Patrick Adams  00:00

Hello, and welcome to the Lean solutions podcast. My guest today is Stephanie bound. Stephanie is the acclaimed author of purpose, passion and performance, how systems for Leadership, Culture and strategy drive. The three P’s of high performing organizations, the book was awarded one of Australia’s top three leadership books in 2021. As an accredited facilitator for Young Presidents Organization, and the company director, Stephanie deeply understands the challenges today’s leaders face, she works with directors, founders and executive teams to deliver talks and programs that embed high performance habits and drive transformational change. Well, welcome to the show, Stephanie.

 

Stephanie Bown  01:14

Thank you, Patrick. It’s wonderful to be here.

 

Patrick Adams  01:17

Well, I’m glad to have you. You are not necessarily in the US which a large percentage of our listeners are in the US, but you are outside of the US. Can you just tell us where you’re where you’re calling in from today?

 

01:30

Correct. I’m outside the bubble I completely outside of the bubble. So I am, I am based in Australia. I’m on the eastern seaboard and the most easterly point of Australia, if you can imagine a map of Australia. So it’s a place called Byron Bay, We’re known for our surf culture here. And I say my closest capital city is Brisbane, just about two hours north of me that I get to do, I get to live wherever I like given the work that I do as a as a bit bit of a traveling Nomad, traveling consultant and advisor. So I chose to live here, I chose to live by bus by the bay.

 

Patrick Adams  02:07

Well, I think that’s one of the things that makes our job so amazing is the ability to travel around, I absolutely love to travel as well. So I’m trying to get out and about and see the world and it’s always fun. The other thing that I really enjoy is work, you know, all the different teams, the people that you work with, and see and just the different cultures that you get to, you know, be involved with. So it’s always, always fun. Yeah, totally

 

02:33

agree. It’s actually a perk, even though it can be a little bit challenging leaving the family all the time, but, like, normal and, and I and I have another clients internationally now. So I do get to the US occasionally. And I get all the way over to Europe from times. And yeah, just try and approach it as an adventure every time.

 

Patrick Adams  02:55

Well, I’m excited to dive into to your book and the talk of high performing teams. I mean, this is a this is a great topic, I think one that you know, many of our listeners are going to be crazy excited about. And having an expert like you to be able to just talk about, you know, the the principles that that are laid out in your book, but that you live by I mean, you’ve you’ve really devoted your life to discovering the dynamics of individuals, teams and organizations. And, and I think that that’s, you know, becomes very, very prevalent in your book and in the work that you do. But our listeners don’t necessarily know you. So can you just tell us a little bit about yourself? And, you know, maybe how you got into this line of work?

 

03:39

Yeah, I’d love to. So I’ve always been really fascinated by psychology and human behavior. I’m the youngest of four children, by a very long way I was a mistake. But a happy one, my mom kept telling me that the advantage of growing up in a family that were like where everybody was a lot older than me, meant that I was observing human interaction and human dynamics from a very young age. And so at the age of 15, I was really clear that I wanted to get into psychology. And I had a conversation with my uncle at the time, who was also a psychologist. And he did a whole bunch of site testing on me to help me choose a career and he sort of was able to confirm that, that psychology would be a great career for me, which was a big relief at the time because it was what I wanted to do. And there’s literally fundamental question, which was, well, the only decision you need to make now is whether you want to help people who are unwell get well or if you want to help people who already well perform at their best, and I instantly knew the answer to that I knew I wanted to work with people and help them thrive. So that led me into the psychology of organizational performance. So worked into went into the neuro psychology of performance and also how people perform at work and that took me down to a path of a Um, management consulting initially. So it was really great to work, you know, really cut my teeth as a young consultant in the world of leadership development and organizational change and start to apply the principles that I’ve learned at uni and see how they really translated. But I think Rudall really came together for me was a couple of years after I’d finished a master’s in organizational dynamics, which is really about the interactions of psycho social systems. So systems thinking about how people interact with work, and each other and how that dynamic creates a culture. And so that extra layer of systems, thinking to organizations really helped me understand the complexities and how if we’re looking at organizational change, really, what we need to be looking at is the level of systems that we create in organizations, which moves a bit beyond the idea of a structure or just a leadership skill, we’re sort of moving into the kind of interplay of how these things come together. And so I was really fortunate to have an opportunity to go in house with a with an organization that was in a turnaround phase, and they were a, they were a health and wellness company that produced multivitamins, and over the counter probiotics and things like that they will call Swiss wellness. So they will go to a turnaround. So I was lucky to sort of go in house and really apply what I’ve learned with an executive team, and be their partner, and start to apply some of these principles that, that ended up landing in my book around, really sort of getting clarity on purpose and mission and empowering leaders to coordinate teams to work together better, and then really living a set of values and beliefs. And when we saw this extraordinary turnaround that happened over the course of a year or two, within this organization, they went from almost going into administration to delivering an incredible revenue and 40% margin. And they ended up going through one of the record private sale for Australia at the time they sold to a Hong Kong listed company. But to see that turnaround happen so fast, through some of these practices and principles that we’ve put in place really, for me solidified the fact that this stuff really works. And so that gave me the confidence to start my own practice and move to the place where I really wanted to raise my children and do this work. So that’s kind of a snapshot of the journey, but it’s, it’s I’ve always had this passion for people and performance in workplaces. Yeah. Well,

