We dissect the perils of clinging to familiar yet obsolete methods and the 'used to be' mindset, emphasizing the indispensable need for adaptability and innovation in today's dynamic business environment. If you've ever wondered why even the most successful companies falter, this conversation will illuminate the trap of past triumphs and the fresh winds of perspective that new team members can inject. By the end of our talk, you'll understand why yesterday's solutions may not solve tomorrow's puzzles, and how continual evolution is the secret ingredient for sustained success.
As the gears of our insightful discussion turn, we highlight the linchpin of any prospering enterprise: communication. Dave and I dissect the barriers that opaque and stagnant information flow can erect, advocating for a culture of transparency that eradicates the silos stifling progress. We champion the idea that challenges should be met with openness and a judgment-free approach, with leaders at the helm ensuring that knowledge is a shared asset, propelling the organization forward. Embrace these principles, and you'll be equipped to navigate and lead through the complexities of modern business landscapes with confidence and clarity.
We dissect the perils of clinging to familiar yet obsolete methods and the 'used to be' mindset, emphasizing the indispensable need for adaptability and innovation in today's dynamic business environment. If you've ever wondered why even the most successful companies falter, this conversation will illuminate the trap of past triumphs and the fresh winds of perspective that new team members can inject. By the end of our talk, you'll understand why yesterday's solutions may not solve tomorrow's puzzles, and how continual evolution is the secret ingredient for sustained success.
As the gears of our insightful discussion turn, we highlight the linchpin of any prospering enterprise: communication. Dave and I dissect the barriers that opaque and stagnant information flow can erect, advocating for a culture of transparency that eradicates the silos stifling progress. We champion the idea that challenges should be met with openness and a judgment-free approach, with leaders at the helm ensuring that knowledge is a shared asset, propelling the organization forward. Embrace these principles, and you'll be equipped to navigate and lead through the complexities of modern business landscapes with confidence and clarity.
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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership. I'm your host, travis Moss, with our Season 5 special guest, dave Nurchi, and we're getting after the lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz and our message for the day let go of the past and used to be requirements. So the requirements of the past. They got to go with the past, and this is brought to you by NQR Media Inc, where we unapologetically bring to light things that need to be talked about. Find more about NQR at our website, which you can go to nqrmediacom. You can also go to YouTube. Get all kinds of live stuff going on there.
Speaker 1:
Youtubecom slash at NQRmedia, so you can find us on YouTube as well. You'll get a chance to see all of our other shows that we do. We have shows on college, living your best life, getting the most out of your money and, of course, this one on leadership and management. All right, dave, so back to the show. We have to let go of the past and we're going to let go of the requirements that used to be. So why don't you hit us? Why don't you take off with us? I'm going to give you extra talking time today, all right?
Speaker 2:
How generous of you.
Speaker 1:
Well, I recognize that. There was an episode a couple episodes ago where you talked for about 30 seconds and 12 minutes.
Speaker 2:
So it's tough to get in there. It's all about you now, it's all about you now, right.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I like this one because the biggest thing that stuck out to me is that you're really going to stunt your company growth, your people's growth, your organization, if you kind of stick to. This is the way we do things. Mentality, and that's how I look at the used to be Right. So this is how we do things. If you hire new people, when we bring new people in right, we want them to. You know, tell me how to do it, tell me a better way to do it right, learn and and listen, train right, but then try to figure out a better way to do it. So if you have the type of culture environment where everyone just kind of sticks to the status quo it's hey, don't ask questions, let's do it this way then the biggest problem you're going to have is continued growth and development in your organization.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I'm just reading a couple of notes here. I was working on being quiet, yeah.
Speaker 2:
I know.
Speaker 1:
That was weird. Well, I was just thinking while you were saying that, I was thinking conventional wisdom, you know, because you got the whole. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. So this is the way we do it, this is the way we've been doing it. We're going to do it like this forever, basically until the wheels fall off and off. And then one day the wheels actually fall off and like everybody acts surprised, like I can't believe it doesn't work anymore, and it's like, well, come on, man, like everything changes, yeah.
Speaker 1:
And then I think, if you're stuck on, this is the way it was done and these are the requirements that we always had to do it you don't have any adaptability, like from a proactive standpoint and I see this a lot of times in workflows and processes and some of the stuff that you work a lot on with our company, which is you build something to work in a certain time, maybe based on the regulations at the time, or the staffing or the technology or something like that and the company grows, grows, grows and has all kinds of new people and all that kind of stuff. And then you just start to hit a wall. You're going why am I hitting a wall? This doesn't make any sense. I keep putting more money towards this, I keep bringing in more people, we keep subscribing to more technology. Why aren't we able to move forward? And then you dig into the processes and you, we're not moving forward, because it's almost like, yeah, we're spending the money on these other things, but we're still doing it as if we were back in the day.
Speaker 1:
You know, and I think that that's the hardest thing is, it's not and it's not only processes. We get stuck with processes, but then we also get stuck with even the way we look at our business in general. You know, and founders do this all the time Well, I had to, you know, pull myself up by my bootstrap and I had to risk everything. And you know, I want people to, you know, come and work at my business. The way that I went about it, when, when we started it, and it's like, well, if that's the case, they're going to start their own business, like you're a unique animal.
