Podcast Episode 59: Confront the Brutal Facts
IN THIS EPISODE:
One of the key concepts from Jim Collins is that teams must regularly confront the brutal facts. Not the opinions or the hopes or dreams, but the facts.
For many leaders, charisma can be as much a liability as an asset. Your strength of personality can sow the seeds of problems when people filter the brutal facts from you. You can overcome the liabilities of having charisma, but it does require conscious attention.
It's important to regularly discuss these brutal facts so we can catch problems early before they turn from small problems into large problems.
In this episode, we talk about how to manage brutal facts in your business and how they can be an incredible thing for you to focus on.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.
Brad Giles 05:04
So today, we are talking about the brutal facts. The brutal facts are things that people are reluctant to talk about in a business. It is one of my favorite topics, every single quarterly workshop and annual workshop. I'm talking about this with teams, what is the brutal facts? What are the things that you're reluctant to talk about? Bring out your brutal facts, bring them out, and we will put them on the table? What an interesting topic we can talk about today.
Kevin Lawrence 05:35
Yes, I love them too Brad, because what we found is a lot of times when we go into companies, they've been dancing around the core issues, and they're not really talking about with any talk about it. And it takes us a boatload of courage and conviction to do it. It's not easy for a lot of people if, especially if you don't have a lot of trust. Yeah. And it's part of our discipline where we just, it's almost like we create a safe space, we create an environment where all those tougher issues can come out and get resolved. And I love it. Because you know, when you deal with the ugliest issues, there's not much that goes wrong with the business. There's just every day. But when there's these rotten, stewing things in the middle of the business, we really hurt the business that reminds me when it comes to businesses, you know, and bankruptcies, which is not a nice thing I remember I sat beside this guy, and I should kind of look him up. His name was Russ law, probably 20 years ago. And when you go to those breakfast events, right, like a chamber of commerce, you go to a breakfast event or a workshop, and there's eight people at the table and Hey, who are you and you meet everyone, I kind of miss doing that. Actually, I didn't love it. But I would love to do it again. And I sat beside this guy, his name is Russ law, and he was a trustee in bankruptcy and he was the best. And you know, in Canada, where I'm from, you know, we have this the one of the best hockey players, when I grew up was named Wayne Gretzky. He was like legendary hockey player, but he's kind of like the Wayne Gretzky of bankruptcies. So I'm curious as hell and I'm talking to receive on rust, like, how is it that these companies end up going under? Like, what's the deal? And he goes, you know, at least half the cases, it was known issues that they ignored. He said he used he used the metaphor of the ostrich putting his head in the sand. They just had an issue. And they didn't address it. And it took a while to go. Okay, thanks. Thanks for us. Let's just do some hope. The other half he goes, it depends. You could chalk it up to external factors and other things and then went back 20 years. So you know, for us is listening, I'm paraphrasing a 20 year old conversation here. But he goes, a bunch of those, I think could have been controlled as well.
Brad Giles 07:59
Yeah.
Kevin Lawrence 08:00
Yeah. And so what he really left me thinking is, hmm, the greatest risk to our businesses is internal. It's us. And in often cases, our willingness to put forth and deal with these brutal facts that can affect us, no different metaphorically, than if you've got a tooth that's sore. And you choose not to go to the dentist, it might get to the point instead of being repaired, it's got to be replaced, or fully removed, and some, you know, nasty dental work. So anyway, that's, that's, that's why I'm really passionate about this, because it just reminds my whole career is that if you leave these issues fester, they get worse. $1,000 problem turns into a 10,000 or $100,000, or a million dollar problem. And I've seen it again and again. Yeah, and versus like, so no, that's so that's the way I look abroad, what's your take on beautiful things called brutal facts,
Brad Giles 09:02
I want to react to what you said, and then move on to that. So there's an old saying, which is I went broke really, really slowly. And then really, really quickly, it builds up. Now it could be about going broke. But it couldn't be about the person who sits at the desk on the in the corner that no one wants to talk to who is a toxic a player, it could be a better customer, it could be a better process or system. It could be about any of these things. But unless we can clear up these problems that people are reluctant to talk about. It has a manifestly awful impact on the business, especially when you get a heap of these things of building up. And people. You know, people don't want to work in that environment. Now, I love that story. And it's a great extreme example. We know the damage that people are the wrong processes or not executing well. All of the things That could come out of the brutal facts could create. So yeah, it's interesting. We, I talk about it every quarterly and annual off site, I'm guessing that you're the same Kevin,
Kevin Lawrence 10:18
for every single quarter, no way without fail. I personally think it is one of the most important points on the agenda, even, even to the point, Brad, where we do surveys in advance to pre ask questions. Yeah. So people can flush it out and do it anonymously. We do it multiple levels in organizations sometimes. Because I want to know, even Brad, in those prep questions. I have a spot where they can submit to me privately, a super brutal fact that they don't want even to put in a survey. Yeah. Because it's just it's, it's every otherwise we can be wasting our time addressing all these nice little strategies or tactics, when there's a nuclear bomb over in the left hand corner of the room that we're not even aware of. So yeah, every quarter, and we dig deep to really excavate them.
Brad Giles 11:19
I mean, I've had meetings, full day meetings, where we talk about the elephants or the brutal facts. And that actually changes the whole agenda for pretty much Yes, I'd say 80% of the day, and I've spent I've gone in and allocated 3045 minutes to this subject, we end up speaking about it for two or three hours. And at the end of the day, people say, look, that was the most valuable item of the day, but you've got to clear up these things. Everyone feels better afterwards. And yeah, you've got to get these things out the way and what I when people knowing that it's on the agenda and that it's coming up, what people would often say is that, you know, they're really looking forward to the elephants part of the day because they know that we're going to confront this terrible issue that's been weighing them down. So correct. such an important agenda item it really
Kevin Lawrence 12:17
it is and I want to touch on elephants. Now I gotta say I got a bias you know, elephants in the room it's been used for a lot of years and it's good but I kind of prefer rats and and moose
Brad Giles 12:34
you know, I got a client's name given my I worked rats and mice No,
Kevin Lawrence 12:38
no rights and moose The thing with the big antlers like you would think of being in Canada, where we are so so there's a great a great founder CEO down in Texas named Phil miner. He brought me into his company. They bought another company and built an amazing platform to for growth. And he brought me into work with a group and you know Phil used to call it chucking the dead rats on the table. That's the way they would call it down in Texas, like there's like a there's dead rats, we got to check them on the table, we got to deal with them, don't just leave them and sweep them off into the corner. Yeah, another entrepreneur. up in Canada, Blaine is his first name he would call it Chuck into moose on the table, because he was up in northern Canada neighborhood, they would have moose there. And he's also a hunter. So he would think in those terms, but Chuck the moose on it. So it doesn't matter your animal The thing is, the you know, the elephant in the room creates tension. Putting a rat on a table creates internal tension, that's not a fun thing. chucking a moose on the table, you got to be really damn strong to pick that thing up because they wake up 1000 pounds. But the point is to get that issue there. And it's almost metaphorically it's like, you plug your nose and you say the words IE, you don't want to do it, right. It's like plugging her nose to jump into the water. It's just you got to do it. Because otherwise it's it's going to be worse. And we're going to have a fake meeting and, and unfortunately, and this will help us to get into our first point. Some people believe that being a terminally positive is a much better leadership strategy. And talking about problems makes problems bigger. It's a very common belief like if we don't talk about it, it'll get better. Yeah,
Brad Giles 14:31
yeah, we should like pump up the team. We
Kevin Lawrence 14:33
should pump it up and be positive and yes, we can and all this good stuff. Ah, it's kind of a go back to our tooth metaphor. If you've got a cavity, not talking about it and ignoring cavities, especially after a certain point generally they don't go away. The pains not critical away. There is a self healing ability for tooth interestingly, if it's a minor one My dentist told me that they actually can self-heal sometimes. But at a certain point, it's a point of no return. And so with these issues, some people think their job as a leader is to be positive and to inspire people. Problem is, if there's a frickin elephant in the room and you're not talking about it, you have zero credibility.
Brad Giles 15:19
Yeah.
Kevin Lawrence 15:20
Because people look at you, because it's like, they know the elephant exists. It's not it's not surprising. Yeah, every week, most people know about these issues. They just see that the leadership's too chickenshit to talk about it. Pardon my language, you know, yeah, the Leafs, the leader is just like, they know, why aren't you addressing Frank, who's been here for 24 years? And doesn't do it? or, or, or, you know, Julie, who's toxic or whatever, I'm just making up names. So it's, it's it's people, a lot of people tried to be eternally optimistic, but those are amateur leaders. You do need to be optimistic. But you also need to be realistic to have faith and credibility and to make the right decisions. You cannot only make the right decisions based so the summarize a brand that I want to say. But it's it's the negatives only being positive. You know, that is that maybe, maybe, you know, and even sales people, sales, people who are only positive, don't sell as well as sales people who also will tell the truth in some cases and point to a weaknesses in Robert Robert shell, Dini in his books has a great piece on that, which will we can get into another time. But go ahead read.
Brad Giles 16:38
There's a time for being positive. But it's not all the time. And talking about the brutal facts is not being the opposite of positive, which is negative. Talking about the brutal facts, is simply confronting the issues at hand, which if you do not confront the issues, in dealing with facts, and not opinions, very important distinction, what are the brutal facts, not your opinion. If you don't do that, and you're only positive all the time, you're never going to address these underlying issues, then people will become disengaged. But there is a time for being positive. And that is, we have identified that this is brutal Fact number one and two, and three, perhaps if you were doing an announcement to the leadership team, or the broader team, these are the brutal facts. And based on that this is our plan moving forward. So you can certainly be positive about the plan and the outcomes, but not addressing the brutal facts is a fundamental flaw that can create real dysfunction in an organization.
Kevin Lawrence 17:58
Yes, and then simple thinking, is this because, you know, $100 problems become $100,000 problems. Yeah, you know, one toxic person can cause you to lose five great people. One angry customer, so I'll give you an example. And this is an organization that inadvertently did it was called into a company to do some work. 2005 when I was 15, more than 15 years ago, awesome company had had 50% growth for many years. They're running about 15 million in revenue at that point, but their growth stopped. Yeah, so they called me and we're doing some strategy sessions. And we're digging around and, you know, around the time the economy was booming, and there's a Yeah, well, you know, the economy's a little soft. I'm like, No, it's not. So we start digging around the business. And what was interesting is, is, you know, asked about a lot of things, what about your customers, our customers are happy, you know, our customers are like a top. When we want more, we just turn it on. direct quote. We want more business, we just turn on the top. So Oh, wow, that's impressive nursing that for? So I said, Well, what about customer feedback? Oh, yeah, we've got an amazing system for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. And have you looked at a receipt? No, we haven't. But you know, we know what's really good. Okay, great. Can I get a copy of that? I said, and I swear Brad like you know, the cartoons really see the steam coming out of the cartoon characters ears when they're angry. Yep. So on my way back I was reading and they gave me you know, a report printed back and I did they printed more stuff, you know, 20 pages 30 or probably 30 lines a page of Excel with a comments. I just got to page two the customers were screaming in my ears. There were three issues in a premium branded company that was highly regarded three issues about three products that were driving the customers crazy. The executives did not have clue. Yeah, they wrote a touch because they're pissin their customers off, and a couple of the products were not good, and not up to their standard. And and and that feedback actually wasn't getting to the table. So it wasn't even a case of that people knew it and weren't saying it. People didn't know it, because they weren't actually even looking. They didn't have the right data showing up in the meeting, to have that. And that's why To this day, I always want to see customer data and employee data, in addition to financial data in our meetings, because it's not that the people need to declare the brutal facts, sometimes the facts set that the report will tell us the brutal facts, the point of it is, is that it's it's insanely powerful, mandatory. And and it creates, so that company was growing, you know, 50% a year, they hit about 50 million, it took three years to really get the growth going growing again, they killed the growth engine. Yeah, they didn't shrink, but they didn't grow.
Brad Giles 21:06
Yeah, and this is the opportunity. And what's important is when it's in a rhythm, so for me, it's typically about every quarter, I reckon that if you're having this type of exercise, which is a dedicated, let's say, half hour or more to what are the brutal facts, let's say if it was every quarter as a part of your strategic planning and execution framework, it's a rhythm that these things tend to build up. If it was every day or every week, it wouldn't be enough. But being every single quarter, it's enough time that these issues can build up to the point where there's a little bit of tension that needs to be released through this mechanism for us to kind of free the path that we can continue to grow. That rhythm of releasing that tension, it means that people are able to look forward to it, they're able to analyze and think about it and think to themselves as leadership team members. You know what, we really need to talk about this at our oxide, we really need to address this issue. So I had an issue recently. One of the elephants in the room was we're not, we're not achieving our revenue, bottoming our profit targets. We're not Jimmy, our profit targets. Okay. Why is that? What's the facts around that? It's the first kind of question that we've got to get to what are the kind of facts that we know this is real? What's the real issue here? So we dug into it. And it appears that one of the departments, the divisions, was a longer standing area of the business that there was an emotional attachment to, but they weren't really making the numbers because the industry had changed, the industry had that component where they sold into or that that part of the industry had changed enough that the margins weren't viable in this industry. Now, unless you had economies of scale, and no one really wanted to talk about that before that point. Because it was like, if we close our eyes, we love that part of the business so much, maybe we can just get on with it, maybe, you know, we can worry about something else. Or overall, you know, we're doing okay, we're doing pretty good. But then, you know, we've got to pay out a certain amount for the losses that that part of the business is making. So without that mechanism, it would have taken much longer for us to find that out. And that's the beauty when it's in a cyclical rhythm, the elephants that we can keep asking, like, keep crying that tension. Yeah. And
Kevin Lawrence 23:55
when you're doing it, every quarter, you get into a flow where they're always kind of on the table. And after, you know, a year or two of doing this, it just naturally happens. And it's a way to help you recalibrate your plans. I mean, I'm sure some examples, some other ones that have come up that have been massive. We had one that came up that although we were having record profit growth, we weren't having unit growth. Hmm. So basically, we weren't growing, but we were making bucket loads more money because one division was killing it like crazy. But the overall business wasn't. And that's a concern. Because unit growth, no unit growth, but profit growth is not sustainable. It's great. Take it while you can. That was one another one that we saw. Just think we I mean, there's one that a company didn't deal with was a massive change in the industry. And they didn't quickly enough change their business model. That's a long time. And I don't want to criticize the client. But that was a very painful one to watch, because they wouldn't make some tough calls around some brutal facts. We had another one as simple. And this gets into, like, you know, in the process, is that the? How do you address them? So we prime people upfront with surveys to ask about the brutal facts so that we, you know, are prepared going in the room, as I mentioned earlier, then in the session, it's about brutal facts. And then we put the question is, what are the brutal facts that we must address or critical conversations we need to have in this meeting, right, so we open up to both categories. And we, we make a big list of them. And then we sort them out. And then depending on what they are, we use that list as context for the rest of the meeting. Yes. And when we're reviewing everything, we keep adding to it. And then when we're deciding the priorities for the next quarter at the company level department level, we then go back and look at those to make sure that we've taken into account what we need to take into account. That's the so that's, that's the brutal facts as context. But sometimes there's something that needs to be debated. And when we rank them, we'll say, you know what, we need to dig into this one. So we take our number one brutal fact. And you know, Jim Collins taught me this exercise, I love it. And we list all the facts about the brutal fact, because it's already sensitive enough to put the brutal facts on the table. So I'll give you an example. This is when the finance team was failing in a company and not giving the company what it needed. It was a serious issue. The CFO at the time, I think was just over his head. And he was a wonderful man. But it was hurting the business. So that's basically Hey, you know, an executive in our team are doing their job, not a nice conversation to have. So we took, you know, not able to get what we need from finance as the brutal fact, it was number one, we split up into groups, and everyone made a list about the facts about the brutal fact not the opinions, because that's judgmental. Yep. What are the specific facts, I can't get my margin report. Um, my inventory report doesn't correlate with the inventory count, or whatever it is, like specific things or requests are taking seven days to get done. So we mapped them all out, and we created a massive list of the facts about the brutal facts, then, now we can have an intelligent on emotional and judgmental conversation of saying, okay, by that time, the CFO was like, Wow, this is so helpful. And then we went and worked on the two or three things that we thought would ask them add the most value. So list of the brutal facts, prioritize them. What's that? Number one? And if indeed, you do need to debate it, you think it's that type of thing that won't get taken care of by those? What are the major facts about the brutal facts, then have a conversation? So you can you know, you can dig into almost anything with that very nice way to work with it?
Brad Giles 28:08
So yes, that Yeah, that's right. So what we're hearing is that it's not just saying the this is the brutal fact, it's what you do with it. You can't just say, there's a brutal fact our finance department isn't performing winning to, to then say, Okay, what are the facts about that? Or what's the real issue he or dig deeper? Because in my experience, it's that digging deeper, that helps to give us the insight for really what we want to know is at the end, like what do we need to do about it? In the next 90 days, what is the actions that we need to do to begin to address this elephant because it's all well and good, go and talk about these things. But unless there's some action, everyone will feel it's worthless.
Kevin Lawrence 28:58
Yeah, and the thing is, and you don't always need to take action. Some of the stuff is just, it's just awareness, right, there will be a couple of things, otherwise, you're going to put too many things to do. Yeah. And then at the end, we'll also basically, you make your list, prioritize it, if you're going to dig into the one, you get all the facts, and you can have that strategic discussion, which are really rich to do with the team, and then drive to a conclusion. With the others. You can just say, is there any action that needs to take here, and I might go into one of the quarterly goals for the company, it might go into a department plant, and there might be one that separately gets actioned or, you know, just like a potential feeling you might need. The dentist says let's keep an eye on it. And we'll look at it again in six months, because these things will come up. The key is to be able to know that you're addressing these major issues that might get in your way, and that people can have trust and have faith that we are going to deal with them and You know, there's no, there's one more example I'll share with you. You know, where there's, there's a bit of brutal facts about a Buddha concern about another department or a sensitive issue that probably is not appropriate to really dig into in the room. But that's what the CEO puts up their hand and says, Hey, I got this one. You know, I'll have a conversation later. This is not, this is not an appropriate forum for us to dig into this, but I assure you that I will take care of it. So this stuff is is not rocket science. It's just counter intuitive. And, and who would think that spending 15 or 20 minutes every time we have a quarterly strategy meeting, to address the negatives, in the end can be one of the most positive things that you can do?
Brad Giles 30:43
Yeah, I can remember before I started having this as an agenda item at our meetings compared to after, and it's transformational, it really does make a huge difference. And most of the delegates would say this is, you know, it really feels like a much more powerful meeting now. And the irony is, is that all we're doing is applying the filter of let's not, you know, let's not be light about this, let's talk about the really, you know, the really big issues that were reluctant to dog about, which creates a much more meaningful meeting. Yeah, so I guess the, you know, you said there, we don't always have to act on the Mall. I think at the very least we've got to ask, Is there anything worthy of effort? No, is an acceptable answer. But is it anything worthy of effort? Because Well,
Kevin Lawrence 31:42
I changed the question. No, Brad, not on my question is, yeah. Is there anything that we must do?
Brad Giles 31:49
Yeah,
Kevin Lawrence 31:50
yep. Because it's all worthy of effort. We're trying to only address stuff that matters in these meetings, which is insanely hard.
Brad Giles 31:58
Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin Lawrence 31:59
You know, and that's, and that's Sorry, I sorry, I just have stronger language on that for me. Because, you know, it's just so easy to come up with way too much stuff to
Brad Giles 32:08
- Oh, for sure. That we want to have action items out of it. You know, if we're running the exercise, we've got to have we've got on land with something at the end, we've got to land with some kind of resolution, or people have got to feel like we've closed the loop. There's no point just talking about them and then saying, Well, that was good. All right.
Kevin Lawrence 32:31
No, I'll find that half of them get taken account of the quarterly goals that we set. Yeah. And they become a little pieces in there that we're going to address, it guides that thinking, I find half of them don't get addressed. were to say, Okay, you know what, we can let that one go for now. Because, you know, again, we're it's about constant prioritization. But yeah, it's super powerful thing. So the thing that we would leave people thinking about is, what would be the point next, when you would talk about brutal facts? And what is the best way that you think you should approach that? Do you want people to write them on post it notes and put them up on a wall? If you're, you know, in a face to face meeting? Or if you're on mural, if you're a digital platform? Do you want to pre survey people? Do you want people to scrape through data sources and put them together even as a side note, you know, and when we're doing these surveys, you know, many of the companies will break up into groups. And people will pull out the big highlights from the surveys and their and their experience. And they'll put their top three for the group so we can share those. But then they will also separately pull out the biggest brutal facts, you know, one of the companies we take about an hour, every quarter, to do the positives, and then an hour for the brutal facts. And they they will have read the surveys and talk to their teams. And they come up with the biggest ones that they think we need to address as a team activity as part of and it's an hour and a two day meeting. And it's it's highly, highly effective.
Brad Giles 34:03
Indeed, indeed, yeah, it's such an important thing that we need to to address confront the brutal facts. Again, we recommend at least quarterly, we recommend that all of the team prepare and think about it, and that we can close the exercise saying that's it, there's nothing else that that we're reluctant to talk about or issues that are there that we need to kind of cover off. And it gives you great sense of closure for everyone. Well, those those those great a very
Kevin Lawrence 34:35
actually something I just want to add in for remote. And if you're uncomfortable with doing this, and if you think that some of the issues might be too sensitive, that's where facilitators come in. Because I don't a lot of the teams because I'm in the room or you're in the room or my teams in the room. It makes it safer and it's easier to have respectful debates about These topics, so you might be a partnership and have a couple partners. And there could be a couple brutal facts, that you're not comfortable debating as a partner's, well then get somebody to facilitate that meeting for you. So you can deal with those issues. You know, it's it's, it's it's okay to get help on these things because sometimes the brutal facts kind of brutal. And and you might need some additional assistance.
Brad Giles 35:24
Yeah, that I it's funny you said that, because I was actually thinking that as we were going through the episode today that there have been people who've said to me, we can't do it without you in the room. And what I mean by that is, it's very hard to be absolutely, like, we create that environment where people are completely comfortable. And it's a controlled environment, which, which really does matter. Well, that was that was a good way to close. So a quick summary, I guess, of where we've been, we've got to confront the brutal facts on a regular basis, because these things will creep up on you, these things will fester. And then unless you address them on a regular structured basis, you could look around and have all of these festering rats or nooses or elephants, or whatever you call it. These things all around the business that are just problems that are just festering away that aren't being addressed. You can't always be positive, our recommendation is once per quarter, and how to address it. We don't have to act on them all we've got to identify what are the big things that we must act on to use Kevin's must phrase there. And then really digging into the list. if you so desire, you can say what's the number one what are the actual facts around this? Okay, so with that, let's move to close. This has been the growth whispers podcast. I'm Brad Giles. You can find me at evolution partners.com dot A you and as always joined today by Kevin Lawrence, who you can find at Lawrence and co.com. I hope you have a great week. We look forward to talk to you again next week about building enduring great companies but for now, have a great week.
Podcast Episode 58 - How to Leverage Collective Intelligence in Your Weekly Meetings
IN THIS EPISODE:
Collective intelligence is one of the most valuable items on your weekly meeting agenda.
Leveraging the collective intelligence of your team presents decision-makers with the opportunity to learn about important business data and facts, debate the merits of ideas and, most importantly, make decisions to help the business thrive.
This week we'll discuss seven important aspects of collective intelligence and how to make it work well in your company.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE GROWTH WHISPERERS:
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.
