Clearing Your Plate - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 023

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be.

Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy.

Today's guest, she's amazing. She can speak multiple languages. She helps entrepreneurs create more value in their companies. She creates a fun and fearless life and business. And she is founder and CEO at Alpha Global Experts. Welcome to Michelle Heckenmiller. Michelle, how are you?

I'm good, Joe. It's great to be here. Nice to see your face.

Yeah, it's great to see you again too.

Well, let's just get it started off.

I like to begin with just a a quick, simple, focused question. What is something that you see in an opportunity in the C-suite, or an opportunity that you see that you think C-suites should know more about? Something that's going on that you think, gosh, more people knew this, it would change the way they think about business.

Absolutely. Well, I think there's a lot of things that we can do to make business better and improve our leadership. But the one thing that really stands out to me is autonomy and ownership of responsibilities within everybody's realm. So whether we're managing up or whether we're managing down or sideways, having clarity on your roles and responsibilities and being clear what's on your plate, and then offboarding the things that do not create enough value. For you to do to other people on your team really makes the organization more efficient. I think that's the number one thing.

So I know this is a trigger word for you. So you mean delegate and elevate or offboard? What's the difference?

I love it. Well, look, we're always told in order to work on our business, which ultimately we all want to do instead of in it, we're always told that we should delegate more. I'm of the opinion, and I strongly believe that we need to stop delegating completely. Why? Because delegating is typically taking something that's on your plate, usually in a situation where you're already overwhelmed and picking something that you can give to somebody else, but you still own the responsibility. Like, it's still your project. It's still still on your plate. It's not really gone. So at first it feels really good when we delegate something. It's like, oh yeah, okay, I can breathe. I don't have to deal with that anymore. And we sometimes feel guilty too, because we're delegating the stuff that we don't wanna do. So then we think we're punishing somebody else by giving it to them, which really necessarily isn't the case, but sometimes it is. So the difference is if we can be more mindful and thinking about which responsibilities we can offboard versus delegating a task,, then we can also be more mindful about whom to give that responsibility to. Because, you know, some people like doing one thing and the other person hates it. And if we can swap some things around that everybody is working in their happiest place, then we all do better. But when we delegate, our head gets so full because we have to remember all of the tasks that we gave to the people, what the deadlines were, We start worrying about, are they gonna do it in time? Then we start micromanaging, checking in on people to make sure that we can sleep at night. That's not useful for anybody in the C-suite or in the organization.

Yeah. So I found this fascinating, this topic, 'cause I've been trying to be a good delegator for all my life. And I'm one of those people that I just, what do they call it? Anyway, I delegate it and I walk away and never wanna think about it again. I usually don't, which is awful because the person I delegated to doesn't know how they're supposed to do it. They don't— I'm not a good communicator. And so I don't necessarily check in on anybody. I just stop thinking about it. But that's also bad. So how do you— what is that? How do you close that communication gap from an offboarding situation that's different from just absolving yourself of that duty anymore?

Yeah, thanks for sharing that story. I think a lot of entrepreneurs or people in the C-suite feel that way. Right? Because we want to get it off of our plate so that we don't have to think about it. You make a really good point. It's the mental load that leads to burnout in the C-suites, in the organization, right? Because it's too much. It's— we can't even process one more thing when we're at that point, right? So then when we delegate something, and as you just said, we forget about it because that's what we want to do. We want to forget about it. But we can't, right? Because then it doesn't really get done properly. So, but thank you for being open and sharing that, cuz I feel a lot of people have that same experience. So how do we bridge that gap? Well, one, having real clarity on all of the things that are on your plate in the first place. Okay. Taking a really close look and then looking at how much value do each of those responsibilities create for your business? How much time are you spending on them? And which one of them do you love doing, and which one do you loathe doing? And so that gives you a visual. So then when you are looking, you can be mindful and say, okay, this responsibility, I really don't like doing it. I'm probably not even great at it, but it is of high value to the company. But as the CEO, I'm the only one who can do this, right? We always think we're the only one who can do it in a certain way. And I mean, if that were true, Warren Buffett's company wouldn't be as big as it is, right? Because you think he's the only one who has his secret sauce. But no, the truth is other people can do things sometimes better than we can. And so by being really clear and mindful of what is on your plate and then understanding doing a bit of a conversation with the rest of your team, finding out what they love and loathe. Now, when you're offboarding a responsibility, you're hopefully giving it to somebody who is happy to do that job because they love it and they're really great at it. So it does several things. It bridges the communication gap because who you're offboarding to understands why you're offboarding it. They understand the value to the company. They understand the responsibility. And then, and they can go do it. Obviously, you can coach them, you can help them, but that's the one thing that closes the communication gap is knowing why are you offboarding this and what is the purpose for the company, because everybody wants to make a meaningful contribution. So when we communicate it in that way, then everybody wins.

