Ep 63 - "A Commander's Intent"

0:07 Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. Chris. What's up? We're recording a little bit later in the day, dude. We've technically tripped into Twilight Hour. Do you feel like you're up for it? No. Up to it? Are you up to the challenge? I'm up for it. Okay. Up for it. All right. I'm up for it. Yeah. I guess we'll find out if we're up to it or not. afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It's sunny here. A sunny day in Corvallis in October. For those of you who don't know, Corral's about two hours south of Portland in rainy Oregon.

0:50 We're getting ready for the onslaught that usually hits here. It is coming. Usually we'd have a few days of pretty crumminess, but here we are. So that's exciting. Well... So what are we going to talk about today? That's an interesting one. Or are we just going to kind of rumble along? No, no, no, no. No, we have a vision. We have a vision for this one. We actually touched on it a few weeks back. No, I think it was actually a few days back. Technically, we did something on the FFL today. Oh, I see what you're doing. I see what you're doing. But by the time somebody listens to this, it'll be a few weeks back. That's right. And for context, those of you who are listening and it's not October of 2022, one of the major events that's happening in the U.S. is Hurricane Ian has had one of the most destructive landfalls of any hurricane maybe in this century.

1:38 Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, hammered Florida, specifically kind of Fort Myers region. And then it went out into the Atlantic, built up steam, and then came ashore again, basically in South Carolina. Yeah, Myrtle Beach. And just hammered Myrtle Beach and kind of those immediate facilities. So, needless to say, right now on the East Coast, there's a ton of... of cat activity. And the strain, the stress, the drama of all of that's affecting not just our clients, but just kind of the industry at large, like all those teams that go to respond and take care of people there. You just see the challenges that show up in those kinds of environments. And you and I were talking about the fact that it's not unlike what I think a lot of teams or people experience in combat or war zones or real world deployments or whatever you want to call it.

2:28 Yeah. Leadership behaviors, how it affects our team, what our teams are experiencing on the ground, these kinds of environments. And then, of course, as we continue to discuss this stuff, it comes full circle and you realize, you know what, this shit applies to everybody, even if their business is not in a cat environment. It totally does, but I think it's especially applicable to all restoration. We are such a weird environment, right? It's like, you know, at least we like to think so. Well, I think so, right? I mean, we often contrast between like retail construction versus restoration construction, just the state of mind, the customers. engage with us is radically different. So it's just, I think the industry as a whole feels more like a war zone environment in the sense that we're always reacting.

3:14 We're a reactive industry. It's difficult to plan and practice in a way that maybe other industries can do. Yeah. And full confession here. I think one of the challenges that I have talking about leadership and operations and business development and all the things is, I think part of us that do things like train, consult, having a podcast, having some kind of social media-based outlet, I think you run this thing in your head of you constantly have to feel like you need to be saying something new or fresh in order for you to be bringing value. Mm-hmm. And so this topic in a lot of ways is going to feel like we are circling back around some of these other topics or ideas, right?

3:57 Like that we've done in the past and we've done before. And one of the things that I think is interesting and what got me excited about this particular topic is I think what happens when you start to be consistent in the type of conversations that you're having, when you're trying to provide specific types of guidance is, What I think you realize over time is that it's less about saying something new and it's more about re-saying it in a slightly different way so that it lands better for a different part of the audience. It connects. It connects better, right? It connects maybe better, maybe it just connects with a slightly different group because their perspective's a little bit different. I mean, we think about our ranks And our companies and really each one of those individuals brings their own perspective. And then on top of that, the groups, like our employee groups.

4:39 If you're a project manager, there's a different perspective than our techs. And our techs have a different one than our estimators, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, cut. Here's where we're going. I think I can call it this too. I don't think that there's any kind of usage of terms that's an issue. But we're referring to this as the commander's intent. Okay. Now, here's kind of the backbone to this. A lot of us want to build a company made up of employees and individuals that are aggressively independent, self-sustaining, capable, really have just awesome work ethic, right? That are just unbelievably loyal to our company and our team. Driven. Driven, right? Results focused.

