Ep 53 - "The Problem With Leadership"

0:07 Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and 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. I don't know. What'd you think? I don't know. I was kind of serious. Should we laugh? That's terrible, dude. It's like you just crawled into people's ear and gave this weird... Dude, and I totally have like that... Deep breathing sound into the mic. And I totally have that gnarly, I'm hungry coffee breath. Well, I'm really glad I didn't hear that. So if somebody had smell-o-vision... Oh my gosh, dude. Oh, you'd be smelling the guts right now.

0:47 Hey, so I got a story and let's see where it goes. Yeah, let's do it. I want to stop talking about your coffee breath. Yeah. But do you want to live out the experience? Can you just face forward towards the camera, dude? That's a good question. Does anybody notice our new Shurety mics, by the way? Yeah. Unfortunately, I... The branding's upside down. Yeah, I need to flip it around. So anyway. We're still working with the visual awkwardness of trying to keep the mic stands out of our face and... A future enhancement. We'll dial that in. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Wadley and the team. You guys are studs. Yeah, these are Shure MV7s. These are like nice podcasting mics, so... Yeah, we're stoked. We got a little come up for the studio. It's great. All right. Okay, so I'm at a barbecue. Three days ago, a Sunday, I'm at a barbecue.

1:29 And I end up seeing a local executive from a pretty major construction company. There's a few in our market. So I'm talking with this guy. I think sometimes we look at big companies... And, you know, we kind of get goo-goo-ga-ga eyes, you know, thinking, oh my gosh, they're so huge and so successful and they must have it all together. And how did they get there? You know, especially when you're a small service company or whatever, you got this big vision for yourself, but getting from here to there just seems so ominous, right? And so we prop up these executives as, wow, there's special sauce there. And oftentimes there is. But as I'm talking shop with this guy...

2:09 Careful on your details. Yeah. Yeah. He was talking about how much of a struggle it is to just keep everybody pointed in the same direction. The organization of the business is really hard. And I'm like, this is so cool to learn this about them, that they're real, just like every other company that we work with and experience you and I've had. superintendents, estimators, project executives and project managers and all that kind of stuff. And that he's discovering that many of them were never equipped with the skill and experience to do that job.

2:57 They came up as an engineer or they came up as a tradesperson or some other role that, But they were never equipped with the project management or people leadership skills or the financial management, budget management and stuff for the positions. And so they've discovered some pockets of this in the business that it's really been creating some problems in terms of profitability and process and all that. Yeah. I thought, wow. I mean, if it can happen in a really successful, respected company like that, how much more does it happen for those of us that we don't have access to the same resources and even consulting and that kind of stuff that a larger company like that might have.

3:42 But it really boiled down to, he's like, look, it's about managing that transition between specialist or frontline person or the trade craft, and then leadership and department management and this other role that integrates the technical with the people management. Yeah, you bet. And I just thought, wow, that's so relevant for our little niche of the industry as well. How often do we take the most charismatic or technically competent person on the team and raise them up into that department leader role only to see them struggle in one of two ways?

4:25 Just either flounder executing on their role or... Or becoming sort of the do-it person on their team. Where it's just like they end up picking up all of the work from their team because it's just easier to do it themselves. That whole paradigm. Yeah. Right? No, I think you're spot on. I thought this is worth talking about because you and I haven't talked about this a ton recently in the podcast. And it's just such a relevant thing for all of our clients and probably the whole industry. Yeah. No, I think you're spot on. And that's just that transition that we see so commonly or a failure in transition is, again, like you alluded to, it's just like, we trust this individual, right?

5:05 Because with the area of responsibility they've had in the past or currently, before this move or this transition, is they do it. They do what we ask. They're consistent. They understand the team culture. They're a great fit. Yeah, they're loyal. Loyal, engaged. We just have a lot of trust for when we ask them to accomplish task A, they're going to go out and do it and do it well. And so because of that trust, we're like, okay, great. We have a key influencer in our staff and our chain of command. So let's put them in this new arena, this new area of responsibility. And ultimately, what you're talking about there is, in a lot of ways, is they don't any longer know what a win looks like. Yeah. Because what they were skilled at, what they spent years doing and executing on, they had over time, whether it had been trained or it just was developed over time, is they learned how to produce a win.

