How To Run Powerful Townhalls

I thought I'd walk you through strategic town halls. This is one of the most important things that I find we do when we first come in. And either it's like day one as a CEO, or you're rolling out a new process or whatever you have going on. So in this case, it's rolling out the Profitable Growth Accelerator, right? PGA. And you want to hit the ground running. Now, one of the things that you're going to find is that people are skeptical. You're doing this for a reason. A lot of times things aren't going the way that you want them to go. And so you're looking for a change and that change can be scary to those who are not on the inside. So we find you cannot communicate enough. You're going to tell them 100 times. These are our town halls. There's going to be a total of 3 of them over the 100-day period. So one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. So generally the first one was in a week or so. The second one is going to be right around the kind of 50-day mark. Doesn't have to be exact. And then the other one is about a week or so before the ending. Now it has to work with your calendar, has to work with your team schedule. A couple other pieces. I don't typically tape mine. The reason is if you tape it, people sometimes won't show up. So I don't like taping them. I like getting out there and pressing the flesh and going over it. The other thing is it really has to be live. So you can tape it if you want to, if you're running a big global company. You got different time zones, you can run into some issues with it. But again, just my preference. I'd rather do them live. Primarily, I want to get the Q&A. That does make a difference. All right. So starting out here, it's a non-negotiable piece of your 100-day transformation. It is important. If you don't do it, people are going to think whatever you're doing is way worse. As the CEO, it's your job to set the tone. You want to be hopeful. You want to be smiling. You want to let people know what's going on. But you don't want to overpromise with these things. This is really critical. There is an effect known as the Stockdale Paradox. It goes back to an admiral named James Stockdale. You can go look it up. I won't bore you with the details, but basically after being a prisoner of war and he came out, he was one of the few to survive it over 7 years during the Vietnam War. They asked him, hey, how did you make it? No one else did. He goes, look, it's really obvious. The people who are the Unrealistic optimists, they died first. And they were taken aback and they said, why? They said, because you've got to have optimism. But if you tell people it's all going to work and it's going to be easy, we're going to glide right through it, we're going to be done by Easter or Christmas or whatever the holiday is that you're looking at. And if you miss that, they lose hope. The people who make it are the ones who are realists, the people who maintain their optimism but know it's going to be hard. And they tell people, This is going to be challenging. We're going to get through it. We're going to get through it together and it's going to be worth it. This is what people are looking for. Winston Churchill during World War II was famous for this. He'd get up on top of 10 Downing Street, smoke his cigars and tell people, look, we're going to make it through this. It inspired a lot of people. So this is the whole point of it is embrace the Stockdale Paradox. It's going to be hard, but we're going to make it. So I already said you're going to hold 3 of these. I've already talked about this. Each one of these is going to run about 90 minutes. Now, the first one maybe go a little bit longer, but as you get into it, you'll find 90 minutes is about the right cadence. You and your team are going to talk for 30 to 45 minutes. You're going to lead it off. Then whoever's running finance, that may be you as well, they're going to go next. And then your key leaders, your staff, like operations and HR and all the other functions. And then if you have any line leaders, people who are presidents or VPs of operations who are running the day-to-day, they're gonna go in. They need to be heard. Without exception, every one of these I've ever done, when we first start off, the team always hates the idea. They're uncomfortable being on camera. They don't like being put out there on the spot. But this is critical. They need to be part of this. As a CEO, you set the goal and you make it a condition of employment for people to go to it. The team has to figure out the strategy of how you're gonna get there. They have to own that because if you own it, they're never gonna believe it. The way that they show this is they get in front of people and they talk about it. This is what this is for. Go live Q&A. It sounds scary and you will get some pretty challenging questions. People who are being hurtful, you don't have to talk about that. You can reframe those questions and make it impactful. You lead off, the whole team goes, then do Q&A. Sometimes people struggle asking questions. If you're doing this over Zoom or Teams or whatever, it's typically only you and your team people can see. Everyone else is going to have to type in their questions, particularly if you've got a big staff. If you've got just a handful of people, you can all get on there. And I think Zoom does up to 50 people where you can see them live. You could