GA 584 | Radical Love Leadership with Mike Schoenberger

We bring out the best in each other. And that means while embracing change, while doing what it takes, while doing the right thing, and while being accountable. The outcome, if you put those all together, it's going to be for the customer, it's going to be for the company, it's going to be for the employee.

Today I am excited to welcome Mike Schoenberger to the show. Now, Mike is the CEO of a company called sunco, and they're a Canadian company. And we had a really interesting talk today. So Mike is really passionate about sort of like the human centered side of leadership, and they've got experience in different types of leadership systems, including Lean and so but today what we really do is we sort of stay on again on the morally human behavior side of things. And we get into. We really kind of kick things off with just sort of his personal journey and how that's influenced his leadership and continuous improvement style. And then what was funny was we've. We typically have like a list of questions that we could work through on any interview that I do, but today it was just like one of those episodes to where it was like, I think I asked him maybe a couple that he and I had talked about, but there was just so much I was naturally curious about that just led us into a really fun conversation. So I think you're going to enjoy this one. I know I did. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 584 again, gemba podcast.com and look for episode 584. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Mike, welcome to the show. How's it going?

It's going fantastic. Happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, people always hear these beautifully finished podcasts, but they don't know some of the behind the scenes. We've had a heck of a time, had some technical problems over here at the Gemba studios. So appreciate your patience as we're working through this.

So that's part of life. You make the best of what you're given. And we did that. And here we are. So happy to be moving forward.

For sure. For sure. Awesome. All right, well, I appreciate you coming on, Mike. As you may know, we like to get all of our shows started with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Replace judgment with curiosity. That's from our friend Brene Brown. I love that.

What's that mean to you?

It just means that don't judge a situation based on what out my past programs thinking you Know what's happened before. Be curious. And that's how you learn. You lean into that and it's amazing. Amazing where that takes you.

Awesome. All right. I love it. All right, well, hey, tell us a little bit about yourself, Mike. Tell us about your background, what your line of work is and what you're up to these days.

Yeah, so I can answer that in two ways. Who I am, I'll answer first and then I'll tell you. Who I am is as a CEO of my company. So I am a, a curious human in relentless pursuit of, you know, joy and connection. So connection to nature and outdoor and hiking. I've been married for 32 years, have four year old son. I love entrepreneurialism, mentoring, giving back and really just creating a strong connection with those I'm involved in. Me as a CEO. I'm the CEO and founder of Sunco Communication and Installation Limited. We're doing business, we're going into our 25th year. Like to say we make business communications easier for our clients. And so that's anywhere from providing the Internet, phone lines, VoIP services, to managed it right across Canada.

Got it, got it. So believe it or not, you're talking to a Canadian citizen. I was actually born in Winnipeg.

Awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. My father was a, he lived up there and he was a professor at University of Manitoba for many, many years. So I have spent. We would, we would spend the summers up there with my dad and gosh, it was great memories up there going. We'd go into Ontario, the lake of the woods, to go camping out on this island and drove this little boat out into the middle of nowhere. But my gosh, those memories are burned indelibly into my brain. So. Love Canada.

Yeah, I do too. It's born and raised and probably never leave. Right.

All right, good stuff. All right. Well, hey, I'm curious, you know, to really. I know we talked a little bit about your work before we hit record, but maybe talk a little bit about that, about your work and then maybe we could just sort of then venture into leadership, continuous improvement and maybe a little bit of your personal journey.

Yeah, I'd love to. So I bought. My dad was my mentor. It's interesting how you mentioned growing up and you know, When I was 17, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And he had this small electrical contracting firm and I started to work for him, worked for him. He ended up getting a contract to a local telecommunications company and did work. Worked side by side with him for like 12 years. Bought the company in September of 2000 that's when Sunco was born and it slowly morphed. You know one of our values is, is you know, embrace change. And we've done that through our 25 years where we went to being a just a telco, telco support company. We're just working with the telcos to put the boxes, phone systems on in the wall where that's what they used to be was this big box in a room somewhere to cloud based systems. And then we got a need from our clients to you know, hey, we need Internet access. We hate dealing with the big telecom companies. Can we buy it from you? So really embracing change and we've been an extremely high growth company from that. When my wife and I bought the company from my dad in 2000, which was basically truck and materials in it to a single contract. Now we're right across Canada, we're 66 employees and you know, breaking the 20 million, 20 million dollar mark. So it's, there's been a lot of change in that and you know with that comes you know, exponential growth which when you talk about staying lean and processes and, and creating efficiencies, we've had to do a lot of that over that time as we've had many different basically like the stock market, we keep breaking through the ceiling and who knows where we're going to go.

