Latest / Books4Guys / Brian Fielkow | Building Better Leaders, Stronger Cultures & Why Safety Drives Business Success

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Brian Fielkow | Building Better Leaders, Stronger Cultures & Why Safety Drives Business Success · Books4Guys

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so yeah, makes sense while you're you're trying to escape the heat anyway.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: But no, Brian, man, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got, I was waiting to tell you this until I push record.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've actually been introduced to your work before, and I didn't know it was you who somebody was telling me about.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't remember if they saw you speak somewhere or or much of the context, but they were telling me, they were like, hey, I saw this guy speak, and he was talking about going into an organization.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember which one they were specifically saying, but they were talking about your focus on safety.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: But why, you know, a lot of people were kind of confused.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we focused on safety?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we focused on safety?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the message behind it was, hey, if we can focus on this one thing and being very if every employee can buy in, and it was it was about improving the culture and that leading to other things.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I remembered as I was looking at your book and looking at you, I was like, I've been introduced to Brian before, and I just didn't know it was you at the time.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought that was pretty cool.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's great, and I really appreciate the time to uh join you, Chris.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I I hope the past uh experience was good, and this this one will be even better.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it must have been good because this this guy was sharing it to like our we have like a men's leadership group, and he was sharing the message behind it and just culture, and we always kind of come with a theme and stuff.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, okay, he was talking about Brian, and uh that which was pretty cool.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: But no, man, it's an honor to have you on the Books for Guys podcast.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, we've we've I'm proud to spotlight your book, Making Safety Happen, which we've got on the website, uh, so anyone can go look and find it.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: But Brian, man, would love to let you have the mic for a moment and just share your story and and just your background and career and really how you kind of honed in on helping organizations focus on safety and the grander message behind it, but also kind of you know what led you into to speaking and writing this book.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, you're an award, you've been voted a top CEO in several in several cases, and you're doing some incredible things.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so just love for you to share your story and and and how that's led to where you're at today.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Chris.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, my my career journey is is one that you could never script.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that's a good thing because, you know, keeping that if I look backwards, it was like, you know, everything happened almost for a reason, but nothing was uh nothing was planned that way.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: I began my career practicing corporate law.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: I went to go work after six years of practicing law, which I enjoyed, but I really looked at my clients.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: It was all business law.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've never set foot in a courtroom.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked at my clients and I was like, I want to do what they're doing.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I went to work for my favorite client.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is up in Milwaukee.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're uh they were a family-held recycling company, and they brought me in as their chief operating officer, and I was like, well, if you guys are willing to take that gamble, I'm I'm not saying no.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so we really had a a good relationship and built the business and sold it to waste management.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's what brought me from Milwaukee to Houston.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Waste is based in Houston, and so for a couple of years I was executive vice president of their recycling business.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: At the time, it was called Recycle America.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I loved being at Waste.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Gave me my first, you know, fortune, I guess, Fortune 500, Fortune 100 experience, but I really had that bug to go try something on my own.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um the recycling business was going to be successful, with or without me.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think I helped take it to a different level, but they were just fine.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I needed to prove that I could do it on my own.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I found in in Houston a logistics company called Jetco Delivery, which I bought.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, I bought it with a focus on taking a commoditized business, which people perceive trucking and logistics to be, and decommoditizing it.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: I realized in the recycling business I really had a good knack for doing that.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so creating a value proposition that allowed us to compete less on price and more on service value added reputation.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: And during those years in recycling and at waste, and then especially at Jetco, I really honed in on safety.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because safety, look, it's the morally right thing to do.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to take care of your employees, you've got to take care of, you know, in our case, the the traveling public, right?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: People we never knew never were gonna meet.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: But if that wasn't important, then I'm not sure what gets you out of bed in the day.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: So to me, it just it it it's the right thing to do, but it's one of those things that is also a really good business.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so we leaned into safety as is integrated into our culture.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: We started to say, look, safety's not a priority around here because priorities shift.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Priorities compete for each other.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: What's important today may be number five on the list tomorrow.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's not safety.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: We made safety a core value, meaning nothing could compete for, compete with it.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it became the glue that wove our company together.