GA 613 | Revealing Hidden Truths with Billy Taylor

People don't fail because of bad strategies. Most people fail because they don't know how to execute. And the formula for winning, right? Strategy plus execution equals results. When we say false strategy plus who owns what, and then we can execute.

Today, I am excited to welcome Billy Ray Taylor back to the show. And let me just begin this episode by just saying happy New Year's to everybody. Hope, Hoping everybody had a great holiday, some time with your family. And, man, I'm excited for this year and I hope you are, too. And I thought, what better way to kick off the podcast than to have my man Billy back onto the. Onto the podcast. I've known Billy for many, many years. We've had a lot of conversations over the years, been on the podcast before. We've done some videos with him, and he's just got energy and he's got passion and he's just a phenomenal human being. And that's why I'm so excited for today' show. So we really get all into the whole idea of execution, and I couldn't think of a better topic again at the beginning of a new year. Like, there's lots of talk about strategy, right? And what are we going to do? What's the plan? And don't get me wrong, that's important, right? We do need to have a plan. We do have a good strategy. Your ocean economy, you're dialed in. All these things are important, but we got to execute, right? We have to execute because without execution, you know, strategy is just words on a piece of paper. Okay? And so that's really what we spend most of the time talking about. We do get into some other things, such as being hard on the process so we can be easy on the people. And again, coming back to process and the standard and what does good look like and all these sorts of things. Again, all super critical things that we need to be thinking about always, but especially at the beginning of the year. So I think you're going to enjoy this one. I know I did. Show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 613 again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 613. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Billy, welcome back to the show. How are you?

Well, I'm doing great.

Great.

I'm excited to be back on the show and it was great seeing you recently. So I was excited to be on the show today.

Yeah, man, it's always fun to. To connect and we always have great conversations, man. Hard to Believe we got another year in the books. And what's 2026 looking like for you?

It's already starting out to be busy, you know, right at the end of the year at the opportunity to spend with some billionaires, Founder of Outback, Paul Mitchell and patron and Ugg Boots. So we just did a panel together in Los Angeles, and right out of the gate, I've got to go to Dubai.

Wow, that sounds like a tough job, Billy.

It's not as glamorous as people would think. Right, right. Once you've seen one hotel room, you've seen them all.

Yeah, I know, I know. I have never been to Dubai, though. Have you been?

No, this would be my first time as well. This is new.

I heard. It's something else, though. Yeah, that's exciting. I can't wait to hear how it goes.

Yes, I'll definitely let you know. So they've got a really big agenda going on over there. A big event called Gladiator Summit, so.

Okay, okay. Nice, nice, nice. All right. Well, Billy, you know the drill, man. You know, we like to get all of our episodes started with our guest sharing quote. So what do you got?

Well, my new quote, it's a business quote, that execution is the new strategy. And you know, with now with AI coming into play, you know what I'm starting to realize, Ron? That companies spend less than one hour a month on strategy. And Harvard did a study. Now, what's confusing is people said, no, we spend time on strategy all the time. No, you're reviewing your action plans. You're firefighting. You're not strategizing. You're trying to overcome the constraints. And you're in all these meetings all day, and that's what you think is you're coming strat. You're thinking about strategy to eliminate constraints rather than strategy to move your business forward.

Give me an example. Like, I mean, this is just a real basic question, but when you say the word strategy, what do you mean.

Moving your business forward? Moving it forward from a standpoint of forward thinking, moving beyond Blockbuster to Netflix. How do you really start to move? Because now we used to do annual strategies. We used to do that. And people say, do you have a five year strategy in today's world, your one month strategy changes.

Yeah.

And are you moving with that? Now there's one thing to hit the business objective. So I want to make a million dollars this month. Well, what's stopping me from making a million dollars? Well, supply disruptions, labor issues. Now, I'm building strategy around that. But that's problem solving strategy is, hey, we know coming down, coming down the pike or three months from now, this is what we believe are going to be our headwinds. And what's that strategy and how do we break that strategy down by tiers and levels of the organization. And so how do we tie that and connect that strategy? That's what's different. It's different. When I ran Goodyear. Yeah. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how am I going to deliver tires. Right place, right time, right cost, right. But now how did I make that run flat tire. Because I know right now I've got that big convenience spare in the trunk now I want to run flat tire that when I have a flat or my daughter has a flat in the middle of nowhere, she can get to college. If she's driving back to college, I need to run flat. There's a market for it.

