[00:00:07.390] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head Heart and Boots Podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:10.830] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we leave.
[00:00:17.810] - Chris
I don't know what you think?
[00:00:19.240] - Brandon
It was kind of serious.
[00:00:21.170] - Chris
Should we laugh?
[00:00:26.850] - Brandon
Christopher, how are you, my man?
[00:00:30.290] - Chris
I'm good. There's so many great things in life. It offsets the not so rad.
[00:00:35.430] - Brandon
Yeah. For those that follow us on the YouTube, the interwebs, I've noticed that our table, I think we're going to have to upgrade eventually to maybe like an actual six foot table so that we can have enough room for all the crap that we try to put on this two foot space. Are you starting to fill out?
[00:00:54.730] - Chris
I feel like that's actually, like, in all reality, that's a little bit of a passive aggressive thing that you're well, you're telling me you don't like all the gadgets and things that I bring to our podcasting table. You'd like it more neat and tidy?
[00:01:06.830] - Brandon
Do you know when they say they're saying if the shoe fits, I made no direct comment, passive or otherwise. Well, actually, in all honesty, I mean, half the crap on the table's. Mind.
[00:01:18.400] - Chris
Speaking of gadgets, I ordered that Apple Watch. I just need to say it all out. I'm a little bit embarrassed, but do.
[00:01:24.640] - Brandon
We need to walk through the chat that we had regarding accountability and gadgets?
[00:01:29.330] - Chris
I think it would probably be uninteresting to most folks.
[00:01:32.020] - Brandon
It's different.
[00:01:33.220] - Chris
So maybe that's a separate one. Yeah.
[00:01:34.790] - Brandon
All right. Okay, man, let's get into this topic. Okay. A while ago, I kind of lose track of when these episodes will get released versus when they're recorded. But we did an episode. Number 55 was changing project manager mindset. Changing our project manager mindset. And, dude, that episode got some serious plays, and we got a lot of feedback, you know, really fortunate. We have a bit of a friendship with CNR, and we do some contributing to that. And of course, there was an article there, too, about it. Anyways, point being, it struck a chord. We got a ton of feedback on the relevance of that and how it was applicable, and we got a lot of people saying how they were going to share that down into their ranks, really, almost as a training. And that's exciting for us. Obviously, when we do something, we hit something that obviously there's value. So I wanted to do a similar kind of episode, and I wanted to focus really, on this transitioning that happens as we're moving people in our ranks from field roles or more technically competent roles. And then we're asking them to slide into division manager spots.
[00:02:46.070] - Brandon
We're asking them potentially to fill operations manager roles, maybe take over the lead seat of a branch or one of our revenue generating locations. There's just a shift in mindset. And so I wanted to do a show on that. We're going to try to keep it tight. We're going to try to stay kind of at that 10,000ft. We're not going to necessarily get down into the weeds.
[00:03:08.750] - Chris
This is a little bit of a window into our consulting because I think this conversation is going to touch on a lot of the stuff that when we do like an on site with our clients, we spend a healthy amount of time with leadership teams walking through this stuff. And I think in some ways it's always fun when you have an article or a show that just takes off. But we kind of knew it was going to strike a chord because this issue of project management and leadership development, every single client that we work with, there's an opportunity to grow in that. Yeah.
[00:03:43.160] - Brandon
And I just think again, for all of us that's the special places that when you get approvement, they have exponential.
[00:03:50.350] - Chris
Impact on the team, it can always be improved. It's one of those areas of the business. You can always be investing and you'll get a return on it for sure. Okay.
[00:03:58.150] - Brandon
All right. So kind of the groundwork for this. I want to preface this kind of with this. Let's put it this way. You and I really have kind of subscribed to this idea of the four disciplines of execution. Of course. That's a Sean Covey piece. We didn't come up with that. Sean Covey, right. They're all kind of that whole Covey group. Prolific business and leadership writers, obviously major folks leading that charge. Anyways, they talk about the four disciplines of execution. The reason I like to start there is because in a lot of ways I feel like if we commit to that pillar strategy, it then shapes a lot of how we think and what we end up doing as leaders down to how we execute on a day to day basis. I want to start kind of there. It's like 30,000ft and we'll work our way into what you and I feel are the primary focuses that our key leaders need to be navigating and spending their energy on. Okay, so the four disciplines of execution, the first is we focus on the wildly important. We're going to kind of unpack a little bit later what that means.
[00:05:01.970] - Brandon
So for us as a leader, depending on where you're at in the organization, that wildly important could shift slightly. But what we've identified over time is it's really just what shifts is how you impact that. But your focus is pretty much the same whether you're a department head or you're a GM, right. They're pretty similar. So focusing on the wildly important, basically what we're going to do is identify what is the wildly important for us depending on our role and then how we affect that act on lead measures. I can't remember the first time that we heard this, but I do distinctly remember in one of the firms that you and I worked for, this really kind of took us like a wave, like when we started to identify that there's leading activities that you can influence. And when you do that, it gives you the highest chance of reaping the reward or getting those lagging measures that you want. So, like, we talked about this in sales, there's leading activities that we can hyper focus on and measure and pay attention to that will likely give us the revenue generation that we want to see.
[00:06:06.070] - Brandon
Right?