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't right for every employee.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: The ones who it was right for found a great home, they were well taken care of, they knew that their well-being and that of their families was was prioritized, and it became we were able to attract the right customers.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Again, not every customer, some wanted just that last nickel.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Fine, not our customer.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: But the ones that cared about it and shared the values, we were able to develop very sticky, long-lasting relationships.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I I learned that very well from kind of living it, from learning sometimes the hard way.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I kind of joke with people, I don't have a golf game and the world is better off for that.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I started speaking and writing about it because I thought that talking about safety from kind of an entrepreneurial executive level was different than how we might approach it if we're talking about it from a technical level, because it is at the core of operational excellence.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's at the core of employee morale, it's at the core of your reputation.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so really, my the new book, Making Safety Happen, is a leadership book.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's a company culture book, just happens to be in a safety context.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I love that, Brian.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've never heard anyone explain that because you you work at different companies and it's in the employee handbook, you know, safety procedures, and people kind of like half-heartedly do what they have to do to check boxes, but you you totally shifted everything.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And like you said, it's a core value, not just something that's on the checklist of things to do.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm assuming your background in business law may have helped a little bit in shaping the importance of safety.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe I'm wrong there, but I'm I'm curious to know if you didn't have that business law experience, do you think you would have honed in on safety as much as you did?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Probably helped.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I may have without the background, but the background helped because what I saw, even look during those years of tremendous growth uh at Jetko, and I've seen it with other fast-growing businesses.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Look, it's fun.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's fun to focus on the growth.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's fun to focus on the top line.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that it it the adrenaline, it's great, you know.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't put equal focus on risk management, and safety is a core part of risk management, there's other things involved in enterprise risk management, but safety is an important part of it.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna give back a lot of what you built, right?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you you have to focus on not just building it, but keeping it.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of us as entrepreneurs, we we like to build it, and that's great.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: But somebody in the in the back of my mind, it's like, what the heck are we doing if we don't have a plan to keep it and not give it all away in lawsuits, settlement, higher insurance costs, whatever it may be.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think my legal background definitely gave me maybe a running start on the need to play offense and defense.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's not an either or proposition.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if you're an entrepreneur and you're growth focused, and that's really what you want to do, is play offense, that's great.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: But then make sure you surround yourself with people that can take care of defense.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, and that's that's what I was curious about.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like maybe you you saw some cases or something where you're like, guys, this is so simple.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you would just focus more on this, you could alleviate all maybe some of these problems that you're dealing with.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, giving a lot back and putting a dent in the growth that you've achieved.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Brian, as you consult with companies, are a lot of the companies you work with, are they more like lack of a better term, like industrial warehouse type focus to where like the safety is an easier thing to check?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, you said leadership book.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Are there companies that, you know, like a corporate setting where there's not as many people, you know, driving around on forklifts or, you know, having trucks?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, can you translate your book to work with those organizations too, to maybe find, whether it's safety or not, like a core value add that gets employees to buy in?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because it seems like it's a culture-building book, just as much as it is a safety, you know, focused book that you were able to use as your mission.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because when you know, when people talk about safety culture, and I'll use the word safety culture, but I need to put I need to put a big asterisk by that.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because to me, uh there is really no such thing as a safety culture.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: In in a healthy company culture, safety grows.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: And can you imagine consistently good safety results in a broken overall culture?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: I can't.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: So really it's all the same thing.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: But when I talk about safety culture, I may be talking about tactics, strategies that are specific to safety, but I view culture as holistic.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, some of the components that that drive safety drive operational excellence.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: For example, so let's say you've got a business that's not that's not high consequence, right?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Where you you you don't have forklifts, you're not or operating rooms or or logistics or construction.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're you're in a business that that that doesn't have those kinds of safety consequences.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: It still comes down to treating your people right, hiring value-aligned people, training.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: So there's the people side, then there's the process side.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you need you need the right people and the right systems and process working in harmony to get results.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we can define results as safety results, operating results, productivity, and ultimately bottom line results.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one thing I learned over the years, uh people taught me early on in the in the in the safety context, but you know, that safety is behavior-based, right?