Episode 209: The Fleet Success Mindset: Building Stronger Teams, Systems, and Results #podcast

Welcome back to the Fleet Success Show. Today we're bringing you another one of our keynotes from RTA Connect 2025. This one happens to be one of my keynotes, so one that I'm pretty familiar with. But I hope you enjoy this as we dive into what sets apart the great fleets from the good fleets as they dive into their people, their processes, and getting really clear about their vision. As we recap some of Jim Collins' teachings to us in the book Good to Great, Great by Choice, Built to Last. And how we apply that into the world of fleet. I'll also go through and talk about kind of the state of affairs at RTA and do a little State of the Union. Some of the things that we like to do every year at Connect with our live studio audience. But hope you enjoy this one as we dive into the world of Jim Collins and some of his great lessons and how we use those in the world of fleet.

This is the Fleet Success Show dedicated to helping you and your fleet succeed using the experience of fleet professionals and Hall of Fame fleet legends. The show that explores how the pillars of stakeholder satisfaction, intentional culture, resource efficiency, and risk management all combine to lead your fleet to success. We're glad you're here. Now let's get into the show.

Earlier this year, we went through and we got to meet with an author, and I don't know what happened to him. He disappeared. He was on the slides, the image went away. He looked like a little bit of a Bond villain though, if you've ever seen that. Uh, but we got to listen to an author named Jim Collins. Took the whole team out to a leadership summit, 'cause that's something we were really big on is investing in leadership of the company. And as we went through and listened to Jim Collins, Jim Collins, for those who don't know, wrote 3 incredible books. He actually wrote 4 and a half, but these are the 3 that have always made an impact with me. And he talked about kind of the collective works that we went through. So Jim Collins, he's basically a leadership professor, taught at Stanford Graduate University, and he put together a bunch of research projects something he loves to do is ask the question, is like, why are some companies, why do they thrive? Why do some companies last for 50 or even 100 years and others, if you didn't know this, small businesses, I wanna say only 3% ever make it to $1 million in revenue. Most small businesses will fail within their first 2 to 3 years. So what is it that makes other businesses, if it takes, if it's so hard to succeed as a business, What is it that makes other businesses last for 50 to 100 years? Those of you who are on the private side of the house, what is it that makes your business last and endure? Those of you who are in government, most of the time, government just keeps going because it keeps serving the people, but we've seen that go awry. Public officials who misuse public funds, we've seen challenges with corruption and things like that. He actually applies these to the public sector as well. But he goes and he studies all these companies and he looks at what is it that— here's these great companies and here's these companies that didn't do so great. And what is it that makes them different? What's— what are the things when we really boil it down? What did this company do that this company didn't? And they usually— he loves finding matched pairs, companies that were in the same industry at the same time in the same economy dealing with the same issues. And yet one of them thrived. And one of them either did okay or died on the vine. So what is it? What are the things that we can distill that are common? And he usually did that when they built to last, they had 18 companies they studied. Good to Great, they had 10, I guess 10 and 10, so they did 20 companies they studied. Great by Choice is about the same thing. And they studied great companies like Circuit City. Yep. Good to Great, it was pretty funny. It was Good to Great, Circuit City was one of the Good to Great companies, one of the great companies that turned into a transition. And then he writes about them in a book called How the Mighty Fall and the hubris that sets in when a company becomes great and they see their own press clippings and they say, oh, we're amazing, and they forget who they are and they forget what they were doing and they get caught up in the trappings of fame and fortune and getting themselves rich instead of focusing on what matters most. Through it all, he distilled down these basically 12 key takeaways, and I'm going to pull out a couple of these. Right. But he talked about in good to great companies, they exhi— they exhibited level 5 leadership, which is leadership that goes above and beyond. It's not leadership that's in it for the leader's sake, but a leader who is committed to humble ambition and the paradox of those two things. Leaders who are incredibly humble, but incredibly ambitious in seeing the mission executed. And he talked about that being this level 5 leader. Who didn't succumb to the issue of the mirror, right? They could look in the mirror and anytime there was a problem, they could look at it and say, I'm the problem. But when they look out and they see what's the reason for their