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Why small decisions kill business value · Speak In Flow

• 0:02
  Melinda Lee: Welcome to the Speak and Flow Podcast, where we help CEOs and leadership teams strengthen their communication so they can move together with more clarity, alignment, and purpose. Because communication is not a soft skill.
• 0:17
  Melinda Lee: It is how we move forward, move the organization together toward measurable growth.
• 0:24
  Melinda Lee: Today's conversation is about decision making and the complexities of it, and especially in our growing, complex, difficult, chaotic world where we don't have much time.
• 0:37
  Melinda Lee: we want to make the best decisions in life. And so joining me is an expert, Michael Bush. He's the founder of Growth Ways, creator of the Guard Railing Framework.
• 0:48
  Melinda Lee: He has over 25 years of experience with acquisitions, raising capitals, exits. He helps CEOs and their teams with making strategic decisions to grow a valuable business.
• 1:01
  Melinda Lee: His unique perspective is so important because the decisions we make today create our world and our business in the future, and so let's start to do that effectively today. Welcome, Michael.
• 1:15
  Michael Bush: Thank you, so glad to be here.
• 1:17
  Melinda Lee: Yes, I am really excited about our conversation, it's gonna be so good, and so…
• 1:24
  Melinda Lee: If there is a person out there, and there is, a CEO who has stopped to listen to this podcast, what do you hope could change in their lives, the way they think, the way they lead, by really taking into consideration what you're about to tell them?
• 1:39
  Michael Bush: So, as I said, the guardrail framework, as far as I'm concerned, is kind of the everything framework, and so the thing that I always want people to take away from is if we start… and the framework is simple, it's this simple. You start with your destination in mind, so we'll get to that in a minute, but you… if you know where you're going, very specifically, I mean, really specifically, and so…
• 2:02
  Michael Bush: For example, when we work with clients, or we work with companies that may be, say, venture-backed.
• 2:07
  Michael Bush: Or they're… they're a company that's gonna be sold at some point.
• 2:11
  Michael Bush: We… the first exercise we do is we say… and it can be even just a pure startup, it can be a company that's a day old, or not even in existence yet, and we can say, okay.
• 2:21
  Michael Bush: on what date, for how much money, and to whom specifically are you going to sell this business? And a lot of times, they're like, well, it's kind of early for this conversation. Like, it's never too early for that, because
• 2:36
  Michael Bush: The decision you make tomorrow about maybe even, like, the legal structure of your business could ultimately affect the value of your business if you sell it
• 2:46
  Michael Bush: 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years down the road. And the thing that we don't forget, don't think about is, is
• 2:52
  Michael Bush: It's all those little decisions, and so the guardrailing framework is start with your destination, and then make good decisions. Capital G, good decisions, which means they hurt no one, they add value to the lives and to the value of the business, and, you really can't do… you can't go wrong if you just keep it that simple.
• 3:11
  Michael Bush: And so, you know, what I encourage people to do is to, you know, cut out the KPIs and the metrics and all the stuff and the, you know, everything that we've had beaten into us by consultants over the years, and really start thinking more holistically about, you know, how everything fits together.
• 3:30
  Melinda Lee: So how did you come up with this? Because, I mean, I would think that CEOs are resistant to planning out so far in advance.
• 3:41
  Michael Bush: Nope.
• 3:41
  Melinda Lee: sound so important to you? Like, this is…
• 3:43
  Michael Bush: Yeah, it's… it's… so our last company was the eighth company that I was part of the exit of, and we started kind of evolving into this process, and so when we started the last company, it was almost an experiment, and the experiment was.
• 3:58
  Michael Bush: we haven't quite started. It was a, you know, it was a brand new startup, spin-out of an existing company, and I was kind of like, okay, what's the… what's the exit? You know, what do you want to do with this business? They're like, we want to sell it for, you know, $100 million in 7 years, and so I was like, okay, so…
• 4:16
  Michael Bush: I literally named names. I'm like… and I was fresh, new to this industry. I didn't know the industry, so I dug around. I was like, well, here's a couple companies that… strategics that do acquisitions to grow their business. Here's some private equity firms that are interested in our space.
