Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Tony, welcome aboard to the show. I'm so happy to talk to you. I want to ask a really difficult question.
Do people make good decisions on average?
[00:00:13] Speaker B: No.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Maybe it's not as difficult as I thought it was. Okay, fine.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: People make horrible decisions, okay?
[00:00:23] Speaker A: But we see ourselves as intelligent, thoughtful human beings.
Your response was so strong. Why? Why? Tell me more.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Oh, so it's interesting. In 2015, 2014, I started diving to this idea of unconscious bias. It just fascinated me. Right. I have an engineering background. Science fascinates me, and I didn't do it from the standpoint of diversity, equity, and inclusion, although I do apply it to that. I just really wanted to understand how people think. And what I started to learn about people and about myself is just mind blowing.
Functional MRIs tell us that on average, 90% of the decisions we make on a daily basis come from our subconscious. They're almost on autopilot. We, we think, we're thinking, but we're not.
95% of our buying decisions come from our subconscious. So as much as we love to believe that we are these intelligent, logical, rational beings, we are emotional and impetuous, and often our feelings dominate our thinking.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: So I. Let's give this a name for a second. The area of research and science behind this is called social psychology. And I'll kind of bring our audience with us on this journey. There is a lot of research that went into this. In fact, multiple Nobel laureates have made, you know, have won on this topic. One of my professors, Richard Thaler, he actually got the Nobel Prize while I was studying with him at school.
So, you know, and he wrote the very famous book Nudge. But let's peel this onion and take it to a really simple thing. If I ask you, who are you voting for? And then I followed that up with, why are you voting for this person? What question are you actually? And I should say, possibly, because it could be different questions. What question are you actually asking yourself when trying to answer that question? Who are you voting for?
[00:02:42] Speaker B: It's weird because I want to say you're answering the question of what do you believe? But the truth is you're probably answering the question, who do you like realistically?
And that likability thing plays a role in voting who we hire, who we hang. I mean, just, I would love to think that I would say, oh, it's all of these ethical things, but I kind of believe that it's a likability thing.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: And I would even argue that different people might ask themselves different questions. And this is, this is Actually called question substitution. Right. It's got a slightly different name. But the idea is that when we ask ourselves a certain question, we're actually substituting the question for another question.
And that's part of. That's one out of probably hundreds of biases that kind of trip us up. But there's basically things going on in our brain that make us think differently. What was the first moment where you recognized that you're suffering from these biases or these substitutions where you're not really asking yourself the right question or you're tricking yourself in some way?
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. That's the first time. That's a hard one, because I don't know.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: Or a memorable.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: It's one of those things that once you become aware of something, you think you always knew it, and then you go back and go, no, I. I didn't always know it.
I would.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: By the way, that's got a name, too. It's expert bias. That's a whole.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: I was trying to not label that one.
Or it's also called the curse of knowledge. I think it's also referred to as that. Right.
Gee, when's the first time I. I was.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Or a memorable one that you're kind of like, oh.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Probably a bad dating relationship, honestly. Right. Like, I've met someone. Yeah, for sure. Because what happened is I met someone and they were very attractive, but then they were cute. And what happened is I started it, filling in the blanks of who I thought they were. Right.
And then when I began to talk to them, I realized I filled in all these blanks with zero information.
I just made all of these assumptions based on certain physical appearances or the way a person talked. And I'm literally saying, like, the way they enunciated how they talk. And then I realized, wow, I'm so far off. And then I think I saw it again when I had one of these really cheesy salespeople try to, like, you know, take advantage of me, and I'm like, why am I feeling compelled to buy? And then I caught myself, like, oh, but this doesn't make sense. Right. So I think for me, it was those types of scenarios.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Wonderful. So, you know, let's just give the audience a little bit of background. If you want to go and read, really, the most fundamental book about what we're talking about, social biases, or really, it's, you know, I would argue it's Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kunelman and Amos Tversky. Highly, highly, highly recommended. So this is even if you don't know it. This is a topic that's affecting almost every aspect of your life, from your relationships at work to your relationships at home with your significant other, whatever it is, and how you behave with your children. Every single thing.
