Podcast Ep 139 | What’s more important: Right People or Right Strategy?

What is more impor­tant, get­ting the right peo­ple or get­ting the right strategy?

Many peo­ple have opin­ions about what mat­ters more. Strat­e­gy peo­ple think it’s strat­e­gy, and you might have a great team, but they will spin their wheels with­out a great strategy. 

Then oth­ers will think that cul­ture is more impor­tant and that a great strat­e­gy will go nowhere with­out a high-per­form­ing team. 

But there’s also one oth­er nuance to this debate and its exe­cu­tion. How effec­tive­ly does the team exe­cute the strategy?

Today we ask if we had to pick one, if we had to ded­i­cate 80% of our ener­gy to, which would it be and why?

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 Whis­per­ers pod­cast where every­thing that Kevin and Brad speak about is relat­ed to build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. Because in many ways, it’s our it’s our work. It’s our pas­sion. It’s what we get excit­ed about. It’s what we get our kicks out of noth­ing like see­ing a busi­ness that goes into the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion third gen­er­a­tion, or just con­tin­ues to thrive for a long, long time, and build on what it’s built. It’s kind of fun for us. So that’s the pod­cast, and today is episode 139. That’s pret­ty incred­i­ble. It’s gonna be three years com­ing up pret­ty soon, Brad. Any­ways, good day at and my friend down in Australia.

Brad Giles 01:07

Well, I was gonna say talk­ing about myself in the third per­son as you just did, because that was enter­tain­ing. But I’m not going to do that. I would say cohe­sive, I would say just, yeah, the word cohe­sive think­ing about how cohe­sive teams are so much more effective.

Kevin Lawrence 01:28

Awe­some, mine is grandiose. I just flew in from, like, in from a flight from the US, like a few min­utes ago, was down in the US. And just just every time I’m there and have time to get out and about and see what’s hap­pen­ing in cities, just the grand scale of the think­ing and was down by Palm Springs. And that’s what they have a cou­ple of mas­sive music fes­ti­vals of Coachel­la and Stage­coach, which are two mas­sive music fes­ti­vals, and saw this amaz­ing rac­ing facil­i­ty called Ther­mo, which again, mas­sive big vision that the founder of that orga­ni­za­tion has, and just, you know, the US it’s a big phys­i­cal coun­try, but the think­ing is even big­ger. So grandiose and just big think­ing and just mak­ing big things hap­pen. So what was your word, Brad? it was it was cohe­sive. So you know, when you have a cohe­sive team, and you have a grandiose vision or strat­e­gy, good things hap­pen. And why would­n’t that make a good sub­ject for a pod­cast? Hmm.

Brad Giles 02:35

It’s pos­si­ble. But it’s also pos­si­ble that we could move on to the sub­ject for the day?

Kevin Lawrence 02:41

Yes. Well, it’s actu­al­ly that’s what the sub­ject of today relates to. It is what is more impor­tant, the right peo­ple or the right strat­e­gy, and you can say that your word cohe­sive, could relate to the right peo­ple. And you could say that my word grandiose could relate to the right strat­e­gy. So cohe­sive or grandiose, or more specif­i­cal­ly, you know, what’s more impor­tant, real­ly hav­ing the right peo­ple in the right team? Or hav­ing the right strat­e­gy? That’s what we’re kind of dig­ging into today?

Brad Giles 03:11

It is, it’s a ques­tion that many peo­ple may may think about, is it more impor­tant to have the right strat­e­gy or the right peo­ple? The strat­e­gy peo­ple would say, oh, yeah, absolute­ly. Must have a

Kevin Lawrence 03:24

right. Strat­e­gy is very impor­tant, and very smart and excit­ing. And yes.

Brad Giles 03:29

And then the, the peo­ple, peo­ple that peo­ple who, you know, go for cul­ture or peo­ple first, they would be say­ing that the most impor­tant thing is get­ting the right peo­ple. So we got to dig into this today. What’s the most important?

