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Speaker 1:
this is unleashing leadership and I'm your host, travis moss. Welcome back to season five. We've got our co-host, dave nurchey, with us and we are into the book the hard thing about hard things by ben harowitz, and we're into the part of the book where we're merging some of Ben's key points and some of my broader takeaways. So we're getting a little bit wordy, but I think we've got some good discussions to have here and today. You may be right even when everyone else thinks that you are wrong. People may never know when you were right and the most important influence is the confidence of the ceo.
Speaker 1:
So the chief executive officer and that is brought to us by nqr media inc. Talking about the stuff that needs to be talked about to get more out of life. Check them out at nqrmediacom. You can find our podcasts wherever podcasts live. Uh, nqr's got a channel just about everywhere, so you could look for NQR and you're going to have the Cutthroat College podcast that we talk about the one big thing Ditch the Suits this podcast. You can also go to YouTube NQR Media and please subscribe like comment. Have some fun. All right, dave.
Speaker 2:
Where are we going with this one? Where are we going with this one? You may be right even when everyone else thinks you're wrong, so does it matter if you're right, if everyone thinks you're wrong?
Speaker 1:
yeah, um, we talk about kind of the team of teams concept and you've, you're sitting at the top of the team with all the information, right, and so you're and you've. You can see this. So, even even in our company, with the 26 or 28 or so employees that we have, there's tiers of knowledge, there's tiers of awareness, right, even as open as we are, there's just people aren't focused on it, they're not aware of it, they're not, they haven't advanced as the skill sets that are needed to even think about some of the stuff that we're doing or whatever. So, as you go up that you've got information and perspective that nobody else has and the goal that the top leadership is to get all the parts driving in the right direction, right, and we see a wall coming in front of us and we know that we've got to turn off one of these side streets. We need to prepare one of the side streets, and it's not bailing out, it's just understanding business and how business works and stuff like that, making sure that we're able to make a pivot when we need to make a pivot, yep. And so I think in Ben's case we talked in the last episode where he has to completely overhaul the company and change the nature of the company.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, everybody might be sitting there saying you're nuts to be doing this, why are you doing this? Sometimes you're going to spend all your time explaining to people why you're doing it and trying to sell them on the idea, or you just get them pointed in that right direction and then all of a sudden it comes together Right, and that's the hard part. In in we talk about flexing right and we, you know the uh, the infinite game with Simon Sinek, and that's the hard part. In in we talk about flexing right and we, you know the? Uh, the infinite game with simon sinek and that in that book he talks about the existential flex. Sometimes and not sometimes consistently, you know, and maybe like uh, some kind of cadence, you do need to flex. You gotta, you gotta do something that just disrupts things so much because it gets you to the next level, the next plateau, and everybody's gonna line up saying why are you doing this? Why aren't we good where we're at?
Speaker 1:
You know, in general, even with a fairly open community you know we're fairly open um, you know staff full of humble, hungry and smart people Change is still difficult and change sometimes is hard to see. Here's the guy with all the information. He can see the vision. Sometimes you can't quite paint the picture well enough to get everybody through the fear of making the. You know the moves as you need to move.
Speaker 1:
Or sometimes I, you know, we'll do work on projects and while people say, I just couldn't see it, though, came more together and we're like well, wait, we colored it for you, we used crayons, we made a really nice picture for you. You know, we put it in Excel, we put it in in uh, you know, powerpoint. We had meetings on it. How did you still not understand? It was like I just couldn't understand it.
Speaker 1:
And now you know, the CEO, as they're driving, has to sometimes just have confidence in the fact that they're driving in the right direction. And you know what, if it's too hard for you to understand what it is, hopefully you'll. And that's where the trust bank and all that stuff comes in that we talk about People buying into the fact that this is a good leader. They know where they're going. I may not understand where they're going, but I understand they know where they're going. I may not understand where they're going, but I understand they know where they're going.
Speaker 1:
And then all of a sudden you have this aha moment when it comes all comes together and there's stuff you do behind the scenes too in leadership, where somebody else gets the credit right. They're like that was a brilliant idea, so-and-so did that. And it happens all the time Like I'll give a division or a particular manager an idea and they go and they execute it wonderfully and they have great results. And then I'm in a meeting. Everybody's like look at them, you know that was such a great idea. People don't have to know it was you who was driving the boat all the time. Right, you know what I mean. Let the other leaders and that kind of stuff. Let them get that attention and that recognition, because that's going to teach them how to work with their subordinates right, because if they got that gift and got the praise for it, that's going to give them permission to do that for the next person down. So to me that kind of takes the first two points.