success, they can see all the people around them, they say, that's the reason for success. Whereas people who struggle with that, they look in the mirror and they see the reason for all the success and they blame everybody else for their problems. He talked about good to great companies, built to last companies follow a principle about first who, then what. They get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and then they figure out where we're going. They reject the tyranny of the or. Nobody tells them, well, you can do this or you can do that. And they say, no, how can I do both? How do I grow and preserve the core? How do I make sure that we can stimulate progress while without forgetting who we are? Right? And they go through and they reject the tyranny of the or. We have the Stockdale Paradox. I'm gonna talk about that one. Which is again with this tyranny of the or, how do I have undying hope and optimism that we're gonna get the outcomes we want without confronting the brutal facts and being able to say, here's all the reasons why we will fail if we don't address 'em. We go through our hedgehog concept, we figure out what it is that we can be the best in the world at, what it is that drives our economic engine, right? That we can make money at, and what is it that we are the most passionate about? That we are just so excited that we love doing what we do every single day, getting really clear about that, what the hedgehog concept is. So he goes through these different 12 keys for great companies, and they all kind of— it's the stretches across his 3 works from the different books that he's written. He's an incredible author, and it was awesome being able to sit in the audience and just listen to him. But it boils down to 3 different things, and when we talk about what it is that Some fleets do, right, to make the leap that others don't. It comes down to these three. They start with disciplined people. They get clear about who's on the bus. They get clear about how we behave. They get clear about what matters most. Then it turns into disciplined thought. How do we think about the problems we're facing? How do we exercise judicious openness around the facts? How do we confront those brutal facts? How do we collect them? How do we suppress? If you're a leader who's been cursed with charisma, how do you suppress that charisma to allow the facts to breathe, to come forward, that people aren't afraid to tell you that the emperor has no clothes, right? Disciplined thought, and then executing relentlessly, pushing the flywheel, getting the momentum building with disciplined action, having those rhythms in place that help you do this. So as always, when I go through this, I always love to take these lessons and turn them into fleet. How do I take this thing that I'm super passionate about, which is leadership, if you couldn't tell, and apply it to the other thing I'm really passionate about, which is fleet management, right? And fleets in general. How do we run a fleet better using these principles? Because these are all written for businesses and usually private businesses. How do I apply this to, say, a government fleet? How do I apply this to a transit agency or a school district? So I'm gonna think about first who, then what, right? And ask the question, and I say sort of on this one, right? But first who, then what. You have to figure out who you want on the bus. What are the type of people you're looking for? And then you figure out where you wanna go. Now, most of you, you're in fleet management, you don't necessarily get to determine where you're gonna get to go, but you can get the right people on the bus and then let those people help guide what's most important. Let them help guide what you should focus on. Let them be a part of the process in determining your strategic resource. Where we talk about resource efficiency, it's the strategic allocation of those resources. All right, so first who, then what is all getting clear about who are the right people, what are their values, what are the behaviors. You get the right team behind you and then it doesn't matter what you do. It doesn't matter if you decide to pivot, right? And the example we usually talk about in business is what if the business decides to get out of the business it's in and get into something completely different? What if we got out of software development and got into something else? Do we have the right people on the bus who are like, hey, I'm here for this company and it doesn't necessarily matter what we do, right? The way you do that is you get really clear in your business and in your fleet about what your purpose, your values, and your mission are. You get really clear about your purpose and your values, you have the team help you determine this, right? The team that's already there, you can start with them. In my case, I started with them and then we iterated a little bit and then we went back to the team and then we iterated a little more, more, and we just kept refining and refining it. At the same time, we're also refining the team and making sure that we're constantly applying this litmus test of first who, then what, Does the team we have today match the culture we're trying to build? Do they match the values that we've assigned, that we've all agreed to and we've all committed to?

