Jose Flores Live on Shally's Alley

Hey, hey, what's up everybody? Happy Black Friday for you, for you out there that are not shopping and you're, uh, you're at home or you're doing online shopping and decided to take a break to listen in. Our guest today is Jose Flores. Say hi, Jose.

What's up everybody?

He just came back from, uh, from a vacation to the Dominican Republic and decided to make some time to join us today here on the show. So, um, welcome and appreciate you taking some time to, to, uh, hop on here in the middle of the insanity of coming back from travel and, and Thanksgiving and all that. Um, happy post-Thanksgiving to everybody out there who is watching. I hope you You got lots of, uh, family time and, uh, you know, spend some good quality time with, with your loved ones. So, um, who is Jose? Well, Jose's actually been a TA leader and ran sourcing at Google for a really long time, like 8 years or something like that. Is that about right?

Yeah, at Google for about 8 and a half, uh, in a, in a management leadership role the last like 5 5 or 5 and a half, 5 and a half or so, right?

Running, running sourcing for, uh, for the search engine that most sourcers use, ironically, right? Yeah. So I was at Google in, uh, 2003, somewhere around 2003, 2004. It was a pretty small company there, but, you know, um, it was fun stuff. And then before that, you, uh, you did some time with Rackspace. Right?

Yep. Yeah. Rackspace down in San Antonio. Yep.

Hosting company. Yeah. Wonder how they're doing these days.

They're still, they're still doing, they're still doing, but not quite as the same trajectory as when I was out.

Is now like cloud is like Google Cloud and Amazon Cloud.

And yeah, move kind of moved from more of a provider competitor to service, to servicing.

Gotcha.

Partnerships and servicing, right?

Yeah, same thing happened to Xerox actually. Xerox made a big shift. They decided to go away from, uh, making it— would basically, they just said we're not going to make photocopiers anymore because there were so many competitors that were doing it, you know, faster, cheaper, and they just didn't want to be in the, in the same, like, and continue to innovate copying machines, and they also kind of saw the writing on the wall that, you know, copying paper to paper wasn't as— it was like things were becoming more like scanning into digital, and, you know, digital processing more so than actual paper processing. So they made the shift and they went into services, professional services, and they made a pretty good, good transition.

Yeah, scooped up a whole bunch of companies. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, yeah. And another— Fujitsu also did FNC. Similar kind of thing. Again, they came from like photos, right, to like digital document management and stuff like that.

Right.

Yeah, that's kind of where it's at. So catch me up. What's going on since Google? What you been doing?

Yeah, so man, it's hard to believe. We were just kind of talking about it. It's been over a year since I've been at Google. You know, from there, I really propelled myself into, you know, independent consultancy. It was kind of a matter of I couldn't, you know, count on or bank on other companies getting headcount, if you would, and me finding a job that way. And so, you know, I kind of just, you know, what's the euphemism? Took the bull by the horns, bootstrapped, if you would, and And I've been incredibly fortunate since March of this year. I have a full-time consulting gig, if you would, with a growing commercial HVAC company in San Antonio. So really been helping them grow, scale, hire. Coincidentally, a lot of the things that I'll say, if you've been working in big tech or in a large corporation for, let's just say, 5+ years or so, even 3+ years, I think we're a little, I'll say blind, right? Blind or maybe a little bit privileged to just the experience that you get in understanding how business works and scales. 'Cause I was able, you know, in this consultancy, I've been able to fall back on like, oh yeah, like how do you put together a project plan? Like that was something that was kind of like the bane of my existence, to be completely honest with you. I'm more of like the doer, the thinker, like let's go, as opposed to the project manager, checking all the boxes kind of thing. But that was just ingrained in me. So when I started consulting with this commercial HVAC company, I'm like, oh yeah, well, we gotta do this and this is our goal and this is our that and these are our objectives and so on and so forth. Here we go, here's your project plan. And they're like, oh my goodness. And you just kind of don't think again, if you've been swimming in a big corporation or larger corporation, larger company, you don't, and you're exposed to it all the time, it just becomes second nature. And it's not till you kind of step outside of that and go apply it somewhere else, maybe at a different scale. You're like, man, I, I absorbed a lot of that stuff. Like, I know how to scale a business. This is, this is actually— and you can see your impact like immediately. Um, and so yeah, right, because you're really—

yeah, right, because you're, you're actually in the midst of it. Isn't that, isn't that kind of, uh, it's a— you just kind of walked right into a topic that that I'm passionate about, which is moving into like consulting as a practice, but coming from recruitment, from TA, because I've always maintained, you know, even when I was teaching sourcing and recruiting as an instructor, kind of as a fundamental skill, and people ask me, well, why would I be interested or why would I get into recruiting? You know, it's kind of like a lot of people don't even really know what recruiting is as a job. You know, some of us end up in recruiting as a result of happy accidents, or, you know, kind of just fall into it or whatever. But I've always maintained that there's no better way to get exposure to a business and business practices than recruiting. Because when you're in the middle of— you're running recruiting for an organization, you learn a lot about all the different departments and functions that Even, you know, even with an MBA, you may not have known how, like, for example, risk works. You know, you might be familiar with the function, but you don't realize that, like, some companies run risk and they have, like, procurement and investigations under it and what's all involved in that and how different organizations run procurement departments and stuff like that. You don't really get exposed to that much depth in business school. And when you get into business and you, you know, if you become a business manager, you just sort of focus on your silo even as part of a big organization. But in recruiting, you are— you have to occupy all these different, you know, parts of the organization. So I think it's one of the best ways to basically learn business. You just get exposed to so much.

