Latest / The Start, Scale & Succeed Podcast / Leading Executives Without Losing Your Mind with Scott Abbott (stage 5) - Ep. 393

Transcript

Leading Executives Without Losing Your Mind with Scott Abbott (stage 5) - Ep. 393 · The Start, Scale & Succeed Podcast

• 0:00
  Scott Ritzheimer: Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again
• 0:03
  to the start, scale and succeed podcast, the only podcast that
• 0:06
  grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As a
• 0:09
  founder, I'm your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and we're talking
• 0:13
  for those of you in the CEO stage today, folks who have
• 0:17
  finally built that leadership team, that executive team around
• 0:21
  you, only to discover that leading executives is an
• 0:24
  entirely different game that nobody told you about, because
• 0:28
  they're different they're different creatures, and if
• 0:30
  you're doing it, you know exactly what I mean. And the
• 0:32
  hard truth here is that leading those folks Well, their
• 0:36
  expectations and their needs and how to succeed at this stage
• 0:40
  requires a different set of skills, soft skills that got you
• 0:44
  here, that drive decisiveness, personal output, those are all
• 0:47
  good, but they're not enough, and if you're not careful, will
• 0:50
  actually work against you when it comes to leading others at
• 0:54
  this level to solve this problem. We're not going to try
• 0:57
  and do it alone. We've got our guest today, Scott Abbott, who's
• 1:01
  the founder and CEO of the boss up coaching solution and
• 1:05
  Academy. He's also an executive coach, angel investor,
• 1:08
  entrepreneur and best selling author with over 35 years. Over
• 1:13
  the last 35 years, sorry, Scott has built, brought and bought
• 1:17
  and scaled companies worldwide. I need to wear my glasses when I
• 1:20
  do these and he's conducted more than 10,000 coaching sessions to
• 1:23
  help founders and teams strengthen their systems,
• 1:27
  alignment and performance. His latest best selling book, boss
• 1:31
  up moments, blends leadership, psychology and soft skills into
• 1:35
  a modern visual field guide for growth in business, work and
• 1:39
  life. Scott is known for his solution centric coaching and
• 1:43
  his passion for unifying business operating systems with
• 1:46
  AI and Human Development. He's here with us today, Scott,
• 1:49
  welcome to the show. I'm glad to have you here. I've been looking
• 1:52
  forward to this conversation. We were delayed slightly, but we're
• 1:55
  now together, so the anticipation is even greater.
• 1:58
  You've worked with a whole lot of executives, and you've built
• 2:02
  this entire framework around what you call boss up moments.
• 2:06
  And I'm wondering if you could just unpack that, what are these
• 2:08
  moments? Why do they matter so much, and how does success in
• 2:12
  this area start to expand beyond these particular moments?
• 2:16
  Scott Abbott: Thanks and thanks for having me on the show,
• 2:18
  Scott, as the expression goes longtime listener, first time
• 2:21
  honor, I guess, to use an old radio term, if you remember
• 2:25
  that. So, so, yeah, I think you know the emphasis of boss up and
• 2:31
  moments, specifically, the book moments, is we don't leap into
• 2:34
  failure or stumble into success. It's stages and phases into your
• 2:38
  intro about CEOs and the difference between a CEO, a
• 2:42
  president, a founder, an operator, a visionary, a leader.
• 2:47
  While they're all contextually in the same ballpark, they're in
• 2:50
  different positions and require a different set of skills. And
• 2:53
  so for me, the boss up coaching solution Academy is really three
• 2:56
  parts. It's a systemic way to help companies build, run, grow
• 3:00
  and scale and exit. Second, this little thing called AI
• 3:04
  automation technology. And third, back to coaching and
• 3:08
  consulting and counseling. So we think it's this blend of head
• 3:11
  and heart purpose and profit, passion and production and so
• 3:15
  with moments, what we really try to do is emphasize the human
• 3:18
  side, the EQ, the ability to contextualize and harmonize, in
• 3:23
  addition to the systems, and to your point, as you scale and
• 3:26
  grow. And you know this, you know what got you here is not
• 3:29
  going to get you there. And so between the boss up blue book
• 3:32
  and moments, it's this, again, fusion of engineering mechanics,
• 3:36
  this practical way to build, run, grow and scale. And then we
• 3:39
  need these things called humans, starting with the founder, the
• 3:42
  CEO, and hopefully they're going to be their best to lead and
• 3:45
  guide and manage. So that's what it's all about, and that's what
• 3:48
  we're just trying to emphasize, is, yeah, we love big picture
• 3:51
  and systems and infrastructure, but let's make sure we
• 3:55
  appreciate us as humans and those around us in the moment,
• 3:58
  so we don't find ourselves in bad places.
