Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome back to be to be growth. I'm Logan lyles with sweet fish media.
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Today is another episode in our behind
the curtain series that we're normally dropping
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on Sundays for listeners of the show. Normally it's James and I most often
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here on this series. Today I'm
joined again by bill read, our chief
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operating officer and all around great guy. Bill, how's it going today?
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Man, it's going well. Thanks, Logan. Absolutely. For those just
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listening to this, you can't see, but I am always excited to talk
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with bill, always excited to record
and share his wisdom and knowledge with with
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you guys as the listeners. But
I'm also just pumped because it's Good Friday.
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We're having a great Friday and we're
both wearing broncos hats, so our
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side known, you know, kind
of behind the scene, since this is
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the behind the curtain series. Just
a little peek behind the curtain there,
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Bill. We're going to be talking
about this phrase that you use a lot
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this thinking on decisionmaking. You caught
the fulcrum of decisionmaking. Let's go ahead
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and dive in and kind of unpack
this term and then we're going to get
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into some examples of where this approach
to decisionmaking really can help or harm your
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organization, depending on how you actually
implement it. Sure, absolutely so.
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When we talk about the Fulcrum of
decisionmaking, what I'm really talking about is
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the effort to push the decisionmaking process
to the people who are closest to the
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customer. Off and I'll say to
the lowest common denominator, but I like
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to avoid that terminology, to say
really what we want to do is we
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want to push the decisionmaking process,
of created process and then actually the authority,
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the empowerment to the people who are
closest to the customer. And the
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reason for that is because, you
know, often as managers or administrators or
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executives, we may at one time
have been on the front lines, but
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for most of us it's it's been
a while, and so it's a dangerous
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thing to make decisions from afar.
And I think I often say that if
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you want to know the answer to
a problem, go to the people that
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are on the front lines and ask
them, because they have the answer.
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Yeah, absolutely, I mean in
lots of different places and lots of different
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industries and across the world right now
people are trying to solve some pretty complicated
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problems, and so I think this
has some implications there, as well as
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whatever business that you're in. It
kind of reminds me too, of the
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way that I always evaluate sales trainers. Right, how long has it been
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since you actually sold something? Right? That's always my first question for anyone
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offering sales training or any sort of
content around sales is, tell me what's
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the gap between the last time that
you were actively selling having conversations in the
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context of what you're training now?
If they've never, you know, not
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done cold calling for ten years and
they're training on something else that they do
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have application in, then okay,
but if they're training on prospecting and cold
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calling and they haven't, you know, made a cold called dial in ten
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plus years, then I'm going to
say, Hey, there's a disconnect here.
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And I think the correlation here is, you know, like you said,
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as you move up in in leadership, you may have these ideas of
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how it was done, how we
solve this problem, even just I mean,
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it doesn't have to be ten years. It could be six months ago,
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right, if you're in a fast
growing, fast changing business like we
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are here at sweetfish, so I
know there was a story from from Brian
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Tracy, I believe that you've shared
with the team before build that kind of
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unpacks this idea in real world terms, right. Yeah, let me share
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that. That's so some of you
may be familiar with Brian. It was
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years ago that he told this story
and maybe you've heard it, so I'll
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do my best to relay it,
but I think it illustrates this concept very,
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very well. He tells a story
about an organization that had built a
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new hotel and they had underestimated the
traffic or the need for elevators right.
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So they got consistent complaints and it
was really getting in the way of their
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business in several different ways. So
they got together as an executive board and
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they were really on track to to
dismantle part of the building and rebuild elevators.
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It was a, I think,
a two or three hundred thousand dollar
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projects for them and somewhere along the
line somebody said, you know, you
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know who we ought to talk to. We ought to talk to the maids,
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the cleaning staff and see what kind
of ideas they have, because they're
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the ones in many cases getting the
complaints. They're the ones that are have
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proximity to our guests and let's let's
just see what what they have to say.
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And so they did. They went
to one particular Gal who had worked
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for them in other organizations for a
long time and they asked her the question,
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what can we do to solve this
problem of guests complaining because they have
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to wait too long for the elevator? And very, very quickly she said
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to them, well, put mirrors
on every floor in the waiting a area.
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And took a little bit for them
to process that, but what she
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said is, Hey, people love
to look at themselves. If you put
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mirrors behind and you'll notice many times
when you're in a nice hotel, there
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are mirrors. As you stand and
look at the Elevator Bank, there are
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mirrors behind you. But she made
that suggestion. They put those mirrors up
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because you know whether you have to
lose. And sure enough that solved ninety
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five percent of their problem. So
I was always fascinated by that story.