100%, 100%. Yeah, it's, uh, it's— you hit the nail on the head. I, uh, one of the things that comes to mind is, is— so my wife's in recruiting as well. Um, she's at PayPal kicking some butt there, and she's only been in— she started in sourcing, uh, and then just more recently had gotten into full cycle, uh, the recruitment side. And, uh, so about what, a year plus or so? And she started, they started giving her director-level roles. And so her hiring managers, as we all know, are gonna, are your VPs, I think even an SVP and so forth. And, you know, a different, it's a different beast as we, anybody on here that's ever recruited before the higher-level positions, it is, you know, different than, you know, maybe an individual contributor or, you know, just lower level in general. And what I was just telling her, I was like, I don't know if you understand or appreciate this yet, but you're dealing with individuals in this company. PayPal's not a small company at all that your level or, you know, folks like the, the other product managers or other software engineers would give their left hand to interact with. You're, you're dealing with the people that are running the show here. And, you know, just, just, you know, to say like, breathe that in, like really make those connections 'cause those folks will tell you and teach you so many things without even teaching you, right? They're going to expose why they can't make this hire at this time because of head, you know, headcount planning for whatever it is in Brazil that affects, you know, this other market across the world and so forth. And so yeah, it's just really cool. And if you're not a recruiter, and you're not a chief of staff or in that vein of business, you'll never get that experience, you know, pretty much anywhere else.

Right. So actually, kind of leads to— if you, if you, you know, think about career transitioning out of recruiting, if you've been doing it long enough like you and I have, I mean, you, you were in the business for what, 16 years? It leads to a pretty good segue into, um, into consulting, I think, because you have that exposure to so many different aspects of business.

It really does. And at the very least, any good recruiter is going to be a good networker. Um, for, for me, it was kind of—

wait a minute, were they a good networker and that's why they became a recruiter, or did they become a good networker because they were just about—

I was, well, I was going to say, from my personal experience, networking has always been ingrained, you know, in me. And that comes from, you know, my really my mom and dad. Uh, my dad is always the guy, hey, I know a guy, I know a guy, I know a guy. And so that was even as a young, as a young kid, it was like, oh, my dad new people everywhere, you know, where we grew up in San Antonio. So if we needed our car fixed, you know, paint, you know, the house painted on, you know, the house painted or whatever it was, my dad always had a network. My mom the same. My mom worked as a legal secretary for a defense attorney. And so just by way of clientele, you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of folks that are, you know, in their immediate networks. And so that was something that was always ingrained in me. I never really met a stranger, you know, if you would. And so I think that innately is what made me a good networker. But to your point, I don't think that there's necessarily a path to recruiting. It's more so, do you want to do it and are you able to fall in love with it? I think those are the folks that are, generally speaking, there's amazing recruiters that, you know, every slice of life in any which way that you approach it. But what I've seen and where I've seen I guess you could say both the success and the longevity of it is folks that really do enjoy that aspect, that really do love the innate networking and stuff. I think the game's changing, right, especially with the introduction of AI as a tool, as an add-on. But yeah, I think if generally, if you like to network, you could be a good recruiter. Doesn't mean that you will, but if you happen to fall in love with that, same, you know, same as sales. I knew a lot of really great salesmen I did that, you know, also, you know, when I was in staffing, and, uh, they don't love it. I don't love direct sales, but I can do it, you know what I mean? Um, so yeah, I think it's just kind of, uh, where does, you know, where's that intersection of passion and productivity? And if you can find that intersection or connect those Venn diagrams, you're gonna— you found yourself in a really good position regardless of what industry or what position that you're in.

The Venn diagrams. Nice, that's a good one. So I guess what you're saying is networking, networking skill, which I've actually had a couple of guests on the show that, that, that talked about specifically about networking, um, and building that skill. But networking skill, my point is, can lead into recruiting. In other words, it's almost like a like if you have a natural aptitude or you already learned it, if whether you learned it or it was nurtured or whatever, it could be a good segue into recruiting. But also on the other end of that, if you are leaving the recruiting space specifically into another career, that networking skill that you honed while you are a recruiter, if you did recruiting right, that becomes a transferable skill to other industries, including say, for example, consulting. But one thing that you and I have talked about before is how empathy fits into this whole thing, right? And so we thought— we talked about, um, empathy and the difference between empathy and sympathy, and how like you can, you can be— you can have empathy as a networker. You can have empathy without getting— I don't want to say trapped, but like with— without risking getting sucked into whatever people's dramas are, right? So one of the lessons I had to learn the hard way when I became a people leader, there's a transition that you make when you first start managing others and you're a supervisor or a lead and you learn how to like do annual reviews and all those other things that are part of the you know, like it or not, that are part of being a boss and relating to your talent leadership experiences at Google running sourcing teams. There's a transition that you go from when you first start managing individuals and then move into managing managers that manage people, right? And you have— I think that that transition when you, when you first become a manager, a boss, empathy is challenging because you can get sort of, um, I'm just gonna come out and say it, you know, everybody has shit happen. I mean, shit happens, right? Like, you have death in the family, you have— there's drama. Everybody has drama. We all do. It's kind of hard to, to not get too wrapped up in that when you have somebody who, you know, is having a hard time And you have to be there for them, you have to be empathetic for them, but you also have to run your business. You know what I mean? So you can't like— you can't just acquiesce to everybody's drama, right? You have to find a way to be both, be empathetic and still meet your goals, right? You know, myself, I mean, I just went through, uh, cancer and I'm on the other end of that. I just, just kind of rang the bell, uh, not that long ago.

Awesome, man.

