Episode 14 - Deep Dive on Managing & Leadership

Welcome back everyone. We are here with Owner Occupied Episode 14. Today we are doing a very deep dive on managing and leadership. Uh, Russell and I really get into an awesome discussion on how to manage employees, how to lead a team, you know, what happens as you transition as an entrepreneur from someone who's doing the work to someone who's managing the people who are doing the work. We touch on issues like how do you hold employees accountable? What do you do when they don't do something that you've asked them to do? We talk about handling performance issues. Russell shares a lot of his backstory on his experience in management, leadership, and hiring and firing a lot of employees over the years. We talk about dealing with performance issues in the context of, is this an issue where they're not capable or they are unwilling to perform at a certain level? And then we wrap up with how do you have those hard conversations when it is time to sit down and talk with someone who works for you and isn't meeting the requirements? How do you start into that conversation and how should you be approaching it? This was a great one for me because I have a lot to learn here. And hopefully you get some value out of this as well. Let's get right into it.

Here with another episode of Owner Occupied with Peter Lohmann. How are you doing today, Peter?

I'm doing really well. How are you, Russell?

I'm doing great.

It's—

life is chaotic and busy as usual. But yep. How about you?

Same, although I'm in a good mood because we've got some really nice weather here. It's like 65 and sunny today. It's finally warmed up, so I'm looking forward to, uh, spending some time in the backyard.

Oh, okay.

That is a—

that's a nightmare scenario for me, but, uh, okay. Unless there's— unless there's a cocktail or a cigar or something involved, uh, any of that— any of that stuff around the house is, uh, yeah, is a chore. Um, and maybe I've grown out of it because I, I have 7 kids and I've had kids that have been mowing the lawn and doing that work for so long. I haven't, I haven't had to touch it, which really touches on the, on the show that we're going to talk about today, which is sort of leading your, your business in that, in that next transition. And, and I know my approach, as I think about it anyway, is similar to I do with the projects around the house is My 12-year-old does not mow the lawn as nice as I would. But there is no job that he would do that so bad that I would rather do it myself. So, I live with a substandard lawn mower or less than I would do, but that my wife can live with. That's the standard is, can my wife live with it? And then if I have to interact with my son to make sure the lawn is in the condition that my wife is then happy with it so that I don't have to do it, that's the level of my engagement. Um, what does that have to do with running a business? Um, that's how I think about, uh, developing and growing leaders. Um, and instead of my wife substitute client, the client has to be thrilled and I set the level of what our services according to the client expectation, and I monitor that. And if we're meeting that, and I don't have to do it, that's a home run. Is there an analogy in the property management business for your work day to day as you think about scaling and growing your company? You've gone from— you didn't have any employees on day one with just your properties, and now you're now you're at 500 or so, and, and you have employees. How's it work so far in that process?

Oh, man, there's so much here. So, you know, when I started, or when anyone starts a business, your success is dictated by your ability to perform the function that your business exists to do. So if your business is property management, which mine is, my success was dictated by how good of a property manager I was. You know, was I efficient at collecting rent? Did I keep up with evictions? Did I make sure that the maintenance requests were being taken care of? Right? That was, that was literally my day-to-day activity. And the success of the company was dictated by my ability to be a good property manager. But what happens as you grow is you start hiring employees, and now they're the ones, you know, at first they're doing some of the tasks, and then over time they start to do more and more of the tasks. And so now there's kind of two things going on. One is your customers are judging your, your property management company on the skill of your employees who are actually doing the work. So that, you know, that ties into our discussion last week on hiring, making sure you get good people. But now the second part of that is that your skill, the skill that matters for you is no longer how good of a property manager you are, but how good of a manager and leader you are. And this, you know, I've touched on this topic previously as it relates to my job, my prior career as an engineer, where I saw time and time and again, good engineers would be promoted to management and flounder because they were great engineers, but they were terrible managers. They're two completely different skill sets.

Right.

And so, and so as you progress either in your career, but also as an entrepreneur, you inevitably bump up against the ceiling of, well, I can only be so good at property management before I need to start hiring people. And now suddenly I'm not the one collecting the rent. I'm not the one doing the maintenance. I'm managing the people who are doing that and how do I bring out the best in them and be a good leader? And that's a journey that I'm still on. I'm learning. Um, I don't feel anywhere near as confident with that side of things as I do with certain other pieces and parts of business and entrepreneurship life that we've discussed. So I'm looking forward to learning from you today. I'm gonna share what I do know and what I've learned. Um, and maybe in the course of our discussion, we can uncover some valuable insights for our listeners as well.

