Curtis

00:00 - 00:11

I'm a 100% and you're a 100%, it makes 300%. The invisible entity is teamwork.

And that all starts with a very baseline of making sure that we are communicating and the words mean the exact same thing.

Chris

00:11 - 00:21

When you walk into a company, what's the first thing from a cultural perspective, like, from a red flag that you typically notice when you walk into a business?

Curtis

00:21 - 01:39

Behavioral standards. Right? Like, how how the teams operate and how they interact with each other.

Culture is a very tricky word in itself. It means a lot of different things to different people.

But when you really break it down into, a business and and, an applied science of how to move it forward, You have to really look for, you know, the behavioral standards, consistency and action. Right? And then, you know, type of a a shared ownership as well.

Right? Because that's what culture really is based in is a shared ownership and an identity behind the company and how we work together. And then it kinda falls into energy and talent.

Right? And so I I do an assessment at first when I first come into a company, and I really look at the behavioral standards, the shared ownership, energy and talent, and then obviously the consistency and action because that's, you know, really what every company needs is consistency and action so they can develop and perform and increase upon that action and and develop other better. And those would be the primary categories that I really evaluate.

So, at first, I'm quiet, and I take a lot of notes, and I do a lot of observations, and I don't do a lot of feedback in the beginning, because I'm really monitoring those details and trying to understand what the baseline is that I'm working with and where I need to go from there.

Chris

01:39 - 01:46

Do you think that's a mistake that a lot of leaders make at first is come in and just start, this is what we're gonna do, this is what I want?

Curtis

01:46 - 02:42

I view leadership a little bit differently than, you know, the status quo. There's a lot of ego based in modern day leadership.

And, if you come in and you're forcing your will and you're forcing, you know, your opinions and your ideas over what's already existing, you know, you can do that because you have the title and you have the power, but you're not gonna get the result. Being quiet is, you know, is a simple way of saying it, but it's really you have to go into a very strong observe mode and and stop the feedback at first.

Right? Because anybody could walk into any business and point out my problems. And I also don't wanna discredit, what other people are built.

Right? Because nothing is a fresh start. Right? I'm not starting Facebook from zero employees here.

There's history involved, and there's people's, you know, pride and their dedication, and they put a lot into this. And so you don't wanna devalue anything that they've already established as well.

Right?

Chris

02:42 - 02:53

What were, say, three tactical things that you started doing to turn around the culture before, like, anything got put in the process, you know, pay all that stuff? What what what did you.

Curtis

02:53 - 05:02

well, it's really an evaluation of the existing leadership. Right? And so you have to understand, are these individuals capable of growing in the role to the desired result, or are they not? Right? Because once one thing I tell people all the time is I don't run a company.

I build teams that run a company. Right? I'm not Yeah.

Capable of running the company. A team is based of a wide variety of talents, a wide variety of skill sets that takes to execute, and your leadership should reflect that.

And so it's the group of people who...

Ehrika

00:00 - 00:06

A big part of the reason you gotta let leaders lead is because you have to actually be able to pay attention to the people who work for you.

Chris

00:06 - 00:13

Why is it important for leaders to be able to lead through transformation? That's the question I have for you.

Ehrika

00:13 - 02:30

Well, isn't leadership the key part of anything we're doing? People are looking to the leader. Right? How is the leader affected? How is the leader going to address things that frankly people who are often smarter than us as leaders already have an opinion about? How are people going to feel? Culture is at the heart of everything that you talk about in a transformation or, you know, use the word change interchangeably.

The bottom line is, as a leader, how you communicate and what you want your organization to do is, frankly, the pace at which they'll they'll go through that, the way that they'll go through that transformation. Right? And it makes me think about I had a boss.

He's actually one of my favorites, crazy guy out of Boston. I'm not gonna mention his name because because he'll he'll hear this, Chris, and he'll be like, okay.

That wasn't a compliment necessarily. If I was your favorite, why did you say this? So I'm a I'm a leave his name out of it.

But he met me, and he saw my resume. And if you look online, I have a degree in public relations communication from the fabulous University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but there's still comms in there.

Right? And he got my resume, and he said, well, you can tell you took the light approach to your college education. And I thought to myself when he said this, I never told him this, well, clearly, you you need a course in it because who would say who would say that to someone? And and that's in the whole the whole process of transformation is exactly that in a nutshell.

