Transcript
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The title of my presentation is Ensuring Organizational Effectiveness Through the Effective Deployment of Work Across Senior Management Layers.
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What does that say?
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It's like word salad, right, it's not an effective word, so the translation is and other duties as assigned.
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Anybody live that life.
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How clear is it what it is you're responsible for and how clear is it what you actually do on the day-to-day?
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Every phone call, every text, every email, etc.
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So tell your story, I'm a storyteller.
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Email, et cetera.
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So tell you a story, I'm a storyteller.
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But, like, straight up, I'm not going to talk about these things because these are table stakes.
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I can look on everybody's website right now and everybody has this in some fancy, shiny form or another.
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But you still feel like this, right, and I'm not even going to challenge anybody to like recite what are your values, what is your mission statement, what is the vision?
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How does everything you do align with all of those other things?
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Right, because it's a tough world and so those things are.
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They're important, they add value, they do add some clarity, they do attract people, give us some direction and, like I said, I'm pretty plain.
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So I'm going to talk about, like, what you can do if you're not already doing it.
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I get the sense that a lot of the stuff that I'm going to talk about you're already doing, but maybe not on purpose.
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And so the things I want to talk about are things that you can do on purpose.
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How to do them?
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Cause I love that question, like, yeah, we keep talking about all this stuff, but how fool?
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Like how?
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How?
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That's what we want to know.
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And so I'm gonna use a fancy word, mental model, and that's about as fancy as I'm gonna get.
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So mental models from jesse land.
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That is the world universe that I live in.
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Uh, and those mental models are no bobbleheads socializing the intended outcome and advocating for yourself.
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Right before lunch there was some conversation about advocating for yourself, and actually when I get to this point, that's when I'll talk about some structural process things that we all kind of need to go back and tell our people about.
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But I'm just going to talk about the real, real stuff.
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And what's that, colin?
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What's Jesse Land?
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Great question.
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So Jesse Land?
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I entered, and who was born in the 90s?
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Okay, I started working in construction in the 90s, in 1995, I entered as a plumbing apprentice, went through four years of apprenticeship, then, instead of like just terminating me.
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They decided to punish me differently and they promoted me to different levels, right, foreman, superintendent, all these sorts of things.
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I did that for about 20 years working on the plumbing side of the business.
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I was on the installation side for maybe eight years.
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Then I got into a little bit of learning and development unofficially, right, little people department stuff, unofficially had a lot of fun.
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And then I went to the dark side.
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I went to work for a GC for about three and a half years, right, and it was interesting because I worked for when I was with the trades.
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I worked for an amazing organization.
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They had really good systems to help me and people like me develop leadership skills.
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Right, servant leadership was the core value there.
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They had a great mechanism to help me understand that.
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However and I know this was the only company that suffered from that not everybody, not every leader in the organization, demonstrated those behaviors.
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Y'all know the company.
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Y'all are all not in your head, all right.
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So what was interesting is, I thought, because we were a trade contractor, we were just less evolved.
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We didn't, we couldn't, we didn't have the caliber of personnel to be the best of the best of the best.
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And then I went to work for the general contractor big, gigantic general contractor the best of the best of the best, right and guess what?
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They had the same problems, right.
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Then I went to work for a developer owner operator.
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They did everything and the same thing.
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However, one upside consistency was at every level.
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So as a trade partner, trade contractor, I got to work with a lot of GCs Before I went to work for a GC.
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Gcs were just jerks, like it was a requirement to be ignorant and not listen and demand things that were unreasonable.
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Then, when I went to work for the GC, it was like oh, there are people too right.
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So I got.
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But there were a small number of GCs, and when I say GCs I'm really talking about superintendents, project managers, project executives that were phenomenal to work with.
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The number is so big.
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I still remember their names.
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It was two names that I had to remember.
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What was different about them was they had a people-centered style of leading.
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Then, when I went to work for the GC, I got to see a bunch of leadership from the trade partners.
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My responsibility was to support departments, business units, in their lean implementation right and project teams and all this other stuff.
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So mostly I got a lot of eyes rolled at me.
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I had to figure out how to connect and lead through influence, and same thing.
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So I got to travel the country and help teams deploy these things that they really didn't want to deploy.
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They're like I don't know why the hell we're doing this Like I've been all right, everything's fine.
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Again, there was a small number of leaders that had phenomenal results in terms of financial performance, in terms of personnel retention, all those little things, and guess what?
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It was their people-centered focus.
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Then I went on to the next job Same thing big, fancy people, bigger numbers, bigger backlog, all that stuff Same thing.
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There was a small number of people that the folks that worked with them, that spent time in their space over an extended period of time, had a much higher quality of life and they had phenomenal business results.
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So then, kind of like the question that was asked earlier but how, like, what were the things that they did that?
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I got to see over and over again that like fostered that, that created the ingredients for this fertile environment for people to grow, excel and perform.
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Number one thing no bobbleheads.
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So when you hear no bobbleheads, what does that mean to you?
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Anybody, yeah, you get that.
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That's the number one rule I have whenever I'm, you know, talking and flapping my gums in front of people.
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It's like no bobbleheads.
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And what that means is, if you think it's BS, say so.
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Why is that important?
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We all have blind spots, yeah Right.
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And so these folks at some point I ended up kind of had to get like shiny boots.
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I always make fun of the shiny boots and the carpet dwellers.
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I'm one too right Like now I am Same thing.
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They all had a practice of making sure or minimizing the bobble-headedness.
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And so what did that mean?
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The way they responded to bad news, painful news, less than awesome news was ah, let's find out more about that thing.
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It wasn't damn it, freddie again.
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That thing, it wasn't damn it, freddie again.
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That's a different experience.
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And so people were I don't like the word, but enabled or empowered to surface problems.
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They also had an immaculate skill of who's kind of like the quiet person in the room that just doesn't really say anything, because all the loud mouths are always talking Anybody All right.
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So they had a great skill of saying I can see you're thinking about something, what's on your mind about this?
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And not like I asked you a question answer Like okay, let's follow up because I can tell you have something that you care about that the group needs to know.
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So they created that connection of like OK, big fat talker Jesse's always going to say something, hurry up and say, get out of the way and let's go and farm information from the rest of the people.
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No bobbleheads.
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So there's a, there's another, there's like graduating levels in this bobblehead world.
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One of them it's the illusion, the person that does contribute.
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But all they did was rearrange all the words that the leader said and repeat it back and repeat it back.
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Anybody seen those?
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Who's guilty of that?
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Nobody.
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Yeah, thank you, thank you, I've done it, like when I don't.
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And then they use like these really, really powerful words.
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There's actually two sets.
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They would say I don't know.
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They would also say I need help.
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Does that make anybody uncomfortable?
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And when people were doing the word salad, like oh, great idea, what I really do agree.
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They're like okay, you said a lot of words, but what the hell are you adding to the conversation?
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Oh, damn, gangsta, right.
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So they were very clear about the expectations in terms of communication.
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They created the situation where people were drug in, whether they liked it or not, to contribute, maybe in the group, maybe outside of the group, and they did not demonstrate bobblehead behavior.
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They did not tolerate bobblehead behavior.
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But, more importantly, they showed people what it looked like and helped them build the skill.
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Why would that be valuable?
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Because people need to share their perspectives and ideas.
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Yeah right, we're in the room because we're decision makers.
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We got responsibility, we got influence.
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We're ballers.
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We need to contribute to the thing.
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That doesn't mean we need to cheerlead.
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Yeah, I love your idea.
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If your idea is stupid, I'm going to tell you it's stupid and it's that is phenomenal, because we could be running off a cliff, because I'm only going to see things through my perspective, and so what it really did, what I got to see, is it really helped develop this idea of problem ownership.
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How many of y'all have people come to you with their problems, see me, and then they kind of Is that helpful?
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No, but if I come to you with my problem and you say, jess, what have you tried?
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Oh well, I haven't tried anything.
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Ok, well, go try something.
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Fool, haven't tried anything.
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Okay, well, go try something, fool, right.
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Or we get there to like, oh, I'm not going to be diminished because I'm being vulnerable and saying I have a problem, I need help and I'm going to have to own the damn problem the best example I have of that.
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And I learned back.
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I was an apprentice at the time.
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I was really.
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I was very opinionated Anybody surprised and I would always complain about the water.
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Water's not cold.
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We need ice on our water.
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This is inhumane, right.
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Guess what happened after that?
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I became the ice boy, which rightfully so it was really.
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I pretended like it was really important to me.
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How important is it if I'm not willing to take action upon it?
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I worked for Ed pipe fitter and he helped me learn this Do not complain about anything you're not prepared to take action upon.
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And he taught me that by making me get the damn ice for the water cooler every day.
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Now, like he gave me cash, like I went and I could keep the change.
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It was awesome.
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So these people because they didn't have like the bobblehead no, bobbleheads was a thing People didn't come and pitch their problems to other people.
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We brought a problem to the table, knowing that I'm going to maintain ownership of it.
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I'm just accessing the resources available to me by bringing the problem to the table.
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And then we got additional resources to go and solve the problem.
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That sound like miraculous, pretty simple stuff, right?
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So, in terms of how do you apply this?
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You can do this now, right, you can stop being a bobblehead Now right, you can stop being a bobblehead.
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If you think it's crap, it's crap, say so.
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If you think I'm full of it, you can walk out of the room.
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It'll hurt my feelings a little bit, but you'll be better off than sitting here the rest of the time, except for you.
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Damn it.
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Don't just tolerate things that mediocrity.
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Don't just tolerate what's happening.
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If you disagree, you have value.
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You have decades of experience.
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You're a human being that has accomplished grand things and because of that, you have something to contribute.
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If you disagree, say so.
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If you think that idea is twisted, say so.
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Now, I'm also going to be very clear.
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Going behind the corner and saying it after the meeting, that doesn't count as saying so.
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You do it at the table, all right.
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So that's how you can start doing it.
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The other thing you can do is when you get back to your people.
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I use this kind of language because everybody kind of knows what the hell we're talking about.
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I use this kind of language because everybody kind of knows what the hell we're talking about.
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You probably thought like oh yeah, I know who.
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You probably gave names to people that are bobbleheads.
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Oh, I know that person that always repeats whatever the boss said and they say the same crap and they just take up all the time because they want to be heard.
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Right, like, make yourself visible.
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There's other ways to do that.
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Right, like, make yourself visible, there's other ways to do that.
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And so the problem ownership.
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It also fostered this situation where if I was assigned responsibility for a problem, maybe it wasn't my problem but because of my skill set.
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My skill set was like connecting with people and getting attention and engaging people and challenging which sucks, because that means I got the hairiest problems like, yes, we want you to do this one.
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Right, can you come help it?
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But because I knew that I could say this is a waste man, like, why in the hell are we doing this?
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We would have the conversation, we would get clear and I would carry forward the mission.
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Let me go solve this problem.
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Let me go solve this problem, which takes us to socializing the intended outcome.
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So when Power BI?
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When did it hit the market?
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Like five years ago Well, maybe it hit my world around that time and, oh my God, dashboards.
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We got to have dashboards and so I had a general manager in a particular business unit who called me up and he was one of these people that was very like no bobbleheads, everybody was straight up in that business unit, rocked man Like they rocked everybody.
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Anyhow, he calls me and he's like Jess, I really need your help.
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You're the lean guy, right?
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Not that this kind of lean, the other lean.
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He says I've asked all my department heads for dashboards and they're all giving me dashboards, except for these three or four.
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Like oh, okay, sounds great.
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He showed me all the dashboards he's like, but they all look different and it's taking a lot of time and I'm not getting them until the day before.
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I'm like okay, so dashboard rich, but directionless.
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I see you nodding your head like sound familiar.
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So what happened was one business unit went down this path.
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It was pretty awesome, and then they generated dashboards.
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It was pretty awesome, and then they generated dashboards.
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What everybody else heard was they, that business unit over there has got dashboards, why don't you?
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So everybody went and made dashboards.
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So I got to get involved.
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I got to spend a bunch of time.
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It was funny because, like, oh, we're going to the principal's office because I had to meet with every department head and apparently I was the principal and what I got to learn was they didn't understand the purpose of the dashboard.
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Every single one of those leaders told me well, I'm creating it, but I, because he asked for it, I'm like, ok, but what like?
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What do you use this information for?
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He's like most of the time is like well, it was the easiest one to create a dashboard for, right.
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Then I also found out that there was only one person who was the head estimator, right, the lead estimator in the business unit that had this Power BI curse.
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It was knowledge, but it was a curse, so everybody was feeding them their garbage and he was spending 40 hours a month producing these dashboards.
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The other thing that you may be that may be happening in your organization right now there were three department heads that had no concept of the idea of utilizing data to make decisions.
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Is that scary?
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It's real.
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And they were being super, like they were being really successful, by luck, I think.
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Right, especially those three folks, anyhow.
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So then I said, okay, thank you for all the information I'll get back to you.
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And then I said wait a minute, what happens after you finish submit your dashboard?
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And then I said wait a minute, what happens after you submit your dashboard?
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He said what do you mean?
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So you've got to submit them monthly?
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What happens after you submit them?
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Who wants to take a guess?
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Nothing, they got the opportunity to do it again.
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It's kind of like my view on dating, right?
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I've got to spend about three hours of my time like taking a shower, fixing my hair, going somewhere, spend a couple hundred bucks for the opportunity to do it again.
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It's not a great investment of my time, right.
00:18:50.779 --> 00:18:52.584
So these people were doing this thing so that they could do it again.
00:18:52.584 --> 00:18:54.710
And when they submitted it, boss said that's not what I'm looking for.
00:18:54.710 --> 00:18:56.272
Well, what are you looking for?
00:18:56.272 --> 00:19:00.305
I'm not exactly sure, but not that Anybody been through that.
00:19:00.305 --> 00:19:03.607
So this is not a foreign thing.
00:19:03.607 --> 00:19:05.247
I'm not talking about your outfit.
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This is a super special one that nobody knows about.
00:19:08.181 --> 00:19:15.074
The awesome thing was when I brought this information back to him no bobbleheads and said here's the thing.
00:19:15.074 --> 00:19:20.491
And the number one question you got to answer is what's the purpose of these freaking dashboards?