5:57 And so now they're in this new arena. They're playing a new part of the game. And they no longer know what that win looks like. And so they're doing the best they can to interpret. They're doing the best that they can to maybe pick up things secondhand in production meetings and meetings. And they're doing the best they can, but they really haven't been equipped or trained formally for this new area of expertise or this new... area of responsibility. And I think too, like you said, that jumping in and doing is because it's native. That's what they know to do. You know what else I think is going on? And I was chatting with this guy about that is just this idea that as companies, you can go a long way.

6:40 on charisma and hustle and values. So many service companies are built on this foundation of the original founder was really a good person. They were a person of their word. They could be counted on. There was a value around quality and customer service and a lot of these fundamental things. And you can take that a long way. Yep. Now, how profitable you are along the way as you're figuring it out, right, of course, can be a struggle. But then companies get to a place where you get big enough where those core fundamentals are not enough. Yeah. Where unless some unified language, some consistent processes are adopted across the team, people understand the why, there's some interconnectedness between the different roles and departments.

7:31 things really start to break down and it's no longer enough to have these shared values or everybody is a hard worker and we're all honest. Because I think you can go a long time with people using their best judgment in the field, but at some point, it's like, everybody's best judgment is going to look a little bit different or a lot different. Yeah. And all of that variability of how one person tackles a problem versus another just really starts to catch up with you. Oh, yeah. Hands down. And then when the file volume and relational volume starts to increase exponentially over the years... then just from a peer statistic perspective, you're the failure rate, right?

8:11 The opportunity for a mishap just goes through the roof. I think something that we could do kind of tactically here is you and I have a, let's call it a perspective on what we think key leaders need to begin focusing on as they make this transition from executing to leadership. And I think what's interesting here is that you can look at this, and I think we'll kind of play with some of the context with this is, This is true all the way from a project manager level to a true department head. Now, the day-to-day activity or the part that you're influencing and how you influence this is going to look different. But honestly, it's like once we leave that position where I am doing physically with my hands, and now I'm either leading teams, leading subs, guiding the client relationship...

9:00 these leadership focuses become the same. And then they just scale a little bit by role. Okay, so let's just go through those. And I think you and I can ping pong, okay, what's that look like, let's say for a project manager as an example versus a department head or a sales manager versus other kind of operational department head. And I think that'll kind of give some guidance for folks to think about in terms of, ultimately, we have to identify where the holes are. Okay, we've promoted this individual to this new area of responsibility. Okay. If we think about it in this way, now we can go back and say, is there potential for holes? And if so, what can we do to equip them, train them, and fill those gaps? Okay, so the first part that we really have a shift, I think, mentally is from the doing when we get into these leadership roles is we have to really be geared in on the cash effect of what we're doing, what our team's doing, right?

9:53 And so for department heads, that's literally like us collecting on invoices that are aging, things of that nature. Cost controls, monitoring the execution of those cost controls, things of that nature. But even in the field as a project manager, part of our responsibility for really adhering to a budget and committing to not spending money we don't have approvals on, things of that nature, is about this area of we are protecting the cash flow of the company, this lifeblood. that feeds the families, that gives us the ability to advance our skill set and create new opportunities, all that. So that cash collection, when you're no longer a technician, that cash collection piece or focus becomes mission critical.

10:36 So if the idea with this show a little bit is, okay, let's think about where there could be a hole there then. So if we understand now a department head or a project manager or some kind of, let's MIT manager, something along those lines. If they need to have a firmer grip on our cash collection position and what activities they are interacting with on a day-to-day basis that affect that, well, then we need to get some training done around that to make sure that they're competent in that specific area. So very common, right? And actually, in your story, you didn't really unpack it, but... The inability or the lack of systems process and maybe some training created not a great opportunity for cash flow.

11:17 And that's ultimately where we see this shake out often. Profitability, things of those nature. Okay. So the second piece, and these are somewhat interconnected to a certain extent. They just have different functions as we execute on the day. is just this profitability and the consistency of our service delivery. So again, when I'm a technician, I'm developing my tradecraft, my skill set to come in, follow this process, adhere to it, provide a great customer experience. Now when I'm a project manager or a department head, it's my overseeing of that. It's not me doing it necessarily, but it's this, is my team equipped to do that?

