112 - The Most Effective Strategies for Aligning People and Processes with Effective Performance Strategies' Ryan Weiss

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show, and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Ryan Weiss, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the founder of Effective Performance Strategies, which can be found at EPS Optics. .com. Welcome to the show.

That's right. Thank you so much for having me, Doug. I'm excited to have this conversation.

Well, thanks. First of all, just for the— I interviewed you on Authority Magazine, so I know about you, but for those who haven't read that wonderful interview, give us a little bit about your backstory.

Yeah, so my backstory, you know, so I started my first business when I was 15 years old, and my youngest brother still owns it and runs it today. So It really turned into a thriving business over time. But, but I went away to— my dad wanted me to go away to college. So went away, got degrees in chemistry and finance, and then worked in the corporate world for almost 17 years, lived in Asia a couple of times, moved back and forth from Asia to the United States, managed teams in, in Europe and South America, all over the world, really. And about 7, maybe more than 7 years ago now, I left the corporate world, and I had some great experiences, but I left the corporate world to become an entrepreneur and founder again. And so it's been quite a journey of kind of going through those experiences.

Tell us a little bit about your company, EPS Optics.

Yeah, so what we do is we help organizations to align people and process to accelerate performance. As I mentioned, my degrees are in chemistry and finance, so I'm a very technical process person. But what I learned along the journey is that it's all about the people. And I think that's one of the things that drew me to you and your podcast was this listening with leaders and the understanding of people is really so critical to, to performance. And so the word OPTICS, the system that we've developed, this word OPTICS has two definitions. If you look it up in the dictionary, one of them is the study of light. And so there's all these words you think about like focus and alignment and all those types of technical words. So there's a technical component. The second definition of the word optics is the perception of people, the optics of a situation, perceptions of people. So I fell in love with kind of this concept that it's all about process enables people to do things. But, uh, but people without process get frustrated. And, and, uh, and so both of these things need to move forward together to accelerate performance. And that's what gets me energized and excited every day.

Wow.

So, uh, you, you anticipated one of my questions. So when you're talking about people in process, elaborate on that a little bit more. What do you mean by that?

Yeah, so it's sort of the— I have, I have two things that kind of jump to mind. One is that people without process get frustrated And the corollary to that is that process without people is wasted. And so if you think about those kind of two, you know, statements, the first one, if you hire in, if you attract and try to retain the best people, you're like, I'm gonna find the right employee, I found the ideal candidate to fill a position in my company, but you don't have good processes in your company, that person comes in and the first day, the they're like, this place is crazy. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing the process, right? They get frustrated and they leave. If you attract the ideal client, your best ideal client, this is the person, this is the customer that I want, right? It's my target. And you bring them in and your processes are all screwed up, they're going to leave. So people without process get frustrated. And on the other side, as I mentioned, process without people is wasted. And So many organizations create these, you know, process upon process in SharePoint and Google Drives and all these processes, you know, all these SOPs, and nobody even has the time to read them or use them. And so people just end up building their habits and behaviors. And really, that's what happens in the middle of people and process is habits and behaviors.

And how do you figure all this out?

But, you know, lots of long walks. I love thinking, right? I just, I've got notepads and notebooks and all these things. But it took over the course of my career, there's been these moments of developing elements of this, which has now turned into a software platform. My next book is coming out early next year. My team is getting my team engaged so that they're using the software. It's not just a theory, but it's actually what we do. Like all those things, it takes so much time, as you know, Doug, to pull something like this together. But it's been my passion and it continues to drive me.

So obviously you're very excited about it. So if somebody— if you were to describe the kind of service that you provide to a client, what would you say?

Yeah, so there's really a few different things. We have a system which is really a framework that enables all of these elements to come together into a map, if you will, a roadmap, if you will, of getting that alignment, getting better alignment between departments and between the performance metrics and things like that. So it's a system that we've created, but a big part of what we do is help you to facilitate those challenging discussions where sometimes we go into an organization and a department manager will say, well, my processes are all documented. If only, and then they have this dot, dot, dot, right? Like fill in the blank. If only the customer would do what they're supposed to do. If only the other department would do. So there's a lot of facilitation that goes on. And I think as you and I have talked about some of the stuff that you do, right, there's probably gonna be application for, for the way I facilitate.

