Strategy That Moves Your Business Series: Organizational Development for Action + Elevation: Show Notes & Transcript

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we’re talking strategy that moves your business – organizational development for action + elevation. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!

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• Marketing Smarts Summary
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Strategy That Moves Your Business Series: Organizational Development for Action + Elevation

Today, we’re continuing our Strategy That Moves Your Business series with our 2nd episode: Organizational Development for Action + Elevation. As you’ve heard us say, “You are only as good as the team you have in your corner.” This means you need a team with the right skill and aptitude to deliver. You can have the best strategic plan in the world, but if you don’t have the team to deliver on it, that doesn’t matter. Learn how to put a highly effective team together that fires on all cylinders in this episode. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

• When systems create clarity
• The perception shift that comes with accountability
• The specialist trap
• Values as cultural expectation
• The power of a hard reset

And as always, if you need Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

• Strategy That Moves Your Business Series: Organizational Development for Action + Elevation
  
  • [0:00] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
  • [0:32] The Critical Importance of Organizational Development
  • [0:57] The Connection Between Strategic Planning and People
  • [1:27] Working ON Your Business vs. IN Your Business
  • [1:55] ForthRight‘s Origins in Solving People Problems
  • [2:50] How to Approach Organizational Development
  • [3:46] The Team of the Future Exercise
  • [4:43] Making Difficult Decisions: Hire, Fire, or Rebuild
  • [5:38] Operating Principles and Rules of Engagement
  • [6:08] The Mindset Shift Required for Leaders
  • [7:06] Why This Approach Takes Courage
  • [8:02] The Risk of Compromising Your Team
  • [8:31] When People Don’t “Get It”
  • [9:28] Leadership Responsibility and Empathy
  • [10:25] Key Assessment Questions for Your Current Team
  • [12:49] The Reality Check: Issues Exist in Every Organization
  • [14:19] Real Examples: Too Many Mistakes vs Too Many Doers
  • [14:47] Leadership Accountability: It’s Always Your Fault
  • [16:03] The Human Side: Respecting Your People Enough to Let Them Go
  • [16:28] What Leaders Can Actually Control
  • [17:17] Taking Ownership Without Taking On Bad Behavior
  • [18:38] When Systems Create Clarity
  • [19:07] The Human Nature of Looking Good
  • [20:50] The Perception Shift That Comes with Accountability
  • [21:15] What We Look For in Organizational Assessment
  • [21:41] Hiring for Aptitude First, Experience Second
  • [22:10] Right-Sizing for Generalists vs Specialists
  • [23:09] The Specialist Trap: Photographers and Project Managers
  • [24:31] The Diametric Tensions in Team Composition
  • [24:59] The Photographer Who Couldn’t Think Strategically
  • [26:15] Understanding Aptitude vs Technical Skills
  • [26:43] Why Most Recommendations Lean Toward Thinkers
  • [28:03] The Current Climate and Leaner Teams
  • [28:59] Pattern Recognition Across Organizations
  • [30:16] When to Hire Junior Talent (and When Not To)
  • [31:12] Interview Differently to Find the Right People
  • [32:09] Building the Foundation: Operating Principles, Rules of Engagement, and Values
  • [33:37] Differentiation: Operating Principles vs Rules of Engagement
  • [34:26] The Retraining Required After Reset
  • [35:20] Values as Cultural Expectations
  • [36:06] Why Cross-Functional Participation Matters
  • [37:01] The Importance of Homework and Hard Conversations
  • [38:00] Calibration and Psychological Safety
  • [38:57] When People Play Small
  • [40:16] The Leader’s Responsibility to Communicate Clearly
  • [41:14] The Power of the Hard Reset
  • [41:42] The Importance of Specificity and Context
  • [43:36] The Phone Call Protocol Example
  • [45:22] Rollout and Beyond: Making It Stick
  • [45:51] The Rollout Plan: Events, Meetings, and Continuous Conversation
  • [46:43] Reframing Existing Touchpoints
  • [47:10] Critical Junctures: Hiring, Firing, and Evaluating
  • [47:39] Hiring Process Transformation
  • [48:32] Aptitude-Based Interview Questions
  • [49:28] The Power of Real-Time Homework
  • [50:23] Reading Reactions, Not Just Words
  • [51:21] When the Right Candidates Become Clear
  • [51:51] Leaders Must Set the Example
  • [52:46] The Integrity Question
  • [53:13] Living By the Principles You Set
  • [53:40] The P&G (Procter & Gamble) Example: “Good Ideas Come From Anywhere”
  • [54:28] Don’t Include Principles You Don’t Believe
  • [54:57] The Grace Period
  • [55:56] Wrapping Up: The Path to High-Functioning Teams
  • Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
  • Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

What is Strategic Counsel?

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:03

Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast.  If you’re looking for honest, direct, and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead  and operate in business,  you are in the right place.  In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking  to reveal a fresh perspective.  This unlocks opportunity for you, your team,  and your business. Now let’s get to it.  Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast. I am Anne Candido.

 

00:32

And I am April Martini. And today we’re continuing our strategy that moves your business series. And we’re going to discuss organizational development, which as many of you know, this is my favorite topic and my focus area of the business. And that is all things people. And as you’ve heard both of us say, you’re only as good as the team you have in your corner, which means you need a team with the right skills and the right aptitude to deliver.

 

00:57

You can have the best strategic plan in the world and we know that Ann produces those on a regular basis.  But if you don’t have the team to deliver on it, then that really doesn’t matter. And this is because breakdowns happen at the people level. In order to have a highly effective business, you have to have a highly effective team that is firing on all cylinders. And this means ultimately that they understand the purpose of the company and what it’s working to achieve. They know their role in it and they understand how they contribute to the bottom line in the big picture.

