Leading in the Public and Private Sectors with Susan K Neely

[00:00:00] Lindsay Chervinsky: What can we learn about how leaders in the public and private sectors can work together to change the world? Welcome to leadership and legacy conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. I'm Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, director of the library. In this podcast series, we talk with experts about leadership and history, how studying these stories helps us understand our current moment and how we can apply lessons from leaders in the past to our own lives.

Susan K Neely has extensive experience in public service at the state and federal levels, as well as leadership in the business world. She was special assistant to President George W. Bush in the White House, as well as the first Assistant Secretary for public Affairs for the US Department of Homeland Security.

She also held senior roles with two members of Congress and the longest serving governor in American history. Finally, she was the CEO of the American Council of Life Insurers and the American Beverage Association. We brought all of this experience together in our conversation where you will hear about her groundbreaking partnerships between business and public service, how she learned from mistakes and her deep commitment to advancing presidential history through her personal philanthropy, especially the lessons in leadership of George Washington.

I know you'll enjoy the conversation. Thank you so much for being here. I am so excited to have this conversation. And you know, we've had the opportunity to chat about history in Mount Vernon, but I would love to learn more about your work and your career and what you learned from leadership. You have had a number of really interesting positions in state government, federal government, and then in the trade association world.

I imagine there are a lot of bad leaders, but also a lot of good leaders. So who are some of the best leaders that you learned from?

[00:01:48] Susan Neely: Well, thank you. It's always fun to delve into one's checkered past and uh, and try to pull some things out of it that were meaningful and interesting and maybe useful to pass along.

I relish, in particular, the public service part of my career, and I had the privilege of being in Congress, albeit as a very junior person. I worked for the longest serving governor in American history, I worked in the White House in the Bush administration and I got to help set up the first new cabinet department in 50 years. The Department of Homeland Security.

I think everyone I worked for, I learned things from, I would point to first Governor Terry Branstad, former governor of Iowa. He became the longer serving governor in American history. There's no term limits in Iowa. He served a number of terms. There was a break in there, and then he came back and he ultimately surpassed a colonial governor, which is how far you had to go back to, you know, find the record.

I think what I learned from him was the importance of really knowing your stuff. I mean, he could go deep in the details part of the council we gave him over time. 'cause actually people don't always wanna know how to make the watch. They just wanna know what time it is. But it's so useful to be able to have that depth and command, of the facts.

He had a great passion for the service and a deep respect for the people that he served.

[00:03:10] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm.

[00:03:10] Susan Neely: And this is all important because he wasn't somebody who you'd go into central casting and say, here's the guy.

[00:03:16] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:16] Susan Neely: Or the gal who's gonna be the longest serving, in American history. That's a lot of hard work and a lot of elections and reelections.

[00:03:23] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:24] Susan Neely: But I think it's those that was the secret sauce, and I love that it was by doing things the right way and having a deep respect for the people that you served. It served him well. And, you know, he had a very distinguished career.

[00:03:37] Lindsay Chervinsky: So you can, you can leave the names off of this, but I think sometimes we, you know, we learn the most from really bad bosses and you know what we don't wanna do.

Was there a leadership lesson you took watching, saying, Ooh, that is not something I wanna repeat, when I'm in a position of power?

[00:03:50] Susan Neely: The thing that I always rejected right from the beginning was the person who uses the pronoun I I I all the time.

[00:03:59] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm.

[00:04:00] Susan Neely: And sometimes you have to use I because you are owning the hard decision.

[00:04:04] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:04] Susan Neely: Or you're owning the fallout. And I think that's an important thing to communicate, but it's the, I have do this, I have to do that. And not recognizing that it's a whole team that produces success. The greatest pleasure for me, as a leader, is when I have a good team and people are comfortable disagreeing with me or with each other, and we ultimately work our way to a better decision, a better, more powerful outcome.

So I totally reject leaders that are all about themselves.

[00:04:34] Lindsay Chervinsky: I think that's a really important lesson. You know, one that we talk a lot about here at the library, because we always talk about one of Washington's greatest strengths was his abilities to surround himself with people and to learn from them and to get advice from them, and how important it is to not just be, you know, a lone wolf.

And so that is, that was true in the 1770s when you're fighting the Revolutionary War, and it is absolutely true today. What I love that you mentioned about your public service work is that you have worked for and with administrations of both parties. And, you know, we always try and emphasize that there are great qualities of leadership that are bipartisan.

