Learning Without Scars
As a third-generation educator, it is easy to say that teaching and training are in the blood for Ron Slee. From his beginnings as a coach, through his time at McGill University, Ron developed a foundation for the work he does today. From working within dealerships, to operating a consulting company, creating a training business and running twenty groups, Ron has been directly involved in this Industry since 1969. Ron has been known as the industry expert for years, and has brought this expertise to bear through his training programs. Today, Ron provides specialized, job function based internet based subject specific classes, job function skills assessments, as well virtual seminars and webinars. These courses are designed for manufacturers and their dealers, as well as independent businesses in the construction equipment, light industrial, on-highway, engine, and agricultural industries through Learning Without Scars (www.LearningWithoutScars.com). This platform is a continuation of the work begun by Quest, Learning Centers which was established in 1996. This training is aimed at improving dealer parts and service operations through qualified people that are knowledgeable in using operational metrics and current market and operational best practice methods.
Learning Without Scars
From Critique to Conversation Transforming Workplace Reviews
Discover how performance reviews can transform from dreaded rituals into opportunities for genuine dialogue with insights from Bruce Baker, a seasoned HR expert from South Africa. Bruce offers a compelling metaphor, likening managers to orchestra conductors, guiding their teams without needing to master each instrument themselves. This episode promises to shift your perspective on performance evaluations, highlighting the vital role of empathy and understanding in fostering productive workplace dynamics and tackling sensitive topics like wages.
Join us on a journey to redefine company culture, focusing on the power of open communication to curb high employee turnover, particularly in blue-collar sectors. We emphasize the importance of viewing employees as indispensable assets, not mere expenses, and share our business model aimed at supporting startups and scaling companies. By exploring virtual group settings and collaborative mastermind groups, we reveal how these strategies can lead to innovation and a more engaged workforce, enhancing both employee satisfaction and business success.
Uncover the secrets of empowering teams through calculated risk-taking and embracing failure as a vital component of growth. Bruce Baker shares his thoughts on overcoming societal norms that inhibit creativity, urging leaders to foster an environment where employees are encouraged to learn from mistakes. Through this engaging conversation, we explore the need for lifelong learning and a shift from risk-averse leadership to a mindset that values fresh perspectives and bold ideas. Prepare to rethink your approach to management and discover how embracing these principles can elevate your team's performance and drive innovation.
Visit us at LearningWithoutScars.org for more training solutions for Equipment Dealerships - Construction, Mining, Agriculture, Cranes, Trucks and Trailers.
We provide comprehensive online learning programs for employees starting with an individualized skills assessment to a personalized employee development program designed for their skill level.
Aloha and welcome to another Candid Conversation. We're going to continue our journey in the world of performance reviews. Today we're talking with a gentleman by the name of Bruce Baker who's originally from South Africa, and I met Bruce in Canada where he was running HR for a very large publicly traded company. And good day, mr Bruce, who's down in South Africa today. I guess it's tomorrow there. How are you?
Speaker 2:Not bad, ron. How about you? Thanks for having me, as always.
Speaker 1:Well, this is going to be fun. You saw the brief introduction. You and I had a little chat beforehand trying to see where it goes, but I mentioned that. Performance reviews I don't think people that do them know how to do them Right.
Speaker 2:I completely agree in quotations has unfortunately moved from something that was initially intended to be constructive to something that is a not necessarily intentionally, but a form of intimidation, especially when having those discussions, and has also moved away from what what I think is absolutely critical in these discussions is having that two-way dialogue, not necessarily from an authority to a subordinate, but between two people that are looking for essentially looking for the same result.
Speaker 1:And what do you think that result should be?
Speaker 2:It's the business's results. We tend, you know, in terms of business professionals, leaders of the sort we tend to forget that all the work, the activity, the exchanges, the emotional energy we put into and intellectual energy we put into, all of this is all about the result, all about did the business actually achieve the result or the results at the end of the day?