What if you're trying to offboard to somebody outside your company? So as a vendor or a consultant or, you know, in our world, fractional C leader, how is that any different than trying to offload internally?

I think it is different because it requires more communication, right? Anybody in your company or outside of your company, in order to really serve you best, they have to understand your culture. They have to understand what your company is about and they have to understand understand which goals you're trying to reach as a whole, not just their small little portion of it, right? So if we can create that big picture, it's different because it takes more effort. It takes more, a little bit more time to kind of onboard. I know, right? Offboard, onboard, to onboard a new vendor or a fractional professional. But the process in itself doesn't really change, and it's a really useful tool. So if you're onboarding a CFO, for example, then as the CEO, being clear on your responsibilities and being really clear on what you want that professional to be focusing on helps. And as a fractional professional coming into a new client, doing the same and saying to the CEO, here, by the way, here's how I envision this. Let's take stock and make sure what's on your plate so that we don't step on each other's toes in the process.

Yeah, I like that. I've been thinking a lot about kind of leader-to-leader delegation, or if you will, but not— or offboarding, or just communication in general. But this idea of almost like a vision sync, I have a vision for how this role should be done by somebody else, but they probably have a vision on how they want to do that role or how they think they could do it. And one may not be right or wrong, but there's probably something in the middle or some complementary set of that vision that both parties can agree to and have a better outcome would be my guess.

100%, Joe, 100%. If we don't talk about it, then we're always just operating on an assumption level, and we all know what that does.

Yes, and it does. And I have— but that happens all the time, especially when you're talking about delegating, or in your case, offboarding. It's a lot of assumptions.

Oh, right.

I'll give you a good example. The CFO role, like, we brought a CFO into our company. I wasn't— my integrator was kind of overseeing, my business partner who was the integrator was overseeing that role. And I'm— I've been out of that space forever. So I have no understanding of how it should be done or what it should be looking like and feeling like. But there was about 6 months of just they weren't in sync and it just kept happening and happening and happening. And finally I went to my partner and I said, Jay, something's not working here. Like, why is it not— every month I show up, everything's messed up still. He goes, well, we just haven't had agreement on the tool that we want to use. I go, well, why is that? He goes, well, he wants to use this tool. I want to use the old tool. I'm like, well, why don't we just try his tool for a while? And after a month of trying his tool, which the CFO was like, I know this tool, I love this tool, it's the best tool. It took us 2 more months and then we finally got to a point where everybody's happy when we show up now once a month. But it took that vision sync where they had to share the— that was particularly on the tool side of things, but everything else was secondary to making— financials got to look right and make sense. And if you can't make that work, it just doesn't work. So It's interesting, even with my own company where we are fractional providers, we have trouble onboarding our own fractional people sometimes.

Right. It really is such an easy tool to use though, right? Like getting that communication out there and just having the conversation to say, hey, here's what I think my role should look like. I mean, it's really 101 of leadership if you think about it. I mean, we've all learned that when we're communicating, we should ask what the other person has heard.

Yeah, right.

And we can be mindful of it. And, you know, but if we can make it part of our communication process to just kind of cross-check, because it's also more efficient right now. If we can use our resources better, it helps our bottom line, right? It helps everybody work happier. And on the other hand, if we're overlapping our responsibilities, Not only does it waste money, but it also is a frustrating experience for everybody. I'm sure every CEO or every C-suite person has had that, okay, song and dance. Am I stepping on your feet this way, this way? Or the CFO, for example, or CMO thinks they're authorized to make certain decisions, right?

Right.

Then the CEO comes in being used to making those decisions and starts making them or questioning the decisions all the time, right? That's typically a symptom of you haven't synced. I like how you say that, like a vision sync. You haven't synced, you don't really know, and it's just, it's wasteful and it's frustrating.

Yeah, it happens a lot internally and I see it externally when we work with clients. And some of it's based on the CEO, and that scenario is used to making all the decisions. Yeah, there needs to be some level, especially when you're working outside your organization, of trust that's built before that CEO will feel comfortable even trusting somebody else to make the right decision, right, or a different decision. And that, that trust time frame happens sometimes really quick for people and sometimes really long. But it can be frustrating if that trust isn't there, 'cause now everybody's second-guessing each other.

I love that you brought up the point of trust, right? A lot of these tools help to build trust, right? If we're going to make a point of communicating, then that builds trust, right? And when we talk about offboarding as well, like it's not like, okay, here you go, I'm gonna go away. It is a process and it does take time, But when we do it right, at the end of the day, there's just so much to gain, and trust is a really, really big thing. I mean, if I'm gonna trust my new employee to take on a responsibility that I wanna offboard, right? There's a lot of questions, and the one question that I find is really powerful is to say, how would you do this? What is your idea? How would you do this? So that element of curiosity, because let's face it, we already know how we were gonna do it. Yeah. Right. And if we're telling all the time how we want somebody else to do it, nobody's learning really. Right. If you've hired a professional versus tell me how you would do it. Now it builds trust because, well, I mean, hopefully it builds trust, right? Hopefully the person gives a good answer, but if they do, now you can say, oh, okay, I was considering doing this, this, and this. And then now there's learning for both, right? We both gained a piece of information. So building that trust is just as important within as well as outside of the organization. And that, that communication is really key.