My question to you is, if we have all these things where we're. We're getting. We're really cheating ourselves and we're not really thinking logically, is there anything that we can do to change that? How do we fight these biases that are affecting us?
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the more aware we are of our tendencies, we start to have the ability to no longer trust our gut and to stop and be. You know, I try to use the acronym par, right? We pause, assess, and respond. This idea of pausing kind of gives us a chance for the rest of our brain to kick in. And then we. We can think and we can assess versus just reacting, but just being aware. I think it's like, the more I know, the more I question myself, and I don't want to say just the less I know, but the more I'm like, okay, before even reacting, why do I feel this way? And I think that, you know, without diving into a lot of techniques and tactics, I do think checking your initial emotional reaction and realizing, because so many people trust their emotions, right? They trust their gut.
They do all of these things and say, you know what? This emotion is not like something I should be trusting. It's just an indicator that something's going on. And if I look at it as an indicator versus something to be trusted, for me, that helps. That may not do anything for anybody else, but for me, it makes a world of difference.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: Let's break this down and go concrete. What's an example in professional or personal life where you had to, you know, pause, assess, and think about how you are making a decision, and maybe you should be thinking about it differently.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: Sure. It happens in hiring all the time, right?
You're interviewing someone, and I think the more dangerous one is you just immediately connect with people, right? It's like, click, you like them. Everything they say is spot on. And all of a sudden, that emotional connection in the middle of. It's like, but wait a second, hold on. They've not actually said anything about their credentials, background, skills and ability. They've just bonded with me. And so many times, that idea of man, that person, like, I actually have to have, like, part of my team go back and say, before I bring this person on, I need you to interview them as well. I want to make sure I'm not Getting charmed. Right?
So for me, I see that both with bringing people on our team, I see it with my initial reaction or interaction with clients that, you know, I. Unfortunately, this idea of a, you know, a first, gosh, why am I speaking? First opinion first, you know what I mean? I can't think of the name of it right now. I'm just drawing a blank. But it's real. Even though I like, even as much as I know, I know I'm still like immediately profiling someone in my head and to go back and say, okay, I have to stop, because if not, I may make a business decision that's going to really hurt me in the end. And I know better, but in the moment I don't feel it. So that's what I would say. For me, for a practical standpoint, I love that.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: I think that, you know, the process of deciding what is the decision making process is something that we almost never do. We just, we have something in our mind. Other people maybe have different decision processes in their mind and we try and just come together. But stopping and saying, okay, how are we going to make this decision? Is not something that I have commonly seen in the business world and keep me honest here. But it feels like that what you're saying, right. Take a pause. Right. Think about how you're making the decision. What are the emotions or biases that are affecting your decision and what really matters.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: Absolutely. And I think, you know, having it as a framework like that so that it's something that you can do repetitively makes a world of difference. Because you started off asking me, you know, are we good at making decisions? And it's, you know, no. Right. But it's partly because it's probably because we know the blueprint for this. Right. No one said, when you're going through life, make decisions this way. When you're confused, when you're under stress, when you're overwhelmed, when you're depressed, here is how you make decisions so that all of those other contexts don't mess up your decision making. We've never been taught that. And so then we're just left up to our own devices and we're not built for that.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: So let's talk about the hiring a little bit. What are we looking for when we hire somebody? Is it their personality? Is it their fit to the team? Is it their experience? Is it all of the above? What are the reasons why you would definitely hire somebody and definitely not hire somebody?
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Boy, I mean, my first thought is all of the above.