Speaker 1:That's the bottom line, ultimately actually achieve the result, or the results at the end of the day. That's the bottom line, ultimately. Okay, so we're looking for I'm going to call it productivity just for lack of a word, absolutely. And that's going to vary by different job types, doesn't it? Leadership might have a series of metrics versus a guy in a warehouse, might not.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, I think. I think, in terms of metrics, there's always, for the most part, there's always a metric, whether we understand it and articulate it or not, there is a metric and it's something that I think we should strive for if we're, if we're struggling to find one.
Speaker 1:And the dilemma with that is clarity, isn't it?
Speaker 2:100% correct. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:If I was to say that, okay, I'm working in the warehouse and my boss is the parts manager at a car dealership, for instance, my manager might not know what my job is Right. My manager might not know what my job is Right. My manager might not have given me a job description Right, and how the hell do I know if I'm doing a good job or not?
Speaker 2:Well, it's a very interesting point, and it's something I deal with quite regularly with folks that I work with is starting off with the job.
Speaker 2:So, as my previous friend, mr Bill Bonsetter Dr Bill Bonsetter always used to say, if the job could talk, what would the job say it needs for superior performance? And one of the key components we start off before we even consider performance management, if you want to call it that is do you truly understand the job that you are managing, the job that you are leading? And naturally, most leaders would say yes, absolutely. And then, when we get really stuck into the job and truly understand it, there is a lot left to be desired in terms of truly understanding the job. We're now taking a step further to what you just indicated is does the manager or does the boss for lack of a better term truly understand not just the job description or the job profile, as we call it, but also the day-to-day living, the life of the employee, wherever that employee may be, in this case, the warehouse? So there's a lot to be desired in terms of do you, as the manager, truly understand the components that make up the job?
Speaker 1:I use the illustration of an orchestra as a metaphor. I guess the conductor of the orchestra is a musician, but he's the only musician that has his back to the customer, and in order for him to be successful, the musicians in front of him have to be really good. All he's doing is giving them a cadence, giving them a rhythm. Yes, and what makes him so good, that leader so good, is the way that he deals with the horn section, the reed section, the timpani, whatever all these different specialists to get them to exceed their actual skills, to be the best they can be. And I don't know that we get that across in a performance review. Like you said, it's almost a confrontation, because I'm talking wages with you, yeah, and the employee can't. I don't think the employee can win in that environment. I think they're scared to death.
Speaker 2:Yeah, completely agree, and it's also another key element is that you know when you're discussing and it's a fine balance. When you're discussing, let's call it money, money and having a frank conversation with your manager and vice versa just doesn't mix very well. And especially when you're looking for candid, two-way dialogue with as little intimidation, if not at all, getting to the primary customer. Therefore, significant reliance, dependabilities on the musicians playing and performing the way they need to perform. You can just imagine if that was a relationship of some level of intimidation what would happen. We've got our employees are the front line, regardless of level and company, and in this case you want as little intimidation and, very specifically, you don't want to have the subject or conversation of money while they're performing and in your you know, in terms of your analogy trying to impress or trying to entertain a large audience, ie the customer. So I love that reference and it's very apt.
Speaker 1:And the other part of it that gets me excited is as a conductor, I cannot be the best trumpet, the best clarinet, the best saxophone, the best timpani drummer. I have to know how to work with those people. But it's all about relationships and trust and respect. It has nothing to do with the technical of the job, does it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That's where it starts. I mean, you know, there's so much material and good discussion out there about trust being that glue that keeps everything together. And again it goes back to that core conversation and that relationship between boss and, to use your term, productivity. It has to be a very candid two-way dialogue, as opposed to one of intimidation or even introducing the concept of money in that conversation.
