Curiosity-Driven Leadership with Jon Bassford

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done. I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent to Doxa Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatant.com Bill G Again, that's doxatant.com BillG One more time. Docsatalent.com Bill G Check it out today. Well, the saying goes, curiosity killed the cat, but it's actually pretty good leadership skill to develop. Anyway, we're talking today about the power of curiosity in your leadership and going to share some real world examples of bringing curiosity to bear on growing your company and and how you walk in the world as a leader. Hey everybody, I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of this super fine Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week with a guest, an author, a guru, somebody who's got something to share around growing and scaling your company, making that whole process easier and faster, maybe even enjoying the journey a little bit more. You'll find all our 600 some shows and more at scalingcoach.com or wherever you're getting this right now. You know, you might be on YouTube, you might be on LinkedIn, wherever it is that you watch, that you listen, Apple Podcast, Stitcher, etc. Like subscribe, turn on your notifications there. You'll hear from us every week. You can also go to our website@scalingcoach.com and I know it's a hard website to remember scalingcoach.com but you can go there and you'll find all those back catalog along with show notes, some downloads and links and offers and things like that. Our own workshops, we do a month, at least a workshop every month and some of our coaching programs. If you want more stuff like that, go to scalingcoach.com you'll find all that. All right, I'm joined now by John Basford. John's on the east coast today. I'm on the West Coast. John is a founder and CEO of a company called Lateral Solutions. They do really interesting work, more in the operations end of things and executive coaching, helping to level up companies and level up leaders and operations, that kind of thing. And he's got a book coming out, the Curious Leader, and we thought we'd talk a little bit about it because we think curiosity is cool. At least we're curious about it. John, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah. John is a jd, mba, a whole bunch of other things. He loves his trainings and certifications, that kind of thing. It takes something to do that. As a college dropout, I have. I have a respect for people who take time and don't cut the corners like me. John, glad to have you on the show. Talk to us about, like, look, I know the kind of work you do, and, you know, we've been preparing for the show. But you majored in philosophy first. What's that all about?

Yeah, so, you know, I was one of those inquisitive kids. I. I was a curious kid, you know, throughout looking back at my life. Once I kind of, you know, got this whole concept of curiosity introduced to me, and I looked back at my life and I really could see how it really drove everything I did, from being an inquisitive kid all the way up to taking advantage of opportunities throughout high school and college, and was raised in a conservative household and began questioning things at an early age there. And it just. Philosophy was really what I was drawn to as a major, and I knew I was going on to law school, so it didn't really matter what I really majored in for the most part. And so. But, yeah, philosophy was a. Was a great major. I enjoyed that time and really helped me expand my mind and my knowledge.

Gave you some breadth. I can hear beyond that. Yeah. Well, so this focus of curiosity, when did you realize and seize on this as a central theme and end up starting this book? Sure.

So I was first introduced to the concept of curiosity, the superpower. I don't know, was probably like 10, 12 years ago. I was about to make a career change, and like most people, that's when I started reaching out, networking to old colleagues and friends, that sort of thing. And a colleague introduced me to one of her colleagues who is an academic, and his specialty is helping people define their superpowers. And so, you know, I did all the assessments and questionnaires and interviews with him, and he came back with. With curiosity as my superpower. And to be quite honest, I didn't do a whole lot with it. And then about a year ago, I was working with a branding company for my business and just personal brand. And what came out of a deep dive with them was curiosity again. And so that's kind of really why? When I leaned into it, I really started thinking back at my career in operations. Helping organizations get curious about their operations to improve things, make it more efficient, make it more effective, as well as what I've done throughout my career in the sense of culture as well and creating cultures of innovation, growth and change. And so looking back, curiosity has always been there. But the nomenclature thing that I began working on the last year or so.

Interesting. So let's share some stories. I don't know where we should start with this. You have so many stories. It feels like it. It started in some of your earlier roles, this curiosity. But do you have a favorite you want, where you want to begin?

