Episode 527: How He Uses Debriefing for Excellence with Glenn Gonzales

Welcome to this edition of the million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

We do a lot of debriefing. I talk about it in, in terms of my fighter's experience. We might do a 25 minute flight and debrief it for two and a half days. We've got to debrief it to excellence and to perfect execution because we can't always get perfect execution in the flight on a daily basis as we're executing the thousands of moving parts behind the scenes. To take off for one flight and to conduct a single flight safely. It's a tough business. It's really hard to do. And the best way to get ahead, the best way to improve is through the debrief. Sitting down and thinking about where we could have been better, even if it went well, what could we have done differently? What could we have done better? And that's how you constantly improve. Finding what that root cause issue is and then solving it for the future.

And debriefing is a real pain in the butt, isn't it? I mean, to slow yourself down and do that, that's grueling.

It's painful. It's painful. And it takes a tremendous amount of discipline. We have a weekly staff meeting where we sit and we talk about what's ahead, but also going back to understand what we could have done differently or could have done better. And so it's an opportunity to get better. But, boy, is it hard. It's like eating your oatmeal when you'd rather have something a little unhealthy.

And how do you, when you debrief now you're only doing that kind of debriefing on the really rough flights or the things that didn't go well or what causes you to dig in when you do the debriefing. What are you doing?

Yeah, we're talking about everything what happened today, what went well, what didn't go well, what was just kind of mediocre. We want to understand where we fell short or where we excelled. It's just as good to go over those things that you did well and to understand that so you can replicate it so you can make sure that everyone on the team understands how we were able to succeed in that one category or situation. And you want to go through those things just as much as you want to go through whatever your weaknesses are.

Yeah. And that can Be easily overlooked, don't you think, Glenn, with the idea? And that's why that people say you don't learn much from your wins, your successes. You know, you do most of your learning from your losses. And because when it hurts, you get beat. You don't want that to happen again. But. But it's so easy to overlook the things you did right and to systemize, to basically recognize the people who did a good job and how they did it. There's a recognition feature there that's important that most companies just totally ignore. They just assume everybody's going to do everything right. But you shouldn't do that as a CEO, should you?

No. You've got to celebrate people. We have what we call our. Your Exceptional Service Award, the yes Award. And we celebrate our victories and we celebrate one another in public. When we get a customer survey where someone's telling us about their great experience, we make sure to communicate that to those individuals who provided that service. We communicate that broadly throughout the organization. It's so critical to celebrate the wins when you're a new company because sometimes you're in the thick of it. You're swimming in the middle of the Atlantic trying to find a quiet space and hoping someone will rescue you. And it probably isn't going to happen anytime soon, but you still have to celebrate those small victories, no matter how small, and make sure the people on your team who are fighting alongside you day in and day out are celebrated for their tremendous efforts.

Now, where did you learn that? I mean, when did that. You know, you're a pilot. You're up there with maybe a co pilot and you have a small. You're responsible for the plane. And though all of a sudden now you're responsible for the whole organization and all of the people involved in the organization and all of the procedures and all of the policies of building and maintaining a great company. So how do you transition, Glenn, to this smooth guy who all of a sudden you come up with these awards for? We got to celebrate our people. How did you know to do that? Was there something in your upbringing? Do you have a mentor? Do you have a role model? Because you're. Let me just say this. You're doing a lot of things right.

It doesn't always feel like that, Larry. You know, I. Again, I kind of go back to that thought process. I've been here before. We've been here before. And maybe it was on a smaller scale. Maybe I'm only responsible for a basketball team. Maybe I'm responsible for some of the people in the military that I was leading there. But, you know, now you couple that previous experience with responsible for not just the business and a couple of people. I'm responsible for the lives of so many. Well, I've been responsible for people's lives before. I've flown airplanes with people in the back. Very different situation. But still, the most important thing is a human element of what we're talking about and what we're doing. And so I make decisions focused on how do I help these people accomplish what they want to accomplish. We talk about it quite often, Larry, that my responsibility is to hire great people and remove the obstacles from them being great, whatever those obstacles might be, and then making sure that they are rewarded and compensated for the sacrifices that they make to our company. They could work anywhere. They could work at Jedit, they could work somewhere else, but they're choosing to work with us. And it's my job to make sure that they're getting something for that effort, something beyond their compensation, something that they can give to their communities, to their families, to their schools. Maybe it's to them professionally or personally that they're getting out of being here. It's understanding those things, that human element, and making sure to return it back to either each person at Jedded.

Now, when you started, what. What was the most frightening, embarrassing, humiliating, negative thing that happened that really got shook you to your core. Because I, like you say, you're in the human life business, you know, and you're dealing with big dollars. You took a big gamble, Glenn, and you continue and you're egging people on to take big gambles, and you have to be the guy to deliver. And then things come along that you can't control. That's the thing about being a football coach as opposed to a basketball coach. There's so many different teams within the team and coaches in your coaching staff that any one of those breaks down and it all kind of rolls up to the head coach, and it can show up at the worst time in the most critical game of the season where you've done everything right, then all of a sudden, you know, it blows up in your face, and the head coach is there, you know, feeling the burn. You know, all the eyes are on him. And so what was the worst thing that happened? It really shook you in this process?