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: That the the employees, their behavior determines safe outcome.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And while I think that's, I guess, sort of true, it's really, it's it's it's really got a big flaw because behavior is relative, behavior is fungible.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: What you really have to focus on is the environment that we as leaders create because employees will adjust their behavior to that environment.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, so my focus is not so much like when when something goes wrong, again, could be safety, could be, to your point, productivity, it could be any part of a business, high consequence or not.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a lot of times what do we do?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: We look at the person whose hands were on the keyboard or hands were on the wheel.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes maybe that's all we have to do is look at that.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: But in most of the cases, I don't think so.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: In most of the cases, there's something going on behind that.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is it training?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Is it putting people in a role they're not properly trained for?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is it undue?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I you have undue production pressure.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Production pressure is good, production pressure is healthy, unmanaged, it's not.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: So you you have to always look at what are the organizational contributors and how do we create systems and process that if somebody quits, we have you know some revolving door out there, somebody else can come into and run the same process.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Without that, you're continually having to retrain and you're continually relying on kind of hoping you get lucky with the right employees as opposed to trusting the process.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so whether it's safety or operations or whatever your business is, it's about trusting that process.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll I'll put one more thought in there about process, um, because I've got a real strong bias on this.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Look, if we give somebody a 600-page handbook, I'm not gonna read it, and neither are they.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: We can check the box that we gave it to them, but that doesn't do you any good.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: The most important thing about process is it has to be understandable by the intended audience.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have a workforce that reads at, you know, sixth or seventh grade level, and that's true of many workforces, and your process manual is written at a collegiate level, you don't have process, you have words on paper.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta have understandable process, you gotta train to the process, and you cannot accept deviations from that process if you really want a tight culture that gets you know consistent results.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, and that leads me, that's that's a good point, Brian.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: This leads me to a question I've got, because that this seems like a no-brainer.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm an organization, this seems like something that that's an easy yes, want to focus on, think we should do it.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: What are some, for lack of a better term, do you ever run into pushback with certain companies or clients?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are some of those hurdles that you sometimes have to get people across to buy into this?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because you used that perfect example, you know, employees having to take the time to read something or focus on this.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, like how, you know, if you kind of tailor different processes and approaches to whoever you're working with, but what are some of those key hurdles that you have to sometimes walk people through to show them how important this is and how it can help their organization grow and be better in more areas than just safety?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think the key is to make sure the person you're working with wants to improve.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if they're struggling and doing poorly, that's fine.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Been there, done that, you know, if they want to improve.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: And if they're doing well, then we've got to kind of guard against complacency and look for continuous improvement.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and and most every client I've worked with is in that category, right?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: They want to get better.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's a true commitment.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: You get a few that just, you know, want to check the box and think that there's some magic formula and there's not.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And those are hard people to work with, but they're few and far between.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: So what you've got to do is meet people where they're at, and you have to approach clients without judgment.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, I may come up with ideas and might be the perfect shoe and the wrong foot.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so you've got to make sure that what you're doing is understanding their needs and you're listening and know where what's keeping them up at night, where do they want to go, what are their goals.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then you can work with them to kind of jointly come up with the solution.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I I think the the approach that scares me is the person that comes in, hey, I've got all the answers.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Follow these 10 points, and your life will be good.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's like one of those influencers on social media.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't work.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it it's always meeting people where they're at, but there are core principles too that you want to check in on, which is, you know, how do our employees think?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: In particular, I do a gap analysis where I'll ask certain questions of the whole company, but people will identify themselves by their role.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And what I look for, like, does senior leadership answer a question one way, and do our frontline employees answer it the polar opposite?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I can find those gaps.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And in the book, I've got like an entire, it's safety specific, but you can modify the gap analysis, entire list of questions that people can ask their employees, because the more you can find the gaps, the the more you can uh help make progress.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing I'll look at is what is the relationship and the involvement of frontline employees.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about leadership being important, right?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: That that's kind of like common currency when we talk about culture.