Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More
Episode 526 with Rebecca Johnson
Introduction
Hey, everybody, I’ve got a special going on here today. We’re going to have two back to back episodes with, ladies that are partners in a business. The business is focused on helping entrepreneurs and small to midsize businesses build great culture in their work.
But they also happen to be disciples of EOS, and they have designated themselves independently. One is the integrator and the other is the visionary. And if you don’t know, EOS language will talk about that as we get going here.
But I’m excited to be able to do kind of this compare and contrast with two leaders of a of a solid business that have been able, as partners to set their guardrails, their their their boundaries with each other so they can optimize the talent that each one has naturally.
And. My first guest is Rebecca Johnson. She is the integrator of the duo. And Rebecca, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Doug.
What Is an Integrator?
So let’s let’s just dive right in on that term. tell us what you know, the role of integrator to to be in a business.
Oh, I love this question because I love being an integrator, and I love that I have a language for my skill sets in a way that I didn’t have until we bumped into EOS.
And from my perspective, an integrator really is. Maybe you could think about it as it’s the leader of the company who’s an important middleman between the visionary and the organization, what it does and its employees. And so maybe the way to describe an integrator is to start by what a visionary is.
And when you talk with Natalie, she’ll have a her own kind of definition of a visionary. But a visionary is the person who is very forward thinking, loves big ideas, has ten new ideas every week, and often as sort of the forward momentum for the company.
And in our case, Natalie is definitely that. In fact, that’s why we’re in business together is because I saw that in her and she saw something different in me.
Distilling the Vision Into What We Commit To
And so the integrator is the person who is helping the visionary and the organization distill from the many ideas you have and from the many paths we could go, which one or 2 or 3 are we locking in on? What are we committing to?
And then the integrator is really in charge of making sure that people and resources and time and money and energy are spent on that distilled set of initiatives.
And for us, that means that, Natalie often feels, and rightfully so, that I’m the one that’s kind of holding her back and keeping the company focused on now and execution. and I often feel that she’s the one that’s trying to pull us forward too quickly.
That tension we name and we know is normal and to be expected. And because we know that it’s normal to be expected, we navigate it really well. because we know that she’s doing her job and I’m doing my job.
And when we come together, well, we create a balance that allows us to grow and scale, but not at a pace that creates, you know, disruption or confusion for employees or spreads us too thin.
The CEO and COO Balance
You have done a remarkable job of explaining that dynamic. And I guess I’ll add, if I may, in corporate speak, it’s it’s the classic balance between CEO and CEO, chief executive and chief operating officer.
The executive is the guy that has the vision and creates the that momentum. I like that you added that into the discussion, and the chief operating officer is the one that typically most of the staff reports to on the the org chart and does keep the pulse on operating standards, efficiencies, resource allocation, etc..
So, you know, while they both are accountable to the board or the shareholders, they might have, finding that healthy balance where one doesn’t want to go dabble with the other.
The other point you raised that I love, because I’ve seen this happen, both good and bad, in business, is that tension between the visionary and the integrator, because the the integrator translates the vision into executable steps and functional deployment assignment, whatever.
And there is very much a tipping point of putting too much on the team or on the system that the business has and creating a kind of chaos.
And when people in the trenches don’t have clarity on what they need to be doing, you’re not going to get very good performance. People are going to tend to hold back and and not execute as well as they might because they want to do a good job, but they aren’t sure what’s right, what the next right step is.
And if the visionary is out there on the top of the mountain hypothesizing and and evangelizing great ideas, well, they may be wonderful and true opportunity, but you got to pace that.
When Chaos Puts People in Self-Protection Mode
You really do. And so two things are coming up for me. And one of them is that, you know, this is for us, why it’s so important to do the work and organizations that we do, which is really about people developing skills to relate better with other people is because,
when people in an organization don’t have, for example, clarity or there’s too much chaos which can be caused if a visionary is allowed to kind of generate ideas and, and change directions without integrators balancing support, then most of the people in the company have whiplash and they sort of get in self-protection mode, right?
And they can’t invest fully in things because they have the sense that it might change tomorrow.
And so when you have people in self-protection mode, as you said, they really can’t contribute fully. And so it’s really my job as the integrator to both deeply appreciate the forward momentum, momentum and the ideas that Nathalie brings.