Yeah. Why do you think it's so difficult for organizations to execute even? I mean, now, you know, as we know, we work with a lot of companies and they might have a strategy, right? They might have a plan. It looks good on paper, but for some reason they still can't get it to, to roll. What do you think?

Yeah. So, so again, one of the things when I say execution is the new strategy. The leaders at the top of the organization, they understand the strategy, they know what the strategy is, but they do not deploy and connect that strategy. And it's not embedded in their daily management system. So strategy. Now, when I say, what are the KPAs, not the KPIs, what's the key performance actions I gotta take and I want to review those actions every day. And that's what the strategy is around. What actions do we need to take to deliver companies? Just from my experience, even coming up in large scale operations, we're really good at saying, here's what winning is. We're not as good as seeing how we win and where we focus. And so the new world, the companies I've seen that are thriving today, Ron, they not only have KPI boards, they have KPA boards. So their daily meetings or their daily huddles start with what are the key performance actions we got to take? That's the strategy. And then we finish the meeting with the KPI boards and say, are those strategies working?

Yeah, because are we winning or are we losing?

Are we winning or are we losing? Based off these strategies. And so they're, they. The, the world is moving from KPIs to KPA's. KPIs right. So think about it like this, Ron. If you wanted to lose weight, what's more important? Standing on the scale every morning? Right. Or, or, or did you go over a checklist that you walked two miles yesterday, you ate two. Less than 2,000 calories. I did all of these things. And then did, did it, did it impact the scale?

Right.

So that's what's missing in today's time, in today's businesses. And I'm seeing that on a regular basis when I go into companies now because the world moves so much faster.

So if I'm hearing you right, though, it's not necessarily a knock on KPIs, right. We still need them.

Yeah.

They're important because I still want to know, hey, how much do I weigh?

Right.

If I just obsess about standing on that scale a million times a day while I'm eating greasy cheeseburgers and whatever I want, you know? You know, it's, it's not going to work.

Right. And you, you nailed it. I mean, you absolutely nailed it. Yeah. With that example. And that's what I see. Obsess over the actions you have to take.

Yeah.

As much as you do the scale.

Yeah. Yep. Now, something that I, and I've known you a long time, I know one of your, your core principles, Billy, is that, that you can't manage a secret. So talk a little bit about your thoughts on truth and maybe how it's, how it can sometimes be. I don't even know how to say it. Hidden, you know, inside of an organization.

Yes, yes. And, and, and let's just start with you can't manage a, a secret. And your, your truth. What are your principles around where you're going to run your business? If they're a secret, what are your standards? Right, see, and, and what? I, I'm going to start with the standard. I recently did an event where these were all successful people, it appears. And I said to, to the group, if you have a child and you say curfew is at 11 o' clock and your child comes in at 1am and you say nothing, what's the new Standard?

Yeah, it's 1:30.

It's 1:00am yeah. Right. It's not what you say, it's what you tolerate. And so that's important as you starting to run your business. And so what's your standard? The next thing I'll tell you is when people say about, talk about, is your performance a secret? Imagine going bowling and there's a curtain in front of you and you don't know how many pins you knock down. And so what do you do next? What's your strategy next? Right? You don't know because it's a secret. You don't know how many pins you knock down. And companies and businesses where they don't have performance, where it's displayed or they don't have scorecards or performance is a secret, then it's hard to manage, is difficult to manage it. And I simplified it for the sake of this conversation. But when I look at you can't manage a secret. As a leader, you must start with clarity. Clarity around what is your. Your, Your. Your. Your. Your. Your standards. Clarity around. What is your performance? Clarity around culture. See, think about it like this. And. And I say this. When you're talking cracking the culture code, it starts with that clarity, and it starts with you personally own it. So think about if an egg is cracked from the inside, life begins, right? A chick is born. But when the egg is cracked from the outside, life ends. We're having that egg for breakfast. Right? And so, so in. In cases like this, you can't manage a secret because you have to break it from within. And that starts with that deliberate clarity.

