Podcast Ep 147 | Jim Collins Three rules of Engagement for Healthy Teams

In team meet­ings, lead­ers often need a sim­ple code of con­duct through which to oper­ate. If you have the ​‘right peo­ple on the bus’, they will be self-moti­vat­ed and don’t require con­stant coerc­ing toward a com­pelling vision. In order to effec­tive­ly del­e­gate respon­si­bil­i­ty and account­abil­i­ty and cre­ate a high-per­form­ing team, lead­ers should fol­low Jim Collin’s three rules of engage­ment for healthy teams.

In this episode, we dis­cuss Jim Collin’s three rules, what they are and why each of them are so impor­tant to cre­ate the envi­ron­ment for a high-per­form­ing team to thrive.

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

Hey, and wel­come to the growth whis­pers pod­cast where every­thing that Kevin and Brad talk about, is about build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. That’s what we spent a lot of time in our life study­ing, and we’re real­ly pas­sion­ate about, and not that we don’t get a kick out of com­pa­nies that aren’t endur­ing a great action. We learn a lot from them. But our pas­sion is help­ing founders, entre­pre­neurs, CEOs, lead­ers, exec­u­tives, build endur­ing great com­pa­nies that sus­tain gen­er­a­tions and per­form amaz­ing­ly well over time. And because we like, it’s what we like to do. It’s what we like to study. It’s what we’d like to share. So I’m Kevin Lawrence here in Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia, Cana­da, and with my amaz­ing co host, Mr. Brad Giles, down in Perth, Aus­tralia. Bran­don, how’s it going for you today?

Brad Giles 01:01

It’s going very good. Good to see Kev hope that you are. Well, it’s been a lit­tle bit of a wall between chats for us. Yes. But not great. It is sum­mer here. sum­mer hol­i­day time. Things are good.

Kevin Lawrence 01:16

Yeah, we’re on the oppo­site end. It’s a lit­tle cool. Here. We were away and had some sun­shine, which was nice. But today, we’re dig­ging into some­thing inter­est­ing, which we’re gonna get to this thing called rules of engage­ment in a minute, but before we do, what’s your word or your phrase of the day?

Brad Giles 01:33

Relax? Relax. I’m just been on some hol­i­days, as I just mentioned,

Kevin Lawrence 01:38

you were telling me to relax? No.

Brad Giles 01:42

No, it’s just relax. I’ve I’m feel­ing relaxed today. It’s been a very good hol­i­day break for me with the fam­i­ly. You just got to go to take time out to recharge.

Kevin Lawrence 01:55

Yes. Yeah, I just did the same where I had a few weeks to recharge. And it was amaz­ing and awe­some. And yeah, although that’s not my word of the day today. My Word of the Day is hap­pi­ness was some time in Mex­i­co and this maz­ing chef that we met in this on the chef like envi­ron­ment. But he talked about in Mex­i­co, one of the core val­ues is hap­pi­ness. And it’s a com­bi­na­tion of grat­i­tude, and gen­eros­i­ty. And it was the most beau­ti­ful def­i­n­i­tion of hap­pi­ness I had ever heard in my life. Wow. And I just it just it just hit me I’m like, Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.

Brad Giles 02:33

So hap­pi­ness is grat­i­tude plus generosity,

Kevin Lawrence 02:38

cor­rect. I love it. Think about it, grat­i­tude, where you’re able to soak up and absorb all the amaz­ing things that are hap­pen­ing around you. And take ener­gy off the things that aren’t just real­ly appre­ci­ate what it is. And then take that and share it with some oth­er peo­ple share some of that with oth­ers. grat­i­tude and gen­eros­i­ty. It’s a it’s a beau­ti­ful per­spec­tive is a side note, even this chef, his name was no, it was a fas­ci­nat­ing guy. He talked about if some­one comes to my restau­rant, and they’re hun­gry, and they have no mon­ey. I’m gonna feed them. Why would anoth­er human I want to help. Now, if they want a beer or they want some mez­cal, which is like one of the drinks, they alco­holic drinks, like, Well, no, they can pay. But if they need food, I want to help. And this guy was as much spir­i­tu­al teacher as he was. Chef and he’d made some amaz­ing food. Alright, so hap­pi­ness. And you call it rest though? Would you call it? Relax? Relax, relax. Okay. All right.