Kevin Lawrence 03:42

We’ve got the answer, we have the answer. We absolute­ly know what it is. And that’s what we’re going to share with you today. Yeah, right. Brad? You don’t need to answer..

Brad Giles 03:53

Well, we have the ques­tions that might lead the lis­ten­er to the answer. How’s that?

Kevin Lawrence 03:58

How beau­ti­ful­ly said. Well, the thing is, like every­thing, the answer always is to a cer­tain degree that it depends. But we’re actu­al­ly going to press our­selves. And if we actu­al­ly had to make a choice to notably pri­or­i­tize one over the oth­er, are we going to pri­or­i­tize peo­ple, and that, you know, if 80% of our ener­gy was going to go to one and only, you know, a lit­tle bit to the oth­er, you obvi­ous­ly can’t go to zero. But if we had to pri­or­i­tize like 80% of the resources go into one of the oth­er would be peo­ple or strat­e­gy. And I think we’re gonna have a real­ly inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion. And we’ve had dis­cus­sions about this in the past, I’ve had many dis­cus­sions on my answer has changed through­out my career, inter­est­ing­ly. And I think ini­tial­ly, I was while I was with one, it changed in the mid­dle and then it came back to where I start­ed cur­rent­ly is where my think­ing is. But Brad, what do you what are you what are you thinking?

Brad Giles 04:58

I’m think­ing what was the one that to what was the one that you start­ed off with? But seri­ous­ly? Yeah, I mean, you said pri­or­i­tize, we want to pri­or­i­tize one over the oth­er. I mean, the word pri­or­i­ty orig­i­nal­ly, if you go back in time, it was about select­ing only one. So to select one thing, and that’s kind of, that’s kind of what we’re try­ing to get to here. Yes. I think we did an episode recent­ly say­ing that. I think it was like 90, approx­i­mate­ly 90% of busi­ness strate­gies failed due to poor exe­cu­tion. That was from Har­vard Busi­ness School. And if that’s the case, then why are they fail­ing that they might be good? So should we focus on get­ting a bet­ter strat­e­gy? Maybe those strate­gies weren’t good enough? Maybe they did­n’t devel­op them? Maybe they did­n’t devel­op an exe­cu­tion plan that was good. Yeah, it’s, I think, I think it depends on what you say, by strat­e­gy, okay, is what I’m think­ing to, like, I want to try to weigh in both sides of the debate, because for some peo­ple strat­e­gy is just a set of goals. Okay? That is, we’re going to go from $25 mil­lion rev­enue to $40 mil­lion rev­enue in three years, for example.

Kevin Lawrence 06:32

Yeah but if that’s a goal, there’s there needs to be some strat­e­gy, we’re talk­ing about strat­e­gy is think­ing about your core cus­tomer, and how you solve their prob­lem bet­ter or dif­fer­ent­ly in a way that’s appeal­ing to them. To start with, like, that’s that piece of it. And then what else in your busi­ness? Basi­cal­ly, there’s the con­sumer piece, there’s the struc­tur­al piece. What is it that gives you a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, such that you can make good mon­ey while you are tak­ing care of the cus­tomers that you’re try­ing to help? So yeah, it’s not just goals, there needs to be a lit­tle more a lit­tle more thought and intel­li­gence and posi­tion­ing in that.

Brad Giles 07:09

Yeah. So they might think, the take that goals idea a lit­tle bit fur­ther, they might think, Okay, so we’re going to open a new state or a new coun­try, or we’re going to dou­ble the size of our sales force. And that’s going to be our strat­e­gy. Now. That’s the def­i­n­i­tion we’ve made that point. But now let’s go to what the def­i­n­i­tion of strat­e­gy as you put it, under­stand­ing the core cus­tomer under­stand­ing their needs, and meet­ing those needs, in an under­served mar­ket bet­ter than any­one else. The prob­lem is, is that you can think, if we do that, we will win, and that will be the job done.