Speaker 1:What's really interesting also, Bruce, is that people don't leave for money. They leave because the boss or somebody has ticked them off 100%. And the other thing that I you know, work for many people is a four-letter word. We spend more time at work with our co-workers than we do in bed asleep, yes, and if you're not happy to go to work, if you don't have friends at work, work is a really dark place.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:A lot of people. You know it's really funny. My best man was a co-worker at a Caterpillar and we were unhappy with our department. He was the service manager, I was the parts manager. We weren't happy with the relationship that existed between those two and I'm going to characterize it as white collar and blue collar, just for the easy definitions. So we swapped jobs, thinking that that might make a difference and and you'd laugh I put overalls on the guys after a week or so, said get back in the office, you're screwing things up out here. And I joked about it, that I could relate to the men but I couldn't relate to the degree of difficulty of the work. Like I could in parts, like I could in IT, like I could in selling, doing physical labor, technical labor that required today some of the smartest people in our companies. I just couldn't relate to those guys as well as I could to a salesman in the field. So, as a leader, there's going to be mismatches, aren't there?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, and that is certainly something that we worked with in droves. In terms of number one, you can't always find the perfect match. If you're speaking from the boss's side, you're not going to find the perfect match, and if you're the employee side, you're certainly not going to find the perfect match. But at the end of the day, if you're looking for match and you're looking consistency, it's the one thing that we both strive for. And again I go back to the word results and productivity, the word results and productivity. And if we can't necessarily match entirely from a personality standpoint, we have to come together and align ourselves in terms of what do we actually want to produce between the two of us?
Speaker 1:So let me go up in the helicopter a little bit further, when you were driving HR in Canada for the public company. What was your most challenging? What was the most challenging aspect of that job for you?
Speaker 2:Believe it or not, it's very apt. We're talking about it today. It's exactly that was the relationships between manager and employee. And you know, with respect to the colleagues I worked with at the time and they've just obviously made some massive improvements was realizing that your environment is not conducive. Let's go back to what we called it not conducive to two-way dialogue. What we called it not conducive to two-way dialogue, it was a one-way, incredibly toxic and manipulative environment.
Speaker 2:And you know, if performance discussions happened and it's a big if if performance discussions happened, it was very far and few between. But also the discussions were a one-way discussion and I'm sure we can guess which way it went. The manager had to say, the employee had very little to say and frankly, the employee didn't want to say much at the end of the day because the consequences certainly outweighed the productive two-way discussion that needed to occur, certainly outweighed the productive two-way discussion that needed to occur. So just designing and building and implementing the program, that was the easy part.
Speaker 2:The really challenging part was the employee relation, the manager-employee discussion on a regular basis. And you know, talk about a metric or talk about a quantitative outcome when you're looking at the level of turnover, especially if we continue to use the blue-collar side, especially on the blue-collar side. It was absolutely enormous and very damaging, of course, but once those discussions started to occur and once that environment became a little healthier I'm not talking, this didn't happen overnight, certainly this this happened over at least a year to two years. When things started to stabilize, um, we found turnover reducing significantly, but also a lot more happier environment, and it's it's just incredible how, how things changed after we got that normalized.
Speaker 1:And let me suggest to you that's the creation of a culture in a company, correct?
Speaker 2:Well said yes absolutely.
Speaker 1:Culture today. This is also a little bit of a bone of mine. I think a lot more people are putting profit ahead of employees these days.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir.
Speaker 1:And they view employees as an expense, not as an asset. Right, and if you take, I call the employees the heroes. You know anybody that touches a customer. They're the ones that build the relationship. They're the ones that the customer wants to talk to, needs to talk to, comes to call when he needs help, for whatever reason. I did tax returns for a client once. The bosses typically don't know that or don't accept that. Do you see that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely see that, and I think you know what I don't think it's. You know as much as I. At times, we get to a point where we say how can you not see this? You know, how are people so blind to this? This is so straightforward, it's not and I think our society in general has and the need to capitalize or increase profits at the expense of the people component in a business and when I say people component, it's not just the employees, it's also your customers. Yep, when you are looking at profitability first, I think it's turning the whole thing around not in a good way, in terms of putting the horse before the cart, I should say, where profitability, which is a combination of utilization of time as a resource and money and, ultimately, efficiency, profitability is an outcome of effort. So what we tend to do is we tend to forget that and spite the very assets human assets in this case that are there to actually produce that profit at the end of the day. So I think we're putting the horse before the cart in that regard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you said that very nicely. Profit is as a result of effort, right?
