Podcast Ep 141 | Planning to win in 2023 - People - (2 of 5)

What peo­ple deci­sions do you need to make to win in 2023? 

2023 looks to have major chal­lenges that are slow­ly devel­op­ing. And this is espe­cial­ly so when con­sid­er­ing the peo­ple chal­lenges we’re all fac­ing. One of the most impor­tant ques­tions to answer in order to best pre­pare for 2023 is how do I get the right peo­ple in the right seats doing the right things the right way?

This week we’re going through some impor­tant things to find the right peo­ple in 2023 and get your peo­ple sys­tem working.

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 Whis­per­ers, where every­thing we talk about is build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies, com­pa­nies, the last com­pa­nies that endure com­pa­nies that don’t blow up, like our friends at FTX. Recently

Kevin Lawrence 00:29

lose $32 bil­lion overnight, in some cas­es, peo­ple’s actu­al money.

Brad Giles 00:38

Yeah, it was­n’t overnight. It was a cou­ple of weeks, or at least one week.

Kevin Lawrence 00:42

Yeah. Or maybe three days? I don’t know. Like, yeah. But that’s, that could be like the record set­ting out­side of a stock mar­ket dip, which wipes out bil­lions or tril­lions of val­ue. That could maybe be the sin­gle day biggest, it’s prob­a­bly in the run­ning for one of the biggest loss­es in his­to­ry for a sin­gle com­pa­ny at once so quickly.

Brad Giles 01:09

Oh, absolute­ly. Absolute­ly. And who would have thought, right? So definitely,

Kevin Lawrence 01:16

def­i­nite­ly not an endur­ing, great company.

Brad Giles 01:19

And why? Because every­thing that we talked about here is build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. My name is Brad Giles, and my co host, is Kevin Lawrence. Hel­lo, Kevin. It’s love­ly to chat to you today just bought out inter­est­ing introduction.

Kevin Lawrence 01:34

Yeah. Oh, geez. No, I want to be clear to like, look, I don’t know the inside sto­ry. I don’t know what they were doing. I don’t know what they were or were not doing it did­n’t sound like a well oiled endur­ing machine. I don’t know. So, you know, we can you know, you can you can, you can have an opin­ion, you can be more than gos­sip, if you real­ly don’t know what was hap­pen­ing, it just did­n’t look to have some of the core dis­ci­plines that that we talk about a we are about or endur­ing com­pa­nies have, they def­i­nite­ly was­n’t run like Proc­ter and Gamble.

Brad Giles 02:07

It was­n’t or, you know, an exam­ple that we often talk about, you know, around great com­pa­nies, any of them. So what might be your word or phrase or thought of the day.

Kevin Lawrence 02:23

Dream­er is the word of the day. I had din­ner with some friends on Sat­ur­day night, and a friend’s CEO does busi­ness in US and Cana­da. And we were just, you know, he’s a, he’s a dream­er. And we had an inspir­ing con­ver­sa­tion and din­ner, and we were talk­ing about, you know, in Cana­da, it’s a won­der­ful coun­try that we live in. But we go down to the US, it’s just big­ger, faster, big­ger dreams, and big­ger Dream­ers. And we were just admir­ing the dream­ing nature of some of the things that he was doing in the US and, and that he finds with peo­ple that tend to dream big­ger. There is peo­ple who dream big in Cana­da, but down there, it’s like, yeah, so dream are the val­ues of dreams and the val­ue of hav­ing dreams and things to be excit­ed about in your life and dis­tract your­self. You know, the val­ue of the dream­ers, the inner dream­er in all of us sounds maybe a lit­tle bit cheesy, but I don’t know, most most suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs and peo­ple have have one hell of a dream.

Brad Giles 03:28

That’s both con­nect­ed and not con­nect­ed to mine. It’s a thought of a day and I don’t like to tell peo­ple what to do. But in this case, build­ing a case as to why the Unit­ed States should switch to the met­ric system.

Kevin Lawrence 03:49

Okay, this is going to be inter­est­ing. Well, okay, Texas, you’re gonna start to use mil­lime­ters and kilo­me­ters. Do tell Brad. I’m curious.

