24. Reshaping the CEO/Board Relationship with Make-A-Wish CEO, Richard Davis

It's time to think differently about navigating your board of directors relationship. Our latest guest shares his unique perspective from both sides of the CEO/board relationship.

As CEO of Make-A-Wish®, Richard Davis leads the organization and partners with the board to make big dreams come true and shape the vision for the organization’s future. As the previous Chairman and CEO for US Bank, and current board member for companies such as Mastercard, Dow Chemical, and Mayo Clinic Foundation, among others, Richard also knows what it takes to represent his shareholder’s best interest.

In this episode Richard shares strategies to help mitigate board politics, approaches to leverage the board as a resource, not just an oversight committee, and how to stock your kitchen cabinet - individuals who provide oversight and hold you accountable as well as bring their own expertise to the table when there is not a formal board.

Transcript

David Morris  00:10

Hello and welcome to our last episode of the HiPERleadership podcast for 2021. I'm your host, David Morris, CEO and founder of HiPER Solutions. And it has been my absolute pleasure to be joined by so many incredible game-changing leaders this past year. At HiPER Solutions, our mission is to inspire and enable high performance leaders to deliver positive change. Leaders today are faced with unprecedented change. And yet even the best leaders have had to toss out their standard playbook and think outside the box. Our intent with the HiPERleadership podcast is to share best practices so that you, our listeners, can gain some actionable and practical approaches to your next big bet endeavor. The holidays are often thought of as a season of giving; and so as we bring 2021 to a close, it's only fitting that our final guest of the year come from an organization that truly gives. Today I'm honored to be joined by Richard Davis, CEO of Make-A-Wish®. Founded in 1980. Make-A-Wish® is a nonprofit organization that assists in the fulfillment of wishes for critically ill children with the help of tens of thousands of volunteers, supporters, and donors. In today's episode, we'll discuss the impact of wishes for the future, and how to best involve board members in your game changing journey. Thanks so much for joining us, Richard.

Richard Davis  01:31

Thank you, David. I'm delighted to be here.

David Morris  01:32

So nice to get to know you. Was it a couple years ago, now, through Sylvia when she was CEO of Girl Scouts?

Richard Davis  01:38

That's correct. You made the connection, and we've never dropped the ball since.

David Morris  01:42

Well, it's you know, really fascinating as we think about all the environments that you are involved in as a board member, today, in addition to having been a board member 90 days after your first CEO role, right? 

Richard Davis  01:54

That's right. 

David Morris  01:55

So what is it like really, from the beginning, being able to see both perspectives?

Richard Davis  02:00

So, David, I think, first of all, I should add that I was the CEO of US Bank for 11 years, and serve on a number of for profit and not for profit boards today. So you're honoring me with my participation, but it comes from nearly 20 years of board service. And I was lucky enough when I became the CEO of the bank that one of my lead directors said immediately, we'd like to get you onto another public board, not because we don't think you need more to do but because we think it'll help you see a different version of how the same things were accomplished. And it was really fascinating to see the same thing accomplished in another company. And it did inform immediately the way I thought about our board. And that allowed me to see the board member lens from being on the other side as a CEO of another company that's trying to manage the board. So if to the extent that you can take any experience from board service, any of you have in your role as CEO that does inform you with another perspective.

David Morris  02:52

Curious, when you got tapped for that opportunity to join a board so soon after you went into the CEO role, what did you think at first?

Richard Davis  03:02

Well, first, I was pleased that they were interested because there's quite a process in order to develop and cultivate board members. In this case, it was an energy company. And I remember saying to them - and in the local community - so I said, "I'm very interested to learn more. You guys have nuclear energy as a big part of your protocol, and I can't help but think of Bart Simpson or Homer Simpson sitting at the dials and wondering how that fits into my life." And they spent quite a bit of time explaining to me the high quality of alternative energy process that they had, how the board construct would work; and they were very interested in having my financial expertise on the board as a banker because each person brings a set of attributes that often boards are looking for filling in the gaps where the composition kind of like a orchestra needs another player. And so for me, it was well timed, and it was a completely different topic than banking. But it allowed me to practice some of my own skills, but mostly just understand how they ran their organization so differently than we ran ours.

David Morris  03:57

And what became the most immediate impact to you as a CEO and how you brought your own board along in your journey?