Speaker 2:And so let's go further up in the helicopter. Tell me what your business is now, our business? Well, it's always been born in a uh, you know an environment where we focus on three different scenarios for business owners, one being, you know, there's there's always the passion to to help startups get going. Um, the other one is fix up in in terms of companies that are struggling or, you know, in a very difficult place and getting them out of that, and then, to a larger extent, is the scale-up component and that's the growth component. And what we do, what we've done traditionally, is really focused on a hands-on approach where we roll up our sleeves and get into the field with companies. And why that's important is, you know, coaching is fantastic, but doesn't necessarily, you know, hit the brass tacks in terms of field work and doing the work and, when you can, as a subject matter expert or consultant, where you can actually provide that technical guidance and coach along the way. That's essentially our core.
Speaker 2:We've recently started working on reaching a broader audience, where we've introduced what we do, but more virtually and in more greater group settings, and we're finding that to be quite a success. You know, as opposed to working with individuals, we work with groups, entrepreneurs that have a similar mindset, but also it's created a bit of a mastermind where we have like-minded people that are going through similar challenges and remember we are social animals at the end of the day, so being able to learn from each other but also being able to acknowledge that you know I'm not the only one that's going through this. And if we take it to a larger organizational perspective, it's professionals. We don't just deal with business owners, we deal with leaders as well within the company and their teams, getting them to realize that hey, if Bill, could do this, well then Ron can also do that. And we're finding that, even though the virtual group initiative is still young, we're starting to see some good results there as well.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting, bruce. We are social animals and we did similar things on the financial side where we'd get business owners. We did it for 12. It started in the on-highway trucking business and they called it 20 groups and they would meet three or four times a year, share financials, share experiences, have subject-specific people, come in as speakers, and it was all about making the group stronger. And what I found was you get a dirty dozen of 12 guys in the room and you give them a report that compares them to each other, with no names, just numbers. Nobody wanted to be the bottom of the list the next meeting. If you were at the bottom of this meeting, you sure as heck did not want to be the bottom of the next meeting, because we're all fundamentally competitive. We all want to do a good job, and only when you get in that team session can people actually show themselves to be vulnerable.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah's. It's fascinating because it's in, you know, in so many cases when we do something like that, it it's getting the permission, um, from each other as a group and feeling safe, and that's when, uh, you know the staunch competition that typically occurs with people, which is great. That competition is no longer something that I win, you lose, but something that, hey, you know what. Everybody's going through similar challenges, but everybody at the same time could also win together, as opposed to winning by myself, right? Or, in many respects, leaders starting to understand that I don't win just through my own efforts any longer. I win through the efforts of the people that I serve as a leader, and so it's quite fascinating and exceptionally helpful when doing it that way.
Speaker 1:The biggest transition, the most difficult transition in the world, is going from being a doer to being a leader, because as a doer, you're dependent on your own skills and performance and effort and ability. As a leader you're only as good as what your group will give for you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely right.
Speaker 1:Yes, and the example I use always is show me an all-star athlete, a superstar who is also a good coach, and I can only think of one. And you're in Alberta and you know Wayne Gretzky, and he was a heck of a hockey player, but he was an abject failure as a coach. Right, because he didn't understand the limitations of normal people. He wasn't normal. And the guy who I use as the example is Bill Russell. He played for the Boston Celtics. He was a center At the time.
Speaker 1:Will Chamberlain was the hero of the basketball world, 7'4" and Bill Russell was 6'11". And Russell won two collegiate championships when he played for San Francisco University of San Francisco. He won the NBA championship. Every year he was with the Boston Celtics, except one, and that was the first year he was player coach. He didn't quite understand what the job was the second year and thereafter he won the championship again, and I can't think of anybody else that you know pele, um, you know whomever we want to talk about, uh, it's, it's an interesting parallel. And then so the best sales to select our leaders, the best doers get promoted yeah, yeah, and it's, it's, it's.