 

Patrick Adams  07:35

I, every you, everything you just laid out gate put me in a place where I have, like, 50 questions for you. So excellent. That’s okay. Yes. Well, first of all, I’m crazy excited for you, that you, you know, you knew your your your passions and your purpose at a young age. And, you know, you had some confirmation for that and follow through on it. I mean, congratulations on that. And that’s amazing. You know, so many people, I think, you know, find themselves working in jobs or doing things that they’re not necessarily passionate about or excited about. And that creates some struggles and challenges for people. Right. So I think we’ll talk a little bit more about that as we as we go today. But the question that I had you brought in this example of this transformation that you were involved with at this company? And, you know, one of the questions that came to mind, as you said, it happened fairly quickly. And it had a lot to do with the the, the the work that was done at the executive level, you know, dealing with, you know, people people’s behaviors and actions. What would you say if you could, I mean, if you call out one or two really important aspects of that transformation, what would you know, what would those be if someone was sitting in the same place, and they were like, we want to, we want to kick off this transformation. What would you what advice would you give them? What were the top two or three items that you guys worked on? Yeah,

 

09:05

that’s a great question, Patrick. And look, you know, like, I look at you, and you’re wearing a shirt, which is all about Lean solutions and agile ways of working. And there’s so much alignment between what you do and the principles and practices that I helped this team put in place. You know, I thought that the initial part of this was getting the senior team included the executive team of five individuals plus their direct reports and maybe a group of about 20 in a room together to to look at the actual state of play, as it was at the time and really kind of appreciate where they were at in terms of their strengths and their capabilities. So just kind of look at it with humility and go, okay, the stuff we’re doing well, let’s start with really stepping up and have the humility to admit mistakes and be willing to change some things so getting people in a room and to look at it it objectively at what they were doing was the first part of this. But the other part, which is this kind of lean and agile idea, which was let’s just get a one page plan happening, like just just a plan on a page, right? Nothing more complicated than that there were plans and strategies all through the organization, there were like PowerPoint decks that were 20 pages long, there was one for the ops team, there was one for the IT team, there was one for marketing. And there was just too much and too many different objectives going sending all these people in 20,000 different directions. So what we needed to do was get everybody aligned, and on the same page, literally one page. And so that whole process of simplifying our objectives, you really coming back to the purpose, what are we about what makes us successful, what are our customers love, and let’s get super sharp on we absolutely have to nail and we talked about, you know, specific categories that we needed to win in, we talked about margin targets we must get. And we talked about culture and process improvements we needed to make that were absolute, you know, we had to do them, there was no buts about it. So but what that meant was everybody had these kind of four pillars, and everybody set goals and objectives according to these four pillars. And everybody came together on the same page to actually deliver that, that results. So just aligning a team on a single simple set of goals and objectives is one massive part of that. The other big part of that was his leadership team being very transparent and open to feedback. So we created a really strong feedback culture with feedback was normalized, where they gave each other really straight to the point constructive, both positive and negative feedback with each other. So they learned how to adjust their behavioral styles and the way that they were leveraging their talent as a leadership team. And then they started to bring that culture to their own team. So we’re, you know, it’s not that no one was safe. But if we were going to create a high performance environment, we needed to be really honest and transparent about what was working and what was not working, where there were passengers on the bus, where there were leaders on the bus. And we needed to empower the people who are on the bus and genuinely doing the work to make key decisions. And to offload the passengers, the people who weren’t really, really engaged who weren’t really part of the story who needed to move on to a different place, because their hearts and minds that already left the, you know, the building, so we sort of had a lot of really almost, you know, difficult conversations, but conversations that took us to this, this place very quickly, you know, once we got super sharp on why we were there, what we were working on and who needed to be there to do it, and then how we were going to work together, all of it turned around, you know, all around. So yeah, it can be a bit uncomfortable. But the, the upside of a performance culture is so worth it. Because people want to be part of a success story. Nobody wants to be part of a failure, you know, and failure is great. If we can learn from failure, I’m all about failing, failing fast, you know, Amy Edmondson and psychological safety, create it. But we need to learn from our mistakes, you know, we need to actually grow from our mistakes rather than become excuses for underperformance. So that was the kind of the keys really and, and you know, that idea coming back together every quarter, like clockwork, you know, like that agile idea, just kind of test, give it a go come back, see how it works. If it doesn’t work, accept come up with something new, you know, we’re like, we don’t have to just keep following through on stuff that doesn’t work. And so that sort of fail fast, you know, idea started to really take root in the way that people were launching products and talking to retailers, which meant we could adapt really quickly to markets that were really taking up our product. So where we got lucky was that a couple of our products became popular to the Chinese market. So they kind of really cottoned on to the Lean Green, healthy aspects of our brand. And they settled to buy and sell our brands into China through kind of online resellers. So we just fed that channel, you know, really quickly, and it just blew the brand up super fast. But but if we weren’t cottoned into those, why is that particular area, buying up begging these particular products? And then we kind of went into those stores and figured out Oh, it’s, it’s these, you know, these Chinese resellers who are coming in, so let’s let’s be that channel. That’s how it happens. But if we weren’t being receptive to the market opportunity, then we wouldn’t pick that up. And then that happened. So so it was a really great lesson in how you create the right culture, the right processes, the right people, and then they will find the opportunities and capitalize on them when they present themselves. Yeah, sure.

 

Patrick Adams  15:03

And it sounds like with the China market picking up. I mean, if they wouldn’t have done the work ahead of time and would have still been in this this complete chaotic mode or this place of, you know, complete instability. I mean, who knows what would have happened, right. So the fact that they did the work ahead of time to create some stability and simplify things, which I love the simplicity of of what you just walked us through, obviously, that set them up for some some great success and growth. It sounds like going

 

15:33

forward. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You’ve got to create an environment where things can thrive. That’s what you can control as a leader. And as a business owner, you can’t force people to perform, but you can create the conditions in which in which that’s possible. And then that’s where trust comes in. Right? That’s when you need to trust that that people that you have, are going to come with you on that journey. And if you start to do that, it’s like gardening, you know, he creates a beautiful soil, plant things in the right places, and then watch it grow. And if it’s not, then you’ve put the wrong tree in the wrong spot, you know, uproot it and move it somewhere else. Right? So if you see yourself as a gardener, then it changes a little bit of the mindset about how you want to create a business. Sure,

 

Patrick Adams  16:18

yeah. And yeah, again, I appreciate the simplicity of what what you laid out. Obviously, you’re dealing with people, and you know, people tend to bring the complexity or things tend to start to, to unravel. And so I’m curious in this transformation, you know, you said you had leaders in these different departments or areas, almost siloed, they had their own plans for what they were planning for their area, their department, and you had to get everybody aligned, there had to be some serious challenges that came with that, with trying to get everybody aligned on the same page. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I mean, what were what were the challenges that came with that?

 

16:59

Yeah, look, it’s every organization falls prey to this, at some stage, this siloing that happens, where we rely on a central individual, a CEO, or a general manager, or, or, or president, somebody who is there to disseminate and direct the activities of everybody else. The issue with that is that everybody hears one message, but they perceive it slightly differently. So they’ll all go off in their own tangents. And it’s a bit of a Chinese whisper, that starts to happen unintentionally, but they often take what they think the the boss is asking him to do. And they’ll execute that without checking in across their peer network to go. Okay, how does this line up with your, your, your outcome? So, so So what then happens is this siloing happens, and it’s not, you know, things fail in the end, or they don’t perform as they should. And rather than take accountability, people start pointing fingers of blame and going, Oh, not maybe they are, but it was it didn’t do their bit, you know, we did a great job in marketing, it was the operations team that didn’t get the the supply chain happened, and quick enough. And so, so when we’ve got that culture, it’s very unhelpful, you know, what we really need is a team of people who, when they come together as a group, they are a leadership team, their job as leaders is to create collaboration and cross fertilization of accountability. So unless we bring them together in these rooms, and go, How you going as a as your team as a leadership team, not an operations on a marketing letter, but your your, your layout team. So if they start to recognize, oh, hang on my team, I’ve got a couple of teams, I stepped in marketing, but I also am in leadership. So I work well both at this leadership level and in my own department. And if I can do both, and I’m putting both camps then then I can collaborate better. And we can get better outcomes organizationally. And I think the other thing too, is, and we’re coming back together with celebrating the achievements of the organization of the group. And it’s, it’s through those celebrations, that we start to say, Ah, if we collaborate, we get we all win, you know, it’s a win win mentality, rather than bonusing individual teams for their own individual performance. So we’re putting very clear reward systems around there were stage games like the business had to perform before any individual incentives were activated. And if the ones didn’t performance, revenue and margin target, nobody got anything. Right. So that forced that what didn’t force but it certainly encouraged people to work together first, that was the first thing. Secondly, then do your best in your role as much as you can. So that yeah, it can. If we don’t do these things, we get unintentional silos. We get people kind of creating five times in their own teams, we get to blame culture. I get low accountability. And that all then falls on the head of the CEO, it’s a lot to carry, it’s a big burden. And the general managers and the President’s those running organizations or running large departments, you know, they often feel the pressure to be the person in the middle and do all the directing, when really, if I can just share that a bit more, share the responsibility, have the plan, as a group, helps the team take collaborative accountability for an outcome, then we get a better solution, we get a better solution, but we’re sort of, we keep getting caught up in outdated, hierarchical ideas about what leadership is about. And to our detriment, you know, we need collaboration more than ever, we’ve got problems to solve, that are beyond where we’ve ever been, you know, we’ve got more and more complex environments we’re working in. And we really need to harness the collective wisdom of teams more than ever, in order to solve the problems that we have, you know, COVID was unprecedented, global financial crisis is unprecedented. We’re in, you know, a situation where we have some, you know, terrible political, you know, outcomes with the war in Ukraine, and what’s happening in the Gaza Strip. So all of these things create destabilization in the environments, the markets that we’re operating in, and we can’t predict that, you know, it’s not like it used to be, it’s unpredictable. So we absolutely need to lean into collective wisdom. And that’s what helps us come up with better solutions in the end, and allows us to learn faster as well. Yeah, makes

 

Patrick Adams  21:35

sense. And this particular example, is just one of many that you’ve been involved in, since that time, but in that particular transformation, and in those that came after, part of what you wrote about in your book is that there’s a certain amount of passion that it takes for, to create a high performing work team. So in this example, in other examples, if you when we use the word passion, I think sometimes, you know, people maybe define that differently, or understand it differently. And before we even hit record, you and I were talking about your passion for the work that you do. And you know how that was ignited? And then you know, now how you use that in the work that you do now. But what how do how do we define passion for leaders? Or what does it mean for a leader to be passionate about the work they do? Or the people they work with? Or whatever it may be? Can you just help us kind of level set? And what what what is passion mean for us?

 

22:33

Yeah, so the book arcs, you love the word because it’s one of the keywords as a title to my book on purpose, and performance. I think you need all three things in organizations, for them to be high performing passion is a really key ingredient to all of this. The way that I define it and talk about it as part of important organizationally is it passion is its, it comes from our shared system of values and beliefs. So passion is what’s important to you what you believe to be important in life. And obviously we, we gain these things through our childhoods. And as we grow into adulthood through many experiences. But what really kind of creates passion in organizations is when we find this shared system of values and beliefs, so people will enter healthcare, for example, because they have a passion for human health, because they care about people’s well being because they want to see change in the system, they want to be able to improve the way health care is delivered. And you know, there’s a whole number of underlying values that drive that. And so when we’re joining an organization, what we’re actually joining is a culture, which is a system of shared values and beliefs. And that is what’s implicit. That’s what lies underneath the surface. And so your if you think about your values set as one circle, and the organization that you’re joining, is another value set is another circle, and that creates a venn right, so how how much overlap is there? You know, how close is your Venn diagram on your value 70 organizational value set? And ideally, there’s a large degree of overlap, right, you’re part of something that you genuinely deeply care about. And so that helps you to stay connected because what that does is it it makes the work really meaningful, it makes our jobs really meaningful. But it also helps us overcome the difficulty because of course work is you know, how much disappointment can you tolerate every day, you know, that’s, that’s the level that you go to with with your jobs and maybe your work. So, you know, it’s hard, it’s hard, it can be challenging to turn up to pick to keep creating change, continuously improved, always look for the next millimeter or centimeter improvement. And so it requires energy it requires Why as passion to do that, we’ve got to care enough to keep pushing. And so it’s super, super important that you join an organization that where you feel that there is an overlap between your value set and the organization’s value set. And that you can withstand it, you know, that allows you to withstand that pressure and the requirement of actually needing to grow and changing improvable all the time. And I think most people, when they feel the passion, they just don’t share the same set of values, you know, they just don’t, it influences everything and influences the choice of organizations, we’re going to join the brands we choose to buy from the suppliers, we choose to work with influencers, how we engage with that customer set, what kinds of customers we actually want to work with, as well and have an onboard as part of our organizations. So it’s absolutely critical passion, but it really just comes down to, you know, beliefs and values that sit underneath, and really sort of drive the behaviors that we see, you know, those are the things that drive that outcome. Sure.

 

Patrick Adams  26:01

And do you think it’s possible for leaders that maybe have joined organizations where, you know, maybe they didn’t share the same values or passions at the beginning? Is it possible for them to adopt those at a later point, or for leaders to coach and help develop other leaders to, you know, gain, or ignite a passion and align with the values? I mean, or is it like, no, if you’re not aligned? You’re, you know, you need to find a different place? Or what does that look like? In your mind?

 

26:37

Yeah, I definitely think we can discover passion, and we can discover energy. I think passion comes from a shed from an at an individual level, it comes in alignment with values of the organization, but also, do you actually get to use your strengths at work? So do you get to do what you love doing at work every day? And so sometimes, when I’m working with individuals, perhaps I just haven’t really done the haven’t had the curiosity about that yet. It’s like, well, why am I here? Why did I choose this place beyond just the, you know, the pay in the conditions and the fact that I kind of liked the job description? Like, why am I really here? If we can explore that and go, Okay, well, what’s really important to you about the work that you do what gives you a sense of meaning? Also, what do you really love doing? And we do, they need to sort of perform a little bit of like, analysis of how much of your role allows you to do what you love, and gives sense of meaning, right. So those two things are really important to explore. Sometimes we’ll get down the end of that road, and people don’t actually, I realized I’m in the wrong place. It does happen, it absolutely happens. And that’s actually better for the organization. And for them if they make that realization, and give themselves permission to move on. Because it’s, you know, trying to get yourself up every day and work in a job that you don’t actually experience a sense of meaning or worth in, can be very difficult, that can lead to very quick burnout. And it’s also, it’s going to make it hard for you to perform in that job, which is going to create a whole bunch of disappointments with the boss and the team around you. And that’s not a good place to keep turning up in. Right. So that’s not healthy. And, but but look more often than not, what we do is we discover what actually matters to people, what’s important to them. And that ignites the passion. And that ignites the sense of purpose and a sense of connection and the want and the drive to set goals that are a little bit more ambitious, and to potentially put more effort in and manage our time and our days a bit better. Because it’s worth it’s, you know, we’re given the intrinsic value out of that as much as we get an extrinsic reward for doing a good job. Yeah, so we definitely need to have a leadership team, at least an executive team deeply passionate and connected to the purpose that they’re working on. And to really ask themselves in each other that question, why are you really here? What is in this for you? I am here for you. We are peers, we’re colleagues, we’re going to be connected in a network forever, you know, that lives beyond this organization. So let’s actually do the work. You know, let’s do it together.

 

Patrick Adams  29:21

Absolutely. No, I love the discovery piece of that. And you talked, obviously, we talked quite extensively about passion. And you mentioned, you know, that passion was one of the three ingredients purpose and performance being the others in the book that you wrote. So let’s, let’s talk about the book. What was the motivation behind the book and tell us a little bit more about the book itself and what it means to you and what it’s meant to organizations?

 

29:49

Yeah, great. So, so really, I wrote this book for organizations who want to become high performing organizations. So it’s very much pitch to that organize relational performance level, I wrote it coming off the back of that experience of working with Swiss wellness and having had, you know, a 15 year career in consulting as well. But I think really what happens is in kind of rapid growth startups, that source of inspiration, the founder, you know, everybody’s really close to the founder, and everybody pitches in and everybody does all the work together, and there’s no hierarchy. And there’s really no order structure or system initially in a startup environment. And then the startups get to a point where they need to scale up and they add more people. And there’s more complexity. And people get further and further away from the source of the truth, which is the founder. And it starts to happen at that point where they get to this point I usually around 50 to 100 people, sometimes it’s a bit beyond that point, where they realize, oh, wow, we actually need a system to keep ourselves connected as a team to why we’re here, what we’re working on, and how we need to work together. And so really, the the book is about help helping organizations think about their systems of performance. So how do we keep people in organizations connected and interrelated, so that they understand how things work together, so that they can perform their own job in relation to how other things perform their jobs. And when you don’t have that day to day interaction with a founder who’s like constantly like creating the energy and the vibe, you need to systematize that right, you need to create a process for it. You know, James clear, wrote atomic habits, and he loved his quote around, you don’t, you don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. So it’s all about these processes the way we work together. So it’s a performance system is the system of into how we create interconnectivity in organizations. And the characteristics of a high performance organization is that people, there’s very clear purpose, that there’s heaps of by people know why they’re here, there’s passion, people care. And there’s performance, people know how what they do drives a result. So there’s things that sit behind each of these things. And there’s a system for that. So leaders connect people to purpose, because they help people understand how what they do is important and matters in the context of the market, culture and drive passion. So culture is about connecting people via this shared system of values and beliefs. And strategy drives performance. So strategy is really all about defining what good looks like and being able to cascade accountability through an organization. And so there’s a system for each of those, there’s a system for how we lead, there’s a system for how we create and regenerate our culture. And people keep people connected to our values. And there’s a system for how we set and align to goals. And if we can kind of embed these habits and these practices in the way that we operate them, then we can get this kind of aligned, interconnected way of people working together. So if you’re a leader, or a founder or business owner, really, you need to be thinking about your systems for connection. And each of those, how those three things work together.

 

Patrick Adams  33:09

I love that. And I love how you’re hitting on systems, because we talk a lot about your being the result of behaviors and the actions of your people. Like everyone has a culture and cultures happen, whether you like it or not. And so what you’re what you’re saying is, let’s create systems so that we can be intentional about the results or the outcome that we’re going to receive, right. The systems do control or help guide the behaviors and actions of the leaders and the people in the organization. Yeah, do you agree? Yeah,

 

33:45

absolutely. Yeah. It’s like, it’s, it’s how we work together to get the work done. Right. It’s all about that. And, and we do need to be intentional about that, you know, as you say, culture, it’s the result of the way people observe leaders leading, and they’ll just follow suit, and so forth. Often what happens, a founder is really reactive and responsive, and, you know, visionary, and they come up with lots of ideas and to test and try out lots of ideas. And then once a business or an organization has a root in a market, really, it’s about growing and sustaining that idea. So if we keep we want to maintain a sense of entrepreneurialism, but we also want to create a sense of predictability. So if we’re constantly trying to be like an entrepreneur, always, then we become this sort of rat reactive, responsive, you know, chaotic, chaotic mess, really. What happened to this sort of Swiss culture after a while, and they were like, Oh, we actually just need to kind of get clarity on what we need them to work on and leave it predictable at the way that we come back together and make decisions. Right and right. It’s that it’s that tipping point where you gotta like, switch over, not so systematize that out salutely lost all opportunity for creativity, but enough so that people know how to work together and keep, keep creating.

 

Patrick Adams  35:08

Now, ultimately, at the end of the day, the goal for an organization is, you know, to create this high performing team, which then is able to, to, you know, provide value to whatever the end customer is for that particular organization. And I’m assuming, by putting these systems of performance in place, that the result is, you know, good financial benefits to the organization, being able to provide good value to your end customer, those types of things. But if we back that all the way up, and we’ve already kind of hit on this a little bit, but what are what are some of the other problems that organizations are facing? That these systems are performance are helping to fix, you know, upstream, that are then resulting in that positive and game? Problems inside the organization? Yeah,

 

36:03

so look, I think the problems that are getting solved are things like strategy’s not actually landing, you know, like, we’ve got a plan. But we see, we don’t see the results, we’re anticipating based on a plan happening. You know, and often that’s because of breakdowns in execution, not because the plan is flawed, because we’re not actually driving that cast, or cascading, that accountability through an organization. So we see this kind of lackluster performance of a plan, we might set a goal or revenue target, let’s say a 20% growth in the year and we achieve 15. You know, and that’s, you know, given the conditions at the start of the year, that was a reasonable goal to set. Why didn’t we you know, so that’s, that’s one of the things that starts to happen. The other problems that start to happen, we see impacts on culture and people. So engagement can be affected, we start to see turnover in an organization, we find it hard to attract and retain people, the really good people that we want in our business, because they’re not challenged enough, they’re not listened to, they’re not enabled, then they’re not actually given the work that they love in an organization that really appreciates the effort that they put in. Because there’s too many passengers on board kind of flying, you know, just sort of flying by it. 70% productivity, right, so. So we see that problem of culture happening. And we also see a problem of, we get, you know, leaders, we try and build leaders in an organization by giving them teams to work with them to help them, right, so but what we’re seeing is we would promote people who are technical specialists into leadership positions, and they don’t know how to leave, they’re not actually trained in leadership, which is a skill set in and of its own. So just because you’re very, very busy, and you need help, and you get somebody in your team doesn’t automatically make you a good leader or a good manager. So then what we see is a whole bunch of people who are hired, not really maximized, because their boss is too busy to help them or too busy doing the work that they should be delegating. And, and they don’t know how to work with that person and inspire them and get them on board and create a team environment, right? So. So we’re seeing this kind of the under utilization of talent. So there’s a couple of problems that can happen in organizations as they grow. And there’s just no visibility from the top to the bottom, you know, that all the people that everybody’s managing up really well and tying a really great story up. But then the results don’t actually turn out the way we expect. And then we see a lot of unhappiness on the at the frontline of people really being underutilized and under supported. So that that can happen. And I think that that’s these are normal things that happen in organizations with humans in them. Because of the you know, these kind of normal human dynamics that occur, if we don’t create an environment where we we ask people to keep realigning on goals, set strategies in relation to purpose, tap into people’s potential, you know, really live our values and do what we say we’re going to be and not just have it as a set of words on a website, like actually make it happen. You know, then, then we fall prey to some of these things. You can tick a box, but have you actually embedded these habits in your organization? And if you haven’t, that is an opportunity. There’s lots of upsides to that. Right? There’s lots of ways to improve

 

Patrick Adams  39:30

that. Right? Right. And I hear you speaking to different listeners in our audience, some mid managers, some executive leaders, obviously, all the everything you’re putting out there is I think, is hitting people in different ways. But we have a ton of leaders that are listening and you’re talking specifically to leaders right now. If if leaders who are listening right now if they want to create a high performing culture What? What are they? How do they create value in that? Or what is their role as a leader in creating that? That high performing culture? Yeah,

 

40:11

yeah, look, I love this topic in particular. So, you know, most of my work is with leaders and leadership teams to really help them do that. And I work with executives or work with frontline emerging leaders that work with middle managers. And I think the challenge is the same whatever level you’re at, obviously, it’s lovely if it’ll happen from the top down. But sometimes it doesn’t perfectly work that way. As a leader, you’re empowered to create a high performance team or an environment. Even if you don’t have a team of people reporting to you, you might be leading a project or an initiative or responsible for technical specialism, for example. Look, I think that the role that leaders play in what they can actively do is, you know, this idea of just sort of connecting people together, it all starts with purpose, purpose is central, to how to lead it’s central to culture, and it’s central to strategy. So getting the team of people you’re influencing, you know, together, either virtually or online, actually, physically in a room together to talk about why are we here? Why is this important? How does this create value? Who do we serve? So what’s our actual, why, you know, not the watch what the work we do, it’s the why behind it, and to sort of get each individual in that group to connect with why that’s important to them. Right? So it’s important for the organizations important for the customer group we’re serving. But what why is it important for you personally, what did you gain out of actually doing this work that’s meaningful for you? And then it’s like, once we’re kind of aligned on that. And we’ve sort of got an idea for what that is, we’re starting to create a bit of a vision together about what what actually good looks like. So then we can talk about, let’s do our one page plan, right? What what are our goals? What are actual measures of success, let’s push ourselves a little bit beyond where we’re at. Now, let’s set it if we’re going to be high performance, we need to kind of set high expectations. High performance is on average, it’s not average performance team, it’s high performance team. So we do need to push ourselves to what we believe is possible and aspirational now and set some goals as a group, and then agree on okay, what’s our cadence for connection? So how often are we going to come back together to observe our results and look at what worked, what didn’t work, and create an environment where it’s normal to give and receive feedback. So it’s okay, we learned from mistakes are great, like, let’s celebrate, you know, the stuff ups and the mock ups, because we’ve learned from them and we can adapt, you know, using Lean and Agile technology and methodology that you talk about, and you train people in, let’s actually learn from that. So in those environments, the role that leaders play, and I really support this notion of the Gallup really supports, which is leaders who coach produce better outcomes. So as a leader, it’s not about telling people what to do. It’s asking people what they think, right? So it’s inviting conversation, facilitating, and coaching, you know, take a facilitator coach role, much like what I would do in a room, to invite lots of input and get lots of ideas on the table, and allow people to speak and share their viewpoints, and then together create this this thing, you know, so you the best thing is when you’ve got an idea in your mind, and then someone else says, you know, the idea that you’ve got in your mind, you’re like, great idea, why don’t you go and try that, you know, because if it’s their idea, then they care about it, they own it. So you know, let people have that moment a little bit and, and feel that they’re part of a journey and something they care about, and they want to be part of it. And they want to, they want to win together. And that’s how you create a team environment. So you can do that whatever level you’re at on whatever project you’re working on. It’s lovely, if your boss does that with you, too. But if you can try that approach and see how it’s working, and what comes out of it, you can then take that to your manager or manager and say, look, we’ve tried this with, we’ve generated enormous success with this. I’d really like our team to try this type of approach, where we get in a room every quarter or every two months, or whatever cadence you want to create. But I would definitely suggest at least quarterly, and, you know, and talk about our why, what are our goals? And what are our results? And then what can we learn and adjust for the next quarter like that is that is agile. In a nutshell, so be the facilitator and a coach for the conversations. And instantly, I can guarantee instantly, you will start to see results. And if you see people walk out of that room disengaged, that’s a one on one about what what are they there for What’s their purpose, what’s their meaning? Are they getting value where they doing what they love, because you might need to help that person move out of the role, either in the organization elsewhere or another organization and that’s better for them better for you. If you You see yourself as a career builder, somebody who actually supports and enables other people’s growth, you’ll get the best out of them when they’re with you. And beyond that they will absolutely thrive and flourish. And what a compliment, you know, what a compliment to you, as a leader, to see that people that you managed, go on and build incredible careers around you like that is that is the ultimate feedback and give back as a leader. So, so yeah, there’s lots of isn’t lots of really simple things leaders can do, but they think they’re too busy to do it. And that is a self perpetuating lie, right? You are creating your own busyness. By doing this stuff all the time and not empowering the people around you, you’re creating that environment. And that’s hard to take. Sometimes it’s hard feedback to take. But if you can be open to that idea, then you can, you can certainly transform the way people around you operate. So

 

Patrick Adams  45:51

true. One of the things that that we encourage leaders, just a very simple question, this is one of my most favorite questions that you can ask your team member is, what do you think we should do? Right, instead of me telling you to your point, just a simple question, what do you think we should do? Even if you as a leader and have a have a thought about what should be done or have done it before and have done it a certain way? Throw that out the window and just ask your team member? What do you think we should do? And if they say something that you don’t totally agree with, but it’s not going to cause you know, maybe safety or quality issues or anything like that? If it’s let them try it, let them experiment? Maybe you’ll learn something through the process. Right. So I think that’s just great, great advice. For our listeners, I think about also, you know, if we think about those people that have just been promoted into a leadership position, like I specifically am thinking of a frontline team leader who’s just, you know, very new to management leadership, any practical advice that you would give just a couple of things that you could say, you know, start with this, or, you know, apply these these couple tips and anything at all?