11:59 As you alluded to, we see people just jump in and do it themselves because it's faster. By the time they explain it, they can just do it. But if we don't make that shift, then you've ultimately created an entire department or team that's dependent on one person's trade skill or skill craft. Instead of that individual making this transition into a leadership role where now it's like, okay, but is my team equipped? Yeah. to deliver this? Or what do I need to do to make sure I have five people that can do it instead of just me? Right? And that's a hard mental transition. Yeah, it's like being a competition angler, a fisherman, and knowing how to catch fish and then transitioning to teach others how to fish, right? That's right. Yeah, it's massive.

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15:27 And I think people just underestimate what happens organically with your SEO search activity when you're getting these new and active five-star reviews from our clients. And we just can't let the pedal up on that because of the effect on our business as long as long. It's a big deal. So check it out. Check out our partners page. Do business with them. You won't regret it. We're confident in that. Floodlightgrp.com forward slash partners. Thanks, guys. Creating new opportunities. Again, these are these lists of things that we feel, our perspective, that these are mission critical for leaders as they begin to develop in your organization. And again, depending on their role, project management, sales management, department management, that execution might look differently.

16:08 But this creating new opportunities, right? Like when you begin to... Really, this is a team sport. This is everybody in our organization needs to have this focus. But again, when we start moving into these leadership roles, it's more than the accountability, the guidance, the equipping of our team to have this shared mentality, to be able to know how their role feeds this particular item in it. Yeah, I've heard people describe that as a broader, like integrated view of their role. Like, where do I fit? Where do my team fit within our business and in relation to these other jobs and other projects we have going on, the relationships we're trying to build and grow?

16:48 Yeah. No, I think kind of the overarching theme here is that it's, take your eyes up a couple stories. We're not at 30,000 feet per se, but we have to step outside of the execution phase, the hands-on delivering and saying, okay, assess the team, assess my group, my division, and say, how are we accomplishing this? What are we doing to increase the number of opportunities our team will see this year? And that's what we're talking about with this this creating new opportunities. It's funny because as we go through this list of primary focus for leaders, it reminds me a lot of the 4P, 4Ps conversation that we've had in the past because they're so symbiotic.

17:33 You almost say these things and you say, yeah, but in order to do that, we've got to have this in place or we need to be focused on this. And that is true. There's no way to protect profitability and consistency of service delivery and not end up creating new opportunities or create a great customer satisfaction experience. They can't be done in isolation, yet they're kind of core attributes. These things all fit together. Employee engagement. And this one's massive. And I think also this can look like, again, if we're trying to delineate between a department head, for an example, and a project manager in the field, our team. It could be as simple as the team, and that team may be made up of employees, but it could be made up of subs and vendors and partners.

18:18 But our engagement element is the same. So maybe instead of employee engagement, it's team engagement. Whatever those resources look like, internal or external, As you make this shift from I execute with my hands and now I'm leading some form of this process is how are those teams thinking about how they affect the job, the client, our team, our brand? How are we working together? Yeah. That's it. How is this team functioning? Thinking about what in terms of skill sets and personalities and experience levels, how is this team working together?

18:58 What does each individual player need in order for us to work more? Yeah. That's spot on. Seamlessly together. Yeah. Training. Training, equipping. Right. If you're... And this is true, again, every level. I mean, even at our tech level, this is critical. If you're somebody that's been on the team for a while, and we talked about this, I think, a couple episodes ago... Or maybe it's coming out this week, coaching culture. This is where that sets in is that as peers and leaders, we need to be looking at our team and asking ourselves the question, is there training that's needed? Is there a conversation that should happen here in order to... create that consistency in our customer experience or our service delivery.

19:40 Because again, even with our subs, sometimes educating our partners and our subs on, hey, when we approach the client, we do it this way. We take this posture. Here's why. Here's how it's brought value to our clients and our team. And really encouraging that equipping and training in your role. So again, when I'm no longer the technician, where I'm just influencing maybe my peer or a battle buddy that's on that particular project, now I'm a project manager, I'm affecting multiple parties with my level of leadership. And so understanding, is there some holes? Do I need to communicate through something, train through something, provide some support to ensure that we do what we said that we would do in the field? Major transition.

20:21 Yeah, I think another thing too, if I add something to our list there, it kind of falls in that training area is developing this whole sense and approach to accountability. Yeah. I think sometimes as we come up through the ranks and when we're an individual producer, we're part of a team and then we ultimately find ourselves in a management role of some kind or leadership role is... that accountability piece can be a tough transition for people sometimes because they're used to really just engaging with peers. And if they haven't had a reason to hold others accountable in that role, that can be a hard transition. It makes me think of that phrase from Henry Cloud, that leaders always get what they create and what they allow. And it feels like an important... That's a skill to establish standards on the team.

