The Failure Gap

Speaker 2 (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Failure Gap where we talk with leaders about closing the space between agreement and alignment. We love talking with interesting people and today we're joined by Matthew Pine. Matthew is the CEO of Xylem, a Fortune 500 global water solutions company. They empower communities and businesses to become more water secure with safe, simple solutions. Matthew focuses on driving a high impact culture where innovation thrives, performance matters, and people come first. Matthew, thank you for joining us today.

Speaker 1 (00:29)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:31)
Yeah, we're so delighted to have you. I know that you have been truly a leader who leans into the power of alignment across your leadership team and through your business. So I'm really excited for our listeners to have the opportunity to learn from you about what you've experienced as you've worked to create alignment to this incredible company that is Xylem.

Speaker 1 (00:51)
Great. Now I look forward to the conversation.

Speaker 2 (00:53)
I would love to start by just giving you the opportunity to introduce yourself to our listeners, tell them a little bit about maybe your journey to leadership and how you came to be the CEO of Xylem.

Speaker 1 (01:03)
Wow. I can tell you that it was a long, long, long and winding road. ⁓ like you said, I'm Matthew pine. I'm the CEO of Xylem. ⁓ happy to be with you today. I would have to say early in my career, much like a lot of early in a career folks, ⁓ you kind of don't know exactly what you want to do in your career, but I would say early on, I'd say at a pretty early age, I, I realized that I wanted to lead people and I wanted to be a general manager or a president of a business. I didn't really know what that meant.

But I did know that it was going to take lots of different experiences. think experiences are so critical to being a good leader. think emotional intelligence, experiences, being a lifelong learner, all those things ⁓ were in my head early in my career. And so I tried to architect a career. Look, you always need people that are ⁓ functional experts that go an inch wide and a mile deep, but I tried to architect my career. So I got as many experiences as I could.

⁓ and I think to do that often you have to take chances on yourself. I had a lot of people take chances on me. ⁓ you know, hopefully I gave them a, ⁓ you know, the reason to do that, but definitely people took chances on me, but you also have to own your own development and you have to take chances on yourself. And so that wound up, you know, me working in multiple industries. I started out in construction management. got into HVAC.

the HVAC industry, was in power generation and now into water. ⁓ and along the way, you know, had lots of different roles. was in, you know, project management, product management, sales, marketing, all four P's of marketing. ⁓ I was in distribution management. I led parts of engineering and then obviously being a general manager. So I find that, ⁓ you know, for me to get into roles like this,

experiences is so critical because you, a, you get exposure to the whole organization, but it enables you to be empathetic and you've kind of walked a mile in other people's shoes and you understand how it's all knitted together and everybody on the team has a role to play. ⁓ it's a team sport and I'm a big team person. I played a lot of sports growing up. And for me, it's about really that empathy of understanding what everybody does and how it comes together. And I think, you know, architecting my.

My journey in that way has helped me quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (03:33)
Yeah, you know, a few years back, there was this construct of creating lattice careers instead of ladder careers, right? That instead of just going up the ladder, that you should move through it like a lattice. And sometimes that means moving horizontally. Sometimes it means taking a step back. Sometimes it means taking a step forward. It feels like you really embraced that construct of how do you build that lattice for yourself?

Speaker 1 (03:57)
I completely agree. I, never really focused on, mean, I'm human. Yeah, sometimes I did, but in general, I wasn't really focused on how fast I move up. was more intentional and like in the, in the moment of the experience I was getting. And so many people that I've coached over the years or colleagues that I worked with, they're so worried about how fast they can move up. And it's a disservice because once they get to wherever they're going.

they're not gonna have those experiences to be successful. Now, could they be successful? Yeah, but more than likely not, ⁓ they're not gonna be successful. So, I had peers of mine that reached different kind of levels ahead of me, but I think ultimately, this prepared me well for where I am today.

Speaker 2 (04:45)
Yeah, you know, at Kerikin's group, we talk a lot about the power of connection, not just to people, but to the business as an enterprise. And when you are an enterprise leader, it's so important to have that broader view. And I think that, I think you've actually tapped into something, which is that the people who move up the ladder very quickly, and that's their focus, they tend to top out at a certain point because they don't have that perspective. They don't have that connection.

to the broader enterprise to be able to make decisions that take all areas of the business into account. I do think that might be one of those things at that hinge point. As you know, and we've seen many leaders, they struggle to make that transition into enterprise leadership.

