Intro

Scott Raven: Welcome to The Corvus Effect, where we explore what it takes to succeed professionally and truly enhance all parts of your life. I'm Scott Raven, Fractional COO and your host. Each episode we go behind the scenes with leaders who've mastered the delicate harmony of growing their professional endeavors while protecting what matters most. Ready to transform from Chief Everything Officer to achieving integration in all facets of your life? Get ready to soar.

Meet Tracey Abbott, Founder of Leadership Current

Scott Raven: Hello everyone. Welcome back to The Corvus Effect. I'm Scott. Today I'm thrilled to welcome Tracey Abbott, founder of Leadership Current, a strategist and senior advisor who spent nearly 30 years transforming how high stakes leaders turn success into lasting purpose driven impact, and she has done almost everything. She's had almost a trillion dollars in assets under management in private equity as an operating partner at Mubadala, a five time PE backed board director, has held executive roles at PepsiCo, Footlocker, Bain & Company. She's an advisor for MIT at the Sloan Sharper Center for Prosperity and Entrepreneurship. She has been in prestigious leadership programs, including the Henry Crown Fellow at Aspen Institute and the Presidential Leader Scholarship under Presidents Clinton and Bush.

But that's not all. She has been a franchisee owner at Chick-fil-A. She has been a marathon coach, and she describes herself as a thought provocateur and insider's outsider helping PE backed leaders move from performance to purpose and from doing to becoming. And if you don't like what I'm saying in English, she's lived in five different continents and she speaks French as well. So we're gonna have a great time talking about all this, talking about her purpose value creation plan, and her intuition accelerant. Tracey, welcome to the podcast.

Tracey Abbott: That must be exhausting. Scott, thanks for that intro.

Scott Raven: Yeah, you know what? I was chuckling because we're taping this shortly after the whole Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce thing, and they were on the New Heights podcast, and Travis's brother Jason went on a two minute diatribe in terms of all of the Taylor Swift things. You know what, Tracey could take up more time with everything that she's done. I'll put it that way.

Tracey Abbott: Well, I'm just glad to be talking about it from this side and now I tell people that, you know, if the first 50 years were about having answers, the next 50 hopefully will be about having good questions, and that's what makes me who I am today.

Scott Raven: You know what, let's dive right in and let's give you a good question to start off.

Tracey's Career Transformation

Scott Raven: Because as I said, you have done pretty much everything and as you describe, helping leaders move from doing to becoming, a lot of that is born from your own transformation from corporate executive to Chick-fil-A franchisee owner to PE operating partner to purpose driven coach. I wanted you to take us back to the beginning. What was the spark? What was inside you that lit up that said there's gotta be more than just chasing after the brass ring and climbing the traditional success ladder?

Tracey Abbott: I mean, I know exactly when it hit. It was about 20, let's see, I was 39. So I had had a pretty linear career, in that I didn't have to explain too much, because I came from Kodak back when it was $90 a share, $14 billion. They sent me abroad and then I went to business school and then, you know, continued to set up what is a more traditional career.

Did the consulting gig, did the Bain and Company just to get the toolkit, because I had a couple bosses who did that really well. So I wanted that. And then hit the boardroom by 39. And I worked for probably one of the best legendary CEOs in retail. Ken Hicks is his name. And it was just something I couldn't turn down when he called me. And so I came in from PepsiCo to come run strategy for him. And I remember sitting in the boardroom and thinking, gosh, I've made it. Now what?

Scott Raven: Well, not only have you made it, but you know, if I heard correctly, you made it sub 40, which I mean, there might be a handful of people who can say that they've made it at this point. Until you realize, wait a minute, maybe not.

Tracey Abbott: You know, I don't know. I mean, part of the beauty of having a life where I was living it overseas, and it was so incomparable to anybody else's life that I was around that I never have really thought about whether it was early or late, or everyone decides to live life in so many different ways. So the drive is myself. I mean, I've been always just extraordinarily curious. That curiosity is what has led my whole life. And you know, right when I think I've got something pretty figured out, I do the next thing just to make sure I'm humble enough to remember that I don't know how to do that next thing.

Scott Raven: So I have to figure out in my head how the next thing...

The Chick-fil-A Experience

Scott Raven: If I understand the progression correctly, was board to Chick-fil-A franchisee owner. I'm trying to see how that path comes about.