21:06 Yep. to communicate those standards really, really clearly, and then to hold people to it. And I think especially in our industry, because it's just so fast at times and chaotic, is that standard keeping can be one of the first things to fly out the window. We make small concessions, right? Small steps in the process are missed or skipped or just disregarded. And we make that judgment on the fly like, is it worth my time to circle back on this or have an after-action review? And it's like, I got too many things on my plate. I'm going to let this one fly. We let the second one fly. And ultimately, then what happens is now all of a sudden, nobody, none of the PMs are doing pre-construction budgets.

21:49 They're all just... Winging it. They're all just winging it as they go. And we're in a world of hurt from our profitability. And it's just because one guy to say, hey, it's a small job. I already kind of know how it's lined out. I don't need to do the budget on this one. And we let it fly because it was a small job. And now all of a sudden on a bigger job, we're skipping that same budgeting process again, or we're cutting corners on it, and it just spins out from there. And then all of a sudden, we're like, man, why is our profit numbers not where we need it? And why is our turnover all of a sudden gone up and all the things? The whole, you know, it's the path of least resistance science. You know, at the end of the day, all of us as humans, regardless of how badass you are and how disciplined, there is a natural tendency to, to take the path of least resistance.

22:31 So true. And as leaders, when we don't create accountability, we create a path that's less resistant and eventually our team will take it. It just is what it is. It's not malicious intent. No. It's not them being bad people or being C players. It's a reality of kind of human behavior. Yeah. It's really interesting you bring up that point. I think there's some additional value there in terms of just that idea of accountability is how important it is for a business owner or a GM for these roles that when we take someone that we've trusted with a little responsibility, we've asked them to step into this new plane of responsibility, what we're ultimately trying to do as an organization is cut down the number of people we're attempting to hold accountable at any given time.

23:16 The military is very diligent about creating a very clear organizational chart, a chain of command is what they refer to it. And kind of their theory is that one human shouldn't be directly responsible for any more. I want to say it's something as little as 10 people. So if you think about team dynamics, company dynamics, the way that it's set up, a team will have a team lead. We're talking four to five personnel. A platoon will have a platoon lead role, platoon sergeant. A squad will have a squad leader. You see this where they're developing a key influencer, a leader... at each phase, and most of the time you have a leader identified for every four to five troops.

23:58 Mm-hmm. And the reason they're so intentional about that is that in order for us to train, equip, hold accountable, communicate to, and really move pieces effectively in the battlefield, We cannot be trying to give marching orders to 100 people at a time. It's not physically possible. You can't do it. And so companies, we need to remember when we're developing a key leader to take over a project, a department, the idea is that each leader in the company then has a smaller audience that they're feeding into directly, that they're equipping, that they're doing these primary focuses with. Yeah. And that's really important. I think some of the things that we do is we fail to remind our staff or teach them that.

24:41 Why are you in this role? Is it because we just have a title team lead and we need to fill that with a name? Or do they understand that, hey, here's our org chart. Here's how we lead people and ensure that each one of us doesn't have too many people that we're directly responsible for. And this is important for you. Just like I lead you, it's your job to mirror that behavior and hold your team accountable. That's how we create a win. Now, the last little piece on this is this succession planning. And again, they're so symbiotic. It's almost like you could wrap all the above up into succession planning. But here's the mental shift, and I don't see very many people doing this.

25:21 We have to equip our new leaders to be thinking about okay, who else in the ranks are showing signs of consistency, dependability, engagement, commitment, so that we can create a pipeline of influencers and leaders amongst our ranks, right? So a GM needs to be looking for the next department head, the next whatever, right? And then these teams... need to be doing the same thing. We need to be walking a technician from day one as a tech one up to a senior, complex loss, MIT manager, whatever. But we need to be identifying this in people and then spending energy. And that goes back to this limiting factor on how many people can you directly be responsible for?

26:05 Well, if you're sending an email out, hundreds. But if your job is to coach and equip, support, develop, identify, you can't do that with very many people at one given time. No, it's so true. And I think also what you're hitting on too is just that creating a pathway for our people. When we see those people starting to lay out for them, like helping them gain a vision of... okay, if I want to get here, and it sounds like there's potential, they see potential in me, what are some of the things I need to put in place? It makes me think of Yellowstone, actually. Oh, yeah. So I'm in the fourth season of Yellowstone, and spoiler alert, Jimmy becomes a cowboy.