So what are some of those qualities that you pulled out when you were either working with the Obama administration, as working on Michelle Obama's Let's Move Program or working in the Bush administration? What do you think are bipartisan leadership qualities that you observed?

[00:05:20] Susan Neely: Bipartisan leadership qualities start with, listening. I realize, I need to work with you or I don't need to work with you. If I wanna advance this issue, this project, this solution, and there's a lot of challenges and barriers to getting there, I'm gonna be stronger in my ability to do that, if I work with you. But, I need to understand where you're coming from and what will make this journey together meaningful and attractive to you.

So number one, quality in bipartisanism is the willingness to listen, not talk first, not gravitate to the soundbite, even though we need sound bites in this culture to

[00:05:58] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:58] Susan Neely: get people excited and sell things, but it's to listen.

[00:06:01] Lindsay Chervinsky: That's such a good reminder.

You know, one of the things I think that's really interesting is I was looking through some of the work that you did and you worked with the Clinton Global Initiative and as I said, the Let's Move Project.

So that means you worked with First Ladies and what did you observe about the leadership or power available to First Ladies? What did you see that you thought, huh, that's a really interesting way to use that. Just sort of objectively a really kind of weird and hard position because there aren't constitutional responsibilities and it's not elected, but it's there and so, you know, what did you observe from that?

We've already had two great conversations about First Ladies in this series. If you haven't already listened to them, make sure to check out our episodes with Anita McBride and Catherine Al Gore on the Power of First Ladies. Because of those conversations, I was eager to hear what Neely might be able to add from her experiences working on initiatives spearheaded by First Ladies.

This led to a broader conversation about women in leadership.

[00:06:55] Susan Neely: Well, the power of the First Lady is real, and you have delved into that even more than I did with the first most powerful first lady, Abigail Adams, who is legendary in terms of her understanding of politics, policy, and the process and how she could support her husband.

[00:07:13] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:13] Susan Neely: Not just as a very astute advisor, but once they were in the people's house using that platform to engage, to create alliances, to create bipartisanism. So I think she's the mistress of all first ladies, but interestingly, if you wanna get more into my line of work where, you figure out how to create movements and how to use platforms.

[00:07:35] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:36] Susan Neely: Nancy Reagan, I think is credited as the first, first lady who said, I've got a big platform here and I'm gonna pick my own issue

[00:07:44] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm

[00:07:44] Susan Neely: to advance. And that was the just say no

[00:07:47] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm

[00:07:47] Susan Neely: to drug abuse or to drug use. And she really, she had some stumbles early on in her position as First Lady because she was seen as, you know, buying new China and wearing fancy dresses. And that was a big contrast with the Carter's when they came in.

And so there was a conscious decision, she needs a cause and she needs to use her platform to advance that in a substantive way. And she needs to be able to go around, give speeches and interviews. And she did it very successfully.

And I think you're the historian, I'm not, but I watched this with sort of the practitioner's eye. I think every first lady since then has had some version of that. Her cause, reading books or education or whatever, you know, Hillary Clinton took it to a whole new level with her active engagement.

[00:08:29] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:29] Susan Neely: In the policy development process. But I think the first lady is a very important role and she can do things in her own right for the good of the country. And you know, obviously that aids and abets her at the husband's presidency as well.

[00:08:44] Lindsay Chervinsky: One of the things I think we've talked a little bit about on this podcast is the role of women's leadership and how a lot of leadership lessons are universal and they apply to all people, but there are certain elements of women's leadership that are perhaps more nuanced or a little bit different, both pros and cons, that are available to women in positions of leadership.

And I noted on your bio that you were, at one point, the Washingtonian called you, one of the 100 most powerful women in Washington, which I love, that's fantastic. I just, I would love to know how you approached your own leadership positions, how you thought about if you had to change anything or if you just intentionally tried not to think about it that way.

[00:09:20] Susan Neely: I certainly had my own style of leadership and one could argue that, that stemmed from the fact that I'm a female, but I approached it more as here's what I think will work.

[00:09:35] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:35] Susan Neely: And here are the elements of what I think are important to being an effective leader. It starts, of course, as I said, with thinking about we, not me, as the leader. It then goes to identifying a great team with lots of different strengths and people that will disagree with me, and encouraging those people to speak up. Now, once a decision is made, then we all go forth as us, but you need that process.

