How To Reinvent Your Workplace with John Broer & Sara Best

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 doxatant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatant.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatant.com Bill g. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today. There it is again. We're talking about reinventing your workplace. You know, since, since really. Well, for a long time we've been thinking about reinventing workplaces, but after the pandemic, everything's getting reinvented, especially around the workplace. What does it mean physically? In the office for sure, but the roles, the way you work, that kind of thing. Great conversation today with some great guests. Hey, I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. Every week we come to you with a couple things. An interview show, a tip show, something to help you grow your business over 500 some and more you'll find. At scalingcoach.com you'll also find our workshops. A download about the stages of growth that you can get for free. A little mini course on how to navigate stages of growth and ultimately exit your company in a good way. And we do a workshop every month, all the back shows, all that and more tool downloads, things like that, resources, links from our fine hosts, our guests like this. So find all that and more. Scalingcoach.com so we are going to get into it now. I have a couple of great business leaders. They are hosts of the Boss Hole Chronicles. And I just, I love the Boss Hole term and dealing with everything that it represents. Having a look in the mirror and taking out the toxic behaviors that start at the top. And when I heard about the show and I met John at a conference, I'm like, oh, we should do a show. They're also founders of Real Good Ventures and they have decades of experience of helping companies develop their people, develop their organizations and all that. Joining us from Ohio, John and Sarah. Welcome to the show, John, Sarah Thanks, Bill.

Good to be here.

Yeah, absolutely. Great to be here. Thank you.

So let's get into it. Why don't you start off and say kind of a little bit more like, where did you get interested in this kind of work? Why did you start that show? Uh, maybe go back to the. Your flawed childhood or whatever it is that.

Oh, John, you want me to start?

Sure, yeah. That sounds great.

Well, I'll just admit right up front that I was a social worker by training and design. I did clinical work for years. I worked with kids and families, but for a portion of my career, I moved into employee assistance work. So we started supporting companies and managers and employees in companies, their mental health needs, but also training and development. And that's where I discovered how unhappy everybody was in the workplace, how miserable people and underperforming bosses and poorly equipped bosses were making things really, really hard. So that's where my true passion developed, around helping leaders, teams solve the drama and the people challenges that we often face.

It's funny, the thorniest things are like, people issues. Right. Strategy is about focus and thinking, about opportunities and differentiation. But people, people, man, don't make any damn sense at all.

That's right.

My worldview is perfectly. Makes perfect sense to me anyway.

That's right. We always say people behave in a way that makes perfect sense to them. Absolutely.

My wife doesn't understand it, but. And vice versa.

And. Well, my background is I cut my teeth in the steel industry and chemical industry here in the Midwest, moved around. But I always seem to be gravitating toward learning and development and training people, training a new sales team. And eventually I just really had a passion for that. There was a time when I left the chemical industry, started my own practice, and it was all around people development. And it was amazing. What I didn't know at the time, but through again, mentors, trial and error, getting better at crafting my capabilities. And then, of course, being able to work with somebody like Sarah, it just has blossomed into this people development, talent optimization work that is incredibly fulfilling. And that is at the core of what we want to do at Real Good Ventures. I mean, our mission is to help people find meaning and fulfillment in their work. We just happen to do it through science. And it's great. But it's also. I think you said it, Bill. It's a little troubling to see we keep repeating these mistakes decade after decade after decade. And that's why the idea of reinventing the workplace is so critical now.

Yeah, well, there's an opportunity, right. Things are kind of not in balance. They're not actually working for a lot of people. People struggle and then you get Something that disrupts the status quo like we had with COVID which is kind of the gift of a time like that, because it disrupts them. And then the, the imbalances, like, nobody has any stomach for that anymore. Like, why am I going to get. Drive two hours to the office and then two get on the train and come in from Westchester and do my, like, ah, like really every day?

Why?

Yeah, you know, to sit in my.

Cubicle or to deal with a boss whose approaches and style of working is inconsistent with good results.

Yeah, we had a, if I may, quick story about a CEO client of ours. Great client of ours. But right at the onset of when people were starting to come back from COVID we talked. He said, hey, we're thinking about instituting and requiring people to come back to the office. And our, our counsel to him was, you can do that, but you have to get ready for people to leave. And he said, you're kidding me. Really? I mean, people would leave? And I said, oh, yeah, absolutely. Because while Covid had a huge downside, it. It literally, it was the catalyst to help push us more fully into that idea of a new workplace and thinking of it differently. And he went out and talked to people and he said, he surveyed them informally and he said, if we require people to come back, how does that land with you? And a number of people said, I'd be on LinkedIn looking for another job. So we give him credit for thinking it through, but not everybody's doing it. There have been a lot of return to work mandates and they're not going so well.