Richard Davis  04:05

There were two actually. The first one, I joined in January, and in April of that year, both my company and their company had the traditional annual shareholder meeting. And, at the company that I was part of, the shareholder meeting was largely attended because people always want to come in and hear the Bank State of the Union, but it wasn't celebratory. And this energy company, same month, three months after I joined the board, had this wonderful meeting where they were out of town at one of their headquarters cities, they invited all of the long term employees to attend. They invited all of the veterans and military personnel to attend that were in that market. They celebrated all of them in front of the shareholders. They had a beautiful video vignette that just told the story of the company and pictures for seven, maybe 10 minutes. And it was a remarkable moment for them to be part of that community. And we've never done anything like that. And the very next shareholder meeting that I had, which would have been a mere 15 months after I started, it had all of those out attributes. And I don't think they've changed it since because it's really a celebration of the people in the company and bringing them before the shareholders to let them be the celebrates. So that's a practical tick up that I got right away. The more maybe important aspects of being on the board was to learn how to comport myself as a board member. I learned a couple of things. One is the board members who say less, but when they speak, it matters. Those are the real valuable board members. For the listening audience, they're probably way too young, but there was an old TV commercial on EF Hutton - it's an investment company. The commercial was when EF Hutton speaks, everyone listens. And it was a very well played commercial where there'd been a busy room or a busy restaurant or busy anything; and all of a sudden, the person would ask the EF Hutton person something and the whole place would just freeze. And everybody just want to hear what they had to say. There's provocative because I learned that board members don't come to speak, they come to react and to respond to things that they hear. And as a board member, when you can choreograph the board meeting so that you present places for open ended discussion, and you set up more questions than just teaching, it becomes a much more productive board. And the board members feel like they are contributing to either the strategy or the tactics. So I learned greatly that a best board members role is to do your homework, understand all that you can, hear the platform and the situation, and then respond with a very thoughtful but a concise response so that everybody else has a chance to weigh in as well.

David Morris  06:25

And given your wide variety of boards you're involved in now, that's a principle pretty universal?

Richard Davis  06:30

It is. I've been in a case where as a lead director, which is also the chair when the CEO has the chairman role, I myself had to ask a board member to to just change the level of conversation. They were speaking too often. Or they were actually they're just nice people, but they were losing their influence because every time someone spoke, they would want to raise their hand right away and say, "I think you guys are wonderful. It's just the best thing I've ever heard. Such a good presentation." After awhile, we'd all roll our eyes thinking, "Okay. That's all very nice, but what do you have to offer instead of just thank you and praise?" Each time that I've ever had to talk to someone, they were grateful for having the ability to hear that. And now some boards in their normal annual course of board evaluation, many boards now have a section that says, "Is there anyone on the board that you think is not performing at the level they should?" It's a confidential response. And then that goes to the chairman or the lead director so that if there's any feedback that the board members feel, needs to basically manage themselves, it's presented to the board chair. Therefore, no news is good news; but it does give you a chance to evaluate your peers and make sure that your high level of expectations for yourself are met by those others on the board.

David Morris  07:38

That's a really good check and balance. Richard, what are all the boards you're on now?

Richard Davis  07:42

Currently, I serve on the MasterCard board, the Dow Chemical board, the Mayo Clinic Foundation Board, and three or four non for profits, including my own.

David Morris  07:51

One of the things that we've talked about that's so intriguing to me is you are a game-changing CEO. You are a game-changing CEO, and yet you've been on these boards along the way. Pretty unique, especially how early you got on that first board. So putting ourselves in the shoes of a CEO looking to drive a big transformation, what are some of the best practices in terms of how they bring the overall board, but perhaps even particular board members, along in the journey.