Yeah, I mean, I mean my very first professional role at a law school, I end up working for a legal organization. I was a member in law school. Not really quite sure what I want to do with my law degree. I wasn't quite sure I wanted to practice anymore or to start practicing. And so I went on a traveling trip for this role and was trained on what these individuals are supposed to be doing. I was kind of a field rep, helping people improve the operations of the organization. And I came back to the office kind of puzzled. You know, I was being told what to tell these individuals, but it was no, I couldn't find anywhere, right? I couldn't find the words written down in a manual, you know, anything, right. And so I went back to the office, kind of get curious, like, look, I just kind of want the backup, right? I want to be able to show people like, this is, this is what you're supposed to be doing. And what I was told it was in the back of some kind of district conference manual. And I was like, well, you know what happens if I don't go to district conference? Will I ever see this, see this, these instructions? The answer was no. Like, if I leave it at district conference, will ever see it again? The answer is probably not. So I was like, well, can I change that? And so I literally brought a two pages of a document out to the forefront just because I was curious about where this existed. And that actually became the staple of everything I did. Just creating a clear, constant communication strategy around this document, which was the lifeblood of this organization, quite frankly, because its revenue and everything was involving these people throughout, throughout the country and executing on these ideas. And so I just brought it forward and you know, the six years I was there, we saw, you know, 20% increase in revenue, we saw 500% increase in programming, record attendance and events. And all because I was curious about where something was located, realized it was buried in the back, and realized that was not the intention of the organization. They wanted this to be the driving force of the organization. So I brought it forward and brought, you brought communication around it as well. And it really made a huge difference.

What does that mean? That you brought it forward? What happened with that?

Yes, I mean, so it literally, I mean, I, I, I, I, I brought it into existence. You know, it again, it was buried behind in the back of a manual as an appendix. And so I took it out, you know, made a two page document. So when handing out, it was a one page sheet front and back. And at the bottom, my email signature was a PDF copy of this. So anytime I gave instructions to these individuals, these leaders, on what they should be doing, I referenced this document and it really became a lifeblood of exactly how we operated every single day, both internally in our executive office as well as those people out in the field. And it really made a huge difference.

So you found a set of instructions, some procedure in the back, you condensed it, you made it more digestible and then you started introducing it over time, like referencing it so that it was regularly there.

Yeah, and actually when I first discovered this document, it was that the word requirement was listed in. I'm like, again, I'm kind of thinking like this is requirements for these individuals and it's buried in the back of a manual. Right, that, that's, again, I don't think that was just kind of, just kind of happened. Right. And that's what happens with, with our businesses and organizations is we just, we do things sometimes without overly thinking about them and figuring out if that's really going to drive the results we wanted. And so I brought it out and I actually even changed it to deadlines and expectations. Just kind of put it out there and just, yeah, like you said, I kind of, you know, you know, fed this everybody little by little. You know, I didn't dram, you know, jam it down anyone's throat. It was, it was a gradual thing. And little by little it just started taking hold and really transforming how this entire organization operated.

You know, it's interesting that you talk about that. I can hear a lot of parallels, but there's a lot of times that companies talk about, well, we got to get all our policies and procedures written out and they put them, they hire consultant, they put them in a binder maybe, or they spend a lot of time internally and they have somebody and they create binders and references and online resources and things like that so great detailed instructions and then they, they live there. And I think actually the same kind of thing happens with a lot of business plans. They, they go off site by themselves or with a consultant or a coach or whatever and then they create a bunch of stuff and then it lives there in a document. And then at the end of the year they go back and they go well did we do anything like we laid this out, but how do we know we did it? And I think there's a disconnect right between that. I don't fly very much anymore, but I used to fly quite a bit as a pilot. Right. And the official manual and checklist is a fairly significant like three ring binder that, that is often in the seat, back of the seat next to you and so you can reach over and grab it out but you can't like leaf through a whole thing. Right. So you have to memorize certain things. Right. That are the most critical things. And ideally you'd memorize them to the point that you could be woken at three in the morning and repeat them from a dead sleep, which is a pretty good standard for critical things. And then a whole bunch of them get summarized in a laminated, you know, checklist of two sides or more. And in a small plane it's going to be a two sided checklist. But even, you know, I've seen a two sided laminated knee board checklist for a 737. So you could have the summary high level things which can include your checklist for all kinds of things. Right. You need to know how to do your job. But then you refer to the checklist to see if you actually did it like operationalizing the adherence to those practices.