Well, it's— and I think because our brains work a little differently, we may approach the subject differently. But one thing I think that brought us together and certainly part of this show, but we think about it in terms of adding value. And you talk about— I love the way you distilled it on Twitter. And And a little side note for our listeners, we love the engagement on Twitter. If anything we said you wanna talk to us about, we're happy to do it. I sometimes don't wanna intrude on an account, but I intruded on Peter's account and we ended up on this show. And so intrude, we like the engagement, so that. But you had the idea on Twitter, you talked about adding value. That you, everything, how can I, how can I 10 times the value on an engagement? And I think about when I interact in this intimate relationship with an employee where if I disconnect it from my business need, my project that is my baby and I love, and I say, you know what, I'm actually going to think about What is it that this person needs and how do I add value to them so that I can change that relationship, at least my relationship with them, and how I think about it as beyond the function of simply the task that they're doing and how do I invest and grow in them as a human being, which might mean losing them. I don't, to share a little bit about my background, I had experience leading people in the military a little bit, and then I had experience in college hiring all the people who did all the fundraising, so sort of a call center, boiling room fundraising operation. I did a lot of interviewing and hiring and training in that capacity. And then in legislative offices, I would lead a staff of 10 to 12 people with different skill sets to, to run those, run that organization, legislative offices, and then hiring people to staff up on campaigns for statewide campaigns or legislative races, hiring people to fill different roles there. And then leading an organization with hundreds of legislative staff and employees as leading the whole caucus. And so, and then ultimately at a state agency with, with, there were 7,000 employees at the state agency, but I had a lot of responsibility for about 2,000 of those. And, and obviously I wasn't dealing with people at the very lowest level all of the time, but I did think about them and that recruitment effort. But my engagement was a little different. And some of that was private sector, some of that was military, some of that was civil service. And now in my business and private sector, we're now up to 11 employees and some independent contractors. And so anyway, so that my experience is very varied in this. Yeah. But I start with less— I don't know that it's less, but I start each engagement with an employee with the thought of what—

how do I—

where do they want to be, and how do I add value to and help them get where they want to be? And then can I use the skill set they're at and that growth trajectory while they're with me to get what I need for my business or my my organizational goal and help them get to their goal? Like, how can I align those things?

Okay, I'm gonna pause you right there because I think you've, you've shared a lot, uh, already that I have questions about and I think is really valuable. So you start off the discussion by mentioning that you're approaching your relationship with your employees, and I assume you mean like your direct reports, but But it sounds like you try and put yourself in the mindset of everyone within the organization.

Mm-hmm.

But you start out with the mindset of adding value, um, which is I think a great insight right off, right off the get-go here, because that's not something that comes naturally to me. Um, and I guess I'm on my journey here where I did make that mindset shift about adding value in my relationships with clients and with people I interact with on Twitter and sort of in my colleague network and stuff. But I don't think I'm in the natural habit or mindset of thinking about how I can add value to my employees. And that sounds like a great thing to be doing. I would imagine that that really deepens the relationship with them. It allows you to build a connection with them that could uncover areas for growth, strengths, weaknesses. It probably builds loyalty. So that, that sounds like a great, um, maybe even like a broad overview of what we're going to discuss. How did you, um, or how do you place yourself into that mindset? I mean, I think it's, it's natural and easy to do that right when you hire somebody, right? You bring someone in, they're brand new, you've just completed the interview process, they've accepted your offer, it's their first day. I think it's natural that you're excited about them and you want to hear about what they're up to and what they want to do. And I've done that too, but over time I find that my natural level of interest kind of wanes and I'm sort of like, you know, I'm reverting back to this, what have you done for me lately mindset, which is not great. How do you keep that feeling alive of being interested in their career progression and what's going on in their world and trying to add value to them?

I, I try and blend the two. And so I think about it as a, as a, as a puzzle problem-solving equation is what do I need them to do today? And that, that I'm paying them a wage for that I have to get at least this much value and be able to bill this much value, or I'm going to go bankrupt. So they've got to have X more value. I never lose sight of that. That's, that's on there. And then I think about where they want to go. What is their, what is their role? What is their dream? And then if I can add value, can I then bill or charge for it as I'm building toward where they want to get and go so that the business value and improvement and their trajectory jibes with mine?

