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Inside the Company: Understanding Roles & Responsibilities · Business Roundtable

0:01
All right, welcome back Everybody Business round Table podcast with your hosts David Carr
0:07
and Bill Hatch. David Carr here of Steward Your Business, where I help
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small business owners in their teams and individuals help to know themselves better, to
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lead themselves, leading their teams more effectively, and we're going to be talking
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a bit about that tonight. Bill, why don't you introduce yourself? Hello
0:24
once again, my name is Bill Hatch. I am a leadership guide to
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working on my book and I'm also a podcaster under the banner of Bald Spots
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Productions. So glad to have you back. Bill. Yeah, we had
0:39
a great conversation last time talking about our client journey, and so I thought
0:45
it'd be a good one though, to talk about company roles and responsibility this
0:51
week. It's come up with a number of clients and going into the beginning
0:56
of the year, we're oftentimes looking at performance reviews was another element. So
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thought Bill would be great to talk with you about what does that look like,
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especially in an ever growing organization. And so yeah, and I don't
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know about you, Bill, I'd love to get your thoughts here at a
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minute. You know, have you gone to an organization or somewhere. It
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doesn't have to be a business, could be a church, could be any
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organization where you were asked to do some things but it wasn't clear like what's
1:26
my role here? What truly is my responsibility and what's the responsibility of somebody
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else? Have you had that experience? I have, primarily in my in
1:37
my younger age, when there wasn't quite so much gray hair. But you
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know, as I gained more experience, of course I began insisting on having
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things clarified and written down, you know. But but yeah, I've I've
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had jobs where people use and other things as necessary and uh, yeah,
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that's just not Uh, that's not the way to go, right, you
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know, it's I mean, I can understand there being having to be some
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flexibility, but having like three job duties and then whatever else we tell you
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not so good, right, you know, that's that's a that's asking for
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trouble. You know, you wouldn't you wouldn't do that if you were hiring
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an outside agency, because you'd expect that outside agency to only do what you've
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hired them to do, you know, only what you pay them to do.
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Yeah, their scope, and you know as opposed to hiring some you
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know, like well, like an intern for instance, this is a this
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is a big deal one you know, you can have you can have unpaid
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interns. Unpaid interns are great as long as you're not paying them legally ye
3:07
or legally not paying them, you know, and you have to be very
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clear about what they're doing, what their jobs are. You can't just have
3:15
them do everything like did you know that you can't have an unpaid intern do
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something that would normally be the job of another employee. Very important. Yeah,
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So if you have a secretary, even if that secretary is really pinsy,
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you can't have your unpaid intern type up a letter not legally mm hm.
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And you know, and and it goes, it goes all over the
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place with with that, it just goes from there. Yeah, especially with
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growing businesses m you know, they you know, the the solo preneur preneur
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moves up to the to the entrepreneur level with a couple of employees and now
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all of a sudden, you've got to figure out what these employees are gonna
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do. And you have no idea because you haven't done HR before, not
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in any sense of the word. And HR is a lot harder to do
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than accounting. Yes, oh yes, counts of numbers. You're you're dealing
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with people with HR, yes, yes, yeah, that's why. That's
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why I usually recommend an outside an outside HR company like UH. A friend
4:30
of mine Petros Frangos, a Greek gentleman who who knows his coffee. He
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he's the president and CEO of a company called HR on Call and they do
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a like a menu of items, everything from the value menu on up to
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the UH all on up to the full we're taking over side of things.
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And I recommend highly finding a company like that, Yeah, for your for
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your HR and ah, yeah that's I mean, that's a good point.
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We talked about this in previous episodes too, Bill, like when do you
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need to get help? And part of the reason why we even do this
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podcast is to provide value and help at least to make you su're aware,
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right, like you just talked about the internship side of things or things,
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be aware of these resources out there that you don't banging your head against it.
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You'll save yourself a lot of time and likely money in hiring somebody like
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you just said that knows this very well and help guide you, so you're
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not spending a lot of time and effort and things that are not very fruitful
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for you, right, or it could be very negative for you, very
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negative. Right. So, so you touched on something I want to I
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kind of want to unpack a bit here. As you said, you know,
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going from your solopreneur and we talk on this podcast, we talk about
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businesses from the solopreneur to the small business owner and beyond. But there is
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a life cycle to a business. There's there's things that happen in different stages
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there. And so you know, when you're thinking about roles and responsibility,
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I think you know that organizational shape or org chart changes over time and sometimes
6:13
we think it might be static or we don't reevaluate that in what that should
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be. I mean, you have this very Sometimes they are very flat.
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Sometimes it's very hierarchical. Neither are bad or good. They're depending on where
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you're at in the business life cycle in my opinion. But maybe talk a
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minute about Bill about that, because you talk about leadership as I do.