Brad Giles 03:45

What a spir­i­tu­al way, what a spir­i­tu­al and nice way to start this episode.

Kevin Lawrence 03:52

Won­der­ful. Well, let’s dig into today. Today we’re talk­ing about Collins, in his book, Good to Great has three rules of engage­ment for healthy teams. Now, we’re not say­ing these are the three rules you must adopt. These are his rec­om­men­da­tions, and we’re going to share some more about it. So Bri­an, why don’t you kind of kick us off and give a lit­tle con­text to why the heck we should be think­ing about this and why it’s impor­tant. Well,

Brad Giles 04:17

have you ever been in a meet­ing where it did­n’t go so well? Or it was an inef­fec­tive meet­ing? I mean, we all have

Kevin Lawrence 04:23

Yes, yes. I’ve been in so many of those. You want to poke your eyes out? Yeah. Yeah. And lit­er­al­ly because that would hurt but it’s like you it’s excru­ci­at­ing. And you don’t want to be there.

Brad Giles 04:34

Yeah. Yeah. And part of the rea­son is that there might not be a set of behav­iors or a code of con­duct that is effec­tive that pre­vents those things from hap­pen­ing. And so in his analy­sis of in Good to Great, I think it was 1443. I could be wrong on that num­ber but well over 1000 com­pa­nies in the Good to Great Study, he learned Jim Collins learned that these great com­pa­nies had these char­ac­ter­is­tics in meet­ings that were that were com­mon amongst them. And so there are these three pri­ma­ry things that kind of set the tone for any meet­ing that peo­ple are going to par­tic­i­pate in. So that’s what we’re dig­ging into today. What are those char­ac­ter­is­tics? Why do they mat­ter? And how could you per­haps use this in your busi­ness to set the right tone or a tone of effec­tive­ness for meetings?

Kevin Lawrence 05:34

Yeah, or be inspired by it to come up with your own ver­sion of it, because it’s kind of a start­ing point or a jump­ing off point. I remem­ber. Gosh, five, sev­en years ago, we were at a Strat plan­ning. Meet­ing for a client in the US. I don’t even remem­ber what city we’re in, but we’re some­where and the CEO said, Hey, I got a spe­cial thing for you. Actu­al­ly, I might have been in Chica­go. And he said, Coach K is speak­ing. Now some peo­ple call me Coach K. It was­n’t me. It was, who is the coach of the leg­endary bas­ket­ball team from Duke in the US, and he’s since no longer at Duke. He’s retired, I believe. But Microsoft, he was he’s got an amaz­ing track record. He coached the men’s Olympic bas­ket­ball team. And he was talk­ing about build­ing amaz­ing and dur­ing teams. And, you know, as he’s telling his sto­ry, about the first time he coached the men’s bas­ket­ball team, because he coach­es a col­lege team in the US, and he did very well. But he goes up, and it was the US Men’s Bas­ket­ball team was full of leg­endary play­ers. And he said, he’s stand­ing there he goes, You know, I’m stand­ing there on the court. And he goes, and then God him­self walked onto the court. who at that time was Michael Jor­dan. Yeah. And he’s like, What am I going to do with Michael Jor­dan? And I believe Scot­tie, Pip­pen, anoth­er NBA play­er, what am I good? How am I going to tell them what to do? Now, he was a very smart coach. And he knew well, he could­n’t, because that was­n’t going to be the way that he could bring his best coach­ing exper­tise, he knew he had these incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed play­ers who were the best, and they knew they were the best. So his job was to actu­al­ly blend them togeth­er. Like an Ital­ian grand­moth­er does with an amaz­ing pas­ta sauce, he had to bring them togeth­er into one amaz­ing group. And he did it sim­i­lar to what Collins talked about with the rules of engage­ment. Except for he did­n’t make the rules. He got them all in a cir­cle, he pre­ced­ed the group a bit, and he had them come up with and make the list of the the rules of engage­ment the team was going to have this is the men’s Olympic team, and what they were going to hold them­selves and each oth­er account­able to most and accord­ing to the sto­ry, I think they came up with 12 things. And there was one was like, be on time. Anoth­er was respect to the clean­ing and care­tak­ing staff. Because a lot of peo­ple with a lot of pow­er and a lot of ego could be dis­re­spect­ful to the jan­i­tors rules, and one of the rules was, that ain’t going to be us. Yeah. So the team came up with this rules of engage­ment code of con­duct, what­ev­er you want to think. And then the team held them­selves and each oth­er account­able to it. So he did­n’t have to play par­ent to, and which is obvi­ous­ly the health­i­est way that’s what we want his teams, but he facil­i­tat­ed it. And helped to to we do this all the time. So what do we do with our own team with our own retreat, we set our own guide­lines that we want to do. And even just today, I was just talk­ing to CEO about this, because he’s got a gen­er­al­ly a fair­ly new exec team. And he’s got a cou­ple of days with him at a spe­cial place. And we were talk­ing about how do you start off two days with your exec team, espe­cial­ly when they’re fresh? Yeah. And it you know, again, these rules of engage­ment that we cre­ate, and then we find a way to fol­low up on it. It’s an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful mech­a­nism to cre­ate team based account­abil­i­ty instead of par­ent­ing by the boss.