And, um, thanks. Yeah, but I'm tying that back to like, I still had to— I started to do my job, you know. I mean, as far as I could. Now, I've worked with people who became very ill and couldn't do their job. That's totally different, you know. You, you have to find a replacement for them and make sure that they have, you know, the opportunity to come back and everything. And that's— there's, there's a whole nother But in the middle of like, okay, so you're dealing with cancer, you still have to do your job, managing someone that's dealing with cancer, they still have to do their job, and then transitioning to managing a manager that has somebody that has cancer that has to do their job. Like, that's a huge change. Tell me a little bit about how you made that transition and where empathy sort of fits into that moving from a manager of people to a manager of managers, or a leader of leaders, if you will.

Yeah, so I'll kind of go back to, we'll just start where I started, I'll say that. And I actually started a little more so on the opposite side of the fence, not so much that I didn't have my, you know, my mindset on the goals of the company, but, you know, empathy played a major role in, in my journey from the point of I was almost too empathetic initially. I, I had risk. Exactly. Yeah, you know, I have a risk, a general mindset, um, and things have changed, you know, over many years, but a general mindset of, well, if they like me, they'll want to work for me and I won't have as many problems, right? And well, when you lean too far either side, right, you get in trouble, you get taken advantage of. Exactly.

This is the 7th grandma that's passed away.

Yeah, right, exactly.

Hold on a minute, how many grandmas do you have? You know, like, there's, there's the, there's the empathy with the real thing, and then there's, and then there's people just kind of taking it too far and taking advantage of you. That's kind of what I was saying, is leaning into making that distinction and not letting it run you. And then when you move into a role where you're managing others that are managing people, they have to make that transition. And now you've already kind of done that, but it's a hard skill to teach. So anyway, go on.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's definitely a hard skill to teach. And, and for me, like, the simplistic— the most simplistic way that I can— like, one that I learned and also, you know, taught and communicate is kind of like the, the, the, the concept of just mastery and teaching, right? Like, I, I learned, okay, my hard way, right, of what worked and what didn't. I was really nice and people still didn't do their job. And not that I turned mean, or— but I, I don't know if you've heard the term, you've been in the, in the recruiting world a long time, you kind of become a little, a little bit of a cynic, right? When you become a recruiter, right?

It's like, well, I think it's a requirement.

Exactly.

Especially if you recruit salespeople, because I mean, there is no person alive better at selling themselves than a salesperson that's used to selling, you know, uh, for, for a living. And then, and they get so good at it that they can, they can sell you bad goods, you know what I mean?

For sure.

Um, so yeah, so go ahead.

Yeah, so, uh, just in, in, in my, you know, in my learning journey, right, what was it that got me to here, right, in a position where I'm now managing others? I had to have been doing something right or whoever it was that made the decision to put me in this position.

Okay, good point.

Yeah, right. May not be doing their job, if that makes sense, right? So, uh, and even if I don't think I'm qualified, I'm gonna definitely, you know, share whatever best practices that have gotten me to that point. And so if I'm managing another person, you, you kind of hit the nail on the head for me, right? Like, you've gone through that and you've been through that, so it's a lot easier to teach to sit quietly in a disruptive situation or in a tough situation, is you've already gone through it once. And so that's kind of where I kind of, if I had somebody who was reporting to me, and I did, who was a manager or a leader of others, you know, the first thing that I'm thinking about is I really want to listen and better understand the actual situation, One thing I was actually not— I had a little bit of a— I had plenty of feedback around, I'll say it that way, and I love and I really appreciated all the people that reported to me that shared this feedback was that sometimes I could jump to conclusions, if that makes sense, right?

Oh man, I did that so much. It became my favorite sport, and I think I probably could have won the Olympic gold medal in leapfrogging leaping to conclusions if I, uh, if I entered the competition. But yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about, because it's your life experience that— your perspective that got you that— you got you so far that you rely on. And you just make the— I— you just make the assumption that if I did this, then this is where— but, but you can't.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, just better understanding, really. And then once I think that I've understood, you know, kind of understood, I really prefer to ask questions. I ask as many questions as I can until I'm out of questions. That's kind of my own, like, device, my own mental device to say, okay, you've extrapolated all the information that you think you might need. Now you might want to go into solution mode or ask them, like, is there anything else?

I see. So don't jump into solution mode. So training yourself to be empathetic by not jumping into problem solving. And that's, I think, a lot, you know, I gotta say, I don't know if it's just not, not to be like, not to be a gendered bigot here, but I feel like men frequently try to find the solution right away. They're like, you know, somebody comes to me and I'm like, okay, let me solve this problem. And you put the blinders on. I feel like that's kind of a a male, sort of, I don't know, it's a trait, maybe. I don't know. But who knows? Maybe it's not male-specific. I just feel like a lot of times, as I've developed leaders that were leading other people and those leaders were male, I feel like it's commonly, it comes up a lot what you're describing, which is like, go right to problem-solving. And so you're saying ask the questions first. Now you do have to, I think, write a— there's a balance where you can't go past some, you know, personal lines. You don't want to ask the questions that might put someone who's not as experienced in a position where they're revealing something personal that they shouldn't be. So I learned to say things like, now, you know, I, I— there may be something personal going on with your medical, you know, life. You don't have to share that, but I need to know what the situation is. Why have you been late the last 17 meetings. You know, if it's medical or personal, you can tell me that it's medical or personal, but I don't need to know the other stuff. Like, you know, so you can ask the questions without walking someone unintentionally into revealing something personal that they really shouldn't in the workplace. But so you're saying that that's how you train yourself to be more empathetic without crossing the line. How about the difference between um, empathy and sympathy, right? Because being empathetic and listening and understanding is one thing. It's entirely another one to like, like, oh my God, I feel so bad for them. Like, and you can't do that because there's a part of you that, you know, human nature, you want to, to be kind and you want to help people. However, sometimes it's not your job to do that. It's not your job to help them through whatever family or medical issues, you know, you're not, you're not there to be like, oh, you know what, uh, you have a cold, maybe what you should do is, is, is, is drink lots of soup. Like, man, you're my manager. I don't really need recipes on chicken soup from you. Like, you know?