5:19 We want team members that are operating not too unlike special operations units, as an example. We want this gritty, adapt and overcome mentality that's like, we got to work 20 hours a day, we're going to work 20 hours. We have any SEALs. Yeah, man. It's just this gnarly, whatever the challenge is, we're going to overcome the challenge. I want a team like that. I'm not saying that tongue in cheek. I'm saying that's totally awesome. And we all want that kind of workforce. I think what we miss is we misunderstand how is it that as leaders, we carry ourselves, what kinds of systems, processes, communications, what do I need to do within my company to create that kind of workforce?

6:04 Because I think we make the mistake of when you, it's just saying to ourselves, if we hire the right people, that's what my team will look like. And it's actually not true. So here's where I wanted to go with this. One of the things I learned during my military career was this concept centered around commander's intent. The idea was, as long as a team or a group of individuals, a group of soldiers, as long as they had clarity around the commander's intent, there was a strong chance that regardless of what happened in the battlefield, the deployment, whatever the case may be, we would figure out a way to adapt and overcome and get to the end goal. You know, the whole failure is not an option thing. But I think what people misunderstand is what work goes into creating a system where that kind of team can actually be existing, right?

6:48 Yeah. Can actually exist. And so I think what happens is, is that we look, we watch movies, we hear stories, and we identify these groups of people that just can overcome anything and everything. And we don't realize what systematically was happening behind the scenes to put them in a position to be that way. Yeah. And so I kind of just want to break that down a little bit. And I think one of the places I want to hang first is this idea of what really is happening behind the scenes in order for, let's say, a special forces team or a SEAL team to be able to be aggressively independent, adapt and overcome and complete the mission at all costs, right? What's happening for that to actually come to fruition? And there's some key things that I think that the military has done a great job of boiling down.

7:36 like that. You should mention before we get too far for new listeners or whatever, just your background. So kind of share, share your interaction with the military and where this is coming from. Yeah. So I did eight years in the infantry, U.S. Army. Four of those years, I was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division 1504 Infantry Battalion, and I was a paratrooper. And then from there, I went into the guard. I got deployed to the guard and kind of some other actions within the military. But At the 82nd Airborne Division, it's interesting because you're stationed at Fort Bragg, or at least I was stationed at Fort Bragg, and Fort Bragg is home to a lot of special operations units. SF is a big, a lot of representation of the SF community and even Delta community there.

8:17 We are, you know, there's some of us would say like the 82nd Airborne Division is kind of the very beginning of when you start tiptoeing into special operations. Okay. From there, you go into Rangers and some of the other units. Anyways, so it was cool. It was a very cool part of my life. I got to jump out of airplanes and do what a very small group of people does. But it taught me a lot. I got exposure to all sorts of really interesting things regarding unit movement, command and control, leadership, right? Getting essentially getting things done through people. Yeah. For those of you who can't see, Brandon has a grin, like a smile growing on his face as he recalls these things. It was a very amazing part of my life. It certainly had its own challenges, but it was a great part of my life, and I really enjoyed it.

9:01 Anyways, okay. So Commander's Intent. Just kind of, I guess, give some background here. Here's what happens. Essentially, before any deployment, any mission, There's a substantial amount of time doing a workup, if you will, and there's some other jargon that's used. But the idea is you spend an enormous amount of time, energy, and resources kind of rebuilding this battle plan, this environment where this mission will ultimately happen. And they do everything that they can to recreate that environment and all the different scenarios and influencers of that situation that they possibly can. So there's this immense amount of intel that's being gathered in preparation to begin training.

9:42 On top of that, there's another couple key things that are happening is, one, there's an organizational structure that creates really clear channels of communication, real clarity around roles, responsibilities, and real clear channels around seniority and authority. So, so far, we have... real strict clarity around an organizational structure. We have lots of time and resources that go into prep and training. In order for us to have those resources, we do a lot of data gathering, a lot of intelligence gathering, and then we execute these training models. Okay, so think about that. In order for us to have aggressive independence and for us to have this adapt and overcome mentality, listen to what gets put into place first.