Brad Giles 07:09
This is such a great one. collective intelligence, the key to the weekly meeting. So there's a prescriptive gender for the weekly meeting that most of us have read, and it contains this item called collective intelligence. And many of us have asked, What is collective intelligence? And why is it important? And so if you've got a one hour one, for example, hypothetically, a one hour weekly meeting, and you're dedicating about 30 minutes to this thing called collective intelligence? What is it? Why is it How does it work? So yeah, today we're talking about collective intelligence. And this is the key to the weekly meeting. There are, we've spoken before about the weekly meeting. And there are many important bits to it, looking at the numbers, looking at the employee and the customer data, a lot of those kinds of things. But then this is called collective intelligence. So we're going to dig into what is it? Why does it matter? a really interesting chat about this time when you've got all of the brains in the room. And that's really to begin what we've got to start with, what is the definition of the word?
Kevin Lawrence 08:30
Yeah, and and let's just start with most people never get to collective intelligence, they get to collective boredom. Yeah, ie, weekly meetings are having this, imagine this brilliant strategy. Let's get the smartest people in the company. We'll put them together in a room for 90 minutes a week. And we'll bore the hell out of them will make them sit and listen to each other ramble on with updates, and give 10 minute explanations for something that could be covered in 30 seconds. So that's what we're going to do. kind of sounds like listening to a professor, you know, sometimes do lectures, but worse. So so that's but in most meetings don't ever get here. And this is the magic opportunity. We don't need your endless PowerPoints. We don't need the endless feel graphs and charts. We do need some of that stuff. Yeah, way too much time is gone to collective updates, which is a much nicer way than saying boredom than collective intelligence. So the key thing is, it's a massive missed opportunity. That gets better ideas, faster decisions, Alliance, people's thinking aligns teams, and it sounds like a building up to be a lot. Because it is
Brad Giles 09:50
because it is because it is weekly meeting is kind of when you pulse the business. You get all of the decision. mica is all of the the bright people in the business in the leadership team nominally this is you know, best practice and applying best practice best into your situation as you see fit. That's the disclaimer. But get all the bright people in the leadership team together, we go through the important key things in five minute punches like, okay, let's give us the update is that red or green? What's happening here? What's happening there? So we've got that over about 20 or 25 minutes. And then we move into this 30 minute collective intelligence where we've got, we've got through all of that stuff. We're avoiding rambling, I love that word rambling, because I feel it so often in leadership team meetings, and it's just like, timeout, that 10 minutes summary, can you do it in 30 seconds? Because that's what matters. So but but but they have 10 minutes. So they want to
Kevin Lawrence 10:54
use their time. Like they want their time. And it's like, they don't know that that time is low value compared to a higher value thing later. Yeah. Because they don't have the discipline to carve out the time for this.
Brad Giles 11:07
Yes. Carve out. So we're allocating 30 minutes. And it's the more
Kevin Lawrence 11:13
or more or more,
Brad Giles 11:15
okay, that's a fair point, nominally 30 or more. So if this means that we are assembling the leadership team, the collective intelligence of the business altogether, then the question is, well, how do we get the best return on investment for that time? Well, we've got to pose the most important challenges or problems or questions to those people in a highly structured manner, so that we can resolve, rectify, solve, answer those questions or problems.
Kevin Lawrence 11:53
Yes, and I want to give an example, I gotta give a shout out, like to my team, because they are really good at making this happen. And every week we do this, as I mentioned, we do our meeting in the evenings, because we're, you know, usually working during the day, and we can always be available. And we've got some people on the East Coast, and it's really late for them. But we have actually another type I just realized there, Brad is it sometimes it's problem solving, or, or working through something. Sometimes it's actually sharing our most intelligent ideas, ie as coaches and consultants, the team will present some awesome work they've done or a brilliant model, but no matter. So sometimes it's about a decision. And sometimes it's about actually just getting smarter as a group. Yeah, yeah. And so that's another angle. And again, every culture and every team is different, but it's enhancing the cognitive, or the, the abilities and understanding of the team decisions or otherwise. So just sort of a side thought that just came to me. So let's jump in, we got some points. So this, this, this, this, this, these meet this part of the meeting is insanely valuable. and engaging. And, and really smart, successful, people want to be a part of meetings where they get to use the brain. So but the first thing is to be aware of the value of this time. Again, if it's your senior team, it's your moment. Well, it's the most senior people within your team, because it's you and your team, or your company, if it's the executive team does not it applies to all teams, though. It's, you know, an hour to an hour and a half every single week, you got all the decision makers, they're like, this is like prime prime prime time. And if you're putting a number on it over the course of the year, the number adds up to be pretty substantial as well. So it's, it's critical, and there's no, generally it's hard to get everyone in a room and other times. And if you don't have these debates, you kind of miss out on the opportunity for alignment and progress.
Brad Giles 13:54
Yeah, yeah, I'm understanding that. I've seen many people say to what do we do for half an hour like? Well, what you do is my God, that so many people have said that, what do we do for half an hour in with the leadership team, like, we're just going to pull up all problems that we've got or whatever? Well, understanding that this is a gift, this is a gift is 30 minutes, and we need to make the most of it. But it's a very, very expensive gift that can make the business posts so much faster. So don't fall into the old rhythms of rambling and talking about stuff just as they pop into your head. And, and so, I guess when you understand the value of the time or the cost of the time, you can also understand the potential of the time. So what if, every single week you solved a big problem or To resolve the big issue or addressed a big challenge that you're facing, or broke down and big opportunity, something like there was one big thing. And you had a really intense structured debate every single week. That might sound a bit strange for the first few weeks. But when you get into that rhythm, you pulse so much faster.
Kevin Lawrence 15:23
Yeah, and together because you're debating and agreeing around these, so it's insanely valuable. And it's, it's it's insanely impactful 30 or 60 minutes away. So number two, is you gotta agree on the questions that you're gonna debate. Like, what is the real question? And that's, that's the key. We watch teams try to do this. And they'll just start talking about something. And we're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, timeout? what's what's, what's an favorite question? What's the question we're trying to answer here?
Brad Giles 15:58
Yeah.
Kevin Lawrence 15:59
Right. What is the question? And it's not what the idea is. And often, as you know, as coaches and facilitator, we're trying to boil things out, what's the question? What are we trying to answer? And if you start with that, it locks everyone's brain onto Okay, we're trying to figure out, for example, I might share with you earlier with our team meeting we had earlier today, how do we measure the impact our firm is having on our clients? Right, and that is the question. And, and so as we dug into, we further refined the question. And then we had a debate and we went all over the road, we went over here and over there, what about this and, and, and, and it was going nowhere, and all of a sudden, one guy goes, No, Brett on my team goes, I think it's a direct impact an indirect, that's what we're looking for. Direct is what we can directly see by the people that we directly engage with. Indirect is the ripple effect that we're having, by working through those leaders on the whole organization. And, and, and, you know, and we don't know which ones right? Yeah, but we know what we're gonna pay attention to both. Because there is a direct and there is an indirect and and and and the indirect it might be a better feel better number because it's bigger, the direct is more tangible will be might miss some of the point of it is debate, debate debate. We landed it, we built a model, and then we actioned it. So is this one thing going to change the world? No. But that's another thing our team is aligned around. It's another thing that helps us to track the progress of our team in our firm. And we agreed on it, and that we can move on to whatever the next thing is, and it's the item is closed. And but but we needed all the brains in the room to get there and to align around it. Go ahead, Brad.
Brad Giles 17:57
And so what are the big issues that you need to resolve? So it's, it might be worth keeping a running list of potential issues that you've got to resolve that, you know, you you need to actually thrash out as a team. I love I love this quote by Albert Einstein. He says, If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about the solutions. Now that's Einstein, not you and I. Okay. Yeah, but but what it really
Kevin Lawrence 18:37
save and flip it around. I'd spend five minutes figuring out the question.
Brad Giles 18:42
Yeah. You know, how
Kevin Lawrence 18:44
much of an improvement it would be if people spent five minutes trying to figure out the damn question. Yeah, I was interesting,
Brad Giles 18:52
because huge improvement,
Kevin Lawrence 18:54
huge. When we don't when we do a lot of our quarterly strap plantings. There's a lot of debates we have around key issues like a lot of collective intelligence. And it seems to be easier to have us run those parts of meetings, then then the then the team. But we spend time upfront, Scott was scoping out what are the discussions we want to have? What is the question and actually spending time up front to get to the root of it? And it's it's actually it's work to figure it out. When we do the work. It's easier, but it's work to figure out,
Brad Giles 19:25
you got to have the right question if you're going to spend 30 minutes, which is very expensive and potentially could create a great result spending time as team understanding, right? This is the real question. What's the real issue and this is the real question that we need to resolve as a team.
Kevin Lawrence 19:43
Right? That does makes it so much easier,
Brad Giles 19:46
but that doesn't happen on the day. Most of the time. I want to be really clear about it. Most of the time. We want we want to think about it beforehand. We want to come with an opinion and also And this really leads into number three, we want to go before it before. Yes.
Kevin Lawrence 20:04
Okay, sorry. I would say before you do, I want to stay allow for the people that like to run a little loose and a little freestyle, right? That, you know, and I'm probably I'm a little more freestyle than you, you're a little more more more more organized Regiment, Regiment, or both are good. But for those freestylers out there, it's okay to lay down the question live in the meeting, I think there's a lot of times when we can, especially on a weekly, and if you can be prepared, it's better in case sometimes, but sometimes it's better to run with it. Right there in the moment. And and and it's okay to do both.
Brad Giles 20:41
So the freaky weird part of me, which is quite a large part response to that by saying, I don't want people to get 25 minutes into a meeting, and then say, Okay, now we've got 30 minutes for collective intelligence, what should we talk about? And it just falls down to an unorganized rebel? So we're in the middle, right.
Kevin Lawrence 21:05
And the freaky weird part of me would say is the way you if you run your meeting, right, you should be asking about in our agendas, you know, what are the challenges or opportunities and flushing some of that stuff out earlier in the meeting? So for example, in our agenda, by the time we got there, we had, you know, seven things that we needed to talk about most of us, most of which are related to our quarterly rocks or quarterly goals. Yeah, we've already pre flushed the motor as as, as the great Jim Collins would say, you know, in the first part of that meeting, you're mining for brutal facts, mining, it's like a mining expert, expert expedition. And then in the collective intelligence, then you're processing or dealing with some of those brutal facts that you need to debate. So, but yeah, you don't want to sit there with it being crickets. But I think if you have the right agenda, you've, you've flushed them out. Or, alternatively, as Brad would prefer. And I think it's also a good discipline, you pre decide these things. So you've got a week or two to get ready for it. And I agree, like even on ours, we are today on a meeting, we're putting a couple of weeks out some topics that we wanted to dig into a little bit further, and then we'll have time to be prepared. Okay. So back to number three, Brad over to you.
Brad Giles 22:22
They prepared. Sometimes things will pop up. And you need, like you've said the need to do it. But like in terms of a structure being prepared. So if we know the question number two, we know what the question is, then we move to Well, we've got to agree on a desired outcome. What is the outcome that we're looking for from this meeting, we want to resolve this, we want to make a decision on that we want to whatever it is, what is the outcome that we need to get, and then allocate a presenter to the topic. So as someone who's going to, let's say, run or chair, the presentation, now that might mean that they'll come prepared with two or three PowerPoint slides, for example, it doesn't need to be 100 slides. But there is a succinct clarity of the question. There may be supporting data to that, so that everybody in the meeting understands all of the the facts and the situation and where we're at. So someone to come prepared and present and to kind of own that, and facilitate that, that discussion.
Kevin Lawrence 23:39
Yeah. And on that they kind of lay down everything that we know, which is great. And what I have learned is, when you ask the head of r&d, to come make a presentation on this important decision you want to make this is like their life's work or reflection. They want to give you a 60 minute presentation. And so here's the pro tip. You tell how whatever the time is on the agenda 1/3 of it goes to presenting two thirds as debate.
Brad Giles 24:12
Yes.
Kevin Lawrence 24:14
And you can even take it down to 20 a quarter present. So for example, we got a 30 minute slot for that critical topic. Yep, we and we use timers like I set my phone as loud as it'll go. We set a timer, you have 10 minutes to present. And then there's 20 minutes to debate. And even with the 20 minutes to debate, I'll set the timer 15. So I've got a 15 minute buffer,
Brad Giles 24:38
because it always spills over a little bit and to wrap up to a solid close. So let's go to a hypothetical sales manager is going to present on the underperformance of the geography. Yep. We're going to the leadership team is going to talk about it. We're going to allocate 30 minutes in our weekly meeting to it. We want you to To present all of the facts, all of the data for 10 minutes for the first 10 minutes, and then we'll discuss and debate it for the following 20 minutes. And then this is the outcome that we want to, we want to either decide to a turnaround plan for that geography or we want to shut it down. That's the decision that we've got to make, right? That's a hypothetical. Yep. Then what is the sales manager think? Like? How do I present all of the information like, that is what we that's his job.
Kevin Lawrence 25:29
That's his job.
Brad Giles 25:30
I agree. But we want him to do, we don't want anyone,
Kevin Lawrence 25:34
we want him to think for three hours, yes. and organize for six hours, if needed, I'm exaggerating. So that in eight to 10 minutes, he can make a beautiful presentation only of only what matters
Brad Giles 25:48
is going, sorry. And going back. Okay, if he doesn't come prepared, he'll just sprout off opinions as they pop into his head. And it won't be a meaningful discussion. If instead, he comes in with that preparation that you've discussed. This is the this is the trade data for the geography. This is what our competitors are doing. This is the the conversion rate,
Kevin Lawrence 26:18
clearly and succinctly with what we or he shows us that he's not as good as we thought he is. That's a whole, you know,
Brad Giles 26:26
so we set a pointer to our job
Kevin Lawrence 26:28
to set them up to win.
Brad Giles 26:30
Yes. And
Kevin Lawrence 26:32
otherwise, he's going to make a 30 minute presentation, we're going to run at a time, we're not going to get a decision, it's going to be frustrated. So and in that case, you know, if it was something that important, yeah, I would say, you know, eight to 10 minutes to present, I would set a timer for eight, he'd be finished presenting by 10. And then we would just ask a lot of questions. Yeah. Yeah. And debate and debate and debate. And and no way that's a big decision. But that's, it's just it. Also, when you tell people in advance, they prepare differently. Sometimes they present a lot of stuff. So it's the end of the day we over present and under discussed that is the root of this over present, under discuss and collective intelligence is about discussing, and asking questions. So I think that's,
Brad Giles 27:19
that's, and as someone who's done that, I love it when people come into the meeting. And they said, Well, before I saw that presentation, this was my opinion. And now that I understand the facts, I have a new opinion. Like, that is an outcome and record presentation. So let's move on to number four.
Kevin Lawrence 27:39
And I would say is, before you do, you know, if you're really want to have it really wanted him to nail it, I would tell him to run it by finance before he comes in. You're one of my favorites. And some of the best, you know, cpmg companies make a finance person be a part of any and every presentation. Because finance is the source of truth. The truth is numbers in business. So if you want to really double people's odds have finance involved in the preparation, because finances, the source of numbers are the ideal source of numbers. Anyway, just a side note. Okay, let's move on number four
Brad Giles 28:15
rules of engagement. So we're coming prepared, but then how do we avoid the meeting descending into anarchie? How do we avoid the meeting descending into people or threatens people? You know, get into arguments? Well, you know, we want to have a set of rules to say when we come together. This is how we play fairly. This is how we argue and debate fairly. And so for me, I've got a set of rules that I play by every time I present to a quarterly off site workshop with the leadership team, I go through these three rules of engagement. So first of all, is brutal honesty, it's incumbent on you to say the things that need to be said. And no point walking away saying we didn't talk about this, and we didn't talk about that. Number two is no shame and no blame. So we're not here to shame people. And we're not here to blame people. And then number three is disagree and commit. And that means that there may be things that you disagree with, that we as a team, agree to execute, but you will commit to their success for execution. So those three things come from Jim Collins Good to Great when he analysis analysis or analyze 1435 companies distilled them down to 11. Those were the traits that all of those 11 great companies had in their leadership teams, those behavioral traits. And so that's why that's what we I use as the rules of engagement in the meetings that I conduct. And that's kind of what we advocate for here too.
Kevin Lawrence 30:03
Yeah, and, and, and those are all set, you can make up your own, it doesn't matter, we button ones even in some companies, when we work with companies to develop these, when we do a lot of debating, some people have a mechanism where you raise your hand if you're going to speak, but and you let the other person finish first. Others have one, like, leave it all on the table. ie, if everything is don't hold back, and if you if you've held something back, make sure you save it before the meeting leaves. Another one is is if you disagree after you leave the room, you communicate back with the entire group. Yeah, but you've got a bit of an issue that needs to be discussed. You don't go and lobby one person at a time. You know, there's every everybody's got different things, you know, other people another one whereas is it you know, that that once you and once you commit, you make sure you stay 100% supportive outside the room and don't undermine every everyone's got their own little glitches. But it's super important. We have those rules of engagement. And you can just brainstorm what do we think we need to agree to, to be effective debates, and and be an effective team. It's great to make sure that make sure Jeff ski was the coach of the massively winning Duke basketball program. He coached the US men's Olympic team, I think a couple of times one is an assistant one is the full coach, outstanding coach. This is what he does with all of his teams when he starts with them, especially the Olympic team, because he got the highest paid athletes in the world. He can't come in and tell them what to do. They make their own set of rules, including even how they respect the people that are cleaning the locker rooms and taking care of them. But it's a it's a wonderful team activity. So the point of it is is to have 234 or five of these, his was actually 12 on one of his sets he shared Yeah, but still to have a handful of basic rules that we stick to and and I recommend, put them at the top of the agenda for a while until they get burned into your DNA. Awesome. Cool. Number five. Helpful Cassandra's. Brad's looking at me funny, cuz that's not what we have written down in our prep notes. So Andy Grove, from Intel, in his book, high output management has this thing called helpful Cassandra's. And he made sure that there was one on every team or project he was part of. And this is the person that would tell him he had spinach in his teeth, or that he just had a really bad idea. These are people that will often have contrary opinions, and disagree with it and find the problems and the holes and whatever the hell it is that you have. And the point of it is, is you know, it's very easy to surround yourself with people who and it's frictionless to surround yourself with people who agree with your brilliant ideas, except for when you're not that brilliant. So you gotta ask for and have people who will bring contrary opinions and appreciate them. So he said, without that he's in deep trouble. because too many people agree with him. And when he's wrong, people still agree with him. But he always made sure there was a person on those teams that would call him on stuff I've got, I've got one person on my team, who is a master of this. And not only disagreeing, but coming up with total ideas in way different directions, like, we're all running down the center of the road. He's like 500 miles off to the left in another world. And it's awesome. It's awesome, because it creates better debates, and it shakes things up. And not just Anyway, I'm going off with this one. So in need contrary opinions, and you got to appreciate them and thank them for this guy to my team. I thank them all the time publicly, privately, even though I disagree with them a whole bunch. Yes,
Brad Giles 34:06
like rapport now you'll see debates, that's the value. So in the context of the weekly meeting, what we're and specifically collective intelligence, we've had a person who's presented and they have spent a substantial amount of time hopefully, preparing to present and we've got to find a gap in the next 20 minutes where we're debating to say, okay, who has a different opinion? Who can mount a case to challenge what's what's, you know, been said here? It's just a simple question. But if we can plug that in there, it can make a really big difference and you can unlock some shyness perhaps where people are thinking something but not saying it which is what we want.
Kevin Lawrence 35:05
Can people trade positions against instead of four. So that's, that's something that you can, it's a technique that you can try in terms of just shaking it up. So whether it's an individual reversing arguments, you just got to look at the other side sometimes, or you could look at the option of not doing what you're talking about doing. So get contrary opinions and appreciate them, value them. And be careful that you're not just shutting them down, which is easy to do. Number six, was kind of covered off a little bit by your rules of engagement, but it's, you know, it's it's disagree and commit, or, you know, agree to disagree, which basically means, at some point, if you have all these awesome contrary opinions, not everyone's going to agree, and if you go for consensus on every decision, you probably won't make any, some, some you will. But at some point, you gotta, you gotta find a way to say, okay, disagree and commit, and someone's gonna call it and it'd be like, you know, Brad, if you and I disagree on it be like, okay, I'd say to Brad, Brad, can you? You know, I feel very passionate about this. Can you live with supporting the way I'm proposing it? Yeah. And if Brad says no, okay, well, then we have to continue. But sometimes you just almost have to ask for support to push ahead. Otherwise, you get stuck. It's it's a, it's a very important thing to do. So you don't get lost in ongoing debate, especially for low value or low impact things.
Brad Giles 36:38
There's a there's a, an ocean of difference between agreed to disagree, and disagree and commit. So agree to disagree means that we leave this argument or this debate in an unresolved state, and you maintain your opinion, and I maintain mine, the sea of differences that when we say disagree and commit, what we're saying is, okay, I've voiced that I disagree with this. But as a team, I commit to the successful execution of this project. And some people, you know, have said to me in those types of meetings, okay, well, I'm going to agree to disagree. And I said, That's not a closure, okay? Because we're walking away with different personalities that lend it's a sea of difference, like we can't let agree to disagree. get in the way of disagreeing commit, because the worst possible thing that you can do is go six weeks into a 13. Week, quarter and say, Kevin, I told you that wasn't gonna work anyway. Yeah. Cuz you
Kevin Lawrence 37:48
and by the way, when I was saying agree to disagree, I was having the same meaning of my mind as you're disagreeing commit. Yes. Is you agree to disagree, and you're like, joined in harmony to push ahead. Yeah, but disagree. And commit is probably a better distinction, because it has the commit part. It's like, okay, Brad, Brad would say, Well, I disagree with what you're saying. But I'm going to commit to it. And I'm going to work with you to make it happen. Yep. Yeah. Which is agreeing to disagree. It almost could still feel like a standoff, which is not good. We do not want that. You want to say have said your piece? And let's move on. Yeah. And let's move on together and make it happen. Yes,
Brad Giles 38:31
yeah. Again,
Kevin Lawrence 38:32
it's also important and important, because that way you can call the question, as I mentioned earlier, and you can move on and sometimes in a room, someone's just kind of said, hey, can can we can we can we can we can disagree, but still support it. And then let's move and commit to moving on.
Brad Giles 38:50
Yeah. Again, to close that out. The worst thing that can happen is you're midway through a quarter and someone's actively undermining the decision, like the damage to Team harmony is is just awful. Okay. So on that subject, let's move on to the final number seven, clarity on the decision. So the objective is we collective intelligence is to get an outcome every week. It's a component of the weekly meeting, because we want to get an outcome. We want to get a presentation, we want to get an understanding of the facts, but we're going in knowing the answer that we want to get. So if we're going in knowing the answer that we want to get, we've got to get the answer. We've got to get the decision. The reason that we've got all of the collective intelligence, all of the leadership team, some of the smartest or most capable people in the business in the room is to get the answer. So don't walk away from collective intelligence without the decision or the answer. And, you know, here's another little tip favorite of mine is, okay. So we're going to add plan is to go and build a plan. One. Okay, so we've just come together as a group to, for the purpose of building a 90 day plan, and your plan is that you're going to go and build a plan. So we don't want to not good enough. No, we don't want to end a meeting like that saying, Okay, I'm going to go and build a plan, because like, it's about decisions.