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: But sometimes the leaders that we miss are the most important ones.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's your frontline leaders, right?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: They're not the people that might be in the boardroom or have big titles.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: But what I've found everywhere I've gone is the more I can harness the power of our frontline leaders, the more I can make change.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've, you know, you've got frontline leaders in your company, in your organization.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's given.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: What's the question is, are they working for you or against you?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so the more you can get them working for you, the more you can you can align the whole company around the right direction.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we had great success with that in our logistics company.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: But the point is I go in, I consult, those are the things I look for is leadership engagement, employee ownership.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: I look for clear process, not 600 pages.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take a checklist.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: I prefer a checklist.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: I look for accountability.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And when we think about accountability, I'm not talking about just writing up the person that made the mistake.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking at organizational accountability.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: The organization's leadership executives have to show the same accountability that we expect the rest of our team to show.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Those are some core things I look at because they tell me if the underpinnings are there of a healthy culture.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And again, most of us are at work in process.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: You never go in and say, oh my gosh, this place is perfect.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: But rarely do you go in and say, oh my gosh, everything's broken either, although I have seen that once or twice.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the time, it's like, where do you want to go?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the more you can kind of figure out the three things that we're gonna do now, as opposed to the 30 things on a wish list, the more we can make progress.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, interesting.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Brian, think thinking about culture and leadership, you know, you've been doing this for for decades now.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: What are some things that you've seen that's either changed since you really began?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking, you know, technology, AI, you know, COVID happened, you know, different, different cultures and different focuses.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: There seems to be just different things that have changed here and there.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: What are some things that you've personally learned along the way that maybe surprised you a little bit?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what are some things that you've seen just from a leadership and culture standpoint that has transitioned or changed over time, that has had you had to maybe recalibrate your approach or or how you work with certain leaders and companies?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think that uh as I've grown being less dogmatic, right?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: So in other words, uh, you know, again, meeting people where they're at, like I said before, I think has been a big learning curve because earlier earlier on it was like, here's how you should do it.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Why aren't you doing it this way?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that that works well uh in theory, but doesn't work well in the real world.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think you know, adjusting your approach, trying to be a better listener and you know, less words, more listening, more diagnostic.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, where I think technology has really helped is we're able to be more data-driven now.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we have so access to so much more data.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: In some ways, it it's too much.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, being able to segregate the data, what the data will do, like, you know, I I analogize it to when you before you go to the doctor for a physical, what does the doctor do?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: They pull your labs, right?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: The labs will tell the doctor, give the doctor a roadmap.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we'll use data heavily for that.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, in in AI, I know that there's a lot of hand-wringing about AI, but in my mind, it's it it's just it it it's gonna make things so much more interesting.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna unlock so much more human potential.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're gonna be able to work that much smarter, that much faster.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm already, you know, already, already doing it.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that, you know, you know, look, when I when I started working, I we didn't have internet.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then early on we had the you know, you've got mail, the dial-up, and all the technology advances have been great, but I don't think that any one of them has or will change the human experience.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and from in my in in my book, if I if I can find it, I in the foreword, I I quoted Warren Buffett's last email to his shareholders before he retired.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the the quote's kind of long, but at the end he said, whether you're religious or not, it's hard to beat the golden rule as a guide to behavior.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Keep in mind the cleaning lady is as much of a human being as the chairman.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, that was like done.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: That was it, because that to me is the essence of leadership.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's the essence of just being trying to be the best person that you can be, is treating people the same doesn't mean you know people when I start talking about this, people might think, well, that's soft, that's like a campfire roast.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Not at all.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's also a hardcore business proposition.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: It you can do both.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: But but you know, dignity, and I've spent so much of my time either in trucking or recycling, where you've got people working in the recycling centers, right?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: These people don't get a lot of respect.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: And yet they're the backbone of the economy, plumbers, electricians.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, we we need respect for not just the people that might be higher up on an org chart.