Speaker 2:You know, I, I promote. I find, quite often talking with managers, leaders of the sort I. I find that the assumption, or the uh, the hope, is that my best doer will also be good enough to teach what he or she knows. And the doer, as you correctly said, is not necessarily the best leader. And being a great leader or being a great manager is also being a great teacher, and a lot of the doers are exceptional at what they are as individual contributors, but are not the best leaders, are not the best managers, and we find a lot of standards that we hope to either maintain or increase by promoting these folks into roles that they're not set out to do, which is absolutely fine. It becomes a big problem, large, uh, fortune 500 company a couple of years ago, early 2000s, where you know, celebrating the two distinct paths in in someone's career where, if you were an individual contributor, whether whether you knew it or not at that point in time, and where you definitely flourished, or whether you wanted to go down the leadership track, either one was celebrated, and the amount of caution that I think we still have to place in looking at succession, looking at leadership development and choosing the right people. They don't have to be exceptionally competent at that point, but choosing the right people, that not only will make good leaders, but will want to do it. They're interested in doing it.
Speaker 2:You're talking about the company that I worked with earlier on. I spoke to the president one day and him and I were just bantering to and forth and then he had mentioned, he'd made a statement and saying Bruce, you know what it feels like? I'm working in an adult daycare center. So I laughed, I smiled and I said well, what makes you say that? And he says you know, I'm exceptional at what I do individually and I don't and I'm paraphrasing, of course, but I don't necessarily understand why I chose to be a leader of so many people.
Speaker 2:It's just not in me and it doesn't motivate me, it doesn't get me going. I'd love to go back where I started, and we're talking about an individual that had been in a senior leadership role for at least at that time, at least 10 years, 10 to 15 years. So it's so important, not just for the sake of the company, but it's so important for the sake of the individual that was once an A player. But essentially, what we've done is, we've put him or her in a position where they become a C player, which is not fair.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I used to characterize it my last job as an employee. We had 53 different stores and I had probably 500 people directly and indirectly and my job essentially was babysitting and politics, and I'm no good at either and I don't like either and I left because of that and I don't like either and I left because of that and it just didn't fit me. So that gentleman you're talking about I think I know who it is we don't sign up for that. Imagine Jack Walsh running a business that has hundreds of thousands of employees. How in the devil do you do that? Well, you don't. You break it down into smaller teams, don't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And in those smaller teams we is always smarter than me. Yes, well said, and that's something you know as a boss. You know there's a book called Flight of the Buffalo. Yeah, a guy whose family owned Johnsonville Bratz Sausage Company in Wisconsin and a university professor at San Diego State professor at San Diego State and the professor said one of the hardest things that he had to learn as a leader was to speak last.
Speaker 1:Let other people talk. Let other people tell you, as soon as you open your mouth, they're going to shut up and they're going to follow your lead Right and how to change. It goes back to culture again and trust and respect and you know your start. Fix. Grow list is fun. Fix implies that you can talk to people or you can survey people and you can find out what's going on, because they will more often than not be honest. In that and if you follow up in discussion with them generically, not individually, group speak rather than individual comments you get a heck of a lot further along than if it's a one-to-one thing. It almost goes back to that wage discussion again, which is completely dysfunctional. Yes, agreed.
Speaker 1:And then we walk into the other side of the world where we don't offer a career path to very many people, we don't pay attention to employee development as a you know like you heard me say how can I, how can you help me get better?
Speaker 2:Right. Well, it's a fascinating thought and certainly a conversation where, you know, in the beginning of this discussion you had mentioned the concern about, you know, seeing your employees, and I want to distinguish between the term seeing and treating your employees. One thing is, in my mind at least, more intentional and the other one is my interpretation, the way that I was brought up, the way that I was taught as a leader. So it's not always intentional, but one of the key misses that we have is, if you see your employees as an overhead as opposed to really the only growing capital asset you have in your business, everything else devalues over time. You have a beautiful opportunity to take this asset and to grow this asset.