Very true. Yeah. And I can see that question flipped around. So the person that I wanted, uh, in offboard to? How would you do this? So that I can gain some understanding into how they think and the steps they would take. And that's interesting. And then I could see them say, well, how would you do it? Well, this— and it might be similar or different. And they would be, oh, that's interesting. And then once again, kind of that vision sync, there may be a blended approach. At least that both sides now understand how the other thinks a little bit differently.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And the added bonus is that you've just realigned that person with your bigger goal and with your vision, right? Because how would you do this? Both people are now trying to solve a problem that makes, you know, sense in the organization towards one of the goals. So you now even aligned and strengthened the culture in the organization.

Yeah. So I, I'm really interested in this concept of decentralized leadership. And what that means to me is moving away from one person makes all the decisions and everything trickles down to the rest, which is a, you know, somewhat of a typical organization where the owner's in charge and tells people what to do. And then it starts to get decentralized when you add some CFOs or other C-level leaders inside of an organization. But even then, it can be very centered around that leader, still, offboarding helps with that, right? So now offboarding is giving permission and intention for everybody to start making their own decisions. But even a layer down, so then you take within the entire organization, how do you build leadership at every level? And I love the idea of offboarding, because that starts to give, you know, it gives permission and expectation for the person that you're offboarding to, to make those decisions that any leader would need to make. Agreed. How do you, um, how do you envision once you— somebody's out, some— something's been offboarded to you, how do you take that now and act as a leader and start making decisions in that area you've been offboarded to? So flipping the switch a little bit, not the person offboarding but the person receiving, receiving Yeah.

Okay. Well, I'd like to just take a little step back and then go into those, those person's shoes. So what we can do as we are offboarding, and I'll put the other hat on in a second, obviously really clear communication, right? Those who sweep get to choose the broom, right? Yeah. And, and one of the really important things to look at is How do we set this up for success? Right? So I love that you asked it. But the reason I went back is, first, if I'm offboarding, it's my responsibility to set that other person up for success. And I have to be fully aware of that. Right? So my intention needs to be to set this other person up for success. Right? So then the first thing is to look at, okay, here's the responsibility, this is what it entails. And it should be an initial offboarding conversation where we do exactly that. It's like, here was my responsibility, here's yours. How does that fit with everything else that you're doing? This is important to the company because, right? That's why we look at how valuable is it to the company. Um, and I feel that you're a good fit for this because, right now the other person also then has to have the space and say, oh, okay, thank you, that's amazing. Help me understand how I'm contributing to the goal. Help me understand some parameters around it. So it's like, um, it's like an onboarding-offboarding conversation almost, right, where you are very clear. And then that person who has been given the new task, again, there should be a series of meetings in the calendar, each of which might only take 5 to 10 minutes and can be phone call, but to be communicated to say, hey, first of all, if you have any questions, please come to me. We all know how that goes, because nobody ever has any questions, because we want to do a good job. And we don't want to go in and admit that we don't know something. So by putting those meetings, those quick check-ins in the calendar, it is a prescheduled, so takes the fear away from the person who is, you know, maybe wanting to ask something. So that's part of the offboarding process. I know I say, okay, we do this, we get clear and we go, but obviously it is a process, right? So if I'm now getting this, then the first thing I would do is really wrap my head around it, look at my team, right? Because every responsibility can also be broken down into smaller responsibilities. We can also break them down into tasks, but then we're just delegating again. But if we're looking at the full responsibility, we can now look and say, okay, Do I have somebody on my team that can help me with this? Or, you know, is there something on my plate now because I want to be successful that maybe needs to go to somebody else? And it creates this organic reshuffling sometimes within the organization. Did I answer your question?

Yeah, a little bit.

Um, yeah, I feel like there's probably more to it. Just maybe go a little bit deeper as to what—

Yeah, I'm going to ask it a different way. So when do you, as the person that offboarded, know that the person that you offboarded to owns it and is being successful and it's truly connected to them and they really own it and it's their responsibility and they're doing it the way you— the way they want to do it or the way they should be doing it, but the way you also agree, yep, it's 100%, I'm done, it's offboarded. When do you know that happens?

Well, that's where the KPIs come in, right? I mean, obviously, once you own the responsibility, you're going to report to somebody on it, because if it's not important enough to report on, then why are you doing it in the first place, right? So those are then the KPIs and being really clear how this responsibility fits within the goals of the company, right? So then, okay, you're going to report to me at this point, you're going to report to me at this point, or depending on what it is, you're going to report to, I don't know, the VP of Sales or the VP of Marketing or, you know, whatever, but the metrics have to be really clear. And so in the process, whoever is offboarding also needs to communicate which KPI is behind this, right? Because that's the only way we can truly offboard and forget about it, right? Like what you said in the, in the beginning, I just want to forget about it. Well, that's how you forget about it. Because You know that it's still, right? You'll see if the goals and the KPIs aren't being met, then it's a different conversation.