Yeah. And, and this, this document was, was high level. Right. It, it was the kind of the, the broad strokes of what the expectations were then the individuals creativity to be able to do it how they wanted. And as you mentioned before about you know, manuals just sticking around. I kind of feel the same way about strategic planning. You know usually strategic planning happens with the same old people, get in the same old room having the same discussion about where we want to be in five years.

Yeah.

It never ever does is get curious about where we are now, where are the holes and gaps that we need to fill in order to get there. It's just kind of let's just do more of the same and create this number that we want to hit in five years. And again, you know, to me this is all about curiosity and, and, and you know, putting things out there. To help people learn and grow, but also, you know, being analytical about what we're doing and why we're doing, how we're doing it. And is that going to drive the results we're looking for?

Yeah. I'm also struck by the fact that we have ideas as business leaders and our teams are also curious and they're curious what are our ideas, what are our plans? And I don't think we make them clear enough a lot of times and we're not curious about what they still don't know or understand. We're so busy with whatever's on our mind and like that.

Yeah, I mean, I talk a lot about culture and I do a lot of workshops on culture. And unfortunately, sometimes in my career I've learned more about culture from the negative aspects of organizations not having a positive culture. But truly you can have the best growth mindset, you have the best ideas you want, but if you are not bringing your team along with you, you're not going anywhere. You're eventually going to hit a ceiling because you have to rely on these individuals. And I completely agree with you. Communicating with your staff, bringing them into the ideas, bringing them into the plans, is the best way to make sure, you know, you're all rowing the same direction. Right. If you're in a rowboat and one side's rowing one way, the other one's the other one, you're going to stay the same. Right. You're going to stay exactly where you are. So it's the best way to make sure you are all rowing the same direction. For sure.

Talk to us about that. You worked with a tech trade association or something like that. Tell us that story. What happened there? What did you do? How does curiosity play a role there?

Sure. So that was an organization I, I actually started very beginning. I think I was the fourth or fifth employee hired it very, very, very cutting edge. Worked with a lot of big tech companies, big and small, but really cutting edge of, of technology policy. And you know, it was, it was trying to make its mark and do a lot of good for its members and policy around tech. And you know, the goal was certainly to create an atmosphere that drove innovation, growth and results. And it was, it was a very, very fast moving organization. And kind of, you know, for me being the operational side, I kind of sat between the executives and the staff in a couple of different ways. You know, operations kind of sits right in the middle of it all, especially whenever we're seeing hr. And, you know, quickly became apparent that despite the intentions of the Leaders. It was creating an atmosphere and culture, anything but innovative actually end up creating a culture where, you know, mistakes weren't tolerated and people learned that if you wanted to keep your job, you know, do as little as possible, don't put yourself out there. That was the way to stay safe. And so what happened was people reverted back and just doing the basic tasks. And, you know, I'm a big believer in if you want to create a culture of innovation, almost adopting, you know, the government policies on the metro of if you see something, say something, bring up ideas, bring up suggestions, feedback, criticism of what we're doing, that's the only way you're going to learn and grow. And if you have a. A staff that's kind of, that's afraid to do that, it's going to be hard to innovate and grow.

How, how in that organization do you, I don't know, make a habit or practice of curiosity? It just seems like a fine concept, but what do you actually do to bring that to life?

Sure. So actually, a lot of it gears around a concept called psychological safety. And Google actually did a study on this. It was called Project Aristotle. And they were trying to define what determined whether a team was successful or not. They had their theories on, you know, intellect, diversity, all these things. And what it came back was psychological safety. And it's this notion that we have to create this environment for our staff where they feel valued, where their opinions and ideas feel valued, where their contribution to the company feels valued. And so there are a couple very, you know, tangible things I think people can do. For one, when you're having meetings, what normally happens, leader speaks first, right? They give their ideas, their thoughts, and that's just going to, you know, turn everything in that room that direction so we can have the best idea ever. But if it contradicts the CEO's idea, it's probably not coming to light. So instead, you know, create an atmosphere where your staff can talk first and stop talk freely. When you open up your meetings, let people know that it's, it's. This is an open forum. We welcome suggestions. Create environments where people are allowed to give feedback. You know, some other ideas too are like, you know, people always cringe when the new guy or new person speaks first in a meeting. They're like, you know, we all know the reaction. What the hell are you speaking for? You've been here for two minutes. You don't know anything. Well, they're actually the best person to speak. They're not bogged down by the traditions, the Habits, the, the, the culture of the organization, they're bringing a fresh set of eyes and ears to everything the organization is doing is actually the best one to get feedback. So, you know, just really getting to know your staff, what drives them, what makes them tick in creating an atmosphere that let them know their voice is heard and wanted and you'll really start seeing things change and grow.