Richard Davis  08:25

First of all, all corporate boards have committees, usually three or four. And those committees do a lot of the work. And if you're listening and you're a board member already, you know that what you do is you count on each member of the board to give their very best to that committee or those committees they serve. And the only time you hear about the work of those committees is at the readout at the board meeting, meaning I trust the audit committee members, as much as I trust the committee I'm on but when I hear the readout, that's the only time I want to be informed about what happened there. I say that first, David, because the committee is often our places where great ideas begin. Well think about something current today and topical, like ESG. That might be the watchword for 2021, as boards start to learn exactly their role in environmental social governance, in saying so each committee might have a role in that, that they have a responsibility to all to come together then at the very board meeting when each committee's contributions are laid out on a matrix and then the entire board evaluates the holistic sense of that. So one way is to socialize big ideas through committees and then back to the board. The other way is to take something strategic, introduce it to the board with the intent to take at least two or maybe even three meetings to achieve understanding, which means that each board member receives before each board meeting a pre read a set of information to read and be careful not to over manage that pre read. It's intended to be consumable, interesting, but fairly short so that you get the lay of the land is like the synopsis on a movie. If you're about to open Netflix and decide you want to watch the movie, it's the trailer. But then when you get them together, you get a chance to walk them through the next iteration of what you're trying to setup here is a big strategy. The next warning is don't repeat the pre read and don't have a ton of slides and then read every slide to the board. That's not a good practice, even though it happens all the time. But then you'll have set it up after the pre read, you'll take it to the next level, and then you'll have dialogue and ask them both, what do they think what do they know. But the really big strategy is don't get accomplished in one meeting and say, well, now we've got it, we're gonna go this direction. So to that, thank you for that one, two hour conversation, it could take two or three meetings with the intent to not only gather their feedback, but to learn from them, the best role a board member has to a CEO into the C suite is to have a different lens on the same topic. It's not surprising, but when you're deep in a company's business, if you're at the C suite, you know it really well, you also need to know that you sometimes miss some of the details, because you know it so well, you don't realize that it's not necessarily layman friendly, when you describe it, the board will help you with that, they'll say I don't think I understand what those acronyms mean, or even more. So I don't think I understand where you're headed with this. Is it this? Or is it that and you go, Oh, my God, I thought it was clear. Thank you for that clarity, here's what I'm talking about. So all that to say the board gives you a chance to give feedback along the way, and you have to go into the processing, I haven't finished the strategy, because authentically, I want the board to influence it and influence our decisions. Not I've got a plan, I don't want to change it, I'm gonna take two or three meetings to get them where I want them to go, that will become non productive. And honestly, they'll notice that somewhere along the way. So all that to say David is take the time to either allow committee structures, take on some of the pieces of a strategy and bring it together and or socialize it through your pre reads. And through two or three meetings along the way, with the intent to make changes before it's vital. And then you all own it when it's done.

David Morris  11:43

It seems like a very, not only practical approach, but one that can be used in really almost any industry,

Richard Davis  11:49

everyone, there's not one that it isn't. And the more specialized the industry is, by definition, you are brought on board members with different attributes and diversity so that they will have multiple views. And by definition, none of them have the same view. And almost none of them are deep into your business, that that's actually not the goal of the board is to help understand your business to help you describe it, lead it and connect it to all of your constituents, which could be your employees, your consumers, or your shareholders,

David Morris  12:16

we got into this conversation on a walk and talk recently. And I might do a little bit deeper into a scenario of transformations. And so many of our listeners, that's their world, all of a sudden, a CEO makes a decision going into, let's say 2022 along with their leadership team, that they're going to do a huge bet, some type of very significant digitization, complete and utter evolution of the business model. From the experience, Richard, what is your sense in terms of best approach in navigating both at a committee level, but also in sort of finding one advocate, you know, on the board, and best way to sort of bring them along in that journey. So let's just say an organization's doing 10 billion a year in revenues, let's say this is a $2 billion bet, it's probably not going to come as a surprise, they would have been updated the board. But bringing them along very specifically in the journey, where there's going to be high risks that could be real issues, approaches for that type of scenario across, let's say, 2022, how you might manage that sequencing wise,