Yeah.

So, you know what I'm talking about?

100%. 100%. Yeah. I, I, for me, uh, like the, the idea of like having sympathy for someone, at least I'll say it for me, the idea of somebody having sympathy for me means there's a kind of a personal, speaking only of myself, connotation of weakness, right? It's like, you can be empathetic and understand and appreciate what I'm going through and potentially help guide me to whatever objective goal that I have, right? And so empathy that way and not, feel sorry for my condition because you don't think that I can still achieve my goal.

Now, or give me chicken soup recipes, right? I'll be like, oh, you should take ginkgo biloba or whatever, like, right? Yeah, you know, hey boss, I'm telling you that I'm not feeling so good, I'm gonna need a week off. I'm not asking for recipes here, right?

Exactly. And, and that's where I think, from a strictly talking from a business, that draws a line.

I don't like that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think it's actually I've learned that I found it easier now to navigate those things, of course through experience, but through that experience is grounding in the objective, right? The subjective is everything that they're feeling, all of the things that they're going through and so forth in their mind. The objective is what we've already stated, which is you're trading your time for money and doing certain things in this job.

And we're paying you for these things, and we'll help you get healthy so you can get back to doing those things, but we're not going to get involved in your, in your, you know, eating habits.

Yeah, and it's, it's from, again, from my perspective, it's almost, uh, for me, I look at it more of like X's and O's, if that makes sense. Now folks have definitely— I've, I've found, I've found myself to be, uh, a confidant to many people, not by my own saying or volition, but folks have come to me and said, "Hey, I'm really comfortable confiding in you." So you're a trustworthy person. I've been shared a lot of things that probably shouldn't have been, whether they're peers or whether they report to me and so forth. What I mean by X's and O's is if somebody comes to me with, "Hey, I'm struggling with this, that, or the other," or, "I'm having issues," or whatever the case is, I likely already know that there's something going on, Because of the metrics that I can see, the performance, right? Whatever it is is affecting— so is affecting whatever.

There was a before and an after, like, you know, you used to do this and things have not— you know, you haven't been performing as well as we both know you can.

Exactly, exactly. So the— where the X's and O's comes in is, uh, just thinking of it as X is a mathematical variable, right? Okay, so If so, if such person Joe Schmo is struggling with X, then, or how is that affecting the O objective goals?

Got it, right?

How was that outcomes? How is that affecting their outcomes? The definition or the details of the X variable doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they've had deaths in their family.

It doesn't, it doesn't matter on the outcome. It matters on the interpersonal level but not on the outcome.

Yeah, well, I guess more so like just kind of the point where you were making around like, like getting into divulging too much information or getting into personal stuff. I, I treat that as you are dealing with whatever personal things that you are dealing with. That's my ex, right? So how does objectively— how are those things affecting your time? Okay, so that means that now your mornings might need to be blocked off great, so we need to adjust potentially your schedule to come in later, right? Something like that, so that we're not really diving into the minutia of, um, like, well, to your point, well, eat the chicken soup in the morning and then take your pills. And I don't care about that. If you need help beyond what can help you, get that somewhere else, right? Yeah, exactly. I can point you to these resources, um, because you're right, I'm not a clinician. I'm not a professional psychologist or anything like that. And so per the business, these are our plan, these are our goals and so forth. Per the person, these are the things that you're going through and whatever resources you need, let me see if I can help you get them. And then once we have these things figured out, we need to figure out a plan to stay on track to hit these goals or get back on track or Right.

Right. Because I mean, you know, like I said, shit happens. You've got to get back on track. Maybe it's going to take 6 months. Now, you know, you can plan as a leader where else you're going to get that extra input. Are you going to borrow from another department?

Exactly.

Adjust your trajectory and so on. So, yeah, I think, and that's the distinction that, sorry, I'm trying to carve out here is the empathy doesn't have to be that level of personal involvement in leadership. And, you know, it's part of being a good leader of leaders, and later on it's part of being a good consultant to understand the environment but not necessarily get involved in it.

Yeah, right, 100%.

I think that's kind of the, the trick there.

Agree, 1,000% agree there. Yeah, you kind of want to especially as a consultant, you're wanting to extrapolate and encapsulate, right? You want to extrapolate the problems that they're trying to solve for or the problems they didn't even know they had and encapsulate it within the resources that they have, right? I can only do so much as a consultant, right? I'm not going to performance manage your people. I know how to do that, I'm trained in how to do that, but that's not my job as a consultant. You would need to do that, and I can coach you as a manager or a leader on how to performance manage your people. So that's— so right there is a perfect example of that encapsulation. What are your problems? So my problems are with my folks that aren't doing XYZ. Okay, great. How are you going to solve for that? I don't know how to solve for that. Here are some ideas on how to solve for that. Then you encapsulate them back in that solution and say, now you go solve for that. Within, with resources that you have. And if you need additional resources, then I can go find those for you, if that makes sense. Because it goes specifically back to your point around you don't want to get involved, right? That's where the simple—

you don't want to do the solution for them, right? Yeah, you can't.

And you kind of can't either, right?

Even if you know, right? So as the role of switching from a leader to a consultant that's giving advice and being dependent on for your wisdom. You know, I like to— I have this conversation with my kids more than once, you know, about like how data and information and knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing, and how you kind of go from one to the other. The way you get to wisdom is through having applied the knowledge and made mistakes. Right.