10:30 Because this is where we miss the mark as business. They don't talk about this when you see the Navy SEAL movies and stuff like that. Like Black Hawk Down. You don't see any of the pre-mob workup stuff. It's all the guts and blood and the, you know, it's like, I'm in it for you. All those things are true. But there's some strategic things that are taking place on a consistent basis to set that team up to be able to operate that way. And this is the piece, I think, that we missed the mark. So again, just to kind of recap these, because really, this is where the driver of the conversation goes. In order for us to build this level of independence and ability, it starts with really strong organizational structure, clear and consistent channels of communication, lots of resources and assets going into training specifically, and we're gathering a lot of intel.

11:16 Okay, that's critical. Now, ultimately what that does is that gets married up to this concept of the commander's intent. I.e., when shit hits the fan, no matter what happens, this is the end result that we have to secure. Commander's intent. Okay? So I was thinking about this in kind of connection with teams that are being deployed in Florida, whether you're from there or you've actively gone into that environment intentionally. I was thinking about just businesses in general in our industry. And what I was connecting the dots to here was this, is that we hear this. We hear the buzz of communication between team members and company owners and leaders of there's just these discrepancies that are happening between key leaders' perception of what's happening in the field or their understanding of the battle plan or their understanding of what the end goal is, the commander's intent, and this giant chasm that exists between them and the individual employees out in the field that are trying to act on these initiatives.

12:15 Yeah. And what struck me is, is that we as leaders often, because we're the ones with the most experience often, or it's our company, and so there's this real sense of ownership, obviously, and wanting to control the outcome. It's our connections, our relationships. Our connections could be key clients and relationships that we grew up building in our business. And so what you see is you see these key leaders find value or think that the best way for them to influence the outcome of this is to become doers. So instead of them being the company owner at 30,000 feet, now all of a sudden a cat event happens and we step into the field and now they're the ones selling to our key relationships. Or we start grabbing key leaders and we make them, now you're a project manager of this big job because it's a big job and it's fairly complex.

13:02 It's worth a lot of money. And I know if you're listening to this right now and you're being honest with yourselves, we do this all the time. So let's take it down to scale and just think local business. We get really busy and now my mitigation department manager starts running jobs. Okay, like I understand why our gut instinct is to take these kinds of actions. But I think this is what's really, really important for us to remember. As soon as we take a key leader out of their position at 30,000 feet, 20,000, whatever the number is, where they no longer can clearly own and hold to a clear organizational structure. They can no longer clearly communicate the plan.

13:43 They can no longer continue to equip and train their people and they can no longer gather good intelligence and get it out to their team. And you described it earlier, they're no longer in a position to see the battlefield. They can't see it. Right? We're now, you know, before I was in a command status, I was on the higher ground. I could see the battlefield. We've now taken that advantage out. We've removed us from having that tool and resource. And now we're doers. And what we don't understand happens is we've now taken what kept or should have been in place to keep our team all rowing in the same direction. And then in the midst of that chaos now, our ranks begin to feel the full brunt of it and they no longer have confidence in the mission.

14:26 They no longer have confidence in where we're going. They no longer know what's happening anymore. They did when we started, but two days into the mission, they start losing confidence feedback. They start losing information, the intel coming back to them to update them on the battlefield and what's happening in the war zone. And ultimately what you see then is this trust in the team begins to break down. And now individuals are no longer confident enough to step out. They're no longer capable of ad-libbing and adapting and overcoming because they no longer fully understand the commander's intent. Because as things unfolded in the battlefield, we stopped owning the core competencies or infrastructure that allows us to operate in that changing environment with a state of confidence and consistency.