• 4:01
  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, it's so true. One of the things that's
• 4:03
  interesting about that is, well, I think a distinct challenge of
• 4:06
  this stage is the level of complexity. It's not enough to
• 4:09
  just have a coach, or to just build, run, grow, scale your
• 4:13
  business, or to just implement technology, right? One of the
• 4:16
  hardest things about this stage is that there are so many hard
• 4:19
  things to tackle all at once. And the reason why we have an
• 4:23
  executive team is because we can't do all of that on our own.
• 4:26
  But the challenge that comes with that is we think it's a
• 4:29
  little like, if you build it, they will be aligned, you know,
• 4:32
  if you get what I mean, but like, that's a big mistake
• 4:37
  thinking that just because you hired them, just because you
• 4:39
  like them just because you're sitting in the same meetings,
• 4:43
  that doesn't necessarily mean that alignment is going to take
• 4:46
  care of itself. What is it that causes high performing
• 4:49
  executives that we think should be in alignment to actually fall
• 4:52
  out of alignment?
• 4:53
  Scott Abbott: Well, I think one of the misnomers in the world,
• 4:56
  especially with a lot of let's just call them entrepreneurs and
• 4:59
  founders. Have this, you know, almost romanticized perspective
• 5:05
  of grit and and hard work and to your to use your word likable as
• 5:13
  you grow and scale, and especially if you want to create
• 5:16
  enterprise value, both for a sales side exit or just a
• 5:20
  succession plan and pass it off to another generation, another
• 5:22
  person. You know, most founders keep a lot inside. They know
• 5:26
  what to do and how to do it, and they and they got from here to
• 5:29
  there based on that. Now it's time to call what you will
• 5:32
  systemize. And you know, one of my favorite expressions to
• 5:36
  emphasize this is by isdore sharp, the founder of four
• 5:39
  seasons, and he's quoted as saying, systemized, predictable,
• 5:42
  the humanized, the exceptional. And so you really want a 10x
• 5:46
  which is a concept, not a binary equation. You've got to figure
• 5:50
  out how to systemize. Let's just call it what they are, the
• 5:52
  standard operating procedures. But it's not only that you can
• 5:56
  actually embed values and standards and principles. I'm a
• 6:01
  big fan of the Indiana Hoosiers. I live in Indiana and do a lot
• 6:05
  of work with IU and obviously we know this little football team
• 6:09
  went from the losing his program to 16 and oh, and won the
• 6:13
  national championship. And if you listen to Kurt signetti,
• 6:16
  it's around what we're talking about. Yes, teamwork, but he
• 6:19
  always emphasizes production over potential. He emphasizes
• 6:23
  systems and alignment. And when you do those things right,
• 6:27
  moment by moment, and you focus on that, not the results, I
• 6:31
  think that's another thing that happens. Hey, they people tend
• 6:33
  to focus on the results or the outcomes or the achievements.
• 6:36
  Well, you don't result in the results. You don't achieve. And
• 6:39
  to achieve, you get there through ideally good systems,
• 6:43
  good alignment people knowing what their roles,
• 6:45
  accountabilities, responsibilities are, how to
• 6:47
  measure, how to manage. And for a lot of founders, man and early
• 6:50
  stage and entrepreneurs, that sounds kind of like corporate
• 6:54
  bureaucracy. Yuck. And this is what's counterintuitive, the
• 6:57
  better systemization you have to everything we just talked about,
• 7:01
  you actually liberate yourself, Scott, you free yourself up to
• 7:05
  be a better mentor, coach, leader, visionary. And I just
• 7:08
  think that's not only counterintuitive to a lot of
• 7:11
  founders, I also think it's not necessarily what they want to
• 7:13
  do, right? But again, as you grow bigger, you realize it's
• 7:17
  not about you, it's about others. You become more of a
• 7:19
  servant leader. You become more even if you're not public. You
• 7:22
  should think that way, right? You've got stakeholders and
• 7:25
  investors, even if you don't technically, that's the mindset
• 7:28
  you should have. And so we believe there's five stages to a
• 7:32
  company. Once you get the stage three and above, you've really
• 7:34
  got to have better structure, infrastructure, systemization,
• 7:38
  otherwise, you really are kind of making about you, and it
• 7:40
  shouldn't be about you as much as it used to be.
