Our conversation is filled with real-world anecdotes that shine a light on the complexities of leadership, communication, and cultivating a culture adept at tackling challenges head-on.
This episode is more than just a dialogue; it's a masterclass in differentiating the personal from the professional when it comes to workplace woes. We tackle the concept of setting a 'Just Cause' for your business, which can serve as the north star for problem-solving endeavors. From understanding the broader organizational picture to providing clear direction, we discuss how leaders can ensure only legitimate business concerns rise to the surface. This is an episode for anyone eager to learn about the intricate dance of nurturing a robust workplace culture where every member of the team is in sync, armed with the right mindset to propel the organization forward.
📖 Buy "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I0A6HUO/?coliid=I7TR8TYLMUZOH&colid=3C5OKZF0U2T0V&psc=0&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_vv_lig_dp_it
🎙️ One Big Thing Podcast - https://theonebigthing.buzzsprout.com/
Our conversation is filled with real-world anecdotes that shine a light on the complexities of leadership, communication, and cultivating a culture adept at tackling challenges head-on.
This episode is more than just a dialogue; it's a masterclass in differentiating the personal from the professional when it comes to workplace woes. We tackle the concept of setting a 'Just Cause' for your business, which can serve as the north star for problem-solving endeavors. From understanding the broader organizational picture to providing clear direction, we discuss how leaders can ensure only legitimate business concerns rise to the surface. This is an episode for anyone eager to learn about the intricate dance of nurturing a robust workplace culture where every member of the team is in sync, armed with the right mindset to propel the organization forward.
📖 Buy "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I0A6HUO/?coliid=I7TR8TYLMUZOH&colid=3C5OKZF0U2T0V&psc=0&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_vv_lig_dp_it
🎙️ One Big Thing Podcast - https://theonebigthing.buzzsprout.com/
📖 To access Travis' complete book list, visit his storehere
Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, and we are with our season five special guest, dave Nertje, and we're getting after the lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, and today we are talking about stop all capital, Don't bring me a problem unless you bring me a solution. And this is brought to you by One Big Thing Podcast, because you are not alone. Learn how to reframe your challenges and overcome the things that are holding you back. Check them out. Go to nqrmediacom, click on the little podcast button up in the top right.
Speaker 1:
Look for one big thing that's also in all caps locks, so you'll find it. It's bold, but some good stuff there. You can hear from Navy SEALs, nfl football players, presidents of universities, all kinds of stuff. Steve gets into it with people, so check it out. All right, dave, I'm wishy-washy on this one and I'll explain why, but I'll let you go first, because you have the same perspective as Ben Horowitz on this. So this is what you got on this same perspective as Ben Horowitz on this.
Speaker 2:
So this is what you got on this. Yeah, I think there's a balance here. I lean more towards raising your hand and saying you know, I have a problem or a challenge and I don't know what to do. Right, so I lean that way because I think it gets an issue out there, it gets it out in the open, it maintains transparency in your environment and it could get the right people involved early enough to minimize the impact of whatever this problem is. Right, the balance there is. You don't want your people just raising their hand at the first moment. They maybe run into a roadblock or something.
Speaker 2:
So that's where I think it gets a little tricky, and that's part of the environment and culture that you create of how do you handle a problem and what's a good process or a best practice to actually handle that problem.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I had a manager early on in my working life. When I was in college I worked at a sports bar and restaurant and I got promoted to management and the general manager, um. I thought it was a pretty good general manager but I don't at the time have much to compare him to Um. But he's bringing me along. And I started as a dishwasher, basically worked my way up to management within a year or two and um and I I showed up one day and I had an 18-page printout of all the things that the restaurant was doing wrong and how we could fix them and how I was the guy to fix them and how smart I was and all that kind of stuff. But I didn't put any solutions in there, I just pointed out why everybody else was doing a crappy job and so he took it. He took the paper and he put it on his desk and so I went in.
Speaker 1:
A couple weeks later I'm like, hey, did you look over my report? And he's like, yeah, I did. And I'm like, well, what'd you, what'd you think? He goes. I threw it away. And I go why'd you throw it away? He goes.
Speaker 1:
Stop bringing me problems. Unless you got solutions, man, he goes I know what the problems are, and so I that there's, you know. And then ben horowitz, basically in the same words don't make, bring me a problem unless you bring me a solution. He's saying that that's junk. He's like look, if somebody knew how to solve a problem, they'd solve it in the first place before they brought it to me. Right, that gets to culture development, though. Right, like he's, he wants him bad information to travel quickly through the organization so he can get to the decision makers, so the decision makers can solve it. Yep, right, he doesn't want you to be afraid of bringing stuff up, but that's a cultural aspect of his lead. You know, he's developing that because of his leadership, he runs an organization where he's not allowing people to bitch and moan. Right, and that's the point there, right? So here I am following around my manager I'm 20 years old at the time, or 21 years old, and this guy's been doing it and he's been doing a very successful. He ran a very good restaurant and I'm just like nip, nipping at his heels, telling him why everybody else sucks, right, you know. And he's turns around and it's like knock it off, bring me solutions.