15:13 And I know sometimes I talk about this stuff and it gets a little heady and I get kind of all fired up. But I think this is that part of leadership that people lose track of its value because we don't talk about it very much. We don't talk about just these core competencies when they affect us at scale. I don't know how the way to put it, but we are so good at giving value to somebody that understands IICRC standards or understands how to manage a large loss because they've done it for 20 years. And don't hear me wrong, that's exactly what you get in a special forces team. You have a communications sergeant. You have somebody that's a medic. You have people that specialize and bring their experience to the table, but none of that happens.

15:57 Without a commander in a position where they can oversee what's happening and provide guidance and leadership. Yeah. Okay. And so I think the struggle, like even culture in general as a company, the reason your organization doesn't have any form of culture that you're... building and identifying and leading in a proactive way is because you don't have clarity on your org structure. You don't have clear communication channels. You're not spending enough time and energy on training. And you're certainly not doing enough to gather intelligence and feed that intelligence to your company. Yeah. Like that's what's happening. Well, when you end up in a place where you're not equipping and empowering, you're micromanaging.

16:37 You are. Because that's what you're left with. You're field directing. You are. Which means you have to be everywhere at once, which nobody can be. And as soon as you're not, those areas that have a little more of a shadow on them, those areas that you're not able to shine a light in and see yourself, will begin to fall apart and not produce the result that you want. Now, listen. I don't want to overstate the idea that during boot camps, they're filtering out those that don't have the internal mechanisms to have a seat on the bus. I'm not taking that away. That's where your onboarding and your hiring process kicks in. Sure. Don't put a C player on the bus and think that just because you communicate well, there'll be an A player. That's not true, but I've seen a lot, a lot, a lot of A players become D players because no one is fucking putting these other four things in place in their business.

17:26 Happens all the time. We see companies that their turnover rate is obnoxious. They literally, it's like every time they get any ounce of momentum in their company, they lose all their key players and they start all over again. Well, that's because we're not often in those cases. Even if we did a great job and hired a bunch of A players, A players don't want to work for a shitty team. Period. Like, really shitty commanders have units that fall apart. They were still SEALs. They were still SF guys, right? They still went through all the filtering, all the breakdown, all the do you really have what it takes, but they failed under shitty leadership. Because at the end of the day, we got to have good leadership. Okay. Anyways, I digress. Okay. So here's what I want to kind of wrestle with a little bit with everybody is, I just want us to stop long enough to think about as key leaders, whether we're a company owner, whether we're a department head, whether we're a team leader, whether you're just a senior technician, what can we learn from this concept of understanding the commander's intent and our role to be able to support and create the kind of environment that gives our team members radical freedom to be competently independent?

18:35 And I use that language on purpose because I think it best describes what we want. We want people that act competently independent, meaning they're confident. They understand the strategy. They're taking action, but it's not any action. It's action that's thoughtful and intentional and aligns with our intent, what the end state is, the goal. Hey friends, hey listeners. We're doing something a little bit different with our ads. So you've been accustomed to hearing some ads with our favorite partners and companies in the industry. Now we actually have a product page, our partners page on our website. So floodlightgrp.com forward slash partners. We want to give you a quick rundown though of the people that we're partnering with and we believe in as really go-to resources in the industry.

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22:06 Thanks, guys. So, okay. How do we do that? Yeah. Flesh this out a little bit. Because operationally, let's get on the ground. What does this potentially look like in a conventional restoration, full service restoration company? You know, and this is that part, like I told you at the beginning, where it's like, well, big chunks of this are going to sound like episodes we've done before. Sure. Right. Well, it's because at the end of the day, all this shit comes back and kind of aligns with itself. Like, like these are symbiotic relationships between these mechanisms and you can't have one without the other. So let's just go in through these four components, organizational structure, communication, training and intel. So first, the org structure. Okay, like the military, we have to have a clean chain of command.