Brad Giles 09:26

Cool. So yeah, so through his research and Good to Great Jim Collins, iden­ti­fied these three rules. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to first of all out­line what are the three rules and then we’re going to dig in and explain what each of them mean. So first of all, it’s bru­tal hon­esty, so it’s incum­bent on peo­ple to say the things that need to be said. Num­ber two is no shame, and no blame. We’re not here to shame peo­ple. We’re not here to blame peo­ple. And then of course, num­ber three is dis­agree and com­mit. So there would be very Gary, in these teams, there’ll be very robust debate argu­ment, peo­ple would be almost throt­tling each oth­er across the table. But through that they would, at the end, com­mit to suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion. So let’s spin it back. Again. bru­tal hon­esty, no shame, no blame, dis­agree and com­mit. Let’s start at the begin­ning. bru­tal hon­esty, so con­front the bru­tal facts. So we’ve actu­al­ly done an episode on this. It’s episode 59. Con­front the bru­tal facts, Jim Collins method for Team hygiene. If you don’t con­front the bru­tal facts, if you don’t step in at all times, and say, what’s the real issue here, or what’s real­ly going on, talk about the ele­phants in the room, what­ev­er it is, all the way through your meet­ings, peo­ple can walk away say­ing, We did­n’t talk about this. And we did­n’t do that. What a waste of time.