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I'm passionate about that as well, about how do you you know lead well
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and look for that especially let's say, going from a solopreneur and you've now
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you've added some employees, you're growing some things to consider in how you put
6:53
your organization together. Wow. Yeah, that's that's big. Yeah. Well,
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I mean the first and and simplest thing is your job descriptions. You
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know, when you add an employee, you need to you need to add
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those job descriptions, and they need to be as detailed as possible. You
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know, I always when when I look at this, I always think of
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the of the US Constitution. The most detailed part of the of the Constitution
7:33
is the is the rights, responsibilities, and duties of the US Congress and
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Senate. And they have them, and it turns out over the course of
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time that their powers are the most limited. The least descript described is the
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is the job description of the President. They did that because they didn't want
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to give the president powers. They wanted to have as powerless an executive as
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possible. They were recovering from a monarchy, and so it's understandable why they
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would want to limit the powers of the chief executive. But it turns out
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that by not describing things, they kind of open the floodgates for for what
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powers for what? For what? You know, he could do or at
8:24
some points, as history will will tell, and so so you have to
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kind of balance somewhere in between there of having you know, the limitations of
8:37
a very well described job and versus a not described job. You know,
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of course, today a person's going to say, well, you didn't say
8:50
this in my in my job description. That's not my job description. I
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hate it when people say that because it very much shows a lack of ownership
8:58
in the company. But you know, it's like you as an employee,
9:03
should have some flexibility as far as what you're willing to do. You know,
9:09
it's like there's a reasonable there's a reasonable amount of flex shouldn't be there,
9:13
you know. No, if you were hired as an engineer, you
9:18
shouldn't have to clean the bathrooms. That's a different job entirely. What if
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something need if some engineering drawings need to get need to get filed properly,
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that's at least related, And I could see needing to have some flexibility in
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there on the part of the employee, right And of course you know that
9:41
could be so that's something that could be foreseen by the employer as well.
9:46
Yeah, you know, well I want to I want to comment because you
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you made a statement which I think is about a new this is a nuance.
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So I wanted to say job descript uh and I and and sometimes people
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intermixes and I'm gonna clarify for me, Bill, so we're on the same
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page. But sometimes I'll say job description is what they pull off the advertisement
10:13
on the website saying or you know, whatever the whatever the site is right
10:16
or advertising for this person that we need. It's a marketing thing to a
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certain degree of saying hey, this is what we'd ideally like to have,
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right da da da da da, And they kind of put their wish list
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out there of this is this would be the perfect thing. Then there's the
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reality of showing up at your job and actually like, okay, this is
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your absolute define roles and responsibilities. So they could be one and the same,
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but they do serve different purposes. So I wanted to just make a
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point of distinction. Is that what is put out there as your advertisement,
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that job posting saying hey, come work for us, may not may not
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totally meld. Hopefully it does, but I just want to be people aware
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you might get hired in one thing and saying yeah, d d D.
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But the reality is you get in and they say this is your official role
11:05
in the company. That makes sense, Bill, Yeah, yeah, no,
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it absolutely makes sense because I'm I couldn't see since you're selling the job,
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I couldn't see advising somebody to detail put every detail of the job description
11:20
into the ad anyway, right, because it doesn't leave any room for questions.
11:26
Oh okay, there's the there's the three pages worth of worth of job
11:31
descriptions. Yeah, you know, forget that. I'm I'm not I'm not
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doing that for one hundred bucks a week. Yeah, but sorry. I
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saw I saw a couple of job descriptions recently, looking for like like childcare
11:48
type people, nannies and preschool teachers and and such. And the job requirements
11:54
that they were asking of these people, you know, degrees and experience and
12:01
yeah, sure, and we'll pay you one hundred dollars a week. I
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mean, that's it's insane what people think they can they can get away with,
12:09
right, But because there's qualifications intermixed in there, which is related,
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but it's it's like they're, like you said, they're shooting for all of
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these things. That's not your that's not nicely your your responsibility. It's like
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what qualifies you to get that role kind of a thing. So I just
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think about that should do what they should do, what the employer should needs
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to do, and the employee needs to look for is before starting job day
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one of you know, it's like, okay, where is it? What
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is my written job description? Yes? And getting that you know, especially
12:48
if you happen to be close to the uh to the employer. You know,
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a lot of times people get jobs because of who they know, you
12:56
know, and in at to at least some degree. And I found in
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the past that if you know the person, that means even more so that
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you need to get things in writing one hundred percent. Yeah, it's because
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you you don't want to lose the relationship over over something like a job.
13:16
Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I work with a client just to that
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point, Bill, where this this person's a new supervisor and there they referred
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to somebody that that's a friend of theirs coming in and so I can act
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as an independent third party in some of this because of the dynamics of that
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friend, like you said, and depending on where you are in your roles
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and responsibilities. And this is just more complicated because I have somebody that's now
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a new supervisor that's managing a friend that they know you you know, and
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so there's a different dynamic there. Uh, and and so do skill set.
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So I come as a third party into the organization to help navigate that
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understanding because it could be sticky, as you, like you said, Bill,
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very sticky if you're not careful. And so they're very thoughtful about that,
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you know. So I one hundred percent agree with you, Bill in
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that when you come in and you start your job, whatever level you are
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in the company, I don't care if you're the president, the CEO,
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to the HR director to whatever level you are, have some some written role
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and responsibility you probably have, should have. Hopefully you have just one role,
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but depending on the company, you may have multiple roles. But let's
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just say you have one role and ideally you have one role and those responsibilities
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are clearly identified or what I call your key performance indicators or your metrics whatever,
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what are you going to be evaluated on? So for me, Bill,
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a lot of times we use in consulting, we use a utilization goal,
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meaning how much of your time is being accounted for a particular project.