Right. I think that the Minute you trade off, it's a disaster, right? I mean, just if you say it out loud, it sounds foolish. Okay. I want to hire someone who's capable, but when they get into my environment, they will be toxic. Does that sound like a good idea? Sounds horrible. Okay, I'm going to hire someone that gets along with everyone but has no idea what they're doing and they're not teachable. Horrible, right? You know, when we say it out loud, it's like, oh, all these are bad moves. So I do think that it's all of the above. I, I do think that in many cases, well, this is hard because you're looking at whether you're hiring a subject matter expert or a manager, right? Those have very different ideas because some people need to work. Their job allows them to work in isolation. So fit becomes less of an issue. Right? But if they're working in a team environment where they're interacting with people a lot, I do think that true fit becomes a higher priority if the person has the ability to learn the skills, right? Because often you can teach someone skills if they have the capacity for it, but it's hard to teach someone how to fit into a situation. And it doesn't take but one or two bad people to mess up an organization's culture.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: So when, when you talk about fit, I mean, we all use that word, right? Cultural fit. What does that mean to you? And how do you even, how do you gauge that in? It's such a short process, right? Maybe you have five meetings, six meetings with this person. So you have six hours. And maybe it's not all you. It's different people in the team that are meeting with this candidate, individual. How do you gauge such a difficult, important aspect in, you know, six hours?
[00:14:03] Speaker B: Basically, yeah, that's a great question.
And you know, off the top of my head, the first thing that comes to my mind is first you have to look at what is the culture that you're building or that you have. Right? Because culture determines fit. If you have an organization where what is really important is to be exact and precise, and then that determines your fit. Whereas if you have another organization where innovation and creativity are more important, that's a big one. I'll tell you. I'll give you an example. Recent one. For me, I was bringing on four trainers for my organization, right? We do a lot of training with different companies on cultural change, bias, leadership, all of these areas. And two of them I had seen speak and I knew them, have a really good history. One of them, I've known for years and knew, you know, he has the capacity to really learn and understand these things. Another one I knew from an associate who recommended him. And so we got together, and this one that I. That was the recommendation.
As we were starting to go through the process, there were just.
And we're talking about things that almost feel intangible. So I'm trying to make sure I can put words onto this. There are things where I started to see. Whereas all of the other teammates or trainers were, hey, this area we're building is almost like a startup. We've got to be very fluid. This one, this one person felt very rigid, like, no, no, no, this has to happen this way. And then I started to see that the next thing was, because we go through a very strong onboarding process with our trainers. As we were going through it, he kept trying to rush the process. No, I'm ready, I'm ready. I just want to go out there and do this. And that's a risk I'm not willing to take on my clients. But as it started to go, as that started to happen, what I started to feel was. And it's a feeling, but I was able to put it into, why do I feel this way? I was like, I don't know that I can trust this person in ABCD scenarios. And that's really important because at this stage for my organization, one person can mess everything up. And so although this person had the competency and the willingness, there were things about his. What I would call his desires and his inability to be coached that made him a bad fit. And like you, I don't like the word fit because it's often used.
It's often used almost like as a catchphrase to just allow people to hire whoever they really want to hire in the first place. Well, that person didn't fit. So I'm going to use this person. That's why I really don't like using that phrase a lot. But in this case, organizational fit, or how comfortable I felt with this person working with everyone else, to me, that that was where it fell apart.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: There's. Let me ask you a difficult question. Is there one, let's say culture or fit in the organization, or might it actually be different between different teams?
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. I think where you're leading that is right on.
Is definitely based on teams. It's based on leadership.
The leader of that different team, I think, is very fluid. And we could see different times where now I'm thinking of clients where a person was an underperformer in one team and moved to another team and was a star because they needed to be in that different environment. So I do think it is definitely team dependent.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: And I have this funny saying that I say that, you know, if somebody is performing, you know, poorly in a certain team, that we've put a duck on a bicycle. You know, a duck should be in the water, not on a bicycle. And it seems like the there's almost this dynamics between what the culture is. And sure, if a person is not adaptable to understand the team and the culture around them and to fit oneself into that, then you know, maybe that's an issue. But I feel, and this is scientifically backed up, that people majority adapt themselves into their environment that they're in and the culture that they're in.