Tracey Abbott: Yeah, I knew that my CEO was retiring, so I had come in to work for him primarily. And I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn't know how to do that yet because I had been in big companies and you know, a lot of times I remember when we're looking for leaders in private equity, one of the downsides if you have a really traditional career is that people wonder if you can roll up your sleeves and you can really operate, you know, the way that private equity operates, which is very in the business, right?

And so I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted training wheels on, and I wanted to bring my brother into business because he is a vet. He enlisted E-5 when he got out and he went to war instead of school. So I thought, I'll bring him into something. And as we were looking around, you know, I knew I wanted to be a franchisee. We're from Alabama and so there is, you know, depending on the football year, it's either Chick-fil-A Jesus or Nick Saban back in the day.

Scott Raven: I dunno, I might have some folks who are Auburn fans who have just clicked off the episode. I'll put it that way.

Tracey Abbott: Listen, I went to Wake Forest, so I just like basketball and Tim Duncan, so I have no dog in that fight. But so we decided that I would go through the process to become an operator and it's a very hard process to go through. So it takes a little while. And then got offered a store out in California. It's an emerging market, so completely opposite the Birmingham market where, you know, the lines are five times around the building. This one was crickets singing and hay bales rolling across the street. So it was gonna take all my firepower, if you will, to make this one work.

Scott Raven: Before we get to starting up in California, let's connect a few of the dots here, right? So wanted to be an entrepreneur, wanted training wheels, wanted to look at Chick-fil-A for all the reasons in terms of you grew up with it, had a good program, et cetera, right? But at some point along the way, 'cause I also realized this too, when I went franchisee, you learn everything that you've learned at this point is more or less crap because you're switching from one world to another. I wanna know when you realized that. I'll put it that way.

Tracey Abbott: Well, I would say it was in my first staff meeting and first of all, I call it a staff meeting, which is ridiculous. It's a standup meeting in a restaurant, and so I remember having probably 15 of my 21 year olds and less, around the table. And I distinctly remember bringing like the P&L and maybe even some slides. I mean, I might have brought PowerPoint slides. And as we're sitting around the table, I talked just straight for an hour about like profit and how this and food costs and labor costs and productivity and all of these things. And then...

Scott Raven: What glazed look did you get from your staff?

Tracey Abbott: Well, I actually only shut up at the end. And I was like, when Stevie asked me, and this is an hour in, he is like, Miss Tracey, what's the N stand for in P&L? And I was like, oh, you know, Stevie, like the profit and loss, like everything we've been talking about, everything on this sheet or whatever. And I just, and I was like, wait, does someone else get it? Someone else got it? And everyone was like no, we have no idea. And so then I had to figure out like, okay, this is not the training that people have. And so let me try to break this down into operational levers instead of financial levers. And, you know, that's a whole journey that I can talk about, but that's the biggest realization that I had is often strategy will look at the financial results of something, but not necessarily the operational nuts and bolts.

Scott Raven: Right now I have to ask, right, because I know also part of the story we talked about the bringing your brother in to be able to enjoy this experience with you, and then three months in it becomes just you at the end of the day. And at this point, you know, I would think that a lot of people would be looking up to the heavens and saying, did I make the right choice here? Right. I wanna know what it felt like to then say, all right, we are where we are. Let's go get it done. Let's move the ball forward and take this staff of 21 year olds and do what needs to be done because I'm committed to being successful in this.

Tracey Abbott: Yeah, I mean, it is a decision. I mean, there's nothing like a front lines restaurant. QSR is, you know, in my opinion, one of the hardest things that at least I've ever done. I'm not sure if it's the hardest thing, but it's certainly with razor thin margins, you know? And it's just a complex organization. It's complex operation. You have drive-through, you have pickup, you have in-store, you have delivery and you're just trying to figure out how to make a chicken sandwich. So it is a tough thing to go into. And then really, like at the beginning, you don't have your team built yet, and you don't know how to build that team really, right? And everyone always talks about Chick-fil-A being like the best, you guys must have the best training and you must have the best. No. I mean, yes. But then you get into the store and it's all wheels off the bus. And so in order to get anyone to show up, it actually can't just be about money because you can walk across the street and make a quarter more an hour, right? And it has to be about how you build culture, which I didn't do well at the beginning. And then I had to take a hard look at like what my skill set is and what other people's could be and make sure that I was surrounding myself with, you know, the best in each role.