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Right? We talk about the purpose, the values, the mission relentlessly. We get clear about why we do what we do. We get clear about how we do what we do, and we get clear about what we're doing. What's most important right now? That's your purpose, your values, and your mission. We talk about disciplined thought, which is the Stockdale Paradox. Those that don't know this story, there was a, the highest ranking prisoner of war in the Vietnam conflict was a guy named Admiral Stockdale. And they used to try to parade them around propaganda films and all that stuff to talk about how well they were treating the prisoners. Uh, but they would torture them relentlessly, right? Trying to get information out of them. And the question was always asked is like, how did you survive? How did you survive your experience out there for many years being a POW? And his answer was, well, we had, I had undying optimism. I knew that one day I would get out. I knew that one day this would be over. He had undying hope and belief that this was going to be a short-term thing. Right now, whether or not he died or lived, like he had believed that he was going to get out of that situation, that this would not be forever. However, the other thing he knew was that it was going to suck. And so he had to confront the brutal facts is that he was going to be tortured. He was going to have to confront the brutal facts that they would not be able to communicate, that he would not be able to talk to his loved ones, that they were gonna try to get information out of him. And so they said, okay, well, how do we do this? A lot of people, when they're being tortured, they try to hold on so much to like, I'm not gonna break, I'm not gonna break, I'm not gonna break. And then they break and then everything floods out. And so what he did is institute a system. He says, look, here's how long you can go and just work towards this thing, right? Survive for 10, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and then you can give them this one fact and then survive for another 20 minutes and then give them another fact, right? Break a little by little by little, but always focusing on the next thing. And he gave them something to work towards. They figured out how to communicate with Morse code, tapping out an alphabet letter using a grid system. They confronted the brutal facts of the reality that they were not gonna get out. And he says, as he is doing this interview, he says, well, what were the difference between the people who didn't make it, right? The people who committed suicide or died of despair and hopelessness and broken hearts. He says, oh, that's easy. That's the optimists. That's the people who are like, oh, we're going to get out by Christmas. You know what? We didn't get out at Christmas. That's okay. We're going to get out by Easter. And they believed and they set a deadline. This was going to happen. And every time it would come and it would happen and then they wouldn't get out, they'd be brokenhearted. And he says, after enough times of that, of getting your hopes up, getting your hopes up, believing that something was going to happen and then it not happening. It broke him. You have to be able to confront the brutal facts of reality while at the same time holding on to this undying hope that everything's gonna be fine. And in fleet, we have to do that same thing. We have to confront the brutal facts that we probably don't have enough budget for our replacement plans. We don't have enough budget to go out and hire all the technicians that we need. It's getting more and more difficult. We have to confront this brutal fact with the technician shortage. It's getting more and more difficult to find good, talented tradespeople. That's not changing. That's a brutal fact of this industry. Yet I have undying hope is that the companies who get clear about their purpose, values, and mission, they're gonna be able to retain and attract that talent. I have undying hope that we are gonna find a way through it because if I know nothing about the human race is that necessity is the mother of all invention and we will find a way to solve a problem. And I believe in our resourcefulness and especially in fleet managers I believe in that resourcefulness as well. We have to be able to turn this flywheel. One of the things that really gets companies and fleets into trouble is the zigzag effect. Anybody ever have quick succession of leaders that you've seen come in? And if you're in a government, I know this happens, right? We see this in the federal government all the time, every 4 years in fact, right? You get going one direction and a new leader comes in and guess what? We're pivoting and we're going the next direction. And then a new leader comes in and we're pivoting and we go another direction. We call that the doom loop because what ends up happening is you never get any sustained momentum. You're just going back and forth and back and forth. How many people have had a leader like that who's just chaotic and they don't know where they're going? If your leader's in the room, keep your hand down. It's okay. Right? Whereas the flywheel is just, you take sustained momentum. You have to push the wheel and that first push, that first revolution, you gotta push, push, push, push, push. And then it finally goes one turn. Right? And then you push, push, push, and you keep pushing hard and you get a second. But that flywheel, as you keep pushing, it builds momentum. And then it goes 2 turns, 4 turns, 8 turns, 16, 32, 64, 128, and it just gets faster and faster until suddenly breakthrough. Until suddenly things become easier. Things feel easier. It feels like an unstoppable machine. It's unstoppable momentum. That's what turning the flywheel looks like. It's steady. Consistent effort leads to unstoppable momentum, unstoppable results. As you're figuring out your priorities, your role as a leader, it's turning this flywheel. It's figuring out how to build a team. First who, then what. It's setting the vision, getting really clear about your purpose, your values, and your mission. Letting that be the magnet that attracts great talent, repels all others. And it's about delivering the results. Those 3 things all the time. Build the team, set the vision, deliver results. Every single leader has the same 3 responsibilities, no matter the industry, no matter the vertical, no matter what. Set the vision, build the team, deliver results. When I talk about setting the vision, it really is like concrete. Emphasis on setting. Right? You are setting the vision like a pad of concrete. You are pouring that, that foundation and you're reinforcing it with rebar. It's all about getting clear, right? You have to have the forms in place. You have to know exactly what you're doing, what you're building. Get clear. Anytime I have a leader come to me and tell me, hey, I have a problem with so-and-so, my first question to them is always, have you been clear? Yeah, I think I've been clear. Get clearer. No, Josh, I've definitely talked to this person about this. I've gotten clear. Get clear. Try it one more time. You have to get crystal, crystal clear, right? To be unclear is to be unkind. Create that clarity, overcommunicate clarity. One of my favorite things to talk about is what we talk about. I get up and I talk about our purpose and our values and our mission. And then I get up and I talk about our purpose and our values and our mission. And I go and I do it again and I do it again and I do it again. Over and over and over, turning that flywheel with every single push. Anybody in here married? You have a significant other at home? How many of you would get away with, "You said I love you on our wedding day and never had to say it again." Your people are no different. You have to tell them again and again and again, what matters most, why it matters, what we're doing. You have to remind them. You have to become the chief reminding officer. Over-communicate clarity until the point you're sick of it, and then do it one more time. Then you reinforce that with your systems and your meeting rhythms. Everything comes down to how clear you can get as a leader. When you do this, you end up creating unstoppable momentum in your fleet. The difference between some fleets that make the leap and some fleets that don't is they have done the work, they've gotten clear, they've overcommunicated that clarity, and they reinforced it.