So there is an opportunity here really to do two things. One is have very clear communication around the culture and two is to find, you know, that agreement that the person is willing to buy into the culture. So based, if you agree with that statement, and I'm going to assume that you do, but keep me honest here.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: I do. I'd like to add one other component to it because I think you're onto something really important. I think the third is self assessment from a leadership standpoint. Because what often happens is when we have a person who is underperforming, then we look at from the standpoint of what are they doing wrong to underperform versus what can we do differently so that they can perform. So that's the only thing I'd like to add.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: I love it. And that really segues me into my question.
As leaders, when we think about our organizations, how should we make a decision around what is the right culture? And we've already agreed that different teams might have slightly different cultures. So how do we even. Is there any kind of framework or way to think about how to build the culture? And then as a follow up question, how to allow people to really connect and learn and understand the culture.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: Man, that is. I've never given that question the kind of thought that you just that that's, you know, entailed in you asking it that way.
And I don't think that there's a catch all answer.
It's almost the Stephen Covey, you know, begin with the end in mind thinking of what do I want my organization to look like?
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: And then what culture fits within that organization?
And I think that has to be very clearly defined and thought out because you know, I don't know if you run into this with your work but what happens is the idea of improving culture often takes a backseat to profit demands. Yes, right. Financial expectations.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
We'll remind the audience that, you know, an officer in a company has one legal responsibility and that's to maximize shareholder profits. So, you know, there's this craziness of like they're legally required to do that. And then the question is, well, how does culture even fit in? Right, right.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Yeah. But then the question is there is definitely the difference between the short term maximizing of profits and the long term maximizing profits. I think that's, that's the hard thing to navigate because for a lot of these officers, they may not have a long enough Runway to be able to really focus on the long term profits. Because if it takes you 18 months to 2 years to do it, you may only have 12 months to prove yourself or you being replaced. So it's, it really becomes this really challenging conversation. Right. Because I think you're so spot on in this question of how do you, you know, how do you even determine what culture you're going to build? But can you do it in a way where on the front end I am doing this, I know I'm focusing on profits, but I'm also doing these things to lay a foundation. And it's kind of this multitasking of or balancing of. I have to be able to optimize profits in this moment and still make business decisions for the future. And the example I think of is the super high performer who's toxic to everyone around them. Right. If you make the decision to pull them out, which makes sense, and every consultant would say it's going to increase everything else, that sounds good on paper, but when you look at what they actually produce, that's a hard trigger to pull.
And so I think that's where the balance comes in.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: I think you're spot on. And I think the way that you're describing it is that you kind of start from the profitability format, formula, I should say, and then you go back and you ask yourself, well, what are the incredibly important values? And I say values, not culture, because I think, and keep me honest here, if you disagree, I think the values will drive the culture. And the values are, let's say, the parts of the culture. And then you kind of go from that formula to the values. And then now you're thinking about, well, how do I really communicate this culture? How do I establish it then how do I give the checks and balances to make sure that if somebody steps out of the culture, I bring them back in or assert that they're outside of it. So I think you're spot on. It's such a wonderful analogy on how you portrayed that.
Incredibly interesting. I want to tell you a story.
I actively hired somebody who I knew was antisocial, toxic, and I'll tell you why.
We were in a company that did reverse engineering and what we did is we basically took these phones, reverse engineered how they work so we could pull all the data off the phones. This was used by, you know, Met police, FBI, CIA, NSA organizations all over the world. One of the favorite stories I'll tell this very shortly that I told every single new hire is one of the things I enjoy about the company is that, you know, our piece of hardware allowed the. This was the Met police in the UK to put away a pedophile. It was six seconds video recording that he basically deleted from the phone, but our device recovered it. And this, the work that these software developers do. It was basically looking at the matrix, right? Which is in our case, a binary stream of the memory coming off the phone and reverse engineering the protocol of how this works. So they're basically like deciphering the matrix. This one individual, completely antisocial, could do about five times more in reverse engineering the number of phones. So I'm like, this person does five times the work of anybody else. This is completely like, this is crazy.