Speaker 1 (05:29)
Yeah, completely agree. And I think it should be a requisite for most people to get at least two functional experiences. And then even within functions, there's different roles that you can take on. So anyway, I think for me, it's been a, it's been a good formula.

Speaker 2 (05:43)
You know, I always laugh because when I was a technologist, I was developing code back in the day, right out of college. And through a set of circumstances, I spent two weeks working in the finance ⁓ functional operation, helping to do ⁓ expense report vouchers, which is a long story behind that. But it was so eye-opening for me. Like I was a developer, right? I was doing code. And here I was suddenly understanding what it really looked like to process expense vouchers.

And it was, I've always carried that experience with me just because it helps me to understand what happens in that function.

Speaker 1 (06:15)
Yeah, yeah, so it's work. It's like I said, it's work work well for me, I think.

Speaker 2 (06:20)
Yeah. I like also your point about taking a risk on yourself. Definitely people have to take risks on you and that opens doors, but if you're not willing to say yes and to say, I'll go, I'll go learn that. You limit your options.

Speaker 1 (06:31)
Exactly.

Yeah, completely agree.

Speaker 2 (06:36)
Yeah, yeah. Well, these are easy things to agree to, speaking of agreeing, and they can be hard. It can be hard, right, to align. And there he is. Yeah, for yourself, when you think about that space between agreement and alignment, is there something that comes to mind where you thought, I agree, I really should do that, but you've either had to work hard to get yourself aligned to it, or you've had to kind of unpack that a little bit for yourself. How does that show up for you?

Speaker 1 (07:01)
Yeah, I mean, I could use the current example that we're going through, Exilem. I mean, we are on a transformation journey and, um, well, I would say that we're tracking well, you know, nothing's ever a straight line and perfect. And we've got, you know, I would say pockets of the organization that aren't quite there yet. Some of that is just the timing of where they are in the journey. And some of it is we just have some, colleagues that haven't quite gotten aligned yet. Um, and so, but in general, it's going very well, but you know, there's some more work that's needed.

to get the whole organization there.

Speaker 2 (07:32)
What do you think gets in the way for people of getting aligned to a major transformation in a business? We see this a lot. People agree, like we need to do that. And then there's the, hope somebody does that.

Speaker 1 (07:44)
Yeah, think our, our, our transformation is grounded in voice of stakeholder. I'm a big believer in voice of customer voice of stakeholder. And I would say that 99 % of our organization is aligned that the voice of stakeholder, have to adjust our organization to the problem is when it comes to a theater near them, that's when the blockers happen. Right. And people can't.

They have trouble getting aligned because they've got mindset issues and some of those are, you know, just fear. You know, just fear in general, fear of failure. ⁓ when you go through transformation transformations, we're going through, ⁓ it takes a lot of rigor and discipline. So maybe people are wary of the rigor and discipline that goes into it or just their individual mindsets aren't there yet. So there's lots of different reasons that people, you know, can get there, but, ⁓

For me, it's about leadership and you have to create, as a leader of that, either me as the leader of Xylem or our segment presidents and functional leaders or the divisions or people that are leaders in the company, you have to create the environment so you can work through that with your team to ultimately get past it. And I find that people don't create that space and they give up too early.

I can tell you we've been on it. took, it's taken us about 18 months to get our senior leadership team in our top one for global 150 aligned. Now we're moving into kind of, you know, ⁓ in minus three and four in the organization, but this is like a three year journey. And so you have to be really persistent and it takes work every day. It's how you show up.

Speaker 2 (09:36)
You know, at Caricades Group, we like to say you shouldn't change what other people do until you change how you lead. Yes. And I think that might be where some people get into the failure gap, right? They agree that something's a good idea, but they're more interested in changing what other people are doing than changing how they lead themselves. That's right. Curious for you on this journey with yourself and your senior leadership team in the top 150.

What are some of the ways that you've seen that leaders have needed to step into new ways of leading to make this transformation a success?

Speaker 1 (10:11)
I would say that, ⁓

Probably the biggest thing is taking a step back and again, creating, ⁓ as a leader, creating the opportunity for people to have quality conversation about their mindsets. Because if you can't work through that as a team, you can't get ultimately to what your aspiration, right? And you can't get to the right behaviors to get there. So.

I think the biggest thing for our team is just the hard work that we've been putting into, to, ⁓ just to have those quality conversations. I call it having the meeting and the meeting. And, ⁓ a lot of times I've seen this over my career. I've done this in my career until I got to understand really to impact how an organization moves forward is having the quality conversation in the meeting, not having one-off conversations around the water cooler about what's wrong or how we should do things.

When you have it in the meeting, it is so quick to get to alignment. ⁓ and I'd see, I'd say our leaders are really having those. I mean, every meeting I'm in, there's no, there's no more like drama outside of the meeting. It's in the meeting. And that is so powerful when you, but it takes trust and you have to be vulnerable as leader. And, ⁓ that's what I've seen our leaders do. They've been vulnerable.

They've ⁓ allowed people to share their mindsets and the blockers to alignment. And ⁓ we've developed so much trust in organization and authenticity that I think we've been able to move. We're on an 18 month journey. would say that's in some people's eyes, not fast. I would say that's fast.

Speaker 2 (12:01)
pretty darn fast to change the mindsets of a whole group of people. But I do think that people make the mistake of wanting it to happen in a catalytic event. They want to be able to just say, yeah, we're all.

Speaker 1 (12:11)
Well, you know, most, most of this people go off and do a retreat. go have a long weekend that, know, and they like each other and they have fun and they talk and everybody kind of agrees on things, but it never, you never really get momentum. And it takes a lot of hard work. ⁓ cause alignment is momentum and that, and that's, that's, and it takes, it's, it's a prescriptive journey that takes months, not just a weekend.

Speaker 2 (12:40)
Yeah. I like that idea that alignment is momentum. is about having momentum and maintaining it and fueling it as you go forward. And one way to fuel it is by having the meeting in the meeting. That's such an important construct because that's where actually trust is both built and on display. Right. So it is by having those conversations together that you reinforce the trust that you need.

Speaker 1 (13:02)
And you can't take it for granted either because this disease, it's hard to get, but once you get it, it's easy to lose, right? It's hard to get, but easy to lose.

Speaker 2 (13:12)
Yeah, what do they say trust is built in drops and lost in buckets?

Speaker 1 (13:17)
Exactly.

it's, know, going back to sports analogy, takes a lot to get in shape, but it's easy to get out of shape. If you think about training for a sport, the work that goes into that to be at the top level, but within a few, three or four weeks, if you have an injury, for example, you're just, you know, if you're on the off season, it's very easy to quickly get out of shape. Yeah. So yeah, so it's, ⁓ it's something you have to work on quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (13:39)
for sure, we all know that's true.

I think what you're tapping into here is one of the mindsets that can be really hard to change for people, which is that to change how you lead, you have to do the hard work every day. It's not about somebody else doing it for you. It's not about getting it done quickly. It's about doing it consistently over time. And I do think that gets in the way. Have you seen that with some of your leaders where they have to just really embrace the work of alignment?

Speaker 1 (14:13)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, you just have to roll up your sleeves and do it. And, unfortunately, you know, ⁓ some people just don't adapt and that's okay. ⁓ we like them and we want to help them do something different, but it, it maybe is just not for them, but it's, it's very difficult work. ⁓ not everybody is ready to do it. I think everybody has the potential to do it, but it's not that everybody's ready to do it. They have to be ready.

Speaker 2 (14:41)
Yeah, and it has to matter to them. Yeah. Yeah. What's another mindset shift that you've seen people grapple with? Something that maybe surprised you or that you realized, that's what's getting in the way here.

Speaker 1 (14:56)
⁓ and I think, know, for individually, I think I named some, think maybe from a group perspective, it's just what I've seen is people not challenging one another. You know, again, having that quality conversation and challenging, ⁓ you know, think this, you know, bringing not, you know, bringing their individual mindsets and not being open, ⁓ and just the fear of the unknown. mean, people, people don't look, people don't like change.

And so there's a lot of fear in that. So that's what the leader's job is to create that, that environment where people, you can let them be vulnerable and make that transition and move out of that, that individual mindset that's blocking the alignment. That's why it's so important to create that space and trust. Because a lot of people, not everybody, but a lot of people can't get there unless you have that. those are things that I see.

Speaker 2 (15:51)
Yeah. I wonder too about the space of accountability and the mindsets that people have around what accountability means and look like. Have you struggled with that at all? Yeah, with a lot of later.

Speaker 1 (16:03)
And

that's what I, yeah, that's what I mentioned earlier about rigor. In my mind, that's, you know, also about accountability rigor in terms of KPIs and measuring and, putting the, you know, the spotlight and the sunlight out, and driving accountability. That can be very difficult for people as well. And I've seen that. And often what I've seen, ⁓ people often confuse accountability and empowerment. You know, empowerment, people think they get to do whatever they want, wherever they want.

you know, and just go do their, do their job. That's fine, but we need accountability parameters. call them bumper cars, the bumper rails. Those are accountability. We can have empowerment between the rails, but that's a hard concept. It's a little bit of a paradox. You can be empowered, but we've got to have accountability with the empowerment. So that's a, that's a bit of a tension and conflict that I've seen as well.

Speaker 2 (16:57)
Yeah. And it sounds like one of the things that you do is you encourage your team to stay in dialogue about those paradoxes. Yeah. Sort of gray areas. And so that builds up the trust that people have that they can figure it out together. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting how it all fuels itself in this space of alignment, right? When you're having the quality conversations, then you can learn to navigate through

Speaker 1 (17:11)
That's right.

Speaker 2 (17:23)
sort of fuzzy maybe guardrails around things like empowerment and accountability.

Speaker 1 (17:27)
Yeah,

we've had that conversation many times. And that's why it's so top of the line with me, the accountability and empowerment discussion has been one we've had quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (17:37)
One of the things that we talk about in social science is that accountability, people feel comfortable when they're holding people accountable to numbers, but less comfortable when they're holding people accountable to behaviors. Because that can feel sometimes almost mean. Or you're like, well, I don't like how you're acting kind of thing. It's not as concrete. It's more subjective than objective.

Speaker 1 (18:01)
Well, you you take it more personal. Yeah. think, right. Yeah. Yeah. But that's, that's, that's interesting. Yeah. We obviously we spend a lot of time on behaviors. Actually we have an alignment ⁓ check-in with our top 150 globally, and they rate us on how well we're aligning to the behaviors that we set out for the company. And so we, do a survey twice a year of the senior leadership team on how we're showing up against our high impact culture.

which is inspired to innovate and power to lead accountable to deliver. And then under each one of those, there's three or four kind of attributes or things we should be leaning into. And so we got a baseline last year and we've made really good progress this year, but we're, having, ⁓ our top leadership hold us accountable to those behaviors. I think that's so important.

Speaker 2 (18:54)
I think that's such a wonderful reflection of how we often think we act with intention, but sometimes the impact isn't there, right? Yeah. And this lets you know for the top 150 leaders who have direct line of sight into how you're working, how are they receiving what it is that you're trying to do?

Speaker 1 (19:11)
Exactly. Yeah, it's really important to understand the behavioral side of it, not just the numbers.

Speaker 2 (19:17)
Yeah, but that also lets you quantify it a little bit, it sounds like, because you get the assessment back and you can see like, where are we ranking? But also day to day, you can hold each other accountable to the behaviors that you're working

Speaker 1 (19:30)
Yeah, exactly. Qualitative people will get feedback from either global town halls or you know we have a kind of every other month ⁓ global leadership call. So we get some kind of qualitative feedback with that. You're doing that quantitative feedback twice a year is really important I think.

Speaker 2 (19:47)
Yeah. Yeah. So you said that one of your high impact behaviors is, ⁓ accountable to deliver. Yes. So that's in that accountability space. Yes. Is that, tell us a little bit about what it's like getting people aligned to that particular behavior or that particular aspect of your.

Speaker 1 (20:03)
I

think one the organizational blockers to alignment there is we were highly matrices before. And so some people couldn't be accountable because the way we were structured. so I would say that ⁓ not all of it, but a big problem was our organizational construct. And so as we move from highly complex and matrix to very singular segment focus with four segments, division, leaders,

know, functions, understanding what they're doing, there's kind of, we've created the space for end to end accountability. And so now it's much easier for people to get, to be accountable. ⁓ Yeah. Do people still have, you know, a little bit of an issue with it? Probably, but in general, the structural change that we remove the blocker to that behavior has helped quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (20:55)
Yeah, you know, there is no perfect structure. Well, there's not. But there are structures that work better for certain goals. And if one of your goals is to drive that accountable to deliver, then certainly looking at your structure is a helpful place to get.