22:48 There's no lack of clarity in most military units. Who leads a team? Who leads a squad? Who leads a platoon? Who leads a company? So on and so forth. There's clarity around how many people report to this individual and ultimately what part of the job, world, career, whatever, are these individuals responsible for? There's crystal clarity in that. And what happens with that crystal clarity is that teams can move fast. They can move fast because they're not spending a bunch of energy trying to decide, who do I ask for help? Who do I talk to? Who do I find out if I'm in this mission or not in this mission? Who do I go to to talk about my pay and what rank I am? None of that happens.

23:28 Because from the very first day, you know where you are in the chain of command. You know what your career progression can look like, and you know who's in front of you that you report to. Period. How many businesses right now can say with devoted confidence that the organizational structure is so crystal clear in your company that regardless of who it was, they could stop any person in your company, ask them their role, their title, their responsibilities, and what they do on a day-to-day basis, and who helps them make progression in their career? I'm hanging there for a minute, right? It's like, honestly, guys, look at your business and ask yourself that question.

24:11 And don't kind of. The answer, is it crystal clear how many positions within your company wear 10 hats? How many positions in your company really don't know who they talk to about career progression, performance, pay? How many in your team have two or three people that throughout a week, they may have some kind of interaction with to get some kind of idea how to solve a problem, how to deal with a role or a task? Be honest with yourself. I will tell you as a consultant, most of the companies that we come up with, whether they hire us or not, whether they're just a peer or a friend in the industry, we see far more companies lacking clarity around their organizational chart than we do companies that have clarity.

24:53 And we've had to claw our way out of that confusion and chaos as well. I've made the mistake more times than I want to admit. Yeah. Right? And the reality of it is, is based on your size and the direction that your company's going, that work chart's going to change. But the point is the same, is that we have to have some kind of foundation to build our company on. And part of where trust and consistency and clarity comes from, it starts first by having a very crystal clear organizational chart. So like, think about it. What does communication channels look like if we don't even know who we're communicating through? What does training look like if I don't even really fully understand what part I have on the team? What does intel gathering and reporting look like if I really don't even know what our organizational structure looks like?

25:36 These are not things that can happen in silos, but they're just mission critical. And far too often, even healthy companies that are growing, they don't stop long enough to build the base. Yeah. And they're just, well, you know, when I first hired, I did this. And, you know, as more things have come in, I've just accepted the responsibility. Good people will just keep saying yes. But it doesn't mean you don't have the responsibility as a leader. If you want to build the kind of company that we want to build, you have to establish clarity around the organizational structure. So can we, you know, you and I have been through at least two cat events that just come right to my mind. Mm-hmm. Three, maybe more.

26:16 But okay, like this scenario in Florida, phone systems are sporadically down. For a couple of days, there was just nothing. Road closures and stuff like that. From your experience with the military, how do we maintain that or how do we create that in an environment that we have a lot less control over? That's a great question. And I think this is like the nuts and bolts portion is where all your guys' experience being on the ground and running businesses and doing this for a living gets to come out. Like this is where you as key leaders get to problem solve, right? But shit does happen and normal communications and all sorts of things can get compromised. Well, one of the things that you would see like in a military environment is the military environment, we create redundancies.

26:56 So here's a silly example. Let's say normal radio is a standard operating way for us to communicate. cellular activity, let's call it nowadays, right? Well, if that goes down, if that infrastructure is unsupported for some reason, we have sat phone. We have sat communication as a backup, right? If that fails, then we're going to have to do some kind of face-to-face contact in order for us to continue communicating what needs to be communicated. But all of that is talked about prior to the start of mission. So I've got freedom to adapt and overcome, but I don't have to just figure this shit out of thin air, right? Here's what our plan is. Here's the backup. And if all else fails, here's what we have left. Well, let's think about that in a cat environment.

27:36 I think we could do something similar in terms of communication. So we start with, we do normal modes of communication. We shouldn't have any problem texting and emailing. Great. What happens if that does fail? Well, okay, great idea. Well, we're going to start every day meeting at XYZ zone so that we can communicate the today's priorities, the missions that we'll be chasing, and what equipment and assets that we have to continue to sell. Okay, so we have a primary, and then we have a backup. And the team already knows. When shit hits the fan and we lose primary, they move to the backup methodology. Okay. And then backup methodology needs to be used consistently. It's not kinda, it's not an option. That's what we're doing now. As long as the phones are down, we meet every morning at this location. This is what we do, right?