Now, on the other hand, I had this other person who interviewed and I came to my CEO and I said, ron, this guy is as good as the other guy we hired, but we shouldn't hire him.
His toxicity level is to which it will damage the rest of the team. And lo and behold, I got overruled. We hired that person. It was about eight months later, Ron came to me and he was like, oh, like, I can't, I can't manage this guy anymore. I want you to manage him. And that was the only thing I said. I said, ron, if we hiring, I'm not willing to manage him. I said, you need to manage him. So I had this little negotiation with my CEO, like, who the hell am I to tell my CEO anyway? I was like, fine, fine, I'll manage him. One of my other quality assurance engineers comes to me, basically frustrated with the engineer. Turns out this guy basically rewrote their code, destroyed like days of work based on the fact that he didn't get some basic things about teamwork. So it's such a. It's such a. It's not a black and white decision in some cases. It can be wonderful. You can get these geniuses that are incredibly valuable, but in some cases it can be incredibly destructive and it's really hard to make that decision. So why.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Question, Can I jump in?
[00:26:40] Speaker A: Yeah, sure.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: Because that, that's, that's fascinating and enlightening. Thanks for sharing that.
I think the first thing is you just pointed out a difference that although you and I each probably have thought about it this time at different times, I don't think it's often expressed or communicated in a way so that we can make better decisions. There is a difference between someone who is not social and someone who is toxic.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Right. And you, having the wisdom that you did, could see the difference. Right. This person, five times, production, not social. I know how to work with that person. This person, toxic. It doesn't matter how you work with that person. Right. The question I have for you is, so with the person that you brought on, who is the super high producer, how did you manage that person? Or what guardrails did you put in to allow them to flourish without exposing their weaknesses in bad situations?
[00:27:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
This is going to sound very bizarre, but I think the ability to create conflict in the interview process and then see if there is a way to resolve together that conflict in the interview process is incredibly valuable. I think that as executives and leaders, we're dealing with conflict all the time. In fact, if you kind of think about it, the only thing a manager does is make decisions. We don't. Mostly we don't write code, mostly we don't create content. Yeah, we'll review others, we'll give feedback, we'll do that kind of stuff. But mostly we're making decisions, gathering information, etc. So if you can't resolve a conflict with a fellow executive or an employee and you can't find the tools to do that, that's a really bad flag. It's a really, really bad signal. So to me, that's one way. And with the employee who was antisocial but incredibly productive, what we found is that through logical discussions, kind of stripping away the emotion, but just explaining the world through logic, it allowed us to get to decisions very easily and explain this is a social norm, Right. This is how people behave, this is how the business behaves, all these things. So we basically kind of worked through logic and it was incredibly valuable as opposed to in other cases where you see that there's this resistance, no matter what kind of tactic of negotiation or communication, they're just stuck in their spot, unwilling to engage, learn, debate, think outside. So I would say this concept of maybe Flexibility is. Is one of the ways that I try to chip at it. But honestly, I don't. I don't know that I have the perfect answer. And it probably differs from person to person and company to company.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: That was brilliant. I've literally never heard someone.
I can't remember hearing someone talk about having a controlled conflict during the interview process as a way to determine. You almost answered the question, how do you determine fit? Right. Because part of fit is how do we deal with conflict? Because we're going to have conflict in the organization. That. That was, I would suggest, because I'm not trying to take over your interview. I feel like I'm about to go.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: Hey, we said this is a, you know, a chat between friends, you know, as if in a bar. Totally cool.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: Okay, I'm gonna do it.