[00:06:06.610] - Chris
Yeah. The fact of the matter is, I think some of the philosophy behind this whole 40 X model, it's acknowledging that we don't ultimately have control over people and the decisions that people make. And this is true in sales. So 40 X is really great in the sales environment. My first exposure was actually in a state farm office. I was working for a mentor agent who now is actually one of the top agents in the country. And he's been working on four DX for ten plus years now. He's been highly successful because it doesn't matter how good of a salesperson you have, we can't control what other people choose to do, but we can control the behaviors that lead up to that decision to create a higher propensity for success.
[00:06:51.470] - Brandon
Right, right.
[00:06:52.340] - Chris
And I think that's an important distinction because sometimes we get so focused on the result, and yet we don't ultimately have control over other people to control that result.
[00:07:01.850] - Brandon
I agree.
[00:07:02.350] - Chris
We can only control our inputs.
[00:07:03.870] - Brandon
Right? That's right. And we're going to probably bounce on these a couple of times, but I really do feel like there is something so important about these things. So again, guys, Sean covey four disciplines of execution. Read the book, go put some time and really understanding how these impact us and what we can do with them. But that acting on lead measures is such a critical shift in the way that we're leading people, and primarily because I think one of the struggles that we have, like when, for instance, we do our monthly review of the financials, is it's kind of happened. We feel almost helpless and frustrated by the fact that something went down and now we're looking at it post script. There's nothing more I can affect that month. Now, moving forward, it obviously gives us insights to modify behavior, blah, blah, blah. But this leading measure thing is so critical and the idea that as a key leader, whether a department head, even project managers, GM, Om's, if we can look at our team and go, what are the things that I can measure and draw people's attention to? That gives me the ability to have live impact all the way up until we start measuring those lagging indicators, that's really vital.
[00:08:13.050] - Brandon
Okay, keep a compelling scoreboard. This one is interesting, I think, for a lot of us, because we tend to be somewhat shy of conflict. We think that public scoreboards are creating conflict potentially. Right. And I think one of the things that we've learned over time is when you have the right people in the bus, a public scoreboard, it creates healthy competition, it aligns people's performance and if they're winning or not winning with the leadership team, right? So there's no secrets, there's no hidden gotchas, there's no misunderstanding of how someone is doing. And so the positive impact of a more transparent or public scoreboard is actually far more healthy for organizations than any downside. And the reality of it is that we found is that those that don't want to be on a public scoreboard tend to be the ones that probably aren't performing well anyway. The interesting thing about this keeping a public scoreboard, it also helps us problem solve. So we're not saying this from the level of accountability and then you ditch when somebody doesn't perform. But if we can see it on a consistent basis again, we can influence it, we can jump in before it's too late.
[00:09:38.010] - Brandon
If a team player is starting to slide into that B to C seat, well, we have an opportunity because it's public, we can see it and we can hopefully get that propped back up and provide whatever insight or training to get them back into that AC. There's lots of implications for this. So keeping a compelling scoreboard and then this last one four is create a cadence of accountability. You and I are super fans of Clint Pover, right, and just his kind of focus on creating a better relationship between employees and employers. And he talks about this balance, that cash. We've talked about this so much of accountability and connection, right? And the idea is that we have to have equal parts of both. The employees are engaged with companies where they're heard and seen where they're valued. And we do that through connection. Right? Really, I understand these are people and we're connected to those people and we marry that with a cadence of accountability. And accountability is hard. It's difficult for us as leaders to maintain. We get tired. Some of us are kind of optimist by nature. So we feel, like I've said it once, right, that everybody will do it now.
[00:10:58.790] - Brandon
And then we get greatly disappointed when our team members don't follow through. We take it personal a lot of times, all the different things.
[00:11:06.100] - Chris
Yes. I think where we tend to fall down as leaders is in the cadence. I think most of us as leaders know we have the responsibility. But where we tend to fall off is we allow little things to go unchecked and those little things start to stack up and become patterns and then those patterns extend from one person on our team to other. People start seeing, oh, that behavior is actually acceptable. It's not ideal, but it's acceptable. And then they start to develop that same pattern right, of exception to our standards and then they pass it from somebody else and so then all of a sudden, your team, the standard has slipped big time. But the cadence seems to be the hardest part because most people don't last in leadership very long if they can't make difficult decisions and hold people accountable. Fire when necessary, that sort of thing. But it's this regular cadence that's so hard to maintain. And we see this a lot, particularly in our smaller restoration companies where they don't yet have a strict adherence to, say, a production meeting every week or for the larger teams, a leadership meeting. It's not happening every week.
[00:12:20.990] - Chris
Instead, it becomes an as needed kind of thing where we fit it in when we can.
[00:12:26.570] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:12:27.160] - Chris
And that's what we've seen, is when the cadence goes away, we start to have these little compromises, these little allowances. Things start happening and small behaviors start to slip. The mitigation process outline, little bullets start to get left out. And then all of a sudden, over a quarter or a month over the course of the year, we're in a totally different place than where we started because slowly these exceptions have started to creep across our entire process and team spot on.
[00:12:59.070] - Brandon
Yeah, totally. You're right on. And I think that's the challenge too. As we're moving people into these leadership seats, we haven't given them this updated focus of it's not necessarily about you getting this work done any longer. It's more about you now play a key role in helping us establish accountability with our process. You were one of the individuals that did it so well, and you were so consistent that because of that, we are now asking you to move into a position where you're overseeing that rhythm. Are we doing it consistently? And when not, what do we do about that? So anyways, I think that that's just part of that challenge. But your spot on it really is this cadence of accountability. And a lot of that is designed in our battle rhythms. Right. A lot of it is in our production meeting schedules that stand to process. How many opportunities do we give consistently and at a fixed place in our day to day operations where we can review and check things out, inspect what we expect so that we can keep our teams accountable for their behavior? Because in most cases, what we've identified is it's less about malicious intent and it's far more that we've created a path of least resistance.