So there's still the traditional success metrics associated with that responsibility. And as somebody who's offboarded, you can, you know, that goal is forget about it, but you're still looking at the metrics and you're still making sure, and the whole organization is still reliant upon metrics and looking at it. So that's your means. And that's not the same as, checking in and worrying about it.

You're just—

Right.

It's not micromanaging. It's not micromanaging. So one thing I like to use, and it really helped me in my company, is 4 questions that were inspired by Vern Harnish, who— founder of Entrepreneurs Organization, for those of you who know who that is. But I always want to give him credit because it really helped me in my business. And so the 4 questions are Does it fit whatever decision you're trying to make? Does it fit with our mission, vision, and values? Does it benefit the client? Probably should be the other way around. Does it benefit the client? Does it benefit our company? Does it fit with our mission, vision, and values? And am I willing to be held accountable for my decision? So if the answer to those 4 questions is yes, then really anybody in the organization can make the decision based on their job description and based on, you know, their realm of the decision. And, and so when I started my company, I was in Canada. My translators, my clients were in different places in the world. My project managers were in different places in the world. So at the beginning, when it was just me and the client had something, my phone would ring in the middle of the night because of the time difference. So once we put people in place to cover that time zone so that I could sleep, right, well, I had to trust them to make the decisions. I had to trust them to tell the client yes or no on a, on a desired deadline for a project, right? So I had to rely that they would make the right decisions. And those 4 questions helped me do that really, really well. But you have to be clear on your culture, right? It all comes back to that.

Yeah. Well, and there's some subjective answers to those 4 questions that is it best, is it good for the company? You know, one person might thought it was, another person might think it isn't, but at least there's a method there for giving somebody the empowerment to make decisions within that framework. And you now have a source to go back to and says, what did you think about those 4 questions? And And once again, you can understand where their, their thoughts might be different than yours, but at least they went through the process.

Exactly. It also kind of frames the conversation if somebody did make a mistake, right? And I mean, we have to have space for mistakes in companies, and I'm going to share with you another way to kind of mitigate that risk of people making big mistakes that hurt the company in a minute. But, you know, when we look at that, we also have to think about the entire context of the decision-making in the company, right? But sorry, where I was going with this is you now can have a conversation instead of saying, oh, hey, you know, you did this wrong, which is hard for many leaders to do. And obviously, we wouldn't say it that way. But that's basically what it feels like. I have to go tell somebody they did something wrong. It's not a good feeling for anybody. But if I can go in and say, hey, you made this decision, walk me through your thought process of the 4 questions, because now you have neutral language, right? And it becomes about the 4 questions. So it just makes it a little bit easier. The other thing that I find really useful is it's called the decision tree. And it's— I borrowed it from Susan Scott, who wrote this amazing book, Fierce Conversations. And she describes the decision tree as in, leaf decision, branch, just branch decisions, trunk decisions, and root decisions. So if a leaf falls off the tree, that's not going to hurt the tree. If you think about your company as a tree, right? If you make a branch decision, okay, if the decision is wrong, the tree is not going to die. When it comes to the trunk decisions and the root decisions, those are big deals, right? So it provides a framework together with the fork questions to say, okay, within, you know, you have, you can make leaf decisions within your role, right? Then make any leaf decision you need to make. If you are making trunk decisions, that is now somebody who has proven their way that they can make those decisions. And it's typically a senior leadership. And so there's also different ways when you can say, okay, leaf decisions, you don't have to ask anybody, for permission. Just go do it. Right? Right. Branch decisions, you don't need to ask for permission, but just let me know how it went. Right? So there's different levels of this. If anybody's interested, Susan Scott explains it obviously much, much better than I do. It's a fantastic process and, and it really makes it clear for everybody what decisions they can make going forward, makes it easier for them to own their own response.

Yeah, I love that analogy. It's simple. I've been thinking a lot about that, that kind of decision tree, if you will, along the lines of short-term and long-term implications for the business. Yeah. So, well, those 4 questions plus, okay, what's the short-term implication of this? And what's the long-term implication? So that you— I want people in my organization, organizations I work with, to think both. I want you to make what's good for the short term, but also, is it all— is it good or bad, or how's it going to impact in the long term? Because a lot of times we're too focused one way or the other. Like, I'm always long term. Like, every decision I make, it's like, oh, it'll be great in 2 or 3 years. And sometimes the short term, that doesn't work out real well, right? No, I can justify it long term, but it's probably not always the right justification. But then other people are almost always short-term thinkers and they're not thinking ever of the long term. Yeah, maybe that was the right decision right now for the next 60 days, but what about 6 months from now when we're needing that piece of equipment or tool or whatever it might be? So adding that to the equation makes a lot of sense. And I like these decision frameworks. It seems like where you're at in the in the organization, you're more likely to be making trunk decisions regularly than someone else who's making leaf or branch decisions. Right. But those analogies work across the board.