Yeah, Larry, you know, I'm humbled every day by this experience. It sometimes is eye opening and enlightening, and other days it's painful. I would say the thing that probably hurts the most is when you invest so Much time and effort and energy into people or processes, and they fail. It almost feels like betrayal. And maybe it's not they fail. Maybe they just turn around and walk out. And so that's disappointing in a lot of ways. And those things are painful to absorb. But you realize you've got to keep moving forward because there are so many other people who are still dependent upon those systems working, dependent upon the other people within the organization and supporting them and making sure that they have what they need.

Well, a lot of that is selling. You know, it's just like when you went into business for yourself. The first person, first sale you made had to be you. And, you know, you got to convince yourself, and we all do. You know, we all have to convince ourselves that this is going to be worthwhile, this is what we should be doing. And then in a similar way, key person leaves or some kind of disaster happens, and, you know, there's a big loss, either loss in prestige, in credibility, an income, or in the case of a valuable person walking out. You got to work through that yourself successfully. You can't just act like step up or lip. And everybody's looking at me, so I'm going to act like it doesn't bother me. But people can smell a phony a mile away. They can see when you're acting. And for, for you to pull it off, you got to have the conviction where you've talked yourself through it and you worked it out. And you say, you know, if they left good, you know, they needed to go. You know, it's better now. You know, things I've said to myself, well, better now than later. You know, it might hurt me now, but it won't hurt me like it would have been if it was down the road. And you work yourself through that again, checklist, and then you're, you know, you become rock solid again. Have you had to go? Is that, is that what you put yourself through?

Yeah, I couldn't have said it any better, Larry. You, you deal with the initial emotion of it. You do your best to take the emotion out of it, and then you objectively find a path forward. You know, in, you know, in the military and flying fighters, we would always say, I never want to have to do my best, best work to get out of a situation, because if you're doing that, you're probably in a really, really challenging space. And the, like, the odds of succeeding are probably pretty low. So, you know, hopefully in these cases, and I learned very early on to plan and be prepared for those types of Scenarios for a system not to work, for someone to walk out the door. But hopefully you see it coming. When you don't see it coming, it's an emotional feeling and you roll with the punches. You just stay focused on those people that are still there, providing them with what they need, providing the business with what it needs, and providing your customers staying true to your ultimate purpose and service.

Yeah, and that works your way down to, you know, folks, if you're listening, you're hearing a real world explanation of what the eggheads refer to as emotional intelligence. You know, keeping your wits about you under fire and all of this type of things that they put egghead words on and, you know, has to do with selling books, but doing courses and stuff like that. But in I covered, I explained it in my book, like, what do you do when disaster strikes? You know, it's just like blindsided disaster. It's on you, it hurts, it's going to cost you, and you can't quit. You know, you've got to come up with a solution in your head. Basically, when your head's spinning and what you do, that's the initial blow, the first thing you tell yourself is that, you know, I just got hit by the meteor. I can't expect myself to behave at my peak right now. You know, you got to give yourself. It's just like when you get stung by a bee, you know, there's a certain phase of that's just going to hurt for a while, you know, and if I'm screaming, yelling and running around, that's just what I've got to do to offload the pain, you know. But after that, go to the facts. You know, after the emotional shock hits you, the way you stabilize yourself is you start saying, well, where are we? You know, what actually happened and what. Who actually is still here? You know, how bad am I actually hurt? And then, you know, what happens? Glenn, I don't know if you realize that, you know, if you've realized this yourself. It's amazing how many times in those catastrophic situations it actually works out that it was the greatest thing in the world for you. It's amazing how that works out, isn't it?

Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, I think back to my days boxing at the academy, or if you've ever been punched in the nose, your eyes start to water and you better get your hands up before you get punched again.

Yeah.

So that's got to be that immediate response. And if you've done any boxing or anything of the sort, you know, now I've got a couple of options. I've got my hands up, I'm not going to get punched in the nose again. Hopefully I can get my wits about me. Do I clinch? Do I punch back? Do I move out of the way? There are all kinds of different things, but the first thing you've got to do after being punched in the nose is as you blink away the tears, you got to get your hands up. Punched in the nose again. Yes, that's the response. And it kind of goes back again to, hey, I've been here before, different situation. This time I'm punched in the nose by a situation or someone leaving the organization. I'm blindsided. Didn't see that coming. But I got to respond and got to keep punching back.

You know, that's the great thing about learning lessons from competition. Learning lessons about winning is they are transferable to all other areas of your life for the rest of your life. And I was talking to, in fact, I want to get him back on because I didn't get a chance to dig into this the extent that I wanted. But I had a big time financial CEO on here one time and he was talking about how he really learned how to fight back, solve problems, get off the canvas from being 110 pound wrestler in high school, flat on his back. It's over unless I can come up with something, you know, and get myself out of this situation. And so, you know, it's really, really fun to hear how those things relate. Thanks for listening to the Million Dollar Mastermind. If you felt there were any valuable takeaways from this episode, please take a minute and leave us a five star review. Your feedback is important and really helps us get the word out to a wider audience. Remember, we have a valuable webinar that is absolutely free. Register for it right now@whiteallonwinning.com thanks for listening.