 

01:27

This is another place where you need to step up and step out and work on your business versus in your business. Also something you hear us say all the time,  which is a hard thing to do and becomes even harder when you’re dealing with people. And I think it’s actually interesting to state too that uh this reason why we call it our company, forthright people, is our original focus was on helping  people  deal with people breakdowns, which then cause business breakdowns and

 

01:55

Now we’ve kind of come full circle into really concentrating on this practice.  And  yes, as the strategic planning side of the business, I would be remiss if I didn’t remind you all that you should go back and listen to that first episode, which was all about strategic business planning and how to put that into action.  So  take a listen to that one because these definitely build on each other. And as April said, you need the two to work together to ensure you have both the plan and the people to deliver on that plan.

 

02:25

Because if you’re just going to try to put out a action plan, a strategic action plan without developing the team around it, you are gonna really struggle to be able to deliver that. And then what tends to happen is you tend to work in your business with heads down  and you don’t actually even understand that something’s amiss until  there is an actual breakdown, whether in the business or within the team.  Exactly, so.

 

02:50

With that, let’s jump into the second episode of Strategy That Moves Your Business as the series, Organizational Development for Action and Elevation. So the first thing I wanna start with here  is how we think about organizational development, what that means to us. We’ve already kind of set the stage for why it’s so important,  but I think the way we approach it can be different than other organizations. And so starting from that place of

 

03:18

How do you even begin to look at a team and answer, like we set up, whether you have the right people in place? So Ann mentioned that where breakdowns happen is when you’re rolling along, you’re working, working, working, and then all of a sudden something happens. We never want you to get to that point. So on the heels of creating your strategic plan, the very next thing we always want to do is assess the current team and look at opportunities for

 

03:46

missing needs as well as potential outages  and just overall, do we have the right people to answer the call with that strategic plan? Because when we do that strategic work, we’re elevating the organization, answering  bigger business questions, propelling the organization forward, all of those things. So  sometimes what got you here won’t get you there. And as a big part of that,  that’s what we call the team of the future exercise. So when we go to assess,

 

04:14

current team members, the things we are looking for are things like, do they have that skillset I set up in the beginning? Do they have the aptitude to learn new things that they need to?  What do you actually need in these positions and how does it potentially look different? And we are very big on saying, yes,  you have people that are great that are in your organization.  Hopefully they’re all really great people. But that team of the future may not include some  and in some cases all.

 

04:43

of those folks. And so what we really talk about is creating a map that matches the strategic plan and outlines the seats that you need in order to achieve the plan without any people in it. And then you go back to the assessment you did of the people. And for those that you feel are still a fit, they get seats. For those that aren’t, we figure out what’s gonna happen there. And then also, do we need anybody else? And the questions here are, do we need hire?

 

05:12

Do we need to fire, which nobody likes, or do we need to  rebuild completely from the bottom up? And we see all of these situations within this work. Coming out of this, and this will be other, we’ll get into these very deeply throughout the conversation. I’ll let Ann talk in a minute. But the components then that are built once you have that team outlined are operating principles and rules of engagement. Like I said, I’ll go deep into that.

 

05:38

but this will help reset how we work together and what’s expected of each person as a result. And then second are the values.  So we talk mission vision values a lot between  all the work that we do here at Fourth Great People.  Mission and vision are more focused on the strategic planning side of things, but values become really important when you’re setting up those operating principles and rules of engagement,  because you want people to understand how they’re supposed to act as human beings alongside what those expectations are of them.

 

06:08

for the future. Sometimes organizations already have those, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they need to be re-looked at, but those are the components that we’ll be talking about, like I said, in more detail. Yeah, I want to go back to what you saying, April, about  how this process works, how you sit and you think about what are the right seats  before you put the people in.  And this is a really huge mindset shift for  many folks because  most of the time as leaders we go in with this

 

06:38

basically, um constraint that we have the people that we have. And so we kind of have to make do with what we have. Yep. I can tell you,  and I’m surprised April hasn’t gotten a  reputation as a hatchet woman.  But I can tell you every time April goes in,  she finds a way to  get the right people into the right seats, whether it is rearranging people within the team or pulling people from outside or hiring by all of those different scenarios.

 

07:06

And I think it just takes some  courage sometimes to be able to  look at it from that way, as well as just having that strategic plan to guide you. Because a lot of times we just don’t know  what we need. We look at it and we’re like, well, yeah, I think I need a project manager. I think I need a design person.  think I need, like, we just kind of base  our assumptions on the work that’s being done versus thinking about, hmm.

 

07:35

What kind of skills do I actually really need for this position? And what does this position entail in order for it to be successful in order to actually action this strategic plan?  So it’s a totally different mindset. And when you have that guy, which is the strategic plan to help you map who is in or who should be in those seats,  it starts to build a rationale for why you do need different people or why you do need to.

 

08:02

train different skills or build different capability. Because if you don’t, I mean,  you basically compromise the whole entire team, right?  mean,  and sometimes you do it without even knowing it. Like you’re wondering why we’re not delivering or  the deliverables aren’t of quality or we’re not delivering on time or somebody just doesn’t seem to get it. It’s like, well, when you’re asking people to do jobs or roles that they are not fit for  or that doesn’t…

 

08:31

really  coincide with their skills or what really lights them up,  you’re not going to get the performance that you want out of your team. So this exercise, I think, is so critically important  because it does give you a fresh perspective in new eyes about how to build your organization. Yes. Well, and it’s funny that you brought up the hatchet comment because I said that about myself in a coaching session this morning. Oh, no. You’re not supposed to, like, tell on yourself when it comes to that, April. You’re supposed to just let the

 

09:00

the whole ethos build and it’s just some sort of mystic. And then when you walk in, they’re like, oh, there’s April the Hatchet Woman. Yeah, well, that’s fair. And I didn’t say Hatchet Woman, I guess, exactly. But I did say that this is where I can be the unpopular person in the room. So I think that’s fair, too. But I like Hatchet Woman better. It’s a brand. I’ll own that, I guess. We’re getting toward Halloween anyway. So I think the other thing here, as you were talking and that I wanted to mention is we just.