I'm sure, I'm sure when you're in those discussions that you see some pretty strong emotions at times.

Oh, absolutely. People don't like their habits and behaviors to be changed. That is 100% certain.

Not, not unless you can convince them that their life is going to be infinitely better if they take, put the effort out. And that's the trick, getting them convinced, because they're going to be very, very skeptical.

Absolutely.

So, so a company will call you in and you're going to analyze who, who their people, like their org chart, put it, put it simplistically, and then you're going to look at all their business processes.

Exactly. So we, we have a framework, and the framework has kind of 4 major components. The first one is, uh, is something called a SIPOC, and it's sort of a wonky acronym, but, uh, but this is the first one. I, I learned this tool actually at the same time I was taking the Dale Carnegie class, How to Win Friends and Influence People, probably 25+ years ago. And, uh, in, in Dale Carnegie's class, he, he teaches that in order to be a good conversationalist, you need to listen to the other person. You need to ask them questions about themselves. At the same time, I learned this framework. The SIPOC is an acronym. It stands for Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customers. So there are two words in there that indicate people, suppliers and customers. There's one word in the middle, the process, which is about the process. And then there's I and O, the inputs and outputs. And bringing all those things together and just sitting down with people. And using that framework started just opening up my eyes to this entire world of pain that people feel when they're not understood as a, you know, my process isn't working and these people aren't listening to it and those people aren't giving me what I need. And it's just a simple way of cutting through all that into a simple framework. And that's really where all of it starts and evolves from there.

So is your company, are you niche-oriented or do you just take all comers?

So that's a great question. We, uh, I, I, you know, I've been doing this for 7 years now since I left the corporate world. So at the beginning I was kind of taking everybody, and, uh, and we've really started to focus on, uh, the construction industry, the manufacturing industry, and service-based industries. So, um, so those are— I know that sounds kind of a little bit broad and kind of But, but, but I found that it really can be applied to any industries. I mean, I've, I've done SIPOCs with bankers and librarians and piano teachers and, you know, across the spectrum. But at the end of the day, you know, I think manufacturing, construction, and service industry, those three have really become our core kind of three markets that we service.

Interesting.

And what is it, do you think, that's unique about you that you bring to the table that makes all this work?

Yeah, I think a part of it is my curiosity. Sometimes people look at and they're like, what do you know about aluminum manufacturing? Or what do you know about trucking? Or what do you know about being a general contractor? And I'm like, I really don't know much of anything about what you do. Like, I can't build an Amazon warehouse, but I've built 36 core processes with a big general contractor who builds Amazon warehouses, and I know lots about how their people and systems all relate together. So, it really starts with a genuine curiosity about understanding systems and people and processes. And, and I think that curiosity builds trust that I'm not here to tell you how to do your job. I'm here to bring a framework to help you get your thoughts organized and your people organized. In a different way.

And obviously you've been in business for 7 years, so you found some success at it.

Absolutely. I have tons of fun with it. So, you know, my dad asked me one time if I would ever go back to the corporate world and I said, no, I'd be pretty hungry.

Exactly.

I'd have to be pretty hungry.

Yeah. As many people know, I left the practice of law after 22 years as a very successful commercial and business trial lawyer. I would never go back. Yeah, yeah. No way. I mean, I help more people in a week than I helped in 22 years as a trial lawyer.

I think finding your passion and getting in the zone is so exciting.

So, exactly correct. So this show is called Listening with Leaders, as you know, and I think you were attracted to the podcast because I'm focused on people just like you are. Tell me about the importance of listening, especially when you're facilitating these conversations.