Yeah. Yeah, I had a, uh, a guy I was listening to a podcast years ago, and I unfortunately I forget who it was, but the guest on the podcast was talking about this and he was, he was, he was hammering on the importance of, um, you can't just blindly give your employees raises forever. Um, and, uh, that's going to sound harsh, but I'm going to clarify that a little bit. So he was suggesting that When you have an employee who's doing well, you know, you need to share with that employee, like, hey, or share with every employee, hey, for this position that you're currently in, let's just call it administrative assistant, the salary range is X to Y, you know, it's $10 to $14 an hour or whatever it is, you know, you're currently at $11, your performance is good. So I could see, you know, we're going to be able to bump you up here. But just so you know, the range for this position is X to Y. If you would like to make more salary, and I would like to see you do that, you're going to need to move in a different role that's going to require different skill sets, and it's going to require a different level of commitment from you. And we want to help you be successful and do that so that you can move into assistant property manager or whatever that new role is. And you share with them very clearly, like, if you would like to do that, here's what we need to see from you. And we're going to give you the resources that you need to get there. But you can't just blindly give a 5% raise to your admin assistants indefinitely. You need to tell them like, hey, the range for this role is this. You can max out. That's fine. If you want to stay there, I have no issue with that and we'll keep you up with inflation. But that's it. If you want to continue to grow, then we need to, you know. So I thought that was really interesting. And especially in a business where your labor cost is so critical, as we've hit on a few times here, I found that very insightful because I would have— I've approached my relationship with my employees and their positions differently because of sort of integrating that philosophy into my mindset. Like, we want to see you exceed and grow, but we can't just, you know, like you said, I'm gonna go bankrupt if I'm paying an admin assistant $30 an hour. But, but that doesn't mean I don't want you to make $30 an hour. I just want to help you get get to that next level?

It allows me to say yes a lot more so that, so that one, I don't substitute my ambition for someone else. I bought a print shop and I met with some employees, and I— you might look at a resume and see somebody that's been there 20 years and you're making $18 an hour, and for you, that might be horrible. And for them, they'd like to get a few more hours per week, you know, and they'd like it to be 40 hours instead of 35. And so, you don't— if I rolled out a compensation plan where you're going to have employee ownership and you're going to— that's not what he's asking for. Like, he wants— that person needs something different. Maybe they want a creative outlet or a different kind of work or to teach teach somebody some of the skills that they have, whatever their ambition is, how do I sync that up? And so you meet someone else, and maybe they're getting married, or they're— they, they want to buy a house someday, and they're saving up for a down payment. And, and so— and they're saying, well, I've been in this role for this long, I'm making this much, and maybe it's in the bandwidth that you can afford and what that role requires. But they wanna make an additional $10,000, $15,000 a year. I can say yes to that. We're gonna cut out this many hours out of your day and I'm gonna train you how to do sales because sales drive the engine. And so this portion of your thing, how do I do that? You know what, does that make sense?

[Speaker] Yeah, that does make sense.

[Speaker] And so I'm not gonna wed and draw that box and say this job does X and nothing else. I will say that I might say this set of skills pays this much, but you as a person, I'm not going to nail somebody in that box or chain them into miserable. You can do some mean things to people at certain hourly wages. If I think it's mean, if I can pay them more than the starting, they're going to get starting at McDonald's or starting over somewhere in the service industry. They're kind of stuck. Like, if you have to leave me and start over and I haven't added any value, you might be stuck at $32,000 a year for a long time.

Like, yeah.

And if that's not where they want to be, that's not the kind of business or the interaction I, that I want with them. And I don't want frustrated or underperforming employees. If they're happy there and that's what they want and They're stressed out by thinking about doing something different. Don't, don't mess, don't mess that up. So you just want to keep it. But that's where that individual approach is required. You could, you could imagine doing that with your employees during an annual review process or, or, or talking to somebody. Are you happy with your job or Some of the things you've talked about, right?