Retrospect is wisdom.

Yeah, right. You take the data and the information, the pieces of data and the information of the data collectively, and you apply that information, it becomes knowledge. Then you do something with the knowledge, screw up, and that becomes wisdom.

Exactly. Yep. You don't know how hot something is until you burn your hand, and then you know.

And then you know exactly how hot something needs to be before you burn your hand, and you know how to grab something that's pretty hot. Most people would be afraid to grab because you know exactly. So it's kind of like, it reminds me of cold walking. You ever seen those, those, uh, new age, whatever, where they do the cold walk? Every time I see them, I'm like, oh, come on, guys. Science. Like, that's just science, you know? Anybody can do that. It's science. But anyway, so you're saying basically that this, this skill of not just giving them the answer is basically the same as not jumping into it. It's, it's, it's on the one hand, as a leader, you can't go in there and do their job, right? Your job to do. And on the other hand, as a consultant, you can't go in there and just straight up give them the answer. You've got to build up to that or do it for— right. Because again, you're not a consultant now, you're a contractor, right?

Yeah, there's the element. Exactly, yeah, yeah, you're a whole different legal—

You're doing the job.

Yeah, you're a different legal entity for sure.

And you know what's really hard about that is when you know, when you are 100% certain that you could do that job so much better and so much faster than the people that you're teaching. And in fact, if you did it, you'd be done in 5 minutes, but it's gonna take you 2 days to— to walk them through the consulting process, that's irritating. And it's like, oh, it's such a challenge 'cause like, I want to step aside, let me just do it. But that's not what you're getting paid to do.

Right, exactly. And that's kind of what it just kind of goes back to is what's my charter here? Like, why am I there? Why are we even having—

He didn't hire you to do it, he hired me to teach him how to do it.

Exactly, exactly.

And empower him to do it, right?

Exactly. And in some cases there are some instances—

Right.

Yeah, there are definitely some instances even with it, like within my current engagement where— so I do, uh, part of my consultancy is, is, is straight up what I've been bred to do basically, or, or been trained to do, is recruiting. I've, I've hired several, uh, several positions, uh, you know, for them. So I, I do that.

You sometimes do step in and do the job, right? That's part of the engagement.

That's part of the engagement, exactly. Now, you know, I also provide, you know, management consulting directly to the president and the GM in regards to org structure and performance management. I'm going through that right now. You know, and there's an element sometimes where they're like, well, what do you think we should do? And it's like, that's not my— that part isn't my job, right, is to make that decision. But what I can give you is help you see your own facts, help you see your own perspective and your own picture 'Cause there's also an element of, right, you go to me or any consultant and say, what should I do? And they said, you should do this. And then 2 weeks later, there's immediate and unfathomable regret, right? And maybe you don't have that engagement anymore because you made the wrong decision as a consultant, right? So I'm more focused on, and will not so much deflect, but, corral, right, that conversation around like, what should we do? It's like, well, here's what you've told me so far. Here's the issues that are still present, and these are your goals. So mathematically, x plus y equals your decision, right? And so it's always kind of back on them. And I, I got that from— or I, I've really— that really helped round me out, um, when, uh, when I did my short stint at Google. I did a bungee, uh, on the HR side. HR consultancy side, well, people consultant side. And that was something that was really interesting to me. I, when I first got into it, I thought I had the perception that HR has, you know, a virtual Rolodex, right, matrix of if this, then, right, if this statements or situations. And that's not really the case, at least my experience. There's not a lot aside from like, is this legal or not? Then of course legal comes in, right? Is this against a regulatory or compliance, you know, compliance thing? Then, you know, that group will come in. But from a business decision, whether it's performance management, whether it's org design, whatever it might be, it is a business decision ultimately. And the HR person, the HR consultant, or the people partner, HRBP, is there to provide that information, to advise on guidelines or things that we for sure can't do and things that you could do based on, you know, the information that you have.

What are the risks? What's worth the risk?

Exactly. But it's not HR or my job to tell you you should do this.

What to do.

Because HR doesn't run that business. That's a good point. So, so that's kind of the, the again, from a consultant's perspective, if I was a, you know, a full-time employee, you know, these are my peers and I have a particularly strong opinion on something, oh, you're gonna hear it, right?

Here for me, and I'm going to present my case and so forth, and then it's up to them to filter whether or not they act on it or not.

Exactly, exactly. And that's kind of, uh, you can like that, love that, whatever. I really appreciate, you know, that element of consultancy of being a consultant, you know, because I can see things, especially from a third-party perspective, that they likely don't, won't, or can't, right? Whether it's just visibility into the, you know, into the business or, you know, they don't know what somebody else is doing.

Yeah. Yeah, to explain that to folks that may not be aware and may be interested in going into consulting, the visibility comes from a lot of that interrogatories that you ask a lot of the questions during, you know, you might call it an audit or you might call it an intake or a questionnaire or survey, but they're all consultants have an initial discovery period. And it's actually one of the essential principles or one of the main tenets as, as I've often talked about the 4 Ds, right? The diagnostic part of it is that initial differential diagnostic. What are the possible causes? What are the possible? And then you don't get into the prescribing at that point. You don't, you don't prescribe while you diagnose because that's a major problem. You know, it's like, it's like if you're looking at, you know, oh, you have a headache? Well, here, take some aspirin. First, let's find out what— so sort of like, where's the headache come from?

Yeah.