And to distill it down to a reasonable number, which is where EOS is so helpful because they have a structure for sort of ensuring that you are always on the track that everyone has agreed to.
Naming the Tension
But the other thing that’s coming up for me that you’re sort of alluding to is the tension. There is interpersonal tension that exists in all organizations always. That’s just the nature of work.
And one of the things that Nathalie and I have been able to do really well, because we have a very strong relationship and we both do what is called our Me work. Like we’re always working on developing ourselves from the inside out is we’re able to have hard conversations and name the tension and work through it
and people in our organization, I hope they would say, feel safe enough to speak up when, for example, their feeling spread too thin.
so one of the ways that iOS and the culture work that we do are very interrelated is that the culture work is necessary to help people develop the skill and confidence to necessary to kind of have the hard conversations that make an iOS system or any system work.
Behind the Scenes: The Beverage Break That Changed a Founder
Well said I, I really do believe that that that environment that allows employees to step up and speak up. And as you were saying, that I was reminded of a story that was presented here on the show a couple of years ago,
my guest described a scenario where this gentleman who was the founder of visionary and at the moment seemed to be trying to be the integrator as well. had built the team up to about 30, 35 employees,
and one day one of the people came forward and said, hey, we’re we’re way ahead of schedule on everything. Can we have a beverage break this afternoon? Let’s go down to the bistro and let’s meet up and and just celebrate a little bit. And the boss goes, that’s a great idea. Let’s yeah, let’s do that.
Pick a time. And he went out and made the announcement to everybody that that’s what was going to happen. So they all tracked down and get their beverages and sitting down and and then this spokesperson, if you will, said now that we’re here, we have something we want to talk to you about.
And they presented this list of I wouldn’t go so far as to call them grievances, but it was statements of their truth. And it started with he had a tendency to be a micromanager. He would hover And that unsettled many people. And then the list went on. You know, there were I don’t know what the final number was, but it was it was substantial.
And fortunately, this gentleman had the the emotional intelligence, the self security to say, you know what folks, I really appreciate you bringing this to me. Give me a little time to process this and I will get back to you. So it was about two days later he called a team meeting and he had the list.
And he said, all right, here’s what we’re going to do. And he went down every one of those things and addressed his response to what he was willing and thought he was able to do. And then he basically asked the crew, he said, is that going to be enough?
And everybody applauded. They said, yeah, we’re if you can do all that. We’re good, you know. And and I thought that was a great story. And of course it touches so many pieces of effective leadership.
One is that self security to not be so arrogant to say, how dare you confront me like this? You know, I’m the owner. I’m the founder. You know, what are you thinking? But rather he turned it all around and said, yeah, this is on me and I’m. I’m willing.
Key Discussion Point: Confident Humility
What a amazing and unusually high degree of emotional maturity that there’s this phrase that we use a lot when we’re talking about what leadership really is. And it’s the phrase confident humility.
And so confidence, of course, is, you know, the belief in myself that I can handle what’s coming or overcome challenges.
And humility is this idea that we are deeply dependent on other people and we don’t have all the answers. And so what you’re describing in terms of how the leader handled this conversation makes me think about confidence and humility.
He didn’t get meek and meager and, you know, be embarrassed or defensive or reactive. He was confident enough in his own abilities to receive what they had to say and to do something about it, and also humble enough to appreciate the feedback. That’s beautiful.
Two Sides of the Same Coin
Yeah. And you touched on another thing that confidence and humility. I love that. And I was challenged recently by one of my clients who raised that question.
he shared the idea that he had been given some feedback, that he was a little too meek in his presence. And yet, he needed to be humble when something, you know, got pointed out. So he brought it to me and he said, I don’t. I see that as binary. I don’t think you can do both. And I said, no, nay, nay, you can do both.
And, and I use the word picture, it’s two sides of the same coin. And you, you want to have that confidence and boldness that people need in their leader and at the same time be open to feedback, accepting and owning defeat and, and expressing it in a healthy way.
And it’s that’s really a hard balance for people to strike. I mean, confident humility is not just important in business leadership, but I think the people, at least when I think about the people in my life who are real role models for what it means to live life well, they demonstrate this beautiful balance of confidence and humility.
Not so much confidence that it feels like arrogance, and not so much humility that it feels like insecurity or overreliance, but somehow a blend of both.