Yeah. And so, so we do, uh, we do a 6-month interview and then we do annually after that. But we also do biweekly one-on-ones. So I meet with my direct reports every other week. Um, but I feel like I could be getting a lot more value out of those one-on-ones. There's a Twitter thread floating around here in the last few days. Maybe we can find it and link to it., and, uh, I forget who it was, but they shared like their little agenda that they used during the one-on-ones and it was great. They had a bunch of stuff in there. I mean, it was like skill development and there was a place to take notes on like what was committed to at the last meeting and what they're gonna be working on coming up. Um, I think accountability is an, is a, is a word or a, or an idea I really want to hit on today cuz it's, it's something that I struggle with a little bit. But yeah, I think it's building the habit of adding value to your employees, staying connected with them, and understanding where they want to go with their career and how you may be able to help them or not. I mean, you mentioned right off the rip there about how maybe that means they don't work here anymore. And I think the way you said that, it wasn't in a malicious way. It It was truly in a, you're not a good fit for what we do here, but it would actually be holding you back to keep you around. Is that kind of what you were—

Oh, absolutely. I would consider it, it'd be a failure in my mind. David, who does the producing for this show, is a really talented filmmaker. He has a vision for what he wants to do long term. He gets to exercise some of that around. That's why our podcast studio can look the way it does, and we're able to serve clients in different ways because of his skill set. But I'd be bummed if he were still doing this same stuff 5 years from now because his skill is beyond what I need right now, and he just doesn't have access to the film career he wants. And so when I go down to LA or I meet people, or when we're traveling again, I'll have that on my mind. Like, can I get, uh, I— can I get a commercial? I, I did on spec last year and it worked out for a client, but, um, we had a, a director for a commercial for a client, and I brought David with me, and he got to meet a Hollywood film director and be on a commercial set, and I had to bring him over and have him exchange cards and tell him he was a fan, you know, to walk him through how to do that. Yeah, that's great. Now, I don't want to give this impression of that I've got this really close intimate relationship, or I've had it in the past with all of my employees, because I am I am insanely, some would say, focused on achieving the goal I have with my clients. Sometimes I care more than my client, but once I'm engaged, I really want to win. Um, and the team has to do that and I can be a stressor. Um, but if they're giving me what I need to deliver for my client, I have in my bucket of the project that I have to get what I need for my team members. That's That's my job is to get them where they need to be. And I view my job in that way, both delivering for my clients and delivering for my employees. That's part that I have to do those things. It's not a, am I helping my— maybe that's a metric you could use, but am I helping my employees achieve their long-term goals as a metric for yourself?

Yeah, that's great. I like that a lot. Um, so when it comes to some of the more challenging issues around management and leadership, um, at least for me, I think of accountability and performance issues. Um, every— everyone is going to let you down at some point, and that includes employees. And when I have an employee who, who doesn't do something that I asked them to do or is showing up late, you know, multiple days in a row or whatever it is. I don't, you know, that's an area that I feel weak again. I'm like, because there's part of me that doesn't, doesn't want to deal with it. It's like, I just want to just ignore the problem because who wants to sit down and have that hard conversation? And then, you know, the employee is going to be like super annoyed that you You know, held their— kind of shoved their face in the, you know, the issue. They probably already knew about it. Um, and now you're trying to, you know, give them a hard time about it, and you don't want to be a jerk about it. Um, but on the other hand, you don't want to ignore it. So I have a hard time striking that balance between how do you hold someone accountable when they said they were going to do something without being overbearing and just making way too big of a deal out of something that's not, you know, life critical.

Here's a question, and, and, uh, we can cut it out if we need to, but, um, your parenting— if you think about it in terms of, of parenting, you, you've been— you've shared, uh, your, your adorable daughter online. How old is she? She's 3. She's 3. Um, and there's things she can do and things she can't do. And, uh, you would, you would bring the hammer if she runs into the street. And, uh, and if she, if she carries on the way to going to bed, uh, it may not go well, but it's not the hammer. Yeah, right, right. And so that's true. And, and there's different interactions. You can't throw food at the table, but you, do you have to eat every pea? Right, right, right. I mean, you, you have these rules and standards and you're enforcing and adjusting based on do they matter and do they do, or do, or are they want to have, must have, death penalty if you fail. Um, do you do that same adjustment in your, in your work? Does it, does it, um, do you have the same adjustment and expectations and timetables for when you think about accountability and what you're holding your employees accountable for?