Mm. Mm. So talk about clarity, then. I mean, Claire, I know something that you're passionate about is that. You mentioned it already a little bit. That clarity does create speed and velocity. But talk about how it sometimes breaks down, though.

Like.

And then what can we be doing as leaders to sort of recognize that it's breaking down when clarity is breaking down, and then what can. What should we be doing about it?

One is that clarity. When it's breaking down, you, You. You can see it. You. I've seen it in organizations that I've worked in. I've seen leaders, they don't create that, that, that. That environment. So you know exactly what winning is within 10 seconds or less. See, most people have these complicated management boards, digital boards, I believe within 10 seconds or less, you should know if you're winning or losing. When I walk in a room, the next part of that, when you're talking about clarity in itself, in an authentic form, in your touch points, I call them doors wars and mores. Daily operating reviews, Weekly operating reviews, and monthly operating reviews. See, at that point, I say, when you say clarity equals speed, I'm focusing on celebrating the red. I'm going to create this psychological safety. But people need to know what red is, what, what's winning, what's not winning. And in every meeting, you have to put the owners in the position to talk about the scoreboard. It can't just be the coach every day. See, when the owners are talking about it, they own it. They have clear expectations, they have clear roles and responsibilities. And again, it's embedded into my daily management and operating system. And now it's no longer my operating system, it's our operating system. And this is what I own inside of that system. So when I started talking about that piece of ownership, that piece of alignment, more importantly, that piece of clarity. Now, one thing I will tell you too, Ron, it's one of my favorite quotes that in the absence of ownership comes blame. When people don't know what they own in your strategy, they blame. When it's unclear what it is that they should be driving, they blame you. Famous coach Jim Trestle of Ohio State said once, when he gets into the room with his team prior to a game, when they walk out of this meeting, no shrugs, meaning don't shrug your shoulders. When a reporter asks you, so what's the strategy or what's the game plan? Are you bought in? The minute you shrug your shoulders, it shows misalignment, right? It shows that lack of ownership. And so when you start talking about clarity, as far as it, it basically converts to speed. When people clear you, you execute faster because people know, people understand, people embrace it. And so that's what I mean. And what I've seen in organizations day in and day out, the gentleman that I recently worked with, he wrote a book and he, and it was around the difference that Bill, the difference between billionaire thinking and millionaire thinking. And he said, it's simplicity. I'm going to make it very easy for you. It's simplicity. Most of the millionaires that he interviewed, they talked about complexity. And when he talked to the billionaires, they focused on simplicity. They focused on simplicity. And that's what it was really about.

So another, another phrase that we, that we hear in our continuous improvement world a lot is, and it's a good one, that we need to be hard on the process so we can, you know, lead easy on the people. What about, talk about this principle and how it's helped you personally? You know, I know over at Goodyear, for example, I think you had some disengaged teams at one time. Talk a little bit about how you, you focused on, on this process and, and then on the people side as well.

Well, I'm going to use you for the example.

Okay.

I've come to visit your, your, your, your, your, your place. I've been, I spent the day with your whole team. Yeah. Right. Be hard on the process so you can be easy on the people. And so you have clear processes and clear standards that people with inside of the Gimba Academy know their roles. It's very clear. And they have a distinguished process of the way you run your business, from the way you film the way you run the business. I've seen you where you didn't agree with something that was happening. You didn't approach it from a personal perspective with that individual. You approach it with, what does the process say? What should we be doing with standard operating procedures? And you hold people to that. Now, let me give you an example. I love your team. And every time I see them, they come give me the big Billy hug. Right. Not the bear hug, the Billy hug.

Yeah.

Right. And so I love it. But if I walk into a place and I say, hey, the standards or the chairs should be all lined up, you know, in. In. In a toy soldier fashion. And I walk in and they're staggered every day. Now I can walk in a room and say, hey, Ron, what in the heck? I've told you four times to get these chairs straightened up. That's around being hard on the people. But if I walk to you and say, run, can we walk over here? I've asked you twice to keep these chairs lined up. Here's the standard. Now I'm going to ask you again, what do you need for me to meet the standard? And then at that point, when I come in the next day and the chairs are not lined up, I'm not gonna. I'm gonna ask you a different question. Right. And, and, and, and it's.