Kevin Lawrence 40:34
Yes. And I think on this, and as simple as it sounds, what we find especially is in this in this COVID world, when we're doing virtual meetings, is that you type the decision on screen and people can see it, okay, here's the decision, because sometimes people hear it, but they don't hear it. Okay, Fred, is going to go and do X, Y, Z, by doing ABC by a certain date. Right? But it's little, we put it all on us know what I meant, and and how many times that's helped us, because we're putting these on screen, to be able to lock it down and saying here is the exact action who, what and when is going to happen. It's super important. So let's have some seven awesome points. So if we go back into the top, our whole thing is here is how do you leverage the power of the most impactful brands on your team? Right, and it's this collective intelligence should be part of the weekly meeting, the same discipline should hold true in your monthly and quarterly and annual meetings where you have robust debates to make important decisions. And so you don't run through the first three here, Brad, you can do the rest, is that you know, aware of the value of the time that is rare, important time, it could be the most important time of that week for that whole team agree on the question upfront, what is the question we are trying to answer, then be prepared. Ideally, if you've done it in advance, if it's on the spot, do your best. If it's in advance, someone can come prepared with as much data and facts and understanding of the current situation. And then rules a game for engagement. So you get everybody participating, you need everyone to be contributing to the discussion.
Brad Giles 42:17
Yes, and then we are moving to ask for country opinions. So we want to get a diverse, we want to get different opinions. We don't want everyone to just go well, because Joe has prepared we need to do what Joe says we need to get different opinions. And we need to ask for them. Who has a contrary opinion throughout the meeting number two, sorry, the next one. Number six is it's okay to disagree. But eventually we need to commit. So I mentioned disagree and commit, we need to get commitment around the decision. And we don't need to have people who are, you know, agreeing to disagree. That's a it's an awful, awful status in a leadership team. And then finally, we got to close the meeting by having clarity and specificity on the decision. And as Kevin so rightly said, in the zoom world, write it on the screen, write it on the whiteboard, if you're in a meeting room, say this is the decision that we land on, and we all agreed. And that's how you close out that weekly, collective intelligence. What a lovely head
Kevin Lawrence 43:28
it is. And one more thought I had there is that sometimes one of the decisions is what you're going to talk about next time. Right, the subjects of who is going to present what for debate the following week. Yeah, great conversation. So thanks for listening. This has been the growth whispers podcast with my good friend Brad Giles, who you can reach at evolution partners.com.au and myself, Kevin Lawrence, at Lawrence and co.com. We hope you have an awesome week and dial in those weekly meetings to leverage the biggest brains in your group and make some good things come out of it. All right. Have a good one. All the best.
Podcast Episode 57 - Stimulate Progress and Protect the Core
IN THIS EPISODE:
This week Kevin and Brad talk about a concept from Jim Collins about stimulating progress and protecting the core.
The idea is that leaders must stimulate change, growth and forward momentum while simultaneously protecting the core of their business. If an organization stops stimulating progress or protecting the core, it runs the risk of sliding into mediocrity.
This is a difficult balance to achieve because once you've had some success, it's very easy to slip into a groove of doing things the same way. However, not continually finding ways to evolve your organization can lead to whole new sets of problems that need to be overcome.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE GROWTH WHISPERERS:
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.
Kevin Lawrence 00:13
Welcome to the growth whispers podcast where everything we talk about is about building enduring, great companies, companies that will be around for decades, generations and ideally, somehow doing good things in the world that we can all feel proud about, or particularly you feel proud of it because it's about you. I'm Kevin Lawrence, and I'm here today joined as I am every week with my co host, Brad Giles, Brad, how you doing today?
Brad Giles 00:39
I'm excellent today. Thank you. I spent yesterday on a boat in the sun. And you know, when you spend time on a boat in the sun, and you are absolutely exhausted at the end of the day, and then you sleep really well. Well, that was yesterday. So I'm feeling quite refreshed and good today. Good. How are you doing?
Kevin Lawrence 01:00
I'm doing great as well. I spent a bunch of time in the sun racing go karts for the last couple of days and not your typical rental kart center, go karts, but full blown competitive tag, go karts, which are fun and punishing. So I had a great time of the
Brad Giles 01:20
scary ones.
Kevin Lawrence 01:22
The very scary and the very thrilling one. I I can only imagine it's probably what drug addicts feel like when they're doing their things, the amount of renlund pumping through your system as your inches off the ground going incredible speeds and pulling massive G's to the corner. So I am really invigorated by I had a great time with some friends. And yeah, lots of lots of lots of good things. So let's jump into today's show. And before we get into our topic, what's your word or phrase today, Brad?
Brad Giles 01:52
Well, I'm glad you asked. Last week, always. Last week, I was with a client been working with him almost a year. And the owner, the CEO of the business, he said, It's been an amazing kind of 10 months or 11 months. And he said, what I've come to realize is it takes time to understand this stuff to understand that understanding takes time. So I summarize that. And this is my fros It takes time to understand that understanding takes time. Yeah, he was he said we wanted to get everything done all at once. But it took us time to understand that it's going to take us a long time to understand deeply all of the things that we're working on. And that really stuck with me That was really good.
Kevin Lawrence 02:52
Yeah, I love that and I know there's I heard someone say that you know in order to become a master of something you know, if you read you know a book a week, it would take you 234 years to become masterful at one thing I am reading a book is not the only way to master but there's a lot of work into mastery. It's very interesting. Awesome. So my word of the day. Alright phrase the day is sore ribs. That is my Yeah, and not the types of ribs that you eat the kind of kind on my body as I mentioned up front with a go karting and, and it's a feeling of great joy, that my ribs are sore, because that means I was having a lot of fun. And these go karts, you actually wear rib protectors like a shell you put around your ribs so you don't break them. And I've got an earlier injury from years ago from a race car that hurt my ribs. But it's still a bit tender apparently. But as sore ribs is kind of connected to happiness and joy because I had such a great time out there with my friends who were also you know, entrepreneurs and we were having a great time. But yeah, these things pull like three G's in the corner and all the pressure is on the edge of the seat digging up so sore ribs is a proxy for good times memories. laughs good fun competition, not always clean competition because there ends up being a bit of carnage as you know, I crashed into one of my good friends and although I sustained the damage, and my other friend slid sideways into me and it was just a riot. So sore ribs is a proxy for great times good experiences, good memories, and, and, and honing in our craft a little bit better. So yeah, that's my phrase for the day.
Brad Giles 04:39
Oh, that's great. Yeah, so
Kevin Lawrence 04:41
let's jump into today's show and what we're talking about and, you know, taking kind of some of the things that we're talking about earlier we were talking about today is is you know why? why it's so critical to keep stretching yourself. You know, when as I'm thinking about even being And go-karting Oh, generally, that's a sport that young kids do. And we've got a whole group of guys up at the track that are doing this, you don't normally see guys in their 40s and 50s, doing this activity, because of how intense it is, and like a lot of things, but But why is it so important to keep stretching yourself and your team and your company, you know, you're stretching yourself leads to stretching your team leads to stretching your company, and the opposite is true. If you get stagnant, then likely your leadership to your team will get stagnant and likely have reasonable probability your company could get stagnant too.
Brad Giles 05:48
Well, I read something recently, and it spoke about people's people's aim may be different to what their body wants, okay? So you may want to be happy in your life. But your body is what your body wants and does and craves, is your body wants to find comfort, and it wants to find ease, like the brain is fundamentally lazy, right. So if your body gets into a groove, it wants to stay there. It's the, it's the intuition of the brain to say, let's find a way to have an easy and comfortable life where I'm not challenged. And I like
Kevin Lawrence 06:38
a cat have curling up on a blanket by a fire. It's just a nice cozy place.
Brad Giles 06:45
That's it. And the animal part of us wants to do that it wants to find a groove and nice easy groove and drop into that and stay there. But, but that doesn't necessarily give us the greatest satisfaction in our life. And if you'd been in a groove like that, for 10 or 20 years, you can suddenly think, what have I done? And so we want to try to avoid that by consistently stimulating progress by saying, yes, it's good to be comfortable, but we need to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone on a regular basis.
Kevin Lawrence 07:22
And it's and it's a big, but it's good to be comfortable. But not really. Yeah, you know, it's good to be comfortable. But it's dangerous. You know, it's good to be comfortable. But while we're having a nap, some other things might be going around that could really hurt us or business or whatever it happens to be. Yeah. And we'd like to be comfortable.
Brad Giles 07:48
We go ahead run, it's good. So Jim Collins, he put it best in the image of yin yang, you may be aware of the yin yang symbol, it's a, it's a circle that's kind of divided in half with a squiggly line. And on one side, he had protect the core, and on the other he had stimulate progress. So we need to always be protecting the core. And we need to always be stimulating progress. And it's the same in you, your business, your leadership team because we have seen many examples where people haven't stimulated progress. And sure, they might make a profit, sure, they might be going okay, but they can just be coasting along, and then they can become very unsatisfied, or things can change in the market that will then catch up to them.
Kevin Lawrence 08:41
Yeah, and today's show is really about looking at your ratio of stimulating progress versus protecting the core. And if you protect the core too much, so for example, as companies get more successful, there's more of a tendency to want to protect, it's like, Hey, we got to figure it out. Let's hold it together and just keep doing more of the same. It's kind of like a rinse, wash, repeat. Just you're cranking up the handle on the sausage maker, let's just keep making sausages. Just keep going, keep going, keep going. But that only works for so long, until what you're doing is is miscalibrated with the environment or it just you miss the opportunity. So you know, so you could be one depending on your business and what's going on. You could be 1% stimulate progress, and 99 protect the core. Or maybe and I would say conceptually, as a CEO, you should probably be conceptually 10% stimulate progress, progress. 90% protect the core.
Brad Giles 09:43
Yeah,
Kevin Lawrence 09:44
that's because it 1% for a lot of companies is not enough progress right now. 90% progress is also dangerous. So really, what I want you to think about today is if you look in your business, what is the only you know the right ratio What ratio should you as the leader have in your role? And if you're not the CEO or your executive leader, manager, whatever it is, what should your ratio be between protecting the core, like relentless execution of all the things that matter, and then stimulating progress, trying something slightly different tweaking a process, tweaking, uh, you know, looking at a different market or different product or different customer. And, you know, it's interesting, had one CEO that wanted me to work with him. In the end, I had concerns about the business he was in I, he talked like he was a purpose-led CEO who really cared. But it didn't feel like his business was really good for the consumer, he tried to tell me what's good for the consumer. I didn't buy it. And it was in the end here, it was probably a mutual decision. We didn't work together, I didn't feel right about it. He probably felt that I didn't feel right for it, which means it wasn't right. But the point of it is, you know, he would read like, 100 books a year.
Brad Giles 11:03
Wow. Yeah.
Kevin Lawrence 11:06
And as I'm talking to him, he knew every book, I mean, I'm we're professional students and teachers, right? Like, we constantly have to learn in our profession. He knew them all. Yeah. But he wasn't doing anything in his business. So he could rattle off all the answers, but he wasn't applying him. So he was stimulating intellectual progress, but getting no traction. And the core of his business, you know, may or may not have been great, but the point of it is, you know, too much of new ideas. And too much stimulation can also be really bad for the person, the point of it is, is you got to manage this, this tendency to get comfortable and have the right balance of stimulating progress versus protecting the core. And I would figure out your starting point should probably be 10 9010. Progress. 90 core is about right. And as your company grows as the CEO, you know, the other measure you look at is how far in the future are you working? If you're working today, you're not doing your job. That's also another conversation.
Brad Giles 12:13
Yeah, the later that you spoke about having not met him, it sounds like what he wasn't doing was stretching himself or his company. He was reading and learning and that was great. But you've got to have that stimulate progress. It's fine. You're stretching yourself? Oh,
Kevin Lawrence 12:30
yeah, he was filling his brain, but he wasn't stretching yourself. And that's a great distinction, Brad, that's what it was filling his brain versus actually because the only way you stretch yourself is by doing something. Yep. Like, you've got to apply it, you've got to put yourself in a situation of discomfort. And, and take yourself and literally when you're stretching yourself, there should be a visceral reaction in your body. Like you should feel it. Like Yeah, something something, you know, your heartbeat should not always be regular is something is taking note of your whether your the heat of your body is changing, your heartbeat is changing, you know, your brain is something's going on, because you're shaking up the system.
Brad Giles 13:13
Yeah, yeah. So what we're saying is you need to work toward mastery, but equally find opportunities to become the student. So, so it is in mastery, it's an ever it's a goal that is always on the horizon, and you never get there. But coming back and always having the student mindset saying, How can I stretch myself around this particular subject? Or this item? or How can I push this part of my life or my business or my leadership team onto something new? People want to grow? And you know, growth is tension and tension is uncomfortable, but tension and uncomfortable nurse makes us feel incredibly rewarded over time.
Kevin Lawrence 14:09
Yeah, and that's hard. Like when you become a master, and you've earned your stripes, so to say, and you become really good, and you become top of the pecking order, right? You're the head of the team or the department or, or the company or whatever, the division, whatever it is. Our ego quite likes that. Yeah, right. You know, just doing some reading on a book about about about, you know, male, almost like is that alpha personalities, dominance being in charge and how people want that a lot of people want that and when they're there, they're quite happy with it, and they don't want to give it up and they don't want to risk it. problem is you become very irrelevant very quickly, because people stop some not all some stop taking chances and doing things and they're not willing to go be the student again, because they want to show their dominance and their knowledge and all of these other things. And I remember, I joined this business was like a network marketing thing I tried in my, in my 20s was it was a wonderful experience. There to being a major side benefit, the product they sold really helped my mum, which was probably one of the biggest benefits. But I met some amazing people in this thing. And it was, it was at the age where I was trying everything. Yeah. And I was, I wasn't yet a master. And I was trying to find my path and learning everything I could, and tried a lot of stuff. But I remember I remember this new guy joined the organization. And my sponsor, the guy that brought me into this business said, This guy is a world class river kayaker. Like, he teaches the best people river kayak, I'm talking like the guys that kayak down you know, small to medium sized waterfalls and go underwater and sit down all this stuff, right? Like, this guy's a world class and he's going the challenge is going to be he's the man in his world, he is the man he is the big dog, the top of the heap, whatever matter for you want to use. How's he going to be with being the most you can't can his Eagle allow him to go from being the man to being the most. And, and, and now I'm not going to talk about that person anymore. But the point of it is, is being the most is hard when you're the man 24 seven or the woman you know 24 seven, to be have the humility to go and look foolish, and to be in capable. And at the bottom of the learning curve versus the top. It's it's hard. And some people can't do it, some people can't do it. And as a result, they kind of get stuck in being the master from history, not the master today.
Brad Giles 16:59
So translating that, what we're saying is, if you have a successful company, if you're a leader, it can be really hard to convince yourself to take a gamble on something to push to stimulate, to stretch, it can be really hard because you think well, I don't want to look like a fool in front of these people. I don't want to look like I don't know the answers to everything. I don't want to risk failing, because if I risk failing, then I will look like a fool in front of people. But the opposite of that, which is being in a group and becoming perhaps irrelevant, or perhaps, you know, not really capitalizing on your potential less effective, less effective, less effective is a good way to put it. Could he be your lunch worse? Yeah. Could be much worse. Yeah.
Kevin Lawrence 17:56
And it will be in time. But the other thing is what I've seen in some of these people, is that they become fearful and risk adverse and rigid. Like, like they become they're in a full grown adults body. But they become like a child inside. Yeah. Because in many ways that they're the confidence is from things they did 20 years ago, not stuff they did recently. And it's great to have that historical confidence. Don't get me wrong. Yeah. But it's like, what have you done recently? Right? And how, how do you have recent confidence or just historical confidence? And I think that's a great thing to, for us to do to consider for ourselves. Think about yourself, where do you have recent confidence versus historical confidence?
Brad Giles 18:43
Right?
Kevin Lawrence 18:44
What is the thing that you've really stretched yourself, like really stretched yourself where you're like, wow, this is hard. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this, or I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this as well as I would like.
Brad Giles 19:00
And the biology backs up what we're saying you need to create new neural pathways by learning new things all the time. And it kind of applies into your organization as well. So over the COVID period, I, I taught myself how to play the guitar in a very, very poor way. like to be able to, to make a noise is one way to put it. But the point being that I stretched myself to learn something different. And again, because as you age, you've got to create new neural pathways. I actually hadn't. I'd been quite busy about a month ago, hadn't picked it up, picked it up. And it was amazing how easily I got straight back into the groove because I had cut those neural pathways of learning before I thought, Oh, geez, I'm going to be so rusty. It's not funny but my point being the biology He supports what we're saying you, you've got to continue to stretch yourself and learn new things. Now I'm looking Okay, what can be the next thing that I can stretch myself on or learn. And I think that's kind of what we're saying here, you've got to find ways to become the student to keep stretching yourself.
Kevin Lawrence 20:22
And it's not just intellectually it's experientially as well. And that you know, you and I were chatting a little bit and I, I think some mentors around me who've helped me and you know, one of the great ones was my mother via my grandmother, my grandmother, which I wrote about in your oxygen mask first Betty how it at will and she was an entrepreneur, her my grandfather were entrepreneurs their whole lives, they owned restaurants all over our great country called Canada, pizza places, burger places, and literally across the country. And it was interesting. And my I remember going to my grandpa and his place in his basement, he was doing hydroponics before it became popular by the marijuana growers. He was making hydroponic tomatoes, you know, all this, it was he was there always up to stuff. But my grandmother used to always say, are inspired by my mother would say is just just just go for it, keep going for it, go for it, go for it, go for it. My grandmother at 81 went back to university. She was curious about the religions of the world. And she went and studied theology Do you know, in many countries, I know in Canada, you can go in and sit in or what they call audit classes if you're a senior citizen. So she had 81 was going to university and having a great time learning like crazy. So, you know, we all need to channel a little bit of the people in our life that really stretch themselves. And that's a you know, it's a great role model. I'm thinking in my own world, I was thinking about this, like, you know, reading another book, a book is a massive thing, right? You know, you and I are working on, we're both working on one individually and one together. You know, taking my firm from being an individual consultant to building a team. That's a whole new learning curve. I mentioned the kart racing earlier in the show, like, my son was doing it, and I was helping him and I was playing around. But I'm doing it a little more seriously with my buddies. Yeah, you know, that's, you know, and that's, it's fun, and it's challenging. And there's, there was a big piece of resistance, even with me doing it. If my buddies weren't doing it, I probably I wouldn't be doing it yet. Because it's painful sometimes. And it's hard. It's really hard, but it's rejuvenating, and energizing as heck. So now even talked about, you know, learning to barbecue. Brad, you were mentioning that earlier on?
Brad Giles 22:47
Yeah, same as the guitar. I like I yeah. I probably a few years ago, now I begin, I bought and got into this concept of low and slow barbecue, maybe because it's been quite a bit of time in America as well. But it was something that was completely different and completely new. And it was, you know, to a degree stretching myself and having to learn something completely different. So one of the things that we're we're talking about here is this concept of homeostasis in the body, and how that translates into an organization. homeostasis is the body's mechanism to regulate itself, that is the respiratory system, the nervous system, all of the organs and systems within the body, they work together to maintain a stable environment. And then when minor changes are detected, all of the body quickly triggers a response to bring the whole body back into this regulation. And that's what can happen in our organizations is that we can have this corporate kind of homeostasis that keeps us in the groove and works against this. This stretching ourselves this concept of stimulating progress.
Kevin Lawrence 24:18
It works for preserving the core it is perfect prisoner and actually think about a Brad good nice one. It preserves the core temperature homeostasis preserves the core temperature it does and so homeostasis is perfect for preserving the core. But if you let it become the only thing if, if if homeostasis is the operating system on 99% of what you're doing, the 1% might not be enough to keep you relevant. That's where the stretch comes in. Right But we need homeostasis. We need stable systems, repetitive processes, things that produce repetitive but excellent. Whatever the customer wants from us, right that is critical. But if we are cells get pulled into it too much will become part of that homeostatic system. And then and then and then we'll it'll slip into mediocrity. So it's a brilliant function of our body. It's critical for our companies. But it that the one thing that is great for us is the one thing that can really mess us up from a business perspective, in a leadership perspective.
Brad Giles 25:20
Yeah. And our body intuitively wants to fall into that comfortable groove, it wants to say our will, we're really in a good spot at work. But you've got to know like, the enemy is within like, Yes, that is true. It's really funny, because you've got this, this sense of, that's what your body wants to do. And then in the middle, you've got your, you've got to be consciously knowing we've got to keep pushing and stretching and growing ourselves and our company and our leaders and our people. But then on the other side, you've got the discipline of the hedgehog, okay? So that is, you've got to, you've got these three consumer conscious considerations that you've got to think about, we've got a main, we've got to maintain this kind of Goldilocks zone, which is a discipline on focusing on the right things, knowing that on the other extreme, that our body intuitively wants to settle down into this group. But if we don't stimulate progress in the center, we're going to have, we're going to have a long term sense of pain. And I think about companies like Kodak, or blockbuster, some of these kind of famous case studies, where they didn't stimulate progress, and suffered the ultimate consequence.
Kevin Lawrence 26:42
Or they didn't do it enough, fast enough. Interesting. And one of the case studies on Kodak, they were doing all the right things. They just started too late and they ran out of cash. That's a whole other story. The point of it is, is that you have to do enough of it. And it's not easy. Yeah. So you talked about that, that, you know that goalie logs on him right? To me, it was you're speaking something that call Jim Collins says is that good is the enemy of great hope and like homeostasis is the enemy of progress. Yeah, good is okay, sometimes and great can be better, but homeostasis is good, but it's also can hurt you so. So some of the things that that, you know, that that we talked about up front. And one of the other things I know for myself is, is, if you notice, no way, how do I know that I'm on track. And the leaders that I work with are on track is that they're looking for gems from masters, like they're on the hunt for things that would stimulate progress, right? versus, you know, when the ego kicks in, and our brain is closed. I'm not saying it's about just about ego, that's a piece. But you know, keep looking and listening. So if you're, if you're listening, and you're so I've got, you know, one of the founders that we work with is over 80 years old, he's 81 or 82. Now, when we did leadership education in his company, he would sit in front row, he would ask more questions and take more notes than almost anyone in this coverage. And he is notably successful. This is not a small business, right? He's no, it'll be built as he's been very successful. But in his eight now, he also still skis 40 or 50 days a year. And he is he's, we just had a strap planning with that company. And he's, he's got as much energy as anybody else in the room, maybe more. And he's a riot and lots of things. But the point of it is, he continues to learn and take risks and push the envelope. And so lots of lots of different CEOs we work with, they're always pushing themselves and challenging themselves in whatever way is everyone is different. It was interesting, in even for myself, is is that so if I'm around a master, and if I'm still curious, I know I'm in the right zone. Yeah. You I met a young young young kid. He's early 20s. At the, at the racetrack on Saturday. And this guy's name's Zack. And he's a you know, he's raced all around the world. And he's done. He has been a champion this thing called Indy lights. Really fast, spectacular driver, and I'm always curious, and I was talking to someone about this one corner and uh, how I could go faster. I've been doing car and cart. I've been car racing and related stuff for almost 20 years. And we've had I've had dozens of instructors who have taught me so much. It's been amazing adventure. And in kart racing over the last five I've learned a lot. This guy gave me one tip, which I'm not going to tell the audience because I don't want my friends to know.
Brad Giles 29:39
racing on how to race better racing tip on how to be okay.
Kevin Lawrence 29:44
I might tell my friends but I don't want to disclose it just he gave me a tip because we're all we are. It's fun competition. But what's still competition. He gave me this tip. It was freaking brilliant. It was brilliant. It was a simple, simple thing. And I'm like, isn't it amazing when I said to him When you talk to masters, you learn so much goes, Yeah, I've been doing it for years. Every person gives these little tidbits, but you know, so he's still looking for his little tidbits and passing them along. So the point of it is, now I happened to have this kart racing on my mind today. But anything in business when you're around someone who is masterful when you're asking questions, and curious, you're probably in the right state of mind.
