Creating Experiences That Are Memorable with Gail Davis
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
It was in the early ‘90s when event budgets were big and the stages were filled with former heads of states and retired Olympians that Gail Davis was leading events at one of the world’s largest corporations, EDS. It’s now DXC. After watching the movie Alive, decided to search for Nando Parrado, the main subject of the movie. After research and phone calls throughout South America, Gail convinced Nando to come to speak for the first time about his experiences. The event was unbelievable. People were more than moved; they were inspired by his story. Two years later, Gail took a bold step and left a successful twenty-year career and launched Gail Davis and Associates with only one speaker on a roster, Nando Parrado. Gail shares how creating experiences that are memorable has helped her build GDA and provide service and a trusted partnership with their clients.
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Listen To The Episode Here
Creating Experiences That Are Memorable with Gail Davis
I’m honored to meet someone that I’ve met in person. Her name is Gail Davis of the GDA Speakers Bureau. It was in the early ‘90s when event budgets were big and the stages were filled with former heads of states and retired Olympians that she was leading events at one of the world’s largest corporations, EDS. It’s now DXC. After a hugely successful event, she was sitting with the CEO. The keynote had been a former president and he said, “That’s good, but next year find somebody that no one’s ever heard of but no one would forget hearing from.” One evening she was watching the movie, Alive. She decided to search for Nando Parrado, the main subject of the movie. After calling the bureaus on her Rolodex, she was told that he was either dead or spoke no English, “Wouldn’t head of state or an Olympian, be better?” They wondered.
Fast forward through research and phone calls throughout South America, Gail convinced an Uruguayan named Nando Parrado to come to speak for the first time about his experiences. His story at the time had been made famous by the movie, Alive. The event was unbelievable. People were more than moved. They were inspired by his story. It was a home run. Then two years later, Gail took a bold step. She left a successful twenty-year career and launched Gail Davis and Associates. She only had one speaker on a roster, Nando Parrado. She wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue managing events, just manage him or grow a large company. One thing she knew for sure was her experience as a corporate event planner led her to create a new model of serving clients and selecting speakers. GDA speakers are more than a speaker’s bureau. It’s a service and a trusted partnership with their clients. After almost two decades, they built a database of world-renowned thought leaders and they vetted those speakers and curated highly qualified speakers who they trust and deliver with confidence to their clients. Gail, what a thrill to welcome you.
Thank you, John. I’m looking forward to this conversation.
[bctt tweet=”Clarity and simplicity are great guideposts.” username=”John_Livesay”]
We always talk about the importance of branding yourself and being memorable and a sea of similarity and you have that in spades. People mention your name. It clicks energy for everybody. I love the details of this story of the origin and trying to find something a little off the beaten path. One of the qualities that I see in you is tenacity. The fact that you did go, “He doesn’t speak English.” You did what it took calling South America to find this guy. That would be some of the things that would be interesting to hear. Is that, in fact, one of the core assets that you’re bringing to the party and does that allow you to stand out?
You’re probably born with a determination or tenacity, but also it can be fostered in your environment. You mentioned that you were familiar with EDS. I know some listeners may or may not recognize that acronym, but it was a company that was founded by one of the most tenacious people, Ross Perot. The culture at EDS is if you want something done that no one else can do, just ask us to do it because that’s who we are. We know how to get things done. Working in that environment at the time that the story with Nando took place, that environment fostered tenacity. If you’re told no, there’s another way. That played into this. I’ve worked with lots of speakers and coaches who talk about vision and how important having a vision is. From the moment I saw the movie, Alive, and then subsequently saw Nando interviewed, I detected his warmth. I was brought into the story and I had the clearest vision of him on that stage. Everyone in that audience mesmerized by this incredible story which at times is a story of leadership and other times it’s a story about teamwork. Ultimately, it’s about the power of the human spirit but I always had that vision. I didn’t know how it was going to get there, but I had it so clear.
Having the vision, being born with a certain amount of tenacity and cultivating it in that EDS environment, all those things together played a big role and eventually Nando showing up in the alley and knocking it out of the ballpark. That was 1994. There was no Google. The story is dramatic when you consider that because at that time if you wanted a speaker, you were dependent. You used the word Rolodex. I remember a Rolodex. I’m calling someone who could flip through the Rolodex and have the number. The fact that none of the speaker’s bureaus have it and the fact that there was no Google made it a challenging situation, which I’m so glad it worked out. Nando, to this day, remains one of my dearest and closest friends. He is the number one go-to speaker of our almost twenty-year history. I’m so acutely aware of how many lives he has profoundly changed or encouraged. When someone has a good story that I’m able to retail in an effort to make the client aware of who they are, that’s just magic for me.
Creating Memorable Experiences: When someone has a good story that you’re able to retail in an effort to make the client aware of who they are, that’s magic.
One of the benefits of great stories is it becomes a memorable and people can then pass on the story and it’s in our DNA. We used to sit around the campfire and tell stories in caveman days and now we tell stories around PowerPoint glow.
I want to add an event where I was talking to a group of people who hire speakers and I was telling them about our industry. As an icebreaker at the beginning, the organizer was playing the game two truths and a lie. They said, “Gail, we want you to play and do this quick.” I said something like, “I am from Ohio, I can do the splits, I don’t watch speaker videos.” Everyone immediately raises their hand. First, they probably think I can do the split, but it seemed too obvious that they said, “Surely, it’s the fact that you don’t watch speaker videos.” I’m like, “I rarely do.” What I have built this career off of is exactly what you just said. Listening to speakers, being inspired by their story, having it be so memorable but I get on the phone and retell the story. Nando often laughs and says, “Gail, if anything ever happens to me, I have no doubt the story will live on because you’ll start going out and tell the story.”
Our stories can become our legacy. That’s where the social impact is because you as a business owner and the risk that you took leaving this secure job to start out on your own and grow something is what a lot of the audiences are going to be inspired by. What I see as a key, one of the investors who fund startups said to me, “Please tell your clients, don’t boil the ocean.” I love that visualization of too many things at once and you have done this. Can you tell us about how you had a goal of growing your company from just Nando to now 500 and then eventually 5,000? You said, “I need to put these things into three categories.” These three categories can be helpful for any business owner or even one-person speaker or entrepreneur. Share with us how you came up with those and what those are.
[bctt tweet=”Get focused into high radar and low categories.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I started with one speaker that my business model was a little shaky. I had one speaker and a guy that didn’t want to be on the circuit. His original direction was, “I don’t want it to be more than six times a year.” As I’ve started off, I was on fire about his story but I had an ad. On some subconscious level, I was measuring a metric that I use. A metric that I was hung up on is how many speakers do I have in my database because anything is better than one. I remember reaching out, making calls, working my network, getting 100, getting 400, I’m sure 500 was significant, I’m sure 1,000 was significant. For the early years to update the website and say, “GDA speakers have a database of over 1,500 speakers,” I started to feel I was getting some traction. I was getting some credibility and then I didn’t revisit that metric for a while. The next thing you know, it’s saying, “2,000, 2,500, 3,000, 3,500,” and the landscape of our industry was changing. I one day started to read my own press release and it said something along the lines of, “GDA speakers have access to and can help you with over 5,500 speakers.” It just stopped me in my tracks and I thought, is that a thing to be boasting about? Where’s the value add there? Can I honestly storytell with you about each of those 5,500 speakers? I don’t think so. Where’s my value?