28:17 And we have to think about, is the way that we're communicating effective in chaos? So like, I don't even, I'm not going to say the name of one program. We've used a thing called GroupMe in the past. There's Slack channels. There's all these different kind of communication methodologies. The challenge with those is... WhatsApp, you know, all those things. WhatsApp, right? If you just see miles... of updates and communication coming through that, you're going to miss the important stuff. I don't care. It doesn't... No one's got time to look at walls and walls of text to ensure that that notification was specifically for them or that whatever was being communicated in that group environment made sense to them and applied to their particular responsibilities.

28:59 And at that minute, you're running a risk of throwing shit at a wall and hoping that your team pays attention to the details that matter to them. Okay? That was a side note. Okay. So organizational structure, that's actually where we started on this. So let's get back on. I'm getting on a warpath. All right. So organizational structure, clarity around that when we deploy into a cat zone, do business at home, have a kind of a widespread event, whatever. Let's go back to the basics. So if you as a team have done a great job of establishing clarity around your organizational structure before, right, just under normal battle rhythms, then you are set up to commit and hold true to that organizational structure when you get out in the field and you start acting. So what do we do with that organizational structure in the field?

29:40 Well, what it does first is if we have direct alignment or clarity around who we go to for answers, support, and resources, now instead of me trying to ask for help or getting feedback and it falls on deaf ears or it doesn't get responded to, if we are committed to following a specific organizational structure that we set up, you shouldn't be communicating with 50 people. You should be communicating to a handful of people that you're responsible for, right? Yeah. So now this excuse of, oh, I was running and gutting. I couldn't answer a text. I couldn't respond to a phone call. Bullshit. Don't build an or structure that puts you in a position where you can no longer report to your team or communicate through the organizational structure to keep the fucking mission on point.

30:22 If you've done that, you're wrong, right? If you can't answer phone calls for your team to give them clear direction on how to continue to move the mission forward, you are failing as a leader. And some of you hearing that, that's going to hurt your feelings. Get fucking over it. It hurt my feelings too. But you know what hurt worse? My ego when shit fell apart because it was my fault. It's your fault right now. If you're a leader, whether you're in a cat environment or at home, you know how many restoration businesses I look at that are a walking tire fire because their internal organizational structure doesn't exist? Most of them. You're a leader. You're a business owner. You're an entrepreneur.

31:02 Your first job is to create an organizational structure that people can commit to and have clarity around. End of story, okay? Next thing, communication chain. These are the battle rhythms that we talk about all the time. It's your weekly meeting schedules. It's your daily stand two. It's your weekly sales meeting. It's your Friday check-ins. It's basic responsibility. You need feedback and feedback. And your team needs feedback. It's two-way communication. It's literally the most foundational element of any relationship on the planet. If you've built a company and your team cannot communicate effectively between one another, you are failing as a leader. You can tell me we're really busy this week. You can say this thing happened and it just, it was a ton of call volume.

31:45 We had an influx of jobs. You can say all the things that you want to until you solve the problem. It doesn't really matter what you say. You're going to get the outcome that you don't want. Communication. It's literally the most basic necessity that you have to have in your organization. So what do we do? Well, if your mitigation team has a stand-to every single morning, when shit hits the fan, why all of a sudden would we stop having a stand-to every single morning? Why is it when your team needs it the most, you would forfeit a standard operating procedure that keeps your business in line? It doesn't make any sense. I don't understand it. And I know Chris is looking at my face right now. He can tell how pissed off I get at this.