Yeah. So if you are coaching me to be more curious, right. I, like, on one level, I am curious, right. I, I'm like super eternally curious on. But, but it's actually in. And I'm speaking for real, right. About myself, right. So, but, but at the same time, I'm smart, I'm deeply experienced, and I'm for sure arrogant. And so while I'm interested and my curiosity is piqued by things, I naturally kind of start a place from, oh, I know everything. What do you do with that? And if I know that about myself, like, you know, what do I do about that?

Yeah, there's no doubt about it. The ego is, is one of the biggest things, right. I'd say the, the biggest hurdles to creating curiosity are our egos. Fear, comfort and habits. Right. Those are the biggest things that get in our way. And they're all very natural mental components that exist and exist for good reason. But when it comes to innovation, growth, they're the enemy. So, you know, the hard look, if there is a leader who is dead set on their own ideas flying no matter what, not accepting ideas from others, not being able to take a look at things from a different perspective. Yeah, yeah. Not be able to look at the operations in a unique way, bringing outsiders, bringing their staff, whatever may be, there isn't a whole lot I can do. There has to be that flexibility and that openness to say, hey, look, just because I'm smart, I know what I'm doing and I've done well, doesn't mean I can't learn from others. And there's got to be that, that, that humility there to be able to open that up for sure.

Yeah. I suppose when I'm challenged and somebody says, are you sure? That's a really useful thing? And I think with experience and wisdom, while I, while I know, I think I know a lot, right. All the time, I also am wise enough now to go, yeah, but I might be wrong. And, and then in coaching conversations, I, I, let's say I'm coaching you, right? I'm coaching you and you're telling me about something and I'm like, oh, I think I know what's going on here? I know enough now to go, well, I think, I know it makes very little difference, so I'll set it aside and I'll start asking questions. Well, what do you think and what else have you looked at? And like so I'll bring curiosity intentionally, consciously to bear not because I'm naturally curious in every situation because I've already admitted that I'm not always right. Like, but I'll intentionally bring it forward because I know it helps in a coaching conversation, I know it helps in problem solving. I know it trains people to be curious rather than tell them what to do.

Yeah. I mean look, if, if, if all you want is, is for your ideas to fly, you know, start a one man band, right. Like that, that's, yeah, you know, that's the clear simple answer is that. And I've had a boss who's done that before. Like I've had a boss who says I don't care if you think I want you to think like me. Which is the exact opposite of curiosity. Right. Like he, he, he wanted people who are smart and intelligent as long as you thought like him. Which again you're bringing one perspective to this. You know, when that's, when that's your, your mantra, you're bringing one perspective. And if you're perspective is always right. Yeah probably not likely that then sure you're, you're going to do great and keep going at it. But the chances are there's going to be come a time where you don't know everything or your idea is going to plate out. Right. And you need a fresh look at things, you need to shake things up and bring in new perspectives. The only way to do that for.