I often compare our industry or what I do something very similar to a travel agent. There are people out there, especially younger people that probably don’t even know what a travel agent is. They are completely capable of going, searching and finding their own speakers. I also know people who wouldn’t dream of taking a trip because they value their time and they value the expertise of their travel agent partner so they wouldn’t dream of doing it without. I started to think a little bit about that and I thought, “If I’m a partner and I have a seat at the table and I’m supposed to be bringing value, I’ve got to revisit this 5,500 because I cannot bring value for 5,500 speakers.” I came in and I triaged those massive speakers. I like to keep things very simple, so clarity and simplicity are good guideposts for running a business. I said, “We’re going to first create a category called High Priority Speakers.” What are my criteria going to be? It’s going to be that we’ve booked the person, that we’ve gotten positive feedback from our clients and that they meet our economic model because as I grew as a business owner, so did my expenses. I now have real estate that I’m releasing. I’ve got employees that I’m paying for. I have health benefits that I’m paying for and 401(k) matching and profiteering.
Maybe in the early days, I could make $500 profit and it made sense, but when you do something with passion, you put the same effort into booking a $5,000 speaker as you do a $50,000. Through the help of a fabulous CPA, I realized that we had a threshold. We needed to make X or we shouldn’t be doing the deal. That helped me identify my high priority speakers and honestly if I could, I would just tell my team, “Let’s only book those.” It’s because we know them, they know us. They’re a proven commodity. We’ll probably not going to run into a hiccup and it’s a win-win for sure, but you can’t scale if you don’t constantly have something new. I realized my second category had to be radar and it’s exactly what the name implies. These are people that have been vetted through an existing client, through speaker relationship. We’ve lost business to them. They’ve got a New York Times bestselling author book on the charts. This is somebody that should be on our radar. We just haven’t yet had the chance to book them. If they’re going to meet our economic model, they’re highly recommended.
Creating Memorable Experiences: Anybody can book a speaker. We like to create an experience.
Then the truth of the reality is a whole bunch of others probably somewhere between 2020 400 speakers had to go into a category that’s called low. Low might be they don’t make the economic model. They were a dear friend back when I was booking speakers for this elementary school, kindergarten graduation but today we don’t do that. Occasionally we’ve made a conscious decision. We don’t want to work with a particular speaker. There was a bad experience with the client, they weren’t open to the feedback, they’re not willing to change. It’s small because this is the greatest industry on the planet. There might be a couple of those or maybe there’s someone that everybody wants but they’re simply not on the circuit. We try not to put our energy into that and try to keep our clarity, focus and drive on high and always looking at the radar to make sure we’re not overlooking someone that should be in that high priority category.
I’ve heard it broken out in those three categories that anybody in sales has to do, which is 20% of my clients give me 80% of my revenue. It sounds like that model is somewhat in your wheelhouse as well yet you can’t just focus on the 20% of the clients. This ability for speakers to move up from low to being on your radar, to getting into the coveted high category is very similar to the journey that everybody in sales has to go to. I talk about going from invisible to irresistible. There are all kinds of similarities to dating too. You’re invisible. Nobody knows you exist. The next rung up is only even significant and then we finally get to at least interesting. I’m willing to have a conversation with you. I’m not going out with you. I’m not hiring you as a speaker yet and then you get to intriguing and then finally irresistible. For any speakers that are listening to this, just realize that you don’t jump from low to high, you’d probably have to get on the radar first. This is the process. The other part of that, building a successful business besides this laser being focused, is your ability to have loyalty and trust built with clients like Barbara Lane. Can you tell us the importance of that and how you get those kinds of relationships?
Barbara runs a meeting planning company that supports associations in the Houston area. One of her clients is Houston HR, which does a large human resource conference, which is called the Gulf Coast Symposium. I was introduced to her by another client and we’ve only been in business and the first year there wasn’t that much of a budget. It was a smaller regional conference. I helped her in every single year since that first year. I had booked her speakers and sometimes it’s two, some years we’ve had three and it’s just such a rock, solid, loyal relationship. When we had our ten-year anniversary, she and one of her employees flew to Dallas and celebrated with us. I hope that she is also going to be here when we celebrate twenty because we would love to recognize her for all of that loyalty. She truly defines a partner. She knows her business and she trusts that we know ours and we collaborate. I would not dream to tell you that we haven’t had a misstep or two along the way, but in true partner fashion, she’ll call me and she’ll say, “We’ve got a new person in such position. You probably need to visit. I’ll
give a little bit of timing. This is what went down and I know you would want to know because I know what your values are and so that’s why I’m calling you to tell you.”
[bctt tweet=”What can I do to make it better?” username=”John_Livesay”]
When you have that collaborative relationship with your clients and you can hear feedback without getting defensive and realize that it is a safe environment, that’s the highest compliment I can ever give or get. It’s to say, “I feel safe to be myself with you,” and vice versa. As many people as possible feel safe to be a guest on my podcast or be safe to hire me as a speaker. That’s the highest compliment. This ability to create loyalty is what you just said right there because when you have an open collaborative conversation where you can get feedback, you build up a sense of trust that allows for the bumps in the road to just be bumps and not derail you.
I remember once I was presenting to a group of people that hire speakers. One person around the table had already booked his speakers and the other people around the table were potential clients. I remember he said, “Gail, I have a question.” I thought, “What are you doing asking a question? We’ve already got your stuff booked.” He goes, “I booked everything I’m going to do next year with you. What are you going to do now? Are you done? Is it here for me to figure out? What do you do now?” I’m so glad he asked that question because that’s another way I’ve tried to distinguish myself and also set myself apart. I heard him loud and clear. I don’t want someone just to book the experience. I want someone with me all the way, from the start all the way to the standing ovation. I put a tremendous amount of energy into customer service support, the event management, navigating obstacles that pop up, all the way through following through how did it go. That’s so important. I like to say that anybody can book a speaker. We like to create an experience so getting to know that client and maybe even suggesting something to them that we’ve learned from another client. They’re getting the benefit of all the various experiences that we have.
That’s the importance of having a strong network. I’ve seen this happen time and again. One of the clients that hire me is Gensler, which is the world’s largest architecture firm. They build skyscrapers in Dubai and redo the law offices in DC and they have a wide variety of different types of clients. One of their secret sauce is to bring in a Mercedes and a Facebook that they’ve done the offices or the build for together in a place where they can share best practices that they would never be able to get access to these top decision makers. Gensler is the conduit which creates brand loyalty. It sounds like that’s what you’re doing since you’re involved with so many different events is sharing what you see worked to make another event successful. That’s an incredible value-add. You take it one step further.
Creating Memorable Experiences: Podcast conversations are very different than a produced video. In listening to a podcast, you can pick up the story that you can retail.