 

09:28

joked about the hatchet woman and all of that, right? I’m not completely heartless, but people do  get really attached and especially highly empathetic leaders. And so they don’t want to have to make the hard decisions, let people go, identify them as not the right fits. know, I set up before the idea that they might be wonderful people. It’s okay if they’re not a fit for the position. So what we try to do, because this is such a tough topic and it gets touchy really fast,  is to make

 

09:57

the conversation’s objective and productive right from the very beginning.  And you heard Anne say that the first step in doing that is to make sure you have the strategic plan. And you heard me say that when you have the strategic plan,  it indicates that there are going to need to be changes in the business, right? You’re achieving new things, you’re trying to get to new goals, you’re setting a path forward, especially the way that we like to tackle it. It’s very, very actionable from the start.

 

10:25

And so when we can get people to think about it,  absent of the people we have or clouding any judgment because you like a person, et cetera, that’s really where  we want to operate from, from the start of this assessment. So we have a series of questions and these are really what we go through with the leaders of the organization and the people in the room to assess that current team and dig deeper to answer these questions really as honestly as we can, mirrored against that plan.

 

10:55

And I’m going to roll through these. I’m going to encourage everybody in this episode to go back through and re-listen because I could spend probably 20 minutes on the answers we would get for each question and we don’t want to be here for hours on end.  But this list can really help you, especially if you want to take a stab at this on your own to get a start. So, and they’re not in order necessarily. They’re just all really important. So  are there team dynamics that are slowing us down? Are we sure we have the right people in the right seats? We’ve covered that one already.

 

11:25

Is everyone clear on the role they play in the broader organization?  Are we giving clear, direct, and timely feedback? Are our leaders truly leading versus managing? Will what we have on the team today get us to what we envision for tomorrow?  And we go through these questions at the individual level as much as we need to, and then at the team level. And you can hear how different ones are positioned, right? If there’s a team dynamic at play, that involves multiple people.

 

11:54

If it’s the right people in the seats, that could be individuals within different teams.  And then from the leadership side, we really make sure that we flip the lens for the people in the room and ensure that we are leading at the highest level possible to give that clarity,  direction, and ultimately a lot of times feedback so that we’re leading versus just managing people, meaning giving them tasks to do day to day, not helping them understand their fit in the broader organization.

 

12:21

not helping them see the opportunities for their career path going forward.  So there can be, like I said, emotions  and sensitivities and things that we ultimately have to point out, right? So,  and I think if we can give examples, it can be helpful, of course, without naming any names because confidentiality and we don’t want to call out our clients or any of those types of things. But  what ends up happening when we do this exercise, even if…

 

12:49

you believe you have the most highly functioning team out there. These questions help us have those deep conversation in order to compare where we are today with where we want to go in the future.  And I can say with 100 % certainty that we’ve never done this exercise and not highlighted current issues within the system.  And the reason I think for that is that when people get to this point where they’re signing up to do this work,

 

13:18

there are reasons for doing the work, right? It’s we’ve stalled, we’re not keeping up with the competition, we have a new business challenge and we don’t know how to do it, right?  Like we said, all of that is tied to the people. So when you have that strategic plan, the plan starts from a place of we want to solve  X  and the people come quickly behind that. So when we get into these discussions with folks, we really take a hard look. And when I think about our clients, there was an example where

 

13:49

there were so many mistakes being made that really it was hard for anyone on the team  to produce at the level that they needed to be producing, right?  Or there’s been other situations where  we had too many  folks that were doing the doing and not enough thinkers. So exercises of work were happening, but nobody knew why that was the case.  And so these are the things that start to be unearthed. And when we think about, now not only do we have issues, but we’re looking to ladder up, it can help keep

 

14:19

the conversation objectives so that we’re truly solving business challenges and then the people that need to fit within that versus attacking people as people, getting into arguments with each other, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, and I’m going to make a bold statement in this because, mean, there You’re going to make a bold statement? That never happens. I know. It’s unusual for me, but here it goes. Dysfunctionality in teams or people not performing.

 

14:47

is always 100 % the leader’s fault. Oh yeah. Right. And so  if you can, as a leader, just be like, you know what, everything is my fault.  I have to just accept the responsibility that this is my team  and this is my fault. Now, you’re not responsible for people’s behaviors in actions.  So if you have people who are

 

15:14

doing bad things,  that is not your responsibility. But your responsibility is the fact that you did hire that person into that role or and or you are that person’s  boss or manager or leader  and or you’re the one responsible for making sure that that person has what they need in order to be successful.  Now, if that person isn’t being able to deliver and that’s the best that person can do, you also owe the respect to that person to let them go.

 

15:43

And I think that is when you said the human aspect is the hardest thing because  we  as leaders and as humans don’t want to feel bad. We don’t want to feel bad about ourselves, right? But if we were to  really put ourselves in the position of the other human beings that we’re leading and think about how they are feeling and realizing

 

16:03

If they’re not feeling successful or if they’re not feeling like they’re contributing, they’re probably not feeling good either. So what is the point of continuing to keep people on that aren’t fitting into the dynamic of the team? That all being said, I’ll go back to my bold statement is you as a leader, what are you doing in order to  cause and impact

 

16:28

what is going on here if there is dysfunction because there is always something that ties back to the leader. Again, it could be the fact that there is no mission, vision, values. There are no operating principles. People are not being held accountable or responsible. People are in the wrong roles. They’re not expected to deliver.

 

16:47

on the right objectives. mean, there’s a lots of things that are going on that if you peel back that onion, you’d like, oh yeah, I guess I can impact that. I guess I can impact that. And sometimes that’s all that it takes in order to get somebody into the right path. Sometimes when she put those things in place, it starts to really showcase that the person is not the right fit, but at least then you have the reasons why. Because again, back to my earlier point, a lot of times we sit there, total our thumbs like, we don’t understand how this is happening. How is this going?

 

17:17

Turn the mirror back on yourself, accept responsibility that this is your team,  you’re responsible for the functionality of this team, and you’re responsible for the fit of each person within the team. Yeah, I think it is  so true. I think  the hard part  as the leader  is to take that onus without taking  somebody else’s bad behavior on. Yeah.