Yeah, A lot of them crudely done, not well thought through, and some of them, like, staggering. Like, I know an executive who moved to a beachside community out of the country, and the company was mandating people get back to the office. I'm like.

Yeah, how can it happen?

The other executive from that company lives in a beautiful place and works whenever they want to and that kind of thing. And you're like, everybody has to be back in the office because the productivity is crap.

Like.

Right. And it could be separate problems. Right. Like the product. There are companies that have always been remote. Right. And there's value in coming together. My son's company is all remote, but they come together from time to time to work with each other. And that continues to evolve for, you know, so I think it's fascinating how people need that. We see that also. We have a couple construction contractor clients in multiple in different parts of the country, and they're doing some work reconfiguring offices. Like, we need more meeting spaces for collaboration. We need lots more team meeting places to get together and that feel more collaborative and less just like a boardroom.

Right. Like creative spaces.

Creative. Yeah. Living room settings and that kind of thing. Like more. A little more. Like maybe a wework kind of space.

But yeah, Bill, I've got a same scenario. Two sons, both of whom work remotely, but one of whom insists that that's the only way he wants to work. And I say, listen, never under, Never undervalue the getting together and just creating some community, even if it's once a quarter or every few months, there is real value in that. And I don't think we ever want to lose that. If I may, one of the things that we talk about at Real Good Ventures, we talk. And I'm going to tell you right now, we borrowed this shamelessly from Aaron Dignan. He's the author of Brave New Work. He's got a great podcast you may want to have him on, if you haven't already in over the 500. But he talks about the difference between a stoplight intersection and a roundabout. And before, before, pre Covid, we were sort of rooted in this framework of a stoplight intersection. We're all familiar with it. We all grew up with it. And then everybody, if you remember the time you're driving in your neighborhood and you come about, come upon a roundabout, and it's brand new and you didn't even know it was getting put in, it freaks people out. That's the new workplace. It's in the.

In the United States. The rest of the world is at ease with roundabouts. Oh, my God, the communists are here.

That's okay. Yes. That is so true. I mean, like, we are traffic convention. Yeah. But think about it. I mean, think about the old command and control versus trust and autonomy. That is the metaphor works. And it's just that we are dealing with a lot of organizations right now that are stuck in the stoplight intersection, not realizing that traffic has moved on. And it's a roundabout world, and your leaders, your operating systems have to follow suit.

Well, and if we could just double click on that for a minute at the stoplight. I always ask people, when we do presentations, when, what do you do when you're at a stoplight? You pull up to the light, you put your foot on the brake. What do you do? And some people are like, get frustrated. Wait, no. Most people pick up their phone or they check. Well, if in your state you're allowed to do that in Ohio, we are, but Michigan, you're not.

Other places, it's not legal here, but everybody does it.

Yeah, you check out. You're unconscious to the design and the workflow that is just so baked in. It's so part of how we work that we just disconnect. And it's very representative of an operating system that many companies don't even realize creates disengagement. Like, it's. It's just. You're lulled into this. Here I am at the light, I have to wait for it to turn green. You know, I'm gonna think about something.

Else right now anymore. Like, every. Like every minute of the day is like, okay, this scene is boring me in this Netflix show, so I'm gonna look down and flick through some reels. Yep, right on all the time. Let me check my email real quick, because this is a montage.

Yeah, well. And the roundabout is confusing and frustrating as it is for some people, is in fact a totally different operating system. And it means they will figure it out. Like, we don't have to, like, break down every rule for them. They'll figure it out. And so the transition to that kind of an operating system is very, very challenging and difficult for most organizations.

It's really profound. And I love that comparison, that analogy there. And you think about how people. And it shows up differently in different cultures, and your team and your vibe is going to be different than other places. But around. About in, say, Germany is pretty different from a roundabout in Rome. Right around about in Southeast Asia is a whole other kind of thing. South Asia, Southeast Asia. Like, those are totally different kinds of chaotic environments. I remember roundabout in Central America, and you got to just lay on your horn and go for it. And, you know, yeah, but what about the people.