Brad Giles 30:25
You are, and, and that, that questioning should help to get you to ponder How can we stretch that questioning like this? It may, how
Kevin Lawrence 30:41
can we push farther? Yeah, better? Yes, I
Brad Giles 30:44
feel a little bit bipolar. Today's episode. But that questioning that understanding should be helping you to understand how can we stretch the company, myself, our leadership team, everyone, within the discipline of the hedgehog concept and our spec recipe, so pushing for
Kevin Lawrence 31:08
pushing for it, because generally organizations want to, and we spend a lot of our time in execution mode, think about how we master what is. Yeah. And that's why this is important. So, so something for you to think about is, you know, who is a master that you are around? Or could be around that you could ask a bunch of questions of, and let me be curious and learn that would be one thing, or the second piece, which is one of my favorite strategies? If there is something you want to stretch yourself with? Or in what Master? Can you get to help you?
Brad Giles 31:43
Yes, right. Like,
Kevin Lawrence 31:43
if you're going to really stretch yourself, like my thing is, who's the best person in the world you can find to help you and learn from them, or best person in your world, whatever it happens to be, but ask them. So, you know, with that in mind, you know, the thing, and this is in chapter 16 of your oxygen mask first, and it's you know, called, you know, keep going for it, as I mentioned, inspired by my grandmother. And we asked earlier, like, when was the last time you did something that you know, really stretched you. We all have these ideas. There's this thing called bucket list, you know, things you want to accomplish in your life. And I think it's a great idea. And I've done it and I've done a lot of many of the things on my list. I still, you know, haven't been to Egypt. And I haven't been on an African Safari. Those are two things on my list. I do. I've done the hot air balloon ride and lots of other cool stuff I wanted to do. But Egypt and Safari then that will come post COVID when it opens back up. But But the thing is that I when I was reading a chapter book, I came up with this thing called it's a stretch list. Yeah. What are these things whether it's at work for yourself or in your life, that you feel compelled to speak again? For you it was barbecue and guitar was on your list? Right? And for me, there's been a bunch of different many, many different things and you know, currently it's karting and next learning how to drive a race car with a lot of downforce, which is a whole other thing that that's coming up for me. But it's it's what's the list of things that you would you want to do that would stretch you and I go back in my early 20s when I took singing lessons, yeah, from a teacher who taught professional singers and dancer or professors or dancers and actors how to sing like yeah full blown right down to the masterclass where you stand in a circle with all these professional performers and I was just young sales guy and learning how to sing Yeah, it was on my list because I got told us on like a dead horse every time it was someone's birthdays birthday, it was time to sing happy birthday. So the point of it is we have these things you got something to remember these things are
Brad Giles 33:58
kind of mentioned that a day a dead horse sounds like a really nice thing to listen to
Kevin Lawrence 34:04
dying. It is not it was not a nice thing. It's probably a dying horse is probably a better dead horse die dying horse like whatever sound that would make. So but it's like make a list of the things that you've thought about that you would like to do and maybe you haven't for whatever reason, whatever story but make a list of those things. It's already there. Like you already kind of know and if you believe in brilliant or divine direction are your internal guidance, you probably already know what you got to do. You know, I've got a you know, sign up.
Brad Giles 34:39
You know, I I remember when I was about 30 I thought I need to exercise and so I got some shoes on and I decided to run around the block. There might have been one or two suburban blocks and I got back and I was that exhausted. I lie on the floor just absolutely knackered. And then maybe a year or two later, we were on a kind of we were living on kind of a main street. And I can remember it was there was this event called the city to surf. So there will run from the city into the surf. It's about 10 kilometers. And I got up that morning. And it was, I think I went out to the bins or something because we're living in a complex. And I heard all of these foot there's, there's no sound quite like the sound of a running event where all you can hear is hundreds and hundreds of people's feet, shoes hitting the floor. And I never forget that sound. And I thought, wow, I could never do that. And as soon as I said, I can never do that. It's it that was planting the seed to think, Oh, well, I could maybe do like a 5k. And anyway, so then 12 months later, when that event came around, I did it. And that was the beginning. And then I did a 21 kilometer run. And then I eventually did a 42 kilometer or 26 mile run. And then eventually I did the Boston Marathon and the Sydney marathon. And so you don't think that you would it would be possible, but you just have to keep stretching yourself. And now I can very comfortably run, you know, an hour without issue. Just just get up and do it. And it just the I guess that's that's a story of change. But my point is, at that point, I didn't even think it was possible to run 10 kilometers or 11. And I just thought, well, I could probably do a little bit. And, yeah, 12 months later I was there.
Kevin Lawrence 36:46
And what we find is almost anything is possible, if you fully set your mind to it, and you really want it bad enough, anything. There's people that have had knee replacement, and they run like that, right and just they you know, there's all kinds of things that but it's, this goes back to your internal guidance, I'm not saying stretch yourself, this is not like put yourself in the torture rack and hurt, you know, do stuff you don't want to do this is doing the things you actually have an interest in doing. And staying fresh with them. You know, and it's maybe you want to learn how to do computer animation, maybe you make want to make a short film, maybe you want to sing and, and produce a song, maybe you want to produce a song and only share it with your family. Maybe you want to produce a song and put it on YouTube. Maybe you want to produce a song and do it anonymously. I don't care. Yeah, but you have some internal guidance about things that would stretch you and just know it's good for your spirit. And it's good for your leadership and which is a result good for your, for your company on what really works for you. So with that in mind, let's go to the next point that we talked about, Brad, which
Brad Giles 37:54
is, you know,
Kevin Lawrence 37:56
we're talking about doing this for you. So you stay fresh and relevant and comfortable with change. Right? Yeah, comfortable with being uncomfortable. And, and, and change and, and, and and taking risks. But the thing to think about is also is what are experiences that you can create for your friends and family that would do the same. So it could be friends and family. You know, it could be your children and partner. And it could be your colleagues at work. But how can you be a catalyst for them because in our work we are catalysts for organization or many organizations we come into are either in complete chaos, or homeostasis. Right. It's fast, gross, the growth and messy and they're trying to get a system to get Actually you know what interesting. Either they need more homeostasis, or they need less. We're actually we're like homeostasis adjusters, we need to get some, or they got too much. And we got to adjust the needle on the homeostasis,
Brad Giles 39:00
I kind of think of it like what we're doing in organizations is going in and and going back to that yin yang diagram. So we're identifying and protecting the core number one and number two, what we're doing is we're stimulating the right kind of disciplined progress. And that's why we get such impressive results. I'd say so quickly. Yeah, it is. And
Kevin Lawrence 39:25
with this brand, we are identifying and protecting the critical parts of the core. Yeah, and a bunch of the stuff they're protecting, they shouldn't be in many cases, and stimulating the right kind of progress. So what's actually it's like cataloging and and and optimizing both the protecting and the stimulating actually. Yeah, awesome, awesome point. So So basically, if you need a homeostasis, assessment and adjustment, you know, we all know that that's what we are and the people we work with spend our time doing but so the point of it is though, is When it comes to this stimulate progress piece thinkable, what can you do to kind of open that up and make that happen for your, for your team. And I'll, I'll give you an example. A CEO worked with auto Chicago for many years, I'm proud to work with them. He's like, my, my Greek brother's name is Angela Morris and a company called medics. He's an awesome guy, a very purpose led organization. And we would always do our annual retreats somewhere else, you know, unfortunately, there were plans last year to do it somewhere spectacular. And it's usually tied to when we hit the numbers. If we hit the numbers, we do that and we go do some great strap planning in a different environment, which shakes up our thinking. But one of the times we did it, we didn't know place called porta viar, toe Mexico. And, you know, we went, we stayed in a nice place where we had our meetings, and we work hard, like some people think of these executive retreats as just, you know, go and party and that and we did do some fun stuff. But we would work, you know, 1012 hour days, like we would really work hard and play hard, too. But one of the days, you know, Andrew arranged for us to go to an orphanage. And so we all packed supplies that the orphanage needed to take to the kids. And he changed our lives that day. Yeah, because going and working at an orphanage, I will just give you a 32nd version of it. In the end, we brought a dentist because they needed to kids needed dental work. So some people were holding kids while they were getting dental work without all the western stuff that we might expect people to have. But you were there seeing kids, it looked like kids like your own children. Yeah, in an orphanage. And it was it was a heartwarming and a heart crushing scenario at the same time. The point of it is, he's a purpose led organization, he created an experience that he got us doing. So we just didn't make donation. We were there with the kids for the day. Yeah, having this experience that created a catalyst for us in lots of ways to have different thinking and a different perspective. That's just one tiny example. There's many, many, many more it, you know, other CEOs and other SEO worked with in the Middle East, was creating a digital startup within their company. And he took a team that was planning a one year timeframe to launch their first website under digital startup. Yeah. And he said, Okay, guys, you need to do it in three months. Right? And so he that the stretch he put on that team and any loud he says, Okay, we'll do a simpler version. But it's live in three months, because he wanted speed. And he wanted to build confidence in that team. So two very different examples. But how can you? How can you see the good in creating those experience that shake things up and stretch people?
Brad Giles 42:45
through a catalyst? Like I think I think that for many people under estimating the importance of a catalyst, and in those examples that you've given, it was an intentionally created catalyst going to those types of environments. Certainly what we do through going back and talking about the, the yin yang symbol, where stimulate progress preserve the core of our role in those organizations is to be the catalyst is to drive that stimulation, because sometimes people can't do it. And it is an external person that can really drive that the, the, that's the kind of the power of the relationship, if you your wife, or the benefit of the relationship, it can be quite impactful.
Kevin Lawrence 43:35
And sometimes you have the power within yourself to do it yourself. Yeah. Right. Like sometimes that you know, people can pull it so the point of it is it's got to happen somehow. But there is a downside of this stimulating progress. It doesn't always work. You know, and as I can share with you in my in my adventure back into kart racing, you know, with my friends, you know, I've bought a lot of spare parts over share with you before I got back into it last year and started playing with it again, because my buddies wanted to do it and my son has always loved to do it. But as I'm, you know, got my brand new card at the end of the season last season and I'm breaking it in I'm supposed to be taking it easy, but then my two buddies are ahead of me, and I want to catch them I can't help myself. And I am driving like as hard as I can. My son actually pulled off the track because he didn't like what he was seeing and what was going to come next thing you know, I'm trying to at the very last second I'm breaking at the very last second and i and i braked a millisecond too long and it didn't work and I went right off the track through the barricade bent up the whole front of my go kart my steering wheels bent forward I was wearing the barricade and it hurt a little bit. And then I had to do the kind of the ride of shame back when I had to come pick up my card and take it in and and we laughed our butts off. Because it was you know, it was hilarious because I was trying and but the point is, sometimes it's messy. Yeah. And it doesn't work and you fail. Yeah. And that was a pretty good one. I mean, they Oh, and we crashed into each other a bunch and you don't have to replace parts on our cards. But that was a that was probably, you know, but I was trying as hard as I could. And I tried too hard. And I pushed too hard. It was a mistake on my part. But you got to be able to celebrate these now. This is why you also want to take steps and not you know, no bet that the farm but the family farm or whatever your move is or is Jim Collins would call it shooting bullets, not cannibals. Yeah, you've got to be able to celebrate success, because there's always learning or growth, or at least one hell of a great story. When things go up in a ball of flames. And you don't make the corner and you crash bad.
Brad Giles 45:54
Yeah. So what we're saying celebrate sucking celebrate the failures, the failures create the tension, that tension creates the growth. Hopefully, you don't do that, again.
Kevin Lawrence 46:07
Try not to and it probably will happen in some form, but ideally differently next time. Yeah. And the thing is, you know, it's so important to celebrate the mistakes and the failures. So it makes it Okay, so then people are more likely to take risks. And more likely, whether it's a personal risk or an emotional risk, or a financial risk. It makes it easier for people to do that and almost D stigmatizes making mistakes. Because you're gonna, like, you know, if you take singing lessons, and you're sound like a dying horse, you're gonna miss some notes, you're gonna still sound crappy at times, but you're going to be better than you were before. And that's, that's one of the most important things is and what I have shared before on the show, but I have a goal every month to make a couple of big mistakes. No, no, generally it's it's, I don't usually miss my quota. Like I normally I nail it, sometimes I hit it by mid month. But but but what I know is, if I'm not really making some serious mistakes, then then I'm not pushing hard enough, like I bought a new vehicle and, and when went for buy foreign and usually take people take old crappy vehicles when they go up into the bush into the trails. And I didn't. And so I noticed scratches all down the side of my new truck. Oops, I saw I saw the detail guy today and asked if he could polish it out, he figured he get most of that. He said, Yeah, you got some deep ones, we might not get them all out. And again, it's, you know, live and learn. And that and it's some point, you got to be able to laugh about the ones, especially the ones that are the minor or not, not as consequential. You know, the bullets versus, you know, if it's risking someone's life, or, or, or, you know, risking your whole company.
Brad Giles 47:55
Awesome. So let's move to wrap this up. So what we're saying here is you can get into a groove that can be detrimental in your person in your company in your leadership team. And you've got to find ways to continually stretch, we use the analogy of homeostasis, the homeostasis system controls the body, and it regulates all of the operating functions of the body. And that's really effective. And that is that can be the analogy for what we're talking about in your personal business life or in your company. And so you've got to find ways to continue to push against that, that align with the disciplines of the hedgehog that we talk about. What can you be the best at What's your purpose? And what's your profit per x? Or how do you What's the single way that you make money. And so, not stretching can come at a great cost over time. So broadly, the things that we've discussed, to wrap it up, it's a bit like the first Newton's first law, okay, if a body at rest are moving at a constant speed is moving at a constant speed or in a straight line, it will keep moving unless it is acted upon it by an external force. We didn't really touch on that. But that's really you know, what we're saying through there. Maybe one out of 99 or 10 out of 99, we've got to find a way to stimulate there's got to be a constant consistent way to stimulate that progress. putting yourself in areas where you are the students and not the master and knowing that that will be uncomfortable in terms of your ego, your pride, your brand, your comfort, but that is what's important. Also, making it the norm to stimulate progress. So I think that we've covered off most of them all and the other one series, knowing that there's a Goldilocks zone, knowing that there is a zone that is not too far and not too little in terms of stimulating progress, anything that we've missed there, Kevin. At No,
Kevin Lawrence 50:20
I just summarized it up Brad is is you know, what is something you said it's really important to get into a good groove as a business and a leader and a person. But it's equally important to get out of that groove at some point too. If you get in a groove and stay in a groove, it's comfortable, but it can lead you down the wrong road, you got to keep tweaking it and popping over that groove every once in a while so you keep perspective and you stay fresh and relevant. Indeed. All right. Well,
Brad Giles 50:47
thank you very much for listening. My name is Brad Giles and joined as always by my co-host, Kevin Lawrence. My book if you are so interested is made to thrive the five roles to evolve beyond your leadership comfort zone Kevin's book, is your oxygen mask first, don't remember the subtitle. If you'd like to find me, you can find me at evolution partners.com.au and Kevin is at Lawrence and co.com. Thank you very much for joining us. We look forward to having a chat in a week and have a great week.
Podcast Episode 56 - Fill Your Week with Strategic Meetings
IN THIS EPISODE:
Many people find themselves "being busy" and having a calendar that's always full. They fill their week with meetings that are not important at the expense of priorities. Instead, it's better to start by populating your calendar with strategic meetings and calls that align with the company quarter, annual, and 3-year goals. That way you are always working on the right things.
This week we discuss the problem with having a full calendar that's missing important strategic priorities and what you should do about it.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.
Brad Giles 00:13
Welcome to the growth whispers where everything we talk about is building enduring great companies, not fast companies, not growth companies, but enduring companies. Maybe it encapsulates those other things. But overall, it's enduring companies, companies that will last. My name is Brad Giles. And always, as always, I'm joined today by Kevin Lawrence, my co-host. Hello, Kevin. And how are you doing today?
Kevin Lawrence 00:40
Doing great Brad Yeah, it's awesome. We're coming into summer here. Vancouver had a pretty good week last week. Really good. And I'm excited actually, what we're talking about today, it was triggered by a conversation with another client, and talking about some of the headaches they're having. And we're hoping to provide a little bit of antidote to some of the headaches that some people feel today, which we'll get into in a few minutes.
Brad Giles 01:05
Oh, yes. It's an interesting subject. But as always, before we start, we'd like to begin with a simple word or phrase to kick us off, as we advocate people do in their meetings. So Kevin, what is your word or phrase for today?
Kevin Lawrence 01:21
Mine is inspired. You know, it's interesting, as I think back over the past week, there's been a bunch of different people that have really inspired me. You know, whether it's action that they're taking my daughter, you know, I think, may have got her first employee in her business. And she's 15. Also, yeah, so that's kind of cool. And you know, and, my son and I were having just a ton of fun. Father, Son driving around, we got we're both into sports cars and racing. So we're having some awesome father son drives around, and a friend that I got together with haven't seen for a while we did some inspiring stuff got a little bit sketchy. We're up doing some off-roading up in the mountains, we got into some pretty steep mountains with my new vehicle, which was, it was, it was actually a ton of fun, but just, you know, being back and old memories and, and some other friends this week, because we're kind of, we're kind of going into a bit of a lockdown. So we have to be very careful about what we do. And when we see people, you know, obviously keeping appropriate distance and stuff, but it's inspired by some really amazing people are in my team just inspires me constantly with the stuff that they're doing. And, you know, the feedback I get is this combination, I need to make a new word, which is a combination of inspired and grateful all mixed together. But I'm insanely impressed by these awesome people I'm surrounded by. It's both in, in work and in life. It's awesome. And you're one of them, Brad, you inspire me with the way you think. And the way you make stuff happen. you're one of those people that I'm also was on that list of awesomeness around me.
Brad Giles 03:04
Very grateful for your kind words, thank you. And I return the volley my word, my phrase is growth versus momentum. We spoke about that before this podcast, I was in a strategy planning workshop with a team last week. I've been working with them for about eight years. And it really felt like we transitioned from growth to momentum, meaning that they're, you know, we're going around the team. And they're just awesome little things that are happening in all sorts of parts of the business. And we've got this great inertia, this great momentum, and it feels so different. So growth is nice. But momentum is awesome. Just that sense that you get in the business when you're getting it when you've worked so hard for so long, and you're getting it right and there is just this self inertia that is growing all parts of the business.
Kevin Lawrence 04:06
You're getting, there's a lot of wind at your back with that momentum and it feels you'll grow this kind of like, you know if you're on a bicycle, and you're riding up the hill, and you're and you're climbing, and you're and it's working and you're getting there. And same with your mountain biking and your mountain bike, it's your trails and you're pedaling and you're getting where you want to go. And I was watching a video today of a run in Whistler Mountain called a line. It's a mountain bike run. I remember doing this I used to downhill mountain bike, but you get momentum you start flying down and the and the gravity is pushing you and you're going you're flying. It's spectacular run. Those of you that have been on a line. It's an amazing, amazing ride. But it's almost like it's that feeling of going downhill versus appeal. In both cases. You've got awesome movement. It's just about what the gravity is doing for you and the gravity is at your back. The best way when you've got that momentum, it's a great, great feeling. It is.
Brad Giles 05:05
Okay, so cool onto today's episode. Oh, I do love this one. It is who's in charge you? Or your calendar? Who's in charge? who's running this show? So often we see people, and let's be fair, we've both been a victim of this right? But so often we see people and their calendar doesn't align with the most important things. Someone says, I can. I'm wondering if I could pick your brain about something? Have you got any time next week? I don't know, like maybe for an hour or something like that. We could just catch up. And then you look at your calendar, and you go, yeah, okay, I got time on Tuesday at 11. Now, you multiply that by 20, over and over and over and over again, and you're not in control of your calendar.
Kevin Lawrence 06:00
Now, yeah, that's easy, and it's easy to feel it. And I I do feel victim to my calendar sometimes. Because it's full, I like to do a lot of things and help a lot of people. And, you know, it's very easy if you're not careful to get dragged through the week by your calendar, versus you being in charge and leading. And that's what we're digging into today. And it's not just time management. This is about being strategic about your time versus reactionary about your time. And it's, it's something that we need to continue to do in front of me, I have my goals for the quarter for work, self and life, I keep them in front of me to remind me on a post it note in front of me, I have my three key outcomes that I need to pay attention to this month that we're in that's coming to a close soon. And I've got those three things I got to get done to remind me because you know, as you and I've talked many times, Brian is that we do lots of work on strategic planning for companies. And we do goal setting for leaders and executives and CEOs around work self in life so that they can live a great life and obviously take care of themselves. So they can stay resilient, like, like we talked about in your oxygen mask. But you got to then bring that to life because you can have this perfect plan. But if your priorities on your plan, don't look like the stuff that's in your calendar, you got yourself problem, like it's not going to work, you're not going to achieve what you want. And you're going to be busy with a whole bunch of extra stuff, which might might seem really important, but maybe not relevant. so important. relevant to your strategy is an important distinction. So, Brad, anything you'd like to add to this?
Brad Giles 07:49
Well, not really, I think you've covered it pretty well. But I think that we jumped straight into it again, who's in charge you or your calendar? So the first thing that we're talking about here is the think do ratio. That's fascinating. Kevin, tell us a little bit about the think do ratio.
Kevin Lawrence 08:07
Yeah, well really as a leader, and this is for leaders, not for people in the very very frontlines as leaders, you're supposed to spend time thinking and planning how to make things better, and what are the winning moves? And how do you change the role of your team, but what happens with a lot of people, and when we do strap planning sessions, and people lay out their strategic goals, they're like, I don't have any time to do them. I'm so busy in my day job, I don't have time to work on those projects. And we're taught to answer is like, Oh, well, that means you probably are so busy doing, you don't have any time to do any thinking or planning. You're too much of a Dewar really not having enough time to be a leader. And I understand that I fall into that sometimes myself, please, I'm not judging you. We're all in this together. But it's this thing to do ratio, what should it be right, for a CEO they're doing should be very tiny, like tiny, tiny, tiny, and a lot of thinking and discussing and, you know, working with other people, or, you know, a frontline technician should be doing a ton of doing what happens though is, as executives grow through the rolls, their think drew do ratio doesn't transition. And it's just look at their calendar, as their calendar is often full of a lot of doing.
Brad Giles 09:25
So how long should you prepare for a meeting in thinking? That's what I asked in my book, your oxygen mask first is your book. My book is called mind to thrive. But yeah, that's what I asked there. And, and, you know, it's you can't really be prescriptive, but it's probably a bit more than most people are doing now. So, what I asked is, if you had a one hour meeting with someone, should you prepare for five minutes? Well, that's probably not enough. If you want to To be meaningful, you know, people say that meetings are one of the worst things that they do. And I reckon one of the reasons is that people just don't prepare. And it's not just the person who's running the meeting, so many of the other people, if everybody's prepared and came together, it would be an amazing meeting. It's the absence of preparation, because people overcook their calendar, but they put too much stuff in the calendar that makes it horrible,
Kevin Lawrence 10:28
right, which is the thinking part versus the doing of showing up and it's, you know, even and I suggest there's some meetings where five minutes is magic, to think about what is my intent? What do I got make, but if you're negotiating a $7.8 million, you know, discount with a big vendor, we know you'll spend more than five minutes or you're sure as heck better if you're going to be successful, you know, favor Good luck goes to the prepared. So it's about that time in your schedule to do that, but most people get so bogged down and did they don't have the time for thinking and I think, you know, I think Haha, they're working with half their capability, because they don't get time to act. And again, I fall victim to this sometimes too, or no, it's I'm responsible, but it happens in my world sometimes to where not enough thinking too much doing and then you end up just executing and things gradually fade into the thinking to pop the quality or the strategy backup every once in a while.