Richard Davis  13:24

Great, good scenario. The first one is don't get married to it until you know that the board is interested in favorable, I guess the best statement I can make is the board is your boss, it's funny, I would say I run the place 90 days in 90 day increments all through the year, but for one day, they run me because they really are representing the shareholders. So a board is independent in every sense of the word. And they represent all the people that invested in the company so that there's not a loss of balance and the loss of visibility to where the right decisions could be made. So first and foremost, if you're going to make a big bet, you want to introduce it as early as you can to the board in its highest most theoretical sense to make sure that they're willing and interested in going to the next level. And don't ever take a bet or find a partner or get ready to do to deal and bring it at the very last minute because even if it's a good idea, you might have messed it up just by not socializing it along the way. It's just not a good idea. So first and foremost, if I was going to do something like that, it was technology driven, I would be placing a high level of emphasis on my technology or digital board committee, whichever committee represents that if it was a capital investment, I would go to the finance group that might be looking at that the most or the audit group that looks at risks and rewards, if it's going to be a huge issue with personnel and it's a big game changer with who we're bringing in and what kind of job functions and what the compensation would be. I would bring in the HR and governance committee so each big bet will feather toward one or the other the kind of bet it is and then that's where your committees come in, because they have the time and capacity To drill down a little further, so you're not taking the whole board all the way down a rabbit hole. But every part of the board has to be aware of the intention that you have, the bigger the bet, the more valuable it is to bring it a third party, I had a reputation of not enjoying the use of consulting too often. Therefore, when we did bring in a consultant, everybody knew it was a really big reason to which is either we don't have all the information, we certainly don't know the landscape like a consultant who might be working with a number of other companies in the same space. And mostly you as the CEO and your board as the governors deserve a third party, a valid third party opinion so that when you all make the final decision, you've not just agreed among yourselves that it's a good idea. But you have other facts. That's the goal. Ah, we were talking, as you recall, before, it's not an air cover thing. air cover sounds like you've planned that if it goes wrong, you're going to have other people to blame, every deal you expect is going to be successful air cover. It's not what it is, is all the necessary lenses that come together that say we all agree at the end of the day that this is a good idea, a good decision based on what we know what we've learned what a third party is telling us. And we lock arms, and we will celebration go into it. And that's when you get the shaking hands of two CEOs in front of a new backdrop with two logos and everyone's happy at that moment, then all the work starts. But you'll be glad you did all that because if it's that strategic, you wanted to have that many people understanding it and paying attention to it. And I'll close where I started. Don't have a predetermined outcome and choreograph getting your board to say yes, get there early enough that you actually want and welcome their feedback. You're excited to have their thoughts, they may actually help you find the third party and be willing to have it be slightly different answer than you might have thought when you started and be glad you did. Because that's the benefit of having something at a board level that beg for a little bit longer than you might have thought

David Morris  16:51

you make it sound so easy, right? Because you've seen the movie multiple times, going into what it looks like in each of those 90 days. at a detailed level it I can see how you bring them along in the board meeting. But what do you do across the 90 days running up to the next board meeting? Do you update them all? Do you update just the tech committee? Again, thinking of it as a big digitization modernization? Yeah, what might you do tactically?

Richard Davis  17:14

David? That's a great question. First of all, you would be available and participate in every committee meeting, the best practices now are the committee meetings are separate from the board meeting calendar. And they're usually within a week or two of the board meeting. And therefore, you're able to coordinate calendars, so that it's not going to be hard to have every committee member, find a date that works for them. And then you would participate in all of them, because there's no concurrent sessions. So you can be involved in therefore you start pollinating, you know, whatever is happening between the 90 day increments. The other trick is, most boards have an executive committee, and the executive committee is made up of the chairs of the committee. So let's say you have four committees, then you have four people on the executive committee, the board chair is probably not a chair of a committee. So it could be five people, that's when on big events, let's say a merger and acquisition, a transformational event, that's when you mobilize the executive committee, they're probably dormant most of the time. But you say I need to have the committee chairs, kind of my kitchen cabinet, I need to be able to get to you guys a little more frequently. Since you're already one of the committees, I need to make sure you all have knowledge and what each of us was working on as we choreographed this. And it allows them to step up in a leadership role in and above what might otherwise have been their role as the committee chair, and all of a sudden, you have a higher frequency now of input. If you were even to bring in a third party who wanted to set the tone, you have a smaller audience at first, then if one of the board realizes that the committee chairs do have your lift, they actually get paid a stipend for being a committee chair. So the proxy, and with that responsibility, it doesn't just mean run the committee, it could be worked with the other committee chairs and the CEO to determine very important activities.

David Morris  18:53

And then what about in between even the committee meetings? Is it a practice not to just email one of the board members some updated question, do you want to see see all the ones in the committee? I mean, what is the day to day dialogue look like?