One of the things I know that is a core problem that all businesses need to solve is attracting and retaining top talent. You need to attract and retain top clients. I’ve been brought in several times to help people win back a big client they’ve lost, but now you’re also taking your skill set of creating loyalty with the Barbara Lanes of the world into your employees. You’ve got someone named Julie O’Keefe that’s been with you the longest. What is it about your relationship with Julie that causes her to not jump ship and go someplace else that other people could learn from?
Loyalty is a huge thing to me and we talked about it with clients. It’s a great thing with employees too and Julie shares that. She is somebody that loyalty matters to a lot. We’re friends. We’ve been through many things together and lots of other employees who did their stent here and went on. Julie and I had the same core values. Julie also loves her clients. One time ago someone told me, “Do what you love and the money will follow,” and Julie does what she loves. She was just in town and we had lunch with a couple of her clients and we had dinner with a couple of her clients. It was so rewarding for me just to sit there and listen to the complete and total love buzz. One of them has used GDA ten years in a row, but they’ve worked with Julie for the last eight. When you try to scale a business, sometimes it’s hard to replicate the magic that you can have with the client, with another employee and the clients that they have.
Julie has certainly done that for sure. There’s a lot of loyalty there. She and I are wired the same. I spent the last two years trying to work on my leadership skills, understanding today’s employee base, understanding what they value and trying to become a better leader. Tweak some of my skills because as much as I can give you many things they taught me, it was a little bit of a command and control environment. I know that my leadership skills or lack thereof but greatly shaped by that environment. One thing in today’s world with Millennials and other generations, that command and control don’t fly. I have come a long way and the thing I appreciate about Julie is she and I call it like it is. We’re in this thing until the end, that’s for sure.
What I find fascinating is there’s that same trust factor again, whether it’s a Barbara Lane client or an employee like Julie that you can each say, “That doesn’t feel right, that doesn’t look right.” There’s that trust built up, so it works both ways. We’ve got all that energy going between clients and now we’ve got all that energy going between keeping great talent and that is your two-legged of a three-legged stool.
The speakers are the third. I love speakers that I can call and go, “I just talked to the client, we’ve got a couple of things we need to work on.” I love someone that will be like, “Thank you for calling. I had no idea. I was coming off that way. I had no idea that was an issue. What can I do to make that right?” The biggest majority of the time that I’ve ever called the speaker to say, “We’ve got a little bit we need to tweak here,” you will find on the other end that speaker that just wants to make it right and on the rare occasion are you greeted with some an inflexibility and defensiveness that they don’t want to hear.
“What can I do to make that right?” If you just had that in your toolbox ready to go at any moment as opposed to defensiveness, it would help. What you’re doing with this third leg of success that you have built is your new GDA Podcast that your son, Kyle, is the producer and cohost of. I love a podcast as much as anybody. I’ve been doing over 200 episodes now and I helped Gensler launched their podcast as a way to develop relationships with clients before they go into a pitch. It becomes a sales relationship tool as opposed to just waiting for a proposal request where they would bring me in to help them with the pitch. I’ve helped them figure out a way to get relationships with these people so it’s not a cold, “Hi, nice to meet you,” relationship. How are you using the GDA Podcast to help your own branding, help the speakers that are such a key part of your world?
We started off very aggressive. My son, Kyle, only knows one speed and that’s, “Go.” We were launching three a week and we did it for a year. We took a little hiatus and I am trying to figure out how I want to reinvent it and do that in conjunction with our twenty-year anniversary. I have some cool ideas. The benefit that I believe we got from the podcast was it’s just great to get back to basics. We did podcasts with so many of the speakers that we’ve worked with for years. For me to unplug and get away from the screen and get on the podcast and visit with these speakers that I’ve worked with for years and be reminded how they’ve changed or tweaked over the years. That was a phenomenal benefit for me as a business owner. It is also a terrific way to train internally. I would tell all of my employees, “While you’re commuting, while you’re running, listen to these because it’s different.” The podcast conversations are very different than a produced video. In listening to a podcast, you can pick up the story you’re there that you can retail. It was very helpful for that.
The storytelling becomes a sales tool for your team by listening to what the speakers saying on the podcast.
For clients on our proposals, if we had done a podcast, we just link it. They’re reading the bio, they can click here and watch the pre-produced videos or click on this. It comes up and while you’re scrolling, it’s playing in the background
There are so many different outcomes and ways to get a return on the investment for your time doing it. It also reminds me of the story of whenever a founder or CEO of a company goes into the factory and walks up down the aisles or Howard Schultz serving coffee at an actual Starbucks to get back to what their customer is saying and where they see problems. You’re reconnecting with those people in your high-end radar list and make it onto the podcast. It’s just another point of distinction. If you’re the first bureau that I’ve heard of that has her own podcast, then it becomes another staying cutting edge. Is there one thing you would like to leave the listeners with as to what you recommend in storytelling?
We talked about a great story is a memorable story. If you’ve thought a story that you can tell that people leave and retell that story, to me, that’s the magic. The connection doesn’t have to be literal. Nando Parrado survived a plane crash for 72 days in the Andes mountains. I’m sure that every single time he gives a speech, there’s no one in the audience that has survived a plane crash in cruising altitude. There might be someone that survived a plane crash, that takeoff and there might be someone who survived a plane crash on landing but there’s no one there that just survived a plane crash at cruising altitude. There’s no one that’s ever been stranded for 72 days in the Andes mountains, but every single person relates to his story. I’ve heard so many people come up to me afterward and say, “Thank you, I’m going through this. Thank you. I just had this experience.” Nando will listen and then he will write, “We all have our own Andes.” When you have a story, don’t try to make it fit. Just tell your story, be authentic. People will connect the dots. Give people credit. Inspire them and let them connect the dots.
I can’t thank you enough for your energy, enthusiasm, insights on focus and loyalty both in and outside of your company. Everyone has their own Andes. Be authentic. Terrific stuff, Gail. What a pleasure. Thanks again for being you. It makes the whole industry light up. It makes me thrilled to be part of your world, whether I’m on the radar or wherever.
Thank you.
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Build Your Tribe with Philip Folsom
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
It is not anymore about the team, it is now about the tribe. Industry leader in team building and leadership Philip Folsom shares how to build your tribe in business and in life. Moving away from the concept of a team, a tribe has become the people who are beyond acquaintances or transactional business partners. Philip talks about how to build a legitimate relationship-based collaborative connection. He gives great insights into creating an environment where people feel safe and healthy, which ultimately increases productivity and loyalty. Making a play on words, he also puts forward the notion that to decide is connected to suicide and homicide where you are literally killing off other ideas. Philip goes deep into all of this as he lays down in metaphors on why we need better relationships in our businesses.