Kevin Lawrence 11:00

And that’s true. Because the bru­tal facts are the real issues that need, we don’t need to talk about how our pen­cil crayons or pen­cils just aren’t the same brand they used to be, and how the paper clips, just they just don’t hold their shape. Like that. I’m exag­ger­at­ing, but it’s a lot of stuff. That’s irrel­e­vant. And as I say too much time the CEO will say, you know, for a mid­size com­pa­ny, if it does­n’t impact the busi­ness by about a mil­lion dol­lars of EBI­TA. Maybe we don’t talk about it, because it’s not bru­tal enough, it needs to be high­ly impact­ful. That’s a, you know, the fil­ter would change based on the size of the com­pa­ny. But there’s so it’s so easy to talk about the cur­so­ry issues and not the core issues. Inter­est­ing­ly, you know, we pump this one up pret­ty hard in the work we do with com­pa­nies. Yeah, we asked ques­tions about it. Before we get in the room. We ping the team about this. And some­times we ping the next lay­er down. If we’re meet­ing with the execs, we get the execs to answer a bunch of ques­tions before we enter the room. And then we would ask the direc­tors as well. But that way, it’s it gets rid of the social awk­ward­ness of get­ting it on the table, because we’ve already got it in a body of data that we can pull from num­ber one. Num­ber two, it’s always an agen­da item. What are the bru­tal facts? Yeah, and we flush them out. And as we get going with teams and build trust, we don’t only flush them out, we pri­or­i­tize them. And we make sure so I’ve got a meet­ing, I’m going to tomor­row for two days. And all we’re going to do is debate bru­tal facts for 810 12 hours a day. And I’ll tell you more about that one lat­er. The main thing is the final agen­da point is make sure there’s actions con­nect­ed to all of the bru­tal facts. That is how we wrap up the meet­ing, before we say are nice clos­ing com­ments, to make sure we’ve addressed them all. Because at the end of the day, we want to lever­age our big oppor­tu­ni­ties and mit­i­gate the bru­tal facts so we can be successful.

Brad Giles 13:05

I had a meet­ing about six weeks ago, and stan­dard agen­da quar­ter­ly plan­ning work­shop. each agen­da item was 3020 min­utes to 45 min­utes. So it’s all struc­tured through­out the day exact­ly what we’re going to do about 10am, we start­ed talk­ing about the bru­tal facts and struc­tured agen­da item, as you’ve just said, we fin­ished at 450 because we had to close up because peo­ple had to leave. Yeah, it can be a real­ly, real­ly impor­tant if we’re talk­ing about the bru­tal facts. Sounds sim­ple. But it can be a real­ly impor­tant thing. What’s impor­tant here is we’re talk­ing about con­front the bru­tal facts. This is a very slight devi­a­tion from that, which is bru­tal hon­esty. So when we set this as a code of con­duct item for the meet­ing, or this is what we’re going to do. It gives peo­ple license to be bru­tal­ly hon­est. And they say, look, are you know, are you real­ly being bru­tal­ly hon­est about that item because I know you’ve got anoth­er per­spec­tive, which might be the real per­spec­tive. So when so total­ly agree with con­front the bru­tal facts, but also this gives a peo­ple and I remem­ber a meet­ing recent­ly where an exec­u­tive said if I’m going to be bru­tal­ly hon­est, this is what is real­ly going on. And it just gives a license for those types of dia­logues to be to be opened up. He

Kevin Lawrence 14:41

point A gives license, but I’ve been in meet­ings where see there’s like that’s not the case. I don’t know what you’re talk­ing about. That’s not okay. You guys are idiots. This isn’t gonna work. I’ve had enough of this shit, blah, blah, blah, and the CEO los­es it which destroys any license that you give To that, and that’s the key is when these things come up, you have to han­dle it well respect­ed, and be able to find a way to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going. Oth­er­wise peo­ple get the mes­sage. Yeah, he’s ask­ing for the bru­tal facts. He just wants the puffy facts. That’s where you

Brad Giles 15:17

need a master

Kevin Lawrence 15:19

facil­i­ta­tor. Oh, yeah, yes. Like in that meet­ing, as that CEO start­ed to lose it. I’m like, Hey, we hear you. But let’s get back to the ques­tion. Every­one in the room is ter­ri­fied, I’m not gonna fire me, that’s fine. We have a line­up of clients. Yeah, but it’s where I had to man­age him because he would have those tend to and that shuts down the room. And that’s the key, even anoth­er com­pa­ny that I that I work with, we need that when there are two peo­ple on the team that love to fight father and son, they like to have a good old fight. And as I’ve said to them, won­der­ful. Do it at home. Do it out­side the room. And, you know, we’ve learned in that com­pa­ny, because some peo­ple love to fight. Some peo­ple get clar­i­ty by fight­ing, and it’s hon­est. But it’s but it’s too intense for the room. So what we’ve learned to do is we if it is I’m say­ing, hey, excel­lent. This is impor­tant. Let’s the three of us take it offline. And we’ll talk about it at lunch, or like pulling it out of the room. So you don’t allow the room to be too tox­ic. So a failure

Brad Giles 16:29

would be walk­ing away from the meet­ing. And any­body says, well, we did­n’t talk about this. And we did­n’t talk about that. Now, or a whole lead,

Kevin Lawrence 16:39

did we ever. And I’ll nev­er bring that up. Again. That’s exten­sive­ly spec­trum, two ends of the spectrum.