Richard Davis  19:05

Yeah, don't be surprised by this, there's not much to it. First of all, your board chair does a CEO or could be the lead director, which as I said, is the same role. If you have the chairman role in your title, you do talk to them, often, you might talk to them once a month, because there's things you just want to be sure that they're aware of. And things don't always happen in 90 day increments. At a minimum, you gather to choreograph the agenda for the upcoming board meeting and everything that's going on. So you do talk to that person a lot. Absent that you don't even on a big deal. Unless it's moving at lightning speed, then, of course, it's a lot of special committee meetings, but normally you don't and I had a favorite saying at the bank, which is if you bring the board into the weeds, they'll whack there with you. And it's intended to be a reminder that if you get down to the minutiae and their small details, then I'm a bit of board member, a lot of places that I'll get right in it with you. In fact, I love that stuff. But you don't need it and you don't want it and it's unwelcomed in the end and it's not perfect. If so, remember, these are folks who come every 90 days or in some cases every 60 days, and for 24 hours, they're all in all about your company all about your needs. And the other 59 or 89 days, they're not thinking every minute about you, they're shareholders, they're stewards. They're available to you when you need them, but they're not running the company. And one of the biggest mistakes I've seen is when a board member or a board chair starts to blur the line between CEO and board, and the board is independent, which is good for the shareholders, it's also good for the CEO because they are not running the organization. So communication between is not as frequent as you think unless it's a time based issue. Because you really want to allow things to matriculate, you want your team to have time between sound bites, to pull together more data, pull together more strategy, get more third party information. And it really does behoove all of you to allow the calendar to kind of dictate how fast you move. Yeah, I

David Morris  20:53

mean, especially with those prep sessions as well, the number of interactions really start adding up there, too. I'm curious, Richard, how often would you say you've seen a board member, let's just say in these large digitalization ins, one of the board members do start acting almost like they're the CEO, and they get into the details, how often does that happen? And if so, what advice do you have for CEOs? And how to manage up to the board in that scenario?

Richard Davis  21:16

I have not seen it happen frequently. I've seen it happen a couple of times. And there's two answers I'm going to give you here to the question. One is, the CEOs should never ever meddle in the board business. That's why you have a chair. So if as a CEO, you became frustrated, because, you know, Director Morris can't stop talking too much, or showing off that he knows all this stuff, or keeps referring ideas to us, and it starts to become non productive. You don't do anything with that with Director Morris, you go to chairman or chairwoman, whomever and you say I need your help. In case it wasn't obvious to you because it probably is, I need you to ask David to kind of tone down his involvement in the board meeting because it's distracting and it's not helpful. You never met with him yourself. That's why you have a board member. The other approach is when you have a board typically would see that they manage it themselves. Boards are very smart, they're very talented individuals and very capable team players, and they will audit themselves every year, the board will do its own evaluation. And in many cases, the evaluation includes the evaluation of each other as Quality Board members, or if there's any areas of improvement they think they should all hold themselves accountable to. And that's where the chair does a lot of work that you don't see as a CEO, the chairs responsible to manage the board. And remember, the board represents the shareholders as an independent board. And those responsibilities are big and meaningful. And they're almost never challenging. But when they are, that's when they step in and manage it. But the CEO should never manage the board, and should only work directly with one board member don't socialize things with more than one don't try to drum up support by talking to three board members and not talking to the other seven, it's there's no good way to manage a board directly but through the chairman.

David Morris  22:56

seems straightforward. Again, just going back to your success as a board member, I can't help but think that it's because you got on board so early on when you did become CEO, if you're a CEO, and you're not yet on an outside board, how would you suggest that CEO bring up the conversation with their board about why they want to go on other boards?

Richard Davis  23:18

Let me unpack that. Number one is you would go to your chair will admit to your chairman, and say I would very much like to be on a outside public board. And with your permission, I'd like to ask you to ask the board to help me find one nothing better than another board member referring someone. And to the extent that that's favorable, the chair would love to take that roll on, bring it before the board as appear. And then say, first of all, do we agree? We want David on a board? And if so let's go help them find one. Because I don't think any board would disagree that one service isn't productive. Now, it doesn't always happen that early. Because in the first year or two, most boards say Look, all I want you to do is focus on your new job. But I'd say at the one or two year mark, when the training wheels are off, you're not new anymore, everything's working. And they've long decided you're the right person. That's the moment you take the step and say I'd like very much for your help. Or sometimes it'll come to you that you go to the board leader, and say I've been invited to interview for a board, I'd like your permission to look at it further. I've looked at the dates, the time consumption will not be too great. And I think this particular board will help me be a better leader here at this company. And that's the approach you would take in that regard. The second piece I want to say about it is you do want to make sure you have the time capacity, and it's something you want to be part of, because wait for it, your reputation and your company's reputation also relies on the company you keep. So if you were gonna go onto a board was the sort of form of contention or risk or could be a conflict with your own consumer base or some of your own principles, then it's a standoff don't get near it. I can think of certain companies that produce products that might be less clear in some people's mind just being a good product, something that people want, and other people don't and don't let that affect your company your reputation for the brand that you protect so viscerally. So make sure that it's aligned with you, there's something you can be helpful to, or something that makes sense that you would be offering your expertise to someone else, while you're also running the company you're writing.