Scott Raven: I would assume that there was a tremendous amount of learning on the ground in that experience, given the prior trajectory that you had had in terms of moving up the ranks through corporate into the boardroom seat, sometimes for all the right, wrong, or different reasons, right? That there is a disconnect between the ivory tower and what happens in real life and that there must have been a tremendous real life, real world learning experience that came about it that is propelling part of what you're doing today in terms of the operations and the purpose that you drive.

Tracey Abbott: Yeah, I mean, I think it can't be about just financial goals, and that might sound funny coming from someone who's an investor and also in private equity. But what I think about is how many lives I had the opportunity to touch, and the power that that holds in your hands. And how then extrapolating that to an industry like finance, how many people can be influenced by that? Right? So 12 million people work for private equity backed companies in the US. I mean, think about how many more people, you know, we've got responsibility, in my opinion for those lives. And that's kind of how I saw it once I figured out the Chick-fil-A culture, and that's what I've tried to do ever since, is really not ever lose that experience on the front lines and literally how it touches people's lives, because they're not numbers on a spreadsheet. The front lines I think, are not well understood by boardrooms, particularly now with AI and where it's going. So I think we have to be even more human focused.

Scott Raven: Yeah. I wanna probe a little bit deeper into that. 'Cause like you're working with leaders, you're talking about billions upon billions upon billions in enterprise value that you're working with, right? I think there's this misconception about people who work in the private equity space that if the numbers aren't there, if the ROI isn't there, if the payback period isn't there, that it could be a very cold-hearted place, for lack of a better term, and you specifically drive something, which a lot of people will call radical purpose driven private equity through your purpose, value creation plan. So I want you to give a little bit of light to this because I think it is a concept that people don't understand. There are these type of people out there that lead this way.

Tracey Abbott: Yeah, there are people who lead this way and there are people who may have found themselves as I did at 39, asking, okay, is this it? What's next? And meaning that from a bigger, broader sense of like, what's life all about? What's it really for? And I think that finance writ large brings in a certain type of personality. I mean, we like to win. We're competitive. We like a good deal, right.

Scott Raven: Nothing wrong with that.

Tracey Abbott: All of that is fine, but at the end of everything, right? I don't think that that is really what people look back on in life and say, oh, I did that last deal, you know, right before I didn't do anything anymore. And I just don't think that that is really how people want to live their lives. I know because I've got a lot of experience with that where people almost regret things that they haven't done. And I think what I'm trying to do is catch leaders who have that longing to be more, to do more for others. This isn't impact investing, that's different. This isn't what I'm talking about, but I'm talking about taking their own leadership, really taking an honest look at who they are and who they want to be when they grow up, whatever that means. And really bridging that gap because if we don't think about it, we kind of just go on autopilot and it's pretty easy to stay in autopilot. So this is really for people who want to and feel a pull to do maybe something that success defines a little differently than maybe the metrics of private equity.

Intuition Accelerant

Scott Raven: And I think that's, you know, you have this concept called the intuition accelerant, which, you know, at its core is building human intelligence versus just putting things on autopilot, brings things into an AI world, which more and more we are doing so, right? Why is the human component so critical and will be more critical going forward?

Tracey Abbott: Because I think that, you know, humans have this curiosity that we're born with and this instinct that we're born with as well. And then somewhere along the way, when we get really good at something like domain expertise, we kind of, and I have experienced this myself, you know, we kind of can sit in that and be comfortable in that. And I think what we are lacking is the idea that data isn't just about numbers. I love data, don't get me wrong. I mean, I have like pie charts for how I spend my time and my day. But in terms of how I intuit and make decisions, a lot of that has to do with just the repetition I have seen over a lot of experience and my desire to be curious and to always be learning new things. And so it's that combination of curiosity and the need for decision making at speed that then had me think about how do great leaders just know? And that is, you know, informed by experience and risk.

Scott Raven: Yeah. What did you find in that exploration of how do great leaders just know? Were there any specific case studies or people that you examined and said, this is the quintessential picture of what I'm trying to portray of they just know?

Tracey Abbott: It is a good question, and that is something I'm currently writing, so I'll save the names and the...