[00:14:16.780] - Brandon
And our person has taken that just like any of us would because the cadence, as you call it, is not in alignment. There's too many opportunities for that course of action to look differently than what we expect. Yeah.
[00:14:29.740] - Chris
I mean, back to this old Henry Cloud statement that we've just really latched onto, and that is leaders will always get what they create and what they allow.
[00:14:41.020] - Brandon
Right.
[00:14:41.720] - Chris
And the cadence and the battle rhythms is the platform for checking both of those. What are we creating what are we allowing and not letting it get out of control? I think General McChrystal or one of these other famous generals too talks about, hey, you walk past, you walk past a non compliant behavior without saying something, you just endorse that behavior.
[00:15:06.800] - Brandon
Absolutely.
[00:15:07.260] - Chris
You just said it was okay. And how often do we do that as leaders? Oh my gosh, so often, right?
[00:15:13.430] - Brandon
All the time.
[00:15:14.260] - Chris
So let's go into, let's talk about this primary focus of leaders because we've identified kind of six key areas of focus. And I think sometimes we can lose track of these because we get caught up in the nuts and bolts. We get caught up in project management, production flow, we get caught up in the production schedule and we can lose sight of some of these other really important things.
[00:15:46.020] - Brandon
Yeah, I think one of the ways to look at this before we move into this is this is the critical shift mentally that our leadership has to make. And I think the challenge can be is a lot of times as business owners ourselves, we're not 100%. Like we haven't really done a good job of articulating what my leadership team's focus should be. And because of that, we've allowed one of our team members to essentially fill in the blanks. And the challenge in that is that they're going to use their existing database, their existing experiences to fill in those blanks. And really often, and this isn't always the case by any stretch of the imagination, but most often we've moved somebody into a leadership role because they've done the tactical part well. And so when we move them into this leadership role and we don't talk to them specifically about, hey, this is part of the mental shift that you need to have, like, this is where you're going to begin to focus. This is what I want to see from you. This is how you win. Now they fill in the blanks and how do they fill in the blank?
[00:16:51.860] - Brandon
Well, they do. They go back to what they know. And what they know is doing the work. An example of this is, and we'll obviously get into them when we get down to the pieces, is if someone sees that they need something to get done, a doer's knee jerk responses, go do that thing.
[00:17:10.460] - Chris
I know how to do it.
[00:17:11.200] - Brandon
I already know how. I've got the experience. I've got the knowledge. It's faster for me to do it than try to tell somebody else. And when that goes on and on and on, we create a culture now where we're just in this cycle of fighting fires because we're no longer proactively leading our teams. We're just jumping in and fixing problems ourselves over and over and over again. And then we perpetuate the problem because we haven't spent any time proactively solving the issue for the long term. And what we see when we talk to leadership teams about this is almost a sigh of relief that someone recognizes that these leaders are just doing the best they can with the limited tool set that they have to their use. And when someone says, you know what? The reason you feel frustrated is because you're spending your energy in the wrong lane, a light bulb goes off and they're like, oh my gosh, yes. That is my frustrated. I didn't even know how to say that, but that's what I'm anyway, that's good. Okay, so let's get into these the primary areas of focus. And I mean, to a certain extent, this is our opinion.
[00:18:15.830] - Brandon
This opinion comes from experience.
[00:18:17.940] - Chris
I know, dude, it's fast. Dude, this is law.
[00:18:21.170] - Brandon
It's the law.
[00:18:21.990] - Chris
It's laws of the universe.
[00:18:23.070] - Brandon
This is laws of the business universe, I think. Okay, so the first one is our primary focus has to be on our cash and collection activity. Okay. Cash and collection activity. Again, if we're a doer, we win when we get the work done. However, as a leader, our job is to ensure that we get the work done in such a way that we're able to collect and get paid for our services. So what does this look like as a primary area of focus for a key leader? And when I say a key leader for this topic, I'm talking about division manager, up, team lead and up, let's call it. Right. Depending on your size and scope of your company. So cash and collection focus can look different based on the role in the team. But an example would be at the team level, it's about monitoring the way that we're closing a project and invoicing. So let's say I'm a Mitigation team manager. We go out and execute on a job. The area that I'm going to dig into and monitor and look at is in order to support this cash collection focus is are we getting the information from the field in a timely manner, and is it accurate enough for me to quickly and time efficiently write a sheet, get an invoice submitted, and get that approval process started?
[00:19:45.800] - Brandon
Right. That's mission critical.
[00:19:47.270] - Chris
Yeah. What is the quality of my document packages that we are creating, which includes the photos, includes the moisture logs, includes all the things? Right.
[00:19:55.720] - Brandon
And if you're a Mitigation manager and you're listening to this right now, I want you to walk through a scenario with me. How often do you find yourself filling in the air gaps on shitty paperwork? Because you know it, you've done it. You know what the team missed because it's applicable to almost every single water loss that we do. And so you just continue to fill in the blanks. You continue to audit horrible data coming from the field, and you fix it in quotes because you know how to fix it.