Uh, is this headache actually, you know, does it have an underlying root cause that we can address? Yeah. So that's the diagnostic part. And then you go into— then you can go into the design of the solution. And that's where you have to socialize that design. And then you can get into the delivery of that design, which you can call that implementation or whatever. But those are, you know, and then you've got the continuous development, which is ongoing, kind of like the feedback cycle. So you're talking about that starting with that diagnostic as a consultant, but as a leader also the same thing, which connects back to empathy, which is Let me understand the problem. Where is this coming from? And we don't know what the personal stuff is, but we do need to understand where the problem is coming from, right? So in a lot of ways, is it— this, this is almost like, uh, like a mirror. You're, you're holding up a mirror, and I think it's a— it's a— I don't even know if I can explain this right. It's a, it's a two-sided mirror because you're holding up the mirror for this, for the student. You're holding up the mirror for the employee. You're holding up the mirror for the client, but on the other side of that mirror, you see yourself, and it reveals the gaps in your own knowledge.

Yep.

Because if you can't relate, or if you, you can't come up with the answer, you've got to figure something out. You've got to learn, and you've got to get clarity to grasp the concepts. And on the other side of that— I don't know how I just did that, but I'd say that I wasn't sure if that was you or somebody listening.

There we go. That's cool.

Apparently it's my phone here. And then on the other side of that, you have— well, actually not the other side, but you also have, in addition to that, you have the effectiveness, right? So if what you are advising leads to a solution, and that's the last stage on the development side of the feedback side, then great, you know, job done. But if it doesn't, then what's your fault of that? Like, how did you confuse them? How did you cause disengagement? And how do you strengthen your own And so I think it's a feedback mechanism that makes you a better consultant. Like anything else, you get more experience as a consultant, which tells you that there are more things that you could do to improve your consulting because of the outcomes. Again, you screwed up, right? There. So you learn from your own mistakes as a consultant. And don't believe in a consultant that tells you they never make mistakes because that's not what you're paying for. The mistakes they made, they made.

Yep.

Never making a mistake, you're paying for all the mistakes they already made, which by this definition means that they're probably going to make another mistake, right? So I think that mirror is the continuous— the mirror doesn't judge, right? Right. The mirror reflects reality. And sometimes without the mirror, we live in this little bubble where we are outside of reality.

Yep.

Because we're not aware. But we hold that mirror up to us and to them, and we learn what our gaps are. We learn whether or not our advice is actually working. And how we can get it to work. And it's a reality check. I think teaching and consulting are very much alike, and both of them are kind of like a mirror. It offers you truth and it inspires growth if you're willing to look at it. Now, here comes the other problem, which is the— let's just call it lack of empathy. Um, where you're not willing to look at that reflection.

Yeah.

So tell me a little bit about that. What are the consequences, or how do you recognize that? How do you— how do you know that you're not being empathetic, um, in a business sense? How do you detect that?

Man, that requires a lot of self-awareness, first and foremost.

Um, sure, it's the mirror.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think it comes down to, and something I was gonna mention as you were talking about the mirror, which I love that analogy, is like empathy and accountability. And to your point, and this is kind of going framing back into your mirror analogy, you know, if I'm looking in that mirror, I need to know, I need to hold myself accountable to my job and making sure that, to your point earlier, I am doing everything that I need, that I promised my client. O's, right?

You've got your own O's.

Exactly, exactly. And so, um, I, I think that's— it, it's very much in, in internal, right? Um, and I think from a consistent accountability perspective, um, you know, maybe there's a checklist, right, of the things that, you know, your, your cornerstones, right? Specifically thinking about a consultant or specifically a manager is what am I— what are my deliverables and am I delivering those in these conversations. For me, when I haven't been so empathetic in a conversation or, you know, in a situation, and I can only talk to myself, I feel that afterward. And this is just my own thing, and it may be something I need to work, you know, continue to explore.

Okay, but how do you detect it?

I replay my conversations with people in your head over and over and over after I'm done with them, almost, almost to a— I would say to a fault sometimes. And so I'll go back in and, and maybe I'll say this is, this is more leaning on maybe the paralysis analysis by paralysis by over-analysis kind of thing. And I'll go back in and look at that and say, okay, that didn't feel good when I actually said it, and it still doesn't feel good now. Like, what? You know, and sometimes it just takes time. It's like, I told them that, and I'm curious how they, how they interpreted that. So let's see what they're actually, you know, how did they, how do they act after that? Or if it's something where I'm like, man, that really didn't sit well with me, I'm gonna go knock back on their door. I'm gonna ask them for more time and simply, and simply address it. And that's just a level of self-awareness that I particularly have. Honestly, that's how I've always been, even before I was a leader. I would replay conversations in my head of like, hey, did I say that kind of weird, or did I communicate what I really wanted to communicate? And so that's just something that has become my own, that mirror, that's become that mirror for me. When I am in that conversation, I am thinking, You know, that there's a, if there's a line that divides my half and your half, I'm always trying to position myself on your half of the table to understand where you're coming from, right, to meet you 51% of the way as opposed to, you know, to 50% of the way, because that puts me closer to your shoes, if that makes sense. And so that helps me better understand. And this is something, a note that I actually made for myself when we talk about fostering impactful relationships is finding some point of connection with you, right? You and I have an immediate connection because we've been in the TA space for a very, very long time, right? So we can talk shop about TA all day long, right? And so that's something that I'm always, you know, really holding myself accountable to, is making some type of, of connection with said person. Um, and then, uh, that just innately, I, I'm, I'm able to, I don't want to say have more genuine conversations, but have that sense of empathy just innately. I don't have to think about it, if you would. And that's just from years and years of the way that I've just kind of been conditioned.