What about the people that stop in a roundabout? We. We have it here in Columbus, and it's like. But here's the thing. That's where the trust and autonomy. Autonomy comes into play. You are. You are given full autonomy to move into this and trust that you're paying attention to the left side in here in the States. But the thing is, it's so new, it still trips people up. But after. After a generation starts to get used to it, we start to realize the benefits. And I mean, the fuel efficiency is so much more. Is so much improved with a roundabout. And the. And the safety, loss of life in roundabouts is reduced considerably. But once again, we're seeing this in. In organizations and managers that are stuck in the intersection are. Are having trouble managing and guiding and Developing a workforce that is really ready for the roundabout.

You know, it's funny, they put in roundabouts, small roundabouts in a very residential neighborhood not far from me. And a few years ago, and in those days I was still looking at the nextdoor website before it just devolved, but this partly led to it and people just lost their minds. And they were so upset about these little roundabouts, very low traffic kind of thing. But they were trying to encourage cooperative thing and pedestrians and cars and that kind of thing. And there's some streets there where commuters go through and then others, it's really just the resident. Anyway, they put them in and there was so much uproar and people just losing their minds over it. They put in stop signs also. So now we have a roundabout and a stop sign at these intersections and it's like, oh, my Lord, tear the roundabout out now.

You just, you just totally. Yeah, just blow that thing up. It's not going to work.

It's a upside down world. That's crazy.

Everything in like, why don't you add a stoplight too?

Yeah, yeah. Oh, my Lord.

Well, the one thing we didn't talk about yet was the origination of the podcast and even the trademarked term bossel.

Podcast and where it comes from. Yeah, it's great.

So, John, you know. Well, let me just say this. Yeah, John, you, you wanted to do a podcast. I was like, we, we don't really need to do that. I mean, come on. But that was three years ago and every day I learn of a new podcast that one of our colleagues or associates has started. So podcasts are the thing. I didn't want to do it, but you had a vision because you knew how this bosshole thing was going to land. So maybe you should tell that story well.

And I got to give full credit to Sarah because we were in an office when we were. Before we were fully remote, but we were working in an office and I just overheard you say, Sarah, man, he was such a boss hole. And it just. A light went off. It's like, oh my gosh, that is a perfect term. Now, we didn't invent it. We had a gentleman on the podcast who said, oh, I've been using that term for years. That's great. But we're the ones that trademarked it. But that, by the way, that, by the way, is a really interesting process. And we. And anyway, that's a whole another episode, but it just resonates. And Bill, to your point, you hear the word and you know exactly what it Means, and Sarah will say, and I love this. You can take any pronoun and put.

The word noun or pronoun.

Yeah, noun or pronoun. That's right. Put the word hole after parent hole, coach hole, teacher hole. We just landed on boss hole and it has, it has really resonated with people and everybody has a boss hole story. But Sarah, what do we always say when it comes to boss holes?

No one was born to be a boss hole. We truly believe that. No one wakes up in the morning going, you know, what can I do awful at work today to make people unhappy and miserable in their jobs? How can I be the most ineffective leader there is possible?

No, I'd like to increase turnover.

Right? Yeah, yeah, let's annihilate retention today. Yeah, that's not going to happen. So the premise is that there are things that we can do and should be doing and can focus on to stay out of what we'll call the boss hole zone. So we consider ourselves boss hole prevention and intervention specialists. Our work is really designed to help people through self awareness and tools and insights to just do a better job and hopefully they want that job. That's a whole nother discussion.

And tell you what, looking at Gallup's numbers disengagement at a nine year high in their 2023 study, we got our work cut out for us. But Bill, going back to the idea of the old model stoplight intersection organizations that are still taking great individual contributors and making a managers without training, without even asking them, do you want to manage or develop other people? What they're asking them to do is say, hey, that thing you did by yourself, can you magically make other people do that same thing and have that success? And it rarely works out. So again, it requires a different perspective on how we think about who should manage people and how we equip them to manage people. And we have all kinds of great subject matter experts. We have bosshole stories, we have round tables where Sarah and our colleague Karen and I will talk about current events or current topics. But it's an issue and if it's not resolved, the workforce today will move on. And that's why you see people saying, you know what, I'm, I'm not here for more than couple of months because I don't like it and I don't like this person. It, it has a huge impact on the organization.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I remember I always have coaches myself and I've had coaches of different kinds at different points and usually I have several different types of coaches at any given time. And I had a couple coaches, like, pointing out to me that I was a boss hole in different situations. And I'm like, so hated it. And I desperately wanted everyone, anytime there's a failure performance or a problem, I just wanted to blame someone else for it. And it really, really bothered me to look in the mirror. And I reluctantly do it. I know intellectually how empowering and liberating it is, right? Because whether or not anybody else has any fault, the thing you can do the most about is yourself, right? So taking a long look in the mirror and going, what am I doing? That's starting all this and then dealing with that first and then letting other people sort themselves out, right? Take their own journey around the roundabout makes such a massive difference in that. And yet not everybody wants to do it. And we even have people. I had a guy hire me who always comes to mind around this subject some years ago. He's like, I read the scaling up book. I really want to do the scaling up work. We need to be a scaling up company. And I got to get people aligned and they got to pull their weight. And my people are passive and they're late on everything. They don't stamp up, they don't take initiative, and they just, they're always late. And we started working with the guy, and they're international company offices in different places across the US and around the world. And lots of people, they do good work in the world. And he's very passionate about his product and the value of they do so. Not for bad intention or because it's a person or anything like that, but he was really disappointed in his leadership and to a increasing extent, all the people in the company. So we start working with them for a while and then things start to go off. And I rearrange things to attend one of their leadership meetings, and I am the first one there. And then some other people start to trickle in. Twenty minutes later, the CEO comes in. One person even comes in after him. So the meeting starts late. And then he's really prepared for this meeting. He's thought and written all kinds of things out. It's not a standard. It's his agenda at the moment of what he's sure is important and it is important to the company. And then. And he rips through that for about two hours. And we're now, well over time. And then he asked, does anybody else have anything that they want to cover today while we're together?

