The Heart of Business
"The Heart of Business" podcast, hosted by Mo Fathelbab, is an authentic and insightful exploration of the human side of leadership and professional growth. Through candid conversations with accomplished business leaders, thought leaders, and peer group facilitators, Mo will delve deep into the personal journeys, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped their careers. Mo Fathelbab's skillful and empathetic approach creates a safe space for guests to share their truths and vulnerabilities, revealing the emotional and often unseen dimensions of success in the corporate world. Each episode offers listeners a chance to glean practical wisdom, heartfelt advice, and a profound understanding of the intricate interplay between leadership, authenticity, and personal growth.
The "Heart of Business" is the official podcast of International Facilitators Organization, LLC and hosted by IFO's founder and CEO, Mo Fathelbab. To learn more, please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com.
The Heart of Business
Listening and Leading through Change with Insights from Peter Laughter
What if leadership wasn't about wielding authority but about fostering collaboration? Join us as Peter Laughter, a dynamic serial entrepreneur, takes us on an inspiring journey from his roots in the vibrant Lower East Side of Manhattan to becoming a pioneer in transformative leadership. Peter's unexpected shift from social work to stepping into his mother's struggling staffing business unveiled his passion for competitive entrepreneurship and catalyzed his mission to revolutionize outdated leadership models. Discover how his daughter's fresh insights pushed him to challenge the status quo and build enterprises that empower and harness the potential of adaptive teams.
Explore the profound shift towards distributed leadership with Peter as we delve into real-life examples of how listening and valuing diverse perspectives can drive organizational success. From a Quaker school board to his own ventures, Peter recounts experiences that underscore the power of fostering a culture where ideas thrive and employees feel empowered to contribute. Hear about how internal peer interactions can unlock untapped potential within organizations, drawing from Peter's personal transition from entrepreneur to consultant. We also touch upon the timeless wisdom of historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr., illustrating the impact of collective insight and adaptive leadership during times of change.
Please visit www.internationalfacilitatorsorganization.com to learn more about Mo Fathelbab and International Facilitators Organization (IFO), a leading provider of facilitators and related group facilitation services, providing training, certification, marketing services, education, and community for peer group facilitators at all stages of their career.
Welcome to the Heart of Business podcast sponsored by International Facilitators Organization. I'm your host, mo Fatalbab, and today our guest is Peter Lafter, serial entrepreneur and public speaker, who helps organizations manage the coming change. And there's a lot coming and no way of change. So, peter, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:It is so good to be here. And when I first joined YEO back in I think 1988, 87, so back in I think 1988, 87, you did my forum training and left an indelible mark on my life and I will never forget that experience. So I am incredibly grateful. I still utilize the things I learned from you so many years ago.
Speaker 1:Thank you, peter. Thank you, I'm honored, honored and it was lovely to see you on LinkedIn and to reconnect with you. What a pleasure. I remember meeting you and I remember being impressed with you as an entrepreneur, and I'm just grateful for this opportunity to tell your story Well let's get this love fest on the road. Let's do it. So, Peter, let's start. Where did you grow?
Speaker 2:up start. Where did you grow up? I grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, back in Alphabet City back in the day, where it was not a very friendly place, so that it is now. I remember when I was a kid, going down Avenue C after dark was a test of bravery, and now there's hipster beer gardens there. It blows my mind.
Speaker 1:There you go. So what was your first taste of entrepreneurship?
Speaker 2:So I was an accidental entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:You know I really had no intention. There was a family staffing business that had a 24-hour component. I was working as a social worker and I was going to get my PhD in sociology and study the emerging internet culture. This was the early 90s and I ended up. My mom's business was in a lot of trouble. She had a night component that needed to be changed. She asked me to run it.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you've heard this, but entrepreneurs I mean social workers don't make a lot of money, so I needed the cash pretty desperately and there wasn't a lot of work. So I started selling and I hadn't been involved in sports as a kid, so I had no idea that I'm insanely competitive and it just kind of fit like a glove. And halfway through it I remember Christine Smith she is. I was placing her on projects at law firms at night said to me Peter, I just want to thank you because you allow me to pursue my dream of being an actor and because of you I can pay the rent while I do that and I realized I'm making more of a difference in my night job than I am in my day job and I'm having a lot more fun and the impact is so much greater. And so that was 94.
