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Speaker 1:
this is unleashing leadership. I'm your host, travis moss, with our season five co-host, dave nurchey, and this podcast is all about our takeaways from some amazing books leadership, business, finance, all different types of books that we get into. This book happens to be the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, and our observations and experiences regarding those takeaways and how we apply those to our real life, in our day jobs, which is at Sea Planning Group, I'm the CEO and Dave is the Chief Operating Officer. So we're going to talk about things that we actually get into and how that relates to the book, and hopefully give you ideas of how you can implement some of these ideas into your life or your business, whether you're the head guy, whether you're in management, leadership or just walking in the door as an entry level employee. And our big takeaway today is two core skills for running a company knowing what to do, which is called strategy, and getting the company to do what you know, which is called efficiency. And too much strategy equals chaos, too much efficiency equals an inability to make big decisions due to overcomplication, and we need to build a management team considering this, and strategy needs to take the lead. So this is one where, as I'm reading the book, I'm just like rambling with my notes and just kind of shoved them all together. So we've got a lot to unpack today.
Speaker 1:
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Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
All right, dave where are we going with this one?
Speaker 1:
We got a run on sentence here, run on paragraph. Actually, let's just start with. We got two core skills strategy and efficiency. Let's start with strategy. Too much strategy is chaos.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think what makes running a company or leading a company hard is the strategy part. When I think, when I think of strategy, there's no right answer, right, it's not like you could just go in and say this is the all the things we have to do and this, this means we'll be successful. So, being able to to build that out and and like knowing what to do is the strategy. That's like the first part. That's. That's difficult, but you need to have confidence in what you're doing. If you have too much right this is like the articulating the vision but not dumbing it down enough right and you're just throwing stuff out there, you're going to have chaos. You have people going in all different directions. No one's going to know what the priorities are. It's just going to be hey, we want to do all this stuff. There's here's eight items, everyone's just running wild um.
Speaker 1:
So I'd back to you on on that part and we'll kind of go forward I don't remember why I put strategy equals chaos, because we're on like episode 70, something of this that's my interpretation of it.
Speaker 2:
I don't know. I don't know either I remember.
Speaker 1:
This sounds like something I would say, not something Ben would say, but it's something that I got from what Ben was saying in the book. But here's what I think about looking at this now Strategy equals chaos, and a big reason why strategy equals chaos is because a lot of things. What happens with strategy is we talk, talk, talk, talk, talk right, or we write these big, beautiful 500 page strategic plans or or or a one page strategic plan. What we really need with strategy is project management. We need to understand how to create a vision and a direction, but then how to pull that into project management and break it down into pieces that we can go after, because through that process you can then figure out a calendar, and a lot of times what you see in businesses is everybody's working on their project, or everybody's doing this, that or the other thing, but nothing's coordinated. Resources aren't coordinated, communication's not happening well. Different divisions will be working on things that either overlap or completely diverge and go in different directions. People work on things that they don't have the ability to actually do because they don't have the authorities or stuff like that.
Speaker 1:
So, um, you know knowing what to do. I don't even mean that by, like I know every step, like once I get done with this step, I know exactly what to do. You don't always know what to do. What you know what to do, what you know to do, is I need, I need a consistent reason. I'm doing everything, and then I need project management wrapped around that and then I can control the chaos. If I, if I, if I'm not good at that and I don't have like a consistent principle, then you know, strategy can run amok. There's lots and lots of people who come up with all these great ideas, of all these things they can do, and before you know they got 200 things they're doing but they're not doing anything.
Speaker 2:
Yep, yeah, and you, you you kind of got right there I mean, you've said it before like organized chaos, right? So what happens then is what? What we're not saying is that, okay, you have all this like project management, here's exactly what you do, go forward and there's no room for creativity or or adapting or, you know, pivoting, anything like that. There's absolutely room for that, but building out the project management and milestones and having people working towards a goal right, that's going to give the organized part right and there's always some room for some of the chaos where like hey, well, what about this?
Speaker 2:
Or, you know, maybe we got to change direction here when we're halfway through, for whatever reason. So organized chaos would be the best way. I think that that's what you want to develop as the leader. Right, you want organization around it, but you still want some freedom for people to have some decision making and things like that.
Speaker 1:
Well, let's talk about efficiency then, which is really that was a thing I remember that's getting the company to do what you know. So that's definitely a Ben. So the first part knowing what to do, which I called strategy the strategy part was me putting that in there. Knowing what to do with Ben, so his thing is what's coming next? And I really do think that that stems from good, clean project management, and sometimes the project is the overarching mission, right. But then getting the company to do what you know, that's in Ben's word and that's like I know how to do this.