Meet the Guest: Workplace Culture Transformation
Yeah. Well, Rebecca, let’s let’s talk about the work that you and Natalie do and what your company does for clients. Give us a flyover of that real quick, if you will.
I love it, a flyover. So the way that we kind of briefly describe who we are is that we’re workplace culture transformation firm, and we help organizations design and nurture intentional cultures.
Culture Is Simply the Way We Relate
And one of the ways that we talk about culture, that kind of quickly demystifies it for people, because, as you know, there’s as many definitions of culture as there are people talking about culture, which is millions and millions.
And so I don’t know that there’s any exact right definition, but the definition we use is just the way we relate with each other.
So an organization’s culture or a team’s culture is really just sort of a manifestation of group norms, which are manifestations of individual behaviors, which are manifestations of each person’s inter operating system.
And so ultimately, the work that we do around culture is very deeply about human nature work, helping people develop themselves so that they can contribute fully so that they become more self-aware, emotionally mature, mentally complex, and so that they can develop really strong quality relationships with each other. Because in our mind, there is no more important work in a workplace than that.
I think in recent years, fortunately, most of the people we work with have moved from thinking about this idea of quote unquote soft skills as sort of a luxury or a nice to have, and realizing that whatever business outcomes they’re looking for.
Those business outcomes happen through people working together. And the stronger those relationships are, the more likely they are to translate into business outcomes.
Yeah, I really my mind is blown already thinking about where to go with this next.
yeah, there’s a lot of avenues. I just opened up a can of worms for you.
Key Discussion Point: You Have a Culture Whether You Like It or Not
You know, the whole idea of culture is, and I agree with you, trying to demystify that when you start talking with a company owner or an executive that is wanting to do some change. I start with the premise that guess what? When two or more people get together, you have a culture whether you like it or not.
And people, people have their natural bent for how they connect with the world around them. And that means coworkers in the business sense. And if you don’t have a a direction, you would like to take that. It’s going to happen organically. And it, it you know, it it may be good and it may not be. And that’s what you have to check on.
But in my experience, companies that try to put forth a statement of culture so that it is definable, it is workable, they inevitably do have an element of values and beliefs that, you know, get filtered in.
And what I see in some bigger businesses, often if you’re in a manufacturing scenario or, high, high demand, production of things, one of the inevitably one of their values they talk about is safety first. You know, we. We want everybody to be able to go home healthy in the same way they showed up every morning. So there’s a safety first element of it.
And then it may go on down to other things. And in classic corporate speak they talk about mission, vision and values. But I think the pendulum is moving. I think people are starting to wrap all of that into a serious consideration of culture and talking about it in that terminology.
A Tale of Two Security Badges
And I tell a story of two companies I was working with in parallel. They’re totally unrelated to one another, but it turned out they had written all of those principles, the culture standard they were looking for.
They had published them to fit on the back of the security badges everybody had. And in one scenario, People described that senior executives routinely in meetings would pull up their badge and they’d go, okay, we’re at the decision point. Let’s check the boxes, and they’d start going down all the values. Does this, do this, does this, do that? Da da da da da da.
And if there was a break in that, that this idea they were thinking about was going to be contrary to any of those, it was an automatic. It was out, you know, it not going to happen.
And the other company, they had the badges. But when you talked to the people there, it was like, what a joke. You know, no, we don’t live like these, you know?
Yes.
Nobody’s following this. We never hear this other than in the periodic annual all hands meeting, you know.
Values That Don’t Guide Decisions Undermine Culture
And that is so such a great illustration of how it’s essential that a company get really clear on the language it’s using to define desired culture, but just because they have the language like that is a priority step.
But it is 100% not enough and actually undermines culture. If an organization is said these four values are really important to us, but people on a daily basis are not referencing those in decision making. They don’t guide daily decision making.
Then not only do they become useless, but they kind of further undermine culture work. Because if you’re not going to sort of demonstrate reward and discourage along the lines of values, then you might as well not even say them.
What Safety Teaches Us About Every Other Value
And we really, you know, you know what is so interesting, Doug, is something just occurred to me when you were talking about safety that I think is relevant to what it takes to really clearly define your desired culture in behavioral terms that mean something to people.
And what I was thinking about is that safety tends to be the only value that I can think of that when a company says it’s priority for them, they often do the work of translating that into behaviors. And the value of safety often gets integrated into processes and policies. Right. So safety.
