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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, with our Season 5 co-host, dave Nurchi, and this podcast is all about our takeaways from good books. The book that we're working on today is the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, and not just talking about his book, but our observations and takeaways and how we implement that into our day lives and the things that we're really passionate about. As we work for Seed Planning Group Myself I'm the CEO, dave's the chief operating officer, and we're always inspired by these great ideas that come up in books, and one of the things that we wanted to do with this show is bring those ideas and show practical application. So some of the things we'll talk about how we've done them or how we work on it or the importance of them, and some of them will debate whether or not we think it's a good idea and how we might do them. And do us a favor, as always like and subscribe to us wherever you're listening or watching from. It definitely helps this show show up on other people's feeds.
Speaker 1:
And our takeaway today short and sweet. We've been doing these long ones Last time I apologize if I got a little wordy. I think we got the whole 14 minutes, but this time we're just going to be talking about separating facts from perception and, let's say, the importance thereof, and this is brought to you by let's see who's bringing this 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 out more information at NQR media, on our YouTube channel or wherever else you can find podcasts. All right, dave. Separating facts from perception. Nope, this is a wide open like. This is the open ended question, right, like, like, where do you want to start with this?
Speaker 2:
My first thought on this one when I looked at it was um, just an example, that at seed of um, we we talked about before our, our paperwork situation right and our operation team, um, the perception there was that we needed, you know, a team twice the size to be able to keep up with the work that was done.
Speaker 2:
And it was for whatever reasons that we'd get. Is this too much work, or it takes too long? Whatever right, you could rattle off a bunch of different reasons, but separating out the facts. When we looked at it and it was like, well, what's causing this, or why do we feel this way? The facts were just that things were not being done efficiently or we weren't updating our processes and things like that to our new size, our client base and the way we were doing things, the software and everything we were using. So that was just the first thing that came to my mind was there was a perception there and if we just kind of acted on that, okay, this is what we hear, this is what it feels like. It's kind of more like the emotional side of it, right.
Speaker 2:
And then, well, now we look at the actual facts and we see what the problem is and we could actually kind of you we see what the problem is and we could actually kind of you know, have a solution for that.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, when people I mean we've, we've done it, we've screwed up, you know I've screwed up. Most of this is my, my, my screw ups from some predating you. You know something that you've got to watch me go through gloriously and then you figure out you know better process to avoid these in the future. But you know, we've made hiring decisions, we've made technology decisions, we've made process decisions over what people were telling us. You know, and they're saying, hey, you know, here's the issue. And this is from a leadership and management standpoint, like, even if it is a leader or a manager that's coming to you saying here's the situation, the next person's up, their responsibility is not. Yes, you need to trust them, but not blind trust. Right, you need to investigate, you need to be interested in what the actual challenge and issue is. You need to dig in. A lot of times we're, you know, in the leadership role. We're being fed information that's, I want to say, and it can be on purpose or it can be inadvertent, but it's being fed to us out of a selfish intention, right, a survival intention or a personal limitation intention. So a lot of times people are coming to us and saying you know, here's what we need to do because of X Y Z, or here's my observation because of X Y Z. It's like if you came and said you know, everybody who works here is a monster, and I said well, why do you say that? And you said because I had an argument with a colleague. That doesn't mean everybody. That means that you have a problem with one person and its effects and circumstances situation. Let's sit down and talk about. You know what happened in that situation? Right, but we have this a lot of times. The way that stuff percolates is it gets embellished based on feelings or emotions and stuff that come from that, or fears or anxieties over it, or sometimes it's lack of knowledge. And this happens a lot of times. People come in and say you know, here's a situation and this is my observations on it. It's like, yeah, but you don't have enough information to make that observation and you don't even know you don't have enough information to make that observation. Or I understand what you're saying, but it's like this on purpose because of X Y Z.
Speaker 1:
So leadership and management has to be extremely interested in and this is one of the reasons why you can't have too many people underneath you. You know somebody says, well, I manage a thousand people. You don't manage a thousand people. You manage how many managers? Well, I manage. You know a hundred managers who manage 10 people. No, you don't manage a hundred managers, you can't.
Speaker 1:
The reason why you can't is because you can't possibly understand really what those people are going through and the issues and challenges and when they're bringing you information, do they really even have enough information to understand the situation? Because you can't spend enough time with them in the course of a month, a quarter or a year, right? So that's why good leadership normally is broken down into teams of no more than eight to 12 people at the very most. Because you have to be interested, you have to want to dig in and find out what's going on, so you can start to separate kind of facts from perception Right, facts from perception Right. Because if you allow perception to percolate internally, it kind of turns into facts, like people will say well, that's what everybody here says, so it's a fact. Well, the fact is that's what they say, but what they're saying is an opinion.
Speaker 2:
Right. Yeah, I mean, perception becomes reality, right. It's kind of that like if it is, if it's just a, you know, widely accepted thing, then, yeah, that becomes a fact. You know, that hasn't actually been dug into or proven, I guess, is probably the way to say it. So I guess a question I'd have from what? How you were explaining that? How do you then? So if someone brings you something right and you say, hey, you want, you want to trust your people, and what's the? How do you handle that?
Speaker 1:
The best way of like, hey, I trust you, but, like I gotta, I'm going to go look into it now, right, Well, I, I, I think that, whatever they're coming to you and it's okay to ask them about it yeah, you know you're having this issue talk to me about the process. Talk to me how the process was developed. Was this a process you developed? Was it a process you inherited? You know, and so what I've seen most of the time when people are coming to this stuff, it's because they lack information, or they, they, they lack somehow.