• 4:31
  Michael Bush: So let's then decide that every single time we make a decision, we have to weigh it and say.
• 4:38
  Michael Bush: Does this decision, whatever it is, even if it's if you're gonna lease a copier or lease a building, does this decision make our business more appealing to a buyer or less?
• 4:49
  Michael Bush: And every single thing, there are very few decisions that you make in a business that… that are neutral. They're all going to either add value or decline, you know, decrease value. And so, you'll see capital-intensive businesses where they'll… where
• 5:04
  Michael Bush: the ego of the founder may just make them decide, we're gonna have to build a manufacturing facility, or we're gonna build this or that. When
• 5:13
  Michael Bush: The goal, ultimately, may be to sell the business, but
• 5:16
  Michael Bush: And everybody that could potentially buy the business already has manufacturing capabilities, so you're building something to make yourself feel good.
• 5:24
  Michael Bush: But at the same time, you're not adding value. And so, you know, I look at it across the board. Whether you hire somebody, you use the same decision-making process. You know, is this person, 4 years from now, when we go to sell the business, is this person going to be considered kind of redundant in a corporate roll-up?
• 5:41
  Michael Bush: And are they gonna lose their job? Are you gonna run into them at the grocery store after you sold your company and be like, hi, do you like my new car? Oh, sorry you lost your job, but I knew you were going to the day I hired you.
• 5:54
  Michael Bush: And you… you do. I mean, there's people that, when you hire them, you know that they're not going to stay with the business long-term because of redundancies, and so… so one of the good decisions I've always encouraged people to make is.
• 6:06
  Michael Bush: Don't hire too many people. You know, compensate your people to do more so that you don't have to hire those extra people who may not be around, you know, once the business sells, or once you decide to, you know, pivot and go in a different direction. And so there's just, like, everything to look at, there's all these decisions.
• 6:24
  Michael Bush: And when it comes down to it, you know, the golden rule comes in pretty handy. It's kind of like, would you like…
• 6:30
  Michael Bush: your CEO making decisions to your detriment.
• 6:35
  Michael Bush: for their personal gain. And if you put yourself in their position, you're like, well, why would I make that decision as a CEO if it's not one that I would want my CEO to make if I was a, you know, a line-level employee, or one of the team members?
• 6:50
  Michael Bush: And so, you know, it's just kind of like thinking before you do things.
• 6:54
  Melinda Lee: Right, but then, ultimately, to have that clarity on the end game first, so then.
• 6:59
  Michael Bush: Oh my god.
• 6:59
  Melinda Lee: Again, make the right decisions up front.
• 7:01
  Michael Bush: Yeah, and yeah, so it… over time, it just became a framework by which
• 7:05
  Michael Bush: it just became so natural, where you would… and so now when we work with clients, we look… we look at their business, we're like, oh, no, you're not going to do that, are you? And they're like, oh, we've been planning on doing that for 5 years. Like, you should have stopped 5 years ago, you know, that's… you know, and yet point out to them that, you know, in some cases, why
• 7:24
  Michael Bush: That thing they're about to do may be a really bad decision, even though it feels kind of awesome at the time.
• 7:31
  Melinda Lee: Yeah. And how… and you work with high-performing organizations all over the world, and so what are the organizations that really know how to do this well, versus the organizations that just get stuck?
• 7:43
  Michael Bush: the ones that really know how to do it well really focus on their destination, and they really… and so, when we work with clients, for example, we were just in Switzerland and did a workshop with a biotech company, and
• 7:55
  Michael Bush: and, you know, the very bright people. You know, it's a whole room full of PhDs I was working with, and the problem that we were having, though, was
• 8:03
  Michael Bush: They had a… a wealth of opportunity, so they couldn't decide
• 8:09
  Michael Bush: you know, what to do first, and how to do. You know, how do you decide what to do if you have 10 wonderful-looking opportunities in front of you? And, you know, my point is, is pick one. You know, pick… weigh them all out and pick one, or pick a direction.