 

17:45

I know you said that, but I want to make sure that we emphasize that point because for me, when we do these evaluations, that’s where the cutoff happens, right? So we go in and we do, we start with the team, the leadership team,  and we do the exercise with them based on each person. But like I said, we’re also assessing them and looking for those outages. However,

 

18:07

When we put these things into place, and I’ll go through the list really specifically so everyone has in their head, what are we solving for? But when we put these things in place and then we can look at the person, when they’re given the opportunity, it becomes clear what are the possibilities, but it also tends to highlight whether it is  on the leader and their behavior in that role or if it’s on the person.  And so  I think that that piece of it

 

18:38

Some people wanna shield their team because they lean so far into protecting their people. On the other side, sometimes people don’t wanna be told that it is their fault,  right, as the leader. It doesn’t necessarily matter what the reason is. I think the gift that you can give people is letting them go if they’re not the right fit  and moving on quickly from that to correct mistakes in the future so that doesn’t happen again. So there’s no lingering and all of those types of things.

 

19:07

Well, I think that’s a really good point because if we were going to just boil it down to basic human nature,  we all want to look good.  We  all have a personal brand that we’re trying to exemplify. And when we’re leaders and our people aren’t  acting the way that we want them to act in order to make us look good, we start worrying about what people are thinking about us.  Are we a good leader? oh

 

19:32

I’m capable,  are we able  to really effectively grow people? Whatever those little  niggles in the back of our heads start to really speak loudly when  our teams are not operating well. And so what tends to happen as leaders as  we can, because it’s human nature, self-protect. And when we self-protect, we start to blame.  Well, that’s not me. I have a bad apple that I can’t get rid of.

 

20:00

you know, and  whatever those excuses become. And I mean, I’m not judging you guys. We’ve all done it. I’ve done it. April’s done it.  It happens because we have reputations we’re trying to maintain. so it’s hard for us to be like, yeah, I hired that person in or maybe I just haven’t done the right thing or I put that person in a position and

 

20:24

It’s not working  out very well, but being able to take responsibility for that is a very, very hard thing. But I can guarantee you, when you take ownership for what’s going on, the perception people have of you as a leader always strengthens. Oh yeah. They understand like, she sees it or he sees it or he or she gets it, they’re addressing it.  They might have different points of view about how you’re addressing it, but at least they respect the fact as a leader.

 

20:50

that you are taking accountability and responsibility for what’s happening and you’re not trying to push it or blame it down on people that reporting into you. Yeah, I think all really good points.  And if we close out at least this part of the conversation, the things that we are  looking for when we do this work that complements the questions that I outlined before.

 

21:15

are the following. So number one, we’re ensuring the right people, not just the people we have. So we’ve talked about that one. Hiring for aptitude first, direct experience second. And we haven’t, we’ve talked around this one a little bit. I want to clarify what that means. So  more and more  often we see within teams, positions being filled with people that

 

21:41

have experiences that lead the hiring person to believe they’re gonna be a good fit for the role. What you actually need is people that have the capacity to learn new things,  have that aptitude to want to learn new things and the ability to figure things out as part of their role  versus just completing tasks on a repeated basis. The next one is right sizing the team for generalists versus specialists.  And this goes a bit hand in hand to the previous point that I made.

 

22:10

But especially if you have a lean team, and when we think about our clients, right, a lot of times they’re not huge marketing teams, for example, or sales teams, for example.  And so you need people that can do a breadth of things, not just specialize in certain things. So an example of this, to the point of me being the hatchet person, there have been instances across several clients where  someone was hired, for example, just to be a photographer, or just to build websites,  or just to be the creative person on the team.

 

22:40

That’s the opposite of what we’re talking about here because those types of people are practitioners of certain specialty  jobs. When you want a generalist, you need people that can kind of float across and do a variety of different jobs. Not that their job descriptions aren’t clear or specific or those types of things,  but that they have the ability  to  do various things well that aren’t specific to  one

 

23:09

particular role on the team.  The next is identifying the right combination of thinkers and doers. And we talked about this in our leadership conversation. So there’s also been instances where the team  over indexes  on one side or the other, meaning you have a lot of thinkers and then nothing happens.  You have a lot of doers and a lot of tasks happen, but the strategy is never realized.  You want to make sure that you have a combination of both on the team. I can’t give up.

 

23:37

specific percentage because it’s always dependent on the team and the business and those kinds of things. But you need both of those types of people on your team in order to operate well.  We talked about defining the culture and uh values of the team. The mission and vision again are more of that strategic planning side. The culture and the values sets forth the tone that you want the team to have  and how you want each person to operate and against what set of values.

 

24:02

And then, and we’ll cover these more specifically next, but establishing operating principles and rules of engagement that set expectations for those behaviors.  So getting really, really clear to Anne’s point from the leadership level down, how are we expected to operate as a team? And so when we do this work, that’s really what we get into assessing.  Those questions that I said before are the things that we’re discussing in order to identify and get to the root causes of what may be going on in the team.

 

24:31

and what we wanna do moving forward. Yeah, I think these are really, really important diametric, they’re not necessarily opposites, but different sides of the spectrum,  because these are usually the crux of most leaders’ frustrations.  So for example, like when you were using the photographer’s example,  we literally had these conversations like, I hired this photographer, but he will like think about- Project manages work.  Well.

 

24:59

You could say project manage the work, but I was gonna say, but he doesn’t, he’s never proactive about thinking about like what to go shoot or  how it’s gonna be working within the marketing materials that they’re actually shooting,  you’re supposed to be shooting this for. And  either of it’s me or Apob in the conversation is like, because you actually want a creative director, not a photographer.

 

25:21

Yeah. You hired a photographer wanting a creative director. So if you want proactivity, if you want a creative visionary, you need a creative director. You’re looking for a totally different skill set that what a photographer practitioner is going to be able to deliver. But this is like the biggest frustration because we think when we hire some of these folks that we are going to get like the full gamut of what that industry provides. So even like you said, a project manager like

 

25:50

project managers are really good at managing projects. They’re not really good at strategic brainstorming. That’s their thing.  But we invite project managers and we’re like, oh, let’s strategically brainstorm what’s going on in the business. And we wonder why the project manager is just sitting there quiet.  So you have to really think about the context for what you need again. And that’s in more psychographic nature. And this is the aptitude thing you were talking about April. It’s like,

 

26:15

Do I need problem solvers? Do I need visionaries? Do I need any of this element of putting things together in ways that are not obvious? mean, these are skills, aptitude skills that you can be bringing in somebody from multiple different industries that could bring in the perspective that even though they don’t have never done it in your industry can bring some  differentiated thinking.