Kevin Lawrence 07:48

And the real­i­ty is, like most things in the world, ideas are cheap, and easy. Cre­ativ­i­ty is the easy part of any­thing. So you have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to win. But then a whole bunch of humans have to do a whole bunch of things right, con­sis­tent with that, to actu­al­ly get the results, and win. So the plan­ning and all that’s impor­tant. The strat­e­gy piece is impor­tant. But with­out the human beings to actu­al­ly get it done. It does­n’t mat­ter. It’s hypo­thet­i­cal val­ue, not real val­ue, and you need the humans to cre­ate the real value.

Brad Giles 08:27

Yeah, absolute­ly. i It makes me think about Uber, the win­ner, Uber. Uber are an inter­est­ing case study, because they had a bril­liant strat­e­gy. There’s no doubt that, you know, chang­ing the entire indus­try where peo­ple used to pay cash, prob­a­bly, or pay, you know, a taxi dri­ver, and all of the taxi sys­tem to com­plete­ly trans­form that they meet the needs of the cus­tomer bet­ter than any­one else. So the strat­e­gy was brilliant.

Kevin Lawrence 09:03

And their exe­cu­tion and the peo­ple that exe­cut­ed I mean, I love Uber, I was using it just today. Prob­a­bly had the most inter­est­ing, one of the most inter­est­ing Uber dri­vers I’ve ever had. But the real­i­ty is, it is the strat­e­gy is out­stand­ing, and they’ve obvi­ous­ly had to have amaz­ing peo­ple to exe­cute that to bring it to life. Because the idea is good.

Brad Giles 09:30

Yeah but there’s a bit of a prob­lem in that the cul­ture was tox­ic. You know, the CEO got the CEO got fired, because there were too many law­suits that were com­ing in, because of the tox­ic culture.

Kevin Lawrence 09:45

I read an arti­cle recent­ly, a bunch of oth­er fun­ny stuff hap­pen­ing. Yeah, a lot of yeah, a lot of things. Yet, all that being true. They replaced him. And the still, I mean, there’s still a spec­tac­u­lar com­pa­ny like they’re doing a great But go back to your point about the cul­ture Brad.

Brad Giles 10:02

Yeah. So they like that’s an exam­ple of world class best exam­ple of strat­e­gy. Okay, so we’re try­ing to cater to both sides here. But but the prob­lem if your name was Travis, the the CEO who found­ed the com­pa­ny, he got kicked out because he did­n’t get the right peo­ple who, because he had tox­ic As, did­n’t get the right peo­ple in the com­pa­ny to build the cul­ture that could sus­tain and man­age the growth over time. Now, there’s no doubt that they exe­cut­ed, no doubt that they changed the indus­try, there’s no doubt that Uber is now I guess, a verb in itself, that Uber, Uber is, you know, you don’t go to say, oh, we’ll go and touch catch a rideshare. Nobody says that. They say I’ll go and catch an Uber. So the suc­cess can’t be the suc­cess can’t be doubt­ed. But…

Kevin Lawrence 10:58

Well, we can say for sure that I’m sure it’s because of peo­ple exe­cut­ing like crazy that peo­ple exe­cut­ing that’s because we’re not the only one that had the strat­e­gy lift is out there and lots of oth­ers, lots of oth­ers in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Yeah. And when peo­ple piece got lumpy, they made some changes, so they could con­tin­ue with the strong peo­ple to con­tin­ue to exe­cute and make great things happen.

Brad Giles 11:21

Yeah.