Speaker 1:
So I think it's a cultural thing, like if you foster a culture where people can just complain about everything, like there's a difference between bringing you a legit problem and complaining because somebody looked at you wrong, you know. Or complaining for the 15th time that the phone system doesn't work, right, you know, or something like that. It's like we get it, we're working on it, like move on, stop dwelling on this. You know that type of thing, you know, or you know that person over there. They don't respect me, they don't talk to me nicely, okay, well, tell me about it. Well, we just keep sending text messages back and forth and I'm mad at them because they said this or that, okay, so they literally sit 20 feet from you. You have you got off your butt and gone over and talk to them? Well, no, I don't, you know, we just do the text messaging thing and stuff like that. So it comes down to all the little things and the way that kind of it's communication right.
Speaker 1:
And because when I first because I've always said, don't bring me a problem, let's bring me a solution then I hear ben say you know, that's bullshit, you want people bringing up the problems, regardless of how small they are, and that really stopped me in my tracks, but then I'm thinking too. But you have to create the environment where you define what an actual problem is. Right, and I think he does that with you know side story on this but he does that with, like, the swear words. Right, there's a point in the book where, yeah, right, he's talking about how the the you know, they have an intervention because people think that there's too much profanity in the organization and he's the biggest swearer of them all. Right, he's f-bombing everything. And so he's like okay, well, you know, I guess I know who's at the heart of this problem.
Speaker 1:
And so they said, okay, well, so the problem is swear words, which really isn't the problem. The problem is how people are receiving the swear words. So they come up with a set of rules and they say look, there's a big difference between if I tell you, dave, this is a big deal or Dave, this is a big fucking deal, right, One tells you and this is in his words one tells you that you think about it, and the other one says put down what you're doing and deal with it, right, right, and he's like so sometimes it helps to emphasize that and you're not trying to make anybody feel good, you're trying to let them know that this is a fire and we need to get after it right like so. So his point is is well, let's have rules around that. Then.
Speaker 1:
If people are being disrespectful, if they're being harassing about with with swearing, that's off limits. So if you have that problem, raise your hand and we'll address that problem. If you don't have that problem, get tougher skin and that was the end of the problem. It never came up again. You know, and I'm sure through organizations, that every now and then there's employees that are harassing other employees and stuff like because you're just not going to have that. If you have hundreds or thousands of employees, you're not going to have a situation where nobody ever acts out of line. Right.
Speaker 1:
So I'm certain at some point probably get raised to the ranks again, but at an individual level, through the proper chains and things like that. But really what he's talking about is oh, you know, we woke up today and the website's down or the technology doesn't work. You know, raise your hand and let everybody know. That's a big, that's a really big problem versus you know what we're out of? Capri Sun in the refrigerator.
Speaker 2:
Right, yeah, yeah, and I I like the point you made kind of early on in your your what. What you said was the like complaining, it's the approach and how you say it, or or what you're saying. If you're complaining, that's different than raising your hand. If I'm complaining about the same thing, or I'm just, you know, geez travis does this, or and I I'm just saying it to say it, or, you know, creating like a negative buzz on something because I have a problem with it. That's very different than saying, hey, I'm raising my hand because I really don't know what to do, or I tried, this didn't work. Anyone else have a suggestion? Like there's a big difference than just Then complaining. I mean, the word you use is perfect and that again it goes back to what you create and people being comfortable either raising their hand appropriately or getting away with complaining. That's like the swear word example. You have to set that tone of what is appropriate and what's not.
Speaker 1:
Well, that gets you into some of the biggest issues that are facing organizations right now is virtue signaling and commingling personal issues into the business. Right, and so when you walk into work, your job is business. Whatever the business of the organization is, that's your focus now. And so, whatever your personal issues are, those are supposed to stay out right, like if you are searching for attention at a personal level. If you bring that and allow that to be your focus at work, that's going to be extremely disruptive and you're going to be bringing up problems that aren't real problems. They're problems to you because you're not getting attention, but they're not problems to the organization. And so I think you know establishing that culture and establishing the parameters of what is a problem, what should be, you know, expedited, what should you be raising your hand on. You know what you know. I think that type of thing is really important. But I also think that you want to be very deliberate in something that we've done. You know, as we started to go through that, the next step of our Just Cause project that we started last season, where we, you know, establish kind of what our guiding star is Then you take that and you start putting that in action, and part of that is defining the parameters. So I think leadership's job is not just to say don't bring me a problem or bring all problems. It's to define the parameters of what a problem is and what acceptable behavior is, so that you don't end up getting inundated with just garbage or arrogance or people who don't know all.
Speaker 1:
Because here's the thing. You could say, well, there's a problem over here with this thing over here we're working on, and you say, okay, what's the problem? And Ben talks about this in the book all the time. It's like, well, it's X, y, Z is the problem, because it doesn't make any sense. I don't see why we're doing it.
Speaker 1:
And it's like, well, I need you to do that because there's, you know, seven things going on over here that you don't actually know about, because you know at that particular job level, the competency isn't there, possibly to know about all those other things. Right, and not saying that there's secrets being kept, but you know there could be competency levels that you just you just don't have to understand the bigger picture and I can't teach it to you in an hour long conversation. It would take possibly years of skill development for you to be able to understand it. So you think it's a problem, but it's not a problem. The problem is the fact that you don't want to do it unless you know why you're doing it. You know what I mean, and not only know why you're doing it, but it has to make sense to you who doesn't have all the information.