Scott Raven: All right. We'll save that for a bit, right? But I think that part of, you know, and we talked about this offline that you said most leaders aren't struggling to succeed. They're struggling to feel fulfilled in their success. And we hear this all the time, that success usually does not bring fulfillment. Why? You know, without giving too much away, I'm sure a lot of this is in your book, right? Why is that? Why can't we put success and fulfillment together?

Tracey Abbott: Because we, in America at least, and it is different around the world. I've lived a lot of places that wouldn't say this because we don't know when enough is enough and we also are comparative thinkers. And so it is that typical, oh my colleagues or my friend circle or whatever, they do certain things and then we feel compelled to do those certain things as well. And I guess I haven't really ever lived life to be defined by anyone else. And so in doing that right, I have been really interested in this concept of what enough is, and happiness. If I look around the world, I think happiness comes from deciding that you have enough, that you are enough. And I think that's the central tenet to what I want people to feel. It doesn't mean that we don't still go and do things, but it's this deep sense of knowing that what we're meant to do is serve the world and we're not just meant to take from it.

Scott Raven: Well, yes. But I think that you also allude to, in the philosophy that people take unintentionally because they're so driven by performance, they're so driven by my effort has to produce certain outputs or achieve certain things or gain certain accomplishments, et cetera, and that it sometimes lacks a connection to purpose at the end of the day, right? And I'm curious from what you've learned, why we often have that misalignment where purpose is not coming along for the ride.

Aligning Mission and Metrics

Tracey Abbott: I think it's an alignment of your mission and your metrics, and when we don't have those two things in line, then it doesn't feel like we're succeeding in which one we really want. And so for me, at different times in my life, and I think this is true for a lot of the people I talk to, you know, your metrics do change over time because there are certain, when you're on the build, you know that's a different metric to some degree than, you know, in my first few jobs, you know, my metric was how many weeks of vacation does this job give me? Because I wanna go travel the world, right? And if I could get that, like I was golden.

Scott Raven: And travel you did. I'll put it that way.

Tracey Abbott: And so, you know, and I also have always negotiated, by the way, since I was early twenties, I've had six weeks or more vacation a year because it's just that important to me. And there's another way to live this, here on Labor Day as we're having a conversation. And so for me, for example, the climb was one thing, the achievement was one thing, and then coming back to family, you know, that's why I made this decision about Chick-fil-A and my brother. So, you know, I got to the top of that mountain proverbially and said, who have I left behind in this climb? And I turned around, right? And I turned around and came back down off the mountain and climbed a different one, this time with somebody. And then from there, you know, going into private equity, it was just something that, again, it was one of these things that's hard to get into. It's hard to imagine how in the world it came about. But it was just through my network, through my connections and I make sure that those folks who even make that one introduction understand, you know, the ripple effect that it can have on someone's career and life.

So I guess that's what I would say is, mission and metrics need to be aligned. My mission now is to help bring out this conscious capitalism in leaders, and there are enough people who want that. I feel a movement really is, it's a groundswell. Now you can see what KKR is doing with ownership works, is an example, right? But there need to be more examples of this and there need to be individual leaders who are not afraid to view themselves as successful because you can do well and do good at the same time.

Scott Raven: Well, I think one of the things, and you know when I was sitting down with you prior to this and getting to know you a little bit before the podcast, right? And I heard these concepts come out and I'm like, wait a minute. You work in private equity and you're telling me you have to slow down to multiply what matters, and it's not about driving 70 hour weeks. It's about being intentional with the effort that you put into things, you know? And I was like, okay, this is not what I expect from somebody who is working in private equity. But I love what you've put into this in terms of saying it's not about the quantity of effort you put in. It's the quality of the effort and the presence which drives the human component multiplier. Can you explain that a little bit?

Tracey Abbott: Yeah, so one thing I learned, you know, Chick-fil-A is by the way, only two years of a 30 year career. But one that I did learn is if you're sitting in the boardroom, if you're sitting in CEO's seat, you know your ability cognitively, your intellectual horsepower, it can create more problems for you than you intend because it's not about how many great ideas you can come up with or who's even the smartest, right? We all know that it is about how it gets executed on the front lines, and to really get something executed well on the front lines, people have to know how what they do connects into something bigger than themselves. That is, I think, the key to anybody knowing how to manage any culture. It's really about that connection between the really clear deliverables and the why behind them.