Kevin Lawrence 11:23

So you know, real­ly, if we, if we look at this, and and I look at an exam­ple of a com­pa­ny, a US com­pa­ny that I work with. And you know, com­ing into COVID, you know, we had 70% A play­ers in the whole com­pa­ny, and 90% A play­ers in the key roles. Like we were stack­ing the decks with tal­ent. It was an incred­i­bly, incred­i­bly strong team. And, you know, the CEO came with us to spend a cou­ple of days with Jim Collins, where he rein­forced, you know, Jim said, clear­ly, you can’t be a great com­pa­ny with good peo­ple, it does­n’t work. So we were on the great peo­ple train, and their busi­ness was real­ly get­ting impact­ed by COVID, we weren’t sure what to do. And at some point, the CEO arranged a call and said, ​“Look, our busi­ness is, you know, 30% of our busi­ness dis­ap­peared. And there is oppor­tu­ni­ties every­where for us, go find it, go flip over rocks, look in uncon­ven­tion­al places, just go find the oppor­tu­ni­ties.” And like a bunch of war­riors, they ran into the mar­ket, and found oppor­tu­ni­ties like incred­i­ble, and the busi­ness essen­tial­ly dou­bled dur­ing that time peri­od. Now, they weren’t in tourism. So they were in a busi­ness that it was pos­si­ble they were in tourism that may or may not have worked, but the fact is, is they kind of like release the hounds. And they went and found what they need­ed. And they did incred­i­bly, incred­i­bly well. So this backs up, you know, for me, my vote is peo­ple. You know, ear­ly in my career, I allud­ed to it, I was clear, though, I always thought it was peo­ple that made the dif­fer­ence. And then I start­ed hang­ing out with some oth­er con­sul­tants and stuff and start­ed think­ing about that peo­ple that strat­e­gy, because strat­e­gy and strat­e­gy are all the smart peo­ple. Every con­sul­tant wants to be a strat­e­gy con­sul­tant. But then I real­ized, strat­e­gy is good, that needs to be there. And I’ve swung back to peo­ple. And so most of our con­ver­sa­tions are an amaz­ing group of peo­ple will fig­ure things out. I mean, there’s many cas­es that you know, you and I know these cas­es of com­pa­nies that have had amaz­ing teams, and the the busi­ness isn’t there that they thought. Well, then they go and rein­vent some­thing they cre­at­ed, or piv­ot­ed and make it work. And I would just add, you know, amaz­ing peo­ple that are aligned. And you know that so if I had to choose, I’ll take a group of badass A play­ers any day, just beasts who want to exe­cute and are amaz­ing at what they do. And togeth­er, you’re going to fig­ure some­thing out. So my, my stake in the ground on this is, is peo­ple because they will find the oppor­tu­ni­ties, they’ll find ways to sort out clients, even if you don’t for­mal­ly do strat­e­gy, the con­ver­sa­tions are going to come up. You need to align it and make sure we’re focused on the right things. But the amaz­ing strat­e­gy with it with a mediocre team, unless you’ve got, you know a monop­oly, maybe. But oth­er­wise, I’ll say it needs to be peo­ple first strat­e­gy second.

Brad Giles 14:26

Yeah, there’s a there’s a com­pa­ny that I work with here in Aus­tralia, and they have an a bril­liant strat­e­gy, like, absolute­ly bril­liant, and it will change the indus­try. And I can’t say who it is obvi­ous­ly, but and I can’t see how any­one can eas­i­ly catch them. Right. And I think that it’s kind of it’s a land grab. It’s not the real estate indus­try, but it’s a land grab, you know, and I think that one they get there, they they’re going to be doing real­ly well. The point that I make at the begin­ning, you know, they did­n’t, they weren’t sur­round­ed by a play­ers, they had the bril­liant strat­e­gy. But then when we get in there the job to be done, we need more high­ly com­pe­tent peo­ple in the room like A play­ers. We need to increase the per­cent­age of A play­ers, these some of these peo­ple were real­ly, real­ly good. But they weren’t good enough to exe­cute this strat­e­gy for what that strat­e­gy deserved. If that makes sense.

