Jeff Standridge:
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Innovation Junkies Podcast. I’m Jeff Standridge.
Jeff Amerine:
Hey, and this is Jeff Amerine. I think we’re going to talk about excellence today, aren’t we? Culture of excellence.
Jeff Standridge:
We are, we are. So we’ve spent this season talking about strategic growth, revenue velocity, organizational effectiveness, operational effectiveness, financial disciplines. And I wanna talk a little bit about this framework that we’ve created over the course of the last few years of working with organizations that are trying to drive, sustain strategic growth.
And ultimately we came across some observations that they generally were struggling in one of five or six areas. And when we pull all of those together and address the deficiencies in any of those areas, that’s when they really began to create that culture of excellence. And so that’s what I wanna talk about today and the six components of that culture of excellence. That be all right?
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, that sounds great. So take us through it. What are the six components?
Jeff Standridge:
Sure. Well, the first one is strong leadership. And if you don’t have strong leadership in a company, and I’m talking about strong leader at the CEO level and strong leaders at that senior level of executive team level, clearly you want to have strong leaders throughout the organization. But if you don’t have them at the top, then invariably, you’ll struggle to get them and keep them throughout the
the various levels of the organization, but strong leadership. When we’re talking about strong leadership, we’re talking about leaders who are committed to the purpose of the organization. They’re committed to the vision of the organization, where the organization’s going, how it’s going to get there. And they’re committed to implementing a system to help ensure that they stay on track. So that’s what we’re talking about. First and foremost, you’ve got to have strong leadership. You agree?
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, it all starts there. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s very difficult to see successful organizations that don’t have strong and committed leaders. No question about it.
Jeff Standridge:
That’s right. Then the next thing that they have is once you get this team of strong and committed leaders and oh, by the way, and we talked a couple of episodes ago about helping leaders assess that level of talent at the senior leadership levels by using three tools. Number one, the total team assessment. Number two, the relative talent review and number three, the accountability chart. But once you’ve got that done and you’re you’ve ensured that you’ve got a strong senior leadership component. The next one is what we call clarity and focus. And that is, you know where you’re going as an organization, you know how you’re going to get there, and you’re relentlessly measuring the pursuit of success in that regard. That’s organizational clarity and focus. And that’s what our strategic growth system, of course, is created to actually define for organizations.
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah. And we’ve seen the impact when there’s confusion about what the direction is, where we’re headed with strategy or with innovation. Not a lot of good things happen. People will tend to degenerate back to what they understand and what they know, which may not be where the organization really wants them to be focused.
Jeff Standridge:
They degenerate back to the organizational equivalent of bourbon and bad habits, right?
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, well, there’s some merits to bourbon and bad habits, but not if you want to be a high achiever.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So we’ve got strong leadership, we’ve got organizational clarity and focus. Then we have engaged and committed teammates. So this is where that strong leadership starts to filter down through the organization, making sure that you’ve got the right people on the bus, the right people, the wrong people off the bus, and you’ve got the right people in the right seats, and they’re committed to moving the organization forward collectively.
Jeff Amerine:
And it’s an intentionality about that. You know, we’ve seen with great organizations like AptiG, a very successful ed tech company that, that grew up in Little Rock, that one of the main keys to their success was they had a very committed team that was tied very closely and kind of defined their work day based on a commitment to their culture.
Jeff Standridge:
That’s right. Yeah. And, and, and this is where these, these elements of a culture of, of excellence begin to have interdependencies on one another. Because if you don’t have strong leaders, uh, then, then you’re going to struggle to have a consistent talent that is engaged and committed.
Jeff Amerine:
Absolutely. Yeah, no, no doubt about it. The best people are going to want to work for the best leaders.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, then the next element. Yeah, absolutely. Then the next element is what I call empowering communication. And what I mean by that, if you just look up the definition of the word empower, it means to make someone stronger and more confident in dealing with the circumstances they’re facing. So to disempower would be to make someone weaker and less confident. So empowering communication is a culture of communication in the organization, certainly from the leaders, but also from one teammate to the next, that makes people feel more confident and powerful and confident in dealing with the circumstances that they’re facing. And so there’s a way to communicate that actually does that. So we’ve got strong leadership, clarity and focus, engaged and committed teammates, empowering communication. Then we have this concept of accountability, 100% accountability, where, you know, I like to say that We’re responsible for things, but we’re accountable to people. And when I allow my name to be put down on a task, a deliverable, a quarterly priority, a short-term goal or whatever, and I say, I’m going to deliver that by the end of next week, by the end of next month or the next quarter, I’m saying to my peers around the table, you can count on me. I am going to be accountable to you.
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, it’s crucially important. And, and the, the burden for leaders is to make sure that if you want to have a hundred percent accountability, you’ve got to have the, uh, commensurate amount of authority and responsibility so that someone is, is truly empowered. And they can live with that a hundred percent accountability because they have the authority to do what they need to do to be successful.