Well, I think it's essential to make a connection in order to do anything from diplomacy to negotiations. You know, whether you're selling or negotiating or being diplomatic, you have to be able to establish some kind of mutual ground, which starts with that connection, right? But, um, again, going back to the difference between, um, you know, transitioning from, um, a hands-on active role where you're involved in doing the work versus a hands-off role where you're more— you're not, you're not— nobody reports to you, you're not a supervisor, you're You're a consultant coming in that is being paid for that advice. I think that type of mutual connection is different.

It's— it definitely, I agree 100%, especially depending on the length of the engagement, you may not have time to— if you don't have an immediate connection, you may not have time to create a connection. One of the things that I do as well, and if there's not a connection, kind of really connect my own experiences. And this isn't— if anybody's listening, you're like, oh yeah, this isn't like rocket science or anything, like, like, like, aha, or anything. But I, I love giving context, and sometimes a little too much context. So if I'm advising, hey, I think that the org structure could be better if we did this and this, right? And maybe that there's— maybe there's pushback, maybe I'm not coming off as empathetic to another person who might say, or the other person in the room that says, no, no, that's not going to work for us. I would back that up. Where my empathy would come in is I would frame, if anything, I would take my comment back from a contradictory or a competitive solution or competitive offering and say, I'm saying the reason I'm advising on this is because at in a previous engagement, these are the things that happened or continue to happen, and this feels like a very similar situation.

So making that connection, exactly.

It would behoove me, you know, to share that experience with you, essentially, because that's what you're paying for.

Yeah, right. And that is— I'm going to show you a comment from someone here, but that is actually a perfect segue to Navigating change and, you know, being the change agent, being the team, whether you're internally as a leader or whether you're leading the change as a consultant, either way, navigating that change or change management is probably the ultimate key to success. If you did your job, you managed to help them with the transition. So I want to jump into that for, for a few minutes here, but you have Apparently, you have a friend/fan asking, as you're setting into your consultancy, your entrepreneurship journey, where do you see your biggest impact being getting into 2025?

I'll speak. So, first of all, Hav, that's my godbrother. I've known him for 35, 36-something years. He's an awesome TA leader as well. We kind of grew in the industry together. So appreciate, appreciate the call-out, appreciate the question. Right now, I think my most immediate impact given my current client is, and which is something I'm actually working on over the holidays, is their 2025 roadmap. We're gonna be doing the SWOT analysis before the end of the year. If for those who aren't familiar, SWOT, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and figuring out, you know, what, What went well? What's going well, right? Where do we, again, where do we need to close the gaps? And then there's always a forward-looking, you know, a forward-looking aspect. And so putting together basically like a success roadmap, you know, for my client, you know, going forward. And as far as my like entrepreneurship journey, I really, really, really, really enjoy this consultancy thing. I'm not even gonna hide it. I smile when I talk about it and that's how I know like this is where I wanna be. Because I love seeing— for me, the big picture, the bigger the picture that I can see, the more effective that I am. And that's what I get as a consultant, as opposed to coming in as, let's just say, a manager, and now I'm not privy to the things that leadership is doing. So, so yeah, putting— setting my clients up for success into 2025, and then hopefully building on that success and maybe landing some more clients in, in 2025 as well.

That's an interesting, um, so I think you can— anybody can take a page off of that, even if you're leading an internal function. The, uh, the SWOT analysis comes from, um, it's, it's a, it's a typical consulting tool. It's a 4-box. You have these, all these different 4-boxes and 9-boxes. You've probably seen the 9-box, and the 9-box gets a lot of memes these days. But before the 9-box, we had the 4-box, and it's an analytical tool that helps us illustrate or detect gaps. I think you can use SWOT analysis or any one of those 4-box and 9-box matrixes in multiple ways to help identify what the true— it's what you were talking about before. It's how the Xs go into the Os. It's what are the variables that are going to impact this objective. So I think that's a Yeah, your biggest impact heading into 2025 from a planning point of view would be just looking at the strategic gaps. Where do we want to go and how are we going to get there? What's the plan on how to get there? And then what are the gaps? And, you know, in order to get there, what are the things that we need to develop? In the SWOT, among, among other analysis, the SWOT is one that is comparing, um, strengths to weaknesses. So you, you identify strengths and weaknesses, and then you try to use the opportunities to cover the weaknesses. And then the last piece of it is the threats, which are usually external. Yeah, essentially use your strengths to— it's across the matrix to bolster against those potentially those threats. But there's other 4-box matrix tools out there like that. So I think maybe thinking more— I don't want to say thinking strategically, that's so overused. But thinking more planfully about your year and setting down some, some good goals, then figuring out what the gaps are. I'm going to synthesize what you said.

Yeah.

And say, you know, that's, that's a really good— if you want to do something to prepare for next year, write down your goals and figure out what are the gaps to achieve those goals, and then plan on covering those gaps, because at least you'll have a plan. It's, it's gonna change, you know. January 1st is gonna change 100%. Yeah, so many would, for so many reasons. Yeah, at least you have identified some of those gaps, right?

Um, exactly, exactly. And I like to say, uh, like one of the ways that my wife and I are very different is she's very much a planner. I think there's planners and folks that are prepared. I like to be prepared for, for different things. So yes, have a plan, But also, you know, like Tyson says, everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the face, right? So something goes wrong. So it's kind of like being, being prepared to continue down the path that you're going down, being prepared to rely back on my, you know, strengths that I know that I have to be able to, you know, I'll give you a perfect example. And this is exactly what I'm doing and being prepared for next year. I love what I'm doing in consultancy. I want to continue to do this. If something changes where this, this particular gig, you know, goes away, dries up, and/or I can't, you know, find another consultancy gig, right? My strengths lie in being able to find people, find incredible talent, and drive them into whatever organization that hires me. So if I have to, which I, I don't exactly want to, um, I'll go back to being a you know, go back to being a recruiter, be prepared to pivot into a different, you know, into a different space. So that's kind of how I— my brain works. I try not to get too set into a plan because if X leads to Y and Y leads to Z and something happens between X and Y, your plan is kaput and now you have to go back and replan. I'd rather be more prepared, prepared to pivot and/or prepared to propel as opposed to rely on a particular plan, if that—

which may not, which may not work given the X's having changed.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. So your variables change and you're like, whoops, yeah, what do I do now? So what do I remember? I was going to go this way, I can't go that way now, right? Right.