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Versus non project related right, And so so I worked in companies though where
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that wasn't clear. And then somebody gets a performance review and says, well,
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your goal was eighty percent and you were at sixty. I had no
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clue. There was no you know, number one. I had no clue
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number two. Even if I did know, I had no way to check
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or look for that, or how do I evaluate that I'm actually achieving said
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responsibility on my part or at least you know, and so understanding and getting
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clarification as to reviewing that, and like you said, asking questions are being
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proactive as to well what does exactly this mean so that I'm actually achieving said
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you know target or goal, right, And I think we're going to get
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Luke. Luke Kibler's gonna be able to join us tonight, so I'll bring
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him mind, So go ahead and answer that question. I'll bring on Luke.
15:56
Well, yeah, just to continue on with what you're saying, you
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know, it's definitely it's like it's late report cards I'm getting. I'm I'm
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taking classes right now towards towards a master's degree, and uh, and I'm
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having trouble getting feedback from my instructor. You know, at this point,
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it's like I'm doing this. I'm doing a similar kind of assignment right now
16:25
this week that I did in the first week of the course, and he
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hasn't graded that first paper that that first assignment, and I don't know if
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I did well and I should repeat, you know, basically repeat the assignment
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for the new uh for the new thing, or if I should head in
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a different direction telling me and I have no way to find out. I
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mean, you know, grades only come out at the end of the term.
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Yeah, at that point it'll be too late, you know, and
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so so yeah, you definitely need to have ways for the employees and the
16:57
employer, a supervisor and everybody in between two to know where each person is
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at. You know, if if they're if they're doing well, then it's
17:08
keep on saling. If they're not, then what direction do you need to
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hit? You know, what what course changes do you need to make?
17:19
That is some great insight. And we've got Luke here too. Welcome Luke
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uh. As we're talking about roles and responsibilities and organizational structure, and I
17:29
think you have I'd love to have your perspective, Luke, because you have
17:32
a great I love that you have involved your family, your daughter and your
17:37
business and and successfully I've seen how you've integrated her and I've got to work
17:41
with her too. But but you know, when you bring somebody, and
17:45
we talked about just before you came on here about like a friend relationship with
17:51
somebody you're working with, But I think family is even more dynamic of like,
17:55
right, how do you navigate that you know they're coming in. Even
18:00
to that business owner that's considering having a family member participate in their business,
18:04
as you, as a business owner, would you recommend as far as roles
18:07
and responsibilities that they should be aware of our pitfalls to consider. Yeah,
18:14
yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, I want to start off
18:15
by admitting it is not easy. This is a tough thing to do,
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and it's very difficult, especially when you have a friendship or family, even
18:26
to separate work and personal life. But that is, first of all,
18:30
number one. One of the first things you have to do is you have
18:33
to establish sision. As much as we want to treat our company like it's
18:37
a family, I think it's more accurate and more productive to treat it like
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a team, meaning, hey, listen, we're here to win as a
18:45
team. We're here to have success as a team. We're here to help
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everyone rise, and we're not doing anyone any favors if we cut each other
18:52
huge breaks and turn a blind eye to big failings or shortcomings or places where
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you're handicapping the whole company because we're giving you a free pass because you're a
19:02
friend or a family. We have to go, Okay, we're on a
19:06
team, a winning team. We're here to win the championship, so to
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speak. And if you ain't beIN cutting it, you don't get to play
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kind of a thing. And that's a tough conversation to have. I'm not
19:15
saying it's easy. It isn't, but I think that one of the things
19:18
that I've implemented recently it's really helped, and I think you guys have already
19:22
mentioned it, is you have to have very clear objectives and criteria what success
19:27
means, what success looks likes, and what failing to meet the minimum standards
19:32
of excellence looks like. So there's that very clear bar and now it's no
19:36
longer you versus them. It's like, here's the standard, and what a
19:40
hitter or not is. It's not an emotional thing. It's not me versus
19:42
you. It's not sort of this subjective personal thing. It's like, hey,
19:47
these things have to happen at this level for us to continue to succeed
19:51
together. Yep, and it doesn't. I'm not doing you any favors by
19:55
keeping you here or pretending that it's okay. So that really clear standard.
20:00
We actually just put together a fresh set of KPIs for my daughter as well
20:03
as each of our team members said hey, this is what we're tracking.
20:07
Proactiveness, accomplishment of these things, a certain level of efficiency, and we
20:11
have sort of a scoring method that we're actually using with her. Because with
20:15
our team that is meant to bring in production and revenue, we have revenue
20:18
markers that we mark track with them as well as activities to support those.
20:22
But with her, she's not directly tied to revenue, but certainly the things
20:26
that she does affects the revenue. Yes, we're tracking it in a different
20:30
way through a scoring process. But we went back and forth about it throughout
20:34
this last whole month, getting really clear and how do we measure this and
20:38
how do we what a successful operation in your role look like? That has
20:44
that Domino effect on the success of the company and the team, So that'd
20:48
be it. First of all, recognize it's tough, it's hard, But
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second of all, I don't actually recommend treating it like a family. You
20:55
want to try like a team as opposed to a family. There has because
20:59
in order for everyone to succeed and win, you have to have clear criteria
21:03
of what that means and we've got to grow together or or this isn't going
21:07
to work. You can't cut people the free pass, but that that you
21:11
can get away with that, and you can do that well as long as
21:14
you set that very clear expectation and that measuring stick is to here, then
21:18
now you both can agree on whether they're hitting it or not right close to
21:22
it being this sort of fly by the seat of your pants. You know
21:23
it's not working, it's not working, it's not working, and then it
21:26
kind of blows up at some point. If you can establish it as early
21:30
on as possible is here's what success needs to look like, and here's where
21:33
it needs to head. Then you're both measuring it and you're finding ways to
21:37
succeed together, and you're trying to help everyone win towards that and at some
21:41
point it will become obvious if they're not going to do it or not.