I don't, I don't think I have a good range of tools. For me, I end up going from 0 to 100. It's like I ignore it, I ignore, ignore it, and then I'm super mad about it, you know, and I'm sending an email or whatever. And I think part of it is that I think I'm a little loosey-goosey with holding people accountable in general, where I don't, I don't really follow up as well as I should, because when I say something, I'm sort of expecting that they're taking notes and that they're going to do it, because I'm very much a I'm going to do what I say I'm going to do type of person. But not everyone is like that. And so it may be as simple as during the biweekly one-on-ones, kind of getting back to what we're saying earlier, we reference a written document. We say, okay, we pull out the sheet from last week. Here's what we said we were going to do. And, you know, has that been completed? That sort of, you know, kind of minor but really important day-to-day step of documenting what was going to be done and then circling back and kind of closing that loop. I think can be really powerful if it's done well and done consistently, and I have not done that. So I think that's a big area, maybe an easy win. And then adding, like you said, trying to develop a range of responses that are somewhere between doing nothing and getting really mad. You know, so that's, that's worth thinking about.

Well, and do you— are these one-on-ones, do you have KPIs in mind for help on— and the how the, the behavior that's annoying you is impacting the KPI, or is it just annoying? And is that— is it that level? Have you thought it through in that, in that way?

I don't think I've done a good job of tying those things together. Um, the KPIs can be difficult for office employees. Like, for salespeople, it's easy, and certain other roles, the KPIs are easy to, to develop and track against. But if you just have someone who's answering phones and entering bills, you know, it's hard to come up with a KPI for that. But yeah, I think that— I think it's worth doing.

But there could be— there can be cultural things, uh, that— there can be cultural things that could seep in or negatively affect the organization. Sloppy that could be contagious. And so why, if this person can come in late, why do I have to show up if we're going to trim on time? Or they leave 15 minutes early, you know, how is that? Yeah, how is that handled? I can see where, yeah, keeping a rein on that, that kind of stuff, uh, is important.

So I think part of my resistance with the KPIs, as I'm thinking through it now, is I don't really know what to do if they miss. So let's say you set up the KPIs, they're doing good for a week or two, and then they come in the following week and they didn't, they didn't meet it. Now what do you do?

Well, and that's where I think of it in terms of, and I don't have it as specific as KPIs, but, but I have what do I need out of this person? And you knew that when you hired them, like, I need you to do X, Y, or Z. And that's what the money you're getting is worth. And, and that portion of it on something that specific, then how this is how I deal with it in that I put it in two different categories. Can you do that? Are they capable of doing that? And if I've hired them and they're not capable of doing that, and And business experts disagree with me on this. And so I understand that I do it differently. But, but I do. And but can, can they do what I'm asking them to do? And, you know, if you're in that trial period, then if, if they can't, then you got to pull the trigger. Gotta let go. But if, in my estimation, if I've hired them to do, if I've made that trigger and I've pulled, they turned down the other job, they moved their family, they're now under my sort of custodial responsibility. I made that choice. That's my mistake. If they're doing, if they're trying hard, if they're exercising, what they can do and they're just coming up short, I've got to find the seat for them to extract the most value out of them. And I'm not going to get max value that I hoped, but I'm going to rearrange things to make where I'm getting the value I need. And I've got more of this than I needed, but I've got it. How do I make this work? And I change the system to fit the people And now I've got another hole to fill for that little bit that they can't do. You know, that's a can't do. So can't do bucket.

Yeah. So how do you know when you're dealing with a performance issue, how do you know if it's a can't do or won't do situation?

