Olivia: Alright Jackson, I have a challenge for you. Describe the worst boss you’ve ever had in exactly three words. Go. Jackson: Oh, that’s easy. Micromanaging. Credit-stealer. Anxious. It was a trifecta of misery. He’d hover over your shoulder, steal your best ideas in meetings, and then panic about deadlines he created. Why do you ask? Are you trying to bring up my workplace trauma? Olivia: Only the best kind! Because our author today might give your old boss a run for his money. And the best part? He’s the one telling on himself. We're diving into Management Mess to Leadership Success by Scott Jeffrey Miller. Jackson: I like the title. It’s honest. Most leadership books are written from this polished, ivory tower perspective. "Mess" is a word I can relate to. Olivia: Exactly. And that’s what makes Miller’s perspective so unique. He had a nearly three-decade career at FranklinCovey—the leadership firm founded by the legendary Stephen R. Covey—and rose to the C-suite. But this book isn't about his polished successes. It’s built on his most spectacular failures. He uses his own messes as the primary case studies. Jackson: Wow, a C-suite executive writing a book about his own screw-ups? That takes some serious guts. Most of them write books to tell you how they never made a mistake. Olivia: That’s the magic of it. He argues that you can’t get to leadership success without wading through the management mess first. And his first, and most important, point is that the mess almost always starts inside your own head. You can't lead anyone else until you learn to lead yourself, which really means learning to conquer your own ego.

Jackson: Okay, conquering the ego. That sounds simple enough in a book, but in reality, especially when you're a new leader, your ego is all you have! You're terrified of looking weak or incompetent. Olivia: You’ve just described Scott Miller’s early career perfectly. He tells this incredible story from when he was a newly promoted leader. He was young, ambitious, and absolutely desperate to prove he deserved the job. He’d been a star salesperson, and now he was leading a team of his former peers. Jackson: Oh, that’s a tough spot. The pressure must have been immense. Olivia: It was. He organized a big two-day sales strategy meeting, his first real chance to make a strong leadership debut. But on day one, his team—his former friends—strolled in late. He was furious. He saw it as a massive sign of disrespect. He stewed on it all day, his anger just building. Jackson: I can feel the tension. What did he do? A stern talking-to? Olivia: Oh, it was so much worse. The next morning, the team was late again. So, Miller walks in, stone-faced, holding a stack of newspapers. He doesn't say good morning. He just walks around the conference table and slaps a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune down in front of each person, opened to the classifieds section. Jackson: No. Don't tell me. Olivia: He did. He told them, and I quote, "I see Dillard's is hiring. Perhaps you should look for a job there, since you clearly don't want to work here." Jackson: He did what? He told his sales team to go get jobs at a department store? That is a five-alarm, career-ending, management dumpster fire! How did the team react? Olivia: Exactly how you’d expect. Outrage. People threatened to quit on the spot. The whole meeting imploded. It was a complete disaster, born entirely from his own bruised ego. Jackson: That is breathtakingly bad. I'm almost impressed. But it raises the real question: how do you possibly recover from a mess that big? You can't just say "my bad" and move on. Olivia: You can't. And this is Miller's core point about leading yourself. The recovery starts with genuine humility. He had to realize that his need to be right and feel respected had completely overshadowed the goal, which was to do what was right for the team. His ego created the crisis. Jackson: So humility isn't about being a doormat, it's about getting your own ego out of the way so you can see the situation clearly. Olivia: Precisely. And that humility translates directly into the most underrated leadership skill of all: listening. In Challenge 3, "Listen First," Miller admits he’s a chronic interrupter. He’s so busy thinking about his brilliant response that he doesn't actually hear what the other person is saying. An arrogant leader listens to reply. A humble leader listens to understand. After the Tribune incident, he had to learn to shut up and listen to his team's anger and frustration to even begin rebuilding. Jackson: That makes so much sense. If you're not humble enough to believe others might have a point, you'll never truly listen. And if you don't listen, you can't build trust. Olivia: And that is the perfect bridge to the next stage of leadership. Once you start to get your own mess under control, you have to start building a fortress of trust with others.