• 8:23
  Michael Bush: And so… and then just put a stake in the ground and be like, we made the decision. So the part of the guardrailing framework is, when you make a good decision, and you know that it's a good decision, you… you won't look back on it and go, oh, that's not… that was a bad decision. I mean, there… you know, you get to the point where
• 8:41
  Michael Bush: It becomes so clear what's a good decision and what's a bad decision, or what's not a good decision, that it becomes,
• 8:49
  Michael Bush: it just becomes, like, second nature for people, and so the companies that have that second nature, that kind of… that humanistic approach to things, where everybody's involved, and so I see the companies where… where, like, every employee has stock options, or every employee is part of all-hands meetings.
• 9:08
  Michael Bush: They usually have better communication skills
• 9:11
  Michael Bush: And better relationships within those companies.
• 9:15
  Michael Bush: And it's one of those things, like.
• 9:18
  Michael Bush: Not everybody in a company is going to be an expert in every area, but it's nice for everyone to feel like they're part of the whole thing.
• 9:26
  Michael Bush: And so, one of the things we've always encouraged people to is if you have, you know, all-hands, you know, staff meetings or things like that, and you notice that half of the room disengages during a certain part, it's probably because they don't understand what's going on. So maybe you're talking about finances, and you've got a bunch of, you know, science people in the room.
• 9:46
  Michael Bush: A good decision would be to
• 9:49
  Michael Bush: teach those people about finance. And so, you know, in a…
• 9:53
  Michael Bush: previous organization I was in, we had some, you know, some lab technicians and things like that. By the time we were done, they could read a P&L, they knew how to calculate EBITDA, they knew all that kind of stuff, because we're like, if we're going to talk about it, and it's going to become part of our culture, we want everyone to understand it. You know how to be an expert in it, but we want you all to feel like you're part of the decision-making process, and that you know why decisions are being made.
• 10:15
  Michael Bush: And they also have the ability to go, is that really a good decision? And so the good… the smooth-running organizations are ones where people feel free to challenge people
• 10:27
  Michael Bush: and say, you know, hey, CEO, or hey, founder, is that really a good decision? Does it really, you know, move us forward? And, you know, a good open organization would be like, thank you so much for pointing that out, you are correct.
• 10:42
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, this is very interesting. So, what I hear you saying is that the organizations that do it well, they… they first, they know the end game, they know where they want to go, and then, so they are able to make the right decisions. It becomes easier to make the right decisions because they know where they want to go.
• 10:59
  Michael Bush: I kind of look at it like a road trip. I use a road trip analogy all the time. It's kind of like, if you don't know where you're going, it makes it really difficult to even set off in a destination. You can go east, north, south, west, whatever. But also, you know when you're driving down a mountain road, you know if you made a bad turn when you fly off the cliff.
• 11:18
  Michael Bush: Well, that's the way decisions in business and life are, too, so it's like.
• 11:22
  Michael Bush: if you can kind of see where the car's gonna go if you make that decision, then it makes it a lot easier to make life decisions, to go, if I make this decision, it may feel good now, but it may be a really bad decision 8 years from now.
• 11:36
  Melinda Lee: And then, and then, like you said also, if you know where you're going, and you share that with the organization, then the people within the organization also can, hey, challenge it, or say, yes, I think that's a good decision, and that requires a lot of good, also, communication across the board.
• 11:55
  Michael Bush: Exactly.
• 11:55
  Melinda Lee: the open communication and fostering that type of environment where it's okay to challenge people. What about the organizations that don't do it well that you see? What happens there?
• 12:06
  Michael Bush: those are organizations that have silos. It's often a company that has a really strong, like, cult of personality around a founder or CEO. You'll often see… you'll have this person who, you know, they may have
• 12:21
  Michael Bush: Brought a whole team with them, and they're, like, an inspirational leader, or they were a thought leader at some point.