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Listen To The Episode Here
Build Your Tribe with Philip Folsom
My guest is Philip Folsom. He’s gone into the dark woods. What he learned there is that individuals and organizations can do and be anything if two things are in place. One, a model of success and two, the tools to reach it. He’s got game-changing tools that have improved over 500,000 people’s lives in the last many years through his work. He’s acknowledged he’s an industry leader in team building and leadership, especially the Los Angeles High Ropes Challenge courses where he has a Professional Development Adventure Program. He came from Washington State. He has a great story he’s going to share about being raised by a single mom and joining the Army at seventeen. His own hero’s journey of hitting rock bottom and coming back up and helping everyone who works with him and encounters him heal. Philip, welcome to the show.
Thank you, John. It’s a pleasure and an honor being here.
I like to ask my guests to take us back as far as they want to the story of origin. Did you always know you loved animals? Tell us about your journey. You can you can start when you joined the Army or you can start earlier than that. I want to give people a timeline of what happened to you that caused you to become an expert in this.
Part of the theme when we talk about the hero’s journey or any type of narrative related to that is that it’s only by going into the shadow that we are able to excavate our gold. That’s a vital component of my story and all of ours. I grew up in classic pre-trauma environments of some neglect and some poverty. It was pretty abject challenges when I was growing up. My dad left early. I went into the Army at seventeen. Like a lot of us, I didn’t go in out of patriotism. I went in there as a means of escaping the situation I was in. In the Army, I had some acute trauma piled on top of chronic trauma. When I got out it was brought to my attention that I had some challenges that I had to deal with. I dropped out of grad school and went on to as a contemporary Vision Quest experience where I studied meditation. I studied equestrian therapy and Outward Bound adventure programming and archery.
What I discovered about myself was that there was healing to be done. It was a choice that became available to me. One of the big themes is the choices of the function of awareness. A lot of people simply aren’t realizing that they have the opportunity to heal and expand and grow and connect and claim the title of hero of their own story. I was always a minor character. In fact, inside of me, there still is a little kid who is marginalized, unsuccessful and terrified of being revealed. I have to acknowledge him. I keep him right next to me. I don’t let him get behind me. I don’t let him blindside me and undermine me. I want to have that little rat sitting right next to me so I can keep an eye on him. I can choose to have him sit down. I get to be the full king of my kingdom now instead of the minor Prince character.
[bctt tweet=”Going beyond team building is tribe building. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
Let’s talk a little bit about the equestrian therapy and how that tie into also what you’re doing with the SPARTA Project?
Equestrian therapy is incredibly powerful. My horse guru is Cheyenne Price. She’s an amazing six-foot blonde horse guru. She has the ability to utilize her animals and tap directly into whatever secret stuff is going on. Horses are prey, which is different than us. We are predators. We have eyes in the front and we are designed for acquisition. One of the secrets of success is to be able to turn whatever it is that we want to have a shift in our life into an acquisition story instead of an avoidant story. Predators don’t like to lose anything including weight. Instead of losing weight, I want to gain fitness. All of a sudden, this reticulate activating system gets triggered and we look for opportunities to gain fitness. The horses are the opposite. They are prey animals, so they move away from energy. It’s a different dynamic. If you can learn how that communication system works, all of a sudden it allows us this tremendous desktop experience of being able to manage our emotions and connect with those things. They see right through you.
The moment you walk into the round pen, here’s a big naked 2,000-pound animal that knows exactly what’s going on with us energetically. We’ve stuffed down our animal nature to the point where we are in our head a lot of the time. Horses can’t afford to do that and they don’t have that available. They know if you’re a bully. They know if you’re an impostor. When I trump in with all of my masculinity and my boots and whatnot, they call me immediately on it like, “You’re not all that.” Come down to your real level and then we can engage with a conversation and a relationship that’s healthy. Once you’ve earned that respect and trust, now we can engage with some different forms of more robust conflict. The horses are one of the animals I use. The other one are wolves. That’s probably not been my favorite thing over the last couple of years.
In fact, your tagline is, “The time of the lone wolf is over.” If you wouldn’t mind sharing why does a lone wolf cry? How does that relate to wolves never biting each other as dogs do? That’s a fascinating insight you have.
We have to start with the reality that we are pack animals. In addition to being predators, we’re pack animal. We have things called mirror neurons, which is this synaptic, legitimate neuron-type that we have that gets triggered when we are connected with another member of our tribe. It releases serotonin. It also is the source of empathy and compassion. We need each other. We need it at a cellular level if we’re going to feel good about ourselves. Wolves are the same. Wolves are also a pack animal. They’re predators. They have mirror neurons and so do horses. What’s happened in our society is that instead of being in our kinship-based tribal systems, we have gotten successful that we’re living in these giant mega tribes. We have moved out of that sweet spot of about 50 to 75 people that we can maintain deep relationships with. We’ve shifted from being personal, connected and collaborative, vision, mission, value-sharing partners to these impersonal relationships we move around with and it’s anxiety-producing for us.
Build Your Tribe: One of the secrets of success is to be able to turn whatever it is that we want to have a shift in our life into an acquisition story instead of an avoidant story.
What happens is when we’re looking at the big drivers of wellness, health and success, it comes down to relationships. This has been studied scientifically from not only longevity but in your specific field of sales and business success. It’s all about relationships and getting those skills. The wolves, why I use them are that they are designed to hunt big game. We are also designed to hunt big game. Except for our big game now and we start looking at our lives is the game of doing something that provides meaning, purpose, service and something bigger than us. If we are going to be able to move towards those big goals in our life, we need other people. We need them beyond an acquaintance or a transactional business partner, but a legitimate relationship-based collaborative connection.
It always comes down to the team and over and over. No matter how big or small the company is, it’s how well does that team get along and respect each other.
Beyond team is a tribe. The tribe is people who are not only connected at a mission or accomplishment level and a visual level which is here’s our job. Beyond the job is what’s the why? What’s the meaning? Why does this exist? Why am I being willing to share and donate eight hours of my day to this cause? It needs to be that important. That’s a tribe.
Part of the way the wolves operate as a pack in their particular tribe is they may fight, but they don’t ever bite each other. Can you explain the difference of how dogs fight versus wolves and how that impacts us in our business life?
When we need somebody, if you have a partner that you need to be able to show up and deliver for you to sell a house or in the case of SpaceX to be able to get to Mars. You’re talking big game stuff. You need those people to do their job. You can’t afford to have them be compromised in any way, which means instead of vague, undermining, politicking gossip, competing with those people. You want to now be reciprocal and be the best cheerleader those people you can because they are an extension of yourself. When we’re talking about tribal or partnership relationships, you want that partner to be absolutely at their sharpest, their most powerful and they’re most resilient. You can’t afford to undermine them. In the case of wolves, they can’t afford to bite each other. It takes ten wolves to pull down an elk.
[bctt tweet=”Choice is a function of awareness.” username=”John_Livesay”]
If they compromise the strength of the pack by infighting, they all starve. This is a hard-wired behavior amongst the wolves because they have that taboo against biting each other. It’s a survival mechanism. All of a sudden, they have the opportunity to express and discharge conflict almost nonstop. They squabble. They talk. They snarl. They posture. They also play because once they have discharged any of that immediate conflict that they’re having, then they get to be completely clean with each other. They run off and play and engage with whatever they’re doing without having that weird, toxic, stuffed down experience that we have when we can’t express our feelings. Sigmund Freud calls that the Theory of Hydraulics, “Whatever we shove down, it’s coming out somewhere else.”
I’ve heard the term that it’s leaking out the anxiety or the stress. What you’re doing with the SPARTA Project, it’s a non-profit for veterans and emergency first responders who are dealing with post-traumatic stress. How does your work with the wolves if at all impact that? What are you doing to help people overcome that?
We are running a cohort. It’s a five-day residential free program for veterans and first responders. This is an all-female cohort starting. We’re proud to be running this program. We run off donations. If you or somebody else you know is interested in giving back to a lean, non-profit, TheSPARTAProject.org is the name of that. We use what’s called a parallel process, which means we are going through this journey along with the veterans because all the good facilitators, all the good storytellers, yourself included. You’ve come from a place where you had to go on that journey. You had to go into the woods and you discovered that the only way out is through. We have to get all the way through the story. We have to resolve.
It’s different than the medical model where there’s a smart person telling you how you should live your life or how you should refill your strategic objectives at work. Good people are co-creators. You mentioned that even when you’re talking about engaging with your clients in a co-creation process. It’s the difference between a doctor and a midwife. The doctor gets to deliver the baby. The mothers who are reading this blog, you know the doctor didn’t deliver the baby. You delivered the baby. The truth is that we’re here to facilitate the creation of whatever that project or healing is for our clients and where they are to be. Sometimes a cheerleader, sometimes its support, sometimes it’s an accountability partner.
That’s what we’re doing with the veterans and first responders are we’re going through this journey with them because we’ve been through the dark woods. We know what’s in there. We know the road that will get us out. The wolves heal each other. Here’s another shout out to a great lean nonprofit, ApexProtectionProject.org. They rescue and rehabilitate wolves and wolf dogs that have been abused, mistreated and neglected. They bring them out to their sanctuary. They slowly integrate them into their healthy pack and the pack heals the wolves. This is how we as humans are going to heal each other are that we need to build the relationships. We need to be able to discharge our shame. We need to be able to go through and feel the pain and get honest with each other. This is true at a relationship level and also at an organizational level. When you’re looking at all the big societal challenges that are happening in our industries, at some point we’re going to have to go all the way through this piece and get the healing done.
Build Your Tribe: In our own journeys, we had to go into the woods and discover that the only way out is through.
The other thing that is surprising about you because you present an extremely alpha male. The way you dress and the fact that you’re outdoors with animals and wolves and horses. You’ve got the hat. You’ve got the whole Indiana Jones vibe going on. Yet you also spent several years as a professional ballet dancer. I’m fascinated to hear that story. How did you go from being in the Army and hitting rock bottom? Ballet is traditionally something that people start very young or something that typically only wealthy people are involved with. It’s a cultural artsy niche. How did that come about?
If I have received any divine blessings, one of them is the ability to go on weird journeys that for some reason people are not allowed to do. I can thank my strange parents for that. I grew up on a commune. I grew up pretty alternative and maybe that little chunk of experience allowed me to go on some weird journeys that are different than other people. Thanks, mom, thanks dad for that. One of them was I got out of the military and I had to take a PE class in community college. I was going through all of my challenges and trying to reintegrate. I was trying to do things as far off of the military as I could. I was looking for balance. The military is highly structured. It’s hyper-masculine. Here was an opportunity to get a PE credit and do something that was much more expressive and much softer. I took a ballet class in a community college. I enjoyed it. It was fun. The teacher said, “I’d be willing to give you some free classes if you come down and do some of the partnering work.”
I was out of the Army. I was twenty years old and strong. It sounded like fun to me. I was taking classes one evening and a bunch of strangers showed up in the class that I hadn’t seen before. I was taking classes with kids. It turned out it was an audition class for the Spokane Ballet Company. There weren’t any tall guys and the prima ballerina of the Spokane Ballet at the time was Rachel Ferrelli, a big six-foot Italian lady. The ballet director said, “Have you ever wanted to be a dancer?” I said, “What does that mean?” “I’m looking for a partner for Rachel Ferrelli and all you got to do is learn how to partner well and look good in tights.” I said, “Let’s do that.” It led me down to Los Angeles. I danced at the Los Angeles Ballet and I danced with a bunch of companies down here. I was never a good dancer. I had done enough martial arts and I looked good in tights.
I know a lot of professional athletes, football players, in particular, do a lot of ballet work to be agile and things. It all fits into your work because you’re working with companies like Sony, DreamWorks and Apple helping them as a high-performance tribe culture coach. Can you tell us what that looks like? Who would hire you? What problem are you solving typically? Give us an example or story of an outcome of someone after working with you.
Stepping back from that, I spent many years doing team building at a local company in Los Angeles. What I was noticing is that it wasn’t changing anybody. I was seeing the same clients that would show up year after year. They were having the same challenges. I realized something that our industry is doing is not creating sustainable results. I’m in my 50s right now. We start looking at legacy. You start thinking about the purpose. What impact did I leave with this? Did I move the conversation forward? I would define that as the transition from passion, which is kindling, it burned hot, fast and easy. It’s me-centric and then transitioning from that passion into purpose, which is like a big log. It’s something that carries a tremendous amount of energy, but it’s hard to get it lit. We get to into this point in our career where we’ve got a lot of skills and we’ve done our 10,000 hours to achieve mastery. We start looking at those bigger purpose conversations of, “What I want to do in the world?” Usually, it’s not about us anymore. It’s about what’s the service component. I eventually started realizing that I had to do a couple of things in my career if I was going to achieve organizational transformation with my clients.
[bctt tweet=”It’s only by going into the shadow that we are able to excavate our gold.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I needed to start understanding strategy. I also needed to start understanding the culture of the organization because it’s easy to change people short-term. If we go out and do something together, there’s going to be an immediate boost in morale, trust and some other fast-burn drivers of energy. We immediately are going to revert back to our baseline of behavior and that baseline is culture. We need to be able to go into a culture and we need to fix that. What is culture? What are the components of it? That was when I got to start growing in my true passion, which beyond healing people is understanding humanity. I studied Paleoanthropology at UCLA. How does our species work? It turns out that journey is a perfect dovetail to upgrading the culture of organizations because the reality is we’re no longer kinship-based animals. We are career-based. Our work teams are the new tribes. That is the anthropological reality.
I’ve studied with the Maasai in Africa and all over the world. When we go in to study these people, there are certain formats about looking at how a culture works. That’s the same thing that business consultants are doing. They’re going in and going, “How was your alignment with vision? Does everybody understand exactly what the mission parameters are? Your strategy? Your tactics? How is morale? How are your values operating?” This is straight anthropology work, but it also allows people to co-create and participate in their culture. This is that time where we get to now have access to all of this tremendous information of humanity and be able to create the cultures that we want to have at work, which is hopefully they’re going to be healthy. More importantly, they’re going to be high-performing. That means we’re going to be able to be competitive, innovative, resilient and have high retention. These are all things that from a business standpoint are the primary profit drivers of the business. Culture does that for them. I work at SpaceX. I do a lot of work with Red Bull. I work at Universal and other industries.
What you’re helping them do is create a safe environment where people can express concerns or confusion or even new ideas without being heavily ridiculed or criticized. That healthy feedback loop from working with you on adjusting their culture allows companies to attract and retain top employees and to even be more productive with those that are there.
One of the unique things that myself and some other people are doing is that you cannot decrease safety. It doesn’t work. Creating safe spaces at universities where there’s no hate talking, it’s not ever going to work. At some point, you have to shape an environment where people are either resilient enough to handle pushback or they’re treating each other as extensions of themselves. At which point they can give feedback, but they’re not biting each other. You cannot write trust and safety up on the break room wall and go, “Now we have a safe environment.” It doesn’t change anything. You have to shape the environment so that it’s changing behavior.
You do that by taking people out into nature and doing all these group activities together that build trust and bonds as opposed to being an intellectual concept.
Build Your Tribe: When we make a decision, we’re killing other ideas.
Those big challenging activities, which are my adventure Vision Quest stuff. I do ropes courses and other big epic things. Those are not creating character, they are only revealing it. The creation process happens during reflection and process. This is one of the things that we don’t do well and most organizations don’t because we are over-programmed and we don’t have time to reflect. A lot of the time we are simply jumping right into, “What’s happening in Q2? We need to get those numbers.” There needs to be that moment of breath where we go, “Are we in alignment? Are we creating the outcomes and the experience that we want to have?” This is something that is on a micro level with us and also on the macro level with big industries is there should be at least some breath in between Q1 and Q2 where you go, “Are we in alignment with our vision and values? Are those things correct?”
When we make a decision, we’re killing other ideas. In the business world, if you’re in sales, in particular, you’re asking people to buy what you’re offering. Therefore, you have to have some empathy that if they buy what you’re selling, they’re going to be making some changes and other options or ideas are therefore being killed off. Can you elaborate on that? It also helps people with addictions, which was mind-boggling to me with food. Anything you can talk about around that would be interesting?
When we look at the word decide, it contains the same entomological root as a homicide, suicide. It means in Latin to cut or kill. When I decide something, I’m killing off my other options. In economics, that will be your opportunity cost. If I want to find out how I’m making decisions, I need to pop the hood and take a look at what are my priorities. Even the word ‘priorities’ is a new term. Usually, that’s only a priority. It’s singular. What is the one priority of all those hundreds of things that I want to experience more of in my life? What’s the one that bubbled to the top and I made that decision and killed off all the rest of those things? That one top priority would be my highest operating value. When we’re looking at either individual or organizational decision making, change management. If we want to ever get in the driver’s seat of being able to make intentional directional courses as we move through our world, I need to at some point take a look at what are my values? Those values are driving the decisions of the things that I’m killing off. Organizational values are not simply a fun thing to put on your website in the break room. If they’re correctly implemented, then they are guiding the navigation of your organization.
Philip, you’ve been a great guest. Your website is PhilipFolsom.com. They can sign up for a newsletter. What’s the best place to follow you on social media might be?
I’m Philip Folsom at LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. That’s my website as well. Please jump on my newsletter because there is more of this strange esoteric but hopefully relevant and powerful information coming. In addition, there’s a monthly open program for people who want to spend a day with the wolves and me. There are cool change agents and seekers. I encourage you to stay involved. Keep changing the world and that starts with ourselves. It’s been an absolute honor, John.
[bctt tweet=”People don’t realize that they have the opportunity to heal, expand, grow, connect, and claim the title of the hero of their own story.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Thanks, Philip. It’s been insightful, entertaining and inspiring. I can’t wait to keep up with new ways you are impacting the world with animals and tribes.
Links Mentioned:
- Philip Folsom
- Outward Bound
- SPARTA Project
- SpaceXApexProtectionProject.org
- LinkedIn – Philip Folsom
- Instagram – Philip Folsom
- Facebook – Philip Folsom
- www.wolftribe.life
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Pivot, Disrupt And Transform with Marcia Daszko
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
How leaders behave directly impact the course of the business. They are the ones that lead the people in the team to work towards a common goal and succeed. As we know it, everyone has the capacity to become a leader. The only thing therefore is to be good at it and not the judging critique that blames others. One of the world’s leading business strategists and catalyst for leadership and organizational transformation, Marcia Daszko, talks about how leaders beat the odds and survive with her book, Pivot, Disrupt, and Transform. Marcia gives the three-step process that tells people to stop focusing on the bottom line and performance appraisals, and shares how leaders should ask the right questions. On top of that, she talks about the foundational business strategies that will soon work towards improving and innovating to ultimately serve the customers.
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Listen To The Episode Here
Pivot, Disrupt And Transform with Marcia Daszko
Our guest is Marcia Daszko and she’s one of the world’s leading business strategists and catalyst for leadership and organizational transformation. She’s got over 25 years of proven success running her own consulting firm and workshops for executives. She’s also a researcher, a graduate level teacher, a keynote speaker, and an award-winning writer. She’s been an adviser to Fortune 500 companies, government agencies including the Pentagon. Marcia, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
Pivot, Disrupt, Transform: How Leaders Beat the Odds and Survive
Your book is fantastic it’s called Pivot, Disrupt, Transform: How Leaders Beat the Odds and Survive. You’ve got some great testimonials from authors like Ken Blanchard who wrote The One Minute Manager, which is one of my all-time favorite books. Before we double click and do a deep dive into this great book of yours, can you take us back to your story of origin? You can go back as far as you want. Your childhood, high school or college. Where did you start getting interested in leadership?
I never thought of myself as a leader because I was so excruciatingly shy. Although my friends when they hear me say that they laugh and roll their eyes and wonder. They see something maybe I don’t see. I grew up in the Midwest in Iowa. My family moved to California when I was in college. I transferred out here. I attended Santa Clara University and San Jose State University and ended up getting my master’s in mass communication. I worked for various companies in corporate communications and marketing. Then one of the organizations that I worked with was owned by Dr. Perry Gluckman a statistician who had a group of colleagues’ consultants who worked with organizations to help them learn and apply Dr. Deming’s philosophy of leadership and management. For those who don’t know, Dr. Deming was a man who went to Japan at the invitation of General MacArthur after World War II to help turn around Japan and help them become a global competitor. In the 1980s, he came back to the US and worked with the CEOs of General Motors and Ford to help save our auto industry.
That’s an impressive background that’s certainly a huge impact and now that changing with Korea and China. I was looking at how China’s overtaken Japan lately in gross national product and all that good stuff. What made you want to write this book?