 

26:43

Be very intentional about what you, again, from an aptitude standpoint, from  that generalist versus specialist standpoint, from the thinkers versus doers,  really categorizing,  do I really need a thinker here? Am I literally looking for aptitude or do I really just need somebody to do? I’m going to say, and April probably have a better percentage of this, most of our recommendations lean towards the thinker side, lean towards the aptitude side.

 

27:10

We very rarely suggest people hire doers because a lot of times you can get the doing done a whole lot more economically and a whole lot better than to have somebody internally who’s gonna do the doing for you. That’s even for small and medium sized businesses guys. I mean, that’s the benefit of agencies and especially, know, there’s agencies for all sizes and all different businesses. Yes,  is it?

 

27:33

really sometimes disconcerting to go and like make yourself vulnerable to go get an agency because you’re worried about who you’re going to get. Yes, but it’s the same thing when you hire people and you don’t know where you’re to get there too because then  a lot of times you’re trying to hire, you know, those doers to kind of go in and do the doing, but then you hire junior doers  who are even less,  have less aptitude for the creativity that you’re looking, they just, they’re used to  being told what to go do at that point in time. So you have to really kind of,

 

28:03

think about the whole dynamic and the whole like psychographic  of who you’re profiling here so you can make sure that you are slotting in again, the right people. Yeah, and I think the way that the climate is now  finding good job candidates, all of the things at play, people being asked to have leaner teams, I think the reason that we do lean more aptitude, more generalist, more thinkers,  right, is because

 

28:33

those do tend to set the profile of the type of thinker, psychographically, that you have that has the desire  as part of their career to be able to learn more, do different things, not get stuck in the task of doing all of that kind of stuff. Versus, I think your point is right on, when you just need people to check off tasks, that can happen in a whole variety of ways, right?  And so…

 

28:59

I think more than ever, we make those recommendations not because we’re biased and leaning that way. It’s just that when you do this over time and you do it on repeat, you see symptoms of the same things within organizations. Yes, they may answer the different question differently or whatever,  but you start to see these patterns. And what it comes down to is I just put a button, a seat, or I thought that person’s resume, what they said they did on paper looked really good,  or we had trouble finding someone.

 

29:27

Or I thought the need was this and now I’m afraid to change it because I’m the one that put it in the seat. All of those different symptoms or responses.  But at the end of the day, I would make the bold statement that  I don’t see how you can go wrong  if you hire that right profile of person, as long as you’re putting them in the right seat, not expecting them to do all the tasks, et cetera, et cetera. They’re just more valuable within your company.

 

29:54

versus all the other ways you can solve for task-based things. Right. And most of the time these aren’t junior people. that’s also what tends to get people, get leaders a little shy is because these people that you’re going to be hiring then are more expensive because they have more industry experience and that has value.

 

30:16

A lot of times they shy away and like, I’m going to take this, you know, new marketer just graduated and maybe I will develop them or we’ll sure. If you want to take that on, you can do that. If you also have somebody in your organization who can develop and do that.  Right. I mean, we take on junior designers all the time, but April has  she’s been around the block  a lot of blocks and she knows how to, she knows how to develop them. And so she takes that on to go do that.

 

30:43

But if we were just gonna take on a junior designer because we wanted to have a cheaper offering for our clients,  it would tremendously fail because we would not be delivering the quality work that our reputation demands. So you have to think about that in the, again, the totality of  what you need that person to do and what they’re gonna, how they’re gonna impact the organization overall, about whether or not you’re gonna be more productive. You’ll be able to get work done faster, better quality work. You’re gonna be able to,

 

31:12

scale or grow. mean, all those are important and those people  are able to provide that value cost more.  And it also means to the point when you were making April is that once you define who these people are, you’re probably going to get to this, you need to be able to interview them in the right way  in order to be able to identify you actually have the right person for that seat. You can’t go through the traditional interviewing questions and make sure oh

 

31:40

You have the right person for that right seat. It’s a totally different interviewing process. Yes. And I can definitely touch  on that. But before I do that,  I  want to go through  how we reset the foundation  once we’ve kind of taken everything apart, if you will,  or decided what it needs to look like moving forward. Right. So  this is where we get into and  best case scenario.

 

32:09

We develop all of these things at the same time, not necessarily in a single session, but as part of the process all together  with our clients. That’s not to say that  some of these things don’t exist in some form or fashion. And you’ve heard Anne and me say we don’t blow things up for the sake of blowing things up.  But at this point in the process, when you say, okay, this is the team of the future. These are the things we’ve decided we have to solve for today and for tomorrow.

 

32:38

then you have to build the foundation of consistency so that everybody understands the expectations of them. And so what I’m getting to here  are the operating principles, rules, and engagement and values.  And these things  are really important to get right, but also to make sure that the team  participates heavily within this process, because this is where we have to rely  on

 

33:08

the organization and the expectations of it and the nuances of each business and people meeting us and bringing those things to the table  so that as Anne and I help to define what each of these are, they’re things that actually can take hold and will be used and put into practice. So when we think about the operating principles, those specifically  are the ways in which  the organization is going to work moving forward.

 

33:37

The rules of engagement  are what that means for each person’s role, right? So for example, one could be,  we want everyone to raise their hand and bring ideas to the table. That’s gonna look different if you are the leader of the team versus a more junior team member and what that means for you. So as the leader,

 

34:00

you want to be fueling that creative energy with your team, encouraging your people to bring things to the table and having those conversations with those that report to you, then the direct reports  are responsible as a behavior for their role of engagement moving forward of actively doing that. We see a lot of times just in that example, right, that this is a place where you may have to retrain. So if you were the type of leader before,

 

34:26

that was dictating to people what you wanted to happen, how you wanted to happen, what it looked like, people  will get fearful of then bringing better ways to do things, new ideas, raising their hand to take things on because they’re used to you just telling them how to do it.  You have to reframe why and how you want them to raise their hand and bring things to the table. Their behavior then needs to change on the other side of that. And there needs to be an ongoing evaluation and conversation to make sure that recalibration happens.