Kevin Lawrence 15:31

It is I was I was with anoth­er co work­er with a few months ago, and we’re sit­ting in the room. And, you know, he’s got a good enough strat­e­gy in his busi­ness, but we’re sit­ting in the room, you know, a num­ber of years lat­er, he and I are the only two peo­ple of the 10 are the only two that were there in the first meet­ing that we had six or sev­en years ago, every­one else has changed. Because they weren’t able at the lev­el that the com­pa­ny was at to get the job done. Most of them some some still was­n’t the right in place for them. But they just for what the com­pa­ny need­ed at the size that it’s grown to. And it’s sub­stan­tial now, the peo­ple just weren’t able to pro­duce most or did­n’t want to pro­duce. And the real­i­ty is, and now he’s got notably bet­ter peo­ple on the com­pa­ny’s grow­ing again. Of course! Because the team just was, you know, if the capa­bil­i­ty of the team was at a, you know, we’ll call it a, you know, a $500 mil­lion lev­el, the com­pa­ny was at a $750 mil­lion lev­el. And for a lot of those peo­ple that just, it just does­n’t work. And again, it’s not just the num­bers just about the scale of the busi­ness. So yeah, the, the peo­ple make a spec­tac­u­lar dif­fer­ence. And inter­est­ing­ly, a lot of CEOs and exec­u­tives don’t spend a lot of time on strat­e­gy or peo­ple, they tend to spend a lot of time on the finan­cials. And it’s, you know, and it’s inter­est­ing, but the intel­li­gence comes out, when you think through strat­e­gy, the lens of strat­e­gy. And the the intel­li­gent deci­sions come out when you real­ly spend time think­ing through the lens of peo­ple. The finan­cials are kind of the out­comes. And I think a lot of peo­ple mis­tak­en­ly look at it back­wards, they try to dri­ve the busi­ness through the income state­ment. And that’s, it’s a score­card, you got to dri­ve the oth­er two to get a bet­ter income statement.

Brad Giles 17:22

And smart peo­ple like, love play­ing with strat­e­gy. Strat­e­gy is play for smart peo­ple. They can do it all day.

Kevin Lawrence 17:30

It’s like intel­lec­tu­al. Yeah, I like, Yeah, I like it myself. Yeah. But I just look at where, where’s the ROI? Where do I see the great­est val­ue add in the com­pa­nies that I work with? But strat­e­gy is fun.

Brad Giles 17:47

You know, one of the good friend of mine, one of the great­est strat­e­gy peo­ple, you know, cer­tain­ly that it’s come across my path, per­son­al­ly is a guy called Kyan Kripendorff

Kevin Lawrence 17:57

Yeah. Kyan’s a great guy,

Brad Giles 17:59

I great guy. And he has one of his strat­e­gy pieces is what’s the fourth option? Love it. And that always makes us ask the ques­tion, what is the option that we haven’t con­sid­ered that’s out there? So for this con­ver­sa­tion, is it peo­ple or strat­e­gy, I say, what’s the fourth option? And that might be exe­cu­tion? Because what we real­ly want is the results. What we real­ly want is, what we want is the exe­cu­tion of the strat­e­gy. That’s, you know, that if there was a third, is it peo­ple or strat­e­gy or exe­cu­tion? But see you with­out the right peo­ple, with­out a team with the right people

Kevin Lawrence 18:43

do their exe­cu­tion? Yeah,

Brad Giles 18:47

right. With­out a team of a play­ers, you’re not going to be able to do the strat­e­gy, jus­tice, okay, you’re not going to be able to exe­cute it to the high­est lev­el of its poten­tial. So it kind of cir­cles back to the peo­ple. So here’s the thing, you could have a high per­form­ing cohe­sive team of A play­ers. Any­time, any mar­ket, any geog­ra­phy, and they would fig­ure it out and find a way to win.