• 12:27
  Michael Bush: But they are very sure of their ideas, and sometimes being 100% sure of your ideas is not the greatest thing, especially in the, you know, the real world, where our great ideas usually have some, you know, wrinkles in them that we have to work out. And so the organizations that I find that have the hardest time with this are ones that are…
• 12:47
  Michael Bush: really… Tightly controlled by a founder.
• 12:51
  Michael Bush: or that have, you know, really strict silos, you know, operations and sales do not work together. You know, I see that so often. Or science, the science team does not participate in, you know, budget planning and forecast planning, and all of a sudden, you'll have a company that they're like, we're gonna do this revenue next year, and the operations people go, haha, our infrastructure will not support that kind of revenue.
• 13:16
  Michael Bush: That kind of growth.
• 13:17
  Michael Bush: But nobody asks them, and so what happens is it becomes an issue when you run up against some production issue, or you run up against some, you know, some sort of, you know, when you, when you hit that, you know.
• 13:29
  Michael Bush: End of the road, for whatever reason, you've got to make sure that you've got a plan to reroute.
• 13:34
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 13:36
  Melinda Lee: Right. But if they're not working together, who's gonna take over?
• 13:40
  Michael Bush: Those would work.
• 13:42
  Michael Bush: Well, what happens is, is you see in those companies, you'll… I mean, you can… once you do this enough, you can pull in the driveway, and you can tell whether the company's running right or not. And, you know, you look at the turnover rates of employees and things like that, and their, you know, if you look in a sales organization, you may look at their revenue per employee.
• 14:04
  Michael Bush: And you can go, yep, your comp structure is right, you know, if the products and things, we'll assume their products are right. Comp structure's right.
• 14:12
  Michael Bush: Great. Turnover's low, we know that everything's good. When turnover's high, or when people don't feel empowered to be part of, you know, anything other than their, you know, individual silo, problems. Always. 100% of the time.
• 14:27
  Melinda Lee: Wow, that's interesting. And so what about the, like, when we're in meetings? Let's go back to the, teams that are doing rather well.
• 14:37
  Melinda Lee: And they made a decision about where they're gonna go, what is gonna happen, and you're in the meeting, everybody's clear on what's gonna, you know, what our tasks are, what the charge is, and then you made a decision, and then they go forth, everybody goes off to their offices, to their home offices, and then…
• 14:55
  Melinda Lee: In a couple of months, like, we lose momentum. Had that happened before?
• 15:00
  Michael Bush: Yeah, no, no.
• 15:03
  Michael Bush: In the history of any company. So, I'm a big… I'm a big dashboard person, and so, like, I like to be able to just look at a company and go, this is on track or it's not. I mean, a well-designed dashboard should literally give you a pretty good clue as to whether or not there is anything wrong with the business.
• 15:21
  Michael Bush: But also, during meetings, one of the things I've always liked to do… I'm not a long meeting kind of person, it's just, like, if someone sends me a meeting request and it's 3 hours, I'm, like, looking for everything I could possibly do to not be there for 3 hours. But so, our staff meetings used to be all hands, so we had 32 employees at our last organization.
• 15:44
  Michael Bush: Those 32 people were all on the call every Friday. The calls were about 20 minutes.
• 15:49
  Michael Bush: And the way it worked was, is each person who was a contributor, so, you know, the salespeople, the marketing people, the finance people, someone would… and they would basically talk about.
• 16:00
  Michael Bush: three things. What are the three things you're working on, whether they're positive or challenges?
• 16:05
  Michael Bush: just three things. We're gonna stick to, you know, we're gonna stick real tight to our timing. It's like… and if there's… and the three things can't just be, oh, we, you know, we did this or that. It needs to be actionable items, and so these are the three things I need help on, these are the three things I want everybody to know about, whatever the case may be.
• 16:23
  Michael Bush: you can knock through a staff meeting really quickly that way, and then you take the detailed conversations offline. You're like, you all don't need to be here while we discuss, you know, renegotiating the lease on the office.