[00:10:00] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:00] Susan Neely: I relish that process where we're thinking and arguing and looking at problems from different vantage points in the prism.

I also think as, maybe a female leader, but I have plenty of male colleagues who do this as well, we focus heavily on building a culture that would support everyone in bringing their best and whole self to work.

[00:10:20] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:20] Susan Neely: And maybe I have a particular sensitivity to that as a working mother.

[00:10:24] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:25] Susan Neely: I do think you have to consider the whole self of the people working for you. Certainly for me, I look at my entire life and how much time do I have with my family and am I fully present and engaged there in addition to

[00:10:38] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm

[00:10:38] Susan Neely: am I fully and present and engaged with my work?

[00:10:40] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:41] Susan Neely: So having a culture that supports that again, it's not just about Susan having time to go to her children's soccer game or theatrical performance.

[00:10:49] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:49] Susan Neely: It's about everybody with whatever their personal passions are.

[00:10:52] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:53] Susan Neely: Single parents, children, no children, whatever. Having the ability to live their lives fully. And I think certainly as a female leader, had of keen sensitivity to that.

And we actively developed policies that supported a culture where everybody could have a full life, and I always felt that gave you a little more edge too. If someone was trying to recruit your

[00:11:15] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:15] Susan Neely: Best and brightest talent,

[00:11:16] Lindsay Chervinsky: (Laughs)

[00:11:16] Susan Neely: you'd have to think very carefully about am I going to have the support that I

[00:11:21] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:21] Susan Neely: Am enjoying here to advance my career.

To learn and have more challenges and opportunities as well as be present for my family or just whatever my personal passion is.

[00:11:32] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

Well, it sounds like that's both a really smart retention strategy, but did you also find that there was a payoff in terms of productivity or commitment or passion?

How do you think that that strengthened your team?

[00:11:43] Susan Neely: I think it strengthened my team, that ability to support, individuals to be their individual self with an eye toward them being accountable and committed to producing great results. I think that's the essence of the culture that we had, and I think people who got that, I always talked about it as adult leadership.

I actually don't wanna keep track of your hours or how many days, this pre pandemic,

[00:12:05] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:06] Susan Neely: before we all learned a lot about flexible working, I don't wanna keep track of your hours or how many days you're here. If you need to do something at two 30 in the afternoon, you go do it. 'cause I'm assuming that if there's a follow up that has to happen at 10 o'clock at night, you'll do it.

[00:12:19] Lindsay Chervinsky: You'll take care of it.

[00:12:20] Susan Neely: That you'll just take

[00:12:20] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:20] Susan Neely: Care of it. I always felt if you hired adults, we're very, very clear on the expectations, you get to do great work here and you have to do great work.

[00:12:28] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:29] Susan Neely: Because that's part of our culture.

[00:12:30] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yeah.

[00:12:30] Susan Neely: And in exchange for that, you're going to be able to have a full and rich life on all fronts.

I think it produced great results. I like to think we had winning teams all the way through.

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[00:13:28] Lindsay Chervinsky: So over the course of your career, as you moved up through state positions, then you worked your way into the trade association world. Everyone makes mistakes, and I think the key for great leaders, Washington included, is that they learn from those mistakes. So what was a mistake that you looked back on and you thought, wow, that was really instructive for me and kind of formative and thinking about your leadership?

I'm always interested to hear how guests and the historic individuals they study learn from their mistakes. Neely's response, reflecting back on her time at the Department of Homeland Security, was honest and fascinating and led to a broader discussion about the differences between leadership in the private and public sectors and cultivating team cultures of accountability and trust.

[00:14:11] Susan Neely: I think a very visible mistake that I certainly will own, and I think my colleagues at the very nascent US Department of Homeland Security would own, was the way we implemented the color code system. Now, I don't know if you have any vague memories of that, it sort of went by the wayside, but early on it, became part of our brand and a definition of things that the New Department was doing very, very well. But, this was something that was seen as a failure, and it took us a while to admit that. The color code system was designed to communicate with the American public around the threat of terrorism.