21:44
And that's where you just got to call it like it is. Again,
21:47
I'm not saying it's easy. That's what you really got to do for everyone's
21:51
sake. So you're doing that, Luke, what's that I said? I
21:56
love to hear that you're doing that. I think business owners get I mean,
22:00
they just get busy, right, you know, like like you said
22:03
Bill earlier, they don't write it down and then you try to hold people
22:07
accountable to whatever that is, Like I think you should be doing this or
22:11
this is this was my priority. Well I didn't know that was your priority.
22:17
It wasn't clear to me. And I chose this thing because I like
22:19
doing this thing. You said that, you said I need to do this
22:22
too, so I'll just do this. You know, it turns out that
22:26
things like this don't work themselves out very well if you let them play out
22:32
and just go, oh, I'm sure it'll work out. No, it'll
22:33
get worse, that's what. It'll get harder and harder to deal with and
22:37
harder and harder to address, and turning that around will get next to impossible
22:42
if you let it go on long enough. Yeah, I mean I talk
22:45
with the clients about this kind of regularly, and in my experience too,
22:49
when when you have even if you have clear roles and responsibilities too, this
22:56
is really important because I do performance reviews or play evaluation is whatever you want
23:00
to call it, and then I have folks that will want to do certain
23:07
things and we have to understand, like you said, is this an alignment
23:08
with where we're trying to go to achieve Like, oh, I'd love to
23:11
take this class or get the certificate, and like that's all well and good,
23:15
but if it doesn't fit within the alignment of their role and where we're
23:18
going with the company, and they're like, oh, and now I want
23:21
the company to pay for this or give me the time to do this,
23:22
and you're like, that's well, I mean, but that's not in alignment
23:26
with what we want to do here, and there's a disconnect between the employer
23:30
and employee relationship and miss expectations and understanding. To your point, Luke,
23:34
doesn't matter if it's family or friend. I mean, like, I like
23:37
your idea, it's a team. We all win together or we're going to
23:40
lose together. We're all affected, we're all interconnected here. Yeah, and
23:44
that's one of the key points I brought up when we had our the past
23:48
few weeks, well the first few weeks of the year, we add several
23:51
meetings where we talked very clearly on expectations and goals and what we need to
23:56
do to grow together. And one of the things that I talk about is,
24:00
listen, your actions don't just affect you. You have to recognize that
24:03
if you're on this team, if you're setting the bar down here and it
24:07
has to be here, and clients are interacting with us and they're having a
24:11
bad experience or things aren't getting followed through, that affects everybody's reputation, affects
24:17
everybody's success. Success breed success, just like failure can tend to breed failure.
24:22
And so understand it doesn't just affect you. And therefore we can't just
24:26
we can't just let anything go. There has to be a standard and a
24:30
bar and we want to be known as a team of excellence and growth and
24:34
integrity and this is these are our core values and we can't we simply cannot
24:40
tolerate someone who isn't willing to live up to those core values. Yes,
24:42
will allow for some growth well, of course seek first to raise people up
24:48
only so long as they're willing to be raised up right, and that's but
24:52
having that clear conversation I think really helped, because at least in this recent
24:59
experience, had everybody really rallied around that, they go, yeah, I
25:03
I realize I want that that I'm affecting everyone, and I want to succeed
25:07
and I want you to succeed. I want you to succeed, and so
25:10
I'm gonna try and help you as well as helping me. And part of
25:12
how I do that is by doing well, by being successful, by being
25:15
diligent, by being focused, by being productive, by bringing value to this
25:21
team, and by doing so we all win. So but it takes some
25:26
conscious effort to have that, very very intentional conscious effort. Bill, we
25:30
want to share your thoughts on this. Actually, uh Luke, you touched
25:33
on something that that brought to mind. You know about about KPI's key performance
25:41
indicators. You know, uh, A lot of places, especially where sales
25:48
is heavily involved in the UH in the in the position, will use revenue
25:53
as a KPI as an important KPI, and I feel that in emphasize the
26:02
wrong things that instead of using revenue, you should be using the things that
26:10
lead to revenue, the right actions that you know, the the doing the
26:15
right thing by each client, investigating and all that, and revenue will take
26:19
care of itself at that point or won't. I mean that that just depends
26:25
on h you know, what you're offering to the to the clients. I
26:29
found that myself in in the past, that that h you know, shooting
26:33
for for revenue is just uh, it's it's gonna end up. It's gonna
26:40
end up biting you in the backside because you're gonna have some salesperson that that
26:45
is going to start using pressure tactics. And I've seen some people use uh
26:53
use some really like like the kind of thing where it's like, sign up
27:00
for it now and in fifteen days canceled, you'll get your money back and
27:03
all get credit for the sale, kind of kind of night and uh,
27:10
you know, I I've seen that in insurance and and auto sales. And
27:15
I've sold a few things in my life. I want to buy some One
27:18
of my my first sales job was selling greeting cards. Yes, yes,
27:25
nice, Yeah, I was, let's see them. It was a few
27:30
years ago. Seven eight years old, A lot that I went door to
27:34
door selling selling greeting cards. Well, both both of you touch on I
27:41
think a valuable topic here. The pick certainly picked the right metrics. But
27:45
there's there's a specific role and responsibility that we have. But we've talked about
27:49
this in previous episodes and it's worth I think revisiting. Is what are you
27:53
know? We talked abouout your mission and your vision and then your values,
27:56
right, your core values those apply to every role within the company. Right,
28:02
So what you're saying, Bill is if you're not leading that living that
28:04
value, were you just listened a bunch of them? Luke, Right,
28:07
doesn't matter whether where you are in the ORG chart, everybody adheres to those
28:12
values, correct, Right, That's it. You know, you have to
28:18
make sure that those marry up. Like you said, those values are are
28:23
so important and you have to pick the right values. I mean, this
28:26
is this is this is games theory one oh one kind of stuff. You
28:32
know, get your garden to weed itself, don't don't emphasize, don't don't
28:38
reward the wrong behaviors. I think it was the Chicago school system in trying
28:45
to catch up with all this uh, no child left behind. UH.