Scott Raven: And I think something that you speak about quite eloquently, and we believe this within the Corvus movement, is that in order to get the results that you want, the personal authenticity has to be there. And I'd love from your own experience to say why you hold that as such an important ideal in terms of the path to being successful.

Tracey Abbott: Yeah, I think authenticity, you know, is a lifelong journey. Honestly, I think it's a little bit like self-knowledge and you can learn constantly in these ways. So for me, I wanna follow people who are honest, who have really clear values and know what they are, who can connect their decision making to those values and not waiver from them. And so, that ability to be honest, I think with the way that you work, but then actually also honest with the way you live your life, I don't really believe in work life balance. For example, I believe in work life...

Scott Raven: Nope, we don't. We don't.

Tracey Abbott: I believe in work life...

Scott Raven: We believe in work life harmony and work life integration.

Tracey Abbott: Yeah. Work life integration.

Scott Raven: Work life balance is a myth.

Tracey Abbott: Yeah. That's what I believe as well. And so, you know, authenticity I think comes from that integration. You know, I'm not different if I'm at work or if I'm at home or if I'm in the ocean. Like it's all the same person now, you know, slightly different behaviors, but you know, I think people know what they get with me and I think that is because people who are comfortable in their own skin can show their flaws, can talk about them, and it allows other people room to also explore what I think is fascinating about human beings.

Scott Raven: I absolutely agree. I mean, the moment that I put down the wall when I let all of my bruises shine and just say look, you know, I've been beat up professionally so many times. I can't even count, but I'm still standing. I'm smiling, right? It just opens the door to allow people into your human connection, which you know, I'm gonna segue a little bit in terms of another area that you have a lot of focus on, which is AI. And that there's this belief that with the proliferation of AI, that the human connection is getting lost and lost or deprioritized over time, and you say, no, no, you can have an open marriage with AI and it can be incredibly successful.

Tracey Abbott: Yeah, look, I mean, whether...

Lessons from Kodak: Adapting to Technological Shifts

Tracey Abbott: Whether we debate AI and how the next five years look, you know, no one knows. But what's clear is this is a major shift in time, and I have experienced this shift. I was at Kodak, as I said, for my first job. I joined in '97. It was $90 a share, $14 billion in revenue, and had the first digital camera in 1975. And in 2000 I sat in the room with a young marketer who was trying to push us to run digital film ads for Y2K and we ran film ads instead. You know, four years later, I was already gone. Thankfully they had sent me to Paris, so I was already off on my international adventure. But years later it's off the Dow Jones. And so I have lived the experience of not getting on the tech curve and not seeing it fast enough as a company, and it's one of the greatest companies to ever be. I mean, it's one of the hallmark American branded companies and it is no more, right?

And so how then if you apply that to today, I just don't want people to miss it because they're busy arguing about whether it's important or not. It is important. It is already changing and will continue to change everything about the way that we work and live.

AI as a Collaborative Tool

Tracey Abbott: And so if I've ever got a competitor that I think is just gonna smoke me on the track, what I'm probably gonna do, instead of trying to work faster and faster and harder, I'm probably gonna figure out how to be in a relay with it. And that's what, you know, that's how I see it. Really, I see it hand in hand. I think we are having the wrong discussion about AI, which is arguing how it's gonna replace us or is it going to be, you know, yes, you can come up with a lot of discussion about what the evils of it are, but I think you can equally have a discussion on what it can empower in human beings, and I use it all the time. I probably am in AI four or five hours a day doing different things. It is most certainly not taking from my creativity or my thinking. It's actually helping organize all of those ideas into something, you know, that matters that I wanna put out into the world. And so, you know, I feel supercharged by it, but I am not being replaced by it and it is not running me. I am querying it. And so that's sort of where I want people to get to is feeling really comfortable.

Scott Raven: There you go.

Marathon Running and AI: Going Slow to Go Fast

Scott Raven: Well, you used the word running. I'm gonna go to the marathon analogy because I know you're a marathon runner. I'm a retired marathon runner, although I know you want me to think about rekindling it. No, I'm good. Thank you very much, right? But you know, we all know, you and I both know the adage in marathon: run your race at your pace and going slow to go fast later is far preferable in terms of having the great marathon experience. For people who are going on the marathon journey with AI, with this concept, go slow to go fast. What do you invite them to do in that go slow start?