• 7:43
  Scott Ritzheimer: That's so true. It's so true. It's one of
• 7:44
  the big dividing lines between stage four and stage five in the
• 7:48
  founders evolution. So Scott, you struck a chord here that
• 7:53
  wasn't planning on going down this route, but I think it's
• 7:57
  really, really important, and it it ties a lot of the tension of
• 7:58
  this all into one thing, and that is, you talked about
• 8:01
  systematizing. You talked about adding SOPs. I think everyone's
• 8:05
  heard that at this point. But here's the mistake that I see
• 8:08
  folks still make, especially founder CEOs, is that they
• 8:12
  delegate all of that to somebody else and a better language, they
• 8:15
  abdicate from it themselves, right? And so here's the problem
• 8:20
  with that. You might not be the best systems thinker in the
• 8:22
  world, and most founders aren't right. It's just okay. That's
• 8:26
  normal. That's not a problem. But if you don't include
• 8:30
  yourself in that conversation, your systems will have values in
• 8:35
  them. Now the question is whether or not they're your
• 8:38
  values. So talk to us more about embedding values. What does that
• 8:42
  look like? What does CEO involvement look like in
• 8:46
  building out these systems?
• 8:47
  Scott Abbott: Well, you struck a chord with me, because there's a
• 8:51
  lot of frameworks and quote, unquote systems that are out
• 8:54
  there, and I think ultimately, one a few of them are very
• 8:56
  popular. Because I actually think, if everybody's being
• 8:59
  honest, they abdicated to it, and they start to follow an
• 9:02
  acronym or a term or a book title, and that's, that's not
• 9:06
  the way you're supposed to do it. That's, that's lazy, that's
• 9:08
  mediocre. But, you know, a lot of humans take that route,
• 9:11
  unfortunately. So, yeah, I think the embedded, the inclusive, the
• 9:16
  integrated, you know, it just reminds me of the classic, you
• 9:19
  know, it's not personal. It's business rubbish, right? It's
• 9:22
  all personal because we're humans. So the founders and
• 9:25
  leaders who find that line between delegate just to
• 9:29
  delegate and delegate to elevate both your team and yourself,
• 9:33
  which means I need to learn. I need to roll up my proverbial
• 9:37
  shirt sleeves and get my hands dirty. I need to know now look
• 9:41
  at AI. Do I need to know agentics 205, and do I need to
• 9:46
  be a coder? Absolutely. You need to be a strategist, you need to
• 9:49
  be intelligent, you need to be practical. But I don't need to
• 9:53
  know what. I don't need to know you with me. And so again,
• 9:56
  ideally, everybody agrees to what we. Call rules based or
• 10:01
  agreement based commitments. That sounds more humane, and
• 10:05
  that includes, again, the day to day job and x's and o's and SOPs
• 10:10
  and the KPIs and OKRs, all those acronyms, right? But ideally,
• 10:14
  they also have an appreciation for X percent of their time is
• 10:18
  to improve themselves working on, not just working in, yeah,
• 10:23
  and if they basically embed that, I truly believe that
• 10:26
  today, Scott leadership, learning and development should
• 10:28
  almost be like a utility bill. It's a uncheck the box, not
• 10:32
  check the box. And if you're not spending five to 10% of a
• 10:35
  working week to invest in yourselves and those around you
• 10:38
  to be better as leaders, managers, team members, you're
• 10:42
  missing the boat, especially because of what's happened over
• 10:44
  AI and the changes in workforce. Okay,
• 10:47
  Scott Ritzheimer: yeah.
