Leadership and Motivation: Lessons from the Front Lines

🚀 At this tumultuous moment in history, how can businesses pivot for success? Norman Leach, a veteran in strategic marketing and organizational leadership shares his experiences and thoughts on motivating teams and strategic planning with Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor. Check out this insightful episode today! #BusinessStrategy #Inspiration 

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Ed Drozda 0:10

Welcome to The Water Trough where we can't make you drink, but we will make you think. My name is Ed Drozda The Small Business Doctor, and I'm really excited you chose to join me here as we discuss topics that are important for small business folks just like you. If you're looking for ideas, inspiration, and possibility, you've come to the right place. Join us as we take steps to help you create the healthy business that you've always wanted. Good morning folks, welcome back to The Water Trough. This is Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor and today I'm joined by Norman Leach. Norman is a senior executive specializing in strategic marketing, communications, international trade and organizational leadership. Norman has held senior leadership roles in chambers of commerce, international trade offices and industry associations, where he leads large diverse stakeholder groups and represents thousands of businesses across multiple jurisdictions. His work supports export development, economic growth, sponsorship expansion, and public-private collaboration, in highly complex environments. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Manitoba and has received multiple national and provincial honors recognizing leadership, service, and contribution to economic development. Norman, welcome.

Norman Leach 1:48

Hey good morning, Ed. How are you?

Ed Drozda 1:50

I'm very well thank you, and I'm glad to have you joining me here from the western part of Canada.

Norman Leach 1:57

Yeah, we're up straight north of Montana.

Ed Drozda 2:00

Well, down here when we think of Montana we think of nothing but wide open spaces with a lot of wind and generally very cold. Is that kinda like it is for you up there?

Norman Leach 2:11

Yeah, it is. We like to think of ourself as Texas North. We've got oil, we've got gas, we've got wide open spaces, we have ranching. What we don't have from Texas is the warm weather. We got Montana's weather and sort of Texas geography.

Ed Drozda 2:24

Thank you for that imagery, I can picture that quite well. I'd like to start by asking you a very direct question. What was the one mistake that taught you the most in your career?

Norman Leach 2:38

Good question. I believe every circumstance can be turned around. I believe that everything can be fixed and sometimes I've ridden the horse for too long. I've stayed with it longer than the industry has changed or the business has changed and you've gotta let go. And typically that was driven by not wanting to hurt the people I was working with. So you stuck it out saying, I think I can fix it. I recently had an example of that again, where probably we should have seen the writing on the wall in October, but it took till January to realize there was just no turning the organization around.

Ed Drozda 3:14

So when you encounter a situation like this would you say that it's a matter of that you're hoping things will change or is it a matter of a lack of immediate recognition? Some mixture of the two perhaps.

Norman Leach 3:26

I think it's partly the way I was raised that you don't give up on things. You don't just walk away when the going gets tough. That old expression when the going gets tough the tough get going. I was raised with that attitude and proud of it. I'm not denying that attitude. I'm proud of it. It's gotten me through a lot of tough times, but it can make you believe that there's always a turnaround available and sometimes there just isn't. So I think it's a lesson I'm still learning.

Ed Drozda 3:52

I think a lot of us are learning that lesson Norman, the idea that there's always a way that this can be fixed. Most definitely there are times when things cannot be fixed, and being able to let go of something and moving on to the next possibility is appropriate. But I think people are driven by the fact that others are depending on them for the outcome that they seek. They're looking to accomplish things, and therefore they're goaded into driving at it longer than they really should. It is hard to say no.

Norman Leach 4:27

In my entire career I have fired two people, because I hate doing it. I'm not that guy. I can't just walk in and say, all right we've all been working hard at this but you three are gone. I believe I took on the responsibility for their lives and I don't mean their physical life, but their financial life, their family life, and I take that seriously. More than once I've not paid myself so we could pay staff.

Ed Drozda 4:54

It's very interesting that you say that. I have also fired very few people in my life. I never enjoyed it and I often thought about it as something that I failed to do upfront. It is a significant challenge and I think this is a great way to showcase the challenge that you face. Letting someone go is a heart-rending situation, right?

Norman Leach 5:19

Yeah, it is because especially in small business, you've met their families, you've met their wives, husbands, kids, sometimes even parents because you're a tight little group, and then, at least my mind goes to oh my goodness, what's it gonna be like when that person has to go home and tell their family that there's no money coming in anymore?

Ed Drozda 5:39

And I've been on the other side of things having been fired and yeah, I know just what that's like. The litany of emotions that you go through and probably blame is not one of the things that we should be considering. You know, talking about the challenges of letting go and things like that allows me to segue into the key in your eyes to motivating people. We have our vision and such but we have to find a way to motivate people, to help us to achieve them. What do you think is the key to motivating people?

Norman Leach 6:09

I've always believed it's being bluntly honest with everybody as to where we're going, how we're gonna get there, and keeping them apprised so there's no surprises. I once said I was never gonna quote my father and now I start quoting my father as I get older. The idea was he said that the difficult we can deal with, it's the surprises that kill us. So I try to make sure that the teams I work with are never surprised. If things are on track they know about it. If things aren't on track they know about it. If success is always a team thing failure is always my thing. You can't blame people. When the team is doing well you share that success, you share that accolades with them. When things aren't going well it's because something failed in my leadership. So I have to look at myself and then go back to them and say hey guys, I mis-led you, or we took a wrong turn in Albuquerque. We gotta change the direction and I tell them why, and I tell 'em the consequences. No one likes to be kept in the dark. We've gone way past that 1950s model.