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I learned that early in my career
and tried to apply it throughout my career.
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In fact, I every day at
sweet fish is we're growing and as
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I have a little more distance from
the front line, from the customer.
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I try to applay that concept,
you know, with with the example that
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Brian told they had two choices.
They could rip out the entire Elevator Bank
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that they typically put in a very
expensive part of any any multi story building,
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with a cost them two or three
hundred thou thousand dollars. Instead,
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they went to this sweet little Gul
who'd work for them for a long time.
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She gave me the answer and they
ended up sending two or three thousand
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dollars on mirrors. Imagine that.
I hope she got a nice little bonus
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or something for that idea. That
led to some huge cost savings. Yeah,
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absolutely. Yeah, you know,
this kind of thing, logan is
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really a culture thing. It's not
a matter of sending a survey or,
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you know, the CEO making an
appearance and asking a brilliant question. This
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is really a matter of culture.
Do you, as an organization, have
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the kind of culture where a gal
like that would, on her own,
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come to you with a suggestion like
that? I think this really just tounch
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from relationships and if you have the
conduit, if you have the kind of
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relationships where people feel safe and people
feel comfortable and probably most importantly, if
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people feel valued, they'll come forward
with those and and, believe it or
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not, they don't expect a bonus, they don't expect the gift. They
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just want to do it because they
love the organization and they want to be
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better at their job and they want
the company to be better at what they
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do as well. Yeah, absolutely. I mean I had a conversation with
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with a guest on one of our
other shows, crafting culture, that dives
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into this idea of culture with every
single episode and we're talking about attracting,
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recruiting and retaining especially millennial and Gen
z talent and this idea. You know,
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I'm a millennial myself, fun on
kind of the back end of that
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generation, so I can associate with
this. A good bit is that,
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you know, especially those two generation
bands, if you will really prioritize what
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is my purpose, what is my
contribution here to something that's meaningful, and
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I think you know that speaks to
what you're talking about there, is that
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when you enable that, you're not
only getting good ideas that are going to
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help the business, might help you
avoid spending money or going down the wrong
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trail or just throwing money at a
problem that doesn't get solved, but is
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also going to be a great piece
for retaining those employees who do have good
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ideas which otherwise, you know,
would just go unheard. So I think
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that's a great connection to the culture
aspect of it. You know, there's
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some other examples I'm sure that you
could speak to. I know that that
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your wife works in the medical field
right now, speaking of areas where organizations
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are trying to tackle very tough problems
and things are changing quickly, decisions need
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to be made and there are a
lot of stakeholders. You want to speak
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to that and then we'll get to
you know, any example here at sweet
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fish of this for pushing the decision
making down to the not the lowest common
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denominator, but the people closest to
the customer? I think that speaks to
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the customer experienced aspect of it.
I like the way you kind of tweak
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that wording. Yeah, absolutely so. My wife works in the hostess in
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fact, and so you know,
with with covid nineteen, you can imagine
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there right in the middle of the
fire here as we as we speak,
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and it's been interesting for me.
I know nothing about medicine, but just
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standing outside the circle and looking in
from a business standpoint, it's really a
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tragedy logan that the decisions are being
made at an administrative level. In fact,
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in my wife situation, their entire
administrative team, they're all of their
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executives, are working from home and
we're working from home right, so I
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get that. But you know there
are people who aren't. My wife goes
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to work every day and suits up
like a Hasmat worker and takes care of
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people. They lost two people yesterday
the covid on her shift, and so
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they are dealing real time with problems
and man, God bless them, but
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those executives and and administrator trying to
make decisions and create policies and procedures that
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they're not there. Not One time
had they showed up on the floor suited
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up and jumped in or at least
just just walk the floor so that they
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could see and talk to the to
the doctors and the nurses on the front
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lines. Things are changing so fast
and an environment like that, that's often
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the case of medicine. It's often
the case in small business. Things move
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so fast that you have to take
the journey as a leader to the place
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where the action is right and that's
not happening there and it's really a tragedy.
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It's causing people. I don't think
it's too dramatic to say it's costing
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people their lives. I love that
example right there. Obviously it's a it's
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a bit of a sober one to
but it is timely to really think about
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the impact of this change in the
way that you make decisions as a leader.