David Morris  25:11

And for our audience, in the world of government, you know, we see a lot of these very large digitizations, you know, billion dollar plus ones, director of a department who's ultimately accountable to it. And although they have their own governance, they may not have a board, right? I'm just wondering if there's any guidance you have, because it seems like there's so much benefit to the board structure. But if you find yourself leading a very large organization, but there's not really a board, there's one person you sort of report to, but there's not a board. Have you ever seen a solution to that where you can introduce something

Richard Davis  25:45

I worked with, you might guess, as a CEO of a large bank with a number of regulated entities, and many of our customers were large government agencies. And what I would say on the former is some of the best leaders brought together a kitchen cabinet for the lack of a better word. And I've been on kitchen cabinets with either regulators or government entities to serve in that capacity that says, a third party independent listening and giving guidance to the individuals or to that point, there are some formal ones like I served on the Federal Reserve Advisory Council, where each of the 12 Fed districts for two years has a sitting CEO in that district that comes every 90 days to the Federal Reserve Board and provides answers to questions they have and kind of reports on what's happening in the world, that part of the country they're in. And so that's how they gather feedback, otherwise, they would be insular and lose the chance of getting connection to what I'll call the real world. We've had government partners, who are big clients that would bring together a number of banks and say, you know, we're, I want to give an example, exactly. But a government agency, we're doing the following. We not only want to understand how you see it, but where are the risks, because you guys are risk managers. And we want to get your ideas on that. So you can always compose some form of a board in the form of a board in the sense of third party advisors and guides. And it doesn't have to be formal, and it doesn't have to have official governance. But it can provide a great deal with third party input to help you brainstorm and think things through safely without the risk of getting too insular. And in the case

David Morris  27:13

of the government examples, or any type of benefit those individuals get it, they just enjoy being part of it.

Richard Davis  27:18

Oh, great question. I've been, I can't remember how many kitchen cabinets but every time I was asked, I was so honored that I would be invited to sit with a government group and give input to could be cybersecurity. It could be banking, through the post office, it could be any of these big heady topics. And it's an honor, it's patriotism, it feels nice to be invited into be asked. And sometimes you get to meet a different cohort of peers that you would not normally meet in your normal day course.

David Morris  27:44

And so can you see any scenario where you may not want to create one of these? Or is it seem pretty much standard value add?

Richard Davis  27:50

You know, I wouldn't create a kitchen cabinet if I have a board because that's redundant. Yeah. I don't think I would make big decisions if I didn't have a board without a kitchen cabinet, because I just think they both serve as that other safe place to run ideas by and to get thoughts and feedback. The only difference is the board is going to help you and be the ultimate decision maker. So it's a twofer. You're serving yourself to get their feedback, and you're also socializing and cultivating the potential that decision but the kitchen cabinet, it's clear that they have no decision making authority, but you will have hopefully a better solution and answer because you involve parties that understand the business well enough of Kava lens that you couldn't possibly have created over the course of your career.

David Morris  28:29

Richard, this has been really terrific. Thank you.

Richard Davis  28:32

I've enjoyed it too. Thank you for asking.

David Morris  28:36

And to our listeners, thank you for your continued support. Be sure to subscribe to the HiPERleadership podcast on your favorite platforms. You're the first to know of all the new episodes with some exciting guests we have in store for you in 2022. And if you're tasked with leading a large game-change effort, visit our website hipersolutions.com To learn more about how our playbook can increase the likelihood of success while de risking your change initiative. Until then have a wonderful close to 2021. We'll be back again with more game changing leaders in 2022.