Takeaways: - When a company grows in size, the management jobs become brand new jobs and everyone needs to re-qualify. - Running a larger organization is different from running a smaller team. - Employees need to adapt and evolve as the company grows. - Being humble and open to changing roles is important. - Early experiences that require individuals to pivot and adapt are valuable. - Transparency and the 'tour of duty' concept help manage expectations.
Takeaways: - When a company grows in size, the management jobs become brand new jobs and everyone needs to re-qualify. - Running a larger organization is different from running a smaller team. - Employees need to adapt and evolve as the company grows. - Being humble and open to changing roles is important. - Early experiences that require individuals to pivot and adapt are valuable. - Transparency and the 'tour of duty' concept help manage expectations.
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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 books that we read that inspire us, and today's book is the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. We're going to bring to you our observations from the book and the experiences that we've had using those observations. Either we've taken some of those things and tried to implement it Maybe we already did before we read the book or maybe the things that we're thinking about we're trying to bring some insights to our viewers and listeners and a little bit of background about Dave and myself, just so you understand kind of what we do on a day-to-day basis. I'm the Chief Executive Officer for Seaplane Group and Dave is our Chief Operations Officer. So these are things that this is our passion, things that we talk about and actually practice every single day. So we have a takeaway, and today's takeaway from the book is when a company multiplies in size, the executive no longer does an effective job. At the new size, the management jobs become brand new jobs. As a result, everyone needs to re-qualify. Running a 200-person organization is not the same as running a 20-person team. So as we progress through the books, we're kind of getting these broader conceptual ideas from kind of smaller statements in the beginning to now, maybe putting multiple pieces together.
Speaker 1:
At the same time, and before we get into the point about today's takeaway and kind of debate, that I wanted to get to our sponsors and, as always, do us a favor, like and subscribe to us wherever you're listening or watching us from. But today's sponsors, this show is brought to you by Ditch the Suits Podcast 2023 podcast of the year in all categories by Quill Podcast Agency, and on that podcast, myself and Steve Campo is our other co-host and we focus on helping you, the listener, get more out of your money in life. Check it out on DitchTheSuitscom or you can go wherever there's podcasts and you'll be able to find it All right, dave. So back to our point. I highlighted a couple of things cause I didn't want to kind of just rehash things that we've already talked about. I actually tried to pull out management jobs because they're brand new jobs and everyone needs to requalify, so I don't know, could we focus a little bit on that today?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think that's great. It's interesting. This goes against the grain, right. I mean, this isn't how most companies operate.
Speaker 2:
Or employees right or employees of needing to requalify and thinking about it as a brand new job. I think the traditional model or the way companies and employees operate is like, hey, this is my job, company's growing, that's great, I'm going to just keep growing with it and keep doing my job. But I think the point about it being a brand new job is the key there. So if we start there, managing a team of three people, five people, 10 people, whatever it is, it's very different, right, it's where your time's going, it's what your focus is, it's different primary responsibilities, I think so you really have to create that environment of your job is constantly evolving and changing as the company grows or changes.
Speaker 1:
And it's a two-way street. You've got the company that's changing and growing and evolving, and then you have the employee, who's also, hopefully, changing and growing and evolving, but they may be doing it at different rates or in different directions. It's kind of like if you had an arrow and it's pointing straight up and you're following this arrow, but then you get to a fork in the road and there's two different directions you can go. You could say, okay, you know, this fork in the road is what's next for the business. And the employee's question is is this job still right for me? And the company's question is is this employee still right for me? And the company's question is is this employee still right for me?
Speaker 1:
And I think we have a tendency to look at it very selfishly, from a standpoint of well, I've been here, so I deserve to be here. It doesn't really matter what's happened around me. And in reality everything's changing all the time. Things are growing and developing. And you can kind of think about when you're a kid and you're playing sports in school. You know, when you're modified, maybe you're the biggest kid, so you're the best kid on the team, and then when you get to JV, maybe you know a bunch of other kids have kind of grown up and you're not the biggest anymore. Then when you get to varsity you know actually talented kids can start to show their talent because of schemes and stuff like that. There's an evolution and you don't get playing time just because you've always been on the team. You get playing time because you get better and you fit into what the team actually needs as you progress and I I think that it's it's unfair in a way, but in another way it's incredibly fair.
Speaker 2:
Cause it gives opportunity to your example. The jv quarterback job is a different job than the varsity quarterback job. Right, yeah, different skill set, a whole different offense, maybe who knows right. But just because that role fit you doesn't mean you now progress to be the best quarterback on varsity doesn't mean you don't belong on the team, right, you there's, there's most likely if you're, you know you're a hard worker all of that kind of some of the assumptions are there there's probably a spot on the team somewhere for you.
Speaker 2:
But you know, maybe maybe you're a receiver now or something else, because it's a better fit for the team and you still have opportunities. It's just different opportunities. So I think that's the important part there. When we bring it back to like the corporate setting right, your role might change but there's still will be opportunities for you if you're still a good employee.