Brad Giles 04:07

Well, that’s what sci­ence does. And sci­ence does it for a rea­son not just because the entire rest of the world except for I don’t know, one tiny coun­try, every sin­gle oth­er coun­try in the world does it? But yeah, it I don’t real­ly have a case to beg oth­er than I’m just say­ing that I’ve got my I would encour­age, I would encour­age our friends to do that.

Kevin Lawrence 04:34

Well, that’s very insight­ful and enlight­en­ing. Actu­al­ly, you know what, while we’re at it, I’m going to talk to my Aussie friends like your­self and get you to dri­ve on the prop­er side of the road. That’s what I that’s what I think is real­ly impor­tant today. Aussies, get onto the prop­er side of the road.

Brad Giles 04:53

I want to say you stitch togeth­er the US matrix, sys­tem and dreamer.

Kevin Lawrence 05:00

My my co host, Brad, my co host and Brad is a freakin dream­er from Perth, Aus­tralia who thinks he’s gonna get the Amer­i­cans to switch to the met­ric sys­tem. So dream­ing of met­rics, your your dream met­ric real­ly dia­met­ri­cal­ly confused.

Brad Giles 05:21

Alright, so that was just what’s on my mind. Right. That’s all I’m saying.

Kevin Lawrence 05:26

Where did that come from the Hold on? Where did that come from? I’m gonna get the Amer­i­cans to, to use the met­ric system.

Brad Giles 05:35

I did­n’t say I’m going to I said, I think that they should con­sid­er it.

Kevin Lawrence 05:37

I under­stand but tell me like there’s a back­sto­ry here and I know you’re you are a thinker. There’s got­ta be some thought there.

Brad Giles 05:46

Yeah, yeah, I was watch­ing a sci­en­tif­ic video. I think it could have been NASA or Tes­la, some­one. It was, it was some and there was just like, they did­n’t even think about using the impe­r­i­al sys­tem. It was just like sci­ence works. Sci­ence uses the met­ric sys­tem, and every oth­er coun­try in the world uses the met­ric sys­tem. Because it’s more log­i­cal and makes more sense.

Kevin Lawrence 06:17

It’s the mea­sure­ment sys­tem in sci­ence. Yeah. Got it. Like Eng­lish is the lan­guage of busi­ness. I got­ta say, like, I grew up in the impe­r­i­al sys­tem, like in Cana­da, I grew up with mph, and we had to con­vert. And in my whole life I’ve known okay, 160 kilo­me­ters an hour. Okay, that’s 100 miles an hour. I my base, like my first lan­guage is Eng­lish. Yeah. And my first mea­sure­ment sys­tem is Impe­r­i­al. So I do a lot less con­vert­ing now. But through most of my life, I was like run­ning con­ver­sions all the time.

Brad Giles 06:52

Yeah, yeah. I, I think I think it’s, it’s inter­est­ing how sci­ence and sci­en­tists in the US use it. And, and just, that’s all because we’ve got more impor­tant things to talk about that are actu­al­ly rel­e­vant to our audience.

Kevin Lawrence 07:08

I know. This has noth­ing to do with today’s show about but I will say one last thing, I am hap­py on my on my one of my cars a truck, it’s got a but­ton. So when I, when I crossed the bor­der in us, I just push a but­ton and every­thing switch­es two miles an hour. So in North Amer­i­can vehi­cles, many of them eas­i­ly switch back and forth, so that we don’t have to trans­late and don’t get confused.

Brad Giles 07:30

so when you go south, it goes back. And when you go north school, yeah. Yeah, that was a joke in a joke. But that’s okay.

Kevin Lawrence 07:37

I did­n’t I did­n’t get it. But let’s move on.