And this is a chat between friends that a lot of people are listening to.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: Give me an example of how you create that conflict. Because I. I could see. This is one of those things where I could see people going, that's a great idea. And, like, even now in my mind, I'm like, that's a great idea. How would I do that? And. And I think I would mess it up before I got it right. So can you give us an example of what that looks like?
[00:30:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So here's what I would recommend to actually candidates.
I'll tell two stories. One is, I had the very, very painful experience of firing my whole team, and one of the salespeople got incredibly emotional. He said, oh, I asked the chief Revenue officer if this would ever happen to give me heads up so I could basically prepare myself, my family, I have all these financial commitments. He didn't do that for me, and I'm furious. So he was borderline angry, borderline in tears. And I said to this gentleman, I said, the CRO is legally unable to fulfill that requirement that you put on to him. The fact that he did that and said, yes, I'll do this. He lied to you because. And, you know, bring everyone with us. Is that an executive in a company is legally bound to protect the company and not, you know, you as an individual. Right. So if they're harming the company by telling you that, oh, the company's not doing well, maybe they create panic, a bunch of people leave, you leave. They're not allowed to do that. So, in fact, you showcase them to be, to a certain degree, immoral. So I said to him, I said, hey, you should ask that question to every single one of your managers and see how they respond.
And in that way, you can test the honesty and morality of the team and see if they are willing to have a hard conversation with you or they're just going to fluff you off with some bs. So I think that's the one recommendation. And the other recommendation I would give is, I would say, as candidates, right, we feel like we don't control the interview, but we can. And the thing that I suggest to do is ask the manager, the hiring manager, what is the problem they're facing right now, and then think through different solutions and understand that problem. Now, two things will happen. One is the person across the table will be incredibly passionate and excited because now you're talking about something that they're actually trying to solve. That's one. Two is they will engage with you around problem solving, and they'll showcase that there's multiple solutions, multiple approaches. You will basically simulate discord or disagreement around an actual problem. You'll showcase the devil's advocate. You'll think through that together. And in that, you're showcasing one, that you understand their problems, you care about their problems, you have ideas around it, and that you're able to solve them together. So I think it's as simple as, like, simulate, you know, a problem that you would have in your work or that you're dealing with right now in your environment. And that's true if you're the candidate and you can be like, hey, what are you working on? Or if you're the hiring manager saying, hey, this is a problem, I don't know what the solution is. Let's talk about it. So I think it's, you know, it's easier than you would think, and it's so surprising, the results. It's just, for me, it's been such an incredible experience. And what you gauge is the feeling of what it would be to work with this person.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: That's absolutely gold.
That's brilliant. It's funny. It's one of those things where to you, you're like, it's so easy. So, no, that was absolutely brilliant. I will hand you back over your podcast.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: You're very, very kind. So I appreciate your kindness in saying that. I was reading one of your blogs and I thought it just a nerve. I thought it was so interesting. But we have to talk about this. You said you are not hiring bad people, you're making bad people. I was like, whoa, that is not the common knowledge. You've got to explain this to us.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Okay, all right. It's. It's one of these things. So I'll Tell you a story. Now, I was with my wife in, I can't say the city. Actually, we were in another city hanging out with some friends and family, and I happened to be sitting next to the head of HR for an organization, right? And she started with the, you know, it's so hard to find good people, right? And that conversation's going. And I just, in the middle of it, said, well, you know, the number one driver of engagement is a person's direct boss, their direct leader. And without missing a beat, she almost, like, became my surrogate and just continued my thought, right? Because it's. People know those things. But in the moment, and it comes down to, we were talking earlier, and I said, you know, we need to, as leaders, evaluate when someone's not doing well. What are we doing wrong in the moment? We think, well, we've done all of this work to get this person in, and now they're not performing what's wrong with them. And it's this. There's so many bad narratives here, right? There's the narrative of what's wrong with them. There's a narrative that no one wants to work. We can't find good people. And then yet you look at other studies that show how much people actually link their own personal value and worth to their job, and you realize, no, these people really care. Yes, they really. But we have now done something environmentally that has made them disengaged and ineffective. I'll just say it that way, right? And so that, to me, is strong. I do think the vast majority of people can do well in working environments. Now, some may need to be in more. In isolation, Some may be in more social settings, right? But the majority of people, they want to work, they want to do well, they want to feel good about what they're contributing to an organization. But the organization never goes back and says, okay, we have a cluster of people that we've hired that aren't doing well. What.