[00:20:23.240] - Chris
Yeah. And it has to be done.
[00:20:25.040] - Brandon
It has to be done. I got to get these invoices out so your solution is to get in and do you make up, you fix it. Right. Now there's a challenge in that because it's a bandaid. Are we equipping our team then, to follow process and be owning that process? No. Now you're stuck ensuring that you're the one reviewing documentation and writing our scopes of services because you're the only one smart enough to fill in the gaps.
[00:20:55.790] - Chris
Which means you're also not using that time to be in the field, to do quality control, to be mentoring, to be training appropriately, to be engaging with customers.
[00:21:05.600] - Brandon
Right.
[00:21:06.600] - Chris
All the things that come further down in this list.
[00:21:08.910] - Brandon
Right? Yeah. I think it's just important for us to give some of those examples where people go, oh yeah, that is me, and that's so common and I'm not putting anybody down for being in that position. But that's part of the frustration that we're creating for ourselves is we're doing instead of creating change in the process for a long term result. So again, we don't want to get too bogged down in the weeds, but that cash collection activity. What that ultimately means is that if we're in any kind of position where we're leading a team or higher our focus, we cannot give up the kinds of day to day activity that drives our ability to collect and protect the cash flow for our company, for anything else. So if we're doing something else outside of that, we need to find a way to delegate and or train into our team to be accountable enough that we're not the fix, that we're not down in the weeds. Right. That's really how we stay focused on that area and keep it moving.
[00:22:09.540] - Chris
It's good. Hey friends. Hey listeners. We're doing something a little bit different with our ads. So you've been accustomed to hearing some ads with our favorite partners and companies in the industry. Now we actually have a product page, our partners page on our website. So floodlightgrp. Compartners want to give you a quick rundown though, of the people that we're partnering with and we believe in as really go to resources in the industry. The first one is restorationairp.com. Right. ERPs are an important part of our sales process, our customer development process. And why reinvent the wheel? The restoration ERP platform is awesome. It can be customized to your business, branding and all that kind of stuff. It has all the components to really create a value add for your commercial client. Accelerate job management Software everybody needs job management software and we have just found Accelerate. Not only is their team just really great to work with, when they get ideas from customers, they throw it into the product roadmap and they implement it. They're really advocating for the contractor and trying to create a software solution that works for them. Actionable insights. We recommend actual insights all the time.
[00:23:15.850] - Chris
Right. All of us as restoration operators are looking for turnkey resources and training solutions that we can take our team to the next level. And AI, when it comes to estimating and matterport and a lot of the other essential tools we're using, they're an awesome resource and they're always coming out with new great stuff. Yeah.
[00:23:34.640] - Brandon
Super influential in the industry. Super Tech University soft skills development training for your technicians, for your frontline personnel. Let's face it, frontline personnel are the heartbeat of our company. They are the ones that connect with our clients and create the customer experience. There's no better investment than investing in the ability for those individuals to represent themselves, our clients, and our brands. Well. So Super Tech University, surety, they essentially are cutting down this lifecycle between delivering service and then getting paid, stepping in, removing the middleman in terms of mortgage companies, refining that pipeline, making sure that there's at least friction as possible so we can go out, do a great job, and then our businesses don't suffer while we're waiting to get paid. The money is coming, and it's coming quickly. And then the last one, guys, is Liftify. It's kind of a newer entry to the industry. They're driving Google reviews so they're turnkey partner that we can literally go out, provide a great customer experience, hand that name off to our trusted partner in Lift if I, and have them go chase that Google review.
[00:24:39.000] - Chris
25% conversion rate, which is industry wide, people tend to average 5% of the people you ask for if you actually convert Lift. If five bumps at 25. We were such a big believer. We're a customer, and they've been generating all of our floodlight reviews. And in a matter of a week and a half, we're up to close to 15 reviews in just a short period of time.
[00:24:57.610] - Brandon
And I think people just underestimate what happens organically with your SEO search activity when you're getting these new and active five star reviews from our clients. And we just can't let the pedal up on that because of the effect on our businesses long term.
[00:25:11.130] - Chris
Big deal. So check it out. Check out our partners page. Do business with them. You won't regret it. We're confident in that. Floodlightgrp compartners.
[00:25:19.870] - Brandon
Thanks, guys. Profitability and consistency of service delivery.
[00:25:26.000] - Chris
You know, it's interesting, even as I looked at that, I was at a community fundraiser event, and I ran into one of my construction buddies this morning, and we were actually talking about this. And what we were talking about is just this interesting observation that your most profitable jobs tend to also be your happiest customers. Oh, yeah, your loser jobs. The jobs that go sideways tend to be with unhappy customers. Now, of course, sometimes it's just because a crazy customer we always have those one percenters that are just impossible to work with. The customer throws a monkey wrench into the system, et cetera. But more often than not, when we have a failed project, it's because of what we did or didn't do nine times out of ten, right? That's a whole other podcast is why do things go wrong? And we can talk about those key things. But it is interesting that as a leader there is a correlation between profitability on jobs and execution on the customer experience timeline. When we're minding our process, when we're doing the pre construction budgeting, when we're having that restoration checklist, meeting with a new build back client and we're walking them through the process, setting appropriate expectations, explaining the process and all that kind of stuff, we tend to get better outcomes in terms of our profit.
[00:26:44.060] - Chris
It's when we don't communicate well and we end up getting a bunch of change orders and all this kind of stuff that our costs go up and that profit shrinks, right?