Wow.

People just mumbled things and whatever they're meeting. And then just before excusing people, he said, bill, do you have any feedback for us? And I said, well, I said we could do some private feedback after the meeting and talk about that, but for the collective team, it's useful to get that there's a design behind an agenda for a meeting like this. Want to understand and empower the design so that it's held collectively and it isn't just about the issues at hand and we could review that again at some point. And then I went to his office adjoining and I said, okay, you remember why you invited me here and what the thing was? And he's like, yeah, my people are passive and late. And roughly it took him a minute. And I said, this is all it right here. And it's really great because it's starts with you. You've taught your people that being on time doesn't matter. And you've taught your people to shut up until you're done talking.

That's right.

And that was the last conversation I ever had with him.

I was going to say, did that engagement end or continue? That's. But that's, that's honesty though. That is transparency that he needed to hear.

We can work on this, it's gonna work. But he was like, you're a, you're an asshole and, and I'm done with you.

Yeah, you're a coach hole. But that's what we need to do is tell the truth. And if that's going to have us lose the job, then so be it. It's worth it.

Lencioni talks about telling the kind truth and I maybe didn't butter that up enough with the opportunity of it and the good news. And he maybe wasn't ready to hear that on that particular day. So there's something there. But ultimately he wanted everybody else worked on except, and I understand it because I think we all do that at some point. But it's also useful to get. We're all at some point or another a boss hole. Don't you think at some point or in some situation with some people, you.

Have a moment, you have a moment. But I want to get back to something you said. The number one competency for effective leadership or to be an effective manager is self awareness. And that's not our work. That is research and studies. There are tons of competencies necessary to have to be an effective leader. But self awareness is number one. When you run into a manager supervisor leader who one, is not self aware, two, doesn't even demonstrate an interest in becoming self aware. And here's the other part of it. No interest in adaptation. They have no emotional intelligence. And I'm not gonna, this is that EQ is Sarah's area of expertise. But when they do not have that, they are, that is a bullet train into the boss hole zone. And, and you are going to see disengagement, turnover, poor performance and then they'll be mystified as to why people aren't inspired. That's a great story going wrong. Yeah.

Well, and John, to carry a thread forward from what you said about adapting.

Yeah.

So we have to have self awareness. We have to know, hey, what the heck is happening with me? What is triggering me? What is, how is my response affecting the people around me? I mean that's a big job. That's a big job for any one person, much less a person who has influence over the well being and the performance of others. But it's when people don't adjust their dials, so to speak. So we talk about natural behavioral drives. And if I'm a highly assertive, highly dominant, very confident person, I like my own ideas, I like to do things a certain way. I, you know, to be an effective boss in most situations, I'm going to have to dial that dominance down. And I just want to, I want to talk about this very, in very simple terms because that's really what it comes down to. We run into a lot of high level leaders who tend to have high dominance and low patience. And they're at that level because they get results. That's how they've been promoted. Travis Bradbury, who has written a couple of great books about emotional intelligence has done a lot of research. And at about mid level management, that's where emotional intelligence drops off. So it increases and then we get to the management level. Those are people who are generally more people focused. They get promoted because they're, you know, they're going to rally their team. But the higher you go, the less emotional intelligence there is because these are people that tend to move quick, get results and that's rewarded in the system that makes them the chief leader. So we have to be super aware of that. And leaders in particular have to know what are the drives I need to dial and when to get a better, to create a better environment, to create a better engagement for my people. The other thing we probably will talk about at some point here is burnout. But we've done a couple episodes with some burnout experts. Compassion and burnout are living. They're, you know, two sides of the same coin and, and post pandemic world and workforce or workplace has to have empathy, compassion. I have to know you as a person. I have to understand what you need as a person. Or as John said, you know, far and above people probably make another choice, go work somewhere else.