What's wrong with possible management leadership, policies and procedures, things that we've not considered communication, right? All of these other things that we know contribute to the employee experience and employee engagement. Just don't even think about it. And the blame always falls on the employee. Now, truth be told, they're getting paid. They should work.
But that's transactional.
There's a difference between work and effort, right? Work is transactional. Effort is personal. And so what we want is effort. But we're often putting them in a situation where the. They're. They're almost giving us work in spite of what we're doing.
[00:37:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Instead of, because of who we are and how we're treating them. And so that's really where that idea of the blog came through because just it's. I get tired of people being the fall person. Right. That it's all your fault. It's like, no, I, I'm exhausted, I'm here, I'm trying to give my best. I have a boss that doesn't give me direction, doesn't care about me. I get great reviews and no raises. Right. You start going through all of these different dynamic. It's like, well, yeah, of course. That's why they're not, you know, cranking. So that, that was what I was thinking.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I absolutely love that.
I recall a certain employee and this wasn't, this was the company of a friend that told me the story and what this lady said, she said, oh, as long this is a fake name, obviously she said, oh, as long as Mark is not fired, like as long as Mark has a job, I don't have anything to worry about. And that was such a mind blowing thing because basically what she's saying is that you can perform incredibly poorly, nothing will happen to you. So what I'm perceiving is that I just have to perform a little bit better than the worst performer.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, I, I think I, I know where Mark works. I've seen that scenario. Wait, let me add a, let me add a story now on top of that, right? So I'm working for, doing work for an engineering firm and they do, you know, this really work with these mechanical items, whatever. And there's a new employee who comes in and they're kind of attempt for hire, right. So they're really trying to make a name for themselves. And so after, you know, just some basic, you know, onboarding stuff, they get to work and they are just cranking, right? You can see this person is really working hard. About 2:00 in the afternoon, I just happened to be in the room with this person, a co worker and their team lead. And everyone's comfortable with me by this stand, right? They know me. I watched the team lead go over to him and said, hey, slow down.
I was like, first I thought, well, maybe he's saying slow down because they're working with some delicate objects. And he says, look, this is a repair shop. Look over there. There's 12 racks of work that we need to repair. The faster you work, the more they bring them in. So slow down, don't burn yourself out. And so it's this weird Balance. Now you tell the story of this poor performer or person with a bad attitude. As long as they're not getting fired, I'm safe.
And the reward for being a high performer is more work.
[00:40:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: So people adapt to those two different things.
[00:40:39] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, we've seen this happen. Right. The, the person who's doing the most work is also getting frustrated by the fact that nobody else is pulling their weight.
What can we do as executives to adjust that situation?
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I love this conversation. It was going great.
So I think there's a few things. There is the idea that we can give people other forms of recognition, praise, reward, things of that nature. Right. O.C. tanner, if you're familiar with them, they're kind of the experts in this space. And when they have surveyed over 200,000 employees, they realize that 73% of employees who receive consistent recognition for going above and beyond the call of duty, they are fully engaged. Right. Which is only about, based on Gallup's work, about 34% of the U.S. workforce. And I think it's a little more than that worldwide, maybe a little more, a little less. So there's this idea of praise and recognition.
I do think that there's a second thing. I was in a very fortunate situation coming out of college. I was a chemical engineer and my company, when I went to work for them, I was what's called an applications engineer. I was basically the liaison between research and sales.
And the career path for me was to go into sales. That's where you'd make the money.