Speaker 2:If the mindset changes to one where I see an opportunity to grow something that I have that produces this value for me, and sometimes with me, that mindset starts to change. But again, and this goes back to what you just said, ron, the only reason why I want to grow an asset, or if that asset wants me to help them grow, is that relationship, is that trust in that relationship, trust in that relationship and the this, this inherent need to want to control and, like you said, really difficult to release that control by absolutely listening to what people have to say to you and, you know, allowing your team or allowing individuals to take control of their growth, by giving them the opportunity or use the term giving them that career path or paths that they can take, I think is absolutely essential and it's a game changer. It really really is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I agree with you completely. A guy that was a partner of mine a long time ago. His name was Malcolm Ferries. He graduated from the Naval Academy. Very smart man, he was a pilot. He crashed and wasn't able to continue flying so he went to Stanford and got an MBA. Boeing hired him and he was the coordinator for NASA and Boeing on the lunar landing. And when I got involved with him, he was involved in coaching and teaching employees and in management.
Speaker 1:He used three words. He said management's about understanding, acceptance and commitment. He said everybody has to understand what we're trying to do and in North America, every year I see a survey and it says something around 10% of the companies in America fail to implement their strategy. And in Canada you'll see the same thing, bruce. Annual surveys show this all the time. It's stunning in its failure rate and when you scratch the surface and dig deeper, the primary reason for that is that 95% of the employees can't tell you what the strategy is Right, which points directly at communication.
Speaker 1:So I go back to Mac and his understanding. Everybody has to accept or understand what we're trying to do. Then the acceptance comes in, and what Mac said is that you have to allow the employees to have a fight with you. It's not a physical fight, but there has to be enough trust and enough openness that they can say, no, that's not the right thing, that's not the right thing to do, this is or that is or the other thing is. And having gone through those things with different companies and different groups, that when it starts working, my Lord, how powerful that becomes.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Everybody's fingerprints is on the strategy and, as a result of that, get out of the way. I don't have to have a commitment, it's ours, we're all is on the strategy.
Speaker 2:And, as a result of that, get out of the way I don't have to have a commitment, it's ours.
Speaker 2:We're all going to do it 100% and I think there is a critical component in there and unfortunately it's a sign of the times where the need you know, you look at our educational institutions right now no-transcript, as opposed to what we have a lot of the time is we have yes people, and not because they want to be yes people, but because the perception is that I don't have the opportunity to say no and this is why I say no. So encouraging that healthy level of conflict within the group and, most importantly, the employee knowing that they can argue and have a fight with their leader, with their manager, without consequence, I think is incredible and you're absolutely you nailed it. When you actually observe and you're a part of that transition you know I talk about cultural the way we do things around you, it just absolutely changes things for the better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I use the word fight because it sounds violent, but it's actually a debate.
Speaker 1:Yes, and in mathematics you use the term argument as a formula as a statement yeah, can have everybody in the company, the culture of the company, embrace Mary coming in tomorrow morning with this wild idea. And then I characterize that with looking at Google and how they determine where they're going to deploy their capital assets for next year, and they use a 70-20-10 approach. So 70% of their financial investment next year is on the core functions of the business making sure it is good. 20% of the monies go into an improvement, a radical change, a technological change, a process, a form whatever, but of the core business. Then 10% is what they call moonshots and it's just a wild hair and a lot of them fail. But that's where the autonomous vehicle came from, that's where google mapping came from, and and so here. So I take and I put people into that 10, 20 and 70 characterization and say 10 of the people, people in the world we don't have to worry about, they'll figure it out, they're fine, doesn't matter what goes on, they'll work, they're disciplined Away, they go.