Yeah.

So let's go back big picture to the workplace thing. But I think segue you talked about burnout. I can remember CEO telling me, listen, I, I'm, I'm concerned about like everybody's tired of the zooms and things like that and they're stressed about whatever and like how do I deal with that? And I said, well, how is it for you? And he's like, oh, I'm stressed out. My kids run and what my attention when I need to be running a meeting and I don't have a good place and you know, like early pandemic kind of thing and everybody was stressed and trying to find ways to deal and get back to work. And I'm like, well why don't you just tell them what it's like for that, what it's like for you and then ask them what they're dealing with and just listen. Trying to pretend like he wanted strategies to handle it for himself. I'm like, you're all grappling with it. Like just acknowledge like, wow, this really sucks for me. How is it for you? You know? And then listen to what it is. I remember a woman who was in a workshop with me and she's crying. She's like, I am sitting in my one bedroom apartment in New York trying to keep my company together and I so alone.

Right?

You're not really alone. It feels alone. You're not alone. We're here with you.

You know, you mentioned Lynch, Patrick Lencioni and we are huge, huge fans of Patrick Lencioni Methodologies that when he talks about vulnerability based trust as the basis for creating stronger relationships, the word vulnerability and at least the acknowledgment that you know what, I don't have all the answers or when a leader. It's very refreshing when a leader will come forward and say I'm worried about this, I'm concerned about this. I want to talk to you about this. I want to get your input versus the old model of trying to be strong, independent. I have all the answers. That is a fallacy and have it all figured out. That's right. We've had so many episodes on the human side of leadership and courage and vulnerability and authenticity. And I think when managers and supervisors can give over to what they think they're supposed to do to where they actually are and being authentic, that totally changes things right there. And. And real quick, Bill, everything we do, when I think about your podcast, scaling up, everything we do with our clients is based in objective data. We have four diagnostic platforms that we equip our clients to use because we don't want to do it for them. We want to enable them so they can scale up whenever they rely on the data, specifically around leadership, what we call leadership DNA, that leader becomes aware. The ones that become self aware are the ones that generally say, it's okay for me to be vulnerable and I need to adapt. The ones that resist are the ones that are struggling, and they're the ones that are. That are having the most difficulty, especially holding onto the talent that's around them. So it's very real, but it's also very solvable.

You know, it's funny, it's like as a leader and in our culture, we're trained early on, I need to be strong, I need to have a plan, I need to give the direction, that kind of thing. And yet, when I think about one of the strongest moments of leadership of my entire life and career was when I went to the team and I told him we were in trouble and I didn't have a plan and I totally lost my shit and I was crying and. Right. So all of that, but good for you. I was open with him, which took some courage to begin with. And then I left him with this promise. Well, first I request I need your help, which also is a thing of strength to ask for help. And then I said, I will not quit. We will fight to the end. And you might not be up for this because you might need to ensure your mortgage and your family's income and that kind of thing. And I understand, and if you need to go, it's okay.

But I.

Your help and I, we're going to play to the end. And if you want to join me in that, I could really use your help. Right. So now people are left with a strong stand, right? And I face losing not only the business, but my house and disruption of my family and all that. And nobody quit.

That's awesome.

That's incredible.

Right? And together we figured out how to double the revenue, the profit, and the cash in a year.

Oh, my gosh.