Yeah, well, if I can, I'll give you one example of where I actually— look, there's been many times where I haven't listened well in my career, and I could probably give you some examples of those. There was a moment when I lived in the Philippines where the, uh, the top manager, one of the managers of one of the teams underneath me, um, she walked up to me one day and she said, "Boss, don't you trust me?" It was a question. "Boss, don't you trust me?" And I had been in the Philippines for about a year And that was one of those moments that was pivotal in my life, that when I recognized that I was doing something wrong that made her feel that I didn't trust her. And when we went and sat down and, and drank some coffee together and I started hearing what she was, the concerns or the feelings she was having, it changed my life in that role. And it also changed my life in that she is, again, she is my head of operations. She lives in Germany now. I'm back in the States, but But she is, she's again my top manager. I've recruited her away from that company. And so we've stayed connected for 10+ years now. And she's just an amazing leader. And if I just think back, if I had not heard and then sought to understand what she was saying in that moment, if I had brushed it off or if I had not seen the importance of that moment, I could have had a very— she was thinking about quitting that day, man. She was thinking about resigning depending on how I reacted. And, uh, and so the trajectory of all of these pieces of life that have happened over the last decade would have been very different.

What caused you to perk up and pay attention in that moment?

That's a, that's a great question. I'm not exactly sure because at the time I was stressed. I mean, I had 180 people and all these things going on. And, but I think what it was is, is, is that I've reached a point in my career by that point or reached a, a point of just understanding that this was more than just process. I could never understand 180 people's processes and that's what I had been trying to do. I was digging in and trying to fix all the problems and, and, and I had a realization that this is about people. I, you know, I was managing a very large team and it was about people, not about the process. And I needed to engage her and understand what was behind that to put our whole team on a better track and not just, you know, try to do the things that had made me successful up to that point to where I got that team, right? And I think it was a big piece of maturity that I had to grow into and recognized.

And what was it, if you don't mind telling us, what exactly was it that she told you that, that caused the shift?

Yeah, so, um, so I had been recruited by the company I was working for to come over there to fix a problem, which was a department, and, and she was over the, over that department at the time. And so I knew that I was sort of there to fix the problem they had The year before I had arrived, they had 56% turnover in that department.

Why?

56% of the employees had turned over in that department. And so I felt this sense of responsibility, like I've gotta figure out what's going on in this department. And one of the things I needed to learn as a leader was I wasn't gonna be able to fix that department. I needed to make sure I had the right people and the right framework. I couldn't fix each individual. And, and so, but I, but that's what I was doing at the time that led her to feeling like I wasn't trusting her was she felt that I was micromanaging her team. I was getting involved and asking questions, making decisions about things. I was basically going around her and, and that was leading to a feeling of distrust, right? That she felt I wasn't trusting her.

I presume that you were successful in cleaning up the mess.

We were. And so she ended up being promoted into my position at the time. So when I left the Philippines, came back to the States, she got promoted into that position. She took over that entire team, not just the team she was managing, but the entire night shift organization, head of North America operations. And then they liked her so much that she ended up getting moved to Germany by that chemical company as an expat. And she lived in Germany for 5 years before she, before she came to me and said, hey, I'm ready to, to reconnect. What are we gonna do? And, and so I recruited her away about a year, year and a half ago now. And so she's been incredibly successful. I mean, if you just think, if I wouldn't have listened to her that day, she would've left. But the impact she had on that company from, for, you know, taking over my position when I left and then being promoted and moved to Germany to do finance and accounting and be a process owner there. It was a pretty big deal. And all of that would have changed if I had not heard that and reacted in the right way.

Wow. And so today, we were talking earlier that you, you go into companies and you're going to have discussions with people about their processes and people. And you get resistance oftentimes, right?

Oh, no doubt. There is—

Move my cheese.

That's right. Nobody likes to, nobody likes change. No, even people who say they like change, you know, there's just a small example. I was at an innovation conference a while back and they showed a mechanical typewriter and I said, you know, And he said, how many of you see this as innovation? And nobody raised their hands. But he said, you know, he's like, well, this was a mechanical typewriter, right? You probably, I don't know if you ever used one. You probably used one back in the day, right? And my father had one and I used to play around with it. But the QWERTY keyboard was designed for mechanical typewriters.