[00:26:53.410] - Brandon
And if we go back to kind of that starting example, if we're bogged down in the office or behind a desk or behind a screen making up for a failure to execute in the field, then we've lost all of our ability to proactively manage the consistency and the execution in the field. I can't do consistent quality control checks. I can't be talking with my clients and finding out how their experience is going. I can't pop in on a job and do some ad hoc training and updating for our team because they're really close. But we're just missing the mark enough, right? I can't do things like let our team know that they're doing a great job following these XYZ processes in the field because I can't get out to interact with my team.
[00:27:38.130] - Chris
Yeah, I'm stuck behind my laptop.
[00:27:39.150] - Brandon
I'm struggling behind the laptop or I'm at one of these jobs, I'm at one single project all day doing instead of equipping a team to do right. So you can see how and I think these apply like even all the way to the GM level. If you're a small enough team, it's completely reasonable to have GMs and operations managers that are filling in the blanks and they're going out and they're executing on a project, they're slipping into a project manager role, they're filling estimator tasking because we just got to get the work done and we slide out of that lane. We're now no longer proactively leading the profitability and consistency of our service delivery. So here's something to kind of keep in mind, I think as we walk through this, I really want to encourage leaders as they listen to this is the key switch. Here is the stop doing piece. Like this is kind of hard to do. What I mean is stop being one of the tools that's used to complete the project and be more motivated by ensuring that the tools are available and sharpened so that your team can execute in the field.
[00:28:49.860] - Brandon
And so the challenge I see on this is that our teams may be mentally on board on saying yes, cash and collections is important. Profitability and. Consistency of service is important. But the way they fix the problem is jumping out into the field and doing themselves and started creating a team that can actually execute consistently. And that's that mental shift that we're talking about. It's vital that business owners and key leaders begin to slide in this proactive management of the resources instead of constantly dropping down a couple runs, jumping out into the field onto that project to be one of the tools that's being deployed. That's the shift. Right? That's the shift. Okay, number three, creating new opportunities. Right. This is our operational selling. Every single one of us on the team, especially as key leaders, your day to day business needs to be considering what is our team doing? What am I doing, how am I behaving in such a way that will give our company another shot, another job, a new relationship, a new opportunity. Right. And some of the ways that we talk about this. Like on the sales side. Is we talk about.
[00:29:57.930] - Brandon
Especially in the commercial environment. How vital it is for operational leaders to be aligned with their salesforce to the point where salesforce could be setting up meetings and intentionally drawing our operational leaders out to engage that prospect or that new account to create depth and trust that the service delivery will happen.
[00:30:19.420] - Chris
Right? Yeah. This is one of those areas where we certainly haven't always been fantastic, but I think you and I did achieve some success. And the teams that we've worked in where breaking down those walls between production and sales and also really getting our sales people connected up to our operational leaders routinely to where there's a regular open conversation happening about new clients that have come in, what's being sold in the field, what are we hearing out in the field? Relaying feedback from sales, that interaction with the primary customer back to our production team so that they have that intel to work off of. It's important for operational leaders to always be connected to what's happening out in the field. On the selling side, what is the promise that we agreed to deliver on that's right. And that's a huge disconnect for so many teams. We get so focused on the scope of work, the nuts and bolts of the execution, our GP, we forget to really engage all of our resources. And probably the most important resource is how did we get this work? Because folks that listen to our stuff, there's this really important tie in with the commercial sales.
[00:31:34.540] - Chris
And this pain solution selling model is that these customers, in particular commercial ones, are coming to us for a reason. There's some kind of pain point, unmet need, unmet preferences that other companies haven't been able to cater to, whatever the case is. But there's a reason why that customer is coming to us instead of going to XYZ restoration. And if our operations leaders aren't connecting with our salespeople, we can end up delivering on the wrong promise.
[00:32:02.690] - Brandon
Totally.
[00:32:03.180] - Chris
We've talked about this before. We have our cadence that we established in operations. One of the cadences we had earlier in our careers was that all PMS had a weekly face to face meeting with recon clients, which is a really strong process. It's great. Keeps everybody on the same page, problems don't fester for too long, blah, blah, blah. But here's what's interesting, right, that salesperson talks with that customer about prior damage events that they've had and customers like, oh God, communication is just so terrible. We never know what the hell is going on that salesperson thinks, oh, this is great because we have our weekly meetings, they're going to love this. Then when the sales rep follows up and explains our weekly face to face meeting process and the customer is like, the last company did that and that was nowhere near enough. We were kind of hoping that we'd get daily updates on what's going on.
[00:32:54.460] - Brandon
Right?
[00:32:54.720] - Chris
But if that kind of intel doesn't make it back to the department leadership and they can't articulate that down to their production teams, we end up thinking we're delivering on the standard that we've established, whereas the customer has this whole other expectation that's going to lead to us disappointing them. This happens all the time.
[00:33:13.620] - Brandon
Yeah. I think what you're highlighting is it's less about our operational leaders thinking that they have this other thing they can do from time to time when they're available. And it's a shift to no. One of your primary responsibilities as a key leader in this organization is to ensure that you are finding and aligned with things in our process that give us another opportunity. So for a key leader to make time to ensure that they go and participate in that relationship in that way is not sometimes do it when you can. It's a primary responsibility. It's how you create a return on the company's investment in you and your role. This is going to be common with.