Brad Giles 11:32
I have a I have a rule. I have a couple of rules around meetings. Number one is no agenda. No attender.
Kevin Lawrence 11:40
I like that, I haven't heard that before.
Brad Giles 11:42
Yeah. So if you don't have an agenda for this meeting, that you're asking me to come to that you've sent to me so that I can think about that you're not going to have an attendance in terms of me, right, because I need to think about it. The second one is, I have meetings with clients that have standing agendas, so we wouldn't need every single month, right. And so then I will always email them the day before. And so for example, so Kevin, in preparation for our meeting at 2pm. Tomorrow, please let me know if there's anything out of the ordinary that you would like to discuss, and every single one client, every single meeting, I will email them that, because number one, you know, the worst thing in the world is when someone forgets about a meeting, or it's not on their calendar. So it's reminding them that it's on number one. And then number two, I'd say about 40 or 50% of the time they say something out of the ordinary that we're going to discuss or that's going to become a key agenda item that I can prepare for. I've already got for my meeting tomorrow, I've already got a response today. And that's beginning to percolate
Kevin Lawrence 12:48
in the best rate, and you know, the importance of that, for example, I have a client where we have this similar system. I don't tell people to respond, I just tell him to think about it. And and and come I like that question. No, it's a great question, Brad. Thanks for sharing that. But we're we send and we now don't have to send we put in the meeting invite the agenda for the meeting. And we follow the same agenda. We have a standing format, we go through interesting, a new, awesome CEO I'm working with. He was getting frustrated in the sessions. He didn't even know there was an agenda. So we miscommunicated and because we weren't emailing them, they were an invite, I'm going through the agenda, and he's not with me. And he's wondering what's going on? I'm like, why aren't you following the agenda? He goes, What agenda I go well, in the meeting way. He was. So now we're actually going to get him up to speed we're emailing. It's damn important. Because the agenda is how, you know, we said similar clients to help them prepare for the meeting. Yeah, and he wasn't showing up prepared. But he didn't realize that it was an invite, and he hadn't looked at it. So it's our fault. We should have let him know. But it's super important. And I will tell you, you know, in companies time and time again, you know, meetings are a nightmare. And often because there's no agenda and I say the same thing. If there's no agenda don't go even when people want to talk to me, Well, what do you want? You know, if it's one of my clients, I said, I need five minutes. I'm gonna say, Okay, fine. I don't need an agenda. Because I know they have a specific today I was talking to a CEO I work with, and they were had something important and said, Hey, can I talk for a few minutes? I said, Sure, fine. That's different. But if you want to, you know, set I mean, what what is it we're gonna cover and for example, we ran a two day strategy last week with a group. We had three meetings in advance for two days with three meetings of at least an hour each to sculpt just the agenda points. Never mind the preparation. Yeah, we had an awesome meeting. But we put it We did a lot of homework just to get the agenda right. But we should it's two days.
Brad Giles 14:53
That's that's effectiveness. I what comes to mind. I had a person Who we both know who I won't mention, who asked me for a meeting? And they were just like, Hey, can we love to catch up? Can we meet on this date? And this time? And I'm like, what's the agenda? What do we what do we wait?
Kevin Lawrence 15:15
You know, I have to catch up. It's not a catch up. If there's something, let me know. And I catch up, like, I don't want to catch up. No I don't want I did, you're gonna be my one of my friends. And we're gonna go have a beer or something. So getting back to the root of it, you know, go even in think to ratio, like, number one is it your time for thinking is critical, but it'll get it'll, it won't happen if you don't have the discipline around other meetings, and not allowing them to take your critical time. So one of the first things, you know, the second thing is, you know, number two, there's your calendar, set your priors or do you set your calendar,
Brad Giles 15:51
if you set your calendar, we need to, we need to, we need to build up the tension on that one, we need to make this we need to make the audience really understand the weight of what you've just said, let them roll or something close
Kevin Lawrence 16:07
to it. Like I can do a drum roll. That's not really working. Very good. That's not making that for us here. I got drunk, I could do come over here.
Brad Giles 16:15
Thank you very much. Thank you very much, because that's so important. Right? Does your calendar set your product better? Is that better? That's much better. If you've got a pen, this is the one thing you're going to write down out of this episode, right? Does your calendar set your priorities? Or do your priorities set your calendar? Why is that important? Because priorities is working broadly, in our definition, working on the business. Okay. So what is the most important thing that you've got to do to work on the business broadly, what is the most important thing that you decide that has to be done? As opposed to as we said earlier, someone ringing up and say, Hey, Kevin, you want to catch up?
Kevin Lawrence 17:01
Just wanted to catch up, and let's be proactively putting in the things that matter most first. Yeah. And again, it's not rocket science, it's just hard to do. And what that looks like, is you have to pre block things in. So for as an example, you know, with, with my team and our quarterly goals, I've got stuff pre blocked in like, I know, I have in my calendar this week, a half a day session. On on our strategy on the people side of the business, it was booked a couple months ago. And we've got time to go through and work on some of the stuff you were talking about. We're talking about before the show, yeah, but it's in there. Right. And it's pre scheduled before other things go in. And same and same with my one on ones with my team. I've got a one on one on my team, where we go through all the stuff that's working in, and it's in there to help because that's, that's a key part of success as our firm as my teammates. And, again, it's not rocket science. And same thing with us, you and I doing this podcast, you got to block in these things, because all the other stuff will fill in all the cracks real fast. So these are all things we know, the key thing to ask yourself is, am I proactively blocking in the strategic things that matter most in my calendar, that helped me to hit my goals, which is it could be your personal goals, and it could be your workout, or it could be your life goals. And that can be time with people that matter a lot in your life. And obviously, your work goals. So it's, incredibly important. And again, that's why ideally, a lot of the highest performing people we work with, they have their annual goals, quarterly goals, many will have a monthly version or a monthly target. And then weekly goals and daily goals.
Brad Giles 18:46
So heavy. And they
Kevin Lawrence 18:49
no longer reflect that.
Brad Giles 18:50
And that's my point. And so maybe for you look at your calendar over the last week or two, how many of the appointments in your calendar or blocked out time or notes align with your quarterly, your annual your three year goals for your organization? How many? How many of the things that you're spending your time on actually align with that. Now, let's say that it's 80% of the things that are in your calendar don't align and only 20% do. And maybe what you can do is set yourself a goal to say what about if in one year's time I can flip that on, I can have 80% of the things that are in my calendar actually align with the goals for the organization that I'm working on, rather than these ad hoc catch ups or things that are not necessarily working on the business or to use Stephen cobis terms are important but not urgent.
Kevin Lawrence 19:53
Mm hmm. And that ratio will depend on your role. Yeah, right. Like if you're a CEO most of your stuff, your Working on should be one to three to five years in the future. And very strategic most like 80% Plus, right, and you're gonna have some stuff around the day to day, but a true CEO with a capital C is forward looking and strategic most of the time. And as an executive, that will notch down a little bit as a director and notch down as a manager. You know, as a manager, you might be spending 80% of your time 20% of your time on some of this strategic stuff might actually be really good for a manager, depending on the size of the company. So it's different based on your role. The question is, how do you get it to ideal one of the key thing a key activity, which I've been needing to do again, and I will in the next month or so, is to build out what your ideal calendar is? What would it be forgotten about to the constraints of today's and I love to take people through three years in the future, because today kind of vaporizes. And so what would your ideal calendar look like? And if you look at how you're allocating your time, and interestingly, for what it's worth, in the field that we're in, you know, it I ideally, to be my best have Fridays free, right? Fridays is a flexible day when I do my strategic stuff, and my thinking time and other work. But sometimes based on how stuff gets scheduled, I don't have that flex day on Fridays. And then it's harder for me to do all the thinking stuff and the on the business things I'd like to do. So no matter what. So no matter what I do, and how well I block my calendar, if I have, you know, time every day of the week with clients, which I love, I enjoy it. And that's the thing, I love my time with my clients, they're awesome, people enjoy the work, but they don't have enough time to do my job as a leader of the firm. Right? So and that's, and that's problematic. So there's by setting your ideal calendar and having an idea of what that looks like it does set you up to win another person I know when I'm in a more of a delivery role was saying something similar. They spending so much time delivery, they never get to their administration Never mind the proactive thinking. So again, everyone's got their own version of it, and you have a good sense of what you need.
Brad Giles 22:17
Awesome. So I'm closing that out. Are you working on things that are important and not urgent? That's the goal or things that are important and urgent. That's where it that's where humans just, unfortunately, get dragged into, you know, this. So Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is where that concept comes from encourage you to kind of look in there if you're interested. Let's move on. We're sure. Yeah, what do we got next, Kevin? Yeah, I
Kevin Lawrence 22:53
mean, I'm wondering, we head down for number three, I don't it doesn't feel as relevant right now. That's more of a productivity thing. Maybe we get a sidebar but a productivity hack. I'm in a session I was in this week, we're talking about a great book on productivity called getting things done by David Allen. I love that a great system. Yeah, it's a great book. It's a lot for a lot it's a pretty technical system. So a little much for a lot of people. But the essence is of its good but he has a phrase in there Brad and he might remember the the the right version of that phrase, but it's basically a system for touching things once. Then the one thing I had a sort of a somewhat a filing system and out that I did I used for a while it faded away, but the thing that stuck was open up an email action right now. A piece of paper action right now. So my insurance paper comes in for insurance on a vehicle, I take a picture and instantly text it to my insurance agent who's awesome. And then it's handled. Right? It's literally receipt, open it see its picture, send it say please insure it, and then it's done. Versus Oh, I'll send it to her later. Yeah, write things like touching things once. Now there's a key is you can also touch things once and send it out. But it's only half done. ie someone's going to come back with four questions and that's the art of touch at once and with everything that it needs. So that's a beautiful piece around personal productivity and from very good productivity books.
Brad Giles 24:39
Yeah, yeah. I love that. David Allen's book Getting things done it's just yeah, read it and employed several points to that. including his filing system which is just fantastic. But let's move on. So
Kevin Lawrence 24:53
so let's go that we've done number five, which is your perfect calendar for 2020 to even like, what would it ideally look like for you? You to be your best. And, you know, in that strategic time you have what have now number six is, you know is in your calendar. It's either short meetings or no meetings. So we go back to you said no, no agenda, no attender, and we're no attender, whatever, you know, agenda. I love that. That's one piece. But other things is how can you actually not even have a meeting? Like, is there a way to resolve it without meeting? You know, and sometimes, you know, some people, it's a quick phone call, like, literally just imagine, as pick up the phone and call somebody. And what I notice is, you know, the clients of mine, that are older than I am, by default, just pick up the phone and get stuff done. Yeah. And very, very quickly, the younger people, they're more likely to text and try which of which both can work, but at some point, is there a way we can do it without a meeting? Right? Or can we do it in a five minute meeting? I love five minute meetings. Let's talk for five minutes, get it sorted out, move on, right? And I'm a, you know, an impatient person by nature. But basically, how do you not get into the trap of the default 30 minute or 60 minute meeting and, and avoid them if and only do them if they're needed?
Brad Giles 26:14
They aren't needed. They aren't needed. I don't I don't really love the slack kind of communication world, which is just text. It's just like text, text text. An interesting thing I read a couple of weeks ago was that the number of people who buy a new phone and never take it off silent, ever. It is actually skyrocketing. So people who just leave their phone on site 24, seven all the time, because they only use it for texting or the internet title as in
Kevin Lawrence 26:47
for not receiving phone calls. Yeah,
Brad Giles 26:49
it never ever reads that don't even it just never ever reads. And that's a societal change. That's happened. So people are moving away from phone calls a little bit. But sometimes you can just really make a big difference. With that quick phone call. You know, you've got to create a high barrier to entry for your time for your calendar. Yes, it's got to be difficult to get a meeting, they've got to go over a number of hurdles,
Kevin Lawrence 27:19
they need to Yes, there needs to be a process to filter it. So only the important meetings get through. That's why in my world, you know, Janice is in my mind, my right hand is the person that sets those meetings. And she knows she needs to get a few pieces of information before she schedules me with anyone. And even when I do tell her set a meeting, I tell her whether it's an A B or C priority, like hey, go ahead.
Brad Giles 27:44
I tell you so I was that last week, I went to a book launch something that's quite rare where I live business book launch, even rarer, lovely book, from no to how it was called by a great guy, Adam mullet, but I met with a person, they're really lovely guy. We were chatting and you know, he had an interesting job. And he wasn't as he didn't have his own business. But even if he didn't, I don't really do necessarily a lot of networking. In person. And I was just we were just chatting about strategic planning and stuff like that. And he said, You know, like this is I find this really interesting. I'd love to catch up for coffee one day, and I just recoiled. I was just like, Yeah, I know. I don't do that. I yeah, like, I don't catch up. For people that don't know, for coffee. Like I never, never never do that because my calendar is too precious. Even if you want to work with me, I'll be highly reluctant to meet with you. I mean, I
Kevin Lawrence 28:51
in my thing, if there's something and if there's I believe there's some potential value for either party. Yeah, definitely. It's a phone call.
Brad Giles 28:59
Yeah,
Kevin Lawrence 29:00
get on the phone for 15 minutes. If there still is, then we'll set up another phone call. We've got a private well go to particular campaign thing he got to protect your time and your calendar and make sure what gets in it deserves to be in it. Number two, that it's done efficiently and effectively. Yep. I and by the way, don't be afraid to end a meeting early. If someone's not prepared. And it's one of the things I've seen, you know, if someone's not prepared and you're protecting your calendar, and it's like, what if you're finished early? Awesome. That's great. But also if somebody isn't prepared, okay, hey, I can see. I was expecting this to be fully laid out with ABC my you know, my miscommunication I'm sorry, maybe I didn't make that clear enough. So how long do you need to get it together? Great. Good. So let's plan on Thursday. I'll see you then. Book a time.
Brad Giles 29:53
He is the thing if you turn up to a meeting and someone says Okay, so what are we here to talk about? That should be like a siren going off in the background. But that's
Kevin Lawrence 30:02
common Brad, people don't know. And even, even when we have strategic discussions, I do a lot of debate time with executive teams that I work with and CEOs. What are we trying to achieve with this discussion? What is the outcome that we want? By the way? We do that before so people can prepare? And then Okay, what is the action? Yeah, like what is going to happen, so we don't waste this time. So basically, you're gonna be very protective of your time of people that want it. But more than that, you need to pre plan the time you need for strategic things. So short meetings, or no meetings is their next point. And it's critical. And there's nothing like a quick call sometimes, or telling them to make the call.
Brad Giles 30:47
Yeah. Like, hey,
Kevin Lawrence 30:49
I need to talk to you about this. It's okay. Hey, I trust you, you make the decision. And if you're deeply concerned, tell me your two options. And we can discuss it, but I'm pretty sure you can handle this. Yeah, on certain things. Sometimes people just want too much feedback. But, you know, if we were to sum this up, Brad, if you look at your, your philosophy of art, because we all have the same amount of time, and there's a stat of 168 hours a week that it's the same for all of us. But if you're looking at optimizing the time that you work, you know, what, what would be the number one message you would have for people?
Brad Giles 31:29
I would say, number one, what gets measured gets managed? And so understanding where is the slippage in your calendar, how many of the, if you were to color your calendar, imagine you printed out your calendar, and you call it at all, how many of these meetings are working on the most important things, how many of these meetings are catch ups, or superficial or someone trying to sell you something or something like that, that that are unnecessary. And then how many of those meetings could have been a quick phone call how many because a phone call, you can end after five to seven minutes, right? And meet us there is more of an obligation to go through a certain rhythm that you don't need to? So that's what I would say, what about yourself?
Kevin Lawrence 32:20
yeah, first of all, and in this virtual world that we work, there's an opportunity for a lot, it's easier to have shorter meetings. And that is the massive efficiency that I have found in these in this working digitally almost all the time, you lose some stuff. But the efficiency is is is notable, I would say is that, you know, think of your calendar, like a strategic tool. Like in my case, I'm blocked my vacations. That's the first thing that goes in my calendar, the time for myself, and my family. And I set those times aside, that that goes in first. And then it goes into all the other things that almost an order of value. But it's it fiercely protective of that calendar, and only letting the right things in and a lot of those niceties just aren't needed. And again, being fiercely protective when someone wants to meet with me. Why? What are we going to cover? How long do we actually need? Right? And again, if it's one of the CEOs I work with, it's like, What do you need? And I'll jump on the phone like ASAP, that's different. Yeah, cuz I know, it's critical that you know, that's a different thing. That's my that's, you know, a key. Yeah, just being really diligent about it. And it's almost like every meeting in your calendar costs you 100 bucks. Yeah, literally, if you think about a good energy of energetic currency, like, Don't take it unless you know, it's gonna be really valuable, and that the people are going to be prepared to make a good use of the time just vigilant about your calendar versus accommodating is what I would say.
Brad Giles 34:01
All right, awesome. So with that, let's just say look after your calendar, let's close by saying that look after your calendar. So with that, if you would like to learn more about Kevin, first of all, I encourage you to check out his book, your oxygen mask first. Also, he's available at Lawrence and co.com. For myself, my book is called made to thrive. And my website, Brad is evolution partners.com dot a year. It's been such a pleasure to chat to you today about your calendar, setting the right priorities. We look forward to chatting again next week to you about another interesting subject about building enduring great companies. Until then, have a great week.
Podcast Episode 55 - Building a People Magnet Machine
IN THIS EPISODE:
One of the most important things required to build a great enduring company is a people process. One that draws individuals in like a magnet so that the best people really want to work for you.
Organizations often do this well on the marketing side of their businesses. We're great at bringing in customers yet we don’t do the same when it comes to attracting the right people.
In this second session talking about the People Magnet Machine, Kevin and Brad answer a range of questions about the process and how to attract and retain the best people, like a magnet!
SUBSCRIBE TO THE GROWTH WHISPERERS:
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.
Kevin Lawrence 00:12
Welcome to the growth whispers podcast where everything that Brad and I talk about that's Kevin and Brad. Everything that we talk about is about building enduring great companies. That's companies where the leader, the CEO, President, whatever you want to call him or her, and the team build a company that lasts for generations and does incredible things on this wonderful planet of ours. Joined today, as always, with Brad Giles, my co host, Brad, how you doing today?
Brad Giles 00:41
I'm doing lovely today. Really well. Lovely Autumn in Perth, a lovely time of year. And things are good. I'm pretty happy and comfortable. I'm pretty awesome
Kevin Lawrence 00:57
and lovely. That's just such a sweet term. Almost some a little bit of British in there. Just as a nice word. I'd say I'm doing pretty good today to the sun is out in Vancouver. And let me tell you, it feels like we're in the middle of summer. It's April, and it was 24 degrees today. Well, so this weekend, I got to get outside, got out on my motorcycle got out in the car with the top down. And it's just like having just absolutely amazing the whole city is out even walking by the beach, or we're driving by the beach, actually. And you all the takeout restaurants, the biggest lines I've seen, it's like, you know, everyone is out soaking it up. And it feels awesome. So today, what are we? Well, we'll talk about the word of the day, first of all, and then we'll get into today. So Brad, what's your word of the day or your phrase of the day?
Brad Giles 01:55
Look, it's people today, and specifically people because our city went to 100% venue capacity, which means that on Thursday, I went to an actual real live concert with the performer called Missy Higgins, which was fantastic. Fantastic just to be out, you know, amongst people live music. And then on Friday, I went to a football game with 60,000 other people that were at 100% capacity at a local venue here. So it's just people is my word for the day.
Kevin Lawrence 02:37
And how does it feel to be in a crowd with that many people? I it's been a long time for me.
Brad Giles 02:43
Yeah, it's lovely. It's we've had a long time building up to it. So we started I think, like 20% and went to 50% and 70%. And it really is feeling quite familiar, or back to normal, in a sense. So that didn't feel too strange. But, you know, I'm in an area which let's just say it's a it's like a box area. So there's not as many people and then we did go down, you know, to the front row area to have a look. And it was absolutely jam packed full of people and no one had a mask, of course not one person that I saw. So yeah, that was it. It was a little bit strange to be in such a crowded environment again, but good.
Kevin Lawrence 03:40
Awesome. Well, my phrase of the day is vitamin D. And I think that's the one you get from the sun. Pretty sure it's the one you get from the sun. And it's just amazing how spectacular and for those of you that aren't from Vancouver would know that we get a lot of cloud and rain here. And we do get the summers can be beautiful, but at the offseason could be a little gray. And the amount is looking out and just seeing how beautiful it is out there. It's just it's soul-lifting and inspiring and it feels great. And you can see the whole place comes alive. I mean, more people are out than ever so vitamin D in the value of it. I used to get a lot more of it when I would trawling worked in the Middle East for years and a lot of time in California is no time in Hawaii and lots of other places nevermind vacations. And so getting in our in my hometown feels darn good, and I'm very grateful for it. So speaking about people in vitamins, what are we talking about today? Brad? What is the show about today?
Brad Giles 04:46
Yeah, we've got a different episode today. So quite a break from the norm. Often we're talking about one subject and how do you solve that subject but we introduced this concept The people magnet machine. Previously, we've spoken about that a couple of times. And we've had about a dozen questions about that, that we've we've brought together to try to answer today. So, yeah, we're talking about what does it mean to build a people magnet machine?
Kevin Lawrence 05:24
Yeah, perfect. And we're gonna go through these questions. And we're both gonna kind of share our perspectives on them to give some other ideas and context for people that are interested. I mean, I hope you're interested in building a people magnet machine. Because, you know, if you want to build an enduring great company, you need lots of great people to make that happen. And people make our lives wonderful. Or the opposite. So let's, let's jump in Brad.
Brad Giles 05:52
Okay, question number one. Why do you believe as you say, you can't build an enduring great business without great people? Why do you believe that you can't build an enduring great business without great people, Kevin? Well, you know, you actually might be able to,
Kevin Lawrence 06:14
or at least you can build an enduring, okay, business, you could think there is a chance, you know, and we're not about, you know, it's like, if we were gamblers, we'd be card counters, ie, we'd want to put the odds in our own favor. I'm not a gambler. I'm not a card counter. But, but the idea is, is you there's a slight chance, you could, but the odds are dramatically against you, because good people build good or mediocre companies, because they're wiring, great people have the great thinking, and the great skills and the great execution to build a great company. So it's very difficult. There's always exceptions, but it's very, very unlikely, because what happens is a company gets filled with good people. And then more mediocrity starts to creep in and more bureaucracy creeps in. And the organization just gradually fades. And then they get bought out, or something else happens. They're not along for another round for the long time, or they're not a leader for the learner long term. So I'll say like, because, you know, generally
Kevin Lawrence 07:23
you kind of need to, and because those great people are continue to do the things to make the company continue to be great. And to be around. Brad, what would you do?
Brad Giles 07:37
what i love that you said there is that the odds are dramatically stacked against you. And, we're both great fans of the work by Jim Collins, and in the work that he's done. It's simply a numbers game, if you don't understand your values, if you don't understand what high performance looks like, if you don't hold people to higher standards, if you don't do all of the work, and you kind of Bumble along and you might be good. The data says that you'd have a much lower chance of enduring on sticking around for the long term. And you might be bought out. So yeah, so I think in answer to the question, you can't do it, because that's what the research tells us. And if you want to outlast the competition, if you don't want to be bought out, if you want to survive for the long term, you're going to have to surround yourself with great people. The only other point about that is that you spend a lot of time working on repairing the damage that is done by mediocre people, you spend a lot of time Yeah, you spend a lot of time working, not on the good parts of the business. But on the bad parts. How can we solve the fact you know, ultimately, that we haven't got great people in these seats?