If safety is a value, there’ll be lots of initiatives around it. It’ll be really clear what people are to do and are not to do, and what you should report when you see it. But that is not often replicated in most organizations around other values.
So organizations might say they value things like collaboration or grit or inclusivity, but if they haven’t translated those values into a set of supportive and unsupportive behaviors, like this is what inclusivity looks like here in very behavioral terms, this is what we demonstrate and reward when we see in others.
And these are the the behaviors that we deem to be unsupportive of inclusivity. And this is what’s discouraged. Then the values are very hard for people to do anything with because there’s no actual shared agreement about what this value means. And so we’re all left to either just ignore them or make up our own definitions and act accordingly.
Behind the Scenes: The 70% Rule
Right. Right. I was thinking also about another scenario. I had large company wanted to do a culture change, and with good intent, the CEO had said we’re not going to attract new talent and younger talent using our old social means and mores.
You know, we’ve got to we gotta upgrade what we’re doing and how we’re thinking about this. So they did a lot of work on the front end, hired some consultants, did some surveys, did all that, and they came up with a framework.
And I was part of a large team of executive coaches that was brought in to help distill and sprinkle down those values to the line managers. And one of the first real challenges was that understanding of what does this word really mean? You know, and empowerment happen to be one of their values. And when I saw that the first time, I thought, oh, here we go.
What does that mean?
This is going to be interesting. But as, as as we were doing our work as the coaching team, we we ran into those challenges. People. People would look at the handout and they’d go, I have my definition of what this is, but how do I know that that’s in alignment with what the executives are expecting?
Chasing 100% Certainty
And interestingly, one of the key principles, and this was very much directly related to their operating culture.
They had had a legacy of of hyper analyzing opportunities in the marketplace and striving for 100% certainty of what they needed to do would be right or wrong. And what they discovered as they tested it, that that principle is that you could get to 70 or maybe even 80% certainty pretty quickly. The data was readily available. The analytical points you might want to consider were easy to find, and the remaining 20% was incredibly hard.
It was expensive. It took time. It, And in the end of things, most transactions they looked at historically, that extra 20% didn’t add any value to the decision. They they knew what they should have done at the 75, 80% mark.
And they said, all right. Is part of our culture. We’re going to embrace the 70 is okay, and we’re going to just we’re going to bite the bullet. If it cost us money operating that way, we’re going to call that a cost of business.
Oh, and by the way, the extended effort to get to the 100% certainty often made them lose the opportunity because the market was moving too fast and they couldn’t they couldn’t respond.
So they lost the opportunity in its entirety. Having spent all that effort to make their decision. So they embraced this principle of the 70% is okay.
The Black Bean in the File
Well, people were struggling with that. People that were long term employees had been negatively rated for having done a 90% work or an 85% work, and they had this fourth place ranking system in their annual reviews.
So if you had ten people on a team, somebody’s going to be number one and somebody’s going to be number ten, and ten’s not good. And that that stays with you during your career journey.
And, so people were reluctant to embrace the 70% because maybe they had a black bean in their file because they had done a less than a piece of work before and had learned their lesson.
So that was probably one of the biggest hurdles they had in adopting the culture they had. But they, they powered through it and fortunately, I think came out the other side with final success. But it took years to get there.
I can imagine that it would.
This is kind of an aside, but I’ve been sitting here thinking like, does any organization expect that they can get 100% certainty on anything? Because since we don’t know the future, I think 100% certainty. Is nearly impossible, right? Because we just don’t know what the future is going to bring.
But what you’re saying about the fact that the culture used to discourage people from moving forward until they were near 100% certainty, and then someone makes a decision, or a leadership team makes a decision that says that idea is no longer serving us.
So what we actually want people to do is we want them to work really hard to get to 70%, and then when they’re there to to go to move forward.
You can see how that would take years, because for all the employees for whom they had been conditioned one way, they have to unravel their sense of what is right and what they learned and fear around doing something new. So yeah, and if you can think about that, just being sort of one piece of the puzzle that an organization decides to change.
Practical Advice: What to Do About the People Not Yet “On Board”
And I think that’s why. So one of the questions that people ask us in culture work often in the early stages is. What do we do about the people who don’t believe in this work, or they’re not yet on board, and they use the term on board usually to mean they don’t seem to be fully bought in.