Tracey Abbott: I think what I would say for the beginning is to be inefficient.

Scott Raven: Mm.

Tracey Abbott: To not go on and have one question, get one answer, and then do something with that. I think where I have learned the most in my own thinking is by giving myself just time to play, time to wonder, time to go down those rabbit holes. But then please also start a new chat again, because once you're in the rabbit hole, you're getting bad information, which you figure you're in the rabbit hole long enough, cut it off.

Scott Raven: All right.

Tracey Abbott: Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean it, you know, at some point I, and also I think I've fired it a lot of times, a lot of times I've even said it. So if they ever have like an Uber rating for users of Claude and ChatGPT, no one will ever pick me up for a ride again. But I think that's what I would say is to feel comfortable that we are so early still in this. I mean, we are in inning one, pitch three is what I heard someone say, who is going to be in my book, someone say earlier this year. You know, it is still very early and so not feeling so behind that you just decide like, oh, I can't get on that train. Now you can. Everyone can, and it's changing so fast every minute. The world's knowledge doubles every 12 hours right now, which is mind blowing. It used to do it every century, right? And so inefficient time, time to play, time to wonder, time to figure out, gosh, I wonder like anything in my life, I'm like, I don't really wanna do that thing. And then I'm like, there's gotta be a better way. And you know what? There's a better way. There is something that I can find. You know, I find use cases all the time that I didn't even know were use cases.

Scott Raven: Right, right, right.

Coaching Leaders for Human-Centric Success

Scott Raven: So I wanna parlay this now into some of the work that you're doing from coaching perspective, because you've got leaders that have countless lives, countless dollars in terms of assets that they are controlling, countless questions that they have in terms of what are the actions that we should be taking today to transform and positively impact the future? What's your vision in what you want these engagements to produce? When you look back at it, what's your vision of what you want these engagements to produce?

Tracey Abbott: I want people to be three times more human. And that human being is different. Everybody's so different that that will look different for everyone because we're coming from, you know, a starting point for you would be different than the starting point for me, and we're all on the journey, right? But I am outcome focused and a good, you know, a decent investment in private equity is gonna be a 3x exit. And so I kind of look at that as I apply value creation principles to leadership. And all a value creation plan is for those who maybe aren't as familiar with private equity, buy a company for, let's say a dollar, then you figure out four or five things to do to that company to raise it to, you know, $10 let's say. That would be a great, that would be a great investment. I'd like more of those investments please. Anyway, so as you...

Scott Raven: As we all would.

Tracey Abbott: Yeah. And so as you think about that, right? You think about going from the base case, which requires courage actually to look at yourself in the mirror and to get that feedback from others, right? So I do a Hogan assessment that is your own 360 on yourself. And then, you know, I talk to other folks in that network, to learn more. And that's how we figure out, okay, this is where this person is starting. This is where this company needs this person to go, because again, this isn't life coaching, this is executive coaching. And what are the things in the middle? And generally speaking, most people are working on stakeholder management. Most people are working on culture, how to build it, gravitas, communication. These are all the things that are required. If you think back to the Chick-fil-A example of communication is how you get from the boardroom to the break room, and then stakeholder management is how you get from running the operation to keeping all the investors and the board apprised and pulled in at the right times, right? And so that's sort of how I think about if you put building blocks in a value creation plan and you made it about your own leadership, how can you get that quote unquote exit that is really worth something to you? And by exit, I mean in terms of your purpose, how you impact the world and your legacy.

Building a Legacy Beyond Financial Success

Scott Raven: Well, let's talk about that, right? Because you are really building a legacy, like you alluded to, that is beyond just financial exits and saying, okay, you know, well, the moment that I get something to IPO, right? I am great. I am fantastic. And you know, you have the professional accolades that you could easily do, that you could guide this from the sidelines and, you know, not be ingrained yourself in the belly of the beast, but you choose to, you choose to be in the arena as you are pursuing this. What drove you to take this fight mainly to a PE industry, that this is a little bit of a foreign concept, but you're taking it to them straight within the arena?

Tracey Abbott: I mean, I think it's a hard one. I think it's not for everybody, let me put it that way.