Wow, congratulations on your success. That's awesome.

Yeah, thank you.

So something that I know that you're, you're passionate about is this whole idea you, you phrase it. I think radical love, which is an interesting phrase to use in a business context but I'm wondering if you could maybe unpack that a little bit and there's, is there any sort of tie ins with, with lean, continuous improvement, that sort of thing?

Yeah, for sure. And I like to say, you know, radical love leader is kind of what I brand myself and, and it's a matter that I heart. And so what does that mean? It means connecting with staff. I'm big about 1% improvement. So when you go to lean, that's how change happens. Right. So 1% about this. If you make a process more efficient, eventually you're going to get this huge, huge growth. And as a company that's grown fast, it can only grow as fast as its people. So you know what radical love leadership means to me is if you're focused on your people of which we do in a whole bunch of different ways which we can dig into and help them become 1% better in their lives, they're going to be 1% better as they show up at home for their family, which will help them show up as 1% better for their fellow employees and therefore our clients. So by having that, that focus on kindness and curiosity and you know, it's okay to screw up. Let's learn from it, let's grow. What's missing in our process. We've had that methodology and that's what I mean about radical love leadership. It's not like it' all numbers and process and working from spreadsheets. We're a people driven organization which is, you know, really spoken high in what our values are. And I'll quickly say them and then I'll, I'll give you the opportunity to ask me further questions. You know, we, we bring out the best in each other, embrace change, do what it takes, do the right thing and accountable to the outcome.

I'm curious to hear like how you go about hiring. You know, you're 60 people, it's not a small company, but no, it's not 2,000 people. So like it's, it's a point to where, you know, if you had, call it an air quote, bad hire. I don't like to say it that way, but you know what I'm saying. So someone who just does not fit with your culture or something like that, or maybe they're just bringing bad energy or whatever it might be into the workplace. Like how do you, what, talk about that side of it, about first of all, selecting the right people. Do you have any, any tips for how you guys go about that?

Yeah, you know what it's really, when you establish your values. That's part of our hiring process. So that's our, the first interview is talking about our values, what they mean to us through all the different, you know, layers of the organization. And then we ask the question, what does bring out the best in each other mean to you? And give us a personal story. What does embracing change mean to you? And give us a story where you did that either in your personal life or at work. Right. And they, and they do that. What does being accountable to the outcome mean to you? And if you ask pretty much any employee that has been hired by us, maybe not through acquisition, but even the ones that have been hired through acquisition, they all state. And I love this, you know, why do you work for SendCode? Because the values and the culture and, you know, we're a company that invests a lot in people.

Talk a little bit about your values and your culture. I'm curious to know.

Yeah, so what we have one the values through eos, the entrepreneurial operating system by Gino Wickman. That's what helped us create our values. But they in any decision, when we're adding a new product, when we're adding a new process, it has to align with our values, who we are as a company, which is to make business communications easier for our clients by being the trusted systems integrator. So we filter it by that. And it's the same thing when we hire people, we hire them to our values. And how do we create a strong culture and keep that culture? One of the ways we do that is we have an internal podcast just or an internal meeting. We call it 30 minutes with Mike. And what it does is either interview a staff member and they pick from 45 questions, some work, some personal, some fun. And I just interview them like this where we just have a conversation for half hour in front of the staff. And it's a way of everybody getting to know each other better, even though a lot of our staff are remote. All within Canada, but all across Canada. So that's helped create a connection. And this year I've been bringing in external guests on different subject matter to have a conversation that can help give a nugget of wisdom to help that 1% improvement. So on meditation, on breath work on coaching, on yoga, on a whole variety of topics. And I've been doing that since January and that's been, you know, really well, it really helps with our culture doing that for about two and a half years.

Have you thought about making it public or are you just going to keep it internal?

Yeah, maybe at some point might make it public. I'm thinking of, I have my personal webpage and I might start putting the 30 minute internal calls on there just to share, to see if anybody in the world takes it, but it's really not. The whole purpose of it is to create a stronger culture. And then when people hear it, a lot of the people that come to us, when you asked about, you know, hiring and getting the wrong person, a lot of people are referred to us and they've heard to us by other people that work at Senco and say, hey, Senko is a great company to work work for. You should apply. So we, our turnover is extremely low.

Nice, nice. So, well, that helps, you know, that's a good testament to your, to your values. So I'm wondering, I know something that you're passionate about is what, what you would refer to as sort of like real human connection. Obviously you work in a, in an environment is very fast paced. So I'm wondering, like, how do you go about that? What are some ways that leaders who also maybe work in a fast paced environment and have a lot going on, that we can all sort of strive to have this, this human connection?