26:46 Yes. Eventually. Eventually, believe it. Oh, man. I mean, he is just a bag of potatoes for a while, though. The guys just don't know what to do with them. He's earnest. He wants to be something different, something better, but he's just struggling to be a cowboy. But Lloyd, Lloyd takes him under his wing. Yeah, he does. Lloyd sees potential in this kid. It's almost as though he sees himself in that kid somehow. He takes on almost more of a father figure of supporting him and encouraging him. But occasionally in this show, he pulls him aside and he's like, listen, boy, or whatever. He says, listen, if you're going to do X, you better get serious about Y. Yeah. And there's those little moments of truth where he pulls him aside and he guides him.

27:29 He said, okay, if you want this, you better get yourself together and start doing that. That's right. And Rip, one of the other figures, one of their leadership figures in the show, does similar things with Jimmy. And it's so fun in the fourth season when Jimmy comes back as a real cowboy. Yeah. Yeah. And the pride that you see from Rip and Lloyd is huge. And you also see this transformed human at the end. And it's like, it was such a reminder for me because you and I have had that moment with some people where it's like, wow, when that comes full circle, it's so special. But it was so intentional. It felt intentional. Even on the show, they were investing in that and they were calling out what they were seeing and pointing to the stuff that they needed to do in order to continue on that path.

28:14 Dude, actually, that story is so applicable. And that really is the switcher. So if we summarize like... kind of an explanation of a new leader or somebody that's transitioning into a department head or a project management role from some other position is, we need to create a vision for what being a true asset to the organization looks like now. Yeah, what does a winner look like? Like now, right? Because it is different. The deliverables are different. And we really are looking for leaders, up and coming influencers that will create... force multipliers within our organization. That's really what we're searching for when we assign people these leadership roles.

28:55 And your example is exactly what that is. That is a force multiplier. Either one of those two leaders could just do it themselves. Yeah. but our team hasn't gotten any larger or more capable. The real value they bring is they take somebody who's ill-equipped and they equip them. And now we have a new team member that's just as capable as they were. We just increased the capacity of our company. We've increased our capacity, our reach, our influence, all the things. So that's exactly what that succession planning is. If we're a $3 million company today, and tomorrow we want to be a $5 million company, Just hiring cold bodies off the street is not how we get there. We need influencers and people that will help live out that strategy and that consistent service delivery.

29:39 And the way that we get that is by equipping the people that are on the team now and identifying those new prospects, those new leaders in the ranks and giving them the guidance that they need to make that transition. Total overview, right? Yeah. Yeah, but this is good. Lots of nuts and bolts in there. I think for a lot of people, this is a reminder. And some of you that maybe are finding yourself in the midst of growing pains, which is kind of what this guy described to me, even though it's a very established company, you just reach these points, these moments of truth where you realize that there's something broken about your business. You dig into it and often... That's why I remembered this story. It was so prescient from this barbecue. I was like, yeah, this is the thing the company struggled with over and over again.

30:21 We have these moments in our growth trajectory that like, oh man, we got a problem here. Yeah. And if we handle it right, we get real with ourselves, it becomes another basis for growth. But that issue of promoting people without properly equipping them is just universal. All of us have struggled with it and all of us will struggle with it again. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's a solid reminder. Definitely something we're all facing on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. So, hey, reminder, right? If you're enjoying this podcast, right? You get value out of the stuff that Brandon and I share. Please share it. I mean, that's the best way that you can help us. We've been watching our average engaged listeners just grow and grow and grow. And we're so grateful.

31:01 So thank you. We know a lot of you text message your friends with the link and stuff like that. Oh, leave a review too. Oh my gosh, leave a review. Reviews are just the currency of today, right? And then you can also leave us a Google review if you go floodlight consulting group anyways. Yeah. That's the makers of the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. That's right. And then the last thing too is please engage with us. Find us on LinkedIn. Send us a message if there's a topic or a guest that you'd like to see us have. Absolutely. We have a great pipeline coming. In fact, we have some really rad shows that are coming out, but we're always looking for new interesting stuff. So please connect with us. Yeah, we want to make sure the content's relevant. Yeah. And really the best way to do that is to hear from you. Yeah. So keep it conversational.

31:42 Keep it two-way. Yep. All right, gang. Right on. See you next time. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart & 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. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.