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's been my mantra and everything else around it, technology, other innovations, it's just it it's just icing on that.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: But but to me, the the core is still the core.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I figured if those were Buffett's last words as chairman, well, then I'm I I'm gonna buy liberally.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I can hear your passion behind it.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that that does seem to be when you look at the best cultures out there, it's it's the ones where they focus on the people and the value of them and the thankfulness for them.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: That that iron fist approach, you know, it's got its place and it seemed to be more prevalent, you know, maybe some years back.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't seem to work as much now.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: But you've been you've been preaching that your your whole career of hey, how can we make our these people feel important, feel safe?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: If they feel that way, they're going to work harder, which is gonna increase the bottom line.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna sell more, you're gonna have a better, like longevity of employees are gonna be there, like you're not gonna have as much turnover.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Just it's just fascinating to see like how you've got to kind of reinstall that focus into people, even if they already kind of know it in the back of their head, but actually practicing it and putting that into motion.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: I love that that's what you've you know been trying.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Trying to help companies with a particularly in the area of just culture, when you talk about the iron fist approach, right?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we could think about that mean boss banging his or her hand on the desk, and that there's no place for that.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: But the problem is a lot of HR policies in my mind promote an iron fist approach unknowingly or unintentionally.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the worst in my case is I really every time I speak, I always have to say, by the way, this isn't legal advice, because then I go right into legal, a legal topic, which is progressive discipline, which I hate.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because progressive discipline, the way that we were taught, there's other ways to practice it, but the way a lot of us were taught is you know the first violations of verbal warning and then a written warning and then suspension.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: You're you know, you know what I'm talking about.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of us have been brought up that way.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: That to me is iron fist.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's ins that it's insane because if we're gonna go with a strike-based approach, I should have fired myself the first week of my job, right?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, mistakes are human.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to create an environment if you're gonna build engagement, if you're gonna promote psychological safety, where you have to sort of understand that we're human, humans make mistakes.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: What I would always look at to know whether we needed an iron fist approach or not is was it an honest mistake or was it reckless behavior?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: If it's reckless, deliberate behavior, do what you gotta do.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's no place for that.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: In in many cases, it's one strike and you're out.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: But let's be real that most mistakes, in fact, are honest mistakes.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that that gives you a chance to coach, train, look for systemic improvements.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of times what we do is we throw the book at people for honest mistakes.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: That kills trust.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, if I have I'm working for you for five years, I'm doing a good job, I make a mistake once and you write me up, I'm like, forget it.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: And if I'm on my second or third strike, I'm going somewhere else.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not waiting for you to uh fire me.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: So the the key is why why use these rigid, archaic systems that destroy trust to think that you're somehow helping engagement?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're destroying it.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:03
  unknown: Yeah.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I was actually talking to someone, it was a little bit of a different context, but I was just thinking, as you were saying that, of how much, how much potential in people that you crush by taking that approach instead of coaching and getting the best out of them, you almost minimize any potential and possibility of them getting better or, you know, doing doing incredible things at your organization.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, yeah, I've never thought of it that way.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, a certain boss can really have a negative effect on somebody if the wrong approach is taken.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just thinking, like, man, how many people out there have not lived up to their potential because of certain circumstances like that?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting thought.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, Chris, and it it's sort of a crime in terms of how much potential we as organizations don't realize, but also how much more morale we destroy.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: People going home feeling crushed, feeling like, yeah, I don't really matter around this place.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it's ridiculous.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, look, you can't act on every idea and you can't necessarily drop what you're doing every time somebody has an idea, but you can have a way to um gain feedback.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: In our logistics company, probably one of the most significant things we did was we asked our drivers, our professional drivers, to elect a driver committee.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And once that driver committee, it wasn't called a safety committee because we didn't want just safety.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: We wanted holistic operations, pay, um, you name it.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it was really the life of a driver, not just a narrow subset.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh once that committee was elected, we did not make a move affecting the life of a driver without the input of at least the chairperson of the driver committee.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that elevated everybody.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I can look at our retention, employee retention numbers measured by employees leaving that we didn't want to lose.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: I can look at so many different metrics, and they all rose once we did that because again, it's giving your employees a voice.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell people, well, if the committee idea doesn't work, that's fine.