Brad Giles 07:42

So today, we’re talk­ing about how you plan to win in 2023. Last week, we did the overview. We did the overview of like, it’s an uncer­tain time, there’s no doubt about it, this. Gee. This is the num­bers are trend­ing one way or the experts, and we don’t claim to be experts, the experts are say­ing that, you know, there’s a good chance of a reces­sion in 2023. But what we do say is we try to offer some ideas for peo­ple to think about as to what can we do to win in this uncer­tain envi­ron­ment that is per­haps trend­ing down­ward? Hey, let’s hope that it does­n’t trend down­ward, but plan and pre­pare. So, yeah, this week, in the midst of this five part series, we’re look­ing through the lens of peo­ple because we had an overview last week, and then in the sub­se­quent weeks to this week is peo­ple, next week is strat­e­gy then exe­cu­tion cash look­ing for­ward. It’s a chal­leng­ing time. Peo­ple are, look, I mean, peo­ple are los­ing their jobs. We spoke about FTX at the begin­ning of the episode, but equal­ly gee, there have been 10s if not hun­dreds of 1000s of job loss­es across the tech sec­tor already. Now I get it that that the tech sec­tor isn’t our audi­ence or is only a small sub­set of our audi­ence. It’s not every­body, but

Kevin Lawrence 09:20

it’s notable part and it’s part of our, notable part of the econ­o­my these days.

Brad Giles 09:23

That’s exact­ly my point. Like it’s still there. And you know, there are oth­er things that are hap­pen­ing as well. So how do we nav­i­gate these chop­py waters?

Kevin Lawrence 09:33

Yeah, and today we’re look­ing at through the per­spec­tive of peo­ple and you know, when we’re think­ing about this it’s like you know, there’s a lot going on every­one’s busy and every­one always has been busy we’re always have been we always will be. But I think it real­ly peo­ple pre­pare con­scious­ly for hol­i­days, you know, with my fam­i­ly, talk­ing about get­ting ready. You know, for the Christ­mas hol­i­days that you know, many peo­ple cel­e­brate here in the West. And you know, and when do you put the tree up and the presents and wher­ev­er be going over the hol­i­days, and whose house are we doing things out. And we have a lot of fun with that. And, you know, when we’re doing road trips, we pre­pare our vehi­cles for the road trips, we make sure there’s air in our tires, and we got the gear that we need, and the car has been ser­viced. And you know, and same when kids start the school year, we pre­pare them and they get their sup­plies and back to school clothes. But we do all that nat­u­ral­ly. But what do we do to pre­pare our teams for a brand new year? You know, some­times we might do a great job. Some­times we’re so busy doing what we’re doing. But we don’t think like, can we get peo­ple extra pre­pared for what’s going on, because just like a hol­i­day or a road trip, or going to a new school, if you’re a kid, it’s an adven­ture. So that’s kind of what I want to dig into, in a quote, and I’ve shared this one before, and I’ll share it again, it’s, it is one of my favorite quotes of all time prob­a­bly in my top 10. From Sun Tzu, the author of Art of War, one of them, you know, where the prin­ci­ples of Art of War came from. And he was just cool. And when it comes to plan­ning and things and but it Sun Tzu says as the text reads, ​“Vic­to­ri­ous War­riors win first, and then go to war, while defeat­ed war­riors go to war first, and then seek to win.” It, it’s all like No, basi­cal­ly, you win before you step foot on the bat­tle­field. And you could argue that a big part of your win­ning is before we step foot into 2023. Yeah. And that’s what I want to set the tone for today is, you know, how do we be real­ly pre­pared and not take our peo­ple for grant­ed? And and step into 2023, maybe more pre­pared? And again, we can’t be pre­pared for every­thing, because that’s kind of the think­ing to lock us into here today.

Brad Giles 11:55

Yeah. Per­haps a slight­ly dif­fer­ent angle. If we the back many of us had an expe­ri­ence about a dozen years ago in the glob­al finan­cial cri­sis. If you had that time again, what would you do dif­fer­ent going into the chal­lenges that were present at that point in time, and we now have that oppor­tu­ni­ty? If all of the experts are cor­rect, that things are going to get more chal­leng­ing? Now is the time to pre­pare. And we’re say­ing around the peo­ple side. So what are we doing?