Speaker 1:
And then the third point was um, just the confidence of the ceo. That's, your job is to have confidence. If you're walking around without confidence, um, people are just going to start jumping out the windows. I mean, like, your job is to find the path to follow and once you find that path, to have confidence. If you put everything in that you can put in that the path is going to work out.
Speaker 1:
And if the path winds and turns and twists and there's a wall in front of it and you got to take a left-hand turn, your confidence is I see that wall, I know what that wall is. I know I got to left-hand turn. Your confidence is I see that wall, I know what that wall is. I know I gotta take a left-hand turn here to avoid hitting the wall. And then you get on that new path and I'm confident that I can figure out where this path is going. You know and I'm confident that I can navigate. None of this like I'm going to hide in a corner and need a safe space because I don't know what the future has for me. It's you are always confident in the next step, because that's your damn job is to design the next step yep, right, oh, that's good.
Speaker 2:
So I think, um, you covered all three there.
Speaker 1:
I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of summarize I probably should have stopped at one and then like that's good.
Speaker 2:
I'll summarize what I heard and you see if you have any more thoughts on it, but I think the first part, what I was hearing you say, is like, you know, you might be right and everyone else thinks you're wrong. So you may be leading the ship or you're looking at this thing from 30,000 feet, right? So you see everything happening and there's certain moves and things that have to be done. The people who may think like, well, this is crazy, or what are we doing? You know, this isn't right. They're looking at it up close, right, and they're just seeing maybe one part of it.
Speaker 2:
So that second part there is, like now, as things start coming together, there's like this piece, that piece, this division's leading this and people are saying, oh, wow, that manager did a great job. Okay, that's great. So the staff might not know that all of this came from the highest level and is part of the plan, so they might still think you were wrong or didn't realize. Well, yeah, the CEO was right, even though the managers are kind of getting credit for it, for it. And along the way, as all this was happening and people doubted things, the confidence that the CEO is showing is what is keeping everybody going forward, because it's like, okay, well, I see this, this is the vision. It's strong, we're confident in what we're doing, we're going to keep pushing forward to see how this goes, type of thing.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, if you took a painting, if you watched a good artist paint a painting, it doesn't look right when they're painting it. You know they're good, you know they're going to come out with a good painting. The artist knows they're going to come out with a good painting, but you're watching it and really you probably shouldn't even look at the painting until the end. Because, let's say, you commission somebody to do a painting and you watch them paint half of it. You're like this is horrible, I can't imagine. I don't even finish it. I hate this thing, right. Well, they didn't finish if you just waited for them to finish it.
Speaker 1:
There's a mosaics.
Speaker 1:
You use glass, right, and so you, or any tile job, you know you go in there and and and you, you make this really ornate looking surface. You know it doesn't look good until you grout it, but the grout comes at the very, very end. So if you get halfway done and you go this is shitty, I hate it, it's ugly, and you tear it all up before you grouted it, you didn't actually get an opportunity to see what it was supposed to look like, right, and for most people, when we're looking at works that are in development, we don't really get a very good idea of what it's supposed to look like, and when you're talking about the painting or, let's say, tile work or something like that with grout, the artist or the craftsman might not know how they're going to deal with a certain situation, like I'm not sure exactly how I want to make that shadow, or I'm not sure exactly how I want to go around that corner. That doesn't mean they're not confident, though. So there's a big difference between I don't know and I'm not confident.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:
I don't know, but I'm confident. I'm going to figure it out as I go through it. And when you're in a leadership position, it is your job to be confident that you're going to get through it, not be like I'm not confident because I don't have all the answers. And that's another thing with being in a leadership position. You're not going to have all the answers. You shouldn't pretend that you do, and that's another discussion for another day. Right, but definitely there's going to, there's time.
Speaker 1:
But just because I don't have the answers doesn't mean I'm not confident. It doesn't mean that I can't climb that mountain. You know there's, there's back to. You know there's a thousand things in life that can happen. Right, I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm confident that I can handle them as they happen, or I'll learn how to handle them as they happen. Right, it's that type of mindset and and and you, if that's, if you're leading from a standpoint of let me take you on this journey and I'm going to get you there one way or another that confidence is going to pull people along with you. Nobody wants to follow somebody who's afraid of what's what's in front of them.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's where the the trust the things we talk about, trust, transparency, all that it all plays into that, because the confidence is there and people will follow because of all the other stuff that you've built with them.