Brad Giles 16:46

Well, that real­ly is a great segue into our next point, which is no time and no blame, right? We’re not here to shame peo­ple. And we’re not here to blame peo­ple. We’re here to build a great com­pa­ny. So we want to sci­en­tif­ic debate with peo­ple engaged in a search for the best answers that is pred­i­cat­ed by bru­tal hon­esty. Okay. So, so from good to great. This was a sen­tence that I loved out of that book. When you con­duct autop­sies. with­out blame, you cre­ate an envi­ron­ment where the truth is heard. If you have the right peo­ple on the bus, you should almost nev­er need to assign blame, but only need to search for under­stand­ing and learn­ing. So this cre­ates trust. When we know Look, we assume that we’ve got the right peo­ple on the bus, we assume that every­one is here with the right intent. There­fore, every­one with the right intent, we’re not going to shame oth­ers, and we’re not going to blame oth­ers when look­ing for the answers.

Kevin Lawrence 17:46

As long as you have a traf­fic cop who man­ages it when it gets a lit­tle off the rails, because it needs it needs the traf­fic cop or facil­i­ta­tor. So I remem­ber some­thing were Jim­son I don’t know if it’s in one of the pri­vate ses­sions we did with him. One of his work big­ger work­shops are where, but I think it was him. I was pri­vate ses­sions. And we did one in Lon­don with him. I remem­ber and he said it might have been there. But what he said is, hey, bru­tal facts are awe­some. And when you should do is pri­or­i­tize the most impor­tant ones. But let’s once you have one, you then need to gath­er the facts about the bru­tal facts don’t drop into debat­ing a bru­tal fact, because you’re gonna have an opin­ion fest. Even when they’re talk­ing about the bru­tal facts, you need to gath­er. Here’s all the facts that we know so many oth­er sit­u­a­tions, exact­ly, real facts. And then once you have the facts, and then you can debate it and come up with a solu­tion. But that’s like, it’s a dis­ci­pline to come up with the bru­tal facts, then it’s a real dis­ci­pline to come up with the facts about the most impor­tant bru­tal facts before you start debat­ing because by nature, we like short­cuts, and we go to opin­ion fast. So we had a sit­u­a­tion in a com­pa­ny where the CFO, I love the guy, he was a won­der­ful soul. And he was not effec­tive. And the finance team was no longer effec­tive. So one of the bru­tal facts is, there was about three of them on the flip chart we made at the begin­ning of the meet­ing about the finance team being inef­fec­tive. So I said, Hey, I just heard this from Jim, before, a few weeks before, so I’m like, I got­ta test this. This is prob­a­bly the right time to test it because it’s very sen­si­tive, because every­one loved the guy. And he knew he was­n’t effec­tive. So I said, Well, let’s do let’s do break­outs. And let’s brain­storm all the facts about the bru­tal facts about the finance team not able to keep up with the nice lan­guage I used. And peo­ple came up with all these facts and we got two pages of facts. And then we were able to have a very con­struc­tive debate and with the CEO in the room, then talk about solu­tions. Yeah, but there was no it was it was is a very safe con­ver­sa­tion because it was facts. It was­n’t judg­ments and blames and fin­ger point­ing in the end. I mean, he also had to find a way to step up because he just it was unde­ni­able that was 47 facts on the flip charts. But it was like it was almost like it was done with love and intent of help­ing the finance team give the busi­ness what it need­ed. Because we it was there was no sham­ing or blam­ing, it was just solv­ing based on facts.