Speaker 2:My mom had been trying to get me because I had some success with the sales to join full time, and I had that realization right around the time. That she said, you know, gave me an equity deal based on growth we were and we did. In 94, we did half a million in sales and by 2000, we were at 12 million and I ended up with half the company. So yeah, it was, but it was just, uh, it was just one of these things. I didn't. I had no idea I would love it as much yeah, yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1:And so then you worked with your mom for a while.
Speaker 2:I take it yeah, I unfortunately had to fire my mom around you or 2007, which was a challenging moment in our relationship, one which we recovered from. But, yeah, we worked together. I ended up selling that company in 2016 and starting another staffing business. We had worked together as an admin staffing company focusing on law firms and financial institutions. We had worked together as an admin staffing company focusing on law firms and financial institutions. I turned it into a professional level staffing, placing project managers and consulting level professionals, and that business got commoditized.
Speaker 2:So I sold it in 2016 and started a staffing company focusing exclusively on management consulting firms called Spartoy Group, and it started to become less fun. Recruiting is broken and I have a 21-year-old daughter who, when she was going into high school, said Dad, I'm working really hard to prepare for a future and I'm being prepared for that future by some of the best teachers in New York City, but I don't think that future is going to exist by the time I get there and it hit me like a brick and I was just like I got to do something to make the world a better place, and I knew being an entrepreneur in the recruiting and staffing industry might get me a nice house, but it wasn't going to make the world a better place, so that was what led me on a long path to where I am now.
Speaker 1:And so where are you now and what are you doing to make the world a better place?
Speaker 2:Well, what I hope I'm doing to make a world a better place is living or building a business or, hopefully, an enterprise. On some observations that I had as an entrepreneur in the recruiting and staffing industry staffing industry and I had a few real, two real transformative experiences that had me realize that the way we view leadership in a command and control orthodoxy and I'm sure you see this with entrepreneurs is that they just can't get out of their own way. They think they know, but the truth of the matter is we live in this world that with incredibly capable people, incredible education and resources, and the system of management, command and control that we use was created to help to make sure illiterate peasants didn't plant the wrong crops and starve the entire community and starve the entire community right, you know, we're working on a 3,000-year-old system, the pharaohs. They did not have the level of complexity that we have to deal with, nor do they have the resources at our disposal. So I saw myself as a leader as I was missing out on the talents and experiences and expertise and ability of my team.
Speaker 2:They were doing what I asked them to do, but just that, and what they were capable of was much more that I didn't know to ask them to, and so I had these two transformative experiences one on a board of a Quaker school I was on, and the other within my company, where I realized there's a better way and I started changing the way I manage and working on that. So now my main focus is public speaking. I have a talk. The Pyramid has Collapsed, Adaptive Leadership for the Age of Disruption, and recognizing that we have entered the most incredible, exciting and perilous age in human history. You know, the changes we've seen over the last couple of years have been astounding, and it's just the start.
Speaker 1:All right, so I want to talk about all that, but you got my attention with the Quaker school board having a big impact on how you see things. Tell us more about that, please.
Speaker 2:Well, so the school was separating from the religious body that owned it, and Quakers are a non-hierarchical religion, so it is the body of people. When they come to unity on the decision is when you move forward, and the body of Quakers hated the idea of the separation. They were really angry at the school, so at our quarterly meetings they would yell and say horrible things about the board members and I realized, wait, these people who are saying horrible things, essentially throwing these emotional Moldov cocktails in the room. I grew up with some of their kids and so I thought, oh, I know some of them, and so I joined the effort to manage this separation and I said I can manipulate them, I can play their interest off each other.
Speaker 2:And the woman, my dear friend Alice Pope, who was running it, said great, we welcome you. But we're not going to do any of that. We're just going to listen to what they have to say and we're going to listen to understand not to convince them, but to understand what is the wisdom behind their objections. And we did that. And we found one particular thing that they started off with they wanted the ability to fire all of the Quaker board members of the school, 50% of the board, which I mean, if you know anything about non-profit boards, an outside influence is an anathema. It was dead on arrival. We wouldn't accept it. But when we asked them, why do you want this? They said well, we think what's special about the school is its Quaker nature. And if you guys get away from that, we want some way to fix it. And we said well, we agree, what's special about the school is their Quaker nature. And if we did get away from that, we'd want that fixed too. And what's more, if we became so separate from this institution that has given us so much, then we should be fired and this actually will keep us close to that institution. And we accepted it and in doing so, they felt heard and gotten and they went. So they brought up something else that really was batshit crazy Excuse my French. We were able to say that's batshit crazy, and they could hear us. But what we ended up with was so much stronger than what would have happened if one side dominated the other, and I walked out of the meeting thinking, my God, what just happened. Surely, if we could accomplish that, then we can bring world peace.