Absolutely. They really do. And I mean, think about it this way. If you're spending— if you're somebody who has to make trunk decisions, right? So there are bigger decisions. You have to really think short-term and long-term.

Right.

So if you are spending all of your time or a large amount of your time making leaf decisions, there is a thing called decision fatigue. Yeah. And it leads to making worse decisions. So by offboarding the full responsibility and letting other people make those other decisions, it frees up your mind so you can be more focused on making the important decisions.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard that. That was news to me when I heard it recently, that some people are really good at making decisions. Like, I've always thought myself, I'm decisive, I can make a quick decision, I can make them over and over again. And, and I heard that that actually leads to worse decision-making. The fact that you're really good at making lots of decisions and you can make them quickly, if you are making a lot of them, you're likely to be making more of the wrong ones. And so offboarding that decision-making in certain areas to other people who are probably equally equipped to make those decisions as you are is actually a better thing for yourself as well.

Right, right. I kind of agree with that statement that maybe you make worse decisions, but the other thing too is like, if you keep making decisions, eventually you're also gonna quickly make decisions to correct the wrong ones. So as long as you keep making decisions, it usually ends up okay, but, You're exhausted and you don't have the brain space to really think through the long-term implications because that takes work. Like you really need to be focused and thinking about the long-term and not the small, quick decisions that other people can make for you.

Yeah. Yeah. I wish I remembered the study that I heard about. It was kind of, it was counterintuitive because I think of somebody that makes a lot of decisions is generally making good decisions. And this particular study was— it wasn't— it was more about the person that makes a lot of decisions is going to have in aggregate some worse decision-making than someone who makes less decisions.

And so interesting. Okay, wow, fascinating. Well, if you define it, I'd like to see.

Yeah, yeah, I probably should have made a note in my little notebook, but should have.

And then, you know, if it was that— you remembered it, that's all that mattered, right?

That's all that matters.

You learned from it and you moved forward. That's what great leaders do.

Yeah, I always tell my wife that I make good decisions 9 out of 10 times, but the one that I don't make good is really bad usually.

She doesn't like that one. That's funny. Yeah, making decisions is one of the things in the company, it's like the magic sauce, right? If you can get enough people making the decisions that are right for their role, then you have a more decentralized company, right? You talked about that. That's really what you're focused on, the decentralization, right? Because what makes it centralized is one person thinking they have all the answers and one person thinking they have to make all the decisions. And we've— do we know a lot of big companies that function like that? No, because you can't grow that way.

You can't, you can't. So if we focus, shift the focus a little bit on the, on the concept of leadership, I'm curious, and from your perspective, what do you think makes someone a good leader? What are some of the characteristics of a good leader?

Hmm. Okay. I think the very first thing that comes to mind is self-awareness. Okay. In order to be a good leader, you have to be self-aware. Aware, and you have to be able to put yourself beside yourself and listen to what's coming out of your mouth. You need to also be able— you need to be empathetic. So I'm not even going with the whole, you know, traditional ones. I think it's really important that you're empathetic. Being really empathetic also means you have to be self-aware, because it's impossible to be really empathetic without being self-aware, right? So those two things I think are really, really, really important. I think from a leadership perspective, making sure that the organization you're working in, be it your own company or be someone else's, has a really good tight cultural fit. Because if we're not living and leading in our own integrity, people notice, right? People, people can feel it if I'm in an organization that, you know, doesn't, doesn't match my values, right? Or the other way around. So I think those are the top 3 for me would be self-awareness, mindfulness, empathy, and cultural fit. And of course, all of the other things that, you know, traditionally we know from leadership, but I believe without those 3 things, if you have everything else, it's going to be really tough to be a good leader.

Yeah, and I love those 3. Those are great. And my premise is that within an organization, everybody is a leader or can be a leader.

Yes.

And if you take those 3 things at any level of the organization, everybody can be more self-aware, everybody can be more empathetic, and everybody can be part of the culture. That is, and making up the culture that is the organization. So that fits very well with kind of the way I look at decentralized leadership.

It makes a lot of sense with respect to decentralized leadership too, because if you look at the organization, I love what you just said, and I'm gonna remember it. It's really cool. Everybody in the organization is a leader, right? We have to lead ourselves. Mm-hmm. We have to lead ourselves to success. Right? There's nobody there saying you have to do your homework this way and you have to do this. You have to be a bit of a self-starter in order to get your job done. So we have to lead ourselves. So I love that, that everybody in the organization is a leader.