Kevin Lawrence 12:31

I’ll just make one lit­tle flag there. Brad, the only thing is like places like Cana­da, we bare­ly got touched by that glob­al finan­cial cri­sis, there was a lit­tle speed bump, gen­er­al­ly com­pared to, in lots of parts of the US got hit hard. And many parts of the world. Cana­da had very, like, not much at all. So you know, most of us don’t know most peo­ple in Cana­da haven’t expe­ri­enced a hard hit. Yeah, but we’re, you know, you may have in oth­er places have it, but it is. It’s a good, it’s a good, it’s a good thought, I love that love the think­ing it’s just for Cana­di­ans is a lit­tle different.

Brad Giles 13:06

No, no, it’s a very, it’s a very good point. And dif­fer­ent sec­tors maybe weren’t con­nect­ed to the finan­cial aspect, but this time might be. And cer­tain­ly even if you are in tech, there was the 2000 tech bub­ble, that burst. Yeah. And that would be cer­tain­ly sim­i­lar to what they’re expe­ri­enc­ing at the moment. So I guess, you know, they say that the Chi­nese word for cri­sis is oppor­tu­ni­ty. Or as the great philoso­pher Homer Simp­son said across-a-tuni­ty when he merged the two words togeth­er in one of the Simp­sons episodes. So we’ve got to look at this in terms of prepa­ra­tion, and also prepa­ra­tion to deal with what’s hap­pen­ing from the peo­ple front. And also, through the oppor­tu­ni­ty that’s been pre­sent­ed. Yeah, because there are oppor­tu­ni­ties with so many lay­offs are and you know that you can pick up some amaz­ing A players.

Kevin Lawrence 14:06

Just be care­ful, because when peo­ple lay peo­ple off, they def­i­nite­ly do every­thing pos­si­ble to keep the As and only let go the low per­form­ers. I got burned by this before and peo­ple yeah, there’s all kinds of great this 09, all kinds of great peo­ple in the mar­ket. Well, there was all kinds of peo­ple in the mar­ket, we did­n’t find many great ones. So, you know, make sure they’re in A play­er for your org because peo­ple fight to keep those ones.

Brad Giles 14:34

That’s an inter­est­ing and very, very valid point. I actu­al­ly sent you a pho­to of before and after Elon Musk at Twit­ter, on your phone, Kev. And so, what, what we’ve got on the before, it looks like a uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus, lots of young fresh faces, who are, they’re very much. I don’t know, I don’t want to get polit­i­cal by any sense, but they’re very much look like

Kevin Lawrence 15:08

it’s a young, fresh, attrac­tive col­lege stu­dents. Yep. And then

Brad Giles 15:12

the after a lawn, they look like they’re straight out of revenge of the nerds, with all cred­it to our very smart tech peo­ple. And they’re, you know, very, very mul­ti­cul­tur­al and very much look­ing like engi­neers. So, yeah, it’s, it’s inter­est­ing that you want to make sure that you take it on bonafide A play­ers, let’s say.