Yeah. So first of all, you know, when I define it as unlocking the power of real human connection and what is real human connection? It's sometimes when you think of somebody and they call you out of the blue or they text you or you haven't heard about it, you know, so there's this, this current or this energy that I feel is around the world. So how do you tie into that in business? By paying attention, by being curious. And when I go to that quote that I said originally, replacing judgment with curiosity, I encourage that in all levels of my organization. So if you see something broken, if you see something not working, let's bring it up and raise it as an issue. If you see another employee doing something that maybe doesn't serve the business, be curious and ask questions on the why instead of jumping to judgment and saying you're doing this wrong, you're screwing up. So it's that continuous improvement by identifying issues. Because as a high growth company, something that worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. So that's where I go, that human connection. Because as soon as you're curious, you create a connection with the person because you want to find out more and you're allowing them to, you know, to, to speak, to be heard, to be seen. So I think it's tying into that, that underlying current of connection that we all want, we come from. You know, if you break it down to our Roots 100 Gatherer Days, we are meant to be in communities of being connected and all supporting and helping each other out and being a part of something, being part of a community and the way the world is right now, there's just social media, apps and all these things designed to steal our attention and not create actual connections between people.

That's interesting because, well, you mentioned you have some remote folks. So I'm curious, like how do you, how do you make sure that you have that, that human to human connection even if you're not always together and you can't, you know, say hello over coffee or something like that?

Yeah, we encourage people to just have calls like this, teams calls or phone calls and connect as best we can with the tools. You know, being a technology company, we have access to a lot of great tools. Even though 96% of the communication is non verbal. Right. Or 88. It's a high percentage. So how do you make sure you be authentic as possible, knowing that, you know, you can't always see somebody's hands and.

Right.

You can't, you can't always read the body language and, you know. So if you get an email that you don't agree with, pick up the phone and clarify. Don't just respond blindly, assuming you know what the answer is. Right.

What are your thoughts on. Call it. Say you're on a zoom call or whatever it might be. Teams call whatever app you're using and someone's got their camera off. What's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, it's, it's funny that you say that because we just had a conversation. My last week's internal call, it's how many. You know, if I ask you the same, a different question back. If you were to meet somebody for coffee at a coffee shop and you turned your chair to them like this, how it turned your back to them, how would that feel for you? Yeah, that's not human connection. Right. So cameras off are not effective way to communicate. Essentially what you're telling the person that's on the other side is, you're not important to me. And I'm probably multitasking and just kind of half listening.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you. However, to play devil's advocate, like, we've got some team members and hopefully they're not listening now. They probably will be listening to this and they're great people and they're just, I would just say more on, for sure, heavily on the, on the introverted side of that spectrum. And for whatever reason, they just don't turn their camera on the majority of the time. And, you know, we don't say you've got to turn it on or anything like that. But. Yeah, so I, I just try to always understand where, where's that person coming from and what's the. I don't know, is there some sort of anxiety or something that's driving that? So that's, it's a, it's a really, It's a pretty touchy topic really, if you think about it. Because when you're telling someone, turn your camera on, and if it gives them uneasiness, then it's like, are we serving them well? So I don't know. It's a tough one.

Yeah. So it's interesting you say that. And for me, where my belief is, is as human beings, our, our self love or ability to love who we are and what we look like and all of our Wrinkles in front of a camera has. It's gotten very difficult. So a lot of people, they're like, I look fat or I look wrinkled or they're worried about what they look like on the camera. So that's why they don't put it on.

Yeah.

And so I'm a, I'm a big fan of, you know, love who you are. And it's like when you have what's the self talk that's going on in your head and you know, would other people. Would you broadcast it to the world? Would you put a speaker on your head and broadcast what's going on? And most people would say no. So it's, you know, I asked the question, if you were meeting somebody face to face, would you put a hood, you know, a hood over your head?

Right.

And the answer is no. And so as a society, we need to start. If this is going to be the new communication medium where we're going to work with people.

Yeah.

Via. Via video, then let's try to get connected as much as possible where I come back to that real human connection. And it's impossible to connect when you're talking to a wall. It's no, it's no different than, than you being on the other side of my door to my office and us talking through.

Yeah, yeah.

Y.