Kevin Lawrence 09:06
Yeah, and you end up spending more time managing down or overseeing stuff you don't have to do with great people. It's as soon as consumes more your time as a leader, and you're less likely to focus on the forward looking things that will make your company stronger in the future is you're stuck in a day to day because your people aren't great. The other thing to think about is if in doubt, look to professional sports, professional sports, put an exorbitant amount of energy into making sure that they have the best people period. And they have massive systems for the best people and people aren't performing at their best they don't play the game, or they don't even stay on that top team and they get pushed down. So it's not rocket science, but that's enduring great, like an enduring great sports franchise. Alright, let's go on to number two. What do you mean by a people magnet machine and you're kinda kind of had a flashes that was big as reading that bright of, of, you know, Scooby Doo and the Mystery Machine. Did you ever Yes. Yeah, that's hilarious. So Scooby Doo was a hilarious cartoon a group watch, you know, probably too much growing up as a kid, they had their van called the Mystery Machine. So we're not, it's not a mystery machine. We're not hiding all of our people in the back of the van. And goblins aren't going to come out and be in the haunted house, like there always seemed to be in Scooby Doo. What we're talking about is, is a company that continually attracts awesome people to it, the best want to work there. And some of the best are also developed there. It's not just about hiring great people. It's also developing. So imagine a bunch of cogs in a machine. And one of them brings in new people that become great. Another one brings in great people already into the existing system. And there's this ecosystem of awesome this. So it's got a great big magnet to attract people towards it. And it's a machine that makes people better.
Brad Giles 11:14
Yeah. And the only thing I'd add to that is, if you think about a business as being a machine, and I've kind of said before, a few times that this is a machine that spits out $100 bills, okay? If you make it work that way. Now, some Unfortunately, some businesses that people build, you need to put $100 bills into it, you just need to keep putting them in, and it never gives you anything back there, to be honest, is that unfortunately, lose money. Well, ideally, we're making a machine that spits out $100 bills consistently. And it's all the work that we do that gets that to happen. So we think about the concept of the business as being a machine that people working. We want it to be a machine that attracts exactly what you said, a machine that attracts people, but not just attracts people. It's like a magnet, they can't help but be drawn towards it. You get two magnets and try to pull them apart. You can't do it. It's it's a magnet, like attraction.
Kevin Lawrence 12:16
Exact so it pulls them there and it keeps them there. And that is perfect. And by the way, Brett could Can I request that we build ones that have $1,000 bills? Maybe 100? I prefer the $1,000 bill machine than the $100. Bill.
Brad Giles 12:29
If you can get if you got Zimbabwe, you can have one that makes a $1 billion bill. Unfortunately, yeah, it doesn't last that long. Yeah. So that's what we that's what we're saying you can't build an enduring business unless in some form, you build a people magnet machine, because you're not going to be able to attract and retain great people. Let's go on to number three, you recommend that employers share their greatness using a story? Define a greatness story? And can you give us an example? Yeah.
Kevin Lawrence 13:08
Now why would you want to let people know the awesome stuff that you're doing? I mean, come on. That's just craziness. Yes, of course, we want to share those stories. And, you know, it's interesting, I have seen so many different versions. And it depends on the culture of the company. You know, some organizations are very humble, and many are humble, humble, in a way where they don't like to talk about themselves, right?
Brad Giles 13:34
Yeah.
Kevin Lawrence 13:34
Others still have humble leaders, but they have a strong PR machine or a machine of, of telling the story. So I'm not saying it's not about humility. But there's, there's lots of great examples of what people do. And if you would look at unfortunately, he's no longer with us. But you know, Tony Shea, built an amazing culture at Zappos. And not only did a write an excellent book on it, called Delivering Happiness, he would do tours of their place of or of their offices, which are wild because, you know, people had lots of autonomy to how they decorated their offices, they had a culture of fun and engagement, which transferred through to their, to their customers. He spoke about it, you know, I've been at conferences where Tony spoke and shared about what they did so, so so he has done an amazing, amazing, amazing job. What are some other ones? I mean, and there's many more, but that's what that is one that was, you know, very impactful and, and he taught a lot of people about that a lot through what he was doing. How about yourself bribery?
Brad Giles 14:47
Yeah, I did the tour of Zappos on a quick note in Las Vegas when we were there, and it was just a fantastic insight into happiness, but to the question well, I you I think that it's a bit like brushing your teeth. Okay. And this is you need to always help people to understand the greatness through stories. And we connect that to core values and core purpose. So, you know, one of the exercises I do in quarterly workshops that I run with teams and annual workshops is asked the question, so can you tell me something great, something great that someone has recently done in the past quarter or the past month. And someone will always come up with something now which core value or core purpose does that connect to? And so building a rhythm and a habit around those stories, and really a legacy that we can draw upon in the future to help new employees understand the values and the purpose through lived stories.
Kevin Lawrence 15:55
Now, we've done just had a meeting last night with one of our client last week and we do strategy meetings, we every quarter do a survey. And we ask people about you know, highlights that people have the great things people did and the core value link to it's part of our system we do. And we gather those the client last week, they go through and ask for stories about every single core value which they then go back and share with the whole team. Other ones, you know interesting about in terms of sharing the, the macro story. So sharing of the value stories are awesome. And a great part of a culture, another client work with an India ashiana hosing their father on gupt, oom Gupta has started the company and he had passed now the three brothers are running it. But one of the brothers did a whole biography on his father sharing his story. And not only was it a, you know, an act of love and appreciation towards his father, but then the stories of how he built the company are able to stay alive as part of the legacy of the company as well.
Brad Giles 16:57
And that storytelling is so important, because as humans, we connect with stories. You know, before there was Excel spreadsheets before there was computers. Before there was even the written word, the only way we could communicate was by telling and recalling stories. And that's the way that our brain best Connect lived behaviors and legacy and what to do and what not to do. Don't go near the big black snake is the story, that big black snake it could cause you harm.
Kevin Lawrence 17:33
Yes, you know, there's another big black snake in our world these days. And that's called glass door. It's where people go to share their stories when they're not happy with an employer. Some people have made some pretty extreme accusations about Glassdoor and their business model. A lot of people do not like it. I haven't done enough behind the scenes, but what I know is you need to continue to share your great stories, because there's often somebody who wants to share bad stories. And you know, and what, whether they're true or not, is a whole separate conversation. But there are forums out there where people can share the bad ones and as a company and as a brand. And we want to make sure we continue share those great stories, the positive stories, and particularly I find reaching back sometimes into the heritage and founding of the company. Now some of the best brands in the world. I'm a big fan of Porsche as a brand and the way they do things. Yeah, no, they're understated, amazing, amazing product that they make. But they always reach back into the archives. And they'll talk about races in the early years or early models, they'll highlight a car from the 60s that they built and angle back to the kind of, you know, looking back and looking for a point is bringing the heritage of the company into the stories they tell as well.
Brad Giles 18:50
Awesome. So let's move on number four. Yeah, to parties come to the table in an employment relationship, the employee, and you, the employer. Tell us about what makes an ideal employee and what makes for an ideal employer. Mm hmm. Well, I guess, really, this is Yeah, we really only look from the employer perspective. Because if you want to be an ideal employer, you there's certainly a you can't really change who you are, you can't really change. You can't become Apple overnight, for example, you can certainly adapt and implement systems to become a better version of what you're doing and we encourage that at every turn. But specifically, what makes an ideal employee Well, I have written about this extensively in my book made to thrive the way I do and you and I have spoken about this concept before you and I originally started talking about it many years ago. And so my thoughts are you've got an ideal customer who's the customer that you'd like to serve. And you also you have an ideal employee that really comes about by understanding who is the employee that if they were on your bus in your company, they would be most living their own personal hedgehog. Okay? So they would be living their purpose, they would be doing what they're the best at who is that kind of person so that if you can think about the bus use that you're the latest standing at the front, looking back at the bus and the whole buses, the company's HR. And as you looked at all the seats, there are all these people who have who are living their own personal HR. Well, that's an ideal theoretical model. But yes, the point is, the ideal employee is going to align with your company purpose, okay? And they're going to also align with what you can be best at, and your kind of brand promise as well. So that, that, in a way, you've got the people who absolutely love doing what you are doing and what you can be the best that so yeah, for me, I think that that's one of the reasons that we spend more time hiring and less time firing, we want to get the best people, but maybe the people who are the best could be the best somewhere else. Kevin, what's your thoughts?
Kevin Lawrence 21:30
I think is high omega real simple response. And it's, you know, imagine, you're just gonna have a great big party, and you got your friends there. And you know, your friends that you naturally get along with, and even the ones you might not have seen for years, but you naturally get along with them, and you can count on them, and you understand what they're good at and understand what they're not. Well, that's kind of like an ideal play there. First of all, they're the people you'd want at the party. They're, they naturally get along with all of your friends, as as kind of a proxy for the rest of your team. They're really good at what they do. And you have a good sense of what they do and what they don't. And
Brad Giles 22:14
that's really all it is. Because you know,
Kevin Lawrence 22:15
a great team is a collection of people who are all weird in a similar way. They're all on a similar wavelength. And the ideal employee naturally fits in with what you need. And that's hard to do. And that's why like he said, we spent a lot of time defining clearly what is the job? What is the excellence required in the human to thrive in this particular role. And then what's all the other stuff around it that are that is needed. So for example, you're hiring a CFO right now helping to hire a CFO for one of our clients. He is an outstanding entrepreneur, you know, serial entrepreneur, you know, driven his hell, spectacular business, like everything about it's awesome. So this person not only needs to be a spectacular CFO, able to drive a very technical and compliance oriented back into the company, but they got to be able to work with our awesome, but very entrepreneurial CEO. Yeah, so the idea of employee It is not about the skill sets, they have a loan that is important, and their experience is important. The personality fit with the CEO is important, but they also have to be able to work with an entrepreneurial CEO. So there's a lot of variables at play. So the question is that situational, and it's worth time and energy to figure it out. And I've seen so many times, were someone that could have been ideal, some worlds can't, because of the company, like I've seen, even, you know, I go to executives, there's executives who can report to an entrepreneurial CEO. And then there's those that count those that can't, or almost might be able to be an executive somewhere else. But they probably would need to be a notch down or a director of that company. So anyway, natural fit, great for the party, if it metaphorically don't take a lot of management. And they're thrilled that they get the opportunity to work with you and you're thrilled you get the opportunity to work for them without that's kind of setting the bar pretty high. But that's what we aim for.
Brad Giles 24:14
Well, that's it's ideal. It's not it is. Yeah, it's
Kevin Lawrence 24:19
one thing that we do Brad on it, sorry, forgot to say and you mentioned it, I think, but we come up with we call an employee promise. Like what is it that we offer that is different than other rules out there? Because every environment has something different to it. It's like, like every dish that a chef puts up, hasn't, you know, they read those nice little descriptions of the dish? Well, every company has a very different environment and culture. So we've come up with coming up with two or three major things that say, here's what you're going to get here. And that might be different than other places is a way to try and help this process as well. And people either run towards that or away from that. Some cases to
Brad Giles 25:01
Yeah. It's interesting and that an employee promise does not mean. So we've got good pay. We You know, we've got health insurance, and we're going to give you four weeks off per year now, that is definitely not it. Call the
Kevin Lawrence 25:17
job. A good job has all those things. That's almost every company offers identical things.
Brad Giles 25:22
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So give me
Kevin Lawrence 25:25
a good example. Give an example company. Yeah. And theirs was, you get a lot of autonomy. lots of opportunities to grow. And you get to work with an amazing group of high performers. So yeah, high performing colleagues, autonomy, opportunities to learn and grow.
Brad Giles 25:51
And if that was explained to you during the, during the interview process, it's drawing the candidate like a magnet, which is exactly what we will zapper. Exactly or
Kevin Lawrence 26:06
repelling them like a magnet if the polarization is backwards?
Brad Giles 26:11
Absolutely, absolutely.
Kevin Lawrence 26:13
That company, for example, at one point had 91% A players.
Brad Giles 26:18
Yeah.
Kevin Lawrence 26:18
And so if you were not a high, strong, high performer, you would get crushed like trampled. Yeah. And they're making it very clear if you're awesome. Come play with us.
Brad Giles 26:30
So in my book made to thrive, I talk about Southwest Airlines, employee promise, and I looked quite deeply into their job adverts and what they do and it's, it's, it's subvert like it's not over, it's kind of between the lines, but it's lots of love for our team. It's lots of fun. And it's a collaborative team environment, like you can count on your team members to help you out. And that's the secret sauce that helps them to deliver their brand promise, which is lots of love. Lots of flights, and lots of fun. So that's the kind of connection thrust. So let's move on to number five. How do you recommend employers go about marketing to attract a players? Interesting question, how do you go? How do you recommend employers go about marketing to attract a players? Well, to answer
Kevin Lawrence 27:29
we first got to start with how do we normally find our a players?
Brad Giles 27:34
And before that, do you know what I think AI players don't respond to adverts because they're not in the market, because they're highly likely, they're highly in demand, you know, most AI players are going to be poached or are going to be headhunter, rather than responding to a job advert. And that's a really important Cornerstone to begin this conversation with
Kevin Lawrence 27:59
it is and that's and I was going a different road to the same place, Brad, which is we are looking at where they come from. Normally, many of them come from relationships, right, where we have known them or other people on the team have known them.
Brad Giles 28:13
Yes.
Kevin Lawrence 28:14
And so if we know that the source, you'll always go back and look at where your best people come from same with your customers. And if you go back and trace your steps, you'll find a lot of it came from relate a lot of them for most companies, maybe yours is different, right. And so it's some relationship, someone worked with them before often or went to school with them or knew them. And if that's the case, then we need to grease that channel or work that channel or leverage that channel of the relationships. And for most companies, what we try and it's hard is to get both the CEO and the key leaders to continually reach out to their networks. Yes, building a bench of interested people that are ready to come in at some time. But it's no different than prospecting for new clients. It's like prospecting for new employees. The challenge is, most people don't put the energy into it. Right. And as a result, so when when when they don't have anything in a prospect system, then they got to spend a lot of time and energy quickly going and trying to find someone and then you end up spending a lot of money to get a recruiter to go and do that for you because the recruiter already has a warm network generally. And but if we're cold, it's very, very challenging to do so. Yeah. It's tapping into relationships and trying to find ways to get the team to put time into that proactively.
Brad Giles 29:39
There's no substitute for a virtual bench. It's as simple as that. There's no substitute for marketing is important, I think in advocating the employee promise in advocating Yeah, this is what we stand for. And so you and I've mentioned before I used to own one of the businesses I owned was The job board, okay, so like monster.com, or seek if you're Australian. And I got to see virtually the same job advert almost the same words, okay. And the traffic was the same, everything was the same. But the amount of people that clicked on the advert because of the employer brand was like 100 times different, it was remarkable. And it all comes back to what is your employer brand. Now, you may think, oh, one was a big company, and one was a small company. That's not what I'm talking about. It was, you could have companies that were, let's say, multinational, and known, it was the employer brand off the bat that was making a substantial difference. So having a establishing and bought employer brand is one thing. Yeah. But equally, there's no substitute for building an employer, virtual, so employee virtual bench or bench. And that means we've it's the hard work, which means we don't have to rely as much on recruiters, as you said,
Kevin Lawrence 31:10
Okay, so and other things that we see clients do, people do put a lot of energy, those that recruit from universities, do put a lot of energy into recruiting in that and building relationships at the schools can be a great strategy if you're bringing in new recruits. And people will dedicate a lot of resources to that. And on the employer brand, like anything, you know, a company we work with will spend a lot of time and energy on LinkedIn, sharing good content, building their networks, and even LinkedIn as an example, if they're recruiting a higher level executive piece, as were their undoing some of their employer brand stuff or other platforms. And the other final piece, it's a little controversial. But the other thing that companies will do is the best places to work or great places to work surveys Now, look at those consultants that help you win it. So the system can be gamed, and it's a bit of a vanity contest. But it does get you to do things and it shows your desire to be a great place to work. And I have those things I love about that and things I don't, you know, and there's, there's pros and cons, but it is something that gives almost an endorsement of potential greatness, that can also help candidates feel more comfortable with you because it shows you have an interest in or a dedication to your employees. And again, I guess my, my own concerns about it. But generally, it's good marketing, let's just say that. It looks really good. It looks good to candidates.
Brad Giles 32:44
And we've really drifted into question six, which is a good thing, which is, and I'm going to continue on what you said, How does a company's brand in the marketplace figure into recruiting? So you've mentioned great place to work one of the teams that I work with Kristen, who, you know, they've won the Best Place to Work or great place to work, I should say, for the past 10 years in a row. An amazing achievement. And, you know, like, it is a great place to work. There's such a caring group of people, they always begin their emails, for example, with Kevin, how are you today? And it's simple, but there's these tie in that kind of voice Yeah, and I don't know how you do a voice on an email, but they seem to do it. I got it. Yeah. It's just a caring place to work. Awesome. Yes. Awesome. They're a physio therapy company called the physio CO in Melbourne. And yeah, they, they just, yeah, I've been working with probably six years, I think now maybe seven years and they're employer brand within the market, they always need to work on it. But what it means like that magnet and why we're using that magnet analogy, because in physio therapy, you've got one group of people who were like, here's what I want to do. I want to become a sports physio therapist, and I want to be on the sideline for the athletes when they come off and do all this stuff. And like, I love competitiveness. And then there's another person who is more like, yeah, I want to help people to help hurdler like and so they've got that magnet north and south attracting the people who are the latter. The athletes because they specialize in aged care, physiotherapy, that's their market now.
Kevin Lawrence 34:41
Right, which is a special market or different market.
Brad Giles 34:45
Yeah. So that's my thoughts on that. Any other thoughts? Awesome.
Kevin Lawrence 34:50
No, I think it's important and going into the budget for you know, marketing these things. Yeah. Every company is different. But investing in things like that are helpful and everyone will be different. But you got to put it no different than what I've seen over the years. You there's energy you put into your marketing for customers, if you're going to be a great company, you have to put energy into your marketing for employees to it's not just a side of the desk thing. They both need systems that help bring great talent to the table, or great opportunities to the table.
Brad Giles 35:26
Yeah, so that was to the question, should a company budget for investing in marketing to attract new talent? How much might that cost? Yeah, from
Kevin Lawrence 35:35
zero to a billion, I don't know, depends on how many people but it's important. And again, it depends on the scale of your company.
Brad Giles 35:44
But how much does attrition cost? How much does every time you lose someone we've, you know, the stats are something like for frontline employee, because one time their salary to replace them by the time you hire, recruit, train onboard all of this stuff to get them back up to speed. So he you know, then you can go up to I guess, 10 or 15 times for an executive level role can be, you know,
Kevin Lawrence 36:13
what, it's 30. Yeah, and I don't have a stat on what it is. But it needs, if you're going to continue to add more people, somehow you're going to do it through money, or through labor, or through paying recruiters to do it. Either way, somehow, you got to do it. And it's an important part of your growth engine, because people's growth is usually limited by their access to talent. That's what we find is access to great talent is what limits their growth, or limits their sanity, because the stress kicks in when they don't have enough of the right people.
Brad Giles 36:45
Yeah. So if you're not getting enough, a player's applying, not withstanding what we've already said about the virtual bench, and you've got an attrition rate that is very expensive. You know, then that's where you can begin to think, well, if we were to reduce our return our attrition rate, like rather than having everyone leave after 14 months, we could get them to leave after 12 months. That's where you can begin to develop your budget pool from.
Kevin Lawrence 37:15
Yep, I think and you're saying leaving after 12 months is less desirable? Okay, good. I got that. I got it backwards. Okay, perfect. So yes, we've suddenly been in 14 months, we will have to leave at 24 months, stay longer if you're good. If you're good. Please stay longer. Okay. Number eight. Once an employee is hired onboarding takes place, We sure hope so. Then development, that would be awesome. Describe your vision about how companies might best onboard their new hires. Now, Brad, I know you're working on a book around this, I'll share a couple things first, from the simple level that we see. First of all, when you onboard someone to critical things, I see one, have a plan. And it's more than just meet Sally and in HR to get your paperwork done. So you get a paycheck, like, have a serious plan. And I know you can talk to that, you know, very, very well. But a serious plan over a long period of time, which I know you've taught you're doing finding in research. So a real detailed plan and number to make sure that they don't feel the pressure to do too much too fast. Now, I get most involved in the onboarding a senior execs. And when they come on, I have the same talk with them every time it's like, Hey, I'm so excited, you're able to join this great company that I get to work with. Remember, there's a lot going on in this place. And it'll take a while to really understand it. So my expectation is the coach to the company, is you take the first three months, and you get to understand the business, understand the nuances, get to know the relationships, get to know the dynamics truly understand it, get in there, get your hands dirty, help out as much as you can. But don't expect we don't expect you to pull a rabbit out of the hat. We don't expect you to go and revolutionize the entire company in the first few months Actually, we don't want you to, we want you to learn and then put together a plan of what you would do. But when people come in to try too hard to do too much too fast, it almost always ends up in a nightmare, because they have beautiful intent and they have understanding where they come from, but they haven't learned this place yet. So my summary is a very clear plan of all the activities and not too much too fast. Tell them just to calm down, and that we don't need them to turn the world upside down in 90 days actually prefer they don't
Brad Giles 39:49
agree with everything that you've said there. A couple of quick points because I could talk about this for hours. Because I'm so heavily invested in writing this book at the moment. Number one 86% of companies have a onboarding process that is 14 days or less, okay. And the magic that comes from onboarding happens after 30 days. So the real ramp up in, in qualitative, impactful output happens between 30 and 60 days. And my advocation is that a onboarding process should be 90 days. And I'm going to very, very specific and particular process around that. The only other thing that I'd say to close that out without having a podcast about onboarding, is that onboarding is not training. onboarding is not induction. onboarding is about getting a person to understand three things, which is understanding the culture of the business, understanding the technical and process expectations of the business. And third is understanding the managers expectations, how their manager Dysport defines success of that individual's role. Yeah, so that's probably what I would say about onboarding for a few key points there. So let's move on.
Kevin Lawrence 41:21
And let's make sure we do a full episode on a Brad, it's a very important topic. Okay, go ahead, please,
Brad Giles 41:27
a note on how I should employ, develop and invest in their people.
Kevin Lawrence 41:35
Well, the first thing they should decide is whether they should develop and invest in that person or not. Not everyone should be developed or invested in if you don't think you're going to get a return. Because sometimes we've got a wrong person, either in that job, or they're actually they shouldn't even be in your company, they're not a fit. So make sure you develop the one make sure first that this person is someone that you want to truly develop, or maybe you should be doing something different. So that's the first question. Jim Collins has an amazing seven questions to help you make that decision. Look up Jim seven questions of whether you should develop or replace. But so that is, that is the first thing, but generally, should we of course, you should develop an invest in people, you just got to be looking for a return on that investment. And in every case, it's not, but it's almost a minimum requirement, unfortunately. And it's almost like if you buy, whether it's a jet, or a boat, or any piece of equipment, it requires maintenance. And in the purchase of things like boats and jets. There's a calculation and, you know, rough numbers, but it's about 5% of the initial purchase value is required for annual maintenance period. So same thing kind of goes true for humans. There's a minimum amount of we'll call it learning and development that we require to stay at our best. And there's the salary is a cost. But there's so I think that's very, I think it's very important. And, Brad, I know you have lots of thoughts on this.