Kevin Lawrence 15:40

And I got­ta say, I like, you know, one of these. Ilan said, Hey, if you’re gonna stay, get ready to prob­a­bly work as hard as you’ve worked in your life. He said dif­fer­ent words. But that was the essence of it. It’s like, bring the War­riors, this is the time to bring the fight­ers to the front, front, and let’s go. Right, you know, who do you want to go to war with. And that was awe­some. So let’s, let’s dig into that. So lots of oppor­tu­ni­ties. And you know, it’s inter­est­ing. Last night at din­ner with some friends, we had a spec­tac­u­lar din­ner and con­ver­sa­tions. And, you know, we were just talk­ing about men­tal health and resilience, because I’ve been doing a lot of speak­ing around men­tal health and resilience, it’s my most pop­u­lar keynote, and was shar­ing with them how a con­struc­tion com­pa­ny had me speak at, at their annu­al event, a con­fer­ence they were hav­ing and about resilience, because they want­ed to bet­ter equip their lead­ers to be able to han­dle the stress that they won com­ing out of, to going into, but it was also so they were doing resilience train­ing and men­tal health train­ing for the team. But they were also doing finan­cial train­ing and had resources to help peo­ple with finan­cial stuff because, you know, as bills go up, things are cost­ing more or my per­son­al, per­son­al finan­cial stuff, just, you know, as I was talk­ing about, at break­fast, one of my dad’s talk­ing about how he’s at the store, and he shop­ping, and there’s anoth­er guy there shop­ping, and it’s like, you know, a cau­li­flower was $10. And it was­n’t very big. I don’t real­ly know a lot about the prices of gro­ceries because I don’t real­ly shop. And if I do, it’s Instacart. And I just click on what I need. I’m not, I’m not a price pick­ing cus­tomer. But I’m pret­ty sure 10 bucks is a lot for cau­li­flower. Yeah, to me, that seems like a hell of a lot. It sounds like it is. But the point of it is, is that finan­cial train­ing to help peo­ple and give them resources, because, you know, unless your par­ents were real­ly good with mon­ey, a lot of peo­ple don’t under­stand it don’t under­stand things like bud­get­ing and things like that. So point is I was doing resilience train­ing, which is a great thing for peo­ple to help them have a strong mind­set, and have them under­stand men­tal health. So they under­stand what to do if things go weird. But also, you know, finan­cial stuff, I thought was a real­ly great thing to do to equip a team, going into what you know, is not easy on peo­ple finan­cial either.

Brad Giles 18:05

I love that idea. Help the peo­ple to under­stand it’s tough times and that they use what they can do to build their own. I guess Finance, Finan­cial Edu­ca­tion. You know, it makes me think about anoth­er sto­ry, I think it was, I think it was Spo­ti­fy, it could have been square, but I think it was Spo­ti­fy. And this was maybe six months ago, they out­line the chal­lenges that the busi­ness is fac­ing in the mar­ket and indi­vid­u­al­ly. And they you know, they were just real­ly, real­ly clear, this is where we’re at. And then they said, This is the prob­lem that we’ve got to solve. And we want to come up with a plan as a com­pa­ny with­in two weeks. So they kind of broke up the com­po­nents of the prob­lems around all of it aligned every­body, once they build a plan around the pri­or­i­ties, and then set to work to do it. So So you know, a prob­lem shared is a prob­lem halved. Is the old say­ing, Yeah, I love that one. And the the lead­er­ship team might have a great plan but but get­ting every­one invest­ed in keep­ing the com­pa­ny keep­ing the strength of the com­pa­ny and avoid­ing lay­offs is every­one’s best inter­ests at heart and can actu­al­ly empow­er the team to make their own or to cre­ate effort where it was­n’t before

Kevin Lawrence 19:27

and align them to it and you’re right is so love that that’s a great one. Your might have been anoth­er sto­ry as well as about, you know, many of our clients are doing now many is we don’t want to have to do lay­offs. lay­offs are real­ly hard on a busi­ness and if you have to do it, you have to do it. It’s not fun. It’s not pret­ty. But what we’ve been doing going back eas­i­ly six months in some clients, but we’ve been slow­ing down hir­ing and get­ting stronger on per­for­mance man­age­ment because we’re We’re com­ing out of a peri­od where peo­ple could­n’t get peo­ple to do the work. So there’s a lot of peo­ple who prob­a­bly should have been moved on, or should­n’t have been pro­mot­ed and things like that. So bring­ing more rig­or back to the peo­ple pil­lar of the busi­ness, and even stronger on per­for­mance man­age­ment, because we’re not as scarce scarci­ty mind­set, there’s not much of a scarci­ty mind­set around los­ing peo­ple or replac­ing peo­ple. So to nat­u­ral­ly man­age the attri­tion and Per­for­mance Man­age­ment as we used to do before things were boom­ing to just try and keep so we have the right staffing lev­els with­out, you know, a big layoff.

Brad Giles 20:40

And that, and that per­for­mance man­age­ment, it real­ly, I total­ly agree, that real­ly comes back to roll score­cards. And so under­stand­ing what does suc­cess look like in the role, per­haps even adapt­ed to suit this upcom­ing mar­ket? What does suc­cess look like in the role, and I go through this in great detail in my book on board­ed, which is out now. And we did a we did quite a few for episodes about a month or two ago on that, on that book on board­ed. But under­stand­ing what is the expec­ta­tions of the role, build­ing the role score­card per role can give you real clar­i­ty, and align­ment up and down the org chart?