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Just got a pause and say,
you know, thank you to your
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wife and all of the essential workers, both in healthcare, at grocery stores,
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all sorts of places right now,
that don't have the ability to work
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from home, as well as the
leaders that are going through these challenges of
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trying to manage frontline essential workers that
that they are separated from and in a
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lot of cases maybe they don't have
the opportunity or there are reasons why they
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can't necessarily go to the front lines. I think the the shift in leadership
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mindset that you're advocating for here,
Bill, is, whatever the case,
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what can you do to get the
decisionmaking to the front line? And we
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as leaders have to put on our
journalist hat, going back to you know,
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US wearing hats today, put on
that journalist hat and it goes back
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to you know what John Maxwell says
in the title of one of his books.
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Good leaders ask great questions, right, or maybe it's great leaders ask
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good question I don't know. Anyway, will link to that in the show
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notes. But you have to ask
those questions to get to kind of the
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the end degree, and so whatever
that case is, whether you're in healthcare
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or wherever, if you can't be
at the front lines for whatever reason,
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ask those questions so that you can
get information from they're much like a journalist
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would. Take it to the end
degree to find out what's the real story,
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what's really happening on the ground,
and use that to inform your decisions.
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And I think whatever the case is, whatever industry you're in, when
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you take that approach you're going to
be better off. We've seen that even
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internally, you know, where there
are not lives on the line here at
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sweet fish in the work that we're
doing, where we're serving customers and doing
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great things, but you know,
we've made a shift in the structure of
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our audio and video team here there
and you've kind of been involved in the
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promotion that happened there. Shout out
to Jeremy Wellman, our new manager of
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audio and video. He's not new
to the team, but he's taken on
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new responsibilities. You want to talk
about that scenario a little bit where this
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methodology of decisionmaking has kind of played
out for us? Bill? Yeah,
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absolutely so. Jeremy has served a
number of different roles in the organization.
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He's one of those guys. By
the way, I often talk about good,
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good people that are made of the
right stuff. Jeremy's one of those
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guys. So, as an executive
is a decision maker myself, I'm constantly
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on the lookout for people who who
have the right stuff, and Jeremy certainly
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does. So the investment made in
him is absolutely worth every every minute,
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every dollar that we make. But
in order for him to be truly successful,
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we've got to get out of the
way right as leaders, we can
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operate most effectively to help Jeremy build
his his world, build that department out.
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We can operate best as guides and
facilitators and mentors, as opposed to
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boss has. I've never wanted to
be a boss. I don't want to
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be called a boss, I don't
want to be looked to as a boss.
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I really want to be a resource
and so that's the approach I've taken
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as we've developed and and assisted Jeremy
in defining the new role of audio and
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video in our company. Yeah,
absolutely, I think that, you know,
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in these sorts of scenarios, I
think what other leaders can learn from
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what I've seen in your approach,
Bill, is, you know, trusting
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the the expertise the leader that that
they are leading and their conversations with the
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folks that are on the front line, in this case the folks who are
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editing video and editing audio, to
where you're asking the questions, to where,
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you know, to the things that
would apply, no matter if they're
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editing video, designing graphics or writing
copy. Right, the same sort of
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questions would apply. What's broken in
this process, where we missing communication?
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Those sorts of things. Those are
your responsibilities as a leader and then it's
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on you to look to those leaders
and those direct reports. That will up
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to you to get their feedback and
listen to their expertise on this is the
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specific problem. You Guide them there
with with your expertise and and experience as
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a leader, but rely on their
expertise in in the roll or the function
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that they're carrying out, in the
job that they're doing, and I think
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sometimes we miss that. They expertise
in in leadership and in riding and the
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expertise in what the function is and
I think ran you allow both of those
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two meet in the middle, then
you have better decisionmaking it. I mean,
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is that kind of a good way
to summarize it there, but yeah,
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it's a great way to describe it. The reality is Jeremy is just
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way better at what he's doing that
I would ever be. So we talked
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earlier about people who maybe have gotten
away from the front lines or away from
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sales and haven't done it for maybe
a few years. The reality is I've
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never done audio video. So I'm
super thankful and recognize his subject matter expertise.
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I've got a quick story about the
very first subject matter expert I hired.
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This was long, long ago,
far, far away, but I
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had a guy named Mike. Mike
was ten years older than me and ten
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times better than me, as it
turned out, but we hired Mike and
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he was in a production position.
I remember being back in the production area
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one day and we were we were
trying to solve a problem we had just
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grown and we were we were adding
square footage and looking at how we would
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configure the setup and and what was
the just for context for people, what
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was the business? What was the
just, the the sure text? So
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it was a marketing firm. We
did mostly fulfillment and distribution works. So
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we had a large, you know, we had a twenty Fivezero Square foot
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facility where we created and distributed mostly
marking, marketing collateral material. So as
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we stood there talking about our options
and trying to solve a problem, I
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remember Michael Looking over his left shoulder. This is twenty years ago, Logan
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so, but but I remember really
well. He looked over his shoulder and
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said, Bill, why don't you
go up front and sell something? He
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said, you hired me to do
a job, let me do it,
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and I was so offended for about
ten seconds and then it just hit me.