[00:14:47] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:47] Susan Neely: We were trying to give some context to this new world we were in, post September 11th. And I worked with a lot of Intel and military professionals who'd done research on what was used in other countries and some kind of, uh, gradation system that allowed us to communicate what we thought the level of threat was, was determined to be a useful tool to give the public some context.

[00:15:11] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:11] Susan Neely: One flaw in this is what the American public really wanted to know is what time is something gonna happen? Is the IED gonna go off on

[00:15:18] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mmmm.

[00:15:18] Susan Neely: The corner of Times Square? And that's what I wanna know, then I won't go there.

[00:15:22] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:22] Susan Neely: You give me sort of qualitative information that there's a preponderance of intelligence that's coming through and we're concerned about something happening on July 4th, because that's a day that is symbolic and that's how terrorists think.

The public really didn't want that kind of gray.

[00:15:38] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:38] Susan Neely: Lack of specificity. But we felt something. We had to tell them something, and we came up with a system where it was red, green, yellow, blue, and depending on the level of threat, we'd have these periodic announcements tied to a color. Good intentioned, but it exacerbated anxiety.

The problem we had in Homeland was that we couldn't pilot things, right?

[00:15:59] Lindsay Chervinsky: Sure.

[00:16:00] Susan Neely: You can't pilot it over here.

[00:16:01] Lindsay Chervinsky: Can't test and process.

[00:16:01] Susan Neely: You can't test it.

[00:16:02] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yeah.

[00:16:02] Susan Neely: You have to just try stuff, and then

[00:16:04] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:04] Susan Neely: When it fails. Pull it. I think it was exacerbating the public's anxiety about the threat of terrorism. We had sort of an epic crash where one of the steps in your readiness kit was to have some duct tape that you could use to seal windows if it was a bioterrorist attack.

And that got totally blown out proportion by the media. People panicked. They were buying all the duct tape at Home Depot, but not

[00:16:27] Lindsay Chervinsky: Oh-no.

[00:16:27] Susan Neely: Sure what to do with it. And it was one of these sort of news cycle kind of things that just went on and on and on. The mistake was hanging onto the color code system as long as we did.

[00:16:37] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:37] Susan Neely: And then in this particular incident, waiting to go out and explain ourselves. We kept thinking it was going to die down and it just didn't. And that people would ultimately get used to it and just accept, this is how we have to live now.

[00:16:50] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:50] Susan Neely: So that was an epic, very public mistake.

[00:16:52] Lindsay Chervinsky: (Laughs)

[00:16:52] Susan Neely: And I should have asked harder questions faster.

I feel, I kept rationalizing that we were right because we were well intentioned.

[00:16:59] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:59] Susan Neely: And all the evidence was the opposite.

[00:17:01] Lindsay Chervinsky: That's such a hard moment because, as you said, it was the best of intentions.

[00:17:04] Susan Neely: Yeah.

[00:17:04] Lindsay Chervinsky: You're trying something new. A lot of times with the government, you have to just try new things.

Franklin D Roosevelt was famous for saying you have to get caught trying, especially in moments of crisis. It is important to show that you're willing to experiment, but then as you said, you also have to be willing to pull the rip chord quickly if it's not working, and that can be really hard to do, especially if, you haven't necessarily made a mistake.

It's not like you made a calculation wrong or the facts were wrong or something. It was just that this system was not working with society as it currently was.

[00:17:33] Susan Neely: Beautifully summarized, and I will quote

[00:17:35] Lindsay Chervinsky: (Laughs)

[00:17:35] Susan Neely: the good President Roosevelt, you have to

[00:17:37] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yes.

[00:17:37] Susan Neely: get caught trying.

[00:17:38] Lindsay Chervinsky: You do!

[00:17:38] Susan Neely: I believe in that.

[00:17:39] Lindsay Chervinsky: You do well, and I think as you said that that's really the challenge with government. You very rarely have the opportunity to test it in the lab. You don't have the time, you don't have the luxury. You have to try and fix things immediately, and American people aren't always patient with that.

So because you worked in many different capacities and there are genuine differences between business leadership and government leadership, but there are also a lot of similarities.

I would love to know both what you think are the key differences and leadership qualities that apply to all walks of life.

[00:18:07] Susan Neely: A key difference in my experience between the public sector and its mission objectives and the private sector, business in particular, and its mission objectives, is exactly that, the objective.