• 10:48
  Scott Abbott: So,
• 10:48
  Scott Ritzheimer: yeah,
• 10:48
  Scott Abbott: it can't be a nice to have. It literally needs to
• 10:51
  be part of the system, if that makes sense. And so I just this
• 10:53
  concept of inclusion, of integration, of fusion, you
• 10:57
  know, over the four decades, I've been doing it, sometimes
• 11:00
  it's been pushing wet noodles, and my dad says, You can lead a
• 11:03
  horse to water, you can't make a drink. I do think there's a
• 11:06
  better appreciation of the why, the how now and the who and the
• 11:11
  when. That's a different story, but, but I do think, I do think
• 11:15
  we've gravitated to a more reasonable reality than when I
• 11:19
  started working. There was much more of that classic
• 11:21
  hierarchical, you know, do as I say, and this is my title, and I
• 11:24
  get away with bad behavior. I think a lot of that is changing
• 11:27
  for the good, but I still think it's a challenge to figure out
• 11:30
  actually how to get it done.
• 11:31
  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, I think a conversation that I hear
• 11:34
  outside the business world around AI, but not as much
• 11:37
  inside the the business world. And I think it's a problem ties
• 11:40
  directly to this and and I think, as CEO of of an
• 11:45
  enterprise, especially if you're pursuing some kind of whole,
• 11:48
  whole scale adoption of AI throughout your organization, is
• 11:52
  that it has to align as well, this idea that AI is
• 11:56
  automatically aligned with, you know, our Standard for customer
• 12:00
  service or our direction as an organization, I think, is not
• 12:04
  the case. And one of the things I don't see happening in a lot
• 12:07
  of the AI conversations is, how do we make sure that the AI
• 12:11
  tools that we use and the way that they're used is in
• 12:14
  alignment with who we are and where we're going? Are you
• 12:16
  seeing something similar?
• 12:17
  Scott Abbott: Well, I'm also having a little deja vu. I'm a
• 12:19
  little older than you, so I, I started my first company in 1995
• 12:24
  as the joke goes, right after Al Gore invented the internet. Me
• 12:28
  and my friends at IBM created what is now basically the way
• 12:32
  commerce and communication gets done. Right? The internet's the
• 12:35
  backbone to almost everything these days. So, so I was there
• 12:39
  in the advent of that. Then, speaking of IBM, I wrote a book
• 12:42
  and did a 28 city tour 18 months, about 15 years ago, when
• 12:46
  this other major wave came in mobile technology and the use of
• 12:50
  social media in the enterprise. And, you know, I have some PTSD
• 12:56
  at a lot of you know, memory that that was freaking people
• 13:00
  out big time. That's why I wrote a book called the cofactor, and
• 13:03
  we talked about systems of engagement and a whole host of
• 13:06
  new concepts and criteria. So maybe I'm a little more, you
• 13:10
  know, positively pragmatic, having spent 40 years in tech,
• 13:14
  both on the delivery and on the acquisition side, that, you
• 13:20
  know, some good old fashioned things still need in place,
• 13:22
  right? We need governance. We need policy,
• 13:24
  Scott Ritzheimer: yeah,
• 13:24
  Scott Abbott: we need systemization. We need
• 13:26
  alignment, right? We need all the above to do it right at the
• 13:30
  same time. You know, we don't know what we don't know yet. And
• 13:33
  so back to again, good systems. Make sure you do the present and
• 13:37
  the future. Make sure you appreciate the hard and the
• 13:40
  soft. Make sure you appreciate the fiduciary and the governance
• 13:44
  with, again, culture, values, standards, as you said earlier,
• 13:47
  and now today, just like I believe learning and development
• 13:50
  should be embedded in your infrastructure, so should AI. If
• 13:54
  you're on a leadership team, we call them roles,
• 13:56
  accountabilities, responsibilities, and if each
• 13:58
  one of your leaders and you does not have AI, and I'm not gonna
• 14:02
  tell you what to do with it, how to do it, et cetera, et cetera.
• 14:05
  But what I would say is it is absolutely an embedded
• 14:09
  imperative reality that you've got to figure out what and where
• 14:14
  and how it aligns. And it's a journey. It's gonna be a
• 14:17
  journey. It's gonna be a long journey. I would just say again,
• 14:21
  AI, is, is, is, is is, ideally, for most of us, a strategy.