That's available. I know. That is what can be available when leaders are honest and say, I don't freaking know the answer, and I'm relying on you guys, and I don't even know if we're going to get through this, but at least we can do it together. I want to say too, there doesn't have to be a pandemic or a crisis to create that kind of environment on your team. I mean, having a little. Having the heat turned up a little bit sometimes does coalesce the group. But this is something leaders should be doing each and every day. They should be doing this. I'm thinking, John, you remember we've worked with a publicly traded agar business and there was one particular leader who struggled. He had all the right stuff, but it wasn't until he did exactly what you did, Bill. He said he got everybody in a room. He's like, I have tried to do this. I think they were putting together a presentation. I've tried to do this. I suck at doing this. I need your help. They stayed together all night. They brought food in. The whole team was there. And one of the people on his team, who I'm confident was ready to walk out the door, said, I have never had more fun and felt more productive and fulfilled in my whole life. That was amazing. So we don't have to have necessarily the heat turned up to 95 degrees, but what we do need is leaders to be real and honest and open to the fact that there are people around them that probably have some good ideas.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you're probably a leader because you are smart, because you have some initiative, some ambition and that kind of thing, but thinking that you're the smartest or even if you are on some parameter, the smartest, that's enough. And that you don't need a diversity of opinion and diversity of skill sets and talents and like, yeah, you're just delusional. And it's hard to live like that. Right. The title on the screen there below me is how to Reinvent the Workplace. What's the Old Workplace? What's the New Workplace? Clearly, leadership sets a tone for culture and has a big impact. But what is this old and new workplace and what's that reinvention process like the new.

The new workplace needs to. There's a couple of things. The sort of going by your gut and just sort of. I have a sense, I know people, I have a sense for people. We're going to move this person here, we're going to promote this person here. That. That just does not work. So today's workplace job, fit manager, fit team, fit culture, fit, have to be supported by objective data. There we have, we have 70 years worth of validated analytics and tools that all too often organizations look at them as sort of like parlor tricks. The tools we use are validated and they are part of the workflow every single day. So I can go in and we can equip a company to optimize their hiring based on core behavioral and cognitive data. And that's not the only thing. I mean, you're looking at all different aspects, but why not start out at the front end, the leading indicator. When you find somebody that has a higher probability of success in a particular role versus somebody who just interviewed well, or our biases take over and say, well, I got a buddy over here that I want to put in this role. We have those conversations a lot. And when. It's very empowering when you, when an organization says, oh my gosh, we've cut our turnover by 20% in six months, we are promoting different kinds of managers that are actually people developers versus superstar individual contributors. And here's another thing that's a reinvented part of the workplace, Bill. You know, the old, remember, this is a stoplight intersection method. You know, image climbing the corporate ladder. If you want to get ahead, you got to move into management. That's. That is an old antiquated model. It should look like a jungle gym. And by the way, every organization should have a very narrow pathway into management. And people who want to go there should be identified and equipped and trained to be a developer of other people. That's what managers are. But there should be a super wide pathway for individual contributors. I could come into this company as an analyst or a technician, and I could work here for 10 or 15 years and progress at different levels and capabilities as a technician and never have to manage another human. There is no shame in wanting to be an individual contributor. I think that's one of the most critical things that needs to be reinvented, creating that wide pathway for individual contributors. And you know what? Let's set our sights a little bit higher on how we promote and identify people to get into management. That's. That's a real key thing right now.

Yeah, it's. It's interesting to watch people, you know, and think about your own life and the pathway. I watched our son raise money and start several different companies and go through challenges with all of them and feel like they weren't winning. And he hadn't learned anything. But one of the big things he learned along the way is he doesn't really like managing the people, and he doesn't like working with all kinds of people. He really likes there are certain types that he especially connects with, and you need more than that type to run a company. And so he's ended up being like, head of science for a company, and he focuses on that science aspect of it. Right. Which is very different than. Than the other role. Like, I'm the CEO and I'm like, so he's capable of raising money. He's capable of creating a big vision for something. But that's different than developing the people and corralling, working different kinds of people together.

Well, but. And if. And if somebody came. Sorry, sir, but if somebody came to him and said, hey, have you thought about going into management or supervising a couple of people? If he says, you know what? That's really not my jam. I really don't want to do that. There is no shame in that. That we want to celebrate, because you know what? There need to be more individual contributors than managers. Lord knows, we don't need more managers that really aren't equipped to be there and don't want to be there.

Yeah, I said to him, I said, so are you CTO of this company? He's like, oh, hell no. I am on the research side. Right. I'm R and D. Like, great. That's a great. And you know, to be honest, I love the R and D side of things. If I think about, like, the end of my role in this company as founder, it ends as R and D, not as COO or any other role.

Well, and even you identifying what you love to do, what you love to be spending your time doing, that's job fit. And we have to move from the. This is our organizational structure. This is the briefcase you need to have to do this job to start looking at who do we have and how do they work and what are the needs of the work that we have. How could we fit people based on their natural behavioral drives and their cognitive ability? How could we better fit them to the work at hand? The other point I think it's important to make when we reinvent the workplace is elevating trust and psychological safety. These are concepts we cannot just talk about or pretend that we have. We have to recognize that they're hard to create. Lencioni's model for effective, cohesive teams and healthy organizations. All those things are vitally important in this workforce. I think for the time that we're in now, we need trust. We don't have it. We don't have a lot of psychological safety. And organizations need to diagnose why.