Speaker 1:
Just because you did it one way doesn't mean that that next generation is going to do it the same way. You might have to kind of get over where you're coming from and think about where you're going. So I think it's on a leadership standpoint you know there's stuff to learn here but I also think it's on a you know, normally when the business gets gummed up, when it can't move forward, you look at it and you go, wow, why is that person still doing these archaic procedures with all this new technology? I mean, we talked about it with technology before. It's like we should get a new technology program and I'm always coming back on but we don't even use the one we have to its fullest potential yet.
Speaker 2:
Right and you brought up a good point. I think what I kind of heard you saying there too is it doesn't mean it was wrong at one point either. Right Because you did it that way and we had an episode on this right Knowing what is needed as opposed to what was needed. So at the time that probably was a good process when you had it. So learning from it and why it is not a good process anymore is the biggest kind of lessons learned there to continue growing and so people understand you know, new people to the organization or as you're making changes. This is why, if you could put a this is why we're doing it behind any change you make, it's generally better accepted across the organization.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and that's one of the things that's sticky too, as the organization's growing is. You have people who are doing paperwork, let's say, a certain way, and they're doing paperwork because that was a competency of the business years ago. But the business has grown, the work has changed, the paperwork has even changed. Um, what you need regarding the paperwork has changed and the person doing the paperwork the old way. So they go you look, we can't do it, we can't do as much paperwork because there's or there's just too much paperwork. We need help. So you go out and you get help and the help comes in and they teach the the help the old way too.
Speaker 1:
Right, so now you've got people duplicating these old and inefficient ways to do work and when you go to them and you're like, why are you doing that, they say, well, this is the way that you do it, this is the procedure that was set forth, and it's like, yeah, but can't you look at the situation and go, and if it's wholly inadequate and it's holding you back, it's not necessarily like how many people do we throw at it?
Speaker 1:
At what point do we raise our hand and say, look, man, this was a great idea five years ago, but it doesn't work anymore. We've got to change this, and I think that's a real life kind of scenario that a lot of businesses are in. I've seen local governments that do this. They're still working on, you know, with very archaic technology or something like that, because that's the way it's always been done. And it's like get it upgraded, get it modernized, you know, help yourself out. And when you ask them, well, why don't you upgrade this? They go well, that's just the way it's always been done, or they don't have the skills to do that. Well then, teach them the skills.
Speaker 2:
Teaching them the skills and what do you get with that? You get frustrated people right Because they're doing things, and they're doing probably repetitive tasks. What comes to mind is a repetitive task or something you mentioned paperwork. You have people doing things and it's repetitive work that it's got eight steps, maybe it only needs three steps and it just drains their energy. So you get frustration. Maybe when you're looking at it as a leader, you end up over hiring, or hiring where maybe you didn't need to right Because you get a process the right way and you think you need five people doing this.
Speaker 1:
Now for the amount of yeah, we've been there, we've been there.
Speaker 2:
Right, and that's not a good solution, right? Because then what happens? Now you start figuring things out and now you have way too many people doing that same job, so you end up with a lot of issues if you're not addressing this type of thing that you have to work out and they could be complicated, because you're talking about people and if you're talking about frustrated employees, then if things aren't working out and their energy is kind of getting sucked out, if they're doing things like this and eventually the company becomes a thing of the past, right, if you keep living in the past.
Speaker 1:
Well, and there's also a territorial issue.
Speaker 1:
We've seen it where people, well, this is really hard work or this is really time, really time consuming work, and it's not supposed to be hard and it's not supposed to be time consuming. It is because the systems and the process and technology hasn't been upgraded, but they almost want to keep it that difficult because I'm the one who can do this. I'm the only one who can do this and and and. So the longer that it festers where you let people live in the past, you know, the more they're going to become almost egotistical, in the sense that I'm the most important person here because I know how to do this and it's very difficult, very time consuming. It's like, yeah, but it shouldn't be and and and. You might be a special person and you might be a special employee, but you're not special because you're the only one who can do that job. In fact, you might be not special at all because you're forcing us to do it that way, because you won't let go of it and let us develop it in a better way.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah. That's a problem in itself, right? If you have people who are territorial and defending their process or their value. That's literally the opposite of what you want, right? You want to teach people, and the more people who know and understand processes and can improve it, the more smart people on something right, the better in a lot of cases to figure out how to make it better.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, maybe that goes in with one of the last points that we made about. You know you want news to travel through the organization we were talking about bad news, right. But you also want you want free flowing information. This goes to the whole my whole stance against silos, right From some of our earlier seasons. You don't want information stopping. You don't want there to be this kind of error of complexity or error of difficulty. That's not actually true. That is just circumstantial, based on somebody's influence, type of thing you really want to have.
Speaker 1:
If you're getting tied up on something and it's slowing it down, it is not a measurement of the person in a negative way for them to say, hey, look, I'm getting tied up on this, the system doesn't seem right anymore. We need all these other capabilities. What should we be doing there? And then, as a leader, you know, from a leadership perspective, you go okay, well, you know what? That's not mission critical right now, and I know it's redundant and I know it's actually being expensive for us because it's costing us extra time and frustration. But we've got these other three things that are in line ahead of it. But here's the plan on how we're going to come back and address that. So you know, I think that there's. You want that information traveling through quickly and not somebody using it to protect themselves.