 

34:56

On the other side of that, the values come into play. So these  are the ways in which you expect people to show up based on the operating principles and rules of engagement.  So everybody’s heard me use the one before that we’ve done in the past about we’ve got your six, so we’ve got your back. What does that look like?  That is uh a cultural, really cultural expectation of.

 

35:20

how we take care of each other as a team and that we don’t leave anybody holding the bag or placing blame or all of those types of things. So the values help create the culture,  the operating principles and the rules of engagement set that this is how the business acts  and why moving forward.

 

35:38

In order to build these things, and the reason we do them together is they really must complement each other and they must be clear, actionable, and simple for people to truly know  what they’re doing and why, and then what their direct expectation is.  When we do this work, when we think about who’s in the room, this is really client dependent. Leadership  is there typically.  Sometimes we have cross sections of teams. Sometimes we have people that we know just have a pulse on the organization.

 

36:06

It really depends when we think about that previous work that we talked about doing to assess what state the team is in and who’s going to be able to help in the situation.  going back to the hatchet thing, if we are getting rid of a lot of people, then the team typically is the people that we feel are going to stay and are going to do a really good job. If we have a situation where we’ve hired a lot of people and we have too many doers and we’re not sure they’re going to work out, then it tends to be the leadership folks because

 

36:34

They’re the ones that are gonna reset the tone and set the expectation for all of this. We are, I am very, very specific with people when we do this work about doing the homework and the hard work to have the conversation and bringing specific examples so that we can make sure that we get this right. the last point I’ll make and I’ll let Ann talk again is if people skirt around the issues or

 

37:01

aren’t willing to  really make the hard resets that need to happen and won’t do the homework to say, is where we think we are today and why, and this is what we think we need to be as a result, then this is something that’s going to live on paper and nothing’s ever going to change. so  these conversations, while tough, when we have those conversations to get it started, this work almost happens naturally because you can take what isn’t working and reframe what you need as a result of that.

 

37:31

and then what you want to look like on your best day. So if I was going to go back to one of the words you said, I think is very critical underpinning to everything that you just said. It’s calibration. All of this is in pursuit of getting everybody calibrated about how this team is going to be operating. And the reason why this is so important, if I pull my professional crush into this conversation, Adam Grant, he would say it’s because you’re trying to

 

38:00

really establish psychological safety for your team. And that is,  I can’t emphasize enough.  It is  the way in order to drive productivity, in order to drive efficiency, in order to drive highly effective behavior within your team. If you want that with your team, you have to create psychological safety. People need to know how they need to operate within your team in order to be successful. To April’s point, if they’re constantly questioning,

 

38:27

If I do this, am I gonna get in trouble?  Or  if I don’t do this, am I gonna get in trouble?  Or maybe I can’t speak up in this meeting because it’s gonna be frowned upon. if  they are constantly questioning how their behavior is going to impact the way that you think about them, the way their colleagues and their teammates think about them, they are going to play small.  It’s just human nature again. They’re gonna protect themselves. They’re gonna go back into their shell and they’re gonna do exactly what they’re told.

 

38:57

and they’re gonna do it exactly how they are, they’re told that they’re supposed to go do it,  and that’s all they’re gonna do. And you’re gonna sit and wonder, how come nobody again is being proactive? How come nobody is really exceeding expectations? And again, I’ll go back to the fact is because you as a leader have not established the calibrated operating principles and the rules of engagement that allow people to have psychological safety within your team so that they can operate with confidence.

 

39:22

So I wanted to  emphasize that point because I think it’s very, very important. If you don’t have that, you can’t have a highly effective team. Your team just cannot exist without it. No, I mean, I think you’re exactly right. I  think too often,  maybe this is a better way to say what I was saying before, there’s lip service given to this type of work instead of  actually

 

39:48

admitting what is needed  among the teams, what needs to change and what that looks like for the future.  And  I think people  also sometimes  think they’re being clear. But the other thing that I feel like I’m constantly reiterating to people is that you have to say things in a way that people can hear. And as the leader, it’s your responsibility to figure that out with each of the people that work for you. Because

 

40:16

You can say, can set this stuff up, you can tell people they’re being held accountable to it, et cetera, but if they don’t hear it or can’t hear it or aren’t comprehending what you’re saying, that responsibility is yours to crack that code and figure it out so that they do have that clarity of what’s expected of them. And we all communicate differently.  A lot of times the issues arise because of

 

40:45

just communication problems.  And so this work helps to set up that more  hopefully objective, but really crystal clear set of expectations. So people know  what they’re supposed to do. And also,  I think the other thing about it is the importance of a hard reset in a lot of cases, because  people also need to understand that what

 

41:14

happened before,  what may have been tolerated before, what it looked like before is no longer.  And if you want to be part of the organization of the future, this is what it looks like now.  And the power of doing that, I think, allows us to say, I don’t want to go back to why it was like it was versus now. I don’t want to go back to why this was acceptable and now it’s not. What we want to say is, this is the point of resetting and moving forward.