Yeah, it's exciting. It's empowering when I, when I share that with others, because picture a day when you're not the only leader in your organization and everybody in your organization is leading it towards a common kind of collective direction that How much more can get done? How much quicker and faster can you get where you need to go? How many more problems get solved if you're not the only leader, or if you and a handful of people aren't the only leaders? I love it. Decentralized leadership is more than going past the fractional C-suite. It's how do you bring that concept to everyone? And it starts with defining leadership and what makes a good leader. And your three definitions are certainly applicable to everybody at every level. It's not just making decisions and telling what people to do and inspiring people. It's, it's more internal. Is that what makes you?

I think so. I truly believe that that's the case. Because that's, that's the foundation for growth. Yeah.

Right. And I believe leaders need to have some sort of vision, but we talked about vision sync earlier. Everybody at every level can have vision for their role and how they can make an impact. So that's, that's shared by all. And just think about all of the different visions you could have within your own organization, how many different places you can go, and how much innovation could come from, from that reality. It gets pretty exciting.

It's really very, very exciting. And, you know, the industry I come from, the language industry, Right? There's so much innovation in the language industry. I think that might be my next book. What we can learn from the language industry for, you know, the rest of the world. Because we were remote. Like, I started my company in '93 with a fax machine. I worked remote for my clients. My translators were remote. My project managers were remote on purpose, not because of a pandemic. We did this. We have tools at our disposal in the language industry where people are like, oh, that exists? That's crazy, right? So when we look at it, if you want to, if you want to learn how to, how to really foster every leader in the organization so that you can offboard and everybody shares, you know, their own responsibility, go work overseas where you cannot be there. Yeah, you will have a different understanding. So a lot of the companies, um, and I've been, I've been approached actually by quite a few companies after the pandemic and during the pandemic and say, hey, can you help me do this? I don't understand how to lead a remote team.

Is that—

I did it for 25 years. Everybody in the language industry has, right? So it's, it is possible when people say, oh well, how do I know if my employees are working? Well, if you have to micromanage and keep tabs on your employees, you have a much bigger problem than people being remote.

Right. Yeah, for sure. The one question I have, which you might have already answered in your own experience, is how do you build culture, true culture, in a virtual disparate work environment?

Right. Well, communication, communication, communication. Right? You need to be clear what your values are. I would say have no more than 3. To be honest, people say, oh yeah, you can have 5, 7 values. Sure, you can have 100 values. But if you want the people in your organization, including yourself, to be 100% confident when somebody asks what the values are, you need to make them short and sweet. Yeah, I've seen so many CEOs, and I did it too in my company at first. It's like, what are your core values? Oh, right. So short and sweet core values, not to— not more than 3. And then it's our job as leaders to live those core values, to live that culture every single day. That's why I made that number 3 on the leadership, right? So for example, we used to do a huddle. We did the huddle once a week, not daily, because it was too hard to coordinate everybody with all the time zones. So once a week, some people had to work longer, and it just was what it was. So everybody showed up. And we, we went through the KPIs. It was a 20-minute huddle. We looked at the numbers, we looked at all the KPIs. We, in every single week, we talked about something that happened and related it back to our core values. So we had somebody share, how did you make a decision, like, who had a challenge where they needed to make a decision on the fly, and then we talked about it very briefly. So bringing those core values back all the time and being really clear on them towards your team and your clients is to me the number one way. And then secondly, also number one is you have to give people the freedom to lead their own space.

Yeah. Decentralized leadership, right? Right.

Give it to them. You have to give it to them. And that means putting the ego aside, which again, a great leader, if you're self-aware and mindful, your ego typically isn't the first thing that, that, you know, runs your decision-making process.

Right. I like the I like the challenge of getting your core values down to 3. We have 6. I know them well. We have an acronym. But, and I know how hard it would be to go to anybody and say, cut your core values down to 3 if you are, if you have more than 3.

That's right.

That's a difficult thing to ask an organization to do. But if you went and said, what are your top 3? That's what I'm going to do to my team. Sure. Ask what are our top 3 core values, because I think I can flush 3 up to the top without getting rid of 3.

But that's a great approach. I love that.

Yeah, I like it.

What are our top 3?

What are our top 3? Because you can keep top 3 of— on top of mind. Yeah, easily. So what are our top 3? Um, and then adding that, you know, simply into the conversation around when you make the decisions— is it in the best— does it fit with our values and our culture? Does it fit those top 3? Yeah. The other thing I heard recently, which brought to my mind again when you— with what you were saying, is that you can tell a lot about an organization and what their priorities are by where they're spending their money and their time. So I've thought my takeaway from that was trying to align our company's budgets. You know, we spend a lot of money on different things with our core values. Like, how is this expenditure that we're putting out aligned with one of these core values? And if I want to do that exercise just to see, are we spending the money where our culture is? I don't know the answer. I haven't done that yet, but it's, it's, it's a great exercise.