Speaker 1:
But how do I get you guys to know how to do it? Because it is very complicated, right. And seeing how we I call it seeing around walls, where you can you start to get so good at analyzing a situation where you can go into a room that you know is X amount of square feet and you can tell that there's something behind a wall, um, just by the spatial relationship, and you know what's behind there, and let's be prepared for what's behind their type of thing, right. So it's, you want to be able to see around the walls, like where are you going next and and what could you be actually bumping into, or what should you expect? Um, and then the term that I put in there was efficiency, and I said too much efficiency equals the inability to make big decisions, um, really due to overcomplicating things. But before I kind of give my spiel on that, I wanted to know kind of what your takeaways were on efficiency.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think it boils down to the balance there. I mean, you need, when I think efficiency, I automatically think of processes and ways to do something right, Like there's a way, there is a correct way to do something right, I guess. Like, if you have a process down, here's what you follow, whether it's like a compliance thing or it's just operational. You know here, here's, as we know right now, the best way to do this.
Speaker 1:
Right.
Speaker 2:
So do it that way. But if you're too focused on that part of the, you know here's the best way to do this. We have to be very efficient. You kind of go back to what I said before you lose some of the creativity or the or the chance for improvement. So that's where I see the balance is you have to, you have to be able to do it as written, I guess, right as a procedure, but also have the room for improvement. Um, so that, and then the decision part. If you're too focused on, this is the right way, or the only way we don't want to take, like the, you know risk of maybe changing something.
Speaker 2:
You're never going to be able to make that decision, to do it or to move forward or to change something.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think I would tie this together. You have an aha moment, so or not? You may not. Let's say that the leader because we're talking about the leader two skills running a company. So you know where you're trying to go with the company, right, and you can see around the walls. You kind of see where you're trying to go. And then you have the company, which is all the employees and stuff, and you're trying to get them to take that vision and actually make it happen, and obviously the more that they can operate and execute efficiently, the theoretically quicker you're going to get there, right.
Speaker 1:
However, what happens with the leader a lot of times is I know what to do, but I don't necessarily know how to articulate it all. So if you learn how to do A, b and C, let's say that you have a map and you're going to make this map as you go and every day you go to work a certain way, and so that becomes a path on your map. And then one day you know there's a roadblock so you have to go another way. So now you have another path on your map and one goes way around to the north and one goes way around to the south, and you never knew that there was a way to go straight through the middle, right, You've just always gone what was convenient and comfortable, that you knew, and and you say, hey, that's pretty efficient. You know, I know exactly how long it's going to take me, you know, I know, you know, I basically got it all mapped out where the problems in the route are, if there's going to be construction or something like that. I've got it all figured out. But you, kind of driving to work every day, don't realize that I can go straight across and cut the time in half. Um, but it conflicts with everything that you do know about.
Speaker 1:
Somebody told me when I first got here this was the best way to go. Then I had to go this way and I found that out and it's a good way to go, but it's I'm not as comfortable with it. Well, there's a way that I can just cut straight through and I can cut the time in half through and I can cut the time in half. So what happens? As the leader, I come to you and you're working on something and you have a process to do it and you go way to the north and then I say, hey, the process doesn't work. So you go way to the south, right, and really what we need to do is just go straight through the middle.
Speaker 1:
And if you are too efficient, if you're worried about efficiency because you've got systems and processes that are so structured, I can tell you a better way to do it. I can bring to you like, look, this is how we need to do this. And you won't be able to do it, and normally it's because of overcomplicating factors. It's like, well, I have to go this way because X, y, z, that's where the coffee shop is. And it's like, well, no, there's a, there isn't our coffee shop on the, you know, straight between type of thing, whatever the reasons is.
Speaker 1:
And so I think we lose so much because we don't properly create an organization that's adaptable, that is designed to change.
Speaker 1:
I mean, our very first episode of this podcast, episode one, the first day, we talked about adaptability and why adaptability is so important, right, and so you're the leader, you kind of know what has to happen and you know that you need to be adaptable.
Speaker 1:
Yet we structure these businesses that are overly focused on efficiency, and then you know when we need to make changes. We can't, yeah, and so I think that that's and the last part about that is building a management team. Considering this, we don't have time to focus on that, but the management team is the execution team right, they're the ones who actually get the stuff done. So the leader says, hey, you know, here's my idea, here's what we need. And the management team needs to be built in a way like you were just saying. They need that autonomy to be able to make some decisions, to say, look, we need to be prepared to change when things change. We can't always be overly focused on what's the quickest or cheapest way or what's the most convenient or comfortable way, or nobody asks questions, because then we actually have to do more work, or something like that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, and I think, like the last point, just it's it's complimenting, right. We're talking about different things here that work. You get a management team that has these different skill sets and compliment each other, not not all the same type of person. Like I'm a baseball person, right. I think of a baseball lineup Easiest thing a lineup is structured a certain way, right, the leadoff hitter gets on base and maybe not the best hitter, and you got different hitters throughout the lineup that all have kind of a job to do. And that's how I think of a management team that you structure to be efficient but also have enough creativity, right?