Well, and that's where the prior performance— so if they've done it before and I know they can, and now it's a don't want to to do That's a different issue. And so on that, and again, this is gonna sound weird, but I fired lots of people over the course of a career and I never do it until it's easy. That's my rule. And so I will coach, I will make it clear. And in my, not just my imagination, I've had conversations, I've had conversations with people I fired who were angry and came back. Years later and thanked me. And there's nobody that reaches that point and doesn't know it's coming because we've identified that it's a can't-do, that you've done this before. Now you're— this is the standard. And now they know they— you're not pointing out that they missed it. They know that and they're choosing to do that. And they know that In my mind, they would never use this word, but I do. You're stealing. You're goofing off. You're surfing the internet. You are not making your phone calls. You are not doing things that you are getting paid to do that you're not doing, and you know you're not doing them, and you know that it's costing me money. All those things are abundantly clear. And so if somebody's doing that, they don't want to do it the same way you mentioned to me about if you're procrastinating, hire somebody else to do that. Like, you shouldn't be doing that, right? Yeah. How would you approach that with your employee if you thought about this and you saw somebody was miserable, they were capable, they had done it at a high level in the past, they just didn't want to do it anymore? And so, I might ask that conversation, I might have that conversation. I know you can do this. I'm on your side. Is something going on? Is something going on at home? You know, what's happening? Dig down in there and how can you help? And it might mean shifting for a time, maybe. Anyway, I don't want to talk too much, but it might mean shifting. Do you want to try something else for a little while? Let me have somebody else help you with this and you can try some of this for a little while. And maybe that break or engagement can get them going again. Something along those lines. But if they consistently refuse on a must-have, gotta-have, by the time I get to the firing point, they know it's coming. And I've seen the physical relief that it's over. Like, yeah, I can't do it, I can't quit, I can't, you know, so we make the decision for them. Yeah, I— there's a person, uh, I've always had interns and young people, and when me helping them advance is good for my career because I've got people all over who can— who I can call, right? I had one guy, he hated me for years. I would not give him a recommendation. Um, uh, he was an Assembly Fellow, which is kind of this gilded class of staffer in the Capitol. You— it's a prestigious internship, uh, fellowship it's called, and, and they're ubiquitous throughout the Capitol. And I had him for a year and he loved history and minutia and detail and the building and everything about it, but he wasn't a fantastic legislative aide. When it came time to recommend him, I said, I can't tell my friends to hire you for that job. I don't think you're— you need to do something along these lines. Angry. Uh, he was on not speaking terms, blocked me on Facebook and Twitter. 3 years later, I was, uh, I had advanced, I was in another position, and I reached out to him and I hired him for his dream job. Like, it was sitting on the floor, it was sitting on the floor of the assembly and detailing and chronicling what was happening. He would excel in that. He has gone on to great things and has a great career, and we're friends again. But that's amazing. At the moment, he would have hated— it was bad, right? But, and I had— but if I had taken the position and this happens, you give them the neutral evaluation, you let them move on, you give the The— you give the advice when somebody calls, you say, well, they're eligible for rehire.

Yeah, you're right, right.

You say it without saying it. I'm legally not allowed to give you, uh, they were— they worked here from here to here and they're legally eligible for rehire, right? Would you rehire them? They are legally eligible for rehire and they could submit their application. You've said everything. Right. Do that, and, and that's not kind, and it's not nice, um, and, and it doesn't add any value. And so I felt like I added value by, by taking the reproach, by saying, by saying, I'm, I'm gonna sever— I'm gonna make— I'm gonna allow you to be angry with me, but I'm also gonna steer you in the right direction that in my judgment is good for your career.

Well, I think Yeah, you know, getting comfortable with having other people be mad at you. I don't know of a better way to put that. I think is a skill and it can be valuable. I know a lot of people, including myself, are very uncomfortable with making other people uncomfortable or angry or upset. And that can be— that can hold you back and it can hold them back, you know, and that goes for work relationships, personal relationships, marriages, you know, kids. Sometimes you have to say something that you know is going to make other people angry or upset. Um, but you, you know, I think like you were kind of like you were saying, to not say it, you're almost deceiving them or being deceptive by acting like everything is okay.

Yeah, you're advantaging yourself. You're preferring yourself and your comfort over their good. It, if you, if, and maybe for after the show would be maybe boring podcast conversation. But if you think of the difference between nice and kind, and I am always kind. Yeah, I'm not always nice. And, and if I'm— and those conversations get easier if when you're thinking about that person, you're genuinely thinking about their good.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's the key and that should come through. Yeah. Um, rather than from a place of, you know, being malicious or something. So what, what I end up having trouble with is, yeah, my business partner, I always joke around that bad employees always find new ways to be bad. It's like, you know, they, they have a performance issue, you, you address it with them and now it's kind of like squeezing one of those balls where it like pops out somewhere else and now you're, you're talking about another thing and then that, and now it's something else. Man, it's frustrating. In my experience, it's rarely been with employee performance issues. It's rarely so cut and dry as like you bring it to their attention and they're like, oh yeah, you're right. I've been having problems at home. It always seems like I'll bring it up and they'll be like, they have a laundry list of excuses as to, well, this was happening and we were super busy and you asked me to do this other thing and then he was out and And you can never really quite nail it down. And then I end up really doubting myself, like, oh, well, maybe they're right and I am asking them to do too much. And I kind of end up backing down. So it's, it's not great.