It's interesting. I get on the surface that it works. I'm curious your thoughts about it and not being a core focused in this. The emphasis on trust and safety seems obvious and valid. And yet there seems to. This prevailing thing that creates and relates to everybody is fragile all over the place. And we find the, the safest, most middle of the road, bland sort of way to say and be and do everything and then. And that's like creating trust and safety and we start relating to people as fragile and capable and all of that kind of thing. And I don't, I like, I don't know what to say. Like, is that really promoting trust and safety or are we covering over things and pretending it doesn't exist?

Forgive me for asking it this way. It sounds like you're talking more about political correctness. That's not psychological safety in our perspective. Our work comes from Dr. Amy Edmondson, a Harvard business professor who did a wealth of research around how to develop psychological safety and why it is the key that unlocks the potential of a team safety is not being afraid that something bad's gonna happen to you if you raise your hand with a question, if you challenge an idea that you're not gonna be ostracized or cut out of the in group that you know you're gonna get help and support and you're allowed to be the person you are. That's what psychological safety is. So it's actually, it opens up the gates, if you ask my opinion, for inclusivity, respecting diversity. We don't go to the center and make it mediocre. We open it up and accentuate the diversity so that people can contribute their best ideas, their best efficiencies. Because right now there's too many stops in many organizations to people actually speaking what they're seeing. You know, we know disastrous, catastrophic situations that have occurred because of a lack of safety. People did not want to get in trouble. Nurses, you know, medication overdoses, the space shuttle Challenger. There are many examples of where people not being equipped to or not having the right environment to say what they need to say created a challenge. John, jump in here too, because you're a big fan.

Well, and I mean, this is, that's what we can diagnose. I mean, what you're talking about, Sarah, is dangerous silence. Bill, you gave us a great example. That CEO that came in late, that talked for two hours and nobody said anything. I would love to measure the psychological safety in that team because it's not going to be there. At its core, psychological safety. You know what it sounds like? It sounds like one of those squishy HR terms. And it's not psychological. Safety is all about team performance. And because we can measure it, it means that we can help resolve it. It. And so when you get that dangerous silence or failure avoidance, because people are saying, oh no, no way, I'm not saying anything. That's the old model. Healthy organizations are the ones that are not afraid to challenge the status quo. And people are not getting punished because they're speaking up and saying, you know what? I don't think that's going to work. I don't think that this is the best course of action. And I'd like to be part of maybe a new idea. That's what we're going for. And when that happens, performance flourishes. So yeah, Sarah, I think the distinction between, between that and sort of political correctness, very different.

Yeah. And all an organization, or if you're a leader yourself, all you have to do is, is evaluate what happens around here when somebody makes a mistake.

Yeah.

And on the one hand, are we saying, you know, be a roundabout, go try things, test it out, but when something bad happens, then we assassinate character and there's retribution in a variety of ways. So we have to be very straight and candid with ourselves about really what kind of environment do we have for candor, for mistakes, for challenges?

You know, it's fascinating. One of the most controversial leaders today is Elon Musk. And maybe not the most emotionally developed, certainly bold and innovative and that kind of thing, but you look at when SpaceX blows up a rocket.

Yeah.

There's pretty much no congressional hearings. They call it a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

Right.

And then they're like, what did we learn from that? Right. And he appears to have some real issues. But, but creating a culture that can iterate fast and work on things seems to be one of his strengths.

Absolutely. That is, that is exactly. I was thinking about the last launch that they lost track of it. And you have rapid, what do they call it? Rapid disassembly. I love that.

Unscheduled.

Yeah. But there was no investigation. He was, he was giving a press conference. Right. After saying this, we learned from this, we move on. And that's the kind of culture that he's, he's creating there.

Well, there is an investigation. Right? An investigation of what happened. Looking forensically at versus who to hang out to dry.

Exactly. Yep.

For the whole thing. Right. Which is different than a congressional hearing where we've already decided how we feel about everything. And there's not a lot of questions being asked. There's mostly like Congress people making statements.