28:49
Policies of the federal government encourage their instructors to not let any child get left
28:56
behind, which is good kind of except that they were passing students who really
29:03
shouldn't have they needed more help and uh. And but the teachers were getting
29:07
rewarded because the students were ahead, or at least appeared to be pulling ahead
29:15
ahead. Yeah, and you know that that could go. Yeah. Absolutely,
29:19
every every level of the company you need to uh to watch out for
29:26
and for rewarding the wrong behavior. Mm hmmm. When I think you know,
29:30
in keeping with the theme here of roles and responsibilities, I think you
29:36
know it all does come down to the leader. In many ways, the
29:37
leader is the one who sets the tone. The leader is generally the chief
29:41
bottleneck of the success and growth of the company, and one of the most
29:45
important elements of growing beyond that bottleneck problem is instilling genuine stewardship in your team
29:55
where they truly believe that they have like an ownership responsibility for the six of
30:00
their team members and their their comrades and the ones that are alongside trying to
30:03
win together, that they feel a genuine sense of freedom in their role to
30:10
lead it that they each see themselves as a leader of sorts. That's that's
30:14
part of what I try to instill. Like my daughter, like hey,
30:17
you're I don't want you coming to me asking me what you should do in
30:19
every decision you need to make. I want you to make the decision.
30:22
I want you to feel free that once you've learned how these things need to
30:26
work, I want you to take it and own it. And if you
30:30
see something you can that needs to be done better, do it better and
30:33
just let me know what you did and I'll give you some feedback on it.
30:36
But I want you when you come to me with a concern and a
30:38
challenge, I want you first to solve it yourself. Come to me with
30:41
your your your suggestions and solutions rather than just saying, hey, dad,
30:45
tell me what to do. Same thing with my advisors and agents, as
30:49
as they're learning and growing and saying it listen, I want you to truly
30:53
own this. Uh, this is this is yours to build and to develop
30:57
and to contribute to the success us as the whole. And give them that
31:00
sense of autonomy, not micromanagement. And that's where they start to take on
31:07
that role very personally and take ownership. And that's where I think they really
31:11
start to develop in their role in a way that that tends to take on
31:15
that life of its own. Like you just mentioned, Bill, I really
31:17
like that giving your garden weed itself. Right. You have to give people
31:21
the freedom to step up and actually operate in their role and to truly own
31:26
it and to make decisions and have some autonomy within the guidelines and principles that
31:30
the company operates in. And it's our job as leaders to set that framework
31:34
and to keep those guidelines intact and head of the right direction. But I
31:38
think within the roles, giving people that freedom and that that sense of ownership
31:44
and responsibility and leadership is absolutely essential. You've got to let them, let
31:48
them, let them make some mistakes too, let them, let them lead
31:52
some things, make decisions, you have to let go. That's a hard
31:56
thing to do, especially for good small business owners, Luke. So it's
32:01
very hard. I'm not saying I'm perfect at it, for the record,
32:07
I'm giving myself some advice here, right, right. But no, you
32:10
hitting a couple of different topics there, Luke. Because if you if you
32:14
are so type fisted and you are that bottle, Like you said, the
32:16
bottleneck you you can hinder innovation and growth. There's appropriate risk that you can
32:24
take at certain levels, right at each h level within the company that you
32:30
want to be able to and that's leading by example, like you said,
32:35
So how you show up as a leader is basically like you said, setting
32:38
the tona like that of like how they should conduct themselves. You know,
32:45
there's a great book I read by Simon Sinek called Start with Why, and
32:52
he recounts a story of trying to get on the plane and I don't remember
32:55
the airline, but this lady was just barking at them all this passenger trying
33:00
to get in line, make sure you're here. It just was not a
33:02
warm and welcoming experience. And and he said, why do you do this?
33:07
She said, if I don't do my job, I'm going to get
33:08
yelled at or I'm going to get in trouble. There's just a sense of
33:10
like her role was like fear based in like this control kind of situation.