And so I think about the what do I do now, now. I, I think about what would I do then. Exactly. If— what do I do if What do I do if? And so it makes the what do I do now a lot less stingy or hot if it does happen, because I have at least a preliminary idea.

Fair enough. As long as you don't get sucked into, or trapped, if you will, into getting a bad case of the what-ifs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What if?

And that's where I rely on my wife to knock me over the head. She's like, all right, You've been thinking about that way too much. Let's go have dinner or something like that.

Listen, you got 2,700 possibilities. You don't really need 2,800.

Like, exactly.

Those possibilities are so far from possible that they're probably not really realistic.

That's good. Finding a balance.

Finding a balance. Yeah. So I think that kind of brings us back full circle to using these tools to help navigate change. Maybe that would be a good topic for another episode, but there's a lot to take away from this and apply it as you make a transition to managing a manager's role or into a consulting role and start planning for next year. So thanks a lot for, um, for coming on the show and being here with us, spending an hour on, on Black Friday, uh, with us here. I, I can't let you go without asking you two questions that I ask all of my guests. The first one is, who should be our next guest?

Oh, who should be our next guest?

Maybe it's Javier.

I was, I was gonna say, put himself in the limelight. You can't—

that's what happens, man.

You can't expect not to be seen. Um, so I, I would nominate, uh, Javier Rodriguez. Yeah.

Okay. All right, that's it, man. You, you put yourself out there, so get ready to get an invitation from me, um, for sure. And then my, my last question— I always want to leave people with something to provoke thought, um, and a lot of folks watch this as a recording, uh, because, you know, maybe they're out shopping on Black Friday.

Sure.

So can you give us something that, that we should think about? So it's, it's more a question that we should ask ourselves, as opposed to some kind of words of wisdom, right? I'm not expecting deep thoughts, but, but rather more like a deep question. A deep question for us to answer for ourselves.

I'll, uh, this does relate and directly allude to navigating change, and okay, from my perspective, um, something that I monitor and protect a lot, uh, very, very closely is my energy and where I spend it and who I spend it on and how I spend it. And so my question would be, um, whether it be now or you're forward-looking into 2025, is, um, thinking about controlling the controllables. You can only control what you can control. There's nothing outside of your direct sphere of influence. You can't control anything else. Whether it's the presidency, whether it's taxes or interest rates or whatever. You can't control those things. So where are you spending your energy? Where is your energy going? What are you spending it on? And are they on things that you can individually control?

Okay, so what are you spending your energy on, and are they things you can actually control?

Right, because some folks might, you know, there's plenty of folks out there that might be so worried about whatever it is, whatever it is, right? I, I'm not really big into the political game, but I try not to get—

no, but it's something people could be worried—

it's 100%, right? Like, oh, this, that, or the other. Sure. Um, what I think about is, if all those things are happening, what information do I need to be able to provide for my family. It all comes back down to my family, right? 100%. How do I continue to make, you know, income and provide for my family, retire my wife, retire my mom, take care of, you know, my ex, you know, a broader set of people, and so on and so forth. So it doesn't matter to me personally who the president is. It doesn't matter to me where the interest rates are going and so on and so forth. Yes, it might suck, but what do I need to do? I need to focus on the things that are going to make an impact on providing for my family. So if it's, hey, interest rates are too high going this way, guess what? I'm not going to go that way. I'm going to go invest in a boring business. I'm going to go invest in laundromats and self-storage and so on and so forth, as opposed to real estate, which I'm in right now, which is brutal. I've got properties on the market right now that are sitting there, flip their flip properties, and it just is what it is. So I think about what can I really control? Where can I really put my efforts into that I can drive a solution forward? As opposed to spending my energy on worrying and being anxious about things that just aren't going, uh, that I'm not going to be able to change. So that's where that question— you can summarize that as you care to, or summarize that as you care to.

Yeah, perfect. Okay, yeah, that's a good one. Good one to leave us with. Um, what was it? Was a comedian that I think put that really well. I mean, I can't remember the name of them. I might have been— no, I'm gonna have to come back to you on that. But I remember the, the quote, um, don't sweat the petty stuff.

Yeah.

Then don't pet the sweaty—

yeah, don't pet the sweaty stuff.

Yeah, yeah, don't sweat the petty stuff. I think it's kind of what you're saying. Yeah, that's it. And not that it's— I mean, not that who the president is petty, but like more like don't sweat the stuff you can't control. Have any influence over it. So, well, 100% care for it, right? But what is it that you're worrying about that you can't control? Um, yeah, and what can you— what can you control?

I like that.

Good way to end things today. Good way to end things on— um, gosh, is it the end of November? Yeah, that's pretty much it, right?

It sure is. Tomorrow is the end of November.

Yeah, that's right. Gosh, end of the month already. Wow. Well, exciting times. Uh, we had Steve Hardy coming next week. Steve and I were at Fiserv together, and he was a very highly regarded, well-admired leader there. So I encourage you to come back if you have any interest in— well, it's not just fintech, you know, Fiserv is a very big company, but he's also doing quite well himself as a consultant and a few other things. So come on back next week. Until then, be kind to yourselves. Bye everybody, take care.