Jeff Standridge:
That’s right. And back to that interdependency, you got to have clarity and focus so that people know what they’re being held accountable for and what they’re being asked to hold themselves accountable for. You know, I have had an epiphany over the last few years, you know, I used to think that this concept of accountability was a leadership behavior and it was a, it was an act of assertion. In other words, I, as a leader, I have the responsibility for holding my people accountable.
Jeff Amerine:
Exactly.
Jeff Standridge:
And I have come to learn by observation and working with dozens of companies over the years, hundreds of companies over the years, that real accountability is an act of submission. In other words, if everyone in the organization submits themselves to being held accountable by their peers and by their colleagues, then the act of assertion that a leader has to demonstrate doesn’t have to happen very often because people do it naturally.
Jeff Amerine:
That’s right. The people will hold themselves accountable because it’s an expectation. It’s part of the culture. And they realize that that’s the only way that collective commitment they have to the objectives and purpose of the company is going to be fulfilled if they hold themselves accountable and don’t let their teammates down.
Jeff Standridge:
That’s right. And I’ve also, I’m also of the opinion, I have a pretty black and white view of accountability that, you know, accountability, true accountability and integrity are pretty much synonymous with one another. Integrity is my words and my actions are aligned. My actions match my words. Accountability is I say I’m going to do something, I do it. When I don’t do it at the…at the core fundamental level, it’s an integrity problem. Um, you know, and, um, and so that’s, that’s something that I spend a lot of time with organizations trying to challenge their previously held beliefs about what accountability actually is. You know, and, and I also try to say that it’s okay that you miss a deadline. That’s not the issue. When I say it’s okay, you miss a deadline. What I’m saying is
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, I agree. I agree.
Jeff Standridge:
At the first moment that you, let’s say I’ve agreed that I’m going to deliver something by the end of Q1. At the very first moment that I recognize that I’m in danger of missing that Q1 priority, I bring it up to my colleagues and I say, guys, I’m off track here. Something has changed. I need your help. We’re in danger of missing this. And if the organization then decides, well, you know what, letting it slip two or three days is not going to be a big issue. We need to solve the, what’s the challenge that’s getting in our way. You miss the deadline, but it’s not an integrity issue because you brought it forward. Where it becomes an integrity issue is you tell your teammates, I’m on track, I’m on track for 11 weeks. And then you get to the last day of the quarter and you say, oh, I missed it, sorry. Or you say, I’ll have you this by Thursday. And when Thursday arrives and you don’t deliver it, you don’t say anything, you hope they don’t ask. And then they ask you on Monday and you say, oh no, I didn’t get it done.
That’s the integrity issue.
Jeff Amerine:
You know, it’s an interesting example of that. When I ran large software projects many years ago, it was amazing to me how a particular module would be 99% complete for 90% of the scheduled time. And that last 1% seemed to take forever to get done. And to that end, the way we began to hold ourselves accountable is it was pretty binary, it’s either zero or one.
Until it’s absolutely done and tested, it’s not done. So don’t even show a percentage and be candid about when that work will be done. So you make a great point and it is an integrity issue.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, it is. And, but if I, if I flag up the first moment that I have, that I think it’s at risk and we talk about that, then I’m, I’m buying myself that integrity, that integrity. So, so we talked about strong leadership, uh, clarity and focus about where we’re going, how we’re going to get there, uh, engaged and committed teammates, uh, empowering communication, 100% accountability. And then the final one, uh, is to, is stolen from the great management philosopher, Mike Tyson, who said that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, right? And that’s organizational agility. What does your organization do? How does it behave and how does it perform when the organization has the rug pulled out from under it or the organization gets punched in the mouth? And much of what we’ve just talked about the last three or four episodes around operational effectiveness, organizational effectiveness, really creates the ability for an organization to have resilience and agility.
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, famous line from Gunny Highway in Heartbreak Ridge was improvise, adapt and overcome. And that’s the mindset, right? You’re gonna get through curve balls, you’re gonna have black swan events and strange things that are gonna happen. What are you gonna do to adapt to that when it occurs? And it’s not to say that you’re constantly vacillating back and forth, it’s just the agility to deviate from normal practice to get something done under an unusual circumstance. It’s really important.
Jeff Standridge:
That’s right. Culture of excellence. That’s what we focus on working with our clients to actually create. We do that by helping them implement the strategic growth system, which is powered by our strategic growth diagnostic called Growth DX. So three, I guess, one tool, one system, one framework, all of which work together to move organizations forward. And I love my job.
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, it’s great stuff. And you.
Jeff Standridge:
All right, guys, happy 2023. Hope you have a great new year. We are going to have one more episode coming up. Jeff, you want to tell us about it?
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, so next time, very special episode, we’re gonna have Corey Carlson on. So be looking for that, it’s gonna be fantastic.
Jeff Standridge:
That’s right. Take a look at Corey Carlson. You want to look him up and those are Corey Carlson with a C on both his first and last name. He’s an author. He’s a leadership expert. And he’s got some great, great perspectives he’s going to be sharing with us. And I’m looking forward to it. This has been another episode of the Innovation Junkies Podcast. See you next time.
Jeff Amerine:
Sounds good.