33:15
So what does she do? She just pushed that on to the clients,
33:19
the customers. That's what she was being managed in her role and how she
33:24
was told to be responsible and though therefore it just reflected right on down the
33:30
line you know who Hill right, it does. So this is this is
33:40
really important, your your your your your point Luke, of how you show
33:45
up in how that affects the individual the company culture. We've talked about that
33:51
in previous episodes, and we just talked a little bit about ethics as well,
33:55
and and how that looks. And this is an interesting thing because before
33:59
you got look, we talked about you know, as a company changes and
34:02
grows, the organizational structure changes. Sometimes it can be flat. Sometimes there's
34:07
these different stages in how the company needs to be and this is a real
34:13
challenge. I went through a company that we went you know, we were
34:16
a million dollars a year the first year I came in, and when I
34:19
left were over seven million dollars a year in revenue. Those are just dynamically
34:22
different experiences in the infrastructure you need to have to support that business and everything
34:31
and so on and so forth. As you get bigger, you have different
34:35
life cycles of the business. What I found, working as the business owner
34:37
in that case is it was frustrating for her because she thought, well,
34:42
I could just set this organizational chart and it's good, and it's like it
34:45
wouldn't it didn't. It had to morph and it would not stay that way.
34:51
And we talked a little bit earlier about outside consultants, which is important,
34:53
HR or others, which is good, but just realizing this is a
34:59
lot of term and change for people because they're like, well, I thought
35:01
I was hired to do this, and I'm doing some of this stuff,
35:04
but now I've got these other things that are coming up three, six,
35:07
twelve months down the line. They're like, but and now I got to
35:10
do these things, and but I also got to let go of these things
35:14
because I can't do these things. And this so kind of talk to I
35:19
mean, you're you're kind of a front end, and either one of you,
35:21
if you want to join it, jump in. Maybe I'll start with
35:22
you Bill first and then come to Luke. But just talk a little bit
35:24
about what you may be personally experienced in that in that evolution, if you
35:30
worked anywhere for an extended period of time, right where you started is not
35:34
where you ended, and what did that look like for you and what was
35:39
that conversation or experience. So Bill, I'll start with you first. Oh
35:43
wow, Yeah, Well we'll start with the with my insurance experience, you
35:52
know, yeah, I started out working for a for a particular major national
36:00
company, and uh it was a fine experience all in all. But but
36:06
yeah, it started out as an account manager position and then morphed into a
36:14
sales position, which added on to it, uh developing social media for the
36:21
for the agency, and uh so it was just kind of all over the
36:24
place, and it was a great experience in the end, but but it
36:29
was like it wasn't what I was originally thinking it was going to be going
36:32
into it, and even once I was in it, it kind of changed
36:38
and and and uh and went went a little awry, and it was it
36:46
was stressful for a while, you know, and because it was like,
36:52
you know, and like how do you bring up to your your supervisor or
36:57
whoever is responsible for your for your description, how do you even bring that
37:01
up? You know, it's like, you know, it's like, Okay,
37:05
well I needed this job, so I was kind of worried about losing
37:08
it. You know, a lot of people are certainly in that position.
37:15
A lot of people aren't in that position. God loves them, but you
37:21
know, yeah, what do you yeah, what do you do when when
37:24
the when the job description keeps changing because it's never been written down. Mhmm,
37:30
yeah, well I think I think there's a lesson in that. For
37:35
sure. I had a similar experience working at a big bank which I don't
37:39
mind naming City Bank, and uh, you know, I got hired in
37:43
there with all my life and insurance licenses, securities licenses, investments, all
37:49
that stuff and everything when I was hired there, and I went from being
37:52
an independent advisory type of role to working as an advisor at a bank.
37:57
And the reason I went there was this stability security. But I expected to
38:01
be doing the advisory stuff there. What I ended up doing was loans and
38:06
lines of credit and new bank accounts and zero work that I loved and expected
38:10
to do, and it got kept getting shifted around and changed to exactly what
38:15
you're talking about, and ultimately it was frustrating and I wasn't satisfied, and
38:19
ultimately I left because it just, you know, I grew to just kind
38:22
of resent what it did. And I think the lesson there, as well
38:25
as leaders of organizations and as leaders of companies of any kind, your people
38:31
need that kind of clarity, that expectation is everything. I know, we
38:37
teach this to our agents and advisors that it doesn't really matter. Of course,
38:43
it matters whether you do something right or wrong. But I mean,
38:45
you could do something exactly right, but if the client expected something different in
38:50
their eyes, you did it wrong. In their eyes, they had a
38:52
bad experience, and you could have done it exactly how it normally goes,
38:55
exactly how it's supposed to go. But they thought it was going to do
38:58
this and it did that. Therefore they're upset, frustrated, disenchanted, you
39:04
know, and everything. So expectation is reality, and you have to set
39:08
the expectations with your team as to what exactly success looks like, what the
39:13
role looks like, what they'll be doing. And I learned this lesson as
39:16
well a bit, you know, the hard way, when I was willing
39:20
to bring on some new people to my organization, and you know, in
39:25
my eagerness and in my optimism, I just kind of figured they knew what
39:29
they were getting into and what they wanted them to do. And let's just
39:34
say, things didn't work out all that well and they're no longer around.
39:37
And so I've taken to trying to scare people away a little bit initially by
39:44
giving them the cold hard facts of Hey, this is what the job involves.