Jackson: Right, because if your team thinks you're an arrogant jerk who might hand them the classifieds, they are definitely not going to tell you the truth about anything. They'll just tell you what you want to hear. Olivia: Which is the fastest way to become an insulated, ineffective leader. This brings us to one of the most powerful sections of the book, centered on Challenge 16: "Make It Safe to Tell the Truth." Miller argues that getting feedback is the receiver's responsibility, not the giver's. You have to actively mine for it. Jackson: That’s a huge mindset shift. We always think it’s on the other person to have the courage to speak up. Olivia: But they rarely do, especially with a boss. Miller shares another story from later in his career. He was a know-it-all micromanager, and his team was miserable. The culture was tense. Finally, the team nominated one junior salesperson, a guy named Paul Walker, to be the sacrificial lamb. Jackson: Oh boy. Poor Paul. Olivia: Paul walks into Miller's office, closes the door, and says, "Scott, I need to tell you something. Everyone here hates you, and if something doesn’t change, we’re all going to quit." Jackson: Whoa. That is what the book calls "talking straight." How did Miller react? Did he reach for the newspaper again? Olivia: Thankfully, he’d learned a thing or two by then. He was stunned, but he didn't fire back. Instead, they had a raw, emotional, two-hour conversation. Miller listened to the team's grievances, and he, in turn, shared the immense pressures he was under from corporate. It wasn't an excuse, but it was context. That single, brutally honest conversation began to heal the team. Jackson: That's a great story, but it relies on having a brave 'Paul' on your team. What if you don't have one? How does a leader proactively create that safety so you don't have to wait for a mutiny? Olivia: This is where a twin challenge comes in: Challenge 15, "Show Loyalty." Miller argues that you can't expect people to be loyal to you with the truth if you aren't loyal to them when they're not in the room. Jackson: You mean no gossiping. Olivia: It’s deeper than just gossip. He tells a story about how he was once in a leadership meeting and casually mentioned that a colleague, Sally, might be getting fired. He thought it was harmless speculation. The information got back to the company president. Jackson: Ouch. Olivia: The president called him into his office and said, "Scott, you’re standing at a gas station and you’re holding a match." He explained that by talking about Sally when she wasn't there to defend herself, he was destroying the trust of everyone else in the room. Because if he'd talk about Sally, he'd talk about them. Jackson: That is such a powerful metaphor. When you defend those who are absent, you earn the trust of those who are present. Olivia: That's the exact principle from Stephen M. R. Covey that Miller cites. That loyalty is what creates the psychological safety for someone like Paul to walk into your office and tell you the hard truth later on. You build the fortress of trust brick by brick, by showing loyalty in the small moments.

Olivia: So, let's say you've done the hard work. You've tamed your ego, you're listening, and you've built a culture of trust. The final piece of the puzzle is to get results. But Miller has a huge warning here: leaders often chase the wrong kind of results. Jackson: What do you mean? A result is a result, right? Olivia: Not quite. He talks about the problem of being an "Idea Guy." This is the leader who is constantly coming up with new, exciting, and often distracting ideas. Miller confesses that he is a world-class "Idea Guy." He'd sit in meetings and constantly say, "Well, what if we...?" and send the team scrambling in a new direction. Jackson: Oh, I know that leader. It is absolutely exhausting. It feels like you're constantly chasing squirrels, and you never finish anything important because there's always a new, shinier squirrel. Olivia: Exactly! And it kills morale. The antidote, he explains in Challenge 23, is to identify your "Wildly Important Goals," or WIGs. These are the one or two things that, if you don't achieve them, nothing else you did matters. It requires ruthless focus. Jackson: So the art is in saying 'no' to all the other good ideas—even your own—to protect the great one. That's hard for a creative leader. Olivia: It's incredibly hard. But achieving the WIG isn't even the final step. You have to anchor the achievement. You have to celebrate it. And Miller is a big believer in celebrating wins in a big way. Jackson: I'm sensing another great story coming. Olivia: You bet. He was leading a session for FranklinCovey's international business leaders. They had just completed a massive project to build their prospecting databases. The collective database now had twenty-eight million potential contacts. A huge win. Jackson: That's a massive number. How do you celebrate that? A nice dinner? A plaque? Olivia: Miller-style? No. He gets up on stage and announces the number: twenty-eight million. And on his command, his staff sets off three industrial-sized confetti cannons. The air fills with twenty-eight million pieces of confetti. It's a total blizzard. It keeps going for so long that he actually passes out umbrellas to the executives on stage. Jackson: Twenty-eight million pieces of confetti! That is gloriously, beautifully over-the-top. The cleaning staff must have loved him. Olivia: Probably not. But the leaders in that room will never forget that moment. They were laughing, dancing, and capturing it on video. The celebration wasn't just an afterthought; it was an experience that cemented the scale of their achievement in their minds. It made the result feel real and meaningful.

Olivia: And when you pull it all together, you see this clear, powerful path Miller lays out. It all starts with you. Master your own ego and demonstrate humility. Jackson: Then you use that humility to build a culture of real trust, where people feel safe enough to tell you the truth and know you have their back. Olivia: And finally, you channel all that trust and psychological safety into achieving focused, wildly important results. And then you celebrate those results in a way that no one will ever forget. Jackson: What I find so hopeful about this book is that Miller isn't some perfect guru on a mountaintop. He is the 'management mess' in the title. He's the guy who handed out the classifieds and got called out for gossiping. Olivia: He fully owns it. The book is widely praised for that very reason—its authenticity. It’s not just theory; it's a field guide written by someone who has been in the trenches and made every mistake possible. Jackson: It makes you feel like if he could recover from telling his team to go work at Dillard's, maybe there's hope for the rest of us after we send a snippy email or micromanage a project. It reframes failure as just part of the curriculum. Olivia: I love that. It leaves you with a great question to ask yourself: What's one 'management mess' I've made that, if I look at it differently, was actually a critical lesson in disguise? Jackson: That's a powerful reframe. We'd love to hear your stories—the messier, the better. Find us on our socials and share the leadership lessons you learned the hard way. We're all in this mess together. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.