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I mean that was a that was
one of the most profound leadership lessons
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I learned. Listen, Bill,
you hired me to do a job,
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let me do it. Go Do
Yours. In essence, it was a
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lot nicer about it than that,
but that was the message. I turned
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around, I walked up front and
I'll tell you. I owned that business
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for almost ten years and I never
went back, never went back to production.
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I love it. What was it
that took you from being offended to
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hey, he's making a good point
and I need to walk away and kind
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of back off, not to to
stop leading but to stop overstepping into his
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expertise. Right. Well, the
reality, and in a situation like that,
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it was he was far better equipped
and experience to make those decisions than
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I was. I'm very comfortable leading, as you said earlier, we kind
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of each bring something. I'm very
comfortable and leading in general, but we
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really needed subject matter expertise there,
and so I was offended for a moment
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because we all have egos and I'm
pretty you know, at that point I
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was pretty used to make a decisions. But that that went way very,
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very quickly when I realized that the
only way for us to get better as
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an organization is for us to get
better as a team, and that,
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just for me, turned out to
be at least one of the basic elements.
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Turned out to be hiring people that
are better at what they do than
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I am or ever was, and
the situation with Mike was was a perfect
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example of that. Mike worked for
me for another seven years. He was
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with me the through the day I
sold the business and then went to a
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partner of mine who had been in
other business centers with stayed with him for
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fourteen years and still with him.
As far as I know, Mike is
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still with corey as open to day. I love it. I love that
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story. For any leader who's having
those sorts of conversations right now, lean
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into that with with this in mind, that you know as you as you
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hire people, you know we've talked
here about hiring for cultural fit, as
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you build your team, everyone's going
to have different expertise, different strings,
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just like the avengers. For anybody
WHO's catching up a marvel comic universe movies
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in Chronological Order. I think that's
probably been googled a lot these days and
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as we're catching up on movies and
quarantine. But think about that. You
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know if someone needs to move cars
out of the street, you're going to
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let the hulk do his thing right
and not say, well, I don't
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know how you're doing that. I
would kind of do it this way.
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Your job is to put people in
the right places and then and then kind
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of back off a little bit.
There's accountability, right, there's there's leadership,
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there's working through those problems, but
letting them make the decisions that they
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are best suited to make. I
think just bringing it full circle to what
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you shared at the beginning well build. This has been a great conversation for
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anybody listening to this that wants to
reach out pick your brain on on leadership,
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culture, operations, the things that
you are helping with here at sweet
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fish. What's the best way for
them to reach out or stay connected with
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00:19:48.009 --> 00:19:52.319
you? Sure best way just see
a quick email bill at sweetphish Mediacom.
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00:19:52.839 --> 00:19:56.880
I love it and just a reminder
to anyone listening that I'm not yet connected
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00:19:56.920 --> 00:20:00.960
with you can hit me up logan
at sweetfish Mediacom as well. Please connect
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00:20:00.960 --> 00:20:03.839
with me on Linkedin. My last
name is spelled L Y elies. I'm
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00:20:03.880 --> 00:20:07.869
pretty easy to find there as always. Thank you so much for listening.
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00:20:07.190 --> 00:20:12.789
Bill. Thanks for another great session
on leadership, operations and everything that.
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You bring a lot of wisdom to
the table here at sweetfish. I really
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00:20:17.670 --> 00:20:23.140
appreciate it. Man. Thanks,
slogan. I hate it when podcasts incessantly
285
00:20:23.180 --> 00:20:26.500
ask their listeners for reviews, but
I get why they do it, because
286
00:20:26.539 --> 00:20:30.779
reviews are enormously helpful when you're trying
to grow a podcast audience. So here's
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00:20:30.779 --> 00:20:33.420
what we decided to do. If
you leave a review for me to be
288
00:20:33.500 --> 00:20:37.890
growth in apple podcasts and email me
a screenshot of the review to James At
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00:20:37.930 --> 00:20:42.049
sweetfish Mediacom, I'll send you a
signed copy of my new book, content
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00:20:42.130 --> 00:20:45.769
based networking, how to instantly connect
with anyone you want to know. We
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00:20:45.890 --> 00:20:48.609
get a review, you get a
free book. We both win.