39:46
This is what this business and this career path involves. Here's the great
39:51
side of it. But here's the challenge side of it. Here's all the
39:53
other things that you're probably not going to enjoy doing day to day but have
39:55
to get done. Here's the person that succeeds. Here's the kind of person
39:59
that fails. Here's the good and the bad and the ugly of the role
40:04
and of this industry and of everything that goes with it. And if you
40:07
can be okay with that, you can do this. If you still love
40:12
what you hear, then we got something to talk about. But being very
40:15
candid and very clear, giving that candor right up front of this is everything
40:20
good and bad. Don't sugarcoat it, don't don't paint it, dress it
40:23
up nice and hide the things that aren't as as a savory and enjoyable.
40:29
Just lay it out and this is this is everything. So that clarity,
40:32
I think is is critical. But you know, like it says in that
40:35
book Who Moved My Cheese? I don't know if you guys have read that
40:37
book, yeah, book, right, change is the one thing you can
40:42
count on. So you have to as a company and as a culture invite
40:45
and welcome change and be looking for it, which is why one of our
40:49
other core values is growth. Growth is a core value that we that we
40:54
publicly ascribe to, along with the integrity and the excellency other things I mentioned.
41:00
Growth is very purposefully part of our company culture and UH and our core
41:05
values because we want to be anticipating and looking for that growth and change rather
41:09
than fighting it, finding ways that we continually are growing, get comfortable with
41:14
being uncomfortable because we're not here to a coast. It's just a slow death
41:19
typically. So you have to build in and I think, and breed and
41:23
embrace that reality that you must evolve and grow UH in a variety of ways,
41:29
which means change and change is something none of us like. We like
41:32
to get comfortable and settle in. But that's not how business works. Somebody's
41:37
constantly moving the cheese, especially if you're growing, so right, Yeah,
41:42
you've got to be looking for it. You've got to be expecting it rather
41:45
than being adverse to it. That that's that's a great point, Luke.
41:50
I mean, when I came on the company, before I started my other
41:53
company. I came on as a a COO, which really actually the time
41:58
was kind of an overkill chief operation officer. But I came into that position
42:02
and that was where, you know, the owner thought that she really need
42:05
help. Over time, we evolve that I was a director of biology.
42:07
I switched that based on other needs. Like you said, there's shifts both
42:12
in business development. So what I found personally as I've grown, especially an
42:16
organization. When I was younger, I was more focused to whatever the title
42:21
that I was given, and then I realized, Okay, the title,
42:24
it has a value, but it really is understanding where do I fit within
42:30
the organization and again what are those responsibilities that I fit that fit under the
42:35
umbrella and being really clear about that. One challenge I found though over the
42:40
years is there are I'll use titles because title is not necessarily there are some
42:50
things in there, but you don't. It's it's a little no nebulous.
42:52
So when I say you're the president of a company, well, what does
42:55
that mean? What does that incorporates To the president of a company, that
43:00
could mean a lot of different things. They have some core things, don't
43:02
get me wrong. But or if I say you're the vice president or you're
43:07
the director. Okay, what does that mean? And so what I found
43:10
is some confusion or challenges in organizations because you have an outward facing title that
43:16
is to the clients or to the world that means one thing, that may
43:21
not mean the same thing inside the organization, or you may have different things
43:24
that you talk about internally. And so I've I'm sharing this as business owners
43:30
because I feel like this is something that comes up at least in my world.
43:34
I work in the aec architecture, engineering, construction, and biologists and
43:37
engineers. And I'm engineer one, I'm engineered two, engineer three. I'm
43:40
biologists one two three. I'm a senior biologist. I'm a principal biologist.
43:43
I'm a wildlife ecologist. I'm a botanist. There is a lot of roles.
43:46
So if it just use my biology, you hat for a sec I
43:51
could I could be a wildlife biologist, I could be a botanist, I
43:53
could be a GIA specialist. There's a lot of things I can do under
43:59
the potent role. Right, So there's titles, I feel and for particularly
44:04
companies that do any kind of consulting where you are giving a rate table or
44:09
titles and there's a title and dollar amount that you're saying here, this is
44:15
the contract and this is the role. I'm feeling that doesn't always match up
44:19
directly with what the role is within the company. I mean, so I
44:22
want you guys just to think about this, or if you haven't, maybe
44:24
your feedback. But this is something I've run into over the years because we
44:30
have to crosswalk what does that mean from an external role that's to a client
44:37
and they understand you a certain way, and what does that mean internally into
44:39
the organization. It may be the same, but it's it's sometimes there's there's
44:45
confusion, and so just thoughts there. Maybe I'll just start with you,
44:47
Luke, consider if that's been an issue for you or just your thoughts on
44:51
that as you're thinking about what you are internally and what you are externally,
44:55
Like what do you put on a business card? Right? Because you know,
44:58
what does that look like? May be the same, but it could
45:00
be different. Yeah, yeah, I can see how that certainly can happen
45:07
in a variety of ways. I think you know, as a company,
45:10
we endeavor to have complete congruency in what we do and see and perceive ourselves
45:17
as internally as well as what the client experiences and expects, you know.