Speaker 1:70% of the people and I think I might've mentioned this to you over time, if not tonight view work as a four-letter word. They grow up in the family, they're taught to be obedient, to be for protection by their parents. Then they go to school and they're taught to be obedient, to learn how to add and subtract and read and write, and they go off to technical school or community college, junior college, university, whatever. And it's the same thing, because here's a syllabus, here's a professor what I call a sage on the stage teaching them. They're the teacher's way. And then they get a job and they get hired and they're all excited and somebody trains them on how to do the job, not the way the employee might want to do it, but the way the company wants them to do it. They're told you go work on that, get faster at it, make fewer mistakes and you'll get more money, you'll be fine. They never look over the wall. They never ask why If anything untoward happens a car accident, a repair it can be devastating, because they're right on the edge.
Speaker 1:And then we got 20% of the population that don't know where to go and there's no model for them to follow. That's the crowd that I think. If we could get everybody, I'd love it, but I'll take the 20% and I'll give them a path. I'll give them a career opportunity. You get hired today. Here's the onboarding process we're going to go through, and after six months, your boss is going to come to you and say, okay, you've been here six months now. You've been doing the job very well. What is there about the job you'd like to change? We don't do that. I think we lose a huge opportunity.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, they've still got fresh eyes. Yeah, there is also a, at least from my experience, there is also a we tend to. You know, there's one thing in growing a business, or at least running a business, it's always about risk mitigation and in many respects, I think, as leaders or managers, we tend to go down, the go to the extreme in terms of risks, go to the extreme in terms of risks. So we come from a protector or we establish an extreme protector mentality as opposed to a builder mentality within our team and company, and whenever we're talking about business growth in the team specifically, there always has to be a certain level of builder mentality as opposed to protector, not the extreme, on each side.
Speaker 2:The general global business culture we have in the Western world is we can't stretch too far, just in case, as opposed to there are inherent risks in doing this, but they're calculated risks to. You know there are inherent risks in doing this, but they're calculated risks. Let's take this risk that is a well thought out process and give the opportunity just like you're referencing Google, give them people the opportunity to question things, to redesign things, and the outcome of that is you know, let's go back to the word profit. The outcome of that is the incredibly efficient use of both those two resources money and time and when we see that happen, it's absolutely astounding when, the day that you decide to ask your employee what they think and this never fails your employee what they think, and this never fails Once you ask them what they think about something, the information that comes back in many cases is exceptional. It is so valuable that the leaders that are open to it actually thrive far more than the leaders that are not than the leaders that are not Exactly.
Speaker 1:Your comment about mitigating risk is perfect, because I think we have an awful lot of leaders who protect the status quo. They're afraid to change something because they're successful as they are. This is the old argument about change Don't touch anything because you know we're okay. We have a social equilibrium and in my generation, as opposed to yours, but my generation. We haven't transitioned into retirement, we're still working and we've delayed the transition of leadership by 10 or 15 years.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And the potential leaders, the 50 to 60-year-old guys and gals. They've been denied the opportunity to take the wheel and, as a result of that, they leave. They go someplace where they have an opportunity to test themselves. Can you see that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. And the word test, I think, is paramount. We need to give people the opportunity to and I'm going to say the bad word fail. I never forget a workshop I did in 2019 with a financial institution just before COVID hit. I ended off the workshop, obviously thanking everybody, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:And as everybody was getting up, I said I wish you much failure and it was very intentional.
Speaker 2:And we spent an extra 10, 15 minutes where people just looked at me and smiled and didn't necessarily know why I wished them this terrible thing. And long story short is our brains are structured to learn and evolve and become better and more efficient in its functioning because of failing. So, you know, we give our kids as they grow up, we give them the opportunity in certain cases not all cases we give them the opportunity to say you know what if you fail, you don't do too well. Well, we'll try harder the next time, we'll do a better job the next time, et cetera, et cetera. And that's healthy.