The Importance of People in Business

Tracey Abbott: But there are so many people, particularly in the portfolio companies, so many leaders who know that it's all about people. Anyone running a company who thinks it isn't, is not gonna be very successful unless they're like, you know, we've got a couple of examples of those out there who are just geniuses, right? But generally speaking, every business is about people. And so if we inherently know that, then how we become better people is how we become better leaders and better leaders than have the impact on many people. So that's how I think about it.

Scott Raven: Let's step back a little bit further because you know, you have these companies all the time who have their corporate values and they say people are our most valuable asset and they can go at it one of two completely different ways. They can go at it your way. People are our most valuable asset, so make sure we invest and develop them and improve them to being the best that they can be, and that we have a beautiful partnership between us, right? And then you have the other side of the coin. People are our most valuable asset, so let's maximize the return. We don't care if we burn them out, we can replace, you know, they're just an asset to be replaced right now. In truth, right? Truth lies somewhere in the middle in terms of what's optimal for a company, right? But to take this argument of, I would prefer to go development in a type of business that really doesn't like the long game, if it can get away from it, right, that it would like best return with minimum risk and minimum timeline, right? And I know you speak on this, so that must be a very challenging thing to bring to this community to say, guys, I'm going to ask you to think differently right now, and here is why.

Tracey Abbott: Yeah, I think again, the portfolio companies are different than the funds, right? And I think I've got good examples on each side where people have been important and probably a couple of examples where maybe it was a bit of window dressing. The thing is, I tell you what, people can sniff out what you're about as a leader pretty quickly, and I always say, show me your bank account and show me your calendar and I'll show you what's important to you because where you spend your money and time is what you value.

Scott Raven: So you're gonna look at my calendar and my bank account and all my money and my time is allocated to kids activities. Okay. Got it.

Tracey Abbott: So that would say that kids are really important in your life right now. You told me kids are really important in my life, and then you showed me those two things, and it's not about how much money, I'm talking about how you spend, how you spend your assets of time, money, energy, et cetera. But if you told me that something was important to you and then I looked at your life and you were working 120 hours a week, you were doing email, you weren't, you were checked out, you know, you were checked out even when you were there, I would tell you that perhaps I would hold a mirror up to you. And I would ask you questions so that you could observe yourself from the balcony instead of on the dance floor, as we say, because all of us have a disconnect between what we intend and what our impact is. All of us have that, but the more that we can pull ourselves and objectively look at how we are living this life, then that's the first step. That's that hard part that I say in the beginning. That's that self-awareness journey, right? That never ends by the way. And so I think that's really it.

Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways

Scott Raven: You know, it's a beautiful segue as we go into the traditional closes of these podcast episodes. I always give a tip of the cap to Randy Pausch's book, The Last Lecture, beautiful tribute before he passed, and his final headache that this story was written for his kids. Now, I spin it a little bit every so often, right? I'm gonna spin it with you because you talked about the 20 somethings that you were handling at Chick-fil-A, right? So I've now gathered a room of 20 somethings who have listened to this podcast in its entirety.

Tracey Abbott: Well, there's no way they do that first off, 'cause they're too...

Scott Raven: Yeah, I know they would, they would, you know, if they're like my 10 and 14-year-old five seconds, and they're onto the next YouTube short, I get it. But what's the biggest lesson that you want them to take away?

Tracey Abbott: I want them to understand that a well-lived life is the adventure of it. And that this idea I even talked about with AI of inefficient time and taking risks and doing new things and trying things, even if you fail them. You know, all of this makes for an interesting life and I don't want them to feel pressure that any person's journey has to be theirs. I think everyone's journey is their own. But I really do want them to fall in love with life and the beauty that it is and have deep curiosity in other people, in themselves and in how they can make their mark on this world in the very millisecond that we have in life to do it. That's what I would want them to think.

Scott Raven: So many things that you can bring to the table for others. Ways that folks can get in contact with you. Let's let the people know. What are the things you want them to know in terms of how to reach out to you, things that you're offering. I know we teased an upcoming book, which, you know, well, we got a lot of stuff in terms of how can they find out more about Tracey?

Tracey Abbott: So my website is a very detailed, and every word counts type of copy that I've written on that. So if you want to learn more about me, it's TraceyAbbott.com with an E and that shows then the different portfolio life I've set up. So executive coaching and assessments is number one. Number two is public speaking and thought leadership. And number three is advising. And you know, those are all three on my website and I'm always looking for more people to talk to, more people to learn from. And I think that's the best way. LinkedIn is my preferred social channel, although I will start to build YouTube and other things. So for now it's definitely my website and LinkedIn.