45:24
And I would guess that if you have that kind of clarity as a company
45:30
as so this is what an agent does, or what an administrative manager does,
45:35
or what a president does, that that would flow outward to the rest
45:38
of the world with some consistency and then know while people may come to your
45:44
company with a certain expectation of, well, this is what I think you
45:47
do, hopefully if your processes and everything about how you operate is congruent,
45:53
they'll quickly learn what it means that your role is. But here's my job,
45:58
you know. And that's part of what we we try to do as
46:00
well when we work with clients is set that expectation. Like listen, you'll
46:02
hear from Laura to set appointments. You'll be working with so and so to
46:06
get your application process. You'll be working with me to do the planning or
46:09
whatever. And we help our team, help our clients and our and our
46:14
partners understand who does what and what these titles mean. So I would hope
46:21
that if you're doing it to me, if you're doing things right, well,
46:22
people may come with a certain expectation the moment they encounter and are engaged
46:27
with you, they quickly learned that there's that congruency, that consistency of exactly
46:31
what everybody's meant to operate in and what these roles mean. So, I
46:36
don't know, I think that's great feedback, Luke. I know, we're
46:39
going to make it a shorter episode or or well wrap it up here shortly.
46:43
Bill, I know you're going to get to head out here you have
46:45
some thoughts here or getting near the end of the episode. Well, you
46:50
know, I think I think a lot of this goes back to what we
46:53
know cos back full circle to where we started in the discussion, in being
47:00
clear about what it is, what the expectations are, you know, having
47:05
in writing and h you know, and you know, Luke, Luke was
47:10
the first to bring up KPIs and and uh and I think that's an important
47:15
thing to include because we need to have a way to track how we're doing,
47:22
you know, what, what are the key performance indicators, what's expected
47:27
of us, and how can we measure it? You know? And uh,
47:32
yeah, that way that that takes all so much stress off of off
47:37
of the positions both uh, both as employee and employer. Yeah, being
47:45
being being very clear in that and continuing to go back to that, and
47:49
if anything is off or out of alignment, you have something to go back
47:52
and look at and say, hey, there's a disconnect here, how do
47:54
we correct that? And you can always re evaluate those needs both there and
48:00
the employee can go back to it. Don't you know these things aren't setting
48:04
stone mm hmm. Absolutely. I think that's that's very important to think about.
48:10
Bill, and I appreciate your perspectives on this tonight and Luke coming on
48:15
board here too. We actually could go a lot more into this. Uh
48:19
And I'm I'm I'm excited we'll be coming back again. I'm gonna but this
48:22
is important, I think, Luke, I'm so glad to hear you.
48:24
Guys spending and investing the time I work with business owners that it's a little
48:29
bit of an afterthought and so I work with them. So those are that
48:32
are getting stuck or not having a plan or how to get where to get
48:36
started, I've been reached out to any of us. This is kind of
48:38
one my area that I like to focus in as overall organizational health, and
48:42
this is certainly one of the key areas we didn't even get into tonight,
48:45
which I love to ANUE episode on actually conducting performance reviews or an evaluation and
48:51
how do you do that understanding the rules and responsibilities, because that's a whole
48:54
nother thing because I work with but that I talk with employees about, like
48:59
how do I get evaluated? We talked about KPIs, but there's one thing,
49:01
there's a whole process in evaluating it. As a supervisor, we're working
49:06
with somebody, giving them feedback and going through all that. So we may
49:07
come back on a future episode to dig into that. But as wrapping up,
49:15
Luke, any last thoughts or comments here tonight on kind of roles and
49:17
responsibilities, I really appreciate some of your key key takeaways and sure tonight,
49:22
Yeah, I guess a couple of quick thoughts is just king in on what
49:27
Bill just mentioned. What we've been talking about the theme of continual evolution and
49:30
growth. While you want to set a very clear course path and direction and
49:34
roles and all that is, be be willing to adjust. Don't be so
49:38
rigid that you get in your own way. But then the other thing I
49:42
guess is that once you do establish a role, you establish a queer criteria
49:46
of what it means to be X. Then you've got to stick to it.
49:51
And that's the other thing that you know, even personally, I know
49:53
what was hard for me as we started growing, as I started adding to
49:55
my team and defining those roles is one thing to define them, it's another
50:00
thing to actually do it. Implementation is key, and you might have to
50:05
really hammer it for a good month before it actually sticks, which means every
50:09
week you're revisiting, going, Okay, we said we'd do this, but
50:13
we're still doing this, And you just got to keep course correcting until it
50:16
becomes the new normal. And so I just want to encourage people, like,
50:19
if you're having a struggle with that, don't give up. Persevere relentlessly
50:23
with what you know is the best practice. What you know is the role
50:28
you should be operating, and you're gonna you're gonna screw it up for a
50:30
while when you try to change direction, when you try to do it better,
50:34
you're going to keep diverting back to your bad habits. That's you know,
50:37
big problem I had was delegating, and I kept taking it back,
50:40
and then I delegated again. Then I take it back I'm like, I
50:43
gotta stop doing this. So I just again number one, that continuous growth.
50:46
But number two, you know, stick to it. You know,
50:50
once you do define it, understand it's not going to just switch. You're
50:53
going to have to reinforce, reinforce until it becomes a new normal. So
50:57
that's that's okay. But take to that enforcement as you have these definitions and
51:01
rules dialed in. So thank you for sharing that, Luke. We will
51:07
be coming back to you guys again with much more great content. Please leave
51:12
any comments you have feedback. We love hearing your premie on the last podcast.
51:16
We have some great comments and interactions and so please share those, share
51:21
the share the podcast you find it valuable with others. We also welcome our
51:24
guests tonight. It's Bill and Luke and myself were always varying the hosts here,
51:30
so we appreciate you guys spending time with us. Have an amazing night.
51:35
Until next time. This is David Carr with Bill Hatch and Luke Kibler,
51:38
wishing you all the best. Having to night, guys night. Thank you