How you as the leader feel, 75% of communications is nonverbal. People can pick up on that.

25% is verbal. Whether you're nailing how you communicate with people is a part of that.

It's the hardest thing to do communications. Right? And so we're talking about transformation.

We're talking about org change. But what we're really talking about is how do you move people through that so that when they get on the other side of it, they feel ready to go.

They feel like it was worth it. They're bought in.

You want them to buy in. Right? So I say, first of all, yeah, there's a lot coming at us as leaders.

There there's a huge amount in terms of AI, machine learning, the global economic, macroeconomic situation we're in. You're trying to figure out your ops.

You're trying to figure out, how you keep your roster engaged. And at the same time, you gotta do that in a way that steadies and calms the ship.

Has a lot to do with how we communicate.

Chris

02:30 - 02:48

How important is it knowing more or less the culture or the vibe of your team? Not just the production and results and the numbers but like when it comes to deploying that messaging and transformation. And are there ways you do that whether it's through skip levels or town halls? Like, yeah.

What does that look like?

Ehrika

02:48 - 05:02

I said something before. I'm gonna go back to it.

And this is another reason I believe in letting leaders lead. I have a day job.

If I'm a CEO, if I'm a member of the c suite, my day job should be very different than the leaders who are directs of mine, than the leaders who work for my directs, than the managers' frontline, than the individual contributors. A big part of the reason you gotta let leaders lead is because you have to actually be able to pay attention to the people who work for you.

I have rarely been surprised when someone's leaving my team, when someone's ready to go, when...

Larry

00:00 - 00:03

The biggest mistake is not being impatient. I think.

Chris

00:03 - 00:04

you have impatient?

Larry

00:04 - 00:06

Yeah. I think you have to be impatient.

Chris

00:06 - 00:19

When you're in the middle of a transformation, what are the early signs that your current teams may be not built for what's next?

Larry

00:19 - 00:23

Well, you know, it's let me say this upfront that.

Chris

00:23 - 00:24

Yeah.

Larry

00:24 - 01:12

Building a team or transforming a team is probably one of the most difficult things that a sales leader has to has to do in a business. I mean, you can build teams from the ground up.

You can inherit teams and try to accelerate the growth of those teams. Sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you have to cut cost, and so you have to increase productivity.

All of those things, you know, you you can follow some real tight rules. But when you're in the middle of having to transform a team from doing one thing to doing something that's very different.

Maybe it's not completely different, but it's very different from what they're doing today.

Chris

01:12 - 01:12

Yeah.

Larry

01:12 - 01:27

That's probably one of the most difficult things you're gonna have to do when you're in business. And so some of the early signs and I haven't done I haven't done this a few times and not always been successful at it, by the way.

Chris

01:27 - 01:53

It's a very to your point, Larry, it's very difficult, but this is such a unique topic because I with with AI coming into the fold, really distancing ourselves from the pandemic and and moving forward, a lot of things have changed to help business is done. And I do see a lot of companies that you and I support going through those transformations, and it is it's tough.

Right. A 100.

Larry

01:53 - 04:01

Right. So so the early sounds you know, getting back to your question, the early sounds that, it's gonna be difficult is when, the the leaders that you have that are closest to your sellers are having a difficult time buying it.

So, you know, when you're transforming team, it's all about buying first. And if you can get the leaders who are closest to the sellers to buy in early on, that's a good sign, a good sign.

But if there's a lot of pushback, from the people that are closest to the sellers, you're gonna you're gonna struggle because, if they're good sales leaders, their teams are really dependent on them, you know, to help them understand what you're trying to get accomplished. So if you're battling with the that layer of sales management, that first layer of source management, that's an early sound that this is gonna be hard because you're gonna have to make some really tough decisions on people who probably have been driving your success and the company's success for a long period of time.

So, you know, in in in many cases, what that means is that you may have to retire or move away from people who are not low performers. They're actually pretty high performers if they don't buy in to where the company needs to go to be successful.

So those are the early sides. If in fact they do buy in, then you move into how successful they they are at helping to communicate that message to the sellers.

And if they're good sales leaders, they usually can do it. And then you have a smoother route.

It doesn't mean that everybody's gonna be able to survive this transformation, but it does mean that it will be a little smoother, as you go forward.

Chris

04:01 - 04:39

What is interesting, you say...