Imagine a workplace where the thirst for achievement and an unyielding dedication to learning are not just appreciated but celebrated as cornerstones of progress. We explore the symbiotic relationship between a company's growth and its employees' development, emphasizing the importance of an environment that cultivates hope and a sense of belonging. This isn't your run-of-the-mill leadership talk; it's a guide to nurturing a community within your business that thrives on dedication and shared victories.
Imagine a workplace where the thirst for achievement and an unyielding dedication to learning are not just appreciated but celebrated as cornerstones of progress. We explore the symbiotic relationship between a company's growth and its employees' development, emphasizing the importance of an environment that cultivates hope and a sense of belonging. This isn't your run-of-the-mill leadership talk; it's a guide to nurturing a community within your business that thrives on dedication and shared victories.
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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, and we are with our Season 5 special guest, dave Nurchi, as we get after the lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, and on the docket today we are talking about the importance of hope. That's also. I think we had a whole episode on hope and will in our last book in our last season, when we were going over what was our last book, dave, I can't, it seems like it was so long ago the Infinite Game. Yes, the whole Just Cause and Hope and Will and all that kind of stuff. So, the importance of hope. We're after that now. We just do so much of this stuff. Some of these things blend together.
Speaker 1:
But today's episode is brought to you by Cutthroat College Podcast and their college bootcamp program, helping people avoid going broke because of the cost of college. So if you know people that are trying to have a better conversation with their kids or make a better business decision about what college or what degree, or if they should get into the trade or maybe they shouldn't go to school at all, that's a great program. You can get more information on nqrmediacom. All right, so back to our point for today, the importance of hope. And I'm thinking back to the book and we've been kind of on this journey through the last couple of episodes where we talked about you know, you've got to get out there, you've just got to do it. Then we talked about the fact that you are just naturally going to be scared, and then we talked about and it's just part of the process, but you still got to act and we talked about euphoria and terror, kind of the rollercoaster you're on. And I think what Ben talks about in the same context and the same kind of portion of the book is the importance of hope, because that's the, that's the tiny little light in your tunnel vision at the very end, right, that's the. You've been in the darkness for days and all of a sudden you come out and there's this beautiful garden and it's all. It's all lit up in front of you. I remember I lived in Pittsburgh when I was younger and they have all these tunnels on the way into the city. So you're in these dark tunnels and you're driving and all of a sudden you come out on the side of a mountain, on a bridge, and the entire city opens up in front of you and it's like this ah moment. Right, it's an absolutely beautiful moment and that's kind of like.
Speaker 1:
When I think about the importance of hope, I'm thinking about this coming through the other end and how everything we did look what it led to. So it's like it's faith, it's hope, it's believe in something. It goes back to the infinite game Now that I remember what we were talking about last season. It goes back into having a mission that's bigger than you individually, like a purpose, like what are we doing? And I think one of the interesting things to talk about here. I don't know, dave, where you want to go with this, but employees and I was having this conversation with a couple other business leaders over the last couple of days Employees, a lot of times today, think that when they come and they get a job someplace, it's about them.
Speaker 1:
They walk in the door and they go. It's about me. What about me? What can the business do for me? And the best employees are the ones who walk in and say okay, what's the mission of the company? What do I bring to the mission of the company? How can I move the company forward? Because in doing so, they move themselves forward. They don't have to worry about taking care of themselves. They will be taken care of.
Speaker 1:
And that doesn't mean that there aren't company cultures that do take advantage of people, right, just like there's bad people right, there's bad companies out there.
Speaker 1:
But let's assume that you're going to work at a good company that has a mission, is is a little bit maybe altruistic or something like that is trying to progress forward and we can get employees to join the company that believe in where we're going.
Speaker 1:
That's the hope. Where we're going is the hope and reinforcing where we're going, because you're going to have these really crappy times that you go through, no matter what the company is, where you know money's tight, people get or key people get sick, or, especially if you're a small business, right, or somebody doesn't do a job well or there's a crappy manager in place, and the only thing that kind of, I think, pulls you through is this idea of where we're actually going with this thing and why I need to do the tedious stuff and deal with the terror that we talked about, and you know why I can't, you know, sit on my euphoria too much, and you know it's. I think it just puts in perspective that hope. Is that, like we were talking about, with the just cause, that guiding star in the future that we're working towards.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's, you know, hope. Hope creates that vision and company mission, right? So we're talking just cause. That is what hope is and that's what paints that picture for the leaders in the company, everybody in the company and, to your point, of the employees and people coming in and what's in it for me, how do I protect myself? How do I advance my career? I think that happens a lot because a lot of companies don't have their defined just cause or they create an environment where employees are looking over their shoulder right, whether it's micromanaging or quotas, right. They kind of a lot of people get chewed up and spit out at companies and they become defensive or they don't. They don't have the trust in the company, so they do look out for themselves. So that starts, you know. Is it? You kind of ask yourself, is it their fault? Have they lost hope because of their experience? How do I, when they come to my company, how do I instill that in them from day one, right? How do I build the environment so?