• 16:37
  Michael Bush: So, we could take that offline, and so… and then through dashboards.
• 16:42
  Michael Bush: And like I said, I'm not a huge fan of, like, just setting standard metrics up for a company, so setting up whatever the metrics are that are measurable and important for that business, looking at the dashboard, and also, I'm a huge fan of sharing that information with everyone. So, revenue.
• 17:00
  Michael Bush: you know, financial performance, everything, every employee in the company, I have been a huge open book management person for a long time. I believe that everybody in the company has the right to know, you know, most things. Maybe we don't want them digging around in people's, you know.
• 17:16
  Michael Bush: you know, medical records, or their, you know, their pay, and things like that, but… but I think that, you know, employees need to know we are a profitable business, or we are a, you know… for example, I was with the company once, we did a turnaround, and the goal was, we're going to get this thing profitable as fast as we can.
• 17:33
  Michael Bush: And so, the challenge that the executive team had was, is nobody had any incentive to become… you know, what… you got a couple hundred employees, they're losing money, you know, a little bit, and how do you get all of them? And I said, well, why don't we just bonus every single person the second we hit profitability? And so, as soon as profitability hit.
• 17:53
  Michael Bush: Which came much faster than anticipated when you said everybody gets, you know, $5,000 that, you know, when we… when we turn X profit. So everybody was working on the same team. And so… and having things… and I'm a big believer in short-term goals.
• 18:09
  Michael Bush: One of the things that's happening around the world now is
• 18:14
  Michael Bush: Comp plans, especially for salespeople or contributors like that, are being flattened out, where they're just giving them a big base salary and maybe a little bit of a bonus.
• 18:24
  Michael Bush: I have seen miracles happen when you go to monthly commissions with no cap.
• 18:31
  Michael Bush: With salespeople, and I… it's… it…
• 18:35
  Michael Bush: never fails, which is why it blows my mind that so many companies are like, you know, the accounting department feels a lot better that they've flattened everybody's salaries, but they've eliminated the reason that the salespeople in particular came to work each day.
• 18:51
  Melinda Lee: And so… So, sorry, can you repeat that again? So, for the salespeople, you said to, flatten out, and… Yeah, so, so…
• 18:59
  Michael Bush: What I've… what I've seen happen, it happens all the time, especially post-acquisition. You'll have a… I'll give you a real-world example. Our old company, our average salesperson was on… we had
• 19:12
  Michael Bush: 13 salespeople. The average salesperson was on, let's call it a 70K base. Okay. So, it's not like they were making $250K base and a little bonus, but they were paid commissions every single month, that was… and the commissions were 5% of gross margin. They got it every single month.
• 19:31
  Michael Bush: And then we had a company-wide bonus that, as long as we hit our company forecast, every quarter, every person in the bonus pool got $2,500. So, we gave people frequent.
• 19:43
  Melinda Lee: Frequent, got it.
• 19:44
  Michael Bush: unlimited upside. And so, if a salesperson, if they came in one day and they said, I sold a billion dollars worth of stuff, we'd be like, well, your commissions are going to be really
• 19:55
  Michael Bush: Spectacular, and we cannot wait to write you that check.
• 19:58
  Melinda Lee: Right, and it's coming, like, next week, as soon as the one comes in.
• 20:01
  Michael Bush: Yeah, and so… but the, you know, the bigger companies, after consolidation, what they do is they go, oh, we've got these complicated comp plans, we're gonna have to, you know, all these salespeople are gonna have to do this. Let's just put them all on a high base salary and give them a bonus. And so what you'll see is those companies will then have
• 20:18
  Michael Bush: turnover on their top performers, because all of a sudden you had somebody who, on their 70K base, was making $500K a year. Now they're on a $275K base and a 20% bonus, and they're like.
• 20:30
  Michael Bush: I just took a 50% pay cut, and I'm working just as hard or harder, and it makes, you know, the HR or accounting people feel better, because they see their salary, they see their cost. What they don't realize is that if people just plug that commission into the cost of
• 20:46
  Michael Bush: goods, you know, just make it part of the business. It's just… it completely flows with revenue, and it keeps people really motivated.