Kevin Lawrence 21:25

Yeah, being real­ly clear on what great looks like in the role, from the val­ues to the finan­cials to the KPIs to the com­pe­ten­cies and skills to the team, like get­ting clar­i­ty, and a lot of orga­ni­za­tions are not that clear. And the only one I like to look at and we use dif­fer­ent lan­guage for it. But I like it to be real­ly easy for peo­ple to self man­age, I call it autonomous account­abil­i­ty. Peo­ple can hold them­selves account­able, because the role is so damn clear. It was inter­est­ing one of the com­pa­ny, I’m doing some work with a cou­ple of real inter­est­ing part­ners in a pri­vate equi­ty busi­ness I’m doing some work with and real­ly inter­est­ing think­ing that they’re hav­ing. But they’re one of the few com­pa­nies I’ve ever heard that takes the full score­card for a role and reviews it quar­ter­ly. Every­one knows they should. Yeah, but most peo­ple don’t take that ini­tial score­card. They built it for a role and use it for the quar­ter­ly per­for­mance review. And it’s, it’s it’s the best dis­ci­pline pos­si­ble. It’s awe­some. With that in mind, the oth­er thing is also mak­ing sure and this goes back to strength­en­ing of the team is mak­ing sure every sin­gle team mem­ber has a clear devel­op devel­op­ment plan, par­tic­u­lar­ly your high­est per­form­ers so they can con­tin­ue to grow. Again, this is one of those basics. And you know, we know the basics are what makes the dif­fer­ence, but is real­ly being clear on how is this per­son going to grow? So for exam­ple, anoth­er com­pa­ny that I’m work­ing with, I’ve got lots of amaz­ing peo­ple, but they have one real­ly high per­former on their team. And as we’re talk­ing about this per­son, and they’re like, Well, you know, I don’t know if they’re gonna want to still be here in 10 years. And, you know, we’ve got to work on suc­ces­sion. I said, Great, well, what do they want? Like, what are they dri­ving to in their job? Con­ver­sa­tion, God, lit­tle tense and a lit­tle qui­et. And like, whoa, hold on, you’re telling me this is maybe your best per­son. And you have a plan for them that they’re excit­ed about? And they’re like God, and they just sort of looked at me, and they kind of looked down and I’m like, okay, maybe we should do that. And they’re like, Yeah, let’s do that. It’s like, it’s like, come on. We know these things. So what­ev­er it is, for your key peo­ple to have devel­op­ment plans that they’re excit­ed about and mov­ing towards and nev­er for­get, for your a play­er has been will­ing to invest in them. You know, one of the lead­ers that I work with in the Mid­dle East, like, you know, we sent more of one of his, one of his team off and spent 10s of 1000s of dol­lars on the addi­tion­al edu­ca­tion for this per­son and done lots for his team in many com­pa­nies invest a lot in their exec­u­tive and lead­er­ship team. And, and he said, and he told me the sto­ry, and I’ve heard oth­ers say the same. You know, he used to have a head of HR that goes, Why are you spend­ing all this mon­ey on these peo­ple and devel­op­ing them devel­op­ing them? Because, you know, they can get amaz­ing, but then they could leave? And he’s like, Yeah, or they could be mediocre. And stay. Yeah, they’re hap­py. No. But the point of it is, is seri­ous devel­op­ment for your key peo­ple so they grow and increase their capa­bil­i­ty, basi­cal­ly make your war­riors stronger.