Speaker 1:
that it's supportive to them when they're walking in the door, when they walk in the door. So one thing that and we talk about all the time, but it's more and more relevant is the hope cannot be for more money. Right, like Dave, if you come and join our company and you're joining the company just for more money and not because you believe in where the company is going, you're not going to do a very good job. You're going to have a very defined shelf life. It's going to actually be hard for you to buy into the people around you and some of the things that are being done, because if it's always about money, you're always going to be looking at what everybody else is making, every single decision. Is there any waste? Why can't I get more if we're going to spend money on that single decision? Is there any waste? Why can't I get more if we're going to spend money on that? Why can't you know what I mean? Like it's it's always going to be a tit for tat type of thing. Yeah, and that kind of takes me on our journey where you know we made a commitment to hire based on virtues, so that whole humble, hungry, smart um structure that we've talked about and we really do buy into the idea of team, of team. So you know, we're kind of ladder, we're looking for people who have these very specific virtues that they live by. That's not good enough.
Speaker 1:
You then have to create the environment to put them in. You have to give them the thing that they're working towards. You have to say this is the higher purpose that we are all working towards and you're bringing your skills and talents to the table. You have to give them something to actually buy into and I think, like you said, a lot of businesses don't do that. They just simply say well, you know, we're going to give you a job, and you sit there and put your head down and stamp these forms and just keep pushing them through, as if there's no like moral or ethical or kind of value to what they're doing. It's just kind of like we put it in front of you, stamp it and move it, but so you find somebody with the virtues and then you find somebody. So that's hard enough. In today's hiring environment that's very difficult. But then you go out there and you want to find somebody with passion and commitment, because not only do you need the virtues, but they have to be bought into what you're doing and that's passion and commitment. So that's even harder, right.
Speaker 1:
So let's say that and this is why there's so few people out there like this right now and why, maybe you know, I've been wondering, you and I and our leadership team have been talking a lot about do we need to build the environment to foster this so that we can bring people, maybe with the first one or two of these tools? So that we can bring people, maybe with the first one or two of these tools? Or, let's say, we get the right virtues and they are hungry. If we have the right environment, how much can we foster the passion and the commitment component? How much of that is on the business's responsibility and how can we do that better? But you've got to have both pieces and so they're both rare.
Speaker 1:
So maybe you have 10% of the people out there that are going to match up with you virtue wise, so you don't hire the first person that fogs the mirror. Maybe you go short, stepped on purpose, because you you know 10 or 20% or maybe 50%, but some some portion of the portion that you already did. So you're whittling down where you, you know where you can recruit from and chances are, if you find somebody with the strong virtues that you're looking for and passion and commitment, chances are really good. They already found something. So those people aren't just like floating around out there like I got nothing to do, right, right, like they're. They're either building, you know your competition or, um, you know they're already tied up someplace. You know somebody because this is what happens and this is for, like, young employees or young prospective employees.
Speaker 1:
And again, not all companies are good, just like not all people are good. But in today's world, when a company that has a clear idea of where they're going, when they find somebody with the virtues and the passion and the commitment, you get more than you could pot. I mean this is why there's so many millionaires that were created out of IBM and Xerox and Kodak back in the day and all the other companies Tesla, amazon, facebook all those companies the first people in did so well. They matched up virtue-wise. Then they had passion and commitment to get this thing off the ground when there was potentially no money in it for them, and then they all became gazillionaires. Because what does the company do when somebody makes that kind of commitment? It's like being in a relationship yeah right, I'm gonna share with you.
Speaker 1:
that's where you get stock options. You get chances to buy equity real cheap. You get, you know, grants, you get um. You get a lot of times promoted up through the ranks quicker because you've been part of that structure. You get added to the board of directors and get compensation for that kind of stuff If you're at a good business that has a well-defined mission that they're working towards and they find people who are committed, who had the same same virtues.
Speaker 1:
Cause, like, part of being hungry is maybe you don't have the right skill, the perfect skillset for the next job, but because you're hungry, you go out and you learn it while you're waiting your turn to have a shot at the next job. Right, so you're, you're constantly leveling yourself up, at least to some degree, or you're willing to move horizontally through the organization to where your skills do really matter. And I think when you have all of that, you make it so that the company almost feels obligated. Well, it does feel obligated. Well, it does feel obligated. I feel obligated to reward people who check those boxes, because that is the breadth of the company, right, they are the organs of the company, they keep the company moving forward and whether they're there for 10 years, 20 years, you know, or a 30-year career doesn't matter, at least for the time that they're. They're committed like that, um, as a business, it's it's. It's hard not to, it's hard to justify not coming to them and saying you deserve more.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and that it boils down to they share that hope with you, right, they share the belief with you and doing your best what's in your control, right? Like you said, you kind of whittle down the available people out there. You have to do your best as a company to make sure you're creating that environment and it's so in your face when you start that people can't ignore it. The hope and belief of what the company is doing, how you're changing the world, has to bleed through the whole company. So when that new person comes in, it's just in their face and they get right on board and they share it right away and that's how you get and keep those people.
Speaker 1:
Gotcha. So create the hope and the belief in the mission and if the company is worth a grain of salt, the company is going to take care of that person for being so committed yep.