• 14:26
  It's, it's a way to provide a lot of great value, and
• 14:30
  absolutely, we also have to be careful not to do things that we
• 14:33
  shouldn't do.
• 14:34
  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, that's so true. So true. I think if I
• 14:37
  were to sum up a big portion of this conversation, the advantage
• 14:42
  that founders have is that they're the founder right and
• 14:45
  that these values are highly aligned with who they are. You
• 14:49
  have a good backbone and culture, but your job now as CEO
• 14:53
  is to make sure that that's implemented in these strategies,
• 14:56
  to make sure that it's pushed deep into these systems and. To
• 15:00
  me, I think that's really the key to doing it without losing
• 15:03
  yourself, is recognizing those parts of you and actually
• 15:06
  embedding them, institutionalizing them in the
• 15:09
  organization. Would you agree?
• 15:10
  Scott Abbott: Yeah, well, sorry for the plug, but you know, I've
• 15:13
  got a I've got one of our moments in here is called 1080,
• 15:16
  10, and it's not going to happen overnight. But here's the
• 15:19
  concept, if you've got good systems, and you've got the
• 15:21
  right leadership team, and you're following what we call
• 15:24
  the nine core competencies, and you're embracing the essential
• 15:27
  concepts, tools and disciplines, that usually takes about a year
• 15:30
  to get in. But once you feel you've got a good foundation
• 15:33
  from a system, I believe founders, visionary CEOs, should
• 15:36
  follow what we call the 1080, 10, and it's based off the
• 15:39
  Pareto Principle, right? The 8020 rule. We've all seen that,
• 15:43
  but ideally the 80% of the day to day, X's and O's, blocking
• 15:47
  and tackling, the delivery, the production, the servicing of the
• 15:50
  sales and marketing, that should be the system and your
• 15:53
  leadership team. You with me? So the founder, the visionary, the
• 15:57
  CEO, is actually now spending 40% of their life in the first
• 16:02
  10% of what companies deal with, and that's marketing, innovation
• 16:06
  right being out in the world, doing market, business, sales
• 16:10
  development to generate new pipeline, new opportunities to
• 16:13
  think down the road, and then the other 40% of their jobs
• 16:17
  should be on the back end saying, Thank you, mentoring
• 16:20
  their people, coaching them up, getting back into the market,
• 16:23
  and say, you know, Would you like something else with that?
• 16:25
  You follow me? And again, a lot of people get caught up and
• 16:28
  think, Well, if I do that, I have to be a good coach or a
• 16:30
  mentor or be a better talker than I am. That's not true. Back
• 16:35
  to again, systems and being authentic. We have a principle
• 16:37
  we believe in, called clear, and it's a pursuit of clarity, but
• 16:40
  it's also an acronym, collaborative, logical,
• 16:43
  empathetic, authentic and resilient. You notice I didn't
• 16:46
  say anything about charisma or that you've got better bedside
• 16:48
  manner than the other people? Have? You follow me? So, yeah, I
• 16:51
  think the beauty today is Know thyself. Ideally you're still
• 16:55
  developing yourself, right? Because you ain't growing,
• 16:57
  you're dying, but don't try to be something you're not. And I
• 17:00
  think that's the beauty of systemization, AI, when it's
• 17:03
  done properly, right, and appreciation, what we call
• 17:05
  humanization. And so don't try to BS anybody or be something
• 17:10
  you're not. And I think leaders today, especially entrepreneurs,
• 17:13
  founders and visionaries, frankly, the only reason Scott
• 17:16
  why they can't get from here to there, given our conversation,
• 17:19
  is themselves. And that happens a lot where people just can't
• 17:22
  get out of their own darn way.
• 17:24
  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah. So true. Scott. There's another question
• 17:26
  I have for you, and then I want to make sure folks know how they
• 17:29
  can get a copy of the book and find out more about the work
• 17:31
  that you all do. But the question before we get there is
• 17:33
  this, what is the biggest secret you wish wasn't a secret at all?
• 17:36
  What's that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening
• 17:39
  today knew?