Brad Giles 24:50

So you speak about devel­op­ment plans Total­ly agree what hap­pens before devel­op­ment plans is assess­ing the tal­ent. Where are they at? So, here in West­ern Aus­tralia, our state in 2000, and I think it was 18, and 19, or 17, and 18. around that peri­od, we went through tech­ni­cal depres­sion, we had eight quar­ters of neg­a­tive growth at a state lev­el, pret­ty inter­est­ing time, that’s for sure. Things after, through and after COVID have kind of come back. But the point that I make is, through that time, one of the teams that I’ve worked with here, they did a tal­ent assess­ment every month with their team that is assess­ing every per­son, every man­ag­er, assess­ing every per­son, in their team against their align­ment with val­ues and their align­ment with pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the role, and then hav­ing to explain to the oth­er lead­ers in the busi­ness, what are they going to do about it? And so, so what that meant is that they came out of that depres­sion, that eco­nom­ic depres­sion, to be clear. With a team, a strong team of eight play­ers had the basis of a devel­op­ment plan for every­one. And now that we’ve turned into good time, so over the last few times has been good. This com­pa­ny has soared. It’s been amazing.

Kevin Lawrence 26:19

Shock­ing. Yeah, that’s the job. The job is to con­tin­ue to build a stronger team around you. Yeah, is the job some­times you can peo­ple get busy and think­ing the job is, you know, tak­ing care of the cus­tomers and stuff. And that is part of the job. But lead­ers job is to build a strong team is an ever increas­ing stron­tium coin.

Brad Giles 26:39

Gaco Robin Shar­ma and he’s got a say­ing that the job of a leader is to grow lead­ers. And that’s what you’re saying.

Kevin Lawrence 26:46

Exact­ly. Yep. So and the thing is, it comes from clar­i­ty of what great looks like and then con­tin­u­al­ly doing the job of a leader and or man­ag­er to grow and improve and devel­op those peo­ple. So the next thing is, I call them in your oxy­gen mask. First, this is a chap­ter called lick your toes, which is clean­ing up all the loose ends and pro­cras­ti­na­tions in your life and your work. But com­pa­nies will just use spring clean­ing called like toads days, instead of Tues­days. It’s a bit cheesy, but it works. But when peo­ple make a list of a whole bunch of low­er val­ue, things that drain ener­gy drains psy­cho­log­i­cal ener­gy, it might not be worth a for­tune. But it’s like fric­tion and bur­den in the sys­tem and just get­ting it cleaned out. And there’ll be things like, you know, the toads lists or things that peo­ple have been pro­cras­ti­nat­ing. And it’s like spring clean­ing for your house and clean­ing out your office or your com­put­er or your proces­sor your files or who knows. And come up with a bunch of stops and things to get into the sys­tem or the sil­ly list, the things that just don’t make any sense. And then the team and the team leader try­ing to fig­ure out how to deal with those things. But basi­cal­ly, it’s like you’re on a road trip, take a breath, pull over and arrest stop and clean the car, like just get all eat­en on the road and trav­el­ing on a road or what­ev­er it is clean up the car, get the junk out of the car, maybe wash the car, and then get back on a road trip again. So that’s some time to stop off and do that kind of stuff. A dif­fer­ent ver­sion that oth­er com­pa­nies do is that they’ll they will again, these are reg­u­lar things we should do. But the peo­ple have been so busy last cou­ple years is just clean­ing up core process­es, like going to you know, in scal­ing up we’ve got this thing called the the pace tool, the process account­abil­i­ty chart, but it’s the most impor­tant process­es and iden­ti­fy­ing the top 567 for the busi­ness or team map­ping them and look­ing how to make them flow sim­pler. Or maybe even mak­ing sure every­one has the core set of doc­u­ments or tools or tem­plates that we should be using just tak­ing time to make every­thing run smoother and elim­i­nate fric­tion in the system.

Brad Giles 28:52

Yeah, so impor­tant the peo­ple side of things look­ing into next year into 2023 It’s it’s some­thing that’s that’s very easy to let slip because you’re you’re focused real­ly on the cus­tomer on the num­bers on maybe changes in the envi­ron­ment and read­ing you know, a lot of stuff in the media about neg­a­tiv­i­ty. But we know that rule num­ber one is you got to get the right peo­ple on the bus doing the right things the right way. And that lens still applies through this peri­od of chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty. And that’s real­ly what we’re say­ing as a zoom out over all of these these items. Make sure you get the right peo­ple on the bus doing the right things the right way that is adapt­ed per­haps to suit this environment.