[00:33:57.580] - Chris
Everything you might need to be a two partner with.
[00:33:59.140] - Brandon
I know. Okay. Number four is customer satisfaction. And I think what we're saying here is because we just talked about consistency and service delivery, ultimately that will create customer satisfaction. What we're talking about here is the inspecting of and digging into and ensuring that we are creating satisfied customers. So an example would be if your team gets surveys sometimes or gets reviews sometimes, you as key leaders are allowing something very vital to slip through the cracks. You're treating customer satisfaction and inspections of that as something else you could do if you have time versus a primary responsibility in your role. And so, of course, our friend at Liftify, the reason we explain to people this is a great resource to adopt into your business is that it's a very easy thing to commit to. It's completely cost effective. It's silly not to use it. The results are high. But the point is, it's you, as key leaders, understanding. You have a commitment to understanding your customer satisfaction as part of your roles and responsibilities. And this is a resource that will help your team execute on that more consistently.
[00:35:14.490] - Chris
And at the same time, it's not like a silver bullet of having a system like lift a fire, getting Google reviews and stuff on it. Part of the customer satisfaction thing is digging beyond those things, too. And I think as leaders, that is part of the responsibility we're taking on, is to really understand. So we talk about departmental leaders, GMs owners routinely engaging closed, collected customers, saying, hey, Mrs. Jones, listen, I was following up first of all, thank you so much for that Google review. I mean, that really pumps the team up when we see that feedback. And I appreciate the internal survey you guys returned to us. Great information. Do you mind if I take a few more minutes with you? I'd love to dig into some of your feedback. And we're always trying to get better. And then, listen, we talk about this process as leaders. It's so critical is listening to what the customers say verbatim? What are the words they use to describe their experience? Do they reference specific team members about their experience? What did they like about our people in our process? It's just one of my favorite go to questions.
[00:36:17.280] - Chris
Hey, could you tell me two or three specific things about our people or our process that just made this experience a little bit better for you guys? And then verbatim capturing those words and descriptions. And then the bigger thing is taking it back to our team and say, guys, this is how we win.
[00:36:34.770] - Brandon
I love that.
[00:36:35.580] - Chris
This is how we win. I heard it straight from the customer's mouth. And it doesn't matter if that's Johnny, the plant manager or the VPO of this or that, or if it's Mrs. Jones that has a three bedroom ranch that we just finished a water damage repair on that piece. So we're collecting Google reviews. That's awesome. Five star review means something great happened, but it doesn't tell our team how we're winning.
[00:37:01.510] - Brandon
Agreed.
[00:37:02.160] - Chris
You know what I mean?
[00:37:02.890] - Brandon
Totally. So let's think about this. Using examples of what we tend to see people do to help this area and the business versus what they should be doing as a key leader is okay. They understand that customer satisfaction is very important. That's not the hard sell. It's like, okay, I believe that. So then it's like, okay, how many of us as operational leaders have accounts that you will go out into the field and service because you don't trust your team to give them the level of satisfaction they should get from doing business with your company?
[00:37:37.280] - Chris
It's painful.
[00:37:38.000] - Brandon
Some people are cringing because we've all failed. Not failed. We've all done that. Okay. I know right now, I know of current conversations where people have done this. So again, our point of walking through these primary areas of focus is it's not necessarily to remind you they're important because I think most people know they are. It's just how are you affecting them in your role is what we're talking about.
[00:38:02.620] - Chris
What are the leadership behaviors that feed these areas of folk?
[00:38:08.170] - Brandon
Exactly. So on that customer satisfaction component, this goes back to us properly equipping our team members to go out and provide a consistent process that then will give them a great customer experience. We build it into our process so you as a key leader, it's less about you going out and taking care of that client, and it's more about you than looking at your team's processes, procedures, looking at your team's training platforms and consistency. It's the quality control. What am I doing to affirm that my team is getting the tools they need to go out and create a happy client? Right. It's you spending your energy there is what we're trying to get folks to shift out of. Because it's not just that we want you to understand that's important. We want you to stop going out and being the only resource that can make it happen and start equipping a team to do it as part of your role as a leader. Okay. Number five employee engagement. This is an interesting one for me because you and I are pretty hyper relational by default. So there are some natural instincts in you and I that just we want there to be a party.
[00:39:16.550] - Brandon
We want everybody to be on board. We want everybody to come with us. We love team environments. There's a lot of operators and key leaders that are so gifted and so skilled and so technically competent, but by default, they don't necessarily need to be surrounded by a bunch of people to have a warm and fuzzy. That being said, when you take on a leadership role, you no longer have a choice of whether or not this is a team sport. You've made a commitment by accepting the movement into a team lead role or an operations manager role that you will begin investing in your ability to connect with people and keep them engaged in the mission that you're leading. It's not a choice. It's got to happen in order for you to be successful in a leadership role. And that means that you may very well have to spend time and energy and get training and support on how to be better at the way you communicate to your team, the way that you establish relationship and connection with your team, the way you coach and monitor their performance. These are non negotiables. As a key leader, your primary responsibility, one of those primary responsibilities is to ensure that you are building a team of people that know they are valued and they're committed to the mission in front of them.
[00:40:32.680] - Brandon
And you cannot do that through dictatorship or lording over people. Yeah.