Speaker 1 (21:08)
Yeah,

I think it served us well over the course of the last decade, but as we're transitioning to the next 10 years, this structure I think will serve us well and aligns better to our high impact culture that we're trying to create.

Speaker 2 (21:22)
Yeah, for sure. For sure. I know another aspect that you've really worked on is the enterprise mindset. And we touched on that a little bit earlier in the conversation, but I'm just curious for you, when you think about getting your senior leaders aligned to having an enterprise mindset, what gets in the way and how do you help them work through that?

Speaker 1 (21:42)
I try to be very proactive here and even when I'm interviewing for people to join the senior leadership team, I want people to play out of position and it goes back to experiences. ⁓ Hopefully people that come onto the senior leadership team and one of the things I look for is the different types of experiences they've had. Because when people show up, yes, you're going to be functionally technical. I mean, that's kind of a given, check the box.

But it's really about how you show up as leader and how are you being an enterprise leader? I want you to play out of position because the more people on the senior leadership team that play out of position, the more diversity of thought we have in the better we can be. And so that's something that I really, I strive to really get people to do. And I think now most people that work, you know, in our senior leadership team understand that. And I've seen a huge difference. People.

are very supportive of one another. They play out of position to help one of their peers and how they show up as enterprise leaders. And it's really selfless. And that's what a team is about. It's about being selfless. And ⁓ we have a senior leadership team that's selfless. They care about their peers, their colleagues, and they want to help them no matter what it is. And so when you have that kind of special sauce,

Of people operating like that, you can do incredible things, but when you have people that are like, okay, this is my role, stay out of my turf, get out of my territory. That doesn't go too far. And those people quite frankly don't last, you know, I don't like working with colleagues like that. And they're probably not going to last on my team because it's just a, it's just individual mindset. This is a team sport.

Speaker 2 (23:26)
Yeah, it is something about making sure that the leadership team is actually a team. Absolutely. Well, horizontal team is in place and I know you've invested a lot in that. Yeah. When you think about your own journey for alignment, towards alignment, and as you've been leading Xilin here now for the last couple of years, what for you has been the biggest sort of learning or takeaway for yourself as a leader who wants to make sure that people are playing on a team and that they are aligned to those shared goals? What's been your, what's been your own

Speaker 1 (23:30)
Yes.

Speaker 2 (23:56)
space between agreeing that I should do that and getting yourself aligned to doing it.

Speaker 1 (24:01)
⁓ well, I just say that. You know, myself included, you don't always really understand how resilient an organization is and, ⁓ what people and teams can accomplish. Sometimes you, don't, you forget. And so one of the things I've, I've wrestled with is there's a lot that we need to go do to get to where we want to go, especially as you're moving through a transformation.

There's a lot to do to kind of get to the other end of it. So I think for me, ⁓ my mindset has been push, push as hard as I can without redlining the organization. Because what I've come to realize is people are resilient. People will stop doing the things that aren't adding value as you do more. And now obviously we want to be very focused on the four or five things where we need to build capability and you can't.

add so much on people's plates, but it's really about, ⁓ know, pushing the organization with more velocity through the transformation. And that's something that I've really, it's been an aha for me that I've seen that we'd be able to move much faster than I probably would have anticipated. And, ⁓ it's something I've worked on to really, to lean into.

Speaker 2 (25:22)
And I appreciate your qualification earlier that you can move faster than you might've thought and things take time. Yes. And give them that time to breathe and that time to grow.

Speaker 1 (25:34)
Exactly. You got, you know, if you want to go fast and far, you got to be aligned. So, we, think, I think the other thing as I reflected to, we did so much and I'm big on culture and leadership and alignment. mean, that's where it all starts. All the other stuff is window dressing. Like you can't do anything unless you have those things. But I think the aha moment for me was we had done so much work on culture and alignment over 18 months.