do that if you want. It can be a little more challenging, but for sure you and your team are going to be live and they can see them. The other folks can type in the questions through chat. Each of these video platforms today have a great setup for that going. So what's the expectations? You're leading it. You're the host. If you have someone who can sit behind the scenes and actually control Zoom, that's really helpful because you're going to be on camera. You're going to be talking. You don't want to be trying to control it. It'll just seem more professional. But if you don't have that, then Either you or one of your staff does it and, and you'll figure it out. As I said before, all the key roles have speaking parts. You want to do this in either a Google Slide or a PowerPoint, whatever you use. You want to have simple slides where you go through, share what's happening. Transparency makes a difference. It builds confidence and trust. Be authentic. This is so important. I can't comment enough about this. Every time I've came in and started running a company, they always say, we never knew this was going on. We didn't know we were in trouble, or we didn't know we were doing this or that. Be honest with them. People want to know, and you're not going to scare them off. In fact, you're going to inspire them. They love being part of this and they want to be on a winning team. You're going to help them do that. I said before, take the tough questions. You're going to be happy that you did. Always seed a few questions. I do that for 2 reasons. One is there's things that are going on. That people may know about, but they're too embarrassed or they don't wanna ask. Ask those tough questions yourself. Have whoever's being your moderator say, listen, one of the things that we wanna talk about is this person just left, or this vendor just did this. Because you're doing this for a reason. Be candid with them, but be inspirational at the same time. And then any questions that you can't answer, follow up with them. Send out the answers to them later. We like to run surveys at the end. A lot of times we'll give away something like a A Yeti cup or a gift card. You honestly don't have to do very much, but it's nice to do something like that for the people. Follow up with the surveys. If you ask people questions and they give you answers, you're going to be held accountable to do it. You should absolutely be on top of this. All right. Your first town hall. How does that work? I try to do that the first week. You've got a new program you're rolling out. I want people to know right away what's going on because they're going to hear and it's going to be rumors. And the rumors are going to be way worse than anything you're doing. They're going to be saying, we're going out of business. They're going to lay us all off. Whatever it is, it'll be way worse than anything you're contemplating. You're here to save the company. You're here to turn it around. You're here to grow it. Whatever you're trying to accomplish, let people in on it. Let them help you with it. It makes a big difference. Now, typically when we're working with a company, we're looking to get about 30% profit improvement the first year. A lot of times we're looking to get more cash in. We want to stabilize the business and go after it pretty hard. Letting people know that, that's pretty exciting for them. One of the questions we get is, well, if you're doing all of that, aren't people going to want raises and things like that? Sure, they're going to want raises. And if you're making a lot of money, you can give them raises. But if you're doing it because your business is failing, it's about saving your business, about saving those jobs. The company pays a lot of bills, sends kids to college. It does all these things. Let's make sure we keep it going, that we stay on top of it. You want to share what you know and what you don't know. Don't make things up. Make sure you understand what you're going— tell them what you're going to do, when you're going to do it, and let them know what their role is. They want to know that. Share your personal commitment. And at the end, give a clear call of action. At the end, you say, look, here's what you need to do. Keep taking care of our customers. Keep showing up every day. Treat customers with dignity and respect. Let them know because You're going to tell them all these things about what's happy. They're not going to be sure what's in it for them. They're not sure what you're wanting from them. Tell them what you need. They will respond. Now, your second town hall, you should have accomplished a lot of things. There's 4 big meetings you take your staff through. The first meeting is setting the goal. This is where you as a CEO working with the board and the senior leadership team, the owners and things like that, you're picking what good looks like. Maybe you're at $10 million of earnings, you got to get to $20 million, or maybe you're at $100 million of earnings, you got to get to $200 million. Whatever it is, it's got to be realistic. Your P&L and your balance sheet have to support it. But that's the point of that first meeting. Your second meeting, which typically happens about 30 to 60 days later, this is where the strategy to achieve that goal is. So coming out of that meeting, when the strategy has been determined by your team, You want to share that with everyone. You're at the