• 20:55
  Melinda Lee: Right, right, right. I love that, I love that.
• 20:58
  Michael Bush: Yeah.
• 20:59
  Melinda Lee: So,
• 21:01
  Melinda Lee: What about when we think about trust, and we think about, you know, you talked about being really open and transparent with the information, which I feel like, yeah, it gives… helps people feel motivated, helps people engage. How much does trust, factor in when people are making decisions at the top? And I… I don't agree with the decision.
• 21:21
  Melinda Lee: How does that work? How does that play?
• 21:23
  Michael Bush: I mean, trust is everything, whether it's personal life, business life, I mean, You know, if you can't…
• 21:30
  Michael Bush: if you can't trust a coworker, or you don't trust your boss, or you don't trust an investor or a board member, it makes it really hard to be effective at what you do, because you're always walking around worried. You're watching your back, rather than doing your job. And, like I said, in big companies, a lot of people, their job is to not lose their job.
• 21:50
  Michael Bush: it's not necessarily to contribute to the overall wellness of the world and of the company. And so it kind of cracks me up when you see companies where you can very quickly tell when there's a leader, just like I said, with the siloed or the really heavily influential founders.
• 22:08
  Michael Bush: There's almost always…
• 22:10
  Michael Bush: And people may not put their finger on it and say there's a trust issue, but there's a… there's a trust issue, because they know that, you know, if they're gonna… if, you know.
• 22:20
  Michael Bush: There's nothing worse than somebody telling you.
• 22:23
  Michael Bush: I have an open-door policy, and there's no such thing as a bad question.
• 22:29
  Michael Bush: When somebody says that, that's basically their way of saying, I want it to seem that way.
• 22:35
  Michael Bush: Until you challenge me. And then you will learn what a bad decision is. And so… and I've seen that time and time again, where, you know, you've got these companies where they say they have a culture of openness.
• 22:47
  Michael Bush: But the employees will be… the first person you have to ask is, you know, the receptionist, or the… or, you know, somebody that's really in the trenches, like, do you have an open and honest culture here? And they'll… a lot of times, they'll be like.
• 23:01
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just here to collect the paycheck.
• 23:05
  Michael Bush: Yeah, exactly. They're like, don't tell anybody I said that, either.
• 23:09
  Melinda Lee: and how much lost productivity there is and engagement, and… and so what about the CEOs? How much is your work, actually working with the CEO and the leadership team to really continue to stay committed to their decisions?
• 23:25
  Melinda Lee: And yeah, because there's so much happening, even though they made a decision, and it was a good decision in that year or that month, I mean, realistically, sometimes it changes, and…
• 23:34
  Michael Bush: Yeah, oh yeah, I mean, you always have to…
• 23:36
  Melinda Lee: So, whether it's a good decision to change, or whether you stick with it.
• 23:40
  Michael Bush: Yeah, I mean, there's always gonna be changes. There's always going to be market conditions, there's going to be, you know, weird things happen, you know, things that we can't… you know, if you're in a regulated industry, all of a sudden regulation changes. And so, you have to always be willing to change direction. Pivot is one of my least favorite words in the entire business vernacular, because it usually means
• 24:03
  Michael Bush: We made a bad decision, but we call it a pivot, so we just…
• 24:07
  Michael Bush: Or changing direction, because we didn't plan… we didn't plan right the first time. But, you know, sometimes you do genuinely have to pivot, you know, if…
• 24:15
  Michael Bush: If you're selling something that is, you know, perfectly legal, and a regulatory restriction comes along, and all of a sudden the ingredient or the product you're selling is
• 24:24
  Michael Bush: no longer legal to sell in the market you're selling it, which happens, you know, more often than you would think, especially we work largely in the food and biotech and the supplement industry. It's really funny how fast you can shut down an industry with, you know, one little regulation.