 

47:07

Yeah, great. Yeah. Love that question. What do you think? Oh, it’s a it’s a magic question.

 

47:16

What the follow up to that is, what else? What else? What else? What else? Oh, the magic question. Yeah, look, I think just really practical. If you’re brand new, you’re stepping in for the first time, or you’re your CEO has just been hired. And you’re coming on in, I think, really start with connecting, just connecting. So start on that culture piece, you know, why are we here? What’s important to you? How are we working together? And how can we work together better. So this is calling out the values and behaviors. So if people want more trapped, if they actually want more trust, and more respect, which is what everybody wants? If people want more trust? Then ask them, What is trust look like to you? How can we show and demonstrate that we trust each other? So what do you need from me? You know, if respect is important, what does respect really look like when we’re working together? And they’ll tell you, they’ll let you know. Right? So you’re creating a conversation about how do we create the right culture, the right environment that we all want to work in? And we’re going to set that before we start talking about the what what are we going to work on. Because if you show that you care about the experience people are having, before you start talking about the work and the deliverables and the outputs, then you show that you actually care, they will automatically feel connected and heard and listened to, and they will want to give you their discretionary effort. It’s, you don’t even have to ask for it. It’s going to be there. So when we in and start with what’s working for you, how are we working together? How can we work together better? What do you need from a leader? What do you need from me? You know, and we listen, like really be willing to listen and take it on board and show that you’re trying like you’re not expected to be a perfect human. But you are expected to kind of role model these values that we have on our wall behind us, we are on the website. People are looking at you for the example of that. So if you are showing that you are learning and living up to as much as you can, these expectations that you have of yourself and each other, being really vulnerable and humble, admitting to mistakes, you know, admitting to when you get it wrong. And being grateful for the feedback people give you, then you will just very, very quickly generate very deep and meaningful and vulnerable kind of connections with people which allow you to get to the root of the issues much faster and get on with the work that people really want to do that they think is going to make a difference. You know respected they’re the ones doing the work. They understand the problems. They’re talking to the customers they know where the systems falling down. They know where the pros So this is broken, like, they can tell you those things, so they won’t, if they don’t think you’re gonna listen, and they don’t think you’re gonna respect what they have to say, they just won’t, they’ll just carry on doing the bare minimum. So you create an environment where it’s safe to raise all this stuff. And you do that by talking about how we work together better, and then kind of really trying your best to role model and live up to those things.

 

Patrick Adams  50:21

So true, such good advice. I appreciate that very much. Stephanie, if if someone is interested to get a copy of your book, where would be the best place for them to go to find a copy of that? Oh,

 

50:34

look, it’s online, all the best. resellers, Amazon booktopia, you can also just check my website. So that’s Stephanie bound.com. So that’s bound not brown bound brown without the iron, I get that a lot. So yeah, so just check out my website, and you’ll be able to find the links to the book and various resources that are available here. Yeah,

 

Patrick Adams  50:57

and we will, we’ll put those links right into the show notes. So if anyone’s interested to grab Stephanie’s book, you can go right to the show notes for a link directly to her book. And then Stephanie, if someone wants to reach out to you with questions or you know, maybe your you know, information about your consulting company and different things like that. LinkedIn, or is it go to your website? What’s the best way to connect with you?

 

51:23

Yeah, both. Both are great. So LinkedIn is just Yep. Stephanie Baum. And you can also just reach out to me directly. It’s Stephanie at Sydney, Roundup calm for an email. You can send a pigeon if you like, I’m pretty old school. So actually, my phone number is available on my website. So I love phone calls now. That’s

 

Patrick Adams  51:45

great. Yeah, I was. I was thinking is that is pigeon like a new social media. Maybe I’m not.

 

51:59

Maybe we just invented something new, Patrick, I think we need to get onto that idea.

 

Patrick Adams  52:05

Well, Stephanie, it’s been great. I consider myself a lifelong learner. And just love talking to people like you, the value that you’re providing to our listeners, and to me, personally, has been great today. So thank you so much for your time, and just your your commitment to organizations, helping to develop people and helping them to align their passions with their purposes, and just the amazing work that you’re doing. Just thank you so much. And thank you for being on the show.

 

Stephanie Bown  52:30

Thank you so much for having me, Patrick. And likewise, you know, likewise, it’s great to connect with people around the world who are passionate about this work of continuous improvement and growth and supporting organizations to have the difficult conversations. So it’s been wonderful talking to you. And thank you for your questions today and for having me on your show and thank you to the listeners.