• 17:39
  Scott Abbott: I think I've said it. And, you know, they say
• 17:43
  repetition, redundancy is the mother of learning. So I'm a
• 17:46
  pretty redundant, repetitive guy guilty by by choice
• 17:50
  systemization. Scott, and again, I know in this world today,
• 17:54
  systems get a lot of guff, but let's be clear, systems don't
• 17:57
  make bad systems people do. And just look around your life and
• 18:01
  your world and think about the good things that happen thanks
• 18:04
  to systems from the streets to the to the skies to the bridges
• 18:10
  to your life. Just think how chaotic it would be if we're all
• 18:13
  just making it up and following Nike's advice to just do it.
• 18:17
  Yeah, so I think counterintuitive, and it took me
• 18:19
  a long time. My dad's a mechanical engineer. I was an
• 18:22
  entrepreneur at young age. I love my dad. He's my hero, but I
• 18:25
  think he pushed my buttons. I moved around a lot, so I kind of
• 18:28
  fancied myself to be this entrepreneur that adapted and
• 18:31
  adopted and I see all this, especially tech MVP and agile.
• 18:34
  And yeah, I get the concept. But believe it or not,
• 18:38
  counterintuitive is this, the more better systemized you are,
• 18:42
  the more it actually liberates you, Scott, to be what you want
• 18:46
  to be and who you want to be. And that's, that's something
• 18:49
  that, if I learned it earlier, I probably wouldn't be with you
• 18:52
  today. I might be, you know, hanging out on a mountaintop
• 18:55
  somewhere, you know, my own chalet. Good news is that didn't
• 18:58
  happen. But, yeah, I would say it's just what I just said, the
• 19:02
  power of good systems, the fusion of, again, the right
• 19:06
  technology and automation. Harnessing the concept of
• 19:10
  coaching and being coached, certainly it's central to boss
• 19:13
  up. So sorry for that candor, but that's our passion. Our
• 19:17
  mantra is to bring these three together. And I think if you do
• 19:20
  it right, you can either scale 10x you can build something of
• 19:24
  legacy and significance, or you're ready, you could just
• 19:27
  have a great solopreneur ship and be, you know, a three person
• 19:32
  firm, me, myself, and I, and that's another thing I think is
• 19:35
  counterintuitive. Well, I don't need to worry about that because
• 19:37
  I don't have a bunch of people around me. Yeah, you do,
• 19:40
  because, again, maybe you don't want to work Fridays and
• 19:43
  Mondays, maybe you want to take up a hobby or fishing. So the
• 19:46
  better systems, even if it's just yourself, is the more
• 19:50
  you're going to be able to have confidence and clarity and
• 19:52
  courage and and just the ability to get from here to there. You
• 19:56
  know, easier, better, stronger.
• 19:57
  Scott Ritzheimer: Yeah, so good. So good. Scott. There's. Folks
• 20:00
  listening would love to get a copy of the book, tell us about
• 20:03
  that, and then they'd also love to reach out and find out more
• 20:06
  about the work you do. Where can they connect with you?
• 20:08
  Scott Abbott: Yeah, so, you know, we always need to give
• 20:10
  Bezos a little more money. So let's go to Amazon. And you
• 20:13
  know, I wish I could say a bunch of other outlets, but Amazon for
• 20:16
  all the books. I've got my own site. I've got four books, but
• 20:19
  recently, boss up and boss up moments. If your coach
• 20:22
  consultant, looking to to partner up with an organization
• 20:25
  that can help you generate impact and income, go to boss up
• 20:28
  dot coach. If your company looking to benefit from a better
• 20:32
  way to build, run scale and exit, go to boss up dot work.
• 20:35
  And then I've got a bunch of my own personal stuff at Scott
• 20:38
  Abbott ABC, so on the interwebs, on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube,
• 20:44
  I share quite a bit of information and thoughts and
• 20:47
  ideas. So those would be the locations to go to, depending on
• 20:50
  your situation and what you're looking for.
• 20:52
  Scott Ritzheimer: Fantastic, brilliant, something in there
• 20:54
  for everyone. Scott, thanks for being on We're glad you're not
• 20:57
  on a mountaintop somewhere, so you can share with us here
• 20:59
  today. Really was a privilege and honor having you thanks for
• 21:03
  coming on the show, and for those of you watching and
• 21:05
  listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to
• 21:07
  us. Hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I
• 21:10
  did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care. Scott,
• 21:14
  thanks everybody.