Speaker 2:But when we become big kids and we enter into the organizational environment or professional environment, failure, as much as we say is allowed to a certain degree, is not really allowed, it's frowned upon. So when your manager or your leader has that perspective, that trickle down in terms of it's okay to take a risk, it's okay to fail, because that's essentially what that means, um, you know, it becomes something very different and people are very reluctant to do that you know, if you think about it, you don't learn unless you fail.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:And I've always said I've used this for years and years. I'm talking to an employee or a group of employees and I said what would you do if you weren't afraid? It's a standard line and they kind of you know. Well, I don't know, but you know it's a tough case.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And they have to be allowed to fail. So it really becomes. It's counterintuitive. We're given gold stars in school. We start from a very young age and we're kind of encouraged to strive to get good results and if we don't, it's problematic. The teacher gives us a bad report card. Our parents go through the same thing, and one of our contributors is a man by the name of Ed Gordon who's written about 21 bestsellers New York Times smart man, a couple of PhDs one in history, one in economics and he says we got to the point that education school over the last 30 years has been dumbed down so much that we've got 70 plus percent of the people adults that can't read at a grade six level. That's a stunning statement, and so you know.
Speaker 1:Part of that is is going into my wheelhouse of me wanting to encourage people to continue learning throughout their whole lives, lifelong learning, because technology is changing, society is changing at such a pace. Instead of. When I came out in the 60s and got a job, my everybody was saying it was a tough market that I was going into. I wanted to work for IBM and everybody said, well, take your time, because you're going to be there the rest of your life.
Speaker 1:And I was talking to a social worker last week here in Hawaii and she said no, that's not true anymore, you're going to have five or six different careers over the course of your lifetime, and it might be in completely different arenas, and that's kind of a sobering thought, meaning that we have to retool ourselves. And that's really where we're going, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely right. Yes, yes, and it's also an opportunity to talk about the social worker. Telling you that is never forget. My grandfather, god bless his soul, always said to me. He said you know, the fantastic part about education, learning and growth is that no one can ever take that away from you. That's right. But the sad part about it is that we have and this was what you know a good couple of decades ago, but the sad part is that we're pigeonholing people, you know, not giving them the opportunity or not encouraging them to, as your word was to retool and encourage that. It's good to retool, it's good to continue to learn, and growth is an ongoing process until the end of our days, right. So being able to encourage that, not just from a societal perspective, but being able to encourage that and drive that within an organizational context, I think is the potential, is just huge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was a lecturer at McGill in the 60s and at the time the man who was driving the faculty of psychology psychiatry said change your career when you're 50. Completely different avenue. Go down whatever. You're a cook today, become a singer tomorrow. Right, and you will extend your life by 10 years.
Speaker 2:No doubt.
Speaker 1:It's true, it is. It's almost a rebirth. You get reborn. You know we've covered an awful lot of ground tonight, bruce, and I don't want to keep you forever because you're on a time zone warp down there. How would you like to wrap this discussion up? What would you like to have as the closing comment, from your point of view?
Speaker 2:Well, ron, I think it's.
Speaker 2:You know, the biggest piece that's hit me through our discussion today or made an impact on me is that risk component and being okay with failure.
Speaker 2:The message that I sent today and the message I'd like to send right now is listen to what that is, think about what that is, internalize that, what that is, internalize that and when you think that you agree with it, think about it again, because what we all feel and what we're all agreeing with is pretty much the same thing, but being brave enough to actually you know, absolutely go ahead and implement something like that. So if you are a leader, you're a manager of people and you know specifically when you're dealing with a troubled employee, someone that you're struggling with, that's the individual that I would like to encourage people to really try and utilize this, and I think the managers and the leaders out there will be pleasantly surprised at the C player slowly but surely moving up becoming a B, b plus and eventually an A player. So being okay with taking risks, being okay with giving people the opportunity to fail and learn from it, I think is paramount and something people really need to think deeply about.
Speaker 1:I think that's a very powerful way to end this, Bruce, and thank you for the time and I thank everybody who's listening and I hope that I'll see you soon at another Candid Conversation.