What are your thoughts then on the younger generation? Like I have, I've got teenagers in the house and, and so forth and you know, like this Snapchat and all the rest of it, it's just, it's the rage. Like, you know, they just, they communicate in very short snippets and their attention span is minuscule at best. What do you think that bodes for the future of, of humanity, the Snapchat generation, if we will not to pick on our kids but, but you know, it is what it is.

Every. Everything changes. Right. So society is going to learn and adapt. I think at some point we're going to have to figure out how to change that because it's a matter of the attention span of everybody has gotten shorter, whether it be dopamine rushes. Like I myself personally used to just sit down and waste hours reading books and lose track of all time. Now I have gotten back to reading more, but only when I started to meditate and do clarity breaks and stare at trees. My device and these devices are the biggest time wasters and attention. They give us a dopamine hit to our brain. So it takes intentional focus.

Yeah.

And until the big, you know, there's too much money in it, because all the big companies, Snapchat are fighting to. How do I get your attention? How to get more of your kids attention. So until society says giving up our attention to those people that are doing it is bad, it's probably the hardest. It's the most addictive device on the planet in my belief. Even more than drugs, even more than alcohol. The phones is the number one device. And it's probably the worst for us. And there will be a time that that's, that's proven. I was listening to a great podcast the other day that basically said that it's like, how much time do we spend connecting as human being to human being without devices?

So every year, well, maybe for like the last 10 years or so, some, some friends of I of mine, we, we do something called Exodus 90. And it's kind of a spiritual thing and, and, but it's, it's 90 days and it ends on Easter Sunday. And so reverse 90 days. And they, so part of the deal is no electronics. Like unless you, for your work, you know, obviously you gotta, you gotta do your job. But yeah, there's no, there's no, definitely no social media. There's no, you just don't use a device unless it's for your work. And man, oh man, I've done it so many times now. I can do it. But my word, the first time that we did that, you would have thought I was like a crack addict, like just shaking because I couldn't, you know, use my device to get that like, like you said that dopamine hit. So, boy, I mean, yeah, the addiction is strong even for a grown man. Right. Let alone, we're starting now with teenagers, you know, and, and I don't know, it's, it's, it's worrisome.

Yeah. You know, the society is going to have to do something at some point. Everything always adapts and changes. It's a matter of. I asked the question to how much of what you see is true, right? Because it's like you look at Instagram and people are running to a beach and making it look like I've been on those beaches and seen those people come and they spend no time. And then you get people feeling horrible to their self so about themselves. So it goes to what I was saying earlier about that loving yourself and, and all of that, that they're comparing themselves to people that aren't really even leaving leading real lives. Right. So it's, that's where radical love leadership coming into business is important to empower our employees to Know that you are important, you do care, you do have a voice, and that connection is important. And how. What are you doing for connection?

Yeah.

And so I'm trying to redefine that conversation to say if we take that approach in business, you know, there's high turnover and how do you keep your people? People are the number one asset to any business. Right. But the way that corporations treat people as numbers on a spreadsheet is counterintuitive to the way we should treat our people.

So we've been talking a lot about sort of like cultural aspects of organizations. And sometimes depending on the business or depending on the culture or the company, not everybody's got an organization is running as well as yours is, or it sounds like yours is. So what advice do you have for leaders who are wanting to make things better? They're wanting maybe some sort of transformation, but there's lots of resistance. It's just. Just, ah, it's just. Yeah, there's just that. It's just, it's hard when you're sort of like pushing, you know, up a hill or something like that. Like, so speak to that leader who's trying to make positive change, but they're just, they're really struggling.

Yeah. So first of all, it's being consistent. Right. So sometimes you get leaders that, and I was one of them that would just be like, rush in, try something for 10 minutes. I'm a visionary leader. And then it didn't work and you move on to something else and your people's heads are spinning. So the number one place to always start is with some sort of business operating system, whether it be lean, whether it be eos, entrepreneurial operating system, whether it be, you know, there's a zillion of them scaling up by Vern Harnish that they all start. And it's coincidentally when you look at these business operating systems, and I'm not as familiar with lean, but what is your values and your vision and what makes you unique? So if you can define that and you start with that, when you hire people and you have people that align with your vision, your values, and what makes you different now it's like you're starting to roll the same direction. So how do you get people on your team? And then you show them that your action is that you really do care and that, you know, our job as business owners and CEOs or executives is to create jobs and help give to the economy while generating, you know, some wealth to be continue to grow.

Right.