Can I, can I draw on the Elon Musk example real quick? Because he's a fascinating individual. He's also, he every as every person has their own idiosyncrasies and so forth. But a lot of times we'll get people come up and they'll say, well what makes you know, you talk about behavioral DNA and how we're wired. What's the best leader? What's the best. We talk about reference profiles. There's 17 of them. But which one is the best leader? And I think that's an old part of the old model that we oftentimes look at people that are bombastic and bold and they always talk and they never stop and they're assertive and take risks. They're always the best leaders. And that is a, that is a really old way of looking at it. Every, what we say is every person has the capacity to be a leader. Not everybody wants to, but everybody has the capacity. It's just understanding your natural wiring and your natural superpowers and understanding how to leverage those and then where your, where your caution areas or we would call it your kryptonite. Everybody has superpowers and everybody has to deal with kryptonite. Understand what that is and then find people who complement you. That's what, that's what, that's what the new workplace needs is our leaders that are highly self aware but also realistic about what do I need around me. It's just like you said, like with your son, you need to have people different than you are. Compliment who you are and not be afraid to do that. And I think that's what, I think that's what SpaceX has done, you know.

And what's her name? Gwynne Shotwell is the CEO of that company. We don't hear enough from her about how she gets things done and, and runs that place and she spends most of the time there. I think there's also a fallacy that like a great world class is a perfect person. And the moment we figure out like I, I know a couple people who worked with Steve Jobs and they both said, well, he was tough to be around, but he was tough for the outcome. Tough about the quality of the work and doing your best work. And he was unwavering and unflinching and demanding in that and not comfortable. Never was going to win father of the year award, right? Like and Henry Ford, right. Revolutionized manufacturing and production and transportation. That Kind of thing. He was a Nazi sympathizer. Right. Like who wanted some of the same concepts or like every single leader seems to have some terrible flaw. Bezos. Right. The utility and value of Amazon to the end consumer, maybe not to the world. And in others say. I'm not saying it's a totally virtuous thing, but it's created value. It's done something that's, that's remarkable and it is out building rockets that look like penises. Right. Like, so there's something going on there that's like flawed.

There's something there. That's right, that's right.

That this is an adult audience. Right. So I like, I think that you need to be perfect and free of flaws in all domains. Doesn't necessarily know like beyond be you. Be all of you.

Be you and have great people around you that can do the stuff you can't on you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, we've been talking for a long time and maybe we didn't cover everything we wanted to cover, but the idea of the right fit and the right job and not the ladder and creating collaborative things of complex people bring safety and self awareness to our leadership and our organizations Reframes the workplace more than putting in different kinds of furniture.

Yeah, right, yeah. And ping pong tables and.

Yeah. Well, you think about the old like the early.com era, it's like let's just put foosball tables and slides in the offices and better snacks. And for sure that makes it easier for people to stick around and spend more time in the office, which is a big thing. But then that also creates things where people age out or they can't sustain because at some point they want to have family. And that's not super helpful in that putting in 247 in a business. Right.

That's for sure. And you started out talking about culture and how critical leadership is in starting and helping to establish culture. But as we say at real good ventures, culture is a result. It is not a remedy. Culture. Culture is a result and we stand by this. Culture is a result of job fit, manager fit and team fit, which can all be measured. And I've had, we've had some CEOs challenge us on that, say we got a great culture. And it's like I said, I'm not saying you don't have a great culture, but if you don't have the right people in the right roles, managers that are equipped to develop them and teams that are designed for flawless execution, you will never hit your pinnacle of culture and that's again a new way of looking at the workplace.

That's right.

Well so the company is real good ventures. We'll put up the banner there. RealGoodVentures.com is if you want to know more about their work and the show is the Boss Hulk Chronicles. We'll put links in the that kind of thing up as well. Bosshole Chronicles podcast there on screen if you're watching and in the show notes if not but probably not hard to remember. Just go search Bosshole and you're turn up in your favorite podcast app and you're sure to turn it up. It's a really great conversation. I'm so glad that we got together and connected today on all of this.

Bill, it's been a pleasure.

Yeah, thank you Bill. Keep up the great work.

Thank you. So big shout out to and thanks to my friend and mentor Vern Harnish who created the whole scaling up framework that we use at the core of our business. And to the people at store on Christelle, Seth Cameron who get our show ready, produced out the door every week and keep it flowing. Make my life easier. Thanks again everyone for watching for listening. If you want to find out about the course, the workshops, all the past shows, scalingcoach.com is our website. Scaling not hard to remember scalingcoach.com easy to remember, easy to spell. Until next time. We'll talk to you again soon. Keep Scaling. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software. Powered by Align, it's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app you can rest easy knowing Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.combillgate One more time. Aligntoday.combillg that's aligntoday.combillg Check it out and try it now.