midpoint. You know where you want to go and you have a good idea of how you're going to get there. That's going to be right around the 50-day mark. It's a 100-day program. You should be right around the 50-day. You should have already taken actions on things that were not working. I always like to say, if your house is on fire, put it out. If your boat's got a hole in it, fix the leaky hole. Whatever is going on, take the obvious actions. Don't wait. You're going to be driving your actions through real data and we're going to help you with that. So it's really important that you share what you've learned. Again, inspirational, not downtrodden. We want to say we've got it. Maybe we don't have it all figured out, but we're getting a plan to go there. Early signals of things that are working, who's stepping up and who's struggling. Talk about where wins are happening. This is not about calling people out. It's about recognizing that this is a journey that we're on and we're all in it together. You want to be aspirational with these things. To be a good leader, you have to hold 2 competing thoughts in your head. The first one is you want to take care of your team. You want to take care of this business, your suppliers, your customers. You want to take care of everyone. At the same time, you're going to have to make really challenging and tough decisions. You've got to be able to weave your way through that if you're going to be a great leader for this. It's not hard, but it doesn't feel easy either. Make sure that you're recognizing there's a duality as you're going through this. Give the reality check. Is it harder than you thought? If you're out there talking to people, they're going to let you know. Share that with people. And then remind them that we're not there yet. It's darkest before the dawn. We've got more of this to go through, but we are going to get through this. The final one is going to happen right as you come around the bend with the 100 days. You probably aren't through it yet. I generally like to hold them around the 90, 95 day mark, but you could go after the 100 days. It really should align with your calendar. So if you're 100 days on Christmas, Don't hold this on Christmas. Go into it the week between Thanksgiving and Christmas and announce, this is what we are. Now, I like to do these before the end of the year, if any way possible, because people can go into holidays having confidence that we have a plan and we're going to execute on it. It's really very uplifting with it. So you share the plan is built. We're going to go take that hill. We're going to do it together. You talk about any changes. Sometimes by this point, you may have had people leave the company. You may have hired new people, lots of things going on. You're running an ongoing business. So. To make a metaphor, you're flying a plane while changing the engines, repainting it, doing whatever with it. Lots are happening with that. People will have seen this. You're gonna need to let them know what's happened, where it's at, and you have to keep repeating it again and again. You're on the home stretch here. You're getting ready to execute. You should have your company reorganized by this. That doesn't mean everything's happened. You've got a strategy, but by necessity of time, It's probably a little shallow. You should have key leaders in leading the initiative, but that doesn't mean everything's done. It's 100 days. It goes by quick. As the CEO, you're going to be going out and visiting things. So this is basically you holding little mini, little small town halls in each of your locations. I try to get to them all, but you absolutely have to get to your main ones. And I do the same thing on everyone. I come in, I say hi to everyone. I shake their hands. I thank them. For all the hard work they're doing. I asked a little bit about them and I go around and I tour the facility. So myself and the key leaders there will go by. We talk to everyone on the floor that we can. We look at the site, we get a sense about what's happening, what's not. Is it clean? Do you have visual KPIs? Do you have the safety, quality, delivery costing out? Do you have all these types of tools out there? Are people using them? Are they looking at you? Are they saying hi? Are they smiling? Are they looking away? Do they look sad? This helps you understand what is happening out in the field. Once you've taken that tour, then the next piece is you're going to have a town hall session. You get everyone together and you spend about that same— well, the time varies because, you know, these are working factories or warehouses or whatever you have. But I try to generally spend about an hour, sometimes 45 minutes. Now, the way I do it is I will combine it with a lunch. Or a breakfast or something after work. It's still on company time. We're still paying people for it, but we have these town halls and we break bread together. And we always keep the food simple. We have it right on the loading docks or right out in the middle of the warehouse. You're the leader, so go last. Make sure you're serving if any way possible. You bring lunch in. A lot of places don't have lunch every day, so it's a little bit of a treat. Let them eat, let them take their time, and then have a fun time with the town hall. There's a lot of cool things you can do. Out there, getting people engaged on it. One of my favorite tricks I like to do when