That could be a specific— the one thing that's maybe jumping out at me that's a little different, biweekly one-on-ones, that seems like a lot. Do things change or you have to check in that frequently? Is that— is it— is there a business requirement that requires the biweekly?

No. Um, you know, I got in that habit. I read a management book or blog post years and years and years ago around the time I started the company here that recommended actually weekly one-on-ones. Um, and I felt like that was too much, so I was doing them biweekly, but Yeah, I don't know.

There's, there's different— it could be that your, your biweekly structure sets up way too much detailed engagement. Like, you have to come up with something to talk about. Yeah, you're talking, or you're just saying the same thing over and over, in which case, do you really, do you really need a meeting? If you, if you back up higher higher view or more detached from the, the, the mechanics of how they're doing the job and let it— I can see if, like, if you're making widgets and you're not tech checking in every 2 weeks, the consequence of a month behind in widget making could be disastrous. Yeah. But if If general— if things are on track and you're meeting weekly with your leadership team on your KPIs, then, then, then is that biweekly necessary to that end? Or especially if it's not tied to your— the things that have to get done, then that might be where where you're getting gunked up because you're talking about things that you might not need to even talk about. Like, do I have to address it? Do I need to address it? Is it as clear-cut? And if it's, if it's not impacting my numbers, do I really have to address it?

That's a good point.

Yeah. And but some of the culture stuff and I'm, I'm, I had a job, my last, my last job I was brought up, I was the first person that— what time is work time? At least 5 minutes before the boss gets there. And when do you quit? At least 5 minutes after. Like, I might chase them out of the parking lot, but I'm not leaving while you're sitting there. And that's how I built my career, with that sort of ethic. And I'm leading from the front as the boss, and I'm setting that. I've, I've been in those kind of leadership roles. I went to a job, and I don't mind saying his name, Kent Kouse. And Kent was a brilliant, smart, hardworking leader, and dude could exist on 4 hours sleep. He's just one of those people. And the first year I worked for Ken— Kent— the first year I worked for him, I started matching him and I realized I can't do this. Like, I can't do that either. I had to, I had to surrender. I had to quit, um, and let him—

some people are just machines like that.

Yeah, he—

I—

dude needs less sleep than I do.

That's—

I can't do anything. I can't compete. There's, there's people like that. Um, but in doing that I get— I bring that up to say I could set the standard as the boss of a culture and ethic. And I, I have a— I can have a— I can be in an administrative capacity when in a civil service capacity, this is going to sound really horrible, but you can't fire people. You can't You can show up drunk to work and it's not a firing offense. You can have any manner of material on your computer and be looking at stuff and it's not a firing offense. And so leading in that environment, there's a— how do you drive culture in that environment? And so if people are lax and slack and spilling or messy desk or whatever the thing is that's getting on your nerves, is it a nerve thing or is it impacting your business thing? That's where I would love for you to, to just think through those because if your KPIs are good, does it really matter if you require people to have everything put in the folder before they leave at the end of the day.

Okay, so I think if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying make sure you're focusing on the KPIs that really matter, and as long as those are being met, it doesn't really matter if Cindy's desk is a little messy when she leaves at the end of every day, no matter how much it may annoy you.

I don't, yeah, and, but you know the culture of your place, so you wanna think about what are your, what are ways to shape the culture so that your agenda for your culture is getting done outside of the biweekly one-on-one or outside of a performance issue. So I would separate performance and some of the culture issues to say, how do I lead in such a way that Is somebody— I don't know what your work rules are, but is somebody going to leave before the job is done? You know, somebody— it can be a pet peeve of mine that the project is due at 10 o'clock in the morning. And if you stayed till 5:15, it would be done now. But you'll do it when you come in at 9 o'clock and I get it at 9:15 instead of the next day instead of 5:15 this day. You know, I want to change that, but I'm not gonna meet and I'm not gonna meet and on that project and say, you should have stayed 15 minutes longer and gotten that done. Right, right. Or I might do that in a—

Now let's say they turned it in 2 hours late. Now what's the conversation look like?