Government is there to provide a service to the people, not achieve goals on a profit and loss statement. Right? And by definition, a service, whether it's building roads or providing social security checks, you need to be accountable in different ways. And I think sometimes when I hear business leaders say, you gotta run government like a business, they're missing that, there may be some inefficiency built into that 'cause you're there to serve people and you're dealing with people and you need to listen to them and you need to, provide that service in a way that works for them. So I think that's a key difference and it manifests itself in different actions. That being said, I think accountability is key.

[00:18:56] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm.

[00:18:56] Susan Neely: And that's where there can be frustration with government that things just get baked in and there's no real recourse to change it. Or the system that our founders set up, the checks and balances, whomever is elected president, gets to put in this political layer of leadership. It's true for our governors as well.

And then that leadership goes away in four years or eight years, but it ultimately goes away. We were keenly aware of that all the time that we were, setting up the Department of Homeland Security and working hard in the first term of George W. Bush, that we had a limited time as politically appointed leadership that was creating this new thing and that we had to work closely with the career people that would provide continuity.

But that's a challenge.

[00:19:41] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:42] Susan Neely: Because the political leadership goes away at some point for eight years, and it's hard to maintain that continuity. Thus, it's hard to make changes in systems and processes, and I don't think government sets out to be inefficient. But, some efficiency has to be tolerated in order to deliver the service, but that you can still have accountability measures in place, and I think that's difficult the way we're structured.

[00:20:03] Lindsay Chervinsky: Well, and I think also so much of this is about trust. As trust in American institutions has declined by its citizens, it's harder to believe that accountability is possible. And so I imagine one key element of leadership, across the board, is how do you build trust with your stakeholders, whoever they are, whether they're citizens, whether they're members in association, how was that something that you thought about?

[00:20:25] Susan Neely: Well, I'll speak to the two organizations that I ran as CEO. First and foremost, you have to deliver value to your customers, however those customers are defined. And you have to help them, your customers, understand what it is you're trying to achieve, and you have to engage them.

In the case of running an association, your customers are members that are giving their resources to support the mission of the organization, and you have to engage them in achieving the goals that contribute to that value proposition. And then you have to do everything at a certain level of excellence. I'm very keen on let's never try to never make a mistake on the things that we control.

[00:21:04] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:04] Susan Neely: Whether that's sending out a well written, well proofed document, or running a superlative board meeting that's efficient, that gets to the heart of the issues people care about, and allows everybody to fully participate. Whatever the details are, small or big, the ones that we control need to be done at a certain level of excellence.

So it's the value proposition and then it's delivery at an excellent level and everybody being committed to that.

[00:21:29] Lindsay Chervinsky: What I heard as you were saying, that was also an incredible level of attention to detail. And I think sometimes in our society today, 'cause we're moving so fast and our social media and the news cycle is constantly changing and our attention spans as a result have sort of shrunken.

We have lost some of the attention to detail and think, oh well you know, it's not important or it's not life or death. But what I hear you saying is that, those small things, how you run a meeting agenda with the quality of the email, those add up to a much larger perception. Did I summarize that accurately?

[00:22:01] Susan Neely: Yes. It's not one detail that makes or breaks you, but it's like every time a customer consumer engages with you, they have a high quality experience. I think all the details add up to that and that if everybody's in the organization back to the team, it's we, not me. All of the tone gets, set from the top.

[00:22:20] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:20] Susan Neely: Is working hard to make sure there's a superlative delivery of service or product. That's what your brand becomes.

[00:22:29] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:29] Susan Neely: It's a brand of excellence. Leaders like to say, don't sweat the details, and I think that's true. You can't worry about details and then lose the forest for the trees. Right.

You have to have the big objectives, the big vision, the big goals. It's a combination. It's a combination of vision and implementation and all of it done as aggressive and excellent level as you possibly can.

[00:22:50] Lindsay Chervinsky: We talked about the importance of wanting to be with your family and wanting to have those interests, and this comes to the question of like, how do you do it all?

And I think the answer is you can't always do it all. Sometimes they have to push and shove and give, and there're gonna be times when you can't. So how did you set that tone while also being human?

[00:23:05] Susan Neely: You can't do it all, all the time, every second. I think that's the first thing you have to give yourself some grace on, and then it helps to have, I think, some good organization skills because you can look at the landscape of everything

[00:23:19] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:19] Susan Neely: That you've committed to and have passion about, and try to figure out where the ebbs 'n flow are.