Brad Giles 20:28

I remem­ber anoth­er exam­ple, I was work­ing with a team. They had a larg­er divi­sion and a small­er divi­sion, prob­a­bly the law, the small­er divi­sion was, I don’t know, ¹⁄₁₀ the size of the larg­er one, but it was los­ing mon­ey. And so we went into this quar­ter­ly ses­sion with this knowl­edge say­ing, look, it’s los­ing a lot of mon­ey, the prof­it from the larg­er divi­sion is pay­ing, basi­cal­ly prop­ping up the oth­er one, what are we going to do about it, that leader of the small­er divi­sion stood up? And he said, Look, I take full respon­si­ble respon­si­bil­i­ty for it. We’re going to imple­ment a plan. And we using that bru­tal hon­esty, we worked and worked and worked to say, look, we’re going to have to shut it down and do it in a coor­di­nat­ed man­ner. Unless we can come up with some Hail Mary, very soon. Long sto­ry short. So we’ve, we’ve, we’ve got­ten to that point, there was no shame and no blame on that leader for that being in that way. But fast for­ward two weeks, and then the finance team where the CFO is on the lead­er­ship team said, Oh, by the way, it looks like we’ve made some mis­takes. And that divi­sion isn’t actu­al­ly los­ing that amount of mon­ey after Oh, mak­ing a small prof­it. Oh, but it was. Yeah, it was ter­ri­ble. It was dis­gust­ing. But dur­ing that meet­ing, that no shame and no blame, it was just it was just hon­or­able to be in there and see that per­son stand up, take respon­si­bil­i­ty. There’s no shame or no blame past.

Kevin Lawrence 22:14

What a test for them. Yeah, it was,

Brad Giles 22:16

it was a real­ly, real­ly good test. Any­way, mov­ing on to the third rule. dis­agree and com­mence this one. So let’s zoom back. Well, let’s just take a step back, we’ve got to be bru­tal­ly hon­est. Num­ber two, we’re not here to shame peo­ple. We’re not here to blame peo­ple. And we’ve got to have robust debates, tough argu­ments as a result of those first too, with build­ing a great busi­ness at the end of that,

Kevin Lawrence 22:46

okay. And by the way, Brad, that almost frames it up bru­tal­ly hon­est, allows us to get all the right stuff on the table. No shame, no blame allows us to process it and han­dle it, and debate it in a healthy envi­ron­ment. And this one allows us to close it off. Like it’s exact­ly, you can’t debate for­ev­er. And at some point, you know, there’s a thing and Robert’s rule of Rules of Order. He’s gonna call the ques­tion, we got to as quick­ly as we can, we’re gonna appro­pri­ate­ly make a deci­sion and move on.

Brad Giles 23:20

And there’s two bits. The first is that we don’t want to have sham process­es just to allow peo­ple to have their say, like, we want to have bru­tal hon­esty, no shame, no blame peo­ple stand­ing up pre­sent­ing facts, okay. But the sec­ond part is the worst thing you can do as a lead­er­ship team mem­ber is go six weeks into the quar­ter. And so if I told you, it would­n’t work, because it under­mines the trust, it under­mines the com­mit­ment and every­thing. So when we will dis­agree. And we will com­mit there may be things that we decide on as a lead­er­ship team or as a team that you dis­agree with. But as a suc­cess­ful team, we com­mit to their suc­cess­ful execution.