Speaker 2:And then I had a moment in my company where I was facing an intractable problem with Yelp reviews, and I won't go into the full details, but I had a really stupid way of solving it. It was expensive, it was difficult, it was painful and it was slow. And one of my employees saw that I was wrong and she saw a really simple, easy way. But I didn't believe her, I didn't think it would work. And she got in my face and she said Peter, what you're suggesting is a violation of our core values. And I still didn't see it. But I couldn't argue with that. So I let her go forward with the idea and I expected it to fail. No, I'm embarrassed, but it didn't fail. It was brilliant, it was simple, it was easy. It made everybody's lives easier.
Speaker 2:And from those two situations back to back, I realized, oh, my role as a leader. It's not to tell people what to do. It is to create the environment where they know what to do, where they have what they need to be able to make decisions, to decide if they can make a decision or if they need to pass it off. We've got a culture where people feel comfortable sharing their ideas and working together to sharpen them and make them better and implement them. It was such a relief.
Speaker 2:I was a pretty insecure guy, truth be told, I still am, but I don't react on it as much as I did. I was always panicked, like, oh, this problem is one where everyone's going to find out that I'm not as good as I pretend I am. But then everything else changed and now I didn't need to worry about that. I could walk into a meeting discussing a problem that was really big, that I had no idea how to solve, but it didn't matter, because the people in the room knew how to solve it. All I had to do was make sure they were staying focused and they felt comfortable sharing their ideas. And you know, and it was just. Everything was so much easier. I love that. So my work now is helping organizations with that transition.
Speaker 1:Bingo. That is my next question. So how does one go about creating this culture?
Speaker 2:So, first of all, it's really frigging hard, and I think there is, you know, because all we know is command and control. So even myself, who I had gone through this transformative experience in about 2012, and I thought I am an adaptive leader. I listen, but I wasn't. I only thought I was, and I run into this with my consulting work. Ceos say that we run a very flat organization and then you get in and that is their perception of themselves. That was created from a command and control mindset, but the reality is it's very hard to do because that's how we think. It's 3,000 years of command and control. It doesn't go away at the snap of a finger. You need an experience to change it.
Speaker 2:So what me and my consulting partners do is one we work with executive teams to get clarity on what their problem is, and most projects and corporations fail. About 70% of them do and there's many reasons, but one of them is executive teams aren't clear. They all say we want to go to Disneyland, but some of them mean Epcot when they say Disneyland. And some people mean they want to go to a conference at Disneyland and the others want to go on Space Mountain. Everyone has the same language, but they have different interpretations of that language. So, getting them on the same page. This is where we want to go and how we think we want to get there. And then we help them. Look at their methodologies for getting there yeah, what assets might they have that they can leverage? And we go through a series of exercises so they have clarity on what they need to do.
Speaker 2:But then we use a non-hierarchical project management methodology called strategic doing, and this is what I call a pattern interrupter, because it allows teams to work in an altogether different manner where people from a cross-section of the organization are given the chance to show leadership.
Speaker 2:So leadership is a verb, it's something we all need to bring, and so when senior executives see people who are lower on the hierarchy exhibiting leadership, it fundamentally changes the way they think about their teams and their teams fundamentally shift how they work together. And so once you do a program like Strategic Doing, you have this core group of people who has these trusting relationships. They have this understanding of what really works and from that you can spread that throughout the organization and use those learnings to create your management structure that works for your organization. And when I look at companies that use distributed leadership, where they distribute power and authority throughout the organization. No two look the same. They're all different, and what I learned from that is it is not a system like Six Sigma or Agile that you apply. There are concepts that you need to bring to the table to build something that works for your organization, your culture, your industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in our prep call. Peter, you mentioned something I don't want to misquote you Along the lines of you need management training? Okay, well, we'll send you to training and let's see how long it lasts, and most of it doesn't stick. But instead you proposed peer groups, I believe. Can you tell us more about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, so I, if you look at the consulting model, first off it's let's bring people from outside in to fix our problems. And surprise, it doesn't work because the people from the outside are bringing what they did at the last client over and they don't really understand the problem. They only think they understand the problem, and so most consulting engagements just end up really frustrating a lot of people. My belief is that everything that a company needs to grow and overcome the challenges that that company may face already exists within the company. So I'm talking to an organization, very, very large organization, that has centers all over and they're realizing oh, the people who are managing these centers maybe they came out of the army, maybe they came from different places, but they've never been trained in management and so let's bring in management training to train them.