Slowly down. They were moving the keys.

And that's the same keyboard that all of us use on our laptops today. And yet there are keyboards out there, there are new design keyboards out there that enable people to almost type at the speed of thought, right? There's something out there, the keyboard, I forget what it's called now, but their logo is type at the speed of thought. You can, there were people typing upwards of 300 words a minute on these new style keyboards. It's called the CharaChorder. That's what it's called. And, and I've asked the question like, how many of you would want to type 300 words per minute? And People are like, oh yeah, you know, that'd be, that'd be awesome. How many of you are willing to learn a whole new keyboard to do that? And like, people are like, I don't know. People, people want improvements, they want, but they don't want to change. And it's so hard.

I don't think it's the change as much as it implies how much work you have to do to do the change. And I mean, we're inherently lazy. It's our brains are all about metabolic load and changing and learning and growing puts a huge metabolic load on us and our brains resist that because of our biology.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Creating new habits and behavior is incredibly difficult to do.

Oh yeah. So, well, yeah, I can tell you I'm a jazz violinist and so when I'm practicing and trying to learn new stuff, I've got a— I'm actually using cognitive neuroscience now, some concepts out of the cognitive, which is making a huge difference. Um, but that's another story on another day.

Yeah, interesting.

What— when you, when you're listening to people, let's say you're in a meeting where you're facilitating these ideas about different processes, what are you listening for?

You know, I'm, I'm actually listening for disagreement, um, for, for dissonance, right? With it. So I've often told people, when I, when I build that SIPOC with a group of people, the moment when I realize, or sort of on the map of what we build, I start highlighting and circling things in red when I hear people disagreeing. When we get to a point where somebody says, no, that's not how we do it, right? And I circle that in red and they say, I don't always get the inputs that I need. And I circle that in red. Those moments of disagreement are almost always the focus areas that we need to dive into in order to solve the systemic problem. And so I look for those moments of dissonance or disagreement.

And then how do you resolve those places where there's disagreement?

That's a great question. So we have this first sort of roadmap that we build. Then I've developed two modules that I add on to it. And these are typically kind of the second session and third session we do. One of them is called QVS, quality, value, and speed. And so I ask the question, you know, is this problem a quality problem? Is it a value problem? Or is it a speed problem? And then the next one is what I call ARM. It's accountability responsibility matrix. And I ask the question, all right, Who's accountable for this, you know, this, this problem or this, this process that causes this problem? And who's responsible for performing the process and what are they responsible to do? So these are kind of the two modules we add on here is Quality, Value, Speed, Accountability, Responsibility Matrix. And I often find that, you know, it can, the problem can be in one of those three buckets and The potential resolution comes from clarity of accountability and responsibility. And as you get alignment on those things, those problems very frequently just start to dissolve and disappear.

I bet you see oftentimes how surprised people are when they don't know who's accountable for the process and they don't know who's responsible for the process. I thought he was responsible, but it was really somebody 200 miles away.

Oh, absolutely. When, when I— when, when they can't tell me who's accountable, they say, well, it's sort of this person and sort of that person. And I say, well, it sort of doesn't happen well, does it?

It's—

it— when, when you find those gaps where there's no clear accountability for that part of the process or that part of the— it becomes very clear. And, um, and, and so that's the system that we've created that just as people start walking through it, you know, people start just getting that clarity around what's going on in my, in my system, and, and how do I solve it. And so we just have these steps to pull people through that.

How long does it usually take to get people, get processes and people aligned in an organization?

Yeah, so typically, when we, when we do what we call the Optic System, it's typically 4 90-minute sessions. That we go through. Now, that doesn't mean that people are all changed and everybody's singing together and all that by the end of the 4th session. But in that 1st session, we do the SIPOC, 2nd one QVS, 3rd one the ARM. In that 4th session, when we put the action plan together, we've already identified those pain points. So we've already started identifying actions and a roadmap. And what I found, well, I'll just give one quick example. There was a client out in West Virginia, an aluminum mill, and the president of the local union chapter came up to me one day. And the first day I met him, he was flipping through his union guide, right? And he came up to me about a year, year and a half into me visiting there pretty frequently. And he said, I like when you show up because good things happen.