Brad Giles 43:19
Yeah. Very similar. So how much? So first of all, how should employers develop and invest in their people? Well, number one said budget, and you just said 5% of salary costs. Great. So it doesn't need to be 5%. But pick a number, allocate that as a budget line, item number one, limit number two, who is accountable for that? All right, people and culture manager or it's the managing director, or I don't know how someone has to be accountable for that. And then they've got a budget, and we've got someone who's accountable. And then the third part is where is everybody at in their growth curve. So Bob, maybe at a different learning and development requirement level than Jenny, or whoever it is. And so each person has an has a next step in their career that that person who is accountable for the, for the budget pool, knows and is working alongside them, and ideally, interacting with their manager as well. And that's how they're allocating the budget through internal or external learning and development curriculum.
Kevin Lawrence 44:30
And don't forget yourself. Even the CEO and the senior leaders, they also the I actually think they need it as much as or more. And if you might, in theory, if you had a 5% budget for training and development 5% of salaries as a benchmark based on that's based on airplanes and boats, it's not based on people that haven't done the math and companies so you know, there'll be a better source for that. But it might be that there's 2% that goes to the front line or 3% or 4%. And on your executives, actually, this, this, I'm talking myself out of a bribe, because salaries go up as you get closer to the CEO. So the 5% would allow more dollars for the executives, because it's 5% of a bigger number. So I'm just I was thought it might be more percentage allocation, but the allocation might not be. But that's those CEOs and executives needed. And we often when we start working with companies, to get them onto a path of greater newness, or back on the path of greatness is that the executives are antsy or under educated or underdeveloped themselves.
Brad Giles 45:32
And that really leads into the next question number 10. Should there be a formal leadership development program? Should you use mentors?
Kevin Lawrence 45:42
Well, let's split that up, then there's a built in program, the answer is, yeah. Now do you run it internally? Or do you outsource? It is one thing at a certain scale, lots of companies build their own universities. But most of the times until you get into the many hundreds of employees, many hundreds, you're better off outsourcing and having someone else do it, but you don't have enough the critical mass running leadership education programs that we do, we do a program that we have provided an open source solution to many of our clients. But that's a lot of work. Now, for every hour in the room, you got 10 hours of prep, at least. Yes. And that assumes you already know the content. So yeah, so should you do it? Absolutely. Um, but you know, at a certain size, you might internalize it. And in my view as mentors, yeah, mentors are magic. Just magical. There are people who can provide guidance, they have the been there done that, right, and guidance and wisdom, we encourage our executives to get mentors all the time. Same with the CEOs not that we work with. So the answers are Yes. And yes, it's just a matter of how brandable you are,
Brad Giles 46:59
the only thing I would add to that is in terms of leadership development program, a couple of episodes ago, we spoke about spiraling up where we want everybody in the organization to be spiraling up where they're getting every month, every quarter, every year, they're becoming a better version of themselves, for the reason that they can stay ahead of the growth of the business, they can. They you know, as the advisor, Coach, you and I need to stay ahead of the CEO and the business, the CEO needs to stay ahead of the business and the managers or the executives need to stay ahead of the growth of the business broadly as well. So we all need to be continuing to learn as much as we can through that journey. So look, absolutely. Alright, let's go on to number 11. The cost of replacing an employee can range from one to two or even more times the salary as we spoke about earlier, when you work with a company plagued by her high turnover, how do you go about diagnosing the problem?
Kevin Lawrence 48:04
We know worst of all this the stats we've heard like 14 times salary for a wrong person and that's more for a miss hire someone who hasn't worked out and done damage which we have seen. But yes, I losing good people. I mean, I if you want to watch me get mad, and I'm pretty fiery to start with. But when we lose a players and the companies we work with, I get angry, and I want answers. And I'm just the coach. They're not my companies. But I'm although I feel like they're losing a player as a massive sin and a massive mistake. So you know, it's a big thing. So, for me more plagued by a high turnover, first of all, because we do quarterly surveys, and we often reach down a couple layers, to test engagement, a couple simple questions to understand what's going on. It gives us a sense of it. So we already kind of have a clue. Or we can see the trends of what people aren't happy about, especially when we split them by division. So we get a lot of data on this on an ongoing basis. But the biggest thing is always data. And there's the data is on two different things. The a players we lost, why do we lose them? Again, it might be through the engagement surveys or exit interviews. We're a big fan of exit interviews. And sometimes we even do them ourselves for clients when if the HR we don't think can get the truth. So and then secondly, if they're losing a bunch of people that aren't a players, then we either go back into the hiring or the onboarding process I'm excited about new book comes out because of will give it'll give us more of a benchmark to look at for what to compare their systems to. But we you know, if you're losing a lot of people that aren't a player's which is generally good for a business, but if there's too many that means there's a hiring problem, generally a hiring problem. But if the onboarding is broken, broken, you may have people who could be high performers who are not looking like it because the they're on board. system didn't serve them.
Brad Giles 50:01
One of the objectives of onboarding, okay, one of the specified objectives is to be confident that we can fire this person within the legally prescribed period of approximately 90 days, depending on your country. So, yeah. You know, it's like the ripcord on a parachute. Like, we want to know, okay, it's time to pull. This person's got to go or Yes, this person is, you know, going to be we're confident they're going to be high performing person in the team. So yeah, obviously, it comes back to onboarding. I think that the thing that I'm really interested about in this book is why do people create bad cultures, which is kind of talking about the problem here? So everyone talks about, do you have a bad culture? Have you got a bad culture? Can you diagnose that you've got a bad culture? Everyone talks about that. And then we've got the antidote to solve that problem. But no one talks about, well, why did bad coaches happen in the first place? And my part of my thesis is, yeah, part of my thesis is that it comes from onboarding like it's you don't have we've got a onboarding program that's a week or four days. So yeah, all I can set someone up to win. Yeah. So how do we know the problem? We know that the problem of high turnover is there, because we can see the attrition rate we can see how many people are leaving. And then we kind of dig into departments, is that always one manager or whatever? And then what are we doing on the rowing that's creating that? So let's move on to the last one. What are your recommendations for employers to retain their best people.
Kevin Lawrence 51:53
we do a lot, a lot, the first thing is to actually just care. Because a manager should be caring for and understanding their people, their job is to serve their people and help them to do their best work and achieve their goals. So you know, the first thing is to truly take an interest in and care and that takes time, some managers are way too busy. But understanding where they're at, ask them what they need, you know, so that was a starting concept. You know, one of the ways that we do it is by doing quarterly talent reviews, where we go through all of our key people, and look at where they're at, and how do we help them to grow and thrive. And in some cases, with a players, they may or may not need to grow, but they definitely need to keep thriving. And sometimes we got to do stuff for them. So we unfortunately get caught up in all the problem people. And our best people often get neglect from lack of attention or lack of energy. And, but we need to be careful that we don't do that. So care, every quarter really do an evaluation of your team and know what you got to do to sharpen up the people who aren't performing, but also to really take good care of your A's. And, you know, the best acronym for it was I heard both Mark Cuban share this with us an event which is kyp know your people, like you got to be in there with him, you got to know what's going on in their world and what's good and what's bad, and what's stressing them and what they're up against. So you can assist them. Another CEO, Charles, built a company called Vega, he said something very similar. That was a very successful entrepreneur here in Vancouver, and he came to one of our retreats for a client. And he just said that, you know, with his people that you got to be really close and tight. And you got to understand, you know, what's going on? And a lot of people don't, a lot of people aren't close enough to their people. And that's, you know, one of the biggest things, I think, because then you're gonna know what the issues and things are to help them. How will you read? What do we think we'd recommend?
Brad Giles 53:50
Our last episode was the seven hidden reason employees leave. And we spoke about a book by Les Brown and Yep, gee, you know, the last thing, the last thing is pay. Okay, the last reason that people will is paid. So what are all of the other reasons? Like, yeah, go back and have a listen to that episode? Have a look at Lee's book? It's fantastic. Yeah. Um, you know, there's an old saying, which is people, you know, people don't leave a company, they leave a manager. So, you know, investing in your managers to care, as you said, investing in your culture, making sure that there are leadership development programs and mentors. Like it. This really summarizes a lot of the stuff that we've spoken about today and last week, as well.
Kevin Lawrence 54:48
Yeah, and one of the big things, just make sure that you're setting them up to want to be coming to work or working, doing their work. Yeah. And that sometimes involves as I talk about my book, you know, I call them toxic Ace, no the high performing jerks. Get them out of the damn system. Because the way that you can really lose good people is by keeping bad people because it will drive them bonkers and create a lot of unnecessary stress in their world.
Brad Giles 55:15
Indeed, all right. What a good chapter I found that answering some questions today about one subject that we'd been, we'd been asked. And so let's move to close. I don't know that we need to summarize them. I think we've kind of we've been through them and answer. So with that. Thank you for listening. This has been the growth whispers podcast. I'm Brad Giles and as always joined by Kevin Lawrence, my co host for myself, Brad, you can find me at evolution partners.com.au. And for Kevin, you can find Kevin at Lawrence and co.com. Thank you very much. We look forward to hopefully chatting with you again next week. Enjoy your week.
Podcast Episode 54 - 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave
IN THIS EPISODE:
If you're going to build a People Magnet Machine, a culture in your business that attracts the right people, you must understand the real reasons why employees leave their jobs.
Perhaps they tell you they leave for higher pay, but the data doesn't support that in most cases. Instead, according to Leigh Branham, there are seven real, hidden reasons people leave.
This week we discuss those seven reasons and what you must do to address each.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.
Kevin Lawrence 00:13
Welcome to the growth whispers podcast where everything we talk about is building enduring great companies. This is a passion that Brad Giles, my co host, and I have, in terms of companies that are able to endure and endure for decades, generations. It's kind of exciting stuff for us. It might not be exciting for others, but we like to learn and share the best things that we learn. And that's what we do here in this podcast. So I'm Kevin Lawrence, as I have already mentioned, my amazing co host, Brad Giles down there in Australia. Good day. How are you doing?
Brad Giles 00:46
Good, how are you today?
Kevin Lawrence 00:59
I'm good. I'm doing really well. Had a good workout this afternoon. I kind of had an easy morning, and intended to get out and didn't and had a good workout this afternoon. And it's amazing how much better my energy and how much better I feel after a good workout. So yeah, that's good. I feel really good. And I'm been my nature path was suggesting I try this keto diet thing. I hope do a reset in my system. So it's like, not even minimal carbs, but like vegetables, and protein and fat and it's so strange to be focused on eating fat. When you know, you're conditioned to think it's bad for you so unexpected. They say lots of great things happen when you do this for a period of time. It's almost like a it's like a different version of a cleanse by just eating copious amounts of animal and other protein. So I'm feeling energetic, as well. So yeah, it's good. How are you? How are you doing today?
Brad Giles 01:58
Oh, I'm very good. I'm very good. Just had four days down south three hours south of Perth here in the wind and surfing region of Margaret River. And yeah, it was it's autumn here. So it was just great to get away in the call the forest. Yeah, had a really good break and eager to get back into it. So tell me, what's your phrase or word for the day, every day? You know, for the listeners benefit. We begin with a word or phrase best practice that we suggest in opening meetings camp, what's your word or phrase for the day?
Kevin Lawrence 02:38
mine is a combination of a grounded reset. You know, it was actually a pretty crazy week last week for a whole bunch of reasons. It was crazy. And I feel like instead of getting a town spent some time just to kind of reset things. And I needed that and when it you know, incredibly busy time to set up and so it's like a grounded reset. So I've reset. I've refocused and I know what I need to do. And I'm kind of excited about getting it done. So yeah, a grounded reset. And I know it doesn't sound maybe exciting, but sometimes things get a little hairy and a little crazy. And yeah, I feel pretty good about it. So that's me. How about you, Brad? What's your word, your phrase of the day.
Brad Giles 03:26
So what happened here last week in Australia. Regarding the Coronavirus. Is the federal government put all of its resources into this AstraZeneca
Kevin Lawrence 03:40
Oh, no,
Brad Giles 03:40
they did. Yes, they did. All of its resources. So they bet. Basically, the whole population's vaccination on AstraZeneca a year ago, or let's say, six months ago, and they pre-ordered and did a whole range of things. And then there's obviously a problem with blood clotting now. So this past week, they've had to say, we are now only going to have people who are under 50 to be vaccinated. Sorry, only people under 50 cannot be vaccinated using AstraZeneca.
Kevin Lawrence 04:21
Mostly bad for people of that age. Wow.
Brad Giles 04:25
it causes blood clots because the body overcompensates the immune system overcompensates, and it kind of goes into hyperdrive or overdrive and then creates these blood clots. So that kind of that, in the back of my mind made me think about the immune system of an organization and so my word is the body ejects the virus. When Jim Collins was writing good to great there was a group of researchers judges that were in a meeting and one of them said, the people who are a players in these organizations, these great organizations, it's like they were hired in. And they just if they don't fit, it's like the body injects the virus. So yeah, that's my phrase today. The body's awesome. Yeah,
Kevin Lawrence 05:23
well, you know, you know, and if there's a really grounded reset, sometimes that can cause you to reject stuff, right? You can, you can inject the good, or the bad story and bring in more good you like, I bring it together, reset and ends up objecting to revive virus and all the bad stuff. When leaders are grounded and focused, they get rid of the bad stuff, and they make room for good stuff, man, where we didn't even talk about it. But we're really I feel like a rapper like we've been two sentences together. Anyways, yeah, well, essentially, but I love the idea of injecting the virus and I love watching it happen. Yeah, interestingly, that ties into today's show, because sometimes the virus ejects itself. That is when someone joins a company and they don't fit or they don't love it, they, pull the ripcord and they self eject out of the company. And that's what we're talking about today. Today, we're talking about when people decide, enough of you, I'm out right now, whether they're like a fighter jet pilot that feels like they're flying into a mountain, and they're gonna pull the ejector seat and parachute out before they crash, or before the company crashes, or they're just sick and tired of their boss. We're talking about that today new, interesting stat for you to think about when it comes to why people leave. Man, do people bs themselves about why their people leave them. And there's a funny saying is that, you know, people don't leave companies, they leave managers. And we have data to back it up. Author Lee brown wrote a book seven hidden reasons employees leave, it's kinda like a secret book that I tell people about, they usually haven't heard about it. And it's amazing. And what they found in close to 20,000 interviews, and I've verified this through our own discussions with teammates that we'll talk about that more. But when people leave a company voluntarily, most people think they got pulled away by more money. And that's almost always a lie. That is not they may have told you that are a whole bunch of other things. But that's almost always a lie. Now, it's a convenient lie. Because then you don't have to feel like you did a crappy job. You can blame it on the other company, but it's actually not true. And the stats are, is that 89% of managers believe people are pulled by better pay. Generally, the data in the research here shows that close to 90% of the time it's something other than money was the root cause of why they know the end, they might have been pulled by a few bucks. But it wasn't the few bucks. There's these other things in this brilliant book called seven hidden reasons why people leave which we're going to dig right into today. So we are not kidding ourselves. Yeah, absolutely.
Brad Giles 08:27
If you are listening to this, and you have a person who has recently left you and you're telling yourself that perhaps what's happened is they left because they got a better offer or though, you know, the data is telling us that there's a nine out of 10 chance that that's just not the case. 90% chance that that's just not the case. So I want to I really want to dig into one part from the book. paradise fire right now. But what it's saying is that this disconnect between 89% of managers believe that people are pulled away by better play pay, but in actual fact, it's other reasons. Okay, so this is the phrase that I love from this book, this astounding disconnect between belief and reality allows managers to deny responsibility for correcting and preventing the root causes of employee disengagement.
Kevin Lawrence 09:34
Yes, it is. And that's what drives me crazy because I'll be in meetings all day went because I got paid more, which completely stops the managers an organization's ability to learn and get better. It's an easy scapegoat to not dig into the root cause and you guys know I'm getting excited about this because when we lose good people, to me, it's a massive sin serious problem and it's like an undeniably undefendable error like it, I mean, we all mess up. But it's but if we get to the root of it and you know what's interesting? No Brown, what I found is that, you know, when I talk to key people in companies we work with, and we'll, we put a lot of time and energy recruiting and building key leaders in these companies. And when people come over, I'm always curious, they always ask them, why did you leave? And guess what, they always state one of the damn seven on this list, it's never money. Even better, you know, I've had many leaders that I've worked with, that have been offered over the time. 5100, sometimes 150% more money. And when they don't go ask the same question, why did you say, yeah, and they get one of the seven reasons, or are multiples of the seven reasons usually when they say why they stay. So that's real life data, it's convenient to think it's money makes you feel better if you lose a good person. But, you know, the research says different. And when you go and dig in, and you know, our firm, even we do exit interviews, sometimes for clients when they lose, you know, a player's when we dig in, it ain't money. But I will tell you, I do believe that they sometimes will say that, because it's a very nice way not to burn a bridge, if I worked for you, Brad, instead of sitting down and telling you that you're a jerk. And a word that starts with an A, that's not a player, instead of telling you that and having you hate me forever, I can make it a convenient excuse around compensation. And that way, I'm not burning a bridge, I don't have to, you know, have conflict with you. And you know, I can, we can both save face. But it's wrong, because we're missing out on the root causes of why we lose awesome people that are so critical to our organization. Now, if they were one of those viruses, ie someone that wasn't a great fit. Well, that's okay. Yeah, well, in all the other cases, it's not an I have seen some catastrophic losses we've had in companies, and but this book is a great resource to try and minimize those. And for those of you focused on retaining your best people, this is an amazing book to understand the psychology of retention, because it really goes back into the psychology in disengagement, which eventually leads to people leaving,
Brad Giles 12:47
it's just lazy. It's just, it's a lazy excuse to say money, because as that sentence said, it allows managers to deny responsibility. And if someone is saying, oh, that person left, because of PE, the first response should be E. But what's the real reason? What's the real reason
Kevin Lawrence 13:09
and that's the culture we want to build into companies is, that may or may not be what they said. But let's figure out the real reason, because we know there's more to it than just that. Yeah, the money is not and it's fascinating how money is not the powerful source, we think it is in a lot of things. So interesting. Before we get into the magic seven, you know, they also know the author talks about the, the process of disengagement. And what he talks about is it's almost like people gradually walk down the stairs, like they're walking down stairs towards the ocean. And then they get lower and lower levels of disengagement. And they wonder why am I here? It's just increasing levels of frustration till it gets to the point more metaphorically, it's like, the straw breaks the camel's back. There's just so much weight on them, and so much pressure that they just say, you know, peace out, I've had enough, you know, I'm going to go and take this job for two bucks more.
Brad Giles 14:09
I remember a similar example, I was studying in Boston many, many years ago. And there was an Electric Code, Doctor general bill leadership expert, from, I think, from the southern US and he, he had this one slide that was just fantastic. He said, people need to be proud of their company, they need to be proud of their product. They need to be proud of manager and they need to be proud of their team, or else they will eventually leave. And that isn't what we're talking about today. But it's very similar if people are leaving because of pay. Mike, one of my questions is well are we giving them something to be proud of across Those four areas,
Kevin Lawrence 15:02
it's sometimes even when people ask for more pay. And I've seen it where sometimes the more pay is relevant for their role. But sometimes it's because, you know, I don't like my manager, I don't like my team, I'm not proud of the company, so you better sure as heck pay me a ton of money to justify me rotting my soul in your organization. Right. And that I've seen that often, it's just, it's almost like danger pay, you know, for those people that work up on the, on the power lines, or on the top of skyscrapers, you know, straggling metal beams. You know, back in the old days, it's almost like they want danger pay to deal with all the crap. And again, that's not i'm not saying that's true in your company, I'm just saying we need to be aware of these things.
Brad Giles 15:43
Many, many years ago, we had a, I had a saying amongst other people, which was that a pay rise only lasts a week. And what that means is that after a week, it's nice to see your pay packet increase. But then you go back, and you've got to deal with the day to day problems of effective organization. So even if
Kevin Lawrence 16:03
your manager is still a jerk, even though you're getting an extra buck an hour, a couple 100 bucks a month, your managers still a jerk, or your computer still doesn't work properly, or the workplace is not comfortable, or your chair is no good, or your co workers are whatever it happens to be. And you're right. It's fascinating, you know, there's a whole thing around compensation strategy. And around compensation strategy. It's interesting, many companies that we work with, that have outstanding cultures as part of what makes them great. Well, they pay fairly, they're not at the highest paying jobs in the market, and they're not the lowest, they're generally somewhere in the middle. But part of the thing is, is they have such a great culture, you know, people are happy to work for their money. You know, it doesn't need to be the best in the industry in some cases. Because if there's other benefits, it's like, you know, half of the value in the job is the paycheck. The other half is the intrinsic stuff that makes you feel good about yourself and other things, which we'll get into here. So should we jump into our seven amazing reasons, Brad?
Brad Giles 17:05
Let's do it. So Reason number one, the job or workplace was not as expected. And then the data around this is that about 35% of American workers quit in the first six months. 35%. Wow, that's a lot of energy and recruitment fees
Kevin Lawrence 17:29
and pain, headaches, disappointments, can you imagine both sides lose in the old? To me, this is like the good old bait and switch. Yeah, we're it's this and it's either overselling it in appropriately selling it ignorantly selling it and not knowing. No, it's interesting. As a side note, we own some companies, they'll get people to talk to key employees to get a sense of what it's like, you know, when we do interviews for executives, we want to understand the environment they're used to, and that they have thrived in or not liked to see if it matches and even even even in our own firm, or a small boutique firm. But we when we bring people on, we tell them upfront, hey, it's intense here. Hey, there's very high expectations of quick responsiveness. And even Hey, our weekly meetings are Monday nights at 6pm. Yes to 530 or six 5:30pm 5:30pm in the evening on Mondays, which is on the west coast. But if you're on the East Coast, that is 8:30pm. So our guys on the East Coast work from 830 till 10, every Monday night on our weekly team meeting. And but it's one of the first things we tell people, even though on our support team, here's what you're gonna be signing up for. And if that's not okay, you know, that's okay. But this is what you're signing up for. And so there's no, that would be a very ugly thing to find out after you took a job.
Brad Giles 19:01
I mean, yeah, for sure. And that feeds into but if you're up front, then that's okay, that feeds into the job or workplace was not as expected. And why is that? It's often because people say, what are we going to do? People, hiring managers or people who are responsible or like, we've just got to get someone in as quick as possible, because this job isn't being done. You know, in my book made to thrive. I outlined the five roles of a CEO and that is accountability, Ambassador culture, strategy, and succession planning. And that feels the role of a leader succession planning. Within that there's a concept that I draw from a book called top grading, which is the virtual bench and, and for key roles. You've got to have people that you're talking to already people who could potentially make it so that you don't have this situation, which is what are we going to do, we're in strife. We've got MTC, we need to just get someone in there because then if they one of the 35%, that leave within six months, you just you've just got a revolving door.