They’re not excited about this. They don’t believe it’s actually going to happen. They don’t believe it’s going to produce any meaningful change. They’re not interested in changing themselves. You know, on board means a whole bunch of things.
But what we’ll say is that it makes perfect sense that a percentage of your employee population is not yet interested in or fully engaged in culture work because they have cynicism or skepticism and reasonably so.
And what those people who we’re considering not yet on board can do for us is they help us to understand how certain employees are feeling, like there’s information from the skeptics that we can gather. They can kind of help us poke holes in our own theories, make sure we’re communicating well.
I don’t even know how we got on this conversation, but I was just wanting to thinking about the fact that it took years for an organization to affirm for employees that 70% is really okay. That makes sense for me because of how much it really takes for a group of people to collectively to change from one belief system to the other.
When Leaders Won’t Drink the Kool-Aid
Well, just one more note on that same thread is that I gave kudos to the senior leadership at this company because they knew they had a a broad and deep bench of, let’s call them L3 leaders, CEOs, CEOs, you know, L1, the O and CFO and all those are El twos. And then there’s this L3 level. And that really gets you into operational management.
They knew they had some L3 that weren’t going to buy this, because they had been long term advocates of the other process. And they they had been groomed that way. I mean, I’m talking 25, 30, 35 years of experience. They drove hard for results and, you know, kind of had the Iron Fist sort of command and control mindset and senior leadership said, stop.
We’re not going to do it that way anymore. That’s the point of all of this. At its most fundamental level. Command and control is dead. We’re we’re going to open this up for to be more collaborative, more empathetic, more all these things.
And they had a couple of leaders that wouldn’t drink the Kool-Aid. They said, you know, now I don’t know. And they were invited to take their early retirements.
So the the company leadership at the top took action knowing that it was going to be a hit. But getting the right person and the right seat on the bus was important because it, it had to be proven that they were serious about this makeover. And when those heads at L3 and L4 started getting exited, people woke up and paid attention. They go, oh they’re serious.
The Inner Operating System Shift
Yeah. And you know, it’s interesting to think about how some leaders, when presented with the reality that the organization is truly investing in shifting the way it does business, meaning a move from command and control to power and power over to coaching and engagement and power.
With that, there are some leaders who really internally resist that and sometimes externally resisted. And I often think that’s because what that big a shift would require for, especially leaders who’ve been leading in kind of a command and control style for decades,
what that shift is going to require for them is such a big change in their inner operating system that some of them, deep down, think, honestly, I don’t even know if I can make that change within myself if I want to, and especially if they’re close to the end of their career.
Imagine if at the end of your career, you’re asked to be an entirely different way. You might just say, I don’t have the energy for that. Maybe if I was 25. But no, thank you. I’m not doing this.
And I really appreciate when people who, like, aren’t drinking the Kool-Aid. Just say it, because then we at least know where they stand, and we can make a decision about how to move forward together.
Closing Thoughts
Right. Well, I’ll tell you what, Rebecca.
I think we’re about up on time today. This has been amazing. And I have a clear and distinct sense. We could go on with this for quite some time.
Me, too.
But I thank you so much. We haven’t even mentioned your company name. Tell folks about that. And also tell them the best way to get in touch with you if they are interested in knowing more.
The name of our company is VidlWork and it’s spelled funny “V I D L”. So our web address is Vidlwork.com and they can send an email if they’re interested to info at com.
Wonderful. Well folks as always we will have links for that info in the show notes. So please check that out. Take a look.
And I do want to remind you, we have a video version of this show on YouTube, a channel by the same name. Leadership powered by common sense. Hop over there, check out our archives, leave us a comment and subscribe if you will.
We we drop shows twice a week, so we’ve got a lot coming at you and a lot of good information. And as I mentioned at the top in another episode, we will be talking to Rebecca’s partner, Natalie Johnson.
They’re both named Johnson, but they’re no relation that that was an interesting data point to ponder. But with that, I think we’re going to sign off and say goodbye. Go out there and make it a great day.
Connect with Doug Thorpe
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougthorpe/
- Doug Thorpe Website: https://dougthorpe.com/
- Podcasts: https://podcasts.dougthorpe.com
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/dougthorpe_com
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/headwayexec
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/dougthorpe_com
- YouTube: https://youtube.com/@dougthorpe