Right.

I'm going to challenge what this looks like at RTA. I've got probably 30 or 40 of us in here right now. RTA, what's our purpose? Thank you. Left side of the room. Right side of the room. What are our values? You guys can be louder. Dear goodness. All right. They didn't— I didn't cue them up at all for this. They're like, are we supposed to talk right now? What's going on? All right. This one's going to be tougher because we're still learning this one. They're like, oh my gosh, I'm so nervous. All right. What's our mission right now? Yeah, there we go. All right. It sounds a little bit like a cult, but that's what we're putting is the cult in culture. That's what it looks like. Everybody is clear, mostly, on what the purpose and the values and the mission are, right? Give them a round of applause for how awesome that is. If you want to know why some fleets make the leap and others don't is because they've put these practices into place. They've gotten clear about what matters most. They've gotten clear about the people they're building. I will tell you, it doesn't matter what you're doing. You get the right people on the bus, you get the wrong people off of the bus, and anything you try to do, you will accomplish. You look at the growth we've had at RTA, you look at where we're going with Fleet 360. Dad tried for years to get us into a web-based product, and it took getting clear about who we were and what we were doing to get it to where it is today. And I know because I have undying optimism and undying hope, I know that that product is going to be amazing, that it already is amazing because of the work we've done. But I also can confront the brutal facts that it's not perfect, that we have challenges, that we have challenges inside the organization. But that disciplined thought is possible because I have disciplined people and we're willing and able to confront those brutal facts. And that will lead to the disciplined action that's going to deliver this unstoppable momentum. And it's going to help us help you make the leap into becoming great. What I know is that leading fleets are not found. They're not discovered. They don't just magically pop into air. They are built one push at a time on that flywheel over and over and over again. And they are built here. RTA Connect, you guys have an amazing week. Thank you. You've been wonderful. Have a great night.

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