Kevin Lawrence 20:10
It is. So yeah, and that's a case of some cases where that's the case, Brad, we're just so desperate to get someone. And sometimes there's some ugly things in the company that people aren't comfortable telling others is just mismanagement, people actually don't paint a clear enough picture of what this place is like, to make sure it's like, it's almost like, you know, we're selling them a car. And it's like, they say, I want something that has four wheels, and can get me to work. And then we actually believe that that's okay. Versus further helping them understand what we sell this type of car, for this type of price. With this kind of warranty, this kind of gas mileage and trying to match, you know, it's been in the carpet to talk about but you know, they say there's, there's a button for every seat, putting the right person into the right car, versus just having them take the job and find all kinds of stuff that doesn't work. So, again, that's, that is preventable. We can and we can, you know, refine over time, and we're never perfect. How do you refine overtime to make sure you paint a clear picture of what the jobs like. And in your interview process, make sure that you're assessing yourself, whether they will naturally fit within your environment. So that's number one. job or workplace wasn't always it was a bad surprise, or a good old, unintentional usually, bait and switch. So number two, the mismatch between the job and person? Yeah, which we've touched on a little bit, but in the right job. And you're the one I see all the time a lot, is someone who is very, very social with an outgoing social personality, in a disc profile, they'd be high on AI or higher on AI would influence. And then you put them in, they put them into a role that's solitary. And they're supposed to sit there and work by themselves all day, and they would be absolutely miserable, or a person who's been a very powerful individual contributor, and we put them into a manager role. And not only do they not even that, and they haven't built the skills, yet, lots of people can learn to manage, you know, they may or may not want to do it, but they actually don't have the skills to be a manager. And if you don't like managing people, and don't have the skills, it would be an absolute nightmare. And you would hate it. And it's hard sometimes, for people to leave those promotions and go back into individual contributor role, which is something that we see a lot. Well, it's
Brad Giles 22:37
about getting the right people on the bus in the right seats. So you got to make sure that the people who are in your organization are in the right role for them. And that comes back I guess, to degree with the reason one as well to considering the hiring process to be you want to spend more time hiring, and less time firing, you want to spend more time up front and the way that that translates when it's been a little while now. But the that I have conducted interviews is I might say, Kevin, thanks for coming in today, we spend a bit more time than everyone else that you may be interviewing with, because we see that we want to get you into the right role. And if it's not with us, then that's okay. But we see it would be a great disaster, if we got down the path. And you were in a role that you didn't feel was right for you, or we felt you went right for the role. So we spend more time to make sure that this is the right fit for you. Because it's going to be a disaster for you if you come on board and then leave and it's going to be a disaster for us as well. So we want to avoid that disaster.
Kevin Lawrence 23:50
Yeah, absolutely. And we're again, very similar. We prefer to use that verbatim in the companies that we do a lot of hiring with, you know, for using that top grading methodology. Because you know, and whether it's an internal promotion or a new hire, same thing. So basically, before you offer someone a job, particularly even an internal promotion, double and quadruple check, are they going to thrive and be naturally a good fit Not, not whether they want the job or not that if they want it, that's a good start. It doesn't mean that they will be capable at it. And again, it's our job to really see Do they have this competency that the ability proven abilities to thrive in that role? Or are we going to crush them, whether it's an external person coming in or not? That's why these people decisions are so critical, particularly even the internal promotions, they're excruciating. So now that one makes sense, right? The person knows they're in the wrong job. This is painful. They don't see a way out. One, they don't see another opportunity. or two. They don't want to take a step back down again. Sometimes is the case. A little Pretty high success rate of getting people to make a change, you know, most people, if you can allow them to save face, you can make a change if there indeed is a more suitable role if there isn't, that's kind of a tough one. So, number two mismatch between a job and a person, they're in the wrong seat. And they often quit because they don't see a way out. And if we leave it too long, they will quit. Sometimes we can proactively address it, but you've got someone that's there in the wrong seat, you know it, they probably know what how do you address this in a way that is the most humane?
Brad Giles 25:35
Yeah, and then on to number three, there is too little coaching and feedback. So people number three reason that people becoming disengaged and leaving jobs is that there's too little coaching and feedback. So I love this. I love this, this quote from the book, it talks about people or managers giving feedback once a year. So imagine that it's like a basketball coach telling his players at the beginning of the season, you're gonna go out and play 30 games. And then at the end of this season, I'll evaluate your performance. Like, it's ludicrous in the context of sports, okay? And that only highlights how ludicrous it is when you have an annual performance review. And there's no coaching and feedback throughout. And, and so the employee thinks I'm not getting any better here, I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. Or if I'm doing the wrong thing, how I just want to find a job where I can get some kind of understanding and feedback, so I can get better at the job and not wait another eight months into my annual review, or whenever it might be.
Kevin Lawrence 26:49
Yeah, it's painful. And if you go into the world of sport, I mean, they do feedback between shifts, or between when the person's playing and when they come off. Or if there's feedback by the coach normally, all right, right away in that moment, whether it's positive or improvement, you know, and when there's breaks, you know, in one, number one, no matter what, whatever the sport is a break. So that would be it's basically the best managers give feedback on a regular ongoing basis. But that doesn't happen in a lot of places. A lot of people aren't great at feedback, it's a skill. And even in the book, the one minute manager just talks about how micro feedback is the key to success. And so there's the ongoing feedback versus the once a year, and people just have no clue. You know, it's, it's interesting. In one of my clients overseas, they had me coach a number of the key executives in a very fast-growing company. It was a new CEO that was growing quickly, and the team so we're, we're coaching them all. That's pretty intense. So that we had a real tight system to coach the executives, and keep them in sync with the CEO. There's this triad model that works really well. But that the point of it is, is these, these executives were dying for feedback. And the shocking thing is the highest performers, usually assumed the worst. And it was almost weird. It's like the low performers were kind of laid back about it. But the high performers were worried they weren't doing good enough. And they needed it. And we did these simple 20-minute feedback sessions every quarter. So I sit down with the CEO to be here. And he and I would have prepared for an hour in advance for the entire team. And then the executive comes in executive spends, you know, six minutes saying how they've made great progress and what they would need to work on next. And then the CEO says, where they have seen great progress and what they think the executive needs to work on next. And as the coach, I'd weave that together into a, a simple mini plan for that executive for the quarter their growth, you know, what their growth goals were. And it was so basic, but the quality of the conversation was unbelievable. and the value of the executive God was on liquid, they were always so grateful. Because there was a mechanism that forced and it was only once a quarter, but it forced it and they loved it. And it also helped their growth. But people are just it's for some people. It's just not natural to give it but yet everybody wants it. And not knowing drives people nuts.
Brad Giles 29:19
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Again, the data that I did within my book, everybody wants the feedback that no one wants to give is the HR article about that.
Kevin Lawrence 29:31
I love that everyone wants the feedback that no one wants to give. Yeah, right.
Brad Giles 29:36
Yeah. And so they said, Do you want to receive positive feedback or you want to receive negative feedback? Or do you want to give positive feedback or do you want to give negative feedback, okay, and the, this was a survey and the outcome basically, was that the highest score is that no one wants to give Negative feedback. But everyone wants to receive negative feedback in the context of constructive criticism, not just having a go, are you? I believe that Yeah, so yeah. And the other quick note, I've done sales training before with sales teams, right? sales isn't everybody, but it's a great insight. And in sales teams, salespeople often never get to actually practice all of the practices that they do is with their manager. Sorry, it was with their potential customer. So they're always practicing. And so we've done an exercise where we get three sales people together, one is trying to sell one is playing the customer, and one is playing the scribe. And they basically pitch to them over 10 minutes, and then rotate and then rotate. And it's a really effective way to get them to practice. And it's a form of feedback and coaching that they just otherwise wouldn't get, and they crave. So short sales people aren't every everyone, but it's so important.
Kevin Lawrence 31:07
It is. And again, the best teams do lots of feedback, whether it's between teammates, and from the coach, the best sales teams practice on roleplay. When we train people on trop grading, we practice roleplay feedback, it's like two days of practice and role playing and feedback to help people get better and you watch people get better. It's like, it's a powerful thing. You just need to find ways to engineer it into systems and interesting. When we're scaling companies, we force the at least quarterly feedback just to give people more chances to improve. And again, people want it you know, and, and, you know, and it's even sometimes as simple as the positive feedback and Why thank you for doing that. Because simple things, but being very specific feedback makes a difference. Yeah, okay. Okay. So
Brad Giles 31:56
let us to reason for there are too few growth and advancement opportunities. So they have gotten into the organization or they're in there a while and they realize my career isn't going to go anywhere here. The people, all of the managers above me are lifers, or, you know, there is no opportunity to grow. And there is that from this, this reason that I love a recent survey asked employees to rate today's managers on 67 leadership competencies, developing direct reports came in 67th. That's, that's unbelievable. That, you know, the job of a manager is to help the people around them to become better versions of themselves. Ah, you and
Kevin Lawrence 32:47
I know that Brad, that is not a commonly held belief by a lot of managers, a job of a manager is often obsessed with trying to get the work done and deliver on their goals. developing their people is kind of like thinking about polishing the hubcaps or the wheels in their car. Most people don't even think about it. It's they're so busy doing they think their job is to drive the car, not polish it. Right, unless they love to do that most people are so busy doing their darn job. They forget their job is to develop people that fully forget. And I'm not saying it's right, but it's it, they just get lost in what they're doing.
Brad Giles 33:26
The problem with that analogy, I like it, but the problem with that analogy, okay, is that if you focus your energy on divert and developing your direct reports, unlike a polished hubcap, it will have a massive impact on your team and the organization perfect.
Kevin Lawrence 33:43
So their job is to teach other they're so busy driving the car they forget they should be teaching someone else. I'll step it up. Thank you for the feedback. But great, what a wonderful example of feedback on the spot about Kevin's mediocre analogy. So Kevin's improved it. Because the driver you know, they realized they got to train other people to drive so they don't have to see what works so well together. Brad, that's awesome. I love it. And you know what I can tell by looking Brad's face he didn't even believe him. I realize he was demonstrating it, but I caught it. And I like feedback. So yes, it's people get lost in it. And they forget, that's why they don't give the feedback. You know, and that's a challenging thing. And going back to the advancement and opportunities, tying it back into this one. I think that the challenge here and what drives me nuts is when we lose good people because they can't see the opportunities. Yeah, but they're there. It's like the company is growing at 30% a year, we're expanding into another country and you can't see the opportunity. And what I've learned over the years, is that you got to take out a map and you have to with a crayon or a pencil or pen, draw them the path from where they are to where they could be because it is off Then obvious to us, but they can't see it. And it's strange. And it's not that different than looking at a total destroyed, old house that looks horrible from the street and even looks worse inside. Most people can't see a shining palace, it could be like a renovation versus you can already see it in four seconds. But unless you have the mind of that person, you can't see how this dilapidated house could become a palace. And the same thing with people is it some people can't see from where they are today with those managers that they think are never leaving, they can't see that growth opportunity. And we really, truly, we need to help them and paint the picture for them and almost walk them down the path. And I've seen people leave because of it and it's infuriating.
Brad Giles 35:51
You don't know what you don't know. Okay, so the manager has seen that path be followed many times in many different ways, perhaps, whereas the employee has never been on that journey before. So they don't know what they don't know. And, you know, part of that is, like you said, illuminating that part saying to them, if you can do this, and this is, that's how we can see your career growing, that's how we can see you becoming better. You know, every year, there are a significant portion of the workforce who retire, or who leave the workforce. And there's always young people coming up, it's always churning over. So you know, there is a there is always opportunities that are arising.
Kevin Lawrence 36:44
And we know these things, but we often don't communicate them and wrap them into them. That's where we have an opportunity to help them. Awesome. Let's, let's so so basically, they don't see the opportunities to grow. And, and, and sometimes they aren't there. And often they are but they don't see the clear path. And that's where these, these career path exercises and development plans. And as our manager, there's some great things that we can do there. So number five, feeling devalued and unrecognized. Now look, some people are devalued, that's that might be the way that they're being treated by their manager. And it happens and it's horrible. But there's also the unrecognized or, or under appreciated. And, you know, it's interesting, and they talked about this in the book, but I see it myself. It's, it's the magic of saying, Thank you. And I appreciate it. Right. And, and, and it's interesting, you know, one of the CEOs I work with, you know, at the end of his day, he would send a two or three texts, sometimes five texts to different people, thanking him for things that he had seen today and appreciate it today. Just a basic thing. Now, not shockingly, people, people loved him. Now you can go over it. And you know, it's like, you can thank people for showing up. You know, you can thank people for sitting at their desk, and you can thank people for, you know, not adding value. That's, that's, you know, you need to thank people for their contributions, not just, you know, a ribbon for showing up. But it's a go ahead Brad.
Brad Giles 38:15
Isn't that the job of HR?
Kevin Lawrence 38:21
HR is the make people happy department. Yeah, people are supposed to this. There's nothing they're supposed to build the culture, make people feel good. And then fix my problems when my people drive me crazy, right? Yeah.
Brad Giles 38:44
They said, you know, some people recognize that. Some people believe that recognition is the job of HR. My job is to get the job done as a manager, and hrs job is to, is to recognize people. I mean, a lot of what you said about we send a text at the end of the day, or you know, it's the little things that make the big difference. You know, because it makes people feel good every time I run a an offsite quarterly workshop, or planning workshop or an annual workshop. One of the things that we do his top thanks to teammates in the room. Yeah, that's not necessarily a manager. Sometimes it's a manager, sometimes it's not, but everyone needs to participate. So I'm gonna thank Kevin for his help on the ABC project, or Jo, Jo n for her help on the x y Zed project. So it's little points like that. Now you can build in all the time that makes them feel a valued part of the team in the absence of that is a desert of recognition. And you just don't know, it's not that people, I suppose people do need it. But it's not that people need it in a needy way. But it's just that people need to know that they're valued. They need to know
Kevin Lawrence 40:16
want to be careful, you know, and this is not about, you know, a love fest, and every 30 seconds, you're getting a thank you note, you know, it's like, you know, some of the best CEOs, they have high expectations. And they think when there's a job well done, but it's not maybe every day or every minute, right. There's acknowledgement, appreciation, and they often will push back and ask for better work. Right? So I want to be very careful. It's not everyone gets a ribbon culture. And, and thank you for showing up. And I know you tried hard, it's Oh, yeah, you know, there's cultures where there's real recognition. And if you look at sales organizations, and there's awards like crazy for different things. So it just, it's being conscious of it. And basically as my mom taught me, and my grandmother taught me, like, it's like remembering your manners. Yeah, thank people, appreciate people and say the things that you think, and you're still gonna give feedback, going back up to number three, giving feedback when things could be better, you know, I'd like a little more of this or a little less of that, or, you know, next time, could you Yeah, so but basically feeling devalued or unrecognized is a surefire way to kill someone's spirit. So let's go over six, six ones, a very interesting thing. Stress from overwork, and work life in balance now, and in my book, your oxygen mask, first, I first of all dispel the thing of work life balance, because it's impossible. And for high performers, that never works. And the fact that the self should be in the middle your that your self is the driver that makes the success at work, and you know, creates life. But the point of it is, is that work consumes too much energy is the fact which we'll agree with 1,000%. And there's not enough left for them to be happy and healthy, and to have a great life. And they and they can really, this get too sucked into work and as a fine balance there. Because some of the highest performers do put in an extraordinary amount of energy into work more than normal. But sometimes it becomes a culture like in For example, I remember reading articles in Japan, where it was like, You weren't allowed to leave the office tell the boss left. So people would sit there for hours and hours and hours and not even have work to do. But there was a social and this one article in particular about saying the whole country, a social pressure to put in long hours. And so that people couldn't leave even though their work was done. And there's an example there's even though there's a name for something, people who would die at work, because they spend too much time salary. Yeah, yes, yes, they talk about their so the point of it is, is that, you know, it's just that people can't live a decent life. And as a result, they're like, I can't do this interesting. One of in one of the covers over the work to this woman who was an A plus, plus, this woman was brilliant, insanely good, never missed a deadline on anything. And so one of the key executives in the company I worked with, and one day she quit. And holy did a few of us have a passionate debate about basically who messed that one up. And long story short, what came out is she was a perfectionist, high performer, who could never missed a deadline and could not do anything but Perfect, perfect work what she did better than anyone in a company. But it was destroying her life. So she couldn't drop her standards and do less crappy work. She talked to her boss, she was actually a director. That was it was executives reported to she talked to her boss. We didn't do anything about it. So finally, she had to quit to save face and her soul. She had no option but to quit. Yeah, because she couldn't not deliver and then she couldn't destroy herself and her family in the process. It was working out interestingly, thing it took a couple years they got her back, thankfully. But it was it was sad was also a stark reminder of the downside of these committed high performers. And when they start to let us know, it's a bit too much. Like we got to be there to help them out and back them up and help them to reduce the stress and find ways to still have a great life by the way. Last point, Brad. It's, it's also why for our companies, you make sure all the key executives have goals for their own resilience and their growth, which just goes back to your oxygen mask first, in addition to their work goals, so that we keep the self goals on the radar because it allows them to stay healthy and resilient and not, you know, not get destroyed. But I'm sure you have some thoughts on this, Brad. So I get really excited about this one. It's a guy. Yeah.
Brad Giles 44:58
So from the book of 70% of people Say that they don't have a healthy balance between work and personal lives. 70% Okay, and 60% of people would give up some pay in exchange for more personal or family time. Now, does that mean that you need to turn to a four day workweek at your organization? Well, no, it doesn't mean that. But it means that you've got to understand that 70% people say they don't have a healthy balance. So how can you work with that? Now I've got a company that I work with, and one of their core values is about community. Okay. And, and we did this, we did this exercise, which is, do and do not? So it's basically for the core values, saying how do you get to under get everybody in the organization to understand so do this, and don't do that, that's how you will live out values. So within community, what they said is, do not is missing the school assembly for your kids. And, and, and so that, in terms of their values is, is a great example of how you can do that. So school assemblies can be I mean, they don't happen every day, but they can be quite important for some people. So if you're at work, and you're missing, something like that, for that organization, that's a real letdown. So they're kind of saying, what really matters to us.
Kevin Lawrence 46:32
And they're helping to build it into the environment. So it's socially acceptable. Many companies we work with have cultures where you're encouraged to do those things. I mean, a lot of the company's work was still really terrible. They're people, they haven't lost their soul yet. No, we catch them before they lose their soul, we try to get it all out of the damn thing. So they still care about it. And I think that's important because, and sometimes people want to do it, but they're afraid to look bad or look on committed or whatever it happens to be. So when you have mechanisms like that, that encourage it. It's awesome.
Brad Giles 47:04
Well, if you if you're an employee, just to close this out, if you're an employee at that organization, you're going to be thinking to yourself, Well, this is a long term job, like this is a sustainable job. They want me to be healthy on multiple levels, which is what we want.
Kevin Lawrence 47:24
It isn't, there's no kind of what we want for all of ourselves and our team. So yes, so stress from overwork, and work life balance, we got to keep an eye on it, we got to help people to make sure they take care of themselves and have room for what they want in their life. Even as I shared last week for our team, on our quarterly goals, we have our goals for work, our goals for ourselves, we also list out the most important things we want to achieve in life. Like we've got goals for the holistic person, because we know that you got to thrive on all of those to sustain success. So let's go to number seven. And this is a bit of a sensitive one. It's the reason why I actually stopped working with one of my clients, because in many ways, we're like a bit of a you know, in many ways, like a team member, but it's loss of trust and competence and senior leaders. And senior leader, we make mistakes all the time, you know, ourselves and then people we work with. But sometimes people do some things that people just No, it's sometimes it's a difference in beliefs about how you handle a situation. Yeah, that happens. I had, I had a CEO I worked with Jeremy was a good guy. Actually, I've had a few. But one is this, he was a good guy. I like him, I would still chat with him. But working with him, he did one thing, one day that I found out about something that he did. And I'm like, You're not my kind of guy. And I'm not gonna disclose anything about what it was. But it was just like, I lost confidence in him immediately. Because of the way he conducted himself. It just it was Yeah. And that that created disengagement. In my case, I stopped the engagement. Because I don't like that, you know, that just was something that I lost trust in Him. And in terms of his leadership, I've seen it with other people. And there's so many things that go into building trust and confidence. And a lot of it is you know, doing what you say, you know, and just being a straightforward, good, good, good person, but no, trust is a big deal. And when you don't trust people, you don't want to want to hang out with them or especially working for them. Yeah.
Brad Giles 49:41
So one of my favorite reads each year just to go absolute full nerd on you is the Edelman trust barometer. So the Edelman trust barometer every year they do a survey all around the world. Most countries I'll say so certainly OECD countries, but more countries and they serve a politics, media and business. And I think this year in 2021, business was the highest trust the CEOs was amongst their. But is the trust level in your organization higher than the average? That's an interesting question to consider. And, of course, people, you know, people have a great struggle on this, to look in the mirror. And I don't know that, depending on the size of your organization, it's worth considering surveying it. But it's, you know, what are you doing to undermine trust in your organization? Yeah. You know, the data from the book says that companies with higher trust levels, outperformed companies with low trust levels by 186%. So it's, there's a compelling reason to focus on trust, what undermines trust and how you can build more trust within your organization? Sure.
Kevin Lawrence 51:09
Like within a team trust is a big thing we work on, we're building healthy executive teams, right? We do a ton of work around that. And that trust is a big component, which there's things to help it. But there's also this there's a Stephen Covey's son. And I think he wrote a book called The speed of trust. Yes. And, and, and, you know, there was one thing I took from the book. And it was trust allows for fast interaction, communication and execution, because you don't have to document everything and CC the world to cover your butt because you don't trust the person. You notice. When you trust something. You just have a five second conversation. Yep, I got it done. You don't call the lawyer to document it. You don't even send a darn email, you might make a note, but you know, you but when you don't holy, let me think about it. Half an hour engineering conversation, 14 line emails and firm, please respond to confirm, maybe we get the lawyer, maybe we involve HR, maybe I double check with my boss, when you don't have trust, everything gets weird and slow. It's hard on the system. And it's something that we don't have interesting, one of our clients in India, you know, how you build trust in India? paying people on time. Yeah, like in Canada, It's not even a question. But in different countries, it's different than to literally paying people on time. Right? It's also why some CEOs have a regular time that they address their companies, right? You know, and it's also the other thing you got to think about, it's also Who do you promote? Right? If you're promote people that are seen as not being trustworthy, then that reflects on the companies all kinds of things they all point of it is understanding that trust is a big deal if people lose trust, and senior leaders, and senior leaders have to make controversial decisions and do things it can really have a massive ripple effect. So that is seven hidden reasons why employees leave and we will know Brad will kind of review them. But the key point here is, is that people don't leave because of money. It's number eight on the list. And it's usually no less than 10%. The root cause is one of these other things, that psychologically or a combination of psychologically dislodge people and they start to disengage. And they kind of slipped down this the stairs of disengagement until they kind of wash it on the ocean. And we think they left for more money, but they just wanted to get the heck away from us is often the case. So number one reason that the workplace wasn't what they expected. Number two, mismatch between the job and the person. Number three, they didn't get enough coaching and feedback. Tell me more tomorrow, I'm doing well, but also tell me how I can improve. Next one is there are too many, there's too few growth and advancement opportunities. Well, many not enough, they want to grow. They want those opportunities, but you got to help paint the path for them. Number five, feeling devalued and unrecognized. There's not enough appreciation for what they're doing, whether it's by teammates or their boss. Number six stress from over work or work life and balance basically, or consumes too much energy, not enough room for them to have a great life. And last but not least, last but not least number seven. They don't trust us the simulators we did something to break their trust, and it could have been a number of things. Hence why we look at engagement surveys and looking for the patterns. What's the final thoughts before we wrap it up?
Brad Giles 54:42
Yeah, awesome. So again, that book is the seven hidden reasons employees leave, how to recognize the subtle signs and act before it's too late. So I encourage you to take a look at that. And also, I guess, final point, understanding that if you're saying people are leaving because of money, it could just be, it could just be that. In actual fact, that's an excuse so that you don't have to do the hard work and it is hard work. So yeah, so with all of that, um, thanks for listening. This has been the growth whispers podcast. And as always joined today by Kevin Lawrence, my co host. And you can find Kevin at Lawrenceandco.com and myself, Brad at evolution.partners.com.au. So thanks very much for listening. We hope you have a good week. We look forward to chatting again to you next week.