Speaker 2:Well, here's the thing I've done work with this organization. I've talked to a lot of those people and, yeah, some of them don't know how to manage, but you know what Some of them do and some of them do it really well and they've learned how to be really, really great managers in the confines of that company, of that industry, with the specific needs of the clients and the regulations of that industry. So those people, they are the best management trainees, not some outside expert who is going to bring somebody else's methodology. So what I'm proposing is that they create programs where they can interact with each other, because that guy who is supposedly not good at management, well, he or she knows something that's working right. They've gotten to where they are for something, and that person who's great at it can still learn from that person who is struggling with it. It's just that they're at different points and they have different understandings. So it's more about sharing what is already within the organization rather than bringing new methodologies for outside. I love that.
Speaker 1:I love that. You know I'm a big fan of peer groups and obviously that's how we met back in the day. I'm curious, maybe if you could share I know it's all confidential In what ways did your own peer group help you? In what ways did Peter benefit from his own forum peer group?
Speaker 2:So this is the depth of how much I, uh, you've made a difference in my life. So I have never been without a peer, a mastermind group, a peer group, whatever you may call it, since that day. And yeah, and I won't. Yeah, because I've recognized like I'm an insecure guy. Yeah, so the reality of myself that I see it's not at all accurate. It is, it is so incredibly inaccurate. Yeah, and in the moment I can't see that.
Speaker 2:You know, brene Brown says if you have a negative conversation about yourself, you can't get rid of it on you, because everything that you see in the world is filtered through that negative conversation. And that's the benefit of peer groups is they can. My peer group sees my forum, sees me for who I am and they can hold me accountable to that. And I don't know where else in the world I would get that. I get it from my wife, but we all know what spouse relationships sometimes you can hear those things and sometimes you can't. You know. So having it from an outside source is, is brilliant.
Speaker 2:But then also, I mean, they're amazing individuals who are doing amazing things and just watching what they do and parrot that, you know is is, is such a gift. You know, there's a guy in my, in my forum, who is a brilliant entrepreneur and a speaker and an author. You know, and I realized, when I was going through this transition from staffing industry entrepreneur to speaker and consultant, I was like, oh, I want to be like him. And it was a simple like hey, will you mentor me? Yes, of course. Yeah, we meet maybe four or five times a year. It's invaluable. Where else would I get access to that?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it broadens your perspective, right.
Speaker 1:So here's, here's a serial entrepreneur, couple of companies, a couple of exits, and you're like yeah, but this sounds more interesting to me.
Speaker 2:Well, it was. You know it's taken me a long time, and I'm not saying that I have the method of what we're doing with the speaking work that I do is very impactful and it opens up people's minds. And then the consulting work helps them on their journey to create really human organizations, and doing so by solving real problems within their organizations in an altogether different way. So it but it, by solving real problems within their organizations in an altogether different way.
Speaker 1:So it but it, and I wouldn't have been able to do it without my form. Bingo, tell us more about your speaking and the topics that you cover when you speak, and more about the speaking practice itself.
Speaker 2:So right now I have about three talks, but I really only focus on one, which is the Pyramid has Collapsed Reimagining Leadership for the Age of Disruption. And I tell my favorite story. I start off by putting the audience in the shoes of the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King and getting them to imagine what it would be like to speak in front of a quarter of a million people, as he did for the March on Washington when he gave the I have a Dream speech. But what a lot of people don't know is he never intended to give that speech.
Speaker 2:On that papal day. He started off giving the speech he intended about economics, about how America had written Black Americans a bad check and needed to make do on the promise of freedom. And halfway through his talk, the gospel singer, mahalia Jackson, who sang and got everyone warmed up for the talk, started shouting tell them about your dream, martin, tell them about your dream. And I don't know about you, mo, but if you were in the middle of the most important speech of your career and one of your colleagues started shouting at you that you were giving the wrong speech and needed to transition to a completely different speech, one which you had not prepared for, you'd be enraged or I would be anyway, but not Dr King.