[00:40:37.890] - Chris
And I think such a big part of that is modeling, for sure. Right. It's like part of our role as leaders is we are there to create the container that everybody's working in. Right. And part of creating a really healthy container is consistency and reliability. Like, you as the leader are setting that tone where there's a safe place when people show up to work every day, there's an experience they can rely upon. Like, the standards don't change every day. The requirements, the expectations aren't constantly shifting. There's a role that they can show up to, and they know there's going to be some amount of stability that they're entering into when they show up to work. That's a big part. That's creating the standards, the expectations, and then holding to them in a consistent way where people can rely on showing up to work and having a certain kind of experience, right?
[00:41:39.850] - Brandon
Yeah, totally.
[00:41:40.760] - Chris
Which is hard. It is really hard.
[00:41:43.980] - Brandon
It's hard.
[00:41:44.550] - Chris
And I think it comes back to what you and I have talked about many times, is when we step into that leadership role, we first have to take stock of the way we're leading ourselves. Because I think if we bring our insecurities into that position, we bring our own lack of discipline, it is going to spill over. It's going to model the wrong thing.
[00:42:06.210] - Brandon
It's going to model the wrong thing.
[00:42:07.290] - Chris
Because again, the modeling thing and team and employee engagement, I think, is we can't be engaged with our entire team all the time. And so what we're modeling day to day starts to show our team members how they should be conducting themselves. And it kind of spreads. It's like it's mentoring, I guess.
[00:42:26.680] - Brandon
But it is.
[00:42:27.880] - Chris
It's mentoring. It's saying, hey, I'm holding to these standards and values. This is how we're successful as a company. And just consistently modeling that I'm showing up to meetings on time. I'm not canceling meetings last minute. I'm not making excuses for my undone work. So employee engagement, I think, is maybe even not even a big enough term, right? It's like we're building the environment and we're setting the standard by how we act and conduct and treat others and the way that we hold to the discipline and standards personally. And that is tough. I've had these come to Jesus moments several times in my career where I realized I've shown up to my meeting five or ten minutes late the last three weeks in a row. And then I find myself irritated because I have this one sales rep or this one employee that is showing up 15 minutes late. And I'm like, what am I doing here? Right? As a leader, I'm not even holding the standard. And then I find myself irritated because someone else is. And of course, it's all ego because then I think, well, I'm more important. It's okay for me to be late because I have really important stuff.
[00:43:37.230] - Chris
Right?
[00:43:37.680] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:43:38.190] - Chris
But that's part of it.
[00:43:40.070] - Brandon
Yeah. I mean, probably the easiest way to supplement this or give you guys some more resource to check out is check out the coaching culture episode. I can't remember the number off the top of my head.
[00:43:50.460] - Chris
It's recent, though.
[00:43:51.220] - Brandon
Last year, fairly recent. Creating a coaching culture that's basically kind of a deep dive. And part of this engagement, like our role as leaders and how we create employee engagement. I guess the short term point for this is that it's not something else you can do when you get time. Yeah, no, I've hired department managers to split the workload. Right. Like, I'm asking you to shoulder some level of responsibility in your role to help me continue to grow a platform in a company that has a bright future. And part of you doing that is in every single leadership role, we need to understand that a critical element and responsibility is for us to learn how and then to proactively engage our employees to where they want to be at that company like it's our job. All right. Team recruitment. This one is always hard because I feel like most of us start looking for people when we've already maxed out our production level. And I think what we're saying here is that as a key leader, if you're outdoing all the time, it's impossible for you to proactively manage the prospect pipeline for new talent, for new employees.
[00:44:59.660] - Brandon
And it's not the GM's job or the owner's job or the HR department's job. It's your job as a key leader to ensure that you're bringing in enough people to adequately handle the current and growing workload. Which means you can't think about this when you're tearing your hair out because you keep going out into the field and doing you need to not go out and do, and you need to focus on solving the problem by hiring good employees. Yes.
[00:45:27.720] - Chris
I say it's that Emiss thing.
[00:45:28.840] - Brandon
Right.
[00:45:29.020] - Chris
It's working on the business instead of in it, right?
[00:45:33.430] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:45:34.170] - Chris
There's two aspects of this that come to mind when you're talking about team recruitment. Is there's a succession piece that we always have to be engaged in? Who are my risers? Who are my climbers in my department? Who is potentially holds the capacity to take my job? So there's this piece of who's coming up through the ranks, who am I developing for future responsibility and expanded scale? And then what holes is that going to leave in the team?
[00:46:01.560] - Brandon
Right.
[00:46:03.350] - Chris
When I move this person up into this, then I've got this open seat. I need to start thinking about who's going to fill that spot. And it could be somebody down the chain, or it could be I got to go external. I got to be finding new blood right. To fill up my bench. So when I promote this person and I'm moving up into this more skilled.
[00:46:20.190] - Brandon
Role and we all have some version of this. Again, if we just kind of keep using this department head as an example, right? Like there's operations managers role, maybe there's the opportunity to take the lead seat in a new branch or a new satellite location. Well, who's going to fill that air gap for you? Right? So we kind of look at these as two different things. There's this recruitment and succession planning. Skipped a big sheet, but no, you're spot on though is those are two different things but they're critical. I got to have enough seats filled on the bench to adequately produce. Right. And I need to be looking for that right hand. I need to be looking for the individuals that are showing promise and begin to feed them new levels of responsibility. Give them a vision for where their career path can go as part of this institution. And what's interesting about all of these, because I know when I think about them, I'm like gosh, there's like these minor layers of overlap that's because they are synergistic, they don't really happen in complete silo from one another. They all support each other.