Speaker 1:
We didn't set the parameters. What was within their authorities, right? So they, and a lot of times, if something's not within somebody's authorities, they don't look for a solution. They just look at it as a problem or a non-problem, or just the way that the system is. And so one of the things that you want to do is you want to say, hey, give me more information about this, help me understand it more, before you say, okay, let's just roll with blowing this other thing up.
Speaker 1:
You know, because a lot of times and I like to say, don't fix your problem by creating a problem for somebody else, and a lot of times that's what we do. We just the problem just moves around from team to team to team, because each team's trying to deal with their own problem and it's just bouncing around because nobody has enough information to say hey, you know, we're all struggling with this in some way. What's the bet? Or maybe just one group is struggling with it? Don't make it everybody's problem. Right, you know, let's try to, let's try to condense that. Or you might be struggling with something and I might be able to tell you I know, but next month we're on a thing and that's going to go away.
Speaker 1:
Right, you know so I think that just like if one of your kids came to you and said, hey, look at this thing. I found, you know, like in the yard right you know, and and you don't say, okay, interesting, let me see it. And they're holding a poisonous frog, you know what I mean, like you, or a piece of glass, right? Wouldn't it be interesting to say, hey, let me, let me see what you got in your hand there, right? You know, what is that? What are you going to do with it?
Speaker 1:
yeah, right or where'd you find it? Where'd you Right, you know, what is that? What are you going to do with it? Yeah Right, or where'd you find it? Where'd you find that? That you know little red frog with green stripes across its back that looks like it's going to, like you know, paralyze you if you accidentally get any of it in your mouth. And I say that because they're kids and kids put things in their mouth, but anyway, yeah.
Speaker 2:
So a lot of the what I'm hearing there is like it's the leader's job, kind of in that situation, to number one, maybe communicate something that this manager person doesn't know, right, like hey, well, we already know about that, we're working on it, here's what we're doing, you know. Or kind of lead them, help them from your different perspective, like lead them to the facts. Okay, I hear this. Now let's talk through why it is and maybe there is something we can point out here and figure out what the actual issue is.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I realized. You just said that kids put frogs in their mouths. I don't know. I grew up in the country. I never. I ate a lot of dirt. I never put frogs in my mouth, but you can get dirty hands and put dirty hands in your mouth. So maybe that you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:
So maybe more relatable to the audience.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, Sorry about the tangent there, um, but here let's get controversial for a second. Let's let's piss some people off. So here we go. This is, I'm sorry, I'm sorry to break this to you. This is the the adult advice. There is opinions and then there are facts. Opinions are what you think about facts or what you think when you don't have facts. Facts are reality. Right, you go outside, the sky is blue. That's a fact. If you're colorblind and you can't see the blue, it's still blue. Right, a tree falls down. It's on the ground. It still fell down. Whether you heard it fall or not, it still fell down.
Speaker 1:
This whole issue where people come in and it's like my truth, this is bad because I feel it this way, or I think about it this way. You're lying to yourself, you're creating a prism of which you're looking at a broken reality, um, and as leaders, we need to be aware of that. People will have an issue and they were a lot of times formulate the opinions around it that shape it into a, a truth that is not real, and then they blame that on the business right, and so the big, the best thing that the leadership or management can do is reset it to facts. You know, um, it's. It's very, very interesting, though the I think it's the washington post. I caught a thing on on some current events that's going on with the washington post. They are the organization I think lost a half a million viewers. They're going to lose like a hundred million dollars in revenue this year or something. Anyway, they're in turmoil and they brought in four executives and a group of employees wanted to know why there wasn't more diversity with the executives.
Speaker 1:
And the newspaper said because we're going to go out of business and these are the best people that we could find for the job to bring in to save the company. And the truth is is that we've tried it all the other ways and we haven't gotten it right. These are the best people that we can find to run the organization. So there are facts and then there are opinions. Your opinion could be well, we want more of X, y, z, but the fact is is that this is what's going to make sure that you have a job tomorrow based on the situation that we're in, going to make sure that you have a job tomorrow based on the situation that we're in. You know, and so you see that across businesses right now, you see this bifurcation between facts and opinions and then you know we revert to kind of personal issues and stuff.
Speaker 1:
So sometimes it's you know, really you have a really good professional staff and it's really just about professional, like processes and systems, and sometimes it's people interjecting a whole bunch of garbage that they've brought with them and throwing it in there and as the leader you've got to be able to step in and say there's no place for that here. The fact is is that this is the best way that we're going to move forward and if you want to be here, this is how it works. But the managers and leaders have to be really interested in this and they have to be willing to fight those battles. You have to be willing to step in and say and take the time, even though it's a disruptive thing for you. You know you got other things you want to be dealing with. You can't not deal with stuff just because you don't want to Tell me more.
Speaker 1:
Dave, you're bringing to me this issue.
Speaker 1:
Tell me more about it, help me understand it, because then you're going to be able to better articulate the reason and you're going to be able to set the tone as to how you want things to move forward, because once people kind of get their way, whenever they stop their feet and they say you know, this is how I feel about something and this needs to be done differently, or, in our case, like you were talking earlier, there's no way we can possibly do this once, once that kind of takes hold, it becomes like this, like illness running through people's heads, yeah, about like this is this, is it?
Speaker 1:
This is the only way we can do it, and we've made so many bad, uh mistakes, trusting feelings, as opposed to looking back at the concrete situation and saying you know, I say this all the time systems and processes, education and training. And then you get back to the virtues of the person you know are they on the same path as us? Have we provided them systems and processes and training and education? And the first thing is do I need to fix one of those two things? And then the third thing is is you know is, is there somebody that just doesn't have the same value as virtue? So it's always a problem.