Sure as older as I get older I am reminded or it's become, it becomes more and more clear to me that I maybe don't understand it all. I maybe don't know. Like the level that I know is of as a surface level and it's only useful to a point. And, and, and especially we recently had on Marshall Goldsmith. I get to this place, it's like okay with me or with the companies I work with, the results aren't there. And so what I know it doesn't matter like whether like there was, there's still something missing, there's a shift required.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean again, we, we, we found a habit. And you know, most organizations, small businesses, startups, non profits, whatever it is, we fall into routines and, and we just keep doing the same thing over and over again. We don't ever take a second to step back and, and analyze what we're doing. As long as something's not broken, we continue to just do the same thing over and over again without ever analyzing or, or tweaking it. And what happens is you eventually get a point where it stops working and then you're flat footed. So my, my, my goal is, is to work with organizations to help them look at their operations, you know, from their decision making processes to their ability to change, you know, their, their operational excellence, efficiency, the whole nine yards. Work with them on analyzing that on an annual basis. You know, get, get to know your organization and where it's at and improve the areas that need to be improved upon to continue the growth. And, and you can do that. Once you do that, you know, then you can really start, you know, mapping out those strategy plans of, of the goals of where you want to hit because you, you, you're solving problems and not just throwing darts at a dartboard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you talked about working with a training or education company or organization. Talk to us about that and the role of curiosity. What happened there? What. Tell us a little bit about that one.

Yeah, sure. That's a, a, a tech education platform that I, I worked with, that's a startup venture backed and came on with them initially to help launch operations and kind of stayed on as a fractional coo. They built up their internal operations and so I kind of, you know, got sidelined, which, which happens, you know, when I'm working with startups. There's, there's a natural timeline in which, you know, they want to do things in house and you know, I, I accept that and honor that and, but this organization, you know, it got to a point where it realized it wasn't growing anymore. It wasn't, it was, it became a little too fat with its salaries and staff and, and they had to trim back the sales and, and I, and I absolutely applaud the CEO for making that hard decision. Cause I know it's, you know, some individuals that were very, very close to him, but they made some hard decisions of, of, of parting ways with some of the original founders and partners and you know, saved 400, $500,000 a year in salary and then, you know, brought me back on and, and worked with me and we kind of built a small operations team and those savings that probably netted out about, about $400,000 a year that they were saving. So again, it was, it was one of those things where luckily this, the CEO was, was curious about what was working, not working and realized this is an area where I can trim the sales and I can stay afloat because, you know, keeping it the way it was was going to eventually lead to the boat sinking in. And he, he did have the curiosity and forethought to, to analyze, you know, what, what could, what could change. And then I was glad when he reached back out to me, happy to help them. I love working with startups, love working with tech companies and seeing the growth and the passion that they have and innovations they have. And so they really made some hard decisions by being curious and helped the organization stay afloat.

If I wanted to, for myself or somebody on my team, wanted to develop or increase my curiosity. What are the habits, structures, routines? What are the hacks that you would have for us?

Yeah, you know, I think one good way to do this is making it a part of your review process for employees. And you know, I'm not old school on reviews. I don't believe in that kind of the once a year annual review. I believe it should be monthly quarterly check ins to see how things are going. And a big part of that is not just, you know, where are you on what you're supposed to be doing, but make it an active part of that process. To what do you see that's going wrong? What are the areas in which we can make improvements? You know, getting feedback from everyone. We don't live in a day of manufacturing lines where you are assembling one part 100 times a day. Every organization, every department, the organization, every employee touches different, different aspects of the business in different ways. If you're accounting, you are working in sales and marketing at the same time. Every single person has a unique perspective into how that organization is run. And so the key, one of the key things is breaking down the silos, breaking down the hierarchy, letting people speak up, letting them give opinions. Creating that atmosphere in this review process of providing that feedback is the greatest way to learn about your organization. And then take those, take that data and intel that you get and execute that. I think that's one of the most, simplest ways to really create a more innovative organization. Otherwise I think a good practice to bring in third parties from time to time, bring in that fresh set of eyes, bring in that fresh perspective, have them analyze what we're doing, why we're doing it and how we're doing it. And that's a great way to kind of just jump start some change.

Yeah. One of our company values is think and ask why and challenging the norms and that kind of thing. But bringing curiosity into a regular thing takes some muscle. I honor it, I cherish it. It's core to what I do. Also continually being pulled into being the smart rat who at first glance thinks he knows everything and being reminded, like developing that are things that I'm really proud of. But, but like bringing that to regular, to. To bear in places where it's not naturally there. Right. Like is the key.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, building a culture, especially building, you know, innovative culture, it has to be let. And in my opinion, it has to be led by the top. Sometimes I cringe when people talk about, you know, doing kind of the brainstorming sessions of what kind of culture do we want? If you ask the staff that, you're going to get a very different answer than what the CEO or owner wants. So I'm a big believer in bring them along with you when the culture changes, bring them along with the vision of the culture. But it's got to be led from the top. The CEO, the owner, has got to put in mechanisms that allow for that input, check their ego, bite their tongue at times, and allow for the free flow of ideas. I mean, that is, to me, that's the best way to kind of create these environments and really help your organization innovate and grow.