And, and I would, I would, I would add one more factor in with it. I would, I would— does it fit with the vision and our culture? Because I'm not necessarily the, the plan and the goals, but the vision, right? Cameron Hill talks about vivid vision and describing what you want your company to look like. When I work with clients, I start with what do you want your life to look like, because I believe the business should serve the life. And we need a vision for our business, because back to that other question, the second thing that makes it really much more efficient to lead a decentralized, even global remote team is to share that vision. Everybody knows where we're going, right? If the vision is in 10 years to have 100 franchises— I'm just making this up— then that's a clear vision. And if our values are that, you know, whatever our clients' needs first, or, you know, whatever they are. I feel like it's also important to kind of align it with the vision when we're looking at the values, because it's a litmus test to make sure, are we really in integrity?

Yeah, I agree. I agree wholeheartedly. I am contemplating how you have a— in a decentralized organization, a decentralized leadership organization, how you can decentralize the vision. And that's Currently it's stuck on mine because typically visions come from the founders or somebody is bringing that vision. But is there a method to bringing vision from everybody into a collective vision in a logical way, not just a feel-good way? Like, wow, we really shape our vision from every leader in organization as a component of it and goes into it somehow, some way.

Interesting. It's an interesting concept. I haven't really I hadn't thought about it that way. I think the reason I don't think about it that way is while everybody makes their own contribution to the company, to the vision based on who we are and what our values are and where we want to go. Business, I know this is probably going to make me unpopular, but business is not a democracy, right? Like we can create a best version. I think it's almost better than a democracy. I dare say that out loud. Because, you know, we get to choose the people who are in our organization, and who get to, you know, based on fit. So if the vision is shared, then like, at the end of the day, one person has like, somebody has to own it. Yeah, right. And if it's like, vision, well, you know, the company is going to have 100 franchises, and we're going to be in 10 different countries. And here's how we're going to treat our customers, like really clearly described and defined, then I think the individual vision would have to kind of align with that overriding vision, in order to still have that streamlined, we belong in this tribe, in this culture and we can identify it. So where maybe the other leaders would say, okay, here's where we're going. Here's my vision of how we're gonna get there. But it needs to be— I don't know how you would— it's fascinating. I'm really curious. I don't know how you would bring everybody's vision together and then people leave and other people come, like, then what happens with the vision?

I know it's a fun thought experiment right now. That's what it is in my head. Practically, it doesn't seem to be very sensible that you could have this collective vision. And then I think about the Star Trek Borg consciousness and like, you know, that's where my mind goes kind of goofy around. But I do think that there is a way. I don't know if I've figured it out yet, but there— if the vision was— first of all, I've realized that having a Vivid vision, as Cameron Herald describes it, can also be a dangerous thing. As a visionary, I've had many, many vivid visions. Like, this is where we're going with my company. By golly, you're either with me or you're not with me. And if we veer off this vision, I get angry and we're veering back on. And so you can almost be too attached to a vision.

That's true.

So you can have it, but if you can remove the attachment, Removing the attachment allows for the idea of, oh, well, maybe there's 10 vivid visions and we could go to one of those 10, or maybe there's 100 vivid visions. They're all kind of in the same general direction. And we started reducing some of the attachment to a very specific vision. Then you can think of, all right, there are lots of different outcomes here that would be acceptable. Now can you plug in, well, what if we had 100 people with each a different vision and they all were and acceptable to everyone. Then you can start getting, and you can see how, well, maybe we can have lots of different visions, but how do you sync them all? And that's where it gets really—

And how do you communicate it? Because the purpose of the vision, of the vivid vision, to me, is to unite the company, to unite the team. We're on the same page, we all know where we're going. Right. I think where it could come in is that there's an overriding vision. But the detail maybe doesn't have to be there. Maybe the overriding vision is a uniting vision. And then we allow everybody to create their own vision on how they want to contribute to getting there. You know, so it's funny, I, you know, this story, we all have to have the right Butts on the bus. Yeah. And then it came, well, and they all have to be in the right seats. Offboarding helps identify who's in the right seats because sometimes we can swap things around. Right now, what I've been playing with is kind of a— and it fits really well with the decentralized model because in that model, the entrepreneur or the CEO is driving the bus. And then everybody's on the bus, right? Central decision-making. I turn left, we go left. Everybody's with me. You don't have a choice. You're going where I'm going. And I think that's kind of also what you mean when we can get too attached to one vision. So what I'm playing with is what if we as entrepreneurs and CEOs, as our business grows, instead of thinking about seats on the bus, Why don't we invest in a fleet of buses and each bus has their own driver? So if I am now offboarding something to this driver or hiring a fractional CFO, then that fractional CFO drives that bus, right? And they put their own people on the bus, let people off. They're driving that bus. I need to tell them where they're going. Ideally, I'm not driving any buses. I'm just making sure I'm looking at it and seeing, okay, they're all heading to this direction, but maybe one goes this way, one goes this way. As long as they all have a map and a roadmap to know where they're going, I don't care who gets on, on which stop. I don't care who gets off. There's metrics, there's budgets to control all of those things. But what if we cultivate a fleet of drivers that, you know, instead of the right seats on the bus, and then each driver can have their own vision on how to get there and inspire their own team to do so. That might— I've been playing kind of with that model, but I like it because it works with your idea of how do we create a decentralized visioning or vision for a company.