I'm out there is I get in front of everyone and I say, all right, so I always go the same. I talk about where we've been, where we are, and where we're going. And I try to get through that pretty quickly. Then I go to the Q&A, my favorite part, and you'll get amazed at the questions that you get. But sometimes it can be tough to get questions. So what I'll do, and I tell them I'm gonna do, I say, look, if no one asks a question, I'm gonna pick someone. To do it, you get to ask a question. Now, the reward that you get for doing this is you get to pick who goes next and people laugh and make it funny and all that. So look, if you're not a comedian, don't be a comedian. If you're not a serious person, don't be a serious person. Have a little fun up there. Be your authentic self, but be engaging. So hopefully you're engaging. If you're not, then maybe you have to fake that, but it's your job. You're the CEO. Get up there. Second piece, bring people with you. The most questions I get on these. Or HR questions and local questions like, I don't understand our point system that we're running the factory off of. I don't understand why we have to clock in a certain way, whatever it is. As the CEO, you may not know the answers to that. So make sure you've got your local leaders and some of your team with you when you go. It's really important. And a lot of the team, particularly staff folks, don't always get out there. So bring them with you. Be a human being. You'll love it. So go out, tour the factory, shake the hands. We've already kind of talked about this, but You know, look, just be honest and candid with them. It's amazing the impact that you get. The other thing I like to do is afterwards, I send handwritten notes to anyone who helped or asked a lot of questions. I just thank them for them. My handwriting is terrible, but you know what? People still seem to like it. So getting a handwritten note from the CEO is moving for a lot of folks. While you may not think it's special, they will, I assure you. So be kind and considerate. You don't always know what people are going through, so be thoughtful with it. One other thing is I never criticize while I'm out there. I don't go out there and say, look at this or look at that and why isn't this better? If I've got something to say, I always wait till later and I let the plant manager or who's running that group know. And I say, maybe we could just do a little bit better. And if I walk along, I feel something unsafe, I see a nail on the floor, screws hanging out, I always pick that stuff up and hand it to someone and just let them know that safety is really important. So don't embarrass, bring people up, lift them up. If you got something to say that is constructive feedback, do that later. You'll find it'll come across much better. So in your tone and style, be authentic, not polished. You don't have to practice this. Be yourself. If you're wearing safety glasses and a yellow vest, then wear safety glasses and a yellow vest. You're not special. You just happen to be the leader. Think of yourself as a servant leader. So get out there and tell them the truth, even when it's hard. And remind people they're part of something bigger. People want to be part of something bigger. They want to be on a winning team. You're going to show them that they are, and you're going to listen to them, and you're going to go take the action that they need. I think this is so important. I always call, I call this my 4 Bs. I go, be brief, get up, say what you got to say, get off the stage when you're done. Uh, be brilliant. Brilliant means being quantitative. So telling them this is what's going on, that we missed by this much, or we made the numbers by this much. Being critical. Is a lot of times we'll want to say things that they're not necessarily not true. We just exaggerate a little bit. Being critical, really, I should just say, be candid. Tell them what's going on, but don't be hurtful. And then finally, I try not to spend more than 4 hours there, which doesn't sound like a lot of time. It turns out to be when you come in with all these people, it's very disruptive and the factory almost shuts down for that period of time. So try to either just do it during a period of the morning or the afternoon. Work with the team there. They'll tell you which is better. If you can get in between a shift change, you can get both of the shifts there at the same time. So when you're done, go. So be brief, be brilliant, be critical, be gone. And they'll appreciate that you were there. Buy them lunch or breakfast. If breakfast, cook it for them. They'll love seeing you do it. So why does this matter? Communication brushes away the cobwebs. It shines the bright light of day on what's going on and people need to know. You and your team talk about it every day. These folks out there, they don't know what's going on, even if they want to. And when they don't know, they make it worse. You're there to shine clarity on it. So don't just give updates, talk about what it is, take their questions, however important or not important, whatever it is, make sure you're out there and you're engaging. And when you do it right, town halls create belief. They absolutely get people buying in and the momentum happens. You'll be shocked at what this momentum is fuel for executing out there. People want to know, people want to help. I hope you enjoyed this. Thanks for watching.