It.

I'm. And the question is gonna be, you are not following the process. So that's why I'm going to make a decision whether you're going to stay employed or not. It's around the standard, holding people to the standard. And I let the standard be the bad guy.

Yeah.

I'm not the bad guy. We agreed that the chairs should be lined up. I guarantee you, if I walk into the Gemba Academy today, housekeeping is immaculate. I guarantee you, it's immaculate. And you know why? Because you're hard on the process, not the people.

Yeah, well, you know, and Mr. Ono, I think it was, Mr. Ono said, you know, without standards, there can be no kaizen.

Right. And that's Right.

And this is so, so critical that, you know, what. What does good look like? And then when you find a better way, update the standard.

Right, Right.

Yeah. So. But yeah, maybe that's a good sort of New Year's resolution for everyone is look at your processes, have a standard. First of all, do you know what winning looks like for everything? Everything from how you clean the bathroom to how you make the most critical product for your, your customers.

Right, Absolutely. You know, and most, most companies that fail, they look for the solution in the tool. And what, what, what I often say is when tools lead, failure follows. When tools are what you're really going after, that golden, I mean, that golden nugget and you don't have the process behind it, then that tool is going to lead to failure and it goes back to be hard on the process. When you go to conferences, focus on the process that goes with that tool. You're trying to acquire focus, bring that process back, be just as I'm going to say, Amber, and connected with the process as you are with the tool.

Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. So maybe to wrap things up, Billy, I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about what you would call your school of execution. And school is S K O O L of execution. What is that? And talk a little bit about it.

So again, people don't fail because of bad strategies. Most people fail because they don't know how to execute. And the formula for winning, and this is, this comes from some of the most prominent businessmen I've ever met. And it comes back to the same thing, right? Strategy plus execution equals results. When we say false strategy plus who owns what, and then we can execute. And so in the school of execution, we walk people on and this is free. We give them every template, how to build a strategy, what are the core components of building a real simplistic strategy for an organization? So that's what the school says. Here's how you build a really good, strong strategy and then here are the components of executing that strategy. So the school of execution is one form to help entrepreneurs. I was on a voluntary board called Bounce Innovation Hub, where we help entrepreneurial startups and to help expedite their success. So the school of execution was my gift back to industry, my gift back to just people that are growing, the future leaders, the next generational leaders out there. And so we started the School of Business Execution. And it started because I had a cohort of 50 young entrepreneurs and they helped me build my software. So it was, they said, well, Mr. Taylor, you should share this with the world. And so we gave a free community called the School of Business Execution.

Nice. So I do have a last question to sort of wrap this one up. So here we are at the beginning of a brand new year. What pieces of advice do you have for the listeners as it pertains to, you know, things like strategy, but just, you know, even just how can they win here over these next 12 months? Like, what are some key things that they should be considering at the beginning of the year? Where we are right now?

Well, right now the world is changing so fast with AI and people were my generation in my era. We started using AI as an updated Google search engine. Today I'm learning to use AI to help me filter to the data and to help me filter through problem solving. And so as we start to move, move forward, I would say don't be intimidated. And I'm gonna, I'm sum this up around what's coming ahead. Right. What's coming with AI? The best advice given to me was don't confuse naive with being dumb. See, you're naive around AI now. You're not dumb about it. And because we're older, we tend to not want to invest into understanding AI. I'm saying to the group, my advice to you is reach out, start looking at how I can help. Let your, your, your, your kids and, and these next generational leaders become your mentors.

Yeah.

Like my son's my mentor right now. Right. And so my advice to you is get a better understanding of what AI is because you're not dumb to AI, you're just naive to it.

Yeah.

And I think that'll help you launch your business. It saved me thousands of dollars, Ron, in legal fees because now when I talk to my lawyer, I've got a sample of what I really want.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm not saying start from scratch. And, and so when I go in to do negotiations now, it's all in one place. And so I was, I was, I wasn't dumb to it, but because I thought I was, I was very intimidated. Now I realize I'm naive and I just know AI is helping me.