Speaker 2:He recognized that the power and authority had shifted, that Mahalia knew something that he didn't, and and because he recognized that fact, he was able to pivot, put aside his notes and extemporaneously give the greatest piece of oration in American history. And that was a collaborative effort. It was a brilliant example of adaptive leadership. Where a command and control leader would be flummoxed and angry and it would have ruined their speech, king was able to in the moment, in the most important moment of his career, recognize that fact and create something remarkable about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and so I tell that story and I talk about how we are entering the most disruptive time and how the command and control orthodoxy that we've used to run our organizations for the past 3,000 years not up for the challenge, and how we need to shift in order to thrive in this really incredibly exciting time.
Speaker 1:How much do you think social media has played a role in this transition, in this impact, in giving so many people a voice that may not have had a voice before?
Speaker 2:So I think social media, the pandemic, all of these things are accelerants and I think the fact and I think social media is an evolution of connection and I'll talk more about that because I think where we're headed is, if you look at how the wave of social media might combine with the wave of AI, it has some really interesting implications. But I believe that if we look at the trouble that organizations are having now, most of these things have been around for the last 20 years. So I'll give you two statistics. So both McKinsey and IBM have done studies on large scale corporate initiatives, digital transformation, merger integrations, big cultural change initiatives All of them have a 70% failure rate. This is a number that has not changed in over 20 years.
Speaker 2:Next year, 2025, american companies are going to spend a trillion dollars on digital transformational loan and the people writing those checks know that 70% $700 billion is going to be wasted. That is equal to the GDP of Switzerland and Belgium combined. Now this number has not changed for 20 years. Think about that the amount of money that's been wasted year over year over year. Everyone considers that normal. The Gallup worker engagement poll consistently for as long as they've been doing it about 75% of workers globally are disengaged, doing the bare minimum just getting by. It's horribly depressing and it doesn't need to be this way. So if we look at those things, this tells me that something's been broken for a long time. And Hemingway has a quote "'How do you go bankrupt? "'gradually, then suddenly'". Our companies have been going bankrupt gradually for a long time and it's about to get sudden.
Speaker 1:Peter, thank you. Thank you so much. That's great stuff. So one thing I want to just dig into before we say goodbye. One last question what's a difficult moment for you where you felt like you had to be that leader? In that moment Dr Martin Luther King did and pivot on the spot.
Speaker 2:Well, first and foremost, I am not nearly as smart or as talented as Martin Luther King, so where he was able to do it in the moment, it took me like a couple of weeks. But I keep thinking of that moment where this employee, Becky, who I owe so much to and I don't think she has any idea what an indelible mark she's had on my life.
Speaker 2:But where she got in my face and said Peter, what you're suggesting is a violation of our core values. You know it was. It fundamentally changed my understanding of who I was. That was my Mahalia Jackson moment, where I realized that Now where where King did it in a couple of milliseconds.
Speaker 2:It took me probably about two months, but just to put things in perspective. But that was really my moment and I've had so many others since then of time and time again where I think I know what I'm talking about and my partner in my last firm, val, who is a genius, and my partner in my last firm, val, who is a genius. She became my partner, but she was an employee because she was fearless in telling me when I had my head up my ass which I do frequently and I valued it so much that I made her my partner because I just didn't want to be without that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah Great.
Speaker 2:Becky, if you're listening. Thank you, I adore you. You've. Yeah, yeah're listening. Thank you, I adore you.
Speaker 1:You've yeah, yeah, wonderful, wonderful Peter. Where can people find you?
Speaker 2:Right now, linkedin is great. By the time this goes, my my speaking website, peter laughtercom, will be up, but I'm probably one of I think I'm the only Peter laughter out there. I think there's one in Australia, so I'm not that guy, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you're the one, and only as far as we know. Peter, thank you so much for joining us today. It was wonderful having this conversation with you. You can follow the Heart of Business podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, podcast reviews have a real impact on a podcast visibility, so if you enjoyed today's episode, please give us a review to help others find the show. Finally, you could find all our episodes at internationalfacilitatorsorganizationcom. Thanks for listening and have a great day.
