Zak Brown, McLaren CEO: How to make the big decisions in F1 (E139)
The High Performance Podcast
High Performance
4.6 • 4.8K Ratings
🗓️ 25 August 2022
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A special bonus episode for you this week with former racing driver and now Chief Executive Officer of McLaren Racing, Zak Brown.
He shares his story from wannabe racer to McLaren boss, and highlights the importance of the attention to detail, surrounding yourself with mentors, and making tough decisions! With McLaren hitting the news this week with team changes, he also reflects on whether he could have done anything different.
We chat about Zak’s role as a leader, his motivations, and self-awareness. This conversation offers great takeaways to people looking to find their own way in business.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi there. I'm Jake Humphrey and this is high performance. Our conversation for you every |
| 0:07.0 | single week. This is the podcast that reminds you that it's within. Your ambition, your |
| 0:12.1 | dreams, your purpose, they're all within. All we do |
| 0:15.8 | is help you unlock it by speaking to the greatest leaders on the planet so you can learn |
| 0:21.1 | their life lessons alongside me as always for this conversation |
| 0:24.1 | Professor Damien Hughes and today we speak to one of the leaders in Formula One |
| 0:30.3 | When he came in having won seven grand preys and was, you know, the hottest driver that you could get and I think, uh, we kind of maybe assumed and I kind of rightfully so, that he was going to pick up where |
| 0:46.2 | he left off. |
| 0:47.2 | I don't think we could have done something differently to make him more competitive. |
| 0:51.8 | We tried all that. We just weren't able to unlock it together and Lando's, you know, driving great and getting the car to perform. |
| 1:00.5 | So I don't think there's anything sitting here that we would have done differently or could have seen. |
| 1:05.0 | You know, I think likeability when you're working as hard as we're all working, |
| 1:10.0 | because the leadership team that I have has the same work ethic as I do. |
| 1:15.0 | So when you're working seven days a week, all hours of the day, |
| 1:20.0 | you've got to like who you're working with, so likeability's always been very important. |
| 1:25.6 | Would I do the same thing again? No, I would make those adjustments because I think I could land in the same place but that's easy to say in hindsight. |
| 1:35.0 | And my sons have seen this and I think they've advised me to slow down at time. So I think hopefully while they've got great work ethic |
| 1:46.6 | they've seen the downside if you'd like of having work be too intense and I think they won't want to repeat that. |
| 1:55.6 | There's two types of successful people, those that are the pursuit of victory and |
| 2:01.6 | those that are the fear of failure and I'm the fear of failure. |
| 2:07.0 | So yeah, we welcome Zach Brown to the high performance podcast and look Damien, it was this was recorded shortly after they made a really big announcement about |
| 2:15.8 | the fact that Daniel Ricardo, who was a really popular driver from a car on is going to leave |
... |
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