Yeah, I know it's, it's a fun thought experiment, and I think there's something— it's worthwhile doing it because I think there's something profound and insightful that can come out of it. I think the add-on to that would be, you said that you'd have to tell them where to go, but what if you didn't have to tell them where to go, but you gave them something they had to do? You have to get 5 people to where they're going today on your bus, any route you want to take or they want to take, pick them up wherever they're at and take them wherever they want to go. But your purpose is to to just do those 5 things every day. You wouldn't necessarily have to give them direction of where they're going, but you would give them direction of what they're doing. And that's where I think having a core vision is like, if we just live our values every day, could that be the vision? It still doesn't give enough direction though, in my mind, to get people where you want the overall place to—

When people get lost, it's expensive. And when people don't know where they belong and how and why they fit, then you don't have a culture.

Yeah. And I think it's dangerous when you start making everything committee-driven and too many irons in the kitchen or whatever that cooks in the kitchen and irons in the whatever.

In the fire.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I was looking for that one. You know, we've all been down that road and it doesn't usually end up very well.

But no, it doesn't. And then that becomes the opposite of decentralized decision-making. So you're creating a bit of a conundrum then, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes. But I think there's something in there. There's a framework somewhere. There's bits and pieces maybe that work in different areas.

I love it. I mean, that's what thought leadership is, the process of thinking of things looking at things differently and thinking about them differently to come up with new ways on, on how we can lead better and run our companies better, right? So yeah, it's a fact. I'd love to continue that, that conversation because it just, it, it creates a lot of questions. And whenever we're creating a lot of questions, isn't that thought leadership, right?

I love it. And I think, um, I really believe that offboarding is a big component of making that decentralized leadership work within an organization. Because without the decentralized leadership, without the offboarding, you still aren't decentralized. No, the offboarding allows you to truly decouple from the, the leader that's offboarded to you. So I think what you do and the work that you do is very, very critical to anything that we come up with together from a thought leadership standpoint. So I would love to have a second follow-up conversation about this and take, take it to another level. Maybe we can brainstorm off, off, offline about some topics for each of us to kind of think about, explore, and then come back together and share. I think that would be really fun.

I'd love that. Maybe there's a book in the making together. Yeah, maybe there is. Let me get my, my, my, my next one out first, so then, uh, then I'm free. But yeah, I'm thinking about what to put in my next book, and then— and I was actually thinking it might be fun to do it with somebody because then it becomes even richer.

Yeah, well, the— I like the idea of syncing visions. That's a— that's a really unique concept that, uh, plays in with what we're talking about. So maybe the two of us can sync visions for a book.

And I would love that, by the way. And this is such a fascinating topic. I could keep talking about that. The syncing visions is amazing. And I actually made a note when you said that. I love that syncing the visions. I also use it with my clients when I get them to do what they want their life to look like and what they want their business to look like. Those two things need to be aligned. I call it aligning, but I like the syncing. Syncing the visions. But that might be an answer, it might, or, or a good starting point, um, when unfolding, can we have a decentralized vision? Because if we vision sync all the visions, yeah, then that might be a way to do it. So just, I, I just want to kind of leave this here, so maybe when we continue the conversation, um, yeah, if we can sync the visions, then then syncing the visions with everybody becomes the vision.

Yeah. And the syncing the vision suggests that there's a— you're coupling them together versus having separate unsynced visions all over the place, which is like chaos. Yes. Yeah. Well, cool. Well, that was exciting. That was a fun conversation. If our listeners want to hear more from you, what's the best way for someone to reach out and talk with you?

Oh, very simple. So you can see my name on the screen. It's michelle@michelleheckin.com. Michelle is with one L, M-I-C-H-E-L-E. And yeah, just reach out and send me an email. I'm always happy to hear from, from other entrepreneurs, from other C-suite professionals. And, and whether you've had a similar experience, or, you know, you want to just have a fun conversation like Joe and I just interested.

Great. Well, we'll have the show notes in there as well so they can get a hold of you. But thank you so much, and you will be my official first second guest— or repeat guest, I should say— because I've been wanting to do a repeat with somebody, and our topic just left so much more to be said. So you're going to be my first repeat guest.

Well, that's awesome. I am honored. Thank you so much for having me on your show. I really appreciate it, and I love the conversation.

Sounds great.

Thanks, Michelle. Awesome. Thank you.

And that's a wrap. There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by YorCmo, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at YorCmo.com. YorCmo.com, spelled wrong on purpose.