But as a business, we're Employing our whole bunch of people that have families, that have kids that are providing for it, that spend a lot of the time there and they want to enjoy what they do. So if your people enjoy what they do, it's more the time than they spend with their families. Yeah, so. So it starts with, it starts small, but, you know, so I, I kind of gave a long winded answer. So if I just sum it up quickly, have a, have an operating system or a process that can help you break it up into bite sight chunks. A lot of smaller companies are stuck in a whole bunch of different seats. I'm the finance person, I'm the ops person, I'm the marketing, I'm hr. So if you define all your roles, it helps you figure out which role you have to hire on first and grow smartly, you know, not, not quickly and everything relying on you. Yeah. Apologize if I jumped on. No, that's good.

I'm wondering if you could you, you talked a little bit about sort of like coming up with that sort of that culture, you know, the almost those like you're dean, like who are we as an organization? Like whose job is that, in your opinion? Is it the CEOs, is it everyone's? What are your thoughts on that? Especially maybe in a newer company as they're, you know, sort of standing themselves up.

Yeah. So who are you? If you come from one person, it's hard to get buy in. So if you can get the team. When we were figuring out eight, nine years ago, when we started the eos, it was, we got together and said, what is our values? And we did a strategic planning session. We throw a whole bunch of stuff on the board and you know, what do we do? Well, we like to make business communications easier for our clients. And that stuck. And when it came to our values, they're like, yeah, that's what we do. And when you read them out individually, they sound quite similar. But when you put them all together, that's when the power happens. Right. So it's like we bring out the best in each other. And that means, you know, we embrace while embracing change, while doing what it takes, while doing the right thing and while being accountable. The outcome, if you put those all together, it's going to be for the customer, it's going to be for the company, it's going to be for the employee.

Do you have a process of revisiting and perhaps tweaking any of your, you know, your, I don't want to call it your values, but you know, the way that you communicate those values.

Yeah, so we, you know, with EOS, it has 90 day quarterly meetings. So every quarter we meet and we review our vision, our values, our marketing strategy, all of that to make sure it still aligns. And then every month, we talk about it in our town hall meetings. So every employee knows who the values are, what they stand for, who we are. We do it when we hire, we do it when we fire. We do it in the quarterly conversations. So the values and talking about who we are is part of conversation in our everyday life here at sunco. I challenge you to ask any Senco employee what our values are, and I'm pretty sure they would all be able to tell you. We talk about it with clients. I look at when we're attracting clients, we're not everything to everybody. We're not the least expensive guys on the block because it costs a lot of money to have a lot of people and be as focused as we are, because, you know, what makes us unique is our commitment to deliver quality and our personal touch and our knowledge and experience. And that comes at a cost. So when we're. When we're attracting clients and have a clients with conversation with clients, typically we look to see if they've defined values, and we try to align our values to their values to say, are we a fit to work together?

Interesting. Interesting. Good stuff. Well, hey, this has been a fun conversation, Mike. I really appreciate you carving out some time maybe to wrap things up. I don't know if you have any sort of like, final words of wisdom or some. Some parting thoughts that you want to leave with everyone.

So it's counterintuitive to think that the more you focus on yourself and your connection to who you are, the better it expands to really all other relationship in your life. So if you can, you know, even do a simple thing like I do when I get up in the morning, I set the intention to come from my heart with love and light and all that I do. When I look in the mirror the first time, I. I just say, hey, I love you, Mike. You're gonna have a great day. And then I do my meditation and my gratitude and journaling before I have my first cup of coffee. So I've really done that. You know, I don't care so much that I'm losing all my hair and, you know, it's gone gray and, you know, I'm just trying to be the best person that I can be. And if. If everybody does that, when I started doing that over the last couple years, and it's probably a whole nother podcast tell you that journey. But you know, it's, it's really impacted all the relationships I have. I connect quicker, I establish TR quicker, I have better relationships, my friendships are stronger and my business has grown exponentially. And so that's what I mean by unlocking the power of real human connection and radical love leadership. So if you do one thing, it's get up in the morning, give yourself a high five and say I love you and your name. Yeah.

Oh, that's beautiful. I love it. Very good. Hey, if people want to connect with you, Mike, what's the best way?

Multiple so Basically I'm on LinkedIn, Mike Schoenberger. I'm on, you know, Sunco CA and then I've got my own website, Mike Schoenberger dot com.

Okay, well, we'll link everything up in the show notes. Everybody can just kind of scroll down and be sure to go connect with Mike and tell him thanks for coming on.

Yeah, not much on social media, so you won't find me posting much on anything but LinkedIn. Don't go on Instagram or Facebook, but same.

Yeah, my kids will be there, but unfortunately. Yeah, awesome. All right, well, hey, I appreciate you coming on, Mike. Take care.

Yeah, sounds good. Thank you very much.

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