 

41:42

here is what it’s going to look like. Well, and to that point, the clarity  is driven by  making sure you’re specific enough and you  provide enough context that people understand what you mean by things. So like you said, April, lot of times people kind of will phone it in and  you’ll see their list of whatever their operating principles or their values are and it’s things like good communication or timely communication. And you’re like,

 

42:12

Okay, what does that mean? Does time communication mean  you’re supposed to know it within  10 minutes of it happening,  a day of it happening, a week of it happening? And what things do you need good communication on? Is it everything? Is it only specific things? These details are really, really important because if your expectations in your head as a leader are different than what your people’s expectations are, and you should assume that they are,

 

42:39

then you’ll totally miss all the time. And then you’re going to, again, you’ll be like, why isn’t this person delivering?  I continue to tell them I want good communication or timely communication, but they’re telling me 24 hours later and I wanted to know five minutes  later. So it’s like, you have to provide the right context, which is a constant kind of a testing and learning process that when something happens and it’s not what you expected, then you are communicating or you’re articulating, hey,

 

43:08

I get you told me that 24 hours later,  these are the types of things I really need to know right away, or I need to know like, as they’re happening, and provide the right criteria. It’s not everything, it’s these are the certain things. And so the more specific you can get, the more clarity you’ll drive, the more psychological safety you have, the more you’ll be able to operate in that state of calibration, and the more highly effective it will become. But if you’re going to leave everything very general, because you’re just

 

43:36

going through the exercises, you’re never gonna reach that state. Yeah, I mean, I’ve used this example before, but it occurred to me from a clarity perspective. So one of my rules of engagement as a leader, ah when I was transitioning roles and taking on  more of the organization was, do not ever let me be surprised and have a client reach me first.

 

43:58

And so to your point about the urgency, right, that was one of my big things. Like that you will get in trouble if that happens. And so then they had to know the ways in which to get in touch with me, right? So then I gave the very specific, if you call me on the phone, I’m going to assume it’s an emergency that a client’s unhappy and they, you know, you’re trying to get to me before them. If you text me, I will get to that next as quickly as I possibly can. If you email me with a flag.

 

44:27

At that point it was after Sam goes to bed,  I will get to you as quickly. You’ll be on the top of the list of emails, right?  And if you just send me an email, my promise to you is that I will read it before I go to bed. It may not get a response if it doesn’t warrant one, but I will have seen it.  And I never had a problem because the client never got to me first.  was  because we had set up that protocol, right? Now the other side of that, which is interesting is

 

44:53

They knew the phone call was an emergency. So I also didn’t get phone calls about things that weren’t related to a client being unhappy.  So it works on both sides.  Okay. So the last part I want to cover here before we wrap up, and we were heading into this territory when we talked about clarity of expectations and all that is the importance of the rollout of this and beyond. And so I’ve talked about having to be really careful that it doesn’t just end up in a drawer or on a piece of paper or lip service or all of those things. So

 

45:22

The other part of it is  not just rolling out the expectations to people, not just being clear on what it means for each of their roles and as individuals, but also instilling it within the organization. And so there needs to be a plan where this is very highlighted for a period of time. And then there needs to be what I would call the maintenance beyond that. And also times when you really come back to this on a very consistent and regular basis and revisit it.

 

45:51

So when we work on the rollout plan with folks, we  do the homework to assess  all of the ways and conversations and things that exist currently  and those that may not that can help us highlight this and put it at the forefront and make it that continuous conversation that I talked about before. So as an example, we talk about having events.

 

46:15

or big meetings that say, this is really important. This is the reset button. This is what this looks like.  But then starting every meeting with these for a period of time,  talking about them in every one-on-one,  giving people an opportunity, kind of an open door period of time to come talk to you if they’re not clear on what that means for them. Looking for ways to bring in subject matter experts that are different voices that may hear things differently from the team.

 

46:43

changing up the way you used to do things. Like, you know, oftentimes the weekly status meeting becomes the thing that becomes a throwaway, right?  Reframing those so that we’re really making sure that we’re putting our operating principles into play and that each person understands what they’re bringing to those meetings.  And then  beyond that, making sure that they stay top of mind and critical at key junctures. So,

 

47:10

Hiring, firing, evaluating, keeping people based on all of these things.  When you’re bringing in new hires, and I will go to how you ask the questions a little bit differently since Anne asked me to do that before.  When you’re doing your strategic planning, again, making sure these things come up and you’re re-looking at things to see if they’re right. Really, really making sure that they become  part of the culture,  all of the expectation and are constantly front and center for people so that there is no

 

47:39

backslide into that what was before, as I mentioned before.  And then really specifically when you’re bringing new people into the organization, making sure that you’re not hiring the way that you used to. And sometimes this becomes a whole subset of this exercise if the hiring process is just broken. But if it’s not, and you can get to a reframe of,  okay, we looked at who we have, we have 70 % are the right people.

 

48:04

We’ve got this 30 % we need to hire some new ones. What do we need to do? Going back to those,  what are we looking for moving forward? That’s the place you start from. And then that’s how you reframe the hiring. So examples of this would be, you don’t just ask the person to run you through their resume and you’re checking the box of whether they have skills, meaning that they’ve done a marketing campaign or a design project or whatever before  you’re presenting them with.

 

48:32

Hey, as an organization, we are constantly rebuilding marketing plans for different offerings. How would you approach building a marketing plan? And that’s an aptitude-based question. What you’re looking for is how the person would tackle it and think about it, not necessarily, oh, well, let me tell you about a time I’ve done a marketing plan and these are the steps that I took and the things that I executed, right? It’s more about how does their brain work? How do they think about it? How would they put?

 

48:59

a process in place in order to go and do that exercise.  We’re also really big fans of having people do homework right in the room with you, especially given the digital age that we are in currently.  We don’t want anybody  asking AI, I guess at this point I used to say Googling, but  how to do certain things, right?  If you’re screening for a phone interview and you ask someone how they would build a marketing plan, they could very easily be on checking that out, right? Versus in a room,

 

49:28

You say, you know, I want you to do this exercise, we’re gonna give you 15 minutes and we wanna see how you would tackle it. You’ll know whether they can think through how to do the work, solve the challenge, be proactive.  And then when we think about things like generalist versus specialist or are they curious or those types of things, you ask them questions like, how do you feel when you’re given a challenge you don’t know how to solve for, right? And I always tell people, don’t just listen to the words that come out of their mouth.