Once I had begun working with Dr. Perry and Dr. Deming they became my mentors. I learned from them that everyone within them has natural leadership. How I learned that is because my two mentors pulled it out of me. Over time, they taught me how to consult and that’s how I got into consulting years ago. We worked from small organizations to companies like the Fortune 500. I wrote the book because in my 25 years plus of consulting, I had seen the fork in the road for leaders. Some leaders struggle and fail and others succeed wildly. It’s like, “Why does this happen and why are some struggling so much? Why is it that we have 6,000 startup companies in the Silicon Valley Bay Area and probably 90% of them won’t go out of business? Why is it that there was a list of Fortune 500 companies that came out in the in 1955 and more than 60% of those Fortune 500 corporations do not exist anymore?” Some were merged in, but many went out of business. When we think about Montgomery Ward, Pan Am, Circuit City, and Blockbuster, they disappeared pretty fast. Does that mean that companies like IBM, Walmart or Shell Oil like we’ve seen with Sears or Target, will they go out of business? I wrote the book because I wanted to help leaders who have so many challenges see that there’s a better way. There’s a different way. There’s a bold way. There’s a courageous way to lead and it’s not that hard.
What would you say would be the one takeaway? Let’s give some great insights right off the bat. If someone is saying to themselves, “If everyone has natural leadership within them, how do I find that? What is it that I can do to discover that if I don’t have a mentor?”
I would ask people to follow their own strategic compass. If they’re thinking about their own leadership and/or they’re thinking about leading their team or their organization, even at home. That they think about what are we trying to accomplish. What am I trying to accomplish and getting people together. Knowing nobody works alone. How do we learn, work, and improve together? That is key. If you don’t have that question answered well, then everything else following it, you’ll struggle and eventually fail.
[bctt tweet=”Everyone has natural leadership within them. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
You’ve got a three-step process here where you tell people to stop focusing on the bottom line and performance appraisals. They need to start doing something new, which is asking some questions and seeing what they can do to encourage an environment of change. Finally, the transformation part of being more resilient. What do you mean stop giving performance appraisals? What do you mean stop looking at the bottom line? How else would we run a company? What do you say to that question?
We need to go back to the aim. What are you trying to accomplish? If you say, “We’ve started this company and now we have 200 employees. We need to start implementing performance appraisals,” I would ask again, “What are you trying to accomplish?” “We want to we want to coach people. We want to give people feedback. We want to help and so on.” That is usually the answer that I get around performance appraisals. What has happened is performance appraisals end up being in practice what people use to judge, rate, rank, criticize, and blame people for. The problem is the people worked in the system. They didn’t create the system. They can’t change the system. Yet, people want to hold them accountable for the system’s results. If they don’t like the results they blame and judging criticize the people, but it wasn’t the people. People come to work to do a good job. They want to be proud of their work. They want to contribute. They want to serve customers. They want to work together. Yet we saw the performance appraisals that we rank and rate the people which creates internal competition. Then we tie it to a compensation system that again is more limiting. Then we say, “Our corporate values are teamwork, collaboration, and integrity.” Yet they don’t see that there’s a huge gap between the two in the practice of even using performance appraisals which is a total waste of time. They are in direct conflict with what they say their values are.
Having been in the corporate world myself and selling advertising for Condé Nast for a number of years and selling my multi-million-dollar mainframe computers, nobody likes them. I have managers who used to dread doing that. It was a huge amount of time and they were under a lot of pressure from top management to not give anybody perfect scores. You must find something to ding somebody on so that there’s something for them to improve on. Otherwise, if you tell them they’re doing a great job, they will stop working so hard. Like, “Next year, hopefully, my three will go up to four on creative ideas or some weird category that they create.” There’s a great quote in your book from Dr. Myron Tribus, “Looking at results is like driving the car by looking in the rear-view mirror.”
That summarizes what you’re saying here. That you can’t motivate or even come up with an inspiring vision of what the future could be if all you’re doing is evaluating someone’s past performance. This concept of teamwork, I always found so amusing, especially in a sales department. They do rank you and yet they want you to all work together. Oftentimes, you would split accounts. Like if Lexus is based here and there are agency is based here, but that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes I’d have a client that the agency was in LA and the client was in New York. The rep in New York and I had to work together and split the commissions if we got the business or we grew the business, but it was still a competition of who’s the top sales person this week and this month, this year. It’s a very bizarre compete, work together, and you’re going to get paid on how you perform, not so much how the magazine performs.
That’s why another thing that I suggest is that not only does a company get rid of the performance appraisals, but they also get rid of incentives, arbitrary, numerical goals, and commissions. That’s a unique, bold, radical revolutionary thinking for most organizations because it’s not best practices. That’s what part of the book is saying too is stop best practices and management fads. If you step back and think, what are you trying to accomplish those don’t help you?
Leadership: Salespeople are successful if they ask the best questions.
You also talked about helping people understand why they lose customers to the competition. That’s a fascinating topic for me particularly because I had to win back a client at one point. Then I’ve helped other companies put a strategy together on how to win back a client. A lot of people don’t have a clue that winning back a client is very different than getting them in the first place. Can you expand on your insights on what companies can do to prevent losing clients and what they might do to get them back?
I have beautiful examples of that. Personal examples that’s what brings everybody to heart. If leaders think about what they are passionate about and get their whole organization focused on supporting each other to serve customers. Doing what they love to do to serve customers, they tap in on being close to their customer. It’s not by surveys and focus groups. It’s by talking to their customer. What do you like? What do you want? What do you need? It is beyond that because it’s not the customer’s job to tell you that they want the fax machine or that they want the iPhone. It’s the companies, the leader’s job to create the future. To create new products and services that are innovative and will serve and satisfy new customers and new markets. For example, for me, I was a very loyal customer of American Airlines years ago. I had more than three million miles on American Airlines. Whenever I would fly with colleagues I would say, “Come on my flight.” Even though there are tickets generally on average worth $50 more than the competition, I would stay loyal. Then their service over time drastically changed. It was a change of CEOs that was part of it. There were mergers after that and then they pulled out the San Jose market as a hub. That drastically impacted our ability to have as many routes and so forth.
The point being, their customer service drastically went down. One time, I got on 40 flights with American Airlines. On those flights, 39 out of 40 I didn’t get a hello, a thank you or a goodbye. As a premier flyer, I wrote them a letter. Months later, I got a wrinkled form letter back justifying their behavior. That’s when I said, “That’s it. I’m done.” I fly American Airlines only if I absolutely have to. I would say they’re a little bit better, but they still have so far to go. I have no interest in flying them. Plus, their seats are the tightest together. You could starve on their flights. I love JetBlue, I love Southwest Airlines. The point being that it didn’t cost them anything to say hello, thank you, and goodbye. It cost nothing for that customer service. I knew that leadership had changed because when leadership doesn’t have the mindset to serve customers, it’s for them maybe all about the bottom line or they’re competing with their peers or whatever it is, it shows up in the people who are touching the customers.
Let’s dive into the second part of the book, which is if we’re going to stop focusing on the bottom line and giving people these performance evaluations, we should be doing something new. That’s the first thing you start talking about, which is also fascinating to me. I also believe that salespeople are successful if they ask the best questions. You were talking about leaders asking questions. Can you expand on that?