[00:23:25] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:25] Susan Neely: Where do I have to be 110% present for this professional commitment? I'm running a board meeting, I'm testifying before Congress, and what's inviolate, in terms of my family,

[00:23:37] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:37] Susan Neely: and children, I would set out the calendar at the beginning of each semester for every major school event.

[00:23:44] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:44] Susan Neely: And unless there was something really, really important, I was going to be there. Right?

[00:23:48] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:48] Susan Neely: Now that produced me tearing up Connecticut Avenue,

[00:23:52] Lindsay Chervinsky: (Laughs)

[00:23:52] Susan Neely: taking their, it turns on two wheels. Not quite that dramatic, but sometimes it felt that way, to get to something. And there were moments I said to myself, I wonder if my children will remember that on this day I was the reader in second grade.

But then I always came down to the continuum, this sense that our mom was present and engaged in our lives, even if some of the time I was getting on a plane to go to do something that I had to do for work or just

[00:24:18] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:18] Susan Neely: working late, or going in early. And I got a great gift from my daughter who is now about to turn 28.

When she said, I actually don't remember a time that you weren't there. And I was like, a big, whew.

[00:24:29] Lindsay Chervinsky: That's amazing.

[00:24:30] Susan Neely: You play the long game with kids, right?

[00:24:31] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yeah.

[00:24:31] Susan Neely: But I thought, wow, I was always so conscious of the times I wasn't there.

[00:24:35] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:35] Susan Neely: And beating myself up about it. At the same time, I was working hard to be there for important things.

[00:24:39] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:39] Susan Neely: At least in her mind it worked. So I take that as a gift, but when you're in the middle of it all, it's easy to beat yourself up. (Both Laugh)

[00:24:46] Lindsay Chervinsky: So, you know, you said that you wanna have the standard of excellence, but of course mistakes do happen and we're all human and we miss something. And I think how we respond to mistakes sometimes is as important as not making them.

So, what did you do when a mistake was made to try and either get. Back to that standard of excellence or to acknowledge it. How did you respond to mistakes?

[00:25:06] Susan Neely: Well, the hope is that if you've created this process where everybody's engaged in owning the result and the culture allows people to raise their hand and say, wait, I'm not sure this is working, or, I disagree, and you're listening to that, the hope is that you will identify mistakes sooner rather than later.

[00:25:22] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:23] Susan Neely: Right. An early mistake that's caught early is a little embarrassing, but it's not life threatening in terms of

[00:25:29] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:29] Susan Neely: The overall enterprise. Right. So mistakes caught early are key, and I think you have to have a culture that embraces that and people feel comfortable doing it. Now, I've had people raise concerns before where they were anxious that something wasn't gonna work.

That's different than a mistake, right?

[00:25:44] Lindsay Chervinsky: Sure. Yeah.

[00:25:45] Susan Neely: And that's where you as the leader say, let me take time here to explain why, I think we're still on the right path.

[00:25:50] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:51] Susan Neely: You know, I always want commitment, not compliance, so I always felt that extra time to give my perspective was important. So anxiety that we're taking a big risk and it may not work, is different than a mistake.

Hopefully you have a culture that will identify mistakes early, and as I learned in Homeland the hard way with our big public shellacking, be open to that.

[00:26:10] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:10] Susan Neely: As the leader and say, okay, you're right. This isn't working.

[00:26:13] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

You threw away a phrase there that I just want to kind of foot on, 'cause I think it's so important and that it was a commitment, not compliance.

In the final part of our fascinating conversation, we shifted to discuss Neely's love of history, historical figure she has learned from, and of course, what she thinks of George Washington.

That is an excellent phrase that I kind of wanna get pasted up on the wall of our podcast studio here 'cause that's just incredible.

So in recent years you have become a wonderful friend of Mount Vernon and we are so grateful for your support and your interest. What caused you to wanna get interested in history? Is it something you've always had a passion for and just recently have had a little bit more time to dig in? Or is, was there something that captured your attention more recently?

[00:26:55] Susan Neely: Well, first my dad, lawyer, had his own practice in the city of Iowa City, which is where the University of Iowa is, so not a historian by training, but certainly a historian by passion. So he was always bringing that to the family dining table and talking about the history of the state, the history of great political leaders and, when we take family trips, we would visit Mount Vernon and elsewhere. That was just understood.