Wow.

And that was meaningful to me. Like anybody who's worked with unions in the past, right? This, this gentleman was not a very happy-go-lucky individual and he didn't like people coming in and making change. But the fact that I was able to win him over and win over the people to say, let's figure out how to do things that, that works well for you. And that listening and curiosity, you know, I started winning him over. And to me, that's one of the biggest like accomplishments of what I do. When I get someone like that who's like resistant at first and they're like, hey, I like when you show up, this is good.

So does EPS Ops have more consulting people like you or are you the only guy?

Yeah, so we've got, I've got a team. I've got actually, so my team keeps growing. I've got Risa, the woman who asked me if I didn't trust her. She's in Germany. I've got, I've got a software development team. So we have a software platform we've created. We've got a business process outsourcing team. So we actually help some of our clients execute on the processes we document and get aligned. And then I've got a number of consultants who help me subcontract. And so we're building up a pretty significant team of consultants to go out and help clients to execute on these things and, and grow beyond just myself.

So So on the software side, is this kind of a DIY kind of thing where you can go in and plug in all the, all the information and it'll chunk out, here's what it, here's what it should look like?

Yeah, so that, that's what, uh, that's what we're really doing. And so the version 1 is already out there and we've got, uh, people putting that Sci-Pod, QBS, AR in there and, um, and it's all, it's all going along. Um, the You know, it's one of these things that as your business evolves, and as your systems evolve, we're launching version 2.0 here in a couple of months. And, and I'm super excited about it. Because we've taken all the things we learned, we've gotten rid of all the extra stuff, because software can sometimes turn into a Frankenstein. Oh, yeah, we've stripped it down to this very clear path for the consultants and organizations to follow. And So yeah, folks can do it DIY, they can do it with a facilitator like myself or one of my other consultants, or you know, there's sort of a blend that can happen as well. So yeah.

How do people find out about you?

Yeah, so probably the best place to learn more about what we're doing and how we're doing it, learnmore.epsoptics.com is a website that you can go to and really learn about some of these key elements and how some of these things are fitting together. So you can look me up on LinkedIn. Ryan C. Weiss is where I'm at on LinkedIn. And I'm always happy to connect with people and have conversations to understand the pain and help people create a path towards solving that pain.

One more question. I'll let you go, Ryan. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know? Unless you revealed it to us? Wow.

You know, probably the one thing that stuck with me all my life is that I'm sort of left-handed, but I'm mostly right-handed. So what I mean by that is I write with my left hand, I eat with my left hand, and I shoot— if I was to shoot a shotgun or something, I would shoot with my left hand. But everything else in my life is done with my right hand. It's a very quirky thing, but I cannot throw a baseball with my left hand to save my life. I cannot cut with a pair of scissors with my left hand to save my life. Like, in elementary school, they would always give me left-handed scissors because I would write with my left hand. So you would think, like, tasks like, uh, you know, fine motor skill tasks are left-handed. I cannot— I cannot use a pair of left-handed scissors. It's It's a bizarre thing about my brain that I'll probably never understand.

Huh. I'm left-handed myself, um, but I had to— I grew up in a right-handed world in the 1950s, so I was forced to learn a lot of stuff right-handed.

Yeah, that's right.

We, we—

yes, I share your pain. How many desks I sat at as a child that were designed for right-handed people?

Writer, I'd smudged all my papers and always got Got A's in everything except handwriting. I got C's in handwriting. I couldn't keep a clean paper to save my life.

Absolutely.

You remember those. Well, Ryan, it's been great talking to you. Thank you so much for your time today. What a lot of fun.

Thanks, it's been a pleasure.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media. Social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings, and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.