• 24:39
  Michael Bush: And so, you've got to be able to make changes, but you also have to know that
• 24:44
  Michael Bush: that you have to know what's going to be a risk in the future. You should know your world, and you should know who to ask, too. You know, for sure, you know, be constantly reaching out. And so, like I said, and like you just mentioned, I work mainly with CEOs, founders, and investors, and leadership teams.
• 25:01
  Michael Bush: And it's always a… you know, we're always kind of like, you know, always be questioning, you know, are we doing… are we heading in the right direction? Because part of guardrails is making sure that you're… you're staying between them. And sometimes you'll have, you know, if you think about different departments within a business.
• 25:18
  Michael Bush: You know, your finance department may have guardrails that are, you know, tying… you know, they're very narrow, because they have very specific regulatory requirements and reporting requirements.
• 25:28
  Michael Bush: your marketing department may have very wide guardrails, or your product development people may have a very wide guardrails, and then they narrow in as you get into, you know, more customer delivery and things like that. But you have to… you have to know that
• 25:41
  Michael Bush: this department has tight guardrails, and this one doesn't. It's just the way it goes. Everybody would recognize that in a business. And so, you know, you'll have different types of leeway, depending upon, you know, who the passengers are on that trip with you.
• 25:55
  Melinda Lee: I love that, I love that.
• 25:56
  Melinda Lee: I, I really appreciate it, and I'm inspired by how you've set up
• 26:00
  Melinda Lee: These systems, decision-making systems, which people don't usually talk about or consider. And so you really put together a really good framework that's worked, that's successful, that produces results.
• 26:14
  Melinda Lee: And, so people can understand it, and when you go into a company, they can say, okay, our guardrails are gonna be this, and our guardrails are gonna be larger, and so the whole company understands that.
• 26:23
  Michael Bush: Exactly.
• 26:24
  Melinda Lee: That support, their decision-making and their ability to get… generate results.
• 26:30
  Michael Bush: And then you… and then you just monitor it. I mean, dashboards and monitoring systems, you monitor it, you're like, we are on… you can look at it and go, we are on the right track, or we are not, because it's real… it's just like with a GPS, you know, you can pretty much tell if you're… if you veered off of course. It's not like…
• 26:46
  Michael Bush: the old days where we were using compasses, where you could be off a degree, and all of a sudden you're at a different continent. You know, now we've got so many tools at our, you know, at our fingertips that can keep us on track. And, you know, and I think that people need to, you know, rely on those tools to keep them on track, and not be reliant on the tools to do their jobs. You know, the tools can help them, you know, it's kind of like alarm clocks, you know.
• 27:10
  Michael Bush: When you hit one side or the other side of your guardrails, it gives you a little bit of a jolt back into the middle, and that's really all you need.
• 27:17
  Melinda Lee: Yeah.
• 27:17
  Michael Bush: You're heading… unless you do a U-turn, you're still heading in the right direction.
• 27:21
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great, that's great, that's so wonderful. And so what, what do you think would happen in organizations if they had communication systems? Just like decision-making systems, if there's communication systems that were standard, that were, like, in…
• 27:40
  Melinda Lee: in a communication… in an organization, they have a standard of communication. How are we going to share information? How are we going to act on this information? And there's a clear standard, and not just a soft skill. What do you think could happen in an organization?
• 27:54
  Michael Bush: it would be game-changing, because, you know, there's lots of, you know, there's lots of ways to put systems in place, but like you say, a communication system, you know, and I think people will think of that, and it depends on who you ask. Someone will say, oh, well, we have this great, you know.
• 28:09
  Michael Bush: We have Notion. It's our… it's our operating system for our business. Or we have, you know, this software tool, or that software tool.