[00:47:25.080] - Brandon
So if you're in the right state of mind and you're focusing on the right things, these kind of perpetuate success, right? Because they feed into one another.
[00:47:34.230] - Chris
I think to kind of put a wrap on that, the keyword is proactive always. Because so often we wait until we're desperate and we've talked many times about desperation, brain, where then we're plugging holes versus looking ahead and saying, hey, our current production rate, if the sales team continues producing and bringing new meat onto the table, what am I going to need in four weeks?
[00:48:01.000] - Brandon
Right?
[00:48:01.530] - Chris
What am I going to need in three months given our current growth track thinking, proactively, bringing that information to the production and leadership team environments and letting people know so that HR is prepared for that influx and we're getting those ads out on indeed 34568 weeks before the actual need is there. Because we all know how challenging it is to find talent. Absolutely. But if we don't do that, we end up plugging holes. We end up taking people that don't meet our standard because they have the.
[00:48:31.080] - Brandon
Technical and then it just perpetuates the problem of all these other categories, right? All the other categories so bad. Okay, the last one here is training. And again, I know you guys are listening to this. There's overlap that's intentional. These are synergistic, right? So training, stop doing start equipping please. Every time you go in to fill in the hole with yourself, you've now robbed your entire team of getting better. Like every time we pull you out of this proactive state of mind. And honestly, for business owners and leaders, you need to be paying attention to this as well. Because the expectation that you put on your people, not supporting them, not giving them the resources they need as a key leader and you're allowing them or forcing them to be in a position where the only way to fix the problem is by going out and doing it themselves, you too are creating the problem.
[00:49:31.860] - Chris
Yeah, you have to model this as well.
[00:49:33.240] - Brandon
You have to model this if you're.
[00:49:34.970] - Chris
Running around with your hair on fire thinking you have to have your hands in every part of the business. You are modeling absolutely. For all your people to have their hair on fire.
[00:49:42.620] - Brandon
And we see this a lot. We see business owners that start companies because they're tactical. They are doers. They get in and they grind their face off and more power to them. The challenge is, though, is that if you never mature out of that state in the way that you lead your business, you will end up hiring and teaching people to operate in that space. And guess what? It perpetuates the problem to where now you never can get out of that space because you just hired a bunch of leaders that aren't doing anything proactively to lead their teams. Now they're just fighting fires right alongside of you, and they're perpetuating the problem within their ranks, which then obviously perpetuates the problem across the institution. Okay, guys, let's just kind of wrap this up again. This is 30 0ft. We didn't get down into the real nitty gritty. If some of you are interested in doing more work with us around this topic, let us know. We do a two day training conferences on this. Conference is the wrong word. Training events.
[00:50:38.600] - Chris
Live workshops.
[00:50:39.530] - Brandon
Live workshops where we get into the nitty gritty of this and really teach teams what this means and how we execute in the field to remain in these categories. So talk to us. Send us an email, connect with us in a chat somewhere or even on YouTube. You can just leave a comment. We'll talk to you more about it. So, high level four disciplines of execution. We want to focus on the wildly important. We want to act on lead measures. We want to keep a compelling scoreboard and a public scoreboard, and we want to create a cadence of accountability. Again. That's Sean Covey. We didn't come up with that stuff. He's brilliant. And then, okay, just recounting these primary areas of focus as key leaders. Where should you be spending your energy? Not when you have time, but because it's a key performance space for you as a key leader. Cash and collections, profitability and consistency of service delivery, creating new opportunities, operational selling, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, team recruitment, training and succession planning.
[00:51:49.530] - Chris
What's interesting about that list, right, is I think when people log in to listen to a podcast about leadership focus, that means different things to everybody. But I think what's interesting about this list to me is while there are lots of tactical things underneath these things, it's the vantage point that's important. It's like we have to adopt this new perspective of our roles as really sitting above those all the tactical do's and don'ts. Right. It's thinking at this higher level of it's this proactive position. Whereas we often were coming out of, how do I make this day work? How do I make this week successful with my team? And then as we go into this higher level leadership role, it becomes all about how we're thinking about the business, how we're setting the team up for success, right? How we're equipping and mentoring, and it's all in this more long range.
[00:52:47.180] - Brandon
Absolutely.
[00:52:47.680] - Chris
I'm going to see the benefits of my behavior three months, six months, nine months, twelve months out, and being committed to that and not getting sucked back into the glamorous. I was a hero today. I solved a problem. I collected an invoice. I set equipment it's instead building the team for next year, the year after, et cetera.
[00:53:11.350] - Brandon
That's it. That's the shift, right? That's the shift.
[00:53:13.690] - Chris
Okay.
[00:53:14.190] - Brandon
Hey, game, this was good.
[00:53:16.050] - Chris
Share it. If this taught you something and you appreciate it, the best way that you can think of floodlight is to share it out with your friends and colleagues. Share it out to your team, use it as a resource. Right? This could be a good first conversation. Have your department leaders listen to this episode. Start to get their brain wrapped around this mind shift and reach out to [email protected]. If you're looking for some kind of consulting or advising partner, we would love to chat.
[00:53:40.730] - Brandon
Right on. All right, guys. See you next time. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart and Boot.
[00:53:49.650] - Chris
And if you're joined the show, you love this episode. Please hit follow. Formerly known as subscribe. Write us through View or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.