Kevin Lawrence 19:18

Yeah and they will exe­cute impor­tant things that are in sync with the strat­e­gy. And as long as the exec­u­tives are mak­ing sure that we exe­cute key things that are about the peo­ple, then gen­er­al­ly the busi­ness gets bet­ter and moves ahead. So con­tin­u­al­ly exe­cut­ing, refin­ing the strat­e­gy and march­ing towards the strat­e­gy, con­tin­u­al­ly mak­ing deci­sions to build a stronger pool of peo­ple who get the right stuff done. And then obvi­ous­ly, man­ag­ing your num­bers, but yeah, so what camp are you in? Strat­e­gy? Or peo­ple if you have to choose?

Brad Giles 19:49

Peo­ple, it’s got, it’s got to you’ve got to get the right peo­ple. Like that’s Jim Collins. Step num­ber one. You got to get the right peo­ple on the bus on the right seat doing the right things the right way. Yeah. And I 100% agree with that. Because unless you get that unless you get the right peo­ple, and you’ve got that cohe­sion, and the high per­form­ing, every­thing else stops.

Kevin Lawrence 20:18

You take an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty and make some­thing mediocre out of it. I agree. I feel like most of the time we spend work­ing with CEOs and exec­u­tives it’s around the peo­ple deci­sions and help­ing to dri­ve per­for­mance. It’s so yeah, so we’re both in the camp that look, you need strat­e­gy. But if you had to pick one and dou­ble down on some­thing, it’s going to be peo­ple, because they’re gonna fig­ure it out. Busi­ness is not rock­et sci­ence. But if you have a whole bunch of amaz­ing peo­ple, it’s it’s way, way eas­i­er. And if you have a bril­liant strat­e­gy, but a whole bunch of peo­ple that aren’t capa­ble or com­mit­ted, you’re not going to get very far you’re not going to win.

Brad Giles 20:59

Awe­some. Indeed, I think, yeah, I think I’m going to close that off by say­ing you can’t, like you said at the begin­ning, you can’t have a great com­pa­ny with good peo­ple. Nope, it’s just such a sim­ple and suc­cinct way to put it.

Kevin Lawrence 21:15

And you can’t have great results with great results with okay, peo­ple. Right, and it’s fun to work with great peo­ple. I love it. There’s noth­ing like work­ing with accom­plished smart, capa­ble peo­ple who are dri­ving to get things done and find­ing ways to win. I mean, it’s like it, there’s noth­ing like it. So there’s the results of the busi­ness and then there’s enjoy­ing your your work and lov­ing what you’re doing.

Brad Giles 21:45

Yeah. And I sup­pose it speaks to the job of man­age­ment and lead­er­ship, which is to grow the peo­ple around you. Right. That’s you’ve got to grow them to become bet­ter and more effec­tive leaders.

Kevin Lawrence 21:58

Are there’s a quote I’ll share is the job of a leader is to cre­ate more lead­ers. Right? Yeah, that’s it. The job of a leader is to cre­ate more lead­ers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many lead­ers are so busy work­ing, that they don’t put enough time into build­ing the leader, but that is our job, job and lead­ers to cre­ate lead­ers. Love that. Awe­some. Well, let’s close this off, Brad. So thanks for lis­ten­ing, guys. This has been the growth whis­pers pod­cast with Kevin and Brad. I’m Kevin. He’s Brad. I’m in Van­cou­ver, Cana­da. Brad’s in Perth, Aus­tralia. You can sub­scribe in your favorite pod­cast app. And if you haven’t already, please do share it with your friends, your team, your col­leagues. For the video ver­sion, go to youtube​.com and just search The Growth Whis­per­ers. Brad and I both have newslet­ters that we put out week­ly and lots of con­tent on our sites. We love to share what­ev­er we can. You can also search for back episodes of this pod­cast all that stuff is avail­able. Brad is that evo​lu​tion​part​ners​.com​.au and I am found at Lawrence​and​co​.com. Hope you have an awe­some week. And I hope that you con­tin­ue to refine your strat­e­gy, but poten­tial­ly con­sid­er dou­ble down­ing on the strength of your team.