You know, even like prior to where we started the transformation, we were six to eight months in. So that pre-work that we did on culture and in alignment, and leadership was so critical to then me, the aha moment that said, man, we can move faster. And look, are people, you know, stress from time to time? Absolutely. When you're going through a transformation, I'm not, I don't want to sugar coat it.

But I can tell you we've accomplished much, much more than I ever would have dreamed in a shorter period of time. I think it comes down to the foundational work we did before we started. It can reflect.

Speaker 2 (26:43)
I think as you know, at Kerrick and Striepe, you like to say to go fast, go alone, to go far, go together, to go far fast, get aligned. And I think you did that and you made that investment upfront. And it has helped you to go far fast with the transformation as you've gone down that path.

Speaker 1 (26:58)
Yeah, yeah, completely agree with that. And that's been a little bit of the aha moment for me.

Speaker 2 (27:03)
Yeah, that's really exciting to think about. And I'm sure that there are people listening in who either are in the midst of a transformation and maybe wish they'd done some of that work upfront, or are getting ready for it and are thinking, what should I do? What are two or three hot tips from you about your experience with getting your organization and in particular, your leaders primed to be able to tackle not just the transformation that you're in today, but all of the different things that your strategy calls for.

Speaker 1 (27:32)
It's funny, I was just reflecting as we were talking, we have this mantra in our ERP, our Enterprise Resource Planning Systems Modernization Program, and it's go slow to go fast, right? So I think it's about up front, the recommendation I would have is you gotta go slow to go fast, as I'm reflecting, kind of real time here about, you know, again, the work we did up front was so important, but it starts with me. If the leader of the company, the...

whatever segment, if it's a segment of a company that's doing this journey or division, ⁓ the leader has to be a hundred percent in and the leader has to show up that way every day and allow the organization, the space to go through this. And so it starts there. Then, you know, it's just like a pyramid. Then you've got to get your senior leader team there too. And that takes, that takes time. would say.

For me, from my experience, that's probably six to 12 months. If you think you're going to do that in a weekend or a month, it's not going to happen. And you may have to have, there may have to be some new leaders on that team as well, because people just aren't ready to get aligned or to go through the journey. ⁓ so I would say six to 12 months. ⁓ and then after that, you know, the senior leadership team, get to report the news.

The top, for us it's our top 150, right? We have 22,000 more or less people in our company. Our top 150 are global leaders. They create the news, they run the company. And so we were really intentional about making sure that they came along on the alignment journey with us. And so that's really critical too. It's just not the senior leader or the senior leadership team. It's that next level down.

that really runs a company, they have to be aligned and involved or it really won't happen. So those are, you know, go slow to go fast and all that work to get that alignment with your, yourself as a leader, the senior leadership team and kind of the next level down is so critical. ⁓ and I would encourage anybody looking to, know, if you're going through a transformation on top of it, this has to happen first, whether you're spinning off a company, you know, you're starting a new company.

or you're taking a company that this needs, you're ready for the next, I call it walls. You grow, grow, grow, and you hit a wall, and then you've to go over the next wall. You grow, grow, grow, you hit a wall because your organization's not ready to get to that next level. If you're in that position, you've got to go through something like this.

Speaker 2 (30:14)
Yeah, if you want to accelerate through the wall or through the...

Speaker 1 (30:17)
that get off the wall to the next growth journey.

Speaker 2 (30:21)
But I know Matthew, one of the things that you've done both personally and had your whole leadership team do is you've invested not just money and time for your top 150, but your own personal time. And your senior leadership team has showed up to be engaged in the process of getting that 150 aligned. So it's not a delegation exercise. No, right. Not something that you delegate to someone else, like a change manager or a caricans group. We do a lot of work with you, but it's not.

for you, it's with you. How do they continue to bring that in?

Speaker 1 (30:55)
Yeah, nobody can know if you're thinking that somebody's gonna do it for you. You've already kind of you're already behind the eight ball Yeah, and the other thing that's in I think reflection too is I have a coach I have a couple of coaches and I think that's helped me kind of make sure that I stay on track. It's hard to do it by yourself and ⁓ I think that's also been a good learning for me is to have somebody to you know, not that they're telling me what to do but to bounce ideas off of to

you know, talk about things that aren't going well, talk about things that are going well, just have reflections. ⁓ I think those are really important things to have.