Speaker 1:
Oh, true story on that too when I was in ninth grade, so we're going back over 20 years now.
Speaker 2:
Yep.
Speaker 1:
Trying to think of how old I was, like how many years ago. That was a long time ago, um 25, 26 years ago plus I don't know I've already had my 20th high school anniversary. So yeah, anyway, I can't do the math, it's too long ago. I'm getting that old.
Speaker 1:
But I was on an undefeated uh jv football team and the team had been undefeated for like years and years and years running and and they just it was a farm school they still are, by the way. They well could be, uh, well, that's a different. I actually went to a different school than the varsity like where I played varsity football. That was a different school, which they've been undefeated for a couple of years in a row too. But we had a really, really good quarterback and he was in 10th grade and he got hurt early in the season and so one of the freshmen became the quarterback on the team in his place. When he came back, the freshmen had been doing such a good job. They put the other quarterback, which was a phenomenal athlete, but they put him at slot receiver, yep, and and it wasn't. It wasn't that he wasn't good, it wasn't that he couldn't do the job, it's that somebody else had essentially outplayed him because they were given an opportunity. He still had a great opportunity on the team and he did phenomenal for the rest of the season, but it wasn't the position that he would have, you know, seen himself in and and that changed his entire trajectory.
Speaker 1:
You know, because I don't, I don't believe he got back into being a quarterback, even in that higher levels, and the kid was just a phenomenal athlete. I think he was a state champion, wrestler or whatever too. I mean, just a great athlete. But you know, you kind of expect to be in a role, because you've always been in that role, and then the organization says look, we need this person in this role and here's an awesome role for you. That makes us even stronger.
Speaker 1:
And I, you know, for most of us, because we, we build so much of our identity around our job, that's a really mentally difficult thing to handle. And and and I don't, I don't think we, we think about it that way. I think we always think about well, you know, I've got this path and it's this straight shot up, you know, and I'm just gonna get in line and I'm just I'm gonna end up at the top and in reality, you know life's gonna happen and get in the way and you're gonna come to those forks in the road. And what that kid could have done is he could have got to that fork in the road and you guys said, okay, well, the team's going to the right, I'm just gonna go to the left, then I'm going to go play soccer or something. But he didn't.
Speaker 1:
He stuck out on the team and he made the team a much, much better team.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So the point there, I think, is you need the right people there, right, the people who are going to take that situation and make the best or see that, okay, this is going to. This helps the team more.
Speaker 1:
This more. This is better for the overall team, overall the company itself. Yeah, back to that whole humble humble. I mean you have to be incredibly humble, um to be able to do something like that um easier said than done, right?
Speaker 1:
yeah, yeah, well, and I think you know for people, for people, you know, when we talk about young kids and stuff these days, I mean the earlier that people can have these experiences, um, where they have to pivot, that they have to change direction. They're not going to survive. If they don't, they don't get to play. You know, his choice was quit, ride the bench or change position. That's it. Sorry, life ain't fair, but the team's gonna win because he's been undefeated for, you know, better part of a decade and we're gonna keep doing that. And it was a team thing. The whole team was behind it and there was no whining or crying or feeling sorry for myself. He just kind of moved on. And so it's almost like the earlier that you can have those experiences, the better, because I think it gets harder.
Speaker 1:
You know, when you've invested 20 years into something, you think you're going to get someplace, and they pass you up for somebody else, there's a lot of spite that comes in there, right, because, like, oh, I just, you know, I invested all this and that's why I think, too, part of this is being very transparent about it. Look, we're growing a lot. This is the tour duty concept. We've hired you to do this job. I can't tell you where we're going to be and if you're going to be, you know best for that and I think from an employee perspective, what can you do? Pay attention to what's going on around you. Get your head out of the sand, look around, think about scaling up. Don't go to work and take it as my job's easy, so I don't work on getting better, personally or professionally. The onus is on you to make sure that you're irreplaceable, right.
Speaker 2:
And you mentioned the tort duty concept. So if you have that concept and people understand this is how we operate right. This is what we do to make us all better, to continue to grow in the right roles. If that's accepted right from the beginning, it's going to be a lot easier transition along the way. Like you said, compared to this starts on modified JV and it's not a surprise on varsity, it's it's accepted a lot better in that case because it's it's just part of what you are as a, as a company or a team.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I and I I guess I would wrap this up your company's pretty much the same way. You know, when you first start out, you're it's like the peewees, you know what I mean. You're playing around with some Excel and some little numbers and it gets a little bit bigger. And now you're making some better decisions and it gets a lot more pressure. You're getting ready for this show and then you're in the show. Yep, right. So the business, businesses go through the same maturation, I think, as people do. It's just a lot of times it's packed in an even shorter amount of time. You know where there's more intensity to it, but it's a good analogy.