 

49:57

watch their reaction, right? As someone, if you have someone who genuinely gets excited, you will see their energy come out and they will get excited and they will be like, oh my gosh,  I, you know, I love the idea of learning new things. And so I would go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or if I asked people, how do you feel about working on teams? Again, watch the reaction and listen to what they’re saying. If they get really excited about,  I love to meet new people and…

 

50:23

I know that I’m never gonna know it all and so therefore I wanna leverage everybody’s skillset, et cetera, et cetera. Those are the things you’re looking for. And so you,  as the team, as the leader, as the people that are gonna work with these people, all of this work has to reframe who you’re looking for and how you hire them.  I mean, people, this is another place where people are like,  but like standard interview questions or organization does it this way or this and that. It is…

 

50:52

hard to retrain yourself to do this, but it becomes  so obvious when the right candidates are sitting in front of you. I mean, we just finished a project of this with another client and they were like, oh my gosh, we had like 20 something candidates and our  one and two and then three and four, one A,  two A,  whatever,  the  secondary people were really, really clear.  And not only that, but they got their top candidates for both positions because the people on the other end were clear and excited.

 

51:21

about what they were going to get because the organization was able to tell them how this was all gonna work and they were seeing it in action in the hiring process. Yeah, I think, I mean, really, really great insight on how to tie all of this into interviewing. I reinforce everything you said. I was gonna go just back and make a point about the rollout and just again to reinforce again for you leaders that you guys set the example.

 

51:51

If you do not follow the operating principles,  all of the values, if you’re not constantly holding those up as  the crux of how this team is going to operate, your team is not going to either. And what’s worse is that your integrity starts being called into question. How serious you are about the functionality of the team and how much you care about the people and whether or not they should continue to believe these processes that

 

52:18

you try to put in place and whether or not you’re really for having a functional team, like all those stuff gets called into question. That doesn’t mean that you have to be perfect all the time.  Have your people hold you accountable  or have somebody else who’s in the room, like you said, like a third party or  subject matter expert, have them hold you accountable. But you’re going to need that feedback from folks to make sure that you don’t slip into your old behavior, that you don’t slip into your bad habits and that you are constantly

 

52:46

forward thinking because if you make a mistake, you make a mistake. You basically like, ooh, I missed that one, you guys, that’s on me. Here’s what I’m gonna do going forward. That’ll continue to maintain the integrity, maintain the respect. If you speak one thing and act another, then your team is gonna do the same thing, right? They’re not going, if you want them to have,  if I wanna have open and honest conversation, but then you shut down everything  anytime somebody says something.

 

53:13

They’re not gonna believe you wanna have open and honest conversation. It has to be consistent. So just think about it and continue to evaluate within yourself. It’s like, hmm, am I living by the principles that I want my team to live by?  And make sure that you’re holding that integrity. I can tell you from my personal experience working, when I was working at P &G, it was a constant state of frustration for me, for team leaders. Like for example, one would be like, oh, good ideas can come from anywhere.

 

53:40

And,  yet when  other people from the team brought good ideas, it wasn’t listened to because we have a creative director and a creative agency that’s supposed to bring all the great ideas.  So all those ideas were just kind of thrown away because that was what the agency is supposed to do.  So.

 

53:58

Also recognize the fact that if you don’t believe good ideas can come from anywhere, don’t make that an operating principle.  I mean, this is the other thing I think to the other side of the story, April, is that people and leaders will put in  principles they don’t agree with because they think that’s what the team wants, but then they don’t live by them. So  have some integrity here. And if even if the team is like, hey, we want to have  flexible work schedules. If you’re like, yeah, no, we’re not having flexible work schedules.

 

54:28

then you shouldn’t have flexible work schedules. They may not like it, but  you have to hold to your integrity. So  just  watch that. I think it’s really, really important. Yeah. And the last thing I’ll say there is just the grace is one of the big pieces that we inevitably always get into the conversation and it’s grace across the board. you said it  Sam.  Sam now. Okay. uh You said it Anne that it’s okay to make mistakes.

 

54:57

when you’re hitting a reset like this, everybody has ingrained behaviors from before that they have to unlearn and unravel. And so being able to call it out, up, down, sideways, whatever, or for yourself to say, I didn’t do that right, or that was an old behavior or whatever, will allow everybody to calm down and not feel like they’re on high alert through the process and

 

55:26

also learn very quickly to correct those behaviors because some of us have blinders on sometimes and we’re moving quickly and we don’t even realize. Some of us get embarrassed and we don’t want to be called out, right? But if you can set that grace period for the team and say, okay, we’re going to learn alongside. also we have to then have that ability to call each other out. It all goes a lot better. And the trust and authenticity of the team also builds as a result. A thousand percent agree.

 

55:56

Okay, so we talked about a lot. I talked a lot today, but just to wrap up this episode and hit the high points to make sure we’re all on the same page. Look, we know that this organizational development work because you’re dealing with people is tough. The strategic plan sets you off on the right foot to be objective. Doing the work to make sure that your team of the future and the evaluation of the current people.

 

56:25

as such is really important. The more objective you can get, the faster you can get more objective, the better off you will be. It’s gonna be a series of tough conversations, but ultimately the pieces you wanna get to is what does that team look like? What do we have? What do we need? Then what are the operating principles, rules of engagements and values of the future?

 

56:50

And how are we gonna make sure that that rolls out as seamlessly as possible and takes hold within the organization? It is gonna be a process. We just talked about grace and the ongoing work that needs to be done. And it is hard work, I just wanna say guys. it’s,  this is never easy and it’s especially hard because you have so many people and personalities in organizations. But the organizations that do get it right do.

 

57:16

have what the title of this episode is meant to communicate. They have immediate action and the team elevates tremendously and you get to high functioning teams and also many times things that they never even thought were possible. So obviously I love this work. We love this work. We’re here for it. If you need to please listen to this episode a few times. Cause like I said, we did cover a lot, but there’s some lists and tasks  and

 

57:42

tools and things for you to go and start to evaluate and ultimately help you get to that team of the future that matches that strategic plan. And with that, we encourage you to take at least one powerful insight you heard and put it into practice. Remember, Strategic Counsel is only effective if you put it into action.  Did we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further?  Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com.  We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business.

 

58:09

and make sure to follow or subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform.