Empowering Managers and Bridging the Gap Between Strategy and Execution

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[00:00:13] CT: Hey, it's good to be back. Feels a bit unusual now, both of us on the same show, but it's cool.

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So in this conversation, we're going to cover a handful of things obviously over the course of the first 200 episodes I think you and I will have some unique You Perspectives on what we learned from those conversations, but more importantly, that learning is going to drive some key changes. When we look at what the show is going to look like in season three and beyond.

g to be talking about today. [: 00:01:00

[00:01:08] CT: I was gonna say, before we get into the business of this, it's important to recognize like 200 episodes, jeez, that's that's a lot. And we You know, it's a lot of work, but I think we've also owed the success of this to all of our amazing guests and you, the listener, because without you guys, there'll be no show.

So thanks for listening. Thanks for being on the show and sharing all the insights.

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What were the things that stood out to you during all of your conversations?

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Managers continue to remain the key activation node for a lot of the good HR initiatives that are being put out there. And this applies to managers at the C suite. So you're talking about like the most senior leaders in the organization. All the way down to your first time managers, your line leaders who are On the front lines every day.

p behavior, to drive impact, [: 00:03:00

And. There are so many different problems around that. So some of it could be an understanding issue. Some of it could be a lack of an investment in building managers. Some invest in building managers, but too late. Many times we've heard of leaders and managers who take on that people leadership role.

And only then do they start learning what it takes to lead. Whereas I think the best organizations we've spoken to, they've invested in this. Earlier far earlier, and they've identified their talent, they've identified their future pipeline leaders and continue to invest in that. So that was one of the big learnings.

Is that something that you've come across as well?

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And I [00:04:00] think one of the other things that that's interesting about those organizations, they're not really looking at leadership as a vertical path. They're looking at it. And it's come up in a lot of my conversations. Looking at it from the concept of a lattice versus a ladder. So they're very open about making sure that they and their people know that it's a, it's okay to move to another division so you can broaden out your skills or try something different as part of your overall career path.

And that makes a lot of sense, especially when you look at. How expensive it is to go ahead and hire somebody and also how expensive it is to be a churn factory. So when you have those things in place, it makes a pretty massive impact in your bottom line, but it also maintains a level of culture within your organization where you're not having to start over every 18 to 36 months because you've turned over your entire staff.

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And so for organizations to say, all right, I'm going to dedicate. a learning budget to develop my leaders. This learning budget may only pay off in three, five, 10 years as they retain their leaders. But I think the most savvy organizations have found that when they run the numbers on these investments, They pay off multiple fold because they have quantified and understood what churn cost them.

ion, the organization better [: 00:06:00

So the best organizations that we've spoken to have tried in some way to be able to quantify the impact of HR activities, of the way that HR and leadership and engagement contribute to the bottom line of their organization. And this is not easy. We've had. Interviews with CPAs who moved into HR and they would immediately tell you that this is not something that can be done overnight.

ch are we talking about with [: 00:07:00

So that, that was something that was interesting to me, or maybe because I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to numbers anyway, so that just flowed into my conversations.

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Was the focus on organizational transformation for a lot of the guests that we had on the show. And what's interesting about that, and especially your point about, these aren't solution driven transformations, I think that's an important point for a lot of folks to keep on their radar. Because if you're trying to execute or transformation well, you have to make sure your people and process elements of the transformation are tight.

tight operationally from an [: 00:08:00

Mission vision values that flow from the executive level down to the job level details of the task at the individual contributor level. And the reason why it caught my attention is your directors and your managers are the conduits for connecting those dots. And whenever you look at, gaps within organizations that have churn or high degrees of churn at the low, lower levels of the organization, you can usually point to that level of disconnect.

ake the strategic objectives [: 00:09:00

So if you're looking at an organizational level and you're dealing with a lot of churn. You might be well served in evaluating how well are your directors and managers connecting those dots from the strategy to the execution, and that's going to give you some line of sight into what you need to prioritize to fix.

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I think it also helps you attract the right kind of talent. On to your team. And this was actually the third big theme That I came across was you can have the [00:10:00] best processes. You can have the best tools, but if you got the wrong people on the bus to begin with, then your bus is going to, it's not going to reach his destination.

So one of the first steps is being able to get the right people on the bus. And it's not about optimizing the candidate attraction numbers or about optimizing your your hiring flow. It's really about why should anyone. want to join your team? Why should anyone want to join your organization?

What's so special about you that that someone would want to dedicate a significant portion of their career to, to contribute to your vision and your mission and your organization. I think being able to articulate that employee value proposition is so critical. And, the economy may not be.

force today where people are [: 00:11:00

And. If your organization can't communicate that sure, they might, you might pick up some good people when the going is bad and when the economy is it's not humming along as nicely as it should, but the moment that switch flips they're out and you're going to be scrambling to try to figure things out again.

So that was another really important insight that, that came upon me and that I learned from all of my guests that attracting talent with the right. Almost reputation organizational brand in the talent market is important and you do that unsurprisingly with people having strong managers with good reputation in their particular functional areas and good applications of data to be able to understand what is it that people care about when they join your organization?

hat is it that they hoped to [: 00:12:00

[00:12:08] Dr. Jim: Yeah, there's a related note that ties into what you just talked about. And when I look at the trends of the conversations that I had with with my guests. Is that those top performing managers, those top performing organizations consistently had a habit. of deep listening within their organization.

So they were constantly gauging where their employees were on a pretty regular basis. Now that in and of itself isn't gonna really move the needle anywhere for you. It's important that you listen. But if all you do is listen and you don't act, that's gonna, that's gonna create a problem where people are just gonna be fatigued from the whole exercise and not participate.

ee life cycle, they not only [: 00:13:00

At what they were hearing from the people on their teams and prioritize based on the most important trends and then move those forward into action to resolve those issues. And that's the key thing that, that came out of a lot of my conversations is that when you look at best practices, you have to act.

And you have to act based on the trends that you see that are most impacting your ability to attract, develop and retain your people. So that emphasis and that bias for action kept coming up in, in a number of conversations in terms of what what leaders that I talked to. Cited as big factors in their ability to build high performing teams.

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And I think when we look at the themes that come out which are focused on building a leader, full organization, leadership, best practices Prioritizing things for action, connecting the dots between strategy and execution. These are all competencies that tie into that still tie into characteristics or traits of building high performance teams.

I think when we look at all of these things that we've taken in, I think one of the things that's going to be helpful in. The next 200 episodes of of the show is to get a broader lens and look across the enterprise, not just HR, but what functional senior and executive leaders are doing when it comes to building those high performance teams.

ization? And that's going to [: 00:15:00

[00:15:05] CT: Yeah, I'm really excited about this. And you're absolutely right. I think We need to take this show to the next level and have that microscope and folk home in deeper on what is it that makes these leaders tick? How do we actually get them to activate effectively and unlock the human potential of so many of their organizations?

And we're going to be, I'm really looking forward to having. Successful leaders come and share their best practices, because one of the key things that we've learned is that human psychology is the same pretty much in every organization and every industry. But the way that leaders execute the way that leaders.

And the way that leaders lead, they can defer in so many different ways and being able to pull some of the common threads across all of them. I think that's where the gold is going to be. That's where we're going to be learning the most to take this show forward.

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Talk about their best practices when it comes to building great teams through a leadership lens. And then more importantly, who is it designed for? We heard over and over again that there's often a disconnect between the line level employee and the C suite or the or the boardroom in terms of how everything connects together.

ive impact for their people, [: 00:17:00

Leadership and impact and people impact together. And here's why one of the big things that gets in the way of you becoming a high performance organization is if you can't retain your people, it's hard enough to attract top talent and. If you're doing a good job of that, but you aren't developing or retaining them, you're back at square one.

So the intent here is we still are committed to helping organizations build those high performing teams, but it's through the lens of how do you attract the best talent? How do you develop them? How do you retain them? And how do you leverage your managers and directors so that they're actually connecting the dots to the people at the line level?

ective. So if we solve that. [: 00:18:00

[00:18:09] CT: Yeah, that old saying that people join companies but leave managers or leave their bosses, I think very much that hasn't changed in the past 20 years. And we've been teasing it for a bit. Do you think it's time for us to reveal the rebranded name of the show?

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[00:18:27] CT: Yeah, we're going to play that drum roll. Drum roll, please. So the new name of the show is now engaging leadership. And I, Jim and I and our team, we've been talking about this for a bit. And I personally really like it because it encapsulates almost everything that we've learned and puts that focus squarely on where it needs to be on the leaders and leadership across the organization at every level.

t it takes to be an engaging [: 00:19:00

So I'm really excited by this new direction and everything that we're going to learn from the guests that we're talking to.

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Because that's really the thing. Everything that you do at the enterprise level at all levels is about. Making an impact on the people that roll into you and the people that you serve. The future of the show is going to be focused in on that, not just from an HR lens, but from an enterprise lens.

hose great best practices so [: 00:20:00