Kevin Lawrence 29:51

Yep. 100% last thing on on the peo­ple pieces, your sum­ma­ry. Going through that Brad? is mak­ing sure are that there’s things in the cul­ture that peo­ple are excit­ed about. Like, there’s no What are your mes­sages as a CEO? What are you say­ing? You know, it’s impor­tant to admit that things are hard. But what is the bright light, you’re show­ing them at the end. And then one of the biggest things I’ve always looked at, and Brad, you and I’ve talked about this before, as well, is that when you’re at the peak of a mar­ket, and you’re gonna go into a bit of a val­ley, or you could be going into the val­ley, have them look­ing up at the next peak, like, have them see­ing where we’re going, and it’s like, five, sev­en years down the road, here’s what’s going to hap­pen, you can look back and say, here’s what’s hap­pened in his­to­ry, nor­mal­ize it, because a lot of you’ll have not been on this jour­ney, and it’ll ter­ri­fy them. Here’s where we’re going, here’s what its gonna look like, here’s why we’re going to be stronger. Here’s where the oppor­tu­ni­ties are. Here’s why it’s good for us, even though it’s hard. And no dif­fer­ent than par­ents when they’re on a road trip. And things become messy, and there’s a flat flat tire, remind­ing them we’re still going to get to Dis­ney­land, and all the good things are going to hap­pen and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So not for­get­ting the lead­er­ship and your job of show­ing the vision and the rea­son to believe in that vision.

Brad Giles 31:16

It’s it’s, that’s fun­ny, because on a very, you’re right with all of that on a very quick and dif­fer­ent sto­ry. One of the lead­ers that I work with, said to his lead­er­ship team, next Sep­tem­ber for our annu­al work­shop, our annu­al today strate­gic meet­ing. We’re gonna go to the south of France. Let me out. Let me tell you, I reck­on he’s gonna have zero attri­tion in his lead­er­ship team between now and then. Sure. Yeah, he’s mak­ing it fun.

Kevin Lawrence 31:45

There, why not? That’s awe­some. Great. So let’s wrap up. So we’re talk­ing about peo­ple we know it’s a chal­leng­ing year com­ing ahead. And some indus­tries are going to have incred­i­ble booms. But gen­er­al­ly, there’s a feel­ing it’s going to be tough. And hey, if it isn’t, let’s have maybe we’ll all go to South of France, but there’s a good chance it’ll be chal­leng­ing. Real­ly, what do you do to devel­op your peo­ple fur­ther? Get peo­ple ral­lied around the chal­lenges, devel­op peo­ple more, make sure they have clar­i­ty and what great per­for­mance looks like. Get out the sys­tems and stream­line the sys­tems spring, clean the busi­ness and get peo­ple focused on what’s pos­si­ble and what they can be excit­ed about. It’s pret­ty straight­for­ward stuff. But we just need reminder some­times because it’s busy and ide­al­ly get­ting our­selves set up to win next year. So this has been the growth whis­pers Thank you for lis­ten­ing. I’m Kevin Lawrence here in Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia, Cana­da, with my amaz­ing co host, Brad Giles, in Perth, Aus­tralia, the coun­try that dri­ves on the wrong side of the road, but does use the met­ric sys­tem to sub­scribe. The growth whis­pers You can find it wher­ev­er you like your pod­casts, YouTube. If you want to watch the video, YouTube and just search the growth whis­pers Brad and I both have newslet­ters that we put out every week Brad has a longer therell tons of great think­ing in his newslet­ter. Mine’s more of a one arti­cle and a pod­cast but both of us have our best think­ing we’d love to share more of a strat­e­gy and belief in abun­dance. You can get a hold of Brad for his newslet­ter and resources at evo­lu­tion part​ners​.com​.au and myself and my team is at Lawrence and co​.com Lawrence A N D co​.com. Hope you have an awe­some week and hope you take time to think about how you can make your­self and your team stronger and more effec­tive next year. Have a great one.