32:27 Guys, listen. The reason I get so frustrated by it is because I did it. I did it. I fucked it up. Right? And it's like, then I see the look in my employees' faces when I lose them or they have an exit interview with me. And basically, I find out that I destroyed an A player because I didn't do my job as a leader. right? So communication, what does this look like? Guys, you already know. Many of you already know. It's normal meeting rhythms. It's battle rhythms. It's being consistent in our check-in. It's consistency in what methodology do we even use to communicate? Is it all face-to-face? Is it verbal? Is it over-the-phone check-ins? I... Honestly, be creative. Do what works best for your team. My point is this, put the infrastructure in place that ensures that you and your team members have a consistent rhythm of checking in, providing updates, and getting intel back on the areas that they're responsible for.

33:21 Let's think about this in a sales environment, cat environment. For some of you, this is going to land really close to home and it's probably going to rub you wrong. I pay salespeople to go sign up new jobs. My salespeople go out into the field and start trying to sign up new jobs. They sign up X new job. We start to produce new job. I stop communicating updates to my salesperson. Here's the reality about this. I could barely do this at times in normal conditions. Do you know how often, even under my leadership, I would have a sales team not realize that we're actively working on one of their client's jobs. Do you know what a massive failure that is as a leader to allow that to happen? That's gross.

34:02 Think about that. Cat environment or not, your salespeople are charged with going and earning your business new relationships and then you don't have the decency to keep them informed on their client when you start producing the job. What do we... What does that communicate to the sales people? Yeah, what is it saying? What kind of end product are you going to get? How long are you going to have that salesperson? Like, just think about all the failures that that sets the system up to experience. And it's just, it's foundational basic shit. But we don't prioritize it. We don't look at that as being more important than going and signing the next job.

34:42 But it is. Like, you can sign 10x new jobs when your systems are in place. That's the point. And we just want to keep adding fucking fuel to the fire, but we don't want to put the kind of wood on it that'll burn nice, hot, and slow. We don't want to build the foundation. Anyway, okay. So that's a basic channel. What have you established so that you, on a consistent basis, can inform your sales staff of what's happening on their jobs? Or here's another example. Our resources are changing by the minute. It doesn't even matter if we're in a cat environment. We could be at home. My salespeople lock in three, four new relationships and they're just waiting to get that first call, right? I mean, we all are.

35:22 We get the first call and it just happens to be that that week, two clients came on at the same time. How often does this kind of stuff happen? We wait six months to get the first call and two call with substantial losses the exact same week. And we're really freaking out about manpower and resources. We start making decisions operationally, but then we don't sit our sales team and invite them into that communication, to that decision-making standard. We don't say, hey, we're going to do X. Here's how we want you to help us communicate that. Here's how we're going to support it behind the scenes. It's like we don't even do... the basics to offer them a professional courtesy, let alone lead them well.

36:02 Okay, we beat that one up. And guys, listen, if this sounds a bit like a brow beating, it kind of is. Like it kind of is because I think part of me gets frustrated because we see this happening just such, it's not once or twice. Like this is more common than not really. Okay. All right. And I can't emphasize it enough. It's experiential for both of us. Oh, like the failure of it. Oh, the failure of it. It's like, yeah. You know, and again, it's like, I'm not even frustrated with you guys, right? It's almost like I'm just saying it out loud because I don't want you guys to have to continue to experience this in your teams because it's so disheartening.

36:44 Like all this grinding gears to build your business and you feel like you take two really solid steps forward. And then the next thing you know, you lose at least a step, if not two, to one of these blowouts. Well, this is often happening because we're not building the foundation. Right. We're not prioritizing our role as a leader to commit to these four categories and letting our production staff do the work, right? Okay, training. It's another piece. We talk about this. Under this idea of commander's intent, once we've established commander's intent, there's just this absurd amount of time that's spent in training and practicing and doing it over and over and over again. It's not throwing somebody in a truck. and hoping that through osmosis, they pick up what Jack the technician might do sometimes.