• 28:17
  Michael Bush: But that's not a system. It's not a… because you still have to build the rules, right? And so, when it comes to communication, you have to understand
• 28:26
  Michael Bush: who your audience is, who you're communicating with. You don't want to… I mean, if you're gonna be communicating with your entire company of however many tens or hundreds or thousands of people, that messaging will be different than if it's just
• 28:41
  Michael Bush: you know, the CFO sending a note to the COO. It's going to be a different tone, it may be a different type of thing, but you need to have that system for when you're communicating with everyone, so that people… people know clearly that what's being communicated is…
• 28:59
  Michael Bush: you know, it's what they're… it's what they're hearing, you know, because so often, you know, especially with, you know, written communication, or emails, or texts, or Slack, and things like that, you don't know
• 29:10
  Michael Bush: you know, you don't know what's going on on the other end of the keyboard. And so, by having systems that are like, we need to communicate in such a way that there's no question about motivation and drive and, you know, so you're not thinking, do they mean this or do they mean that?
• 29:29
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:30
  Michael Bush: So, and that all goes back to trust and transparency and the things that we've already discussed.
• 29:35
  Melinda Lee: Right, right, right. Yeah, so if we have a system for communicating, and also a system to clarify, so that there's no assumptions or.
• 29:44
  Michael Bush: Yeah.
• 29:45
  Melinda Lee: understanding, then we're able to build that trust and be able to work together more effectively.
• 29:50
  Michael Bush: Yeah. I mean, it's… it's funny, I have three daughters, they're all grown now, but I remember when they were little, they would, you know, especially one, would… would choose the question kid. It would be like, why, why, why, why, why, why, why?
• 30:03
  Michael Bush: In hindsight, that's a great way to go through life, because rather than being… because, I mean, how many times a day do we want to know something? And, you know, we don't… and it's not something we're going to, you know, check GPT or look at Google. There's… we kind of want to know something, and you just… you just feel like walking up to the guy at the grocery store going, why, you know? And we'd have a lot better world if we could all just kind of
• 30:27
  Michael Bush: you know, live that way. Same thing in a workplace. I mean, if…
• 30:31
  Michael Bush: If people understood why they were doing things, rather than how to do them, or just to do them, it's… it's a game changer.
• 30:39
  Melinda Lee: What do you think can happen in their lives?
• 30:42
  Michael Bush: Well, I think… well, first of all, I think that… I think that inquiry and curiosity is… is everything.
• 30:49
  Michael Bush: I'm going through a year-long fellowship right now that's a purpose fellowship, and so it's literally, over the next year, we're going to be developing a 10-year purpose plan, and for our personal lives, and how to teach other people how to find their purpose and things. And I kind of look at it like, if everybody could go through life.
• 31:06
  Michael Bush: you know, being open enough to be able to ask and answer questions, and not feel afraid of being judged, and not feel like, you know, if I… where you're not having to read between the lines with everything, and clear, open communication solves a lot of problems.
• 31:22
  Melinda Lee: Wow. I love that. A year-long program where you're asking questions about your purpose. Yeah. That is so cool. But I… that's gonna help save you so much time, have such a.
• 31:35
  Michael Bush: Oh, yeah.
• 31:36
  Melinda Lee: full life afterwards, and going back to everything that you've taught us today, of having that, you know, so, so clear, clarity in what you need to do, what you want to do, then everything else after that, you can make the right decisions to have that at the end.
• 31:52
  Melinda Lee: So, that's powerful. Well, send me the link, I don't…
• 31:56
  Michael Bush: Modern Elder… the Modern Elder Academy!
• 32:00
  Melinda Lee: Oh my.
• 32:01
  Michael Bush: Fabulous thing, yeah.
• 32:02
  Melinda Lee: Wow, that's awesome. Oh, thank you so much, Michael. That is, I had a great time with the conversation today. I really, truly…
• 32:11
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, appreciate your insight, and what you do for us, and helping us to make more strategic decisions, but ultimately creating a better life for us, a better business for us.
• 32:20
  Michael Bush: Awesome. Thank you so much, this has been great.
• 32:22
  Melinda Lee: Yeah, thank you! And thank you all for being here. Remember, anytime you have a chance to communicate, communicate what matters, communicate it consistently, so you and your organization can move together.
• 32:34
  Melinda Lee: Take care. Bye-bye.