In our preparation, you talked about some Greek organization or something like that. What was that?

That was the first organization I worked with. I brought that document to the forefront.

That maybe we missed one of the good stories there, but what are we missing from the book? Like, we've covered a few of your stories and ideas there.

What have I. Yeah, let me, let me kind of tell you another one about. So I kind of look at becoming a curious leader as three shifts you got to have. Shift to a growth mindset, a shift to operational excellence, and then a shift to a curious culture.

Say it again. Shift number one, to.

To a growth mindset. Shift to a growth mindset, sure.

Yes.

Operational excellence and a curious culture. And so curious. So the curious culture is what we've been talking about a lot in this, the operational excellence is that that notion of diving into what we do, how we do, why we're doing it, so that we can find the most efficient, effective way to operate. And obviously the growth mindset is necessary to start all of it. The leader has to have the intention, desire to want to innovate growth and change in order to bring that to this team, both operationally and culture wise. And there's an organization I worked for, I was brought in as Kind of a change agent and had a couple years in the red, had just decreased half its staff, was really kind of struggling, had some success for a number of years and it just kind of stopped all of a sudden. One of those, one of those type situations. And I really came in and I rebuilt every department one by one, starting with the internal operations, the finance administration side of house, and then moved to marketing and membership, all these other things. And I brought about a lot of change in two years and. But there was a certain point to where the change ended up being too much. And there's a story that kind of shows this. We had a competitor that was, that was popping up and they were, they came out the gates in a blaze and they were actually were killing us. And over our, our, you know, seat probably number one organization in this field. And one of the things that they were doing that we weren't doing was video content. And this was to a younger, younger demographics. And you know, this, is this getting, you know, five, six, seven years ago. And still then, you know, video was starting to just become the king mechanism for delivery of content and ads, everything. And so I positioned to the, to the CEO and founder, I said, hey, you know, we really got to move into the space. We're getting left behind. And the answer was that's not what I envisioned when I founded this organization 27 years ago.

Yeah.

And my thought was really, you didn't envision video before Instagram, before TikTok, before Facebook. You didn't have that forethought. Another crazy thing about one of his sayings was he said the same to inspire the staff, saying, we were founded the same year of Amazon. Why aren't we Amazon? That's your answer. Because you didn't think of something 27 years ago, therefore we can't do it today. You know, Amazon didn't launch AWS because they had a desire to get into storage, data storage. They were designing a system for their own data and said, hey, there's there, there's a, there's a, a business model for this. And now it's, you know, one of their top line revenue streams that kind of, I don't say happened by accident, but like they didn't start a book e commerce store to do data storage, but they changed and adapted and that's what this organization had stopped doing. It stopped looking at the trends and what they needed to do to really kind of reverse that downward trend.

That's a really interesting story about shifting that. I love that. So growth mindset always is Like a beginning. And I think like growth goals and growth mindset are two different things, right?

Yeah. 100. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, goals is. Again, I kind of see the goal setting and strategic planning a lot of times is. It's, it's aspirational. It's. It's, it's. It's kind of just sits out there in the ether. Good things to have, good things to shoot for, you know, big.

But now, are you willing to change? Yeah.

Right, right.

Be curious. Are you willing to develop new skills, new capacities?

100. You know, again, and that, that falls back into our conversation about the ego. Right. It's. Yeah. Is being able to get rid of the notion that, that what we founded 27 years ago, and my vision then is, is will still make us last. Toward the end of time, you have to check your ego at the door. You got to analyze your operations. You got to bring your team along with you. You got to think outside the box and, and learn to try to find new solutions through yourself. Be resourceful. And, you know, when I talk about being resourceful, I don't mean monetarily find the answers. And, you know, find the answers wherever you can. If that's consultants, go to consultants. If it's your staff, go to your staff. But you have got to be that resource management person who's fostering all the best ideas to help your organization move forward.