Speaker 2 (31:33)
Yeah. And you know, just as a side note, I think this idea too, that the CEO role can be lonely. And so having somebody who you can talk to about some of the things that are going on can be really important and really valuable for you. Yeah. But also the work of alignment makes the role a little less.

Speaker 1 (31:53)
I agree, I was gonna say that. I've heard that CEO job is lonely. I would say that probably because of the work that we're doing, I don't feel that per se. But to be able to sustain the jury we're on, I have to have somebody to talk to as well. And so that's how I see it.

Speaker 2 (32:12)
That's

Yeah, because you're holding that alignment together. Right. CEO. That's part of your job. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you've leaned into that job really beautifully. I think the CEOs who do feel the most lonely in the role are the ones who have not really aligned their team to how do we run this company together.

Speaker 1 (32:31)
Yeah, exactly. It's a team sport.

Speaker 2 (32:34)
Yeah, yeah, go back to the team sport. Well, we've covered a lot of ground here, Matthew. We've talked about the importance of trust and the importance of accountability and what that looks like and how you can really bring everybody across your team into this conversation. And then that next level down of the 150 leaders. And I know you're now driving the discipline of alignment through the whole organization. it's again, 22,000 people across the world. So it's really exciting to see you.

benefiting from leaning into this idea of how do we get aligned to deliver together and then what's going to come from that in terms of the transformations that we're undertaking as a business. So it's really, really exciting and I appreciate you sharing all of your experiences and your ideas with us. I do have one last question for you. And that is, if you could get any group of people in the world aligned, it could be your family, it could be a community group, it could be your leadership team.

it could be the world, whatever it might be, if you could get them aligned to deliver on something together, knowing that it's going to take time and hard work and a lot of conversation, what would that be?

Speaker 1 (33:39)
That's a deep question. I'd probably go big and say, do we, yeah, because I'm, yeah, I feel like a global citizen. I travel everywhere. I'm all over, you know, all over the place. have a global company. Um, I have a little bit of an international family. So I would say globally, I would, I would say let's get alignment probably around two different areas. The first we've talked a little bit about it and that's trust or truth. Um, because I think.

In today's world, there's so much more, there's so much misinformation that this, you know, ruins trust and truth. And I think that's really a foundational element to, to, create change and to get alignment. In the second, I would say is probably, ⁓ and again, this is, see this a lot in the news today is just really mutual respect. So true trust and mutual respect. If we could get people aligned globally.

around the world on those two elements, I think we could do anything around the world and have a much better place to live. Not that we have that bad place to live today, but in general, are, yeah, ⁓ they're changing and ⁓ not always for the good. I think we're losing, we're losing, ⁓

and trust and we're losing respect for one another. And if we can get aligned there, we can do incredible things. So that would be two areas that I would focus on.

Speaker 2 (35:14)
I love it. Let's think big and always be in pursuit of better. Exactly. doesn't mean that things aren't okay today, but how do we continue to be better and better as we go forward? Yeah. And so, yeah, the call to action is for grounding in truth and respectful behavior towards each other and how do we advance all of our purposes in that way? Love it. Yeah. I've never known you, Matthew, to not dream big, I think that's... I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (35:40)
Yeah, that's a big, that's a big aspiration, but I think it's a worthy one.

Speaker 2 (35:46)
It's a worthy one to put out in the world and I'm really grateful that you did that. So, Matthew, thank you again so much. I know that our listeners are gonna get a lot out of this conversation and I've enjoyed hearing about your journey to leadership and this idea of taking personal risks and being willing to put yourself out there and get different kinds of experiences and opportunities on your journey to senior leadership in an organization. The power of enterprise leaders to really drive alignment through the organization and to stay engaged in the conversation. It's not a catalytic.

weekend retreat, it's hard work over a period of time. And it actually, the work doesn't go away, but it does get easier because you get better at it. It is a skill that you can learn. It's a discipline that you can learn. And Matthew, I know that you've invested your personal time and your team's time in learning those disciplines. So we're grateful for that, for you and for Xylem. And I know that you're going to go out and solve water. So thank you for all you and your team are doing. And to all of our listeners, thank you for joining us here on the Failure Gap. It's been a pleasure and we'll see you next time.