And I was fine on that career path. But my, my, my boss told me one day, said, hey, kind of the way we set this up is we've realized for some people that's a great career path, but for other people, what we have is kind of a subject matter expert path where we can promote them and we can give them, you know, more money, more work, whatever. But they don't have to now start doing the things they're not good at and don't love, because that's often what happens. Right. The only way up is management.
So I do think executives, we have to think of more non traditional career paths and non traditional ways of being able to reward our high performers. Maybe there's bonuses, maybe that, and sometimes, maybe we need to ask the employee, you know, what is a good way for us to, you know, you're clearly a high performer and sometimes just saying that because we don't communicate that we recognize that you are doing more than others. So what can we do? To make up for that. Is it financial, is it time off, is it other things? Because unfortunately, the way a lot of the systems work is when a portion person starts performing higher than the metrics change that are used to evaluate them. Right. A person's top at sales. But now next year sales goals have been changed because you're doing so much more. That's your new benchmark. But then you're looking to see, well, that's great. But everyone else isn't having to work by those benchmarks. So I do think that there's, we have to rethink how we look at recognition and then how we look at career paths. Those are the two things that stand out to me.
[00:43:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that's so delightful. I noticed, you know, through my really high performing employees, one of the things that kind of just smacked me in the face that they were interested in is mentorship and just giving them the, just satisfying that curiosity that they had and saying, okay, we're going to have whatever, two hours a week. And honestly, mostly the best solution that I found, I don't know if you would agree with this, is that it shouldn't be with the direct boss. So actually finding a different leader, maybe in a different team or group that they are curious about, if, you know, if I was the engineering product guy, then maybe it's sales or marketing or customer success. Allowing them to be mentored by somebody else just gave them so much satisfaction that they're taking this journey of self improvement which will also lead to their, you know, progression in the workforce or beyond.
And I was like, oh my God, this doesn't cost me anything. This builds relationships with other teams, with other groups to the level that when I had a problem, that employee would go and work with their mentor, a different team to figure it out. And I was like, this is wonderful. Why isn't everybody doing this? So I just love your comment. There is so, so much that we can do which isn't a bonus and it isn't, you know, higher pay you should be paying at market. Right. You should be fair and honest with your employees as it comes to their pay.
But you know, there's a lot more that people would appreciate beyond just money.
Tony. I didn't notice, but you know, we're way end of time, right. Usually we stop at 45 minutes and we're almost at the end of the hour. And what that means is this was just so much of a fun discussion for me.
[00:45:39] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:45:40] Speaker A: I want to wrap up with the last question and ask you this. If you have to, you know, think about your 20 year old son or daughter or think about yourself, you know, at the age of 20 something, what would be the biggest, most important piece of advice that you would give?
[00:46:02] Speaker B: I'm saying this knowing that my experiences may be different than everyone else's. So this would not necessarily apply to everyone. It may not be universal.
I think I would give my 20 year old self a pep talk.
I would tell him you are smarter than you think you are and smarter than other people will let on or tell you that you are.
I'm saying this not to make you cocky or arrogant, but you need to trust at times the decisions that you make, the path that you take because it's going to be different than everyone else. And to realize that at times you making these different decisions will make other people uncomfortable and their natural response will be to make themselves comfortable by pulling you back to where they see you belong. And if you can understand that you're going to surround yourself with some great people and all these other things, but don't be dependent on other people's validation or other things. Run your race, run your path.
You will do well. That in and of itself would change my life.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: Tony, thank you so much for coming on the show. This was truly fun.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: Thank you. I'll tell you, you said, oh, everyone leaves here. And they said it's a great. This was one of the best conversations. If you ever want me back, I'd love to be back. And we could talk about other people I could recommend to you. But to have a conversation that was of this depth, with the intelligence and yet heart, this was. I needed this today. So thank you.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: You are very, very kind. Thank you so much. Johnny.