What we need to help leaders do then is yes let go of the old because otherwise, if you are trying to start something new but you don’t get rid of the old, I always say it’s like trying to put strawberry jam on moldy green bread. Let’s get rid of the old is essential. Leaders need to start thinking and asking different questions. These are not questions like, “Why did you do this and why did you do that?” Instead, the questions of, “What are we trying to accomplish?” It’s a strategic compass, which I have in the book. “What are we trying to accomplish together? By what method will we achieve it together? What are the values that we’re going to stand for with our customers, with our markets in our community and with our colleagues? Who are our customers? What do they need and how do we know?”
[bctt tweet=”Looking at results is like driving by looking at your rearview mirror.” username=”John_Livesay”]
That’s significant because that means we’re going to collect data and look at that data over time and not react to it. Based on what we see about that data over time, what are the trends? Is it stable? Are we serving customers or not? Then we ask the final questions which are, how do we measure progress? How do we measure success? Most management teams and executive teams, when they have management team meetings, most of them are focusing on and that might be a day or two at a time. You’ve been in the sales team meetings where you spent a day or two or three talking about the numbers and the quotas and goals. You kept manipulating the numbers. I’ve seen those meetings and they’re a sad use of time. I share with my clients that we focus on discussions about the aim, about quality, and about the customer. About serving customers, about the systems, the processes that we need to create and improve, and enable to flow so that we can then get the results that we want.
The last thing in a management team meeting that we need to talk about if we have time are the results or the goals or the numbers. Everything that you do before that are the things that create the numbers. If you don’t like the results, if you don’t like the bottom line, if you don’t like the profit margin or the profits you need to go back. Leaders need to go back and spend 90% plus of their time thinking about, “How do I create an organization where everyone understands what the aim is and how we create the systems and processes so that we have these strategies?” Quality is a business strategy. Improvement is a business strategy and innovation is a business strategy. We need to have those three as foundational business strategies. Then we can go through the organization, work together and see how we improve and innovate to serve our customers.
It sounds like a very different use of time than what I used to have to do, which was once a week all sales reps from around the world will be on this long conference call. We have to say, “For this upcoming issue, I’m going to bring in ten ads. I have five of them who verbally said yes. Another ten that are 50/50 and maybe another seven or so that are less than 50%. Then they say, “We take 90% of the verbals, 50% of the 50/50 and then 10% of all the others. You still are short a couple of pages. Where are you going to get them from?” Then you’d have to listen to everybody else’s story. Then they go, “If we add up all the numbers that everyone says they’re promising and committing to bring in, here’s the number for the month. That’s not high enough for what our goal is.” We will do that for three months out. Tedious, painful, and unproductive. Everywhere I work, that’s what it was. That was the given way of doing it.
It’s the best practice, it’s the management bat. It’s the way we always do things even though the way we always do things isn’t helpful, isn’t innovative, isn’t serving customers, isn’t fun and isn’t motivating. That process you described is demotivating. It doesn’t make me feel good. I’m not happy when it’s over, it’s like, “I’m so relieved.” It’s all about the numbers. It’s not about things that you can get passionate about like serving customers and being creative. It sucks the life out of people.
Then they would add a layer on to it where it’s like, “You promised that you bring in as many ads.” Something fell out. You promised to the whole room as if getting people to commit to something makes them do it. If they don’t feel bad enough that something fell out.
Leadership: Once you make the decision to pivot and start trusting your people, you cannot go back and start trying to manage from fear again.
One of my friends had 1,200 sales people in his corporation. He had sales of $500 million. He was constantly competing for his share of the pie. He was frustrated with it and looked for a better way. That’s when he decided to transform his organization. He spent a year transforming his own thinking about leadership. Then he decided to change his system. He made the plan to do it. He communicated both to his key executives, his key salespeople, his employees, and his customers what he was going to do before he did it, then took all of his 1,200 salespeople off of commission and off of incentives. No more performance appraisals. He did many things to transform his organization and then he took it from $500 million to $2 billion in six years.
People think that salespeople aren’t motivated unless they’re tied to a performance and that’s not the case. I love this concept where you have here on how we transform as leaders, the old way and a better way. The biggest level is the high level of fear, anxiety, and stress or in the old way of, “If you don’t make your numbers, after three months you’re going to be fired.” There’s a constant fear-based culture. This is multiple companies, this is not unique to one. The better way you propose is to reduce the fear and build trust that if you have a bad month or two, we’re going to look at you your attitude and your work ethic. All other things besides just the numbers deciding whether or not you keep your job. Is that a fair summary of what you’re saying on the better way?
[bctt tweet=”You can’t motivate or even come up with an inspiring vision of what the future could be if all you’re doing is evaluating the past.” username=”John_Livesay”]
The better way is that the leader is finally going to lead instead of being judge and critique and blame the king or queen. Their job as a leader is to create an environment where everyone understands and contributes to the aim of the organization, and people support each other. That means that it’s up to the leader to communicate effectively, to build trust and they do that through communication. I’m not saying to put out a memo or an email or anything saying, “Here are our mission, vision, and objectives.” That old static document has to go away anyway. Instead, the leaders are the people that are communicating a hundred times a day but they’re asking questions. They see that their job is to develop all of the people’s natural leadership in the organization. Not just the top ten people or the management team, it’s everyone. Their job is to reduce fear and build trust. Over and over again, they have to be asking questions, listening and then responding to find out what are the barriers for you in doing your job. For you personally, for your team, for this department for this division, what are the barriers getting in the way of them supporting each other? In them learning, in them developing as a team, and in them serving customers. We have to ask more questions.
One of my clients, I was sitting down with him one day. It was one of the first meetings and I had a feeling that he would get value out of seeing that list of the old way and the better way. I went over it with him and he looked at it and he said, “I’ve been doing the old way. Can I change and start doing the better way?” I said, “Yes.” Overnight he transformed. He scared the wits out of his management team. His executive assistant asked me, “What did you do to him?” I said, “What are you talking about?” She said, “He’s changed so much. It’s great, but will he change back?” I said, “When he’s under stress, he might change back but that’s why I’m here. Until he’s not wobbling on that bicycle, but he’s riding that bicycle and that’s then who he is. He’ll transform. He transformed his thinking overnight and said to me, “Marcia, over the 30 years that I’ve been managing this organization, I wish I would have known that I had a different option than the one that I was never taught in school. That I’ve never learned from anyone else before.” He felt a huge sigh of relief being able to lead, coach and develop his people and create an amazing organization versus being the critic he used to be.
That’s one of my favorite takeaways from a book. Once you make the decision to pivot and start trusting your people, you cannot go back and start trying to manage from fear again. Your final words in the book are, “Think different, act different, and be different.” Thank you so much for being on the show. The name of the book is Pivot, Disrupt, Transform: How Leaders Beat the Odds and Survive. How can people find you? If people want to hire you as a consultant, what’s the best way to find you?
They can go to my website via MDaszko.com. Through the book, my contact information is in there. They can call, email or reach out. I look forward to helping leaders however I can.
Links Mentioned:
- Marcia Daszko
- Pivot, Disrupt, Transform: How Leaders Beat the Odds and Survive
- The One Minute Manager
- MDaszko.com
- Quantmre.com
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