Scott Raven: And I do wanna make sure that there are a couple of things, on top of that, that folks know about you. First off, in terms of your keynote speaking topic, leading with intuition in the age of AI, you wanna elaborate on that a little bit?

Tracey Abbott: Yeah, it's, I've simply, I, as I said, I'm so analytical. My parents, you know, are both like math majors who ended up at NASA in rocket science, et cetera. And so explaining to people like us, the word intuition is really hard to do. If someone says like, oh, I just felt that way, then okay, then show me the equation for how to get there. And so I've tried to actually break down intuition into something you can explain. And I say it's intuition equals instinct, which we're born with plus experience, which we have times risk, which we take, and that equation is just meant to show that it is not a fixed thing that we have. We don't just, we're not just born with something and then we have it or we don't. I want people to understand that they can build it and they can build it through these types of experiences that are both novel and domain experience where they can build more. They can start to test where their limits are. Not into chaos, but right on the edge before it gets there. And you, over time, you expand your ability to take smart risk. And that's why I say if we can realize that we are in a constant learning with our own intuition and AI is doing that same constant learning, then we can evolve ourselves at the pace where we don't get left behind or it doesn't control us, but we do that with it, and that's why I talk about intuition. I really want people to understand physically who they are, how they make decisions, and really feel convicted in what those are. Because often, if it's just coming from our intellect or our mind, we can maybe not feel as...

Scott Raven: It's not enough to think in this life. You have to be able to feel from time to time and, you know, another beautiful thing, 'cause I know you're an avid diver for many years, right? That you actually put the word dive into one of your key assessments, the Pearl Dive assessment, which you describe as a personal due diligence scan. Help me understand what it's gonna find.

Tracey Abbott: So the Pearl Dive, that's actually free on my website and I would love for everyone to go do that. It's on my about page and it really, it's really like almost a prompt journal that I put together of all the hard questions that I've asked myself over time. And like I said, I'll continue to ask them and I say my best friend calls me a pearl diver into people. And I'm just deeply interested in not what's on the surface of people, but what is a lot like, a lot of levels down from that and what drives people and what makes them happy. And I don't think a lot of us sit around and think about what makes us happy. We just sort of go and we do. But I think the idea of having nothing left to prove and everything left to become is what drives me because that is a lifetime of journey to see what we become. And so the Pearl Dive is really, for me, the comfort of sitting in discomfort with people because in order for us to figure out this life that we all lead together, I'm gonna ask hard questions because they're important ones. And then my ability to hold the space for someone and make them comfortable that they can say anything to me and there's no judgment and there's no fixing someone. I'm not here to do that, but I am here, you know, to hold that space while people feel safe and figure it out.

Scott Raven: Beautiful. And we will make sure when we have this episode up all of these links to Leadership Current, the Pearl Dive, LinkedIn, everything will be up there for y'all to access. Tracey, before we close this out, any final words?

Tracey Abbott: I think just to be curious and to be excited about the future and where we are all going, and to just be as human as you possibly can. 'Cause that's what makes us so special.

Scott Raven: Yes, absolutely. And please make sure that when the book is ready, right? We'll get that out onto the podcast as well. I'm sure that's gonna be a fantastic read. Tracey, thank you so much. It's been an honor and this has been a great podcast episode. So thank you so much.

Tracey Abbott: Thanks so much, Scott. I appreciate it.

Scott Raven: To my listening audience, thank you for investing the time and your presence here. As always, subscribe and leave us comments so that we can make this podcast as impactful as possible. Share with the people in your lives who could take the wisdom from here, and I will see you next time on The Corvus Effect. Take care.

Outro

Scott Raven: Thank you for joining me on The Corvus Effect. If today's conversation sparked ideas about how to free yourself from overwhelm, visit TheCorvusEffect.com for show notes, resources, and our free sixth dimensions assessment, showing you exactly where you're trapped and how to architect your freedom. While you're there, check out the Corvus Learning Platform, where we turn insights into implementation. If this episode helped you see a new path forward, please subscribe and share it with others who are ready to pursue their definition of professional freedom. Join me next time as we continue exploring how to enhance your life through what you do professionally. Remember, it's time to soar towards your legacy.