Well, and this happened, and I don't mind, I don't mind talking about it. This happened where you were due some, you were due some clips for the show, and we have a schedule for when you're supposed to get those clips. There, the, there was one week where you're gonna get David in trouble here. This is, no, no, it's great, but I'm just, I, one, one, I'm not sure, he's not recording today because we're slammed with other work. Okay, so he set it up, and I don't know that it he even listens to the show. He does enjoy them when he's here and we have good conversations. It's a good mentoring time for me. That's part of the reason I have him recording this show as opposed to the other people who ordinarily do the other client stuff. But, but he didn't deliver those clips. And so, and I found out about it 5 minutes before we were loading.

I was—

where are they? And I didn't get to it. And I find out 5 minutes before we're supposed to talk. In my—

that—

I am very unpleasant in those circumstances. I am. I need to impress upon you that that can't ever happen. Late happens. Internally, we can have problems with meeting a deadline, but A client interaction can't ever— I can tell a client, I can't do that, we're gonna have to move it. But, but I flaked, missed a couple days, and you were nervous because I'd given you other work to do and you didn't know how to deal, process that you didn't get an assignment done. And so I didn't even know, you know. And so that is, that is an aggressive, stern death penalty kind of situation.

So in the moment then, as soon as you found out, did you sit— did you just turn around right then and say, hey, um, I need to— you know, maybe using those words, hey, I need to impress upon you that this cannot happen again?

No, I immediately after that show, um, uh, immediately after that show, right then, that can't happen.

That—

okay, yeah, that— and I, and I use the phrase, that's a death penalty offense for a client interaction, you can make a million mistakes and I promise not to care. It's not— you're not lazy, you're not stupid. We all make mistakes and we have an environment where it's comfortable to make a mistake because I'm not going to react to a mistake. I make more of them than everybody. I'm the, I'm the administrative hole in the tight ship. So, but But I insulate clients from my incompetence by having other people do that. And so, and mistakes happen even with a client. I'll apologize to a client for a mistake and you move on. But I can't not know, and we can't— a mistake swept under the rug stinks. It's like tuna. Right, right. And so sweeping it under the rug or not bringing it forward is a death penalty offense. But, um, but slipping up, being 2 hours late, why did it happen? Is it a consistent thing? Is it something I need to address, or was it just a mistake? You had a bad day, it took you longer to do something than otherwise, you misprioritized, you did the fun job that you like to do, not the boring job that you hate to do. But those kind of things are not, um, in my mind, those are not I'm not going to discipline someone. I'm not going to cut someone's hours. I'm not going to— I mean, the documentation process and the civil service process is such that you have to document every offense to build a case for the dramatic firing offense is, is that process. And, and I, I just find that to be sort of a toxic kind of interaction, talking to people about their mistakes all the time.

Right.

You're so— and but you've got to diagnose a mistake, a mistake versus stuff that happens all the time or something that's more of a performance issue.

Yeah. So it sounds like the answer is here. There are no easy answers. It's contextual, depends on the person, depends on the situation, depends on how often it's happening. Uh, yeah, it makes sense.

But if you're thinking about them from an individual and personal standpoint, if you know what their skills are, what they're good at, what you hired them for, and what their goals are, you'll be thinking about that in the context of where they are. And so You might, in a totally disconnected from the specific mistake standpoint, have a conversation with them about if you want to do X, Y, or Z in the future, this is the consequence to missing a deadline, or yeah, this was a consequence for me missing a deadline at some point without any reference to their mistake. You're right. Yeah, me bringing up and training or pushing in that direction But in the same way you would fire yourself from doing different jobs if you're consistently bad and procrastinating and hate doing it and it's not getting done. With an employee, it's the same. I think it's the same thing. Either rearrange the boat or, or you have to move on. But you, you can figure that out.

Yeah, well, this has been great. I think I've learned a lot. This is going to be one of those episodes that I listen back to. You've got a lot more experience here than I do. Before I started this company, I had no management experience whatsoever. So this, this is, this has been informative. I think it's a good place to wrap for today. We appreciate all you listeners out there tuning in, and I know we just crossed over 1,000 total downloads for the podcast. So that's really exciting. Um, we hope everyone's getting a lot of value out of this and, uh, let us know if you have comments, feedback. Uh, you can reach us both on Twitter. I'm @pslohmann and you are—

I can't remember your Twitter handle.

Russell Lowry 10, right? Because your old handle was like the, the original Russell Lowry or whatever it was. That's right. Yeah. All right. Well, great. Thanks everyone. And, uh, we'll see you next week.