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Then do coffee and donuts on the fourth Friday.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: The people that you want to show up will show up.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: But when somebody comes to you with an idea and you say, talk to the hand, or they come to you with an idea and they never act on it or give feedback, it's like, well, that's the last time I'm gonna come to you with an idea.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we we we we in it sometimes unintentionally crush people.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of it, honestly, is sometimes we feel like we're the smartest guys in the room and we're not.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, there's a lot of power and uh I don't know, and and staying curious and continually trying to improve as leaders, especially.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Brian, just two more questions for you.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, in regard regards to your book, as people read it, especially leaders, as they're going through it, if there's not but one or two things that they take from it, what do you hope those one or two nuggets of information is that they take from reading your book?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think the first one would be that you as the leader cast the shadow.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, the organization or or your teams operate within that shadow.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you're always under the microscope.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and what you say, what you prioritize, what you reward and recognize, what you tolerate sets the environment for everybody else.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the first thing I want would want people to do is look in the mirror.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that, you know, they've gotta get the words I can't, or we won't, or we've always done it this way, out of their vocabulary.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we've got to be cont committed to continuous improvement, and we've got to demonstrate that as a leader.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think that another thing I would want people to take away, and we touched on this earlier, is just the need for clear, unconditional respect for process.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think a lot of problems are um have their roots in in the environment that we create.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, the systems and processes or that we don't create.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and when you've got the right leadership, employees will engage.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: And what are they going to engage around?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: They need to engage around the right systems and processes, what you've got in place.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really the underpinning of what I want people to walk away with that anybody can do this.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't something that you have to be a big company for.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter where you're at.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if you're struggling, it doesn't matter if you're doing well, if you're starting up, if you're a mature organization.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: It it's all about finding those one or two ideas that you can take, adapt to your situation, make your own, and use it to ignite.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Last question for you, Brian.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I ask everybody this that comes on the podcast just from a book standpoint.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always curious to know what is a book or two that has meant a lot to you, personally or professionally, and what's a book that you love to recommend to others?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the the two books that really were the most impactful for me, and I still recommend them, one in particular.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: The first book is called The Advantage.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably, I don't know, 15 years old by Pat Lancioni.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he's one of my favorite authors because he writes in a very accessible way.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: And The Advantage is really an amalgamation.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great it's like a greatest hits album of his previous books, the you know, the five dysfunctions of a team and death by meeting, and a lot of his concepts are in that book.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want a quick read, that that book is great.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Then when I speak, and anybody that will listen, I recommend the checklist manifesto, which again is probably about the same vintage, but it's about how to get things right, not with more process, but with fewer, with less.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the checklist manifesto is by Dr.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: Otul Gwande, and so he was running a network of operating rooms in New York.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: And let's just say they had all the process in the world, highly skilled professionals, and still bad things were happening.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, wait a minute, we need to do, we need to move, see airline pilots, right, before every flight check, after every flight check.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: He moved the network of operating rooms from a rigid process manual that nobody read to checklists that we will do before every operation, after every, and he drove error out of the system and performance skyrocketed.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, that book is just a great reminder about sometimes less truly is more, simple is better, and you get better results.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: So those those two books are kind of the ones I go back to time and time again.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Love that.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna add those to my list.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're the the neither of those books have been recommended before.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm glad that you recommended two new ones just from your you know personal preference.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: But Brian, man, this has been fantastic.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for coming on here and just sharing your story and your passion and your mission and what you're helping people, you know, to see and and to move forward and to do some incredible things within organizations.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh proud to spotlight your book, proud to spotlight you and your work and excited to see.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've done so much, but you have so much more to do.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I can hear the fire in you and just what you're wanting people to take away from your message.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so, man, keep keep doing what you're doing and excited to see everything that you continue to accomplish and achieve.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: And absolutely not not done yet, and uh long way to go.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: But thanks for having me.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate the conversation.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: If people want to continue it, feel free to reach out and glad to answer any questions or elaborate however I can.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate it, Brian.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.