So I think that provided some influence in terms of my interest in history. But I do think that presidents in particular, that tone from the top, that massive platform, they have to influence so many things that I care about personally, in particular, captures my interest.

And George Washington is, what's the slogan mount Vernon has? Number One POTUS? The hashtag,

[00:27:42] Lindsay Chervinsky: (Laughs)

[00:27:42] Susan Neely: number one POTUS and POTUS number one?

[00:27:43] Lindsay Chervinsky: POTUS one.

[00:27:44] Susan Neely: POTUS one. That's it. POTUS one. Well, he is the first.

[00:27:46] Lindsay Chervinsky: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:47] Susan Neely: Uh, president of the United States, so I am very motivated and I find the Washington's story so compelling. I feel emotional about it.

I feel very patriotic about it, so I'm happy to be engaged and help lift that up.

[00:28:00] Lindsay Chervinsky: Love that. So, as someone who's been learning about history, first from your father and then through your life, through the course of your career, what is a book or a couple? Since someone asked me this morning for a book recommendation, I was like, you can't ask me for just one. It's the meanest question. What are some books that have spoken to you on leadership?

[00:28:17] Susan Neely: A book I read recently by a very accomplished female, CEO, Indra Nooyi, it was her autobiography. She was the CEO and chairman or chairwoman of, PepsiCo,

[00:28:29] Lindsay Chervinsky: Wow.

[00:28:30] Susan Neely: Fortune 500 company. Huge. Interesting story. Grew up in India, so an immigrant who came here and pulled herself up by the bootstraps and arguably was moving at the highest levels in the country.

What I like about this book is she's got a lot of lessons about leadership. She talks about things in a way that resonate with me in a very articulate way, that I would love to emulate. Performance with purpose was her way to drive her the development culture at PepsiCo in the years that she was the chair and they had many policies and procedures that supported that performance with purpose.

So I totally buy into that and believe that it worked for PepsiCo and tried to emulate that in my own platform for leadership. She also talks about the sort of mess that us professional women like to share with those that are coming up the ranks. It was not always perfect. I was the chair of PepsiCo trying to figure out how I was going to get cookies to my child's performance the next day, and could I stoop to buy store bought

[00:29:31] Lindsay Chervinsky: (Laughs)

[00:29:31] Susan Neely: cookies on the way home, or was I gonna make something at midnight?

This is from Indra Nooyi, and she tells all these stories very candidly, and I love, that it's a book from a woman who walked in the halls of power at the highest levels, a Fortune 50 company, and also raised a family and is comfortable talking about that.

[00:29:51] Lindsay Chervinsky: Yes. That last piece, comfortable talking about it, I think is sometimes the essential part of it.

So our traditional last question is when you think of George Washington and leadership, what do you think of?

[00:30:00] Susan Neely: George Washington had that perfect combination of vision and ability to implement that vision, and I find in the course of working with good leaders and recruiting and leading people, not everyone has that.

That's a unique quality. There's visionaries and there's people that do the details, and he had it both and that, produce powerful results for our country and for the world.

[00:30:26] Lindsay Chervinsky: Oh, that's a wonderful answer. Perfect way to end. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was such a delight to be able to chat with you, and I'm looking forward to seeing you at Mount Vernon again soon.

[00:30:34] Susan Neely: Thank you so much. It was my pure pleasure.

[00:30:39] Lindsay Chervinsky: Thank you for joining us this week on Leadership and Legacy, and thank you so much again to our guest, Susan Neely. I'm your host, Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky. Leadership and Legacy conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library is a production of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association and Primary Source Media.

In the spirit of George Washington's leadership, we feature the perspectives of leaders from across industries and fields. As such, the thoughts expressed in this podcast are solely the views of our guests and do not reflect the opinions of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. This podcast is made possible by a generous donation from West Smith.

To learn more about Washington's leadership example, or to find out how you can bring your team to the George Washington Presidential Library, visit gwleadershipinstitute.org or to find more great podcasts for Mount Vernon. Visit georgewashingtonpodcast.com. You can also explore the work of Primary Source media at primarysourcemedia.com.

Join us in two weeks for our next great conversation.