working on that. But I remember early in my career, and I thought business leaders were amazing. This is this I work at General Motors. I mean, there was like, my eyes were wide and we make cars and we this iconic, it's amazing. And somewhere along the line there. The shine around corporate being a corporate executive, has has, has wavered a little bit. And I, I want my legacy to be an example of a senior executive, an example of a capitalist who's done it the right way. who's done it in a way that made a huge impact for the good of society. And, and I, I really believe that that's, that's with the way we support our customers. That's what the products that we make, it's with what we do internally and how we support our colleagues, with our policies, with our, with the culture, that, that we create, it's through, its through being honest, and having integrity. And, and making a difference and understanding that you're making a difference every day, I want my legacy to be that I don't want to do anything professionally, that I that I would be ashamed of telling my kids about, or people that my family or people that care about me about. My hope is that through my actions that that others are inspired to do the same. You know, and we should be incredibly excited about the capabilities that we have in corporate America, and the great impact that corporate America has, has on our lives. And, you know, I'm seeing some changes, some signs of changes. And we think about what the Business Roundtable did a couple of years ago, with, you know, talking about the purpose of companies being, you know, for the good of stakeholders, not just shareholders, yes, that's very important, that was a great step is an amazing step in and look at governance now. And, and, you know, the the emergence of ESG. And people really want to know, what are you doing? What are you doing to make a positive difference other than making a profit. But, you know, I'm certainly a capitalist, I'm, I think I'm a compassionate capitalist, and I believe that we should make money. But I also believe that the benefit of what we do should benefit society. So we should, you know, our actions should be benefiting society, and specifically, our colleagues that work here and the communities that that they're a part of. So hopefully, I can do my part and I, you know, my small part to, to continue to move that or move the needle on on that dimension.

Jan Griffiths: 1:07:14

It's clear to me that you are having an impact, that you're having an impact, not only in society with the products that your company is working with right now, but most certainly as a leader and the people that you engage with, and it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast and sharing your journey, and your insights with our audience today. Fred Lowery, thank you.

Fred Lowery: 1:07:41

Thank you so much.

:: 07:47

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