Yeah. And then, and then you talk about operational excellence and I. And that seems obvious in some level. Right? Like, okay, it's great. Sounds good. Everybody should do that. Right. But, but where are you? Not excellent. What's it like to do business with you? What's it really like to get things done around your business? Is a, is a good question. Some good questions to start with, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, again, I work with a lot of founders and we all know that startups, small businesses, small nonprofits, that they're all very similar. Right. They're short on resources. You know, they're trying to do a lot with a little. And one of the biggest things that I've seen happen is that, you know, the CEO, founder, whatever, trying to do too much on their own. And if you ask that CEO or founder, you know, when you, when you're building a team, do you want to build a C player team?

Yeah.

You'd say, no, I want an A team. Right. Okay, well, you're doing this that you're an A at. You're doing this that you're a B at. You're doing this, you're a C at dnf you have just created a C team because you are doing too many things that you're not an A player at. And they often what they do is they outsource or bring on people that cover their true zone of genius, that allow them to help start that company and start that business and they don't outsource the areas that they're not as of geniuses and they get stuck in those areas.

And that's that really, that's a genius thing. I want to underscore what you've said there because I think people miss that. I hear this all the time. I just need to find more of me. I need to find more like me. And I would say nope, what you need to. And that is a really common if you think that like great. But. But what you probably need to do is hire all of the things that you shouldn't be doing. Right. Figure out how to hire all around you different kinds of people. Not more people like you. Not people who could do what you do. That isn't the path to scaling.

Yeah, I mean again, kind of combination of the mindset and, and the curious culture is, you know, one of my things to talk about with curious culture is getting to know your staff and what makes them excited about coming to work, what they enjoy doing. If we have a staff that enjoys 90% of what they do and 10% they tolerate, they're going to be a lot more successful, happier, less mistakes than doing the reverse. Same with CEOs and founders, right. They get stuck doing 90% of what they don't like doing because they won't outsource that or they won't bring someone in for that. That's when you get burnout, that's when you get errors, that's when you get lack of growth because they just lose the passion. You'll let the CEOs and founders need a need to follow the se advice of realizing who they are, being self aware about that where their strengths and weaknesses are and play to your strengths and stop trying to make up for your for your lack of skills by doing more of it. Find the people that are right for that role. You know another thing about the A player thing is I think a lot of, you know, fast moving companies that want to grow, they mistake having A players for A personalities. That's a huge mistake that CEOs and founders make is they want that type A personality. You know what? Not every role needs a type A personality. Sometimes you want the C personality. That's an A player. For that role, you know, so got to put in the right people for the right roles. And a lot of times that means, you know, the CEO stepping aside from that duty.

Really, really helpful. Well, we've covered a lot of stuff like that. The last thing that you talked about was this culture of curiosity. And we have, as I said, one of our company values that we memorize and talk about regularly is think and ask why. And we bring that to some places and we challenge that. But I would say among all the values, that is not the one always that gets the most attention. I don't actively think about it. So it's really helpful for, for me today to think about where could I bring think and ask why to more areas. And I will bring it to my quarterly and quarterly plan update and to my annual thinking for next year, which is, you know, just beginning now. So I think it's a useful place for all of us to think about what does that look like? But for me personally, where it's enshrined in, in our thing and central to a business of a coach who needs to be challenging and causing people to think is like, where am I not doing the same thing right?

Yep, yep, yep. You got, you gotta, you gotta step back, you gotta look at things differently and allow the ideas to flow and just allow for that environment right, where feedback and ideas questions can just flow easily.

So John Basford. John Basford.com is the website John without an H and bass and Ford just like they sound. John bassford.com if you happen to be just listening now somewhere and not looking at it. But if you're looking at the screen or if you can look at the show notes or you want to go back later, creator, there'll be a link there. John Bessford.com the book will be out next year. Probably the curious leader and, and so we may do some follow up or announce on that when it comes out. But I appreciate you coming on today and sharing some of your wisdom and stories and that kind of thing with us. Thank you so much.

Enjoy the conversation. Thanks for having me.

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