37:29 That does not create team members that can competently be independent in their role. That does not do it. We have to train them. Meaning we have a specific training standard. We're very clear on what it is we train, how we train it, how do we sign off on it, how do we confirm that the employee is competent in those areas that are critical for them to do their job? How do we give them feedback on a consistent basis that tells them they've got it, that they're getting it? Like if you don't invest time and energy into the training of your staff, how on earth do you want them to go out with confidence and be independent guys? Freedom comes from discipline. Freedom does not come from chaos.

38:11 Freedom comes when our teams are well-trained and they can think on their feet because their energy is not going to the basics anymore. They know how to show up and do their job. Where their creative energy is going is, how do I take care of this particular client in a way that will get us another opportunity? When shit heads the fan, how do I make an adjustment confidently but still know what my commander's intent is? I still know what the result is I have to provide for my client. Training is what keeps special operations teams in the field and effective even when stuff goes wrong. It's not just their grit. Okay. Your teams need training in order for them to adequately improvise in the field.

38:52 Okay. Intel. It's the last one. And I'll get off my soapbox. Thank you all for hanging with us anyways. Okay. Intel. This is our data. Okay. Think about it in our business. These are our KPIs. These are our performance indicators. These are leading activities. Okay. This is the data. This is our closing rates. This is our gross profit margin. This is our revenue versus goal. It's the intel, right? This is, Chris, this is the curious questions that our leaders ask when we get onto a job so that we can prepare our team to deliver an exceptional customer experience. Intel. If you do not have a systemized way to gather intelligence from your performance, from the field, from your sales staff, from your client markets, and you're not providing that detail, that intel, back to your teams to make them better, to give them more confidence, to equip them for success, you are failing as a leader.

39:47 Our teams have to know what's going on. They have to know if they're winning. They have to know if they're succeeding. They have to know what's the most current information on that project, that client, that goal, that mission, Leaders are responsible for providing access to the intel so that their people can be competently independent. Intel is what allows special operations teams to make modifications to a battle plan when it's underway. In fact, they use intel to make better decisions once the battle starts. We talked about this a little bit, battle patience.

40:29 Battle patience is this idea that at times, we have to slow down just long enough to allow the actions on the battlefield to unfold enough to give us more clarity about what's really happening. Okay? That's normal life too. That's normal business operations. You can start with a plan. You can train towards a plan. And then when we begin to execute, inevitably, we will hear things. We will learn things. We will identify things that are critical for us to modify our behavior for success. That's intel. We have to have that information coming inbound and being fed adequately to our team so that they can execute. As a leader, that's your job to prioritize that, not doing it.

41:11 Leaders are designed to hold a specific command and control role. And I do not mean command and control, i.e. micromanage, dominate, or own. Command and control is literally owning responsibility for creating organizational structure, creating standardized communication systems and methodology, creating and allocating resources towards training and equipping and ensuring your team has the most up-to-date and most valid intelligence so that they can make decisions on the battlefield. That's your job as a leader. I think that's it. I think that's the end of my sermon. I think that's a good place for us to stop.

41:52 Thanks for hanging out with us. Guys, remember, I'm saying that because I make those mistakes. I'm not saying it because I'm judging you. I've made those mistakes. It's burnt me out. I've burnt out great people. It has at times made me look back at my performance and not be happy with what I did with the resources that were in front of me. If you're a business owner and you're trying to build a business that can survive without your direct input on a day-to-day basis, if you want to build a company that allows you to have the freedoms of a business owner, if you want to lead a team or create a team that is engaged and competently independent, we have to execute on those four competencies. That's where our time and energy has to be going.

42:33 If you do that, you'll get what you want. You'll have a company that people want to be in. If you don't, you're going to continue to chase fires. You're going to continue to drink yourself to death on a nightly basis. You're going to continue to be frustrated and disgruntled. And you're going to continue to fight a team that's built on a revolving door where new team members are coming and going all the time. It doesn't have to be that way. Okay. Thanks for hanging out with us. I still love you guys. We'll see you next time. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots. And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend.

43:18 Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.