Kevin Lawrence 24:06

Yep. And it’s hard, like holy, like, in my role, I’ve got a CEO that we have a lot of debates. And there was one deci­sion that they made, and I’ve just learned said, Look, I am going to fight you tooth and nail on this deci­sion, because I do not agree with it at all. And once you decide, I’m gonna sup­port you on this deci­sion with all my mind, but man, it’s hard. Espe­cial­ly when you dis­agree. I had I had a client. Her name was Judy. She was my sec­ond client. This goes back in the ear­ly mid 90s. And she was a fiery, strong woman. I loved her. She was amaz­ing. And I’m pret­ty fiery myself. And we’re work­ing through some­thing and we could­n’t agree. And she gave me she said that she was Kevin before I did­n’t know the con­cept. I just knew debate until you win. And she says, Kevin, we’re just gonna have to agree to dis­agree. I’m like, What are you talk­ing about? We’re not done to need to debate this, you know, and I just because I, you know, I believed I was right. And she just had­n’t real­ized yet. And she was­n’t we’re just going to agree to dis­agree. And I’m like, it was kind of reliev­ing, was like, Okay, we admit that we dis­agree. But we’re going to agree to pro­ceed with in this case, her idea. She was my client after all. And it’s a very, very pow­er­ful, I use it all the time. Yeah. It’s like, I know, so and so that, you know, this is dif­fer­ent than what you were think­ing. But can you agree to dis­agree and can be com­mit­ted to this going for­ward? And they say, yes. And when peo­ple are will­ing to say, yes, it saves us from an extra three hours debate. But the key is they have to be com­mit­ted. Yep. Not just pre­tend com­mit­ted. Yeah, I had one,

Brad Giles 25:59

one issue. And there must have been three, maybe four weeks ago, and we debat­ed this par­tic­u­lar sub­ject for it must have been an hour or an hour and a half, fiery, fiery debate where peo­ple were retract­ing, and they were stop­ping talk­ing. And then they were yelling, and, and so we got to the point. And I’m like, right, Are we com­mit­ted? Are we going to do this? It’s dis­agree and com­mit. And we went around the table? Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. No. And I thought we must have been, we must have spent the last 20 min­utes all on the same page say­ing yes. And I think it was the CFO. And the CFO said, No, this, this does­n’t make sense. And then he can he com­menced, he said, I’m pre­pared to dis­agree, if nec­es­sary, but this is why I dis­agree. And he out­lined it, the whole table’s turned, and we did­n’t do it. But the team need­ed to go through that that debate. So yeah, dis­agree is

Kevin Lawrence 27:12

healthy. When that hap­pens. It was if it’s if it’s enhanc­ing your think­ing and help­ing you to make a bet­ter deci­sion, which is the intent of debate.

Brad Giles 27:21

Yeah, indeed. Well,

Kevin Lawrence 27:23

what a good awesome,

Brad Giles 27:25

good chat today.

Kevin Lawrence 27:26

do you want to close it out essence, the essence is some guide­lines or codes of con­duct. And Jim Collins gives you a great set to start with. Right? And, you know, and there’s oth­er ones that we’ve had, by the way, you know, what said in the room stays in the room. There’s 17 oth­er prin­ci­ples peo­ple have called, but this is a hell of a foun­da­tion to set your­self up to win. And it’s the essence of what peo­ple want in these meet­ings, to have healthy debates, and to have a healthy team.

Brad Giles 28:01

intake.

Kevin Lawrence 28:02

So bru­tal hon­esty, no shame, no blame dis­agree­ing com­mit all guide­lines to help cre­ate a func­tion­al team last thing that I’ll share. The key thing is if you do this exer­cise and decide them, you need a mech­a­nism to keep them top of mind. And I rec­om­mend putting them at the top of the week. The agen­da, as a reminder of the prin­ci­ples are the code of con­duct that we use to con­duct our meet­ings, so it gets oper­a­tional­ized oth­er­wise, it was a one time activ­i­ty that gets for­got­ten and lost in the ether.

Brad Giles 28:33

Indeed, good, good checked, bru­tal hon­esty, no shame, no blame, dis­agree and com­mit. Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. Of course. You can find us on youtube if you’re inter­est­ing too. inter­est­ed to see our smil­ing faces just search our growth whis­pers and you can find Kevin and he’s got an inter­est­ing week­ly newslet­ter at www​.Lawrence​and​co​.com. And myself of course, got a week­ly newslet­ter as well at evo​lu​tion​part​ners​.com​.au. I hope you’ve enjoyed the episode, and look for­ward to chat­ting to you again next week. Have a great week.