Yeah, yeah, we on, on Gemba Academy, we actually created this thing last year called Ask Gemba. It's basically like a chat GPT, but all it knows is Gemba Academy material. And so every, you know, video, every blog article, every podcast, everything that we've ever produced over the years has been loaded into this thing. And I remember there was a. Last year, late last year, I was working with a co. I was coaching a client and we were in something pretty heavy, pretty, pretty technical. And, and I was just like, I was talking to him. Like, man, I just. Hold on, I can't remember. You Know something and I hit our little Ask Emba thing and, and I found the answer and guess who the answer was from? Who was from me back in like 2010 or something like that, you know, I had written a blog article or something. I'll just say because like, my gosh, you know, like I just channel myself Back to know 10, 15 years ago, you know, and, and found the answer. So yeah, it's, it's just, it's mind blowing how powerful this technology can be for us. You know, I guess my only thing is my fear and I'll be curious to get your take on this. And maybe it is the boomer in me, I don't know. But my fear is that if we're not careful, we could allow AI to take over the thinking for us and that the next generation, you know, may not be able to think as critically as they need to. But I don't know, you know, I mean, maybe that's what people were saying just about the Internet in general. Right. When it came. What do you think about that?

No, no, I, I, I, I, I, you're, you're bang on. And, and I want to add to what you just said. You know, one of the things about being human is you think, feel and do. AI just thinks. Yeah, right. It doesn't feel and do. And so that's the thing is you have to be cognizant of. And I'm going to go back to your example you just gave. You found the answer, but the system didn't know the application. The system didn't know you had to feed that in it to get the answer out. And that's what I mean when I say, you know, AI is not the end all, be all. Yeah. And when you're in right in and it hallucinates, so you have to be careful around, right. Being specific on what are you asking it to do and what's the application of which you're going to use it. And so just like anything, right. And I don't, I'm not trying to go off on a tandem, but listen, a gun is good for certain things and it's bad for certain things. Yeah, right, exactly. It's a tool.

Right.

What's critical is the application. Yeah.

Putting them hands of a madman, we got.

That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Yeah. And so it could be a great thing, it could be a harmful thing.

Yeah, for sure. Billy, man, I love talking to you, man. I, I just get pumped up every time I hear your, your voice and your energy and I really just appreciate you, man, for, for carving out time maybe to wrap things up and we've already done this a little bit, but just put a bow on. On it. If you have any final words of wisdom or just parting advice that you want to leave with the folks and to get them all pumped up here so they can go crush this, this new year.

No, I think just be. Be very open, very open to the possibilities. And when I say that is the business landscape is about to change drastically in 2026. And what I mean by that is I've sit in a room with some of the biggest strategists here, ending this year, and the way they're thinking. I've been privy to some conversations that were just mind blowing when I got back to my room, you know, it was that, wow, that makes a lot of sense. When I say, you remember skating to where the puck's gonna be, right? The old Wayne Gretzky story. The Puck is a really about. It's about the move with the landscape of our economy, the way we're thinking, and a lot of these businesses reshoring back to the United States, a lot of business coming back. The key is how do we handle it? How do we get ourselves in a position so agility, be agile. That's all I'm going to say. Be agile. Because the landscape is moving.

Yeah. Love it. Hey, Billy, if folks wanted to connect with you, what's the best way giving me on LinkedIn.

I answer all of my LinkedIn messages personally. I, you know, it's my TV at night, so. No, reach out to me. LinkedIn. I love to connect. Don't just follow. Connect with me. Yeah, connect with me.

Love it. All right. Yeah, look up Billy Ray Taylor, LinkedIn. We're gonna have it. We'll have it in the show notes as well. So to scroll down whatever app you're listening on to and, and go holler at Billy and tell him thanks for coming on to the, to the podcast.

Thank you. And I love. Look forward to coming to see you in person soon. I want to come back to the studio. I think you took me, you took me out to eat somewhere and that food was great.

Well, we'll do it again, man. Just jump anytime. The door is always open, my man.

Thank you.

All right, take care.

Take care.

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