Ed Drozda 7:13

One of the things I heard you say is the importance leadership humility in being able to motivate people. Is that a correct interpretation?

Norman Leach 7:22

Oh, absolutely. What good are you as a leader if everybody refuses to follow you? If you think you're so good that you've got it all together, I dare you to run your business by yourself. This idea of the lone wolf business person doing it on their own doesn't exist. Everybody counts on somebody, and if they're not there for you especially in the bad times, then you're going to fail. Guaranteed, written in stone. There's all kinds of phrases for it Ed. Servant leadership has been used, but humility is If you have all the answers, go do it yourself but you can't. So I'm solid believer in keeping the team involved. And again, that's why it gets hard to fire people 'cause they've lived through the tough stuff too, and you know it.

Ed Drozda 8:08

Absolutely. You spent a good deal of your career in senior executive roles. So you have an immediate audience, if you will. I'll use the term audience for employees. But well beyond that immediate audience you've got so many more audiences. How do you bridge the gap between your direct reports to the people who are on the shop floor, getting things done?

Norman Leach 8:39

I try to get life lessons from everything I do. I once had a tour of the Mexico City Zoo by the director of the zoo, so she probably had 2000 direct reports to her. She takes us on a private tour at about eight thirty in the morning before the zoo is actually open, and as she walked along she could say good morning by name to everybody she met. Every staff member she could say by name. She saw a piece of paper on the ground as we're walking, she bent down, picked it up, carried it with her until she got to a garbage can and then threw it away. She herself was doing what that cleaning crew was doing to get ready for the morning. And one of them, it amazed me, she stopped and maybe she had talked to the guy recently, but she had remembered and she said good morning, Jose. How are you? How did your son do in his soccer game last night? And for a person to care enough to know not only the names of her employees, but to know something personal about them amazed me. And I've seen that in a number of places and people. But as a leadership thing I'm thinking, oh my God, I am so far behind her in terms of how I recognize people 'cause I have trouble with names. But here's a person in her busy day made the effort to remember people's names. I think that's how you bridge that gap, is that you tell your people they matter and prove it. No job is too small for the leader to do. She picked up that piece of paper. I am not even sure she would've noticed that she did it if I had said something, because it was just natural to her. It's what you do, you pick it up, put it in the garbage 'cause that's what everybody wants is a clean zoo before the audience gets there. That's how I do the bridging is to say everybody's important. I'm gonna know them, I'm gonna know something about them, and then the business stuff just falls in. If you actually care the business stuff will follow.

Ed Drozda 10:40

I think we can all agree that those who are engaged in the strategy and the vision creation are extremely important, but without those who execute the strategy and bring that vision to fruition the vision means nothing. Everybody at every level counts.

Norman Leach 10:58

The question I would always ask myself, if someone gave me a task, if somebody said, I want you to do this, my question would be why am I doing this? What's the outcome if I do it right? What's the benefit to doing it right for the organization, for the team? So if I'm asking that question as a leader, if I look at my board of directors and say, why do we want to do this? Tell me. Then I have to be ready to give that answer, not wait for it, but give the answer to the team who's gonna execute. This is why we're doing it. This is what the result will be if we hit it. If we hit it outta the park this is how it's gonna look for all of us. I honestly believe you have to do that. Like they just don't have a choice.

Ed Drozda 11:37

What you're describing is a very important element of motivation, that is ownership. The individual who's being tasked with a responsibility has a sense of ownership. By understanding the why behind it. The what they execute, but the why gives them a sense of ownership. Just because I can do it doesn't make it great. Right?

Norman Leach 12:03

Well, in a sense of pride that they hit the goal. I'm always really super careful when I use this analogy because I don't want to imply people are like dogs, but it's a life lesson that I'm playing with one of my dogs and I'm teasing them with a treat, and I keep taking the treat away from them. In about three tries they go, that's it. I'm done with this game. I didn't win, so I'm gonna go away. Employees, and again I do not want to imply that they're like animals. They're not. But human beings are human beings. If we don't see an end to the game, if we don't see a victory somewhere in this, if our day is just a drudging, do the same thing over and over and over again with no sign of what was success and how it benefited the company, then why wouldn't they just say, okay, I'll do the bare minimum. I'll come in at 8:02 and I'll leave at 3:58 and I will turn off my cell phone and I will refuse to cooperate with anything but what's on. I'll take my one hour lunch. My teams have never been like that. They've always said we'll catch up. Let's just get the victory. Let's win the game. Doesn't matter if you're playing a game. If the coach doesn't say you're doing a good job, and all they do is yell at you, sooner or later you stop playing the game. It's hard to recover once you've got people who don't care, it's hard to make them care.

Ed Drozda 13:26

Absolutely, and to your point about dogs and humans, I get what you're saying. When you really get down to the fundamentals of motivation the similarities are astounding. The dog is a nice model because you can observe it without getting any pushback.

Norman Leach 13:45

And again, I do not want to in any way imply people are dogs, they're not, it's the exact opposite. But if you give too hard a task to somebody they'll walk away too. They know when it's impossible. If you say this has to be done by a certain time and it's impossible they know it and they're not gonna execute. Or they'll poorly execute and say I did what you told me, I got it done by the end of the day. But it's not good work. Okay. But the two are incompatible. I couldn't do good work and have it done by the end of the day. So Norman, which did you want?

Ed Drozda 14:16

At that point it becomes totally demoralizing and it's a lasting situation. If the leader has these unrealistic expectations, then they've lost their connection to that individual.

Norman Leach 14:29

And the team and beyond that the other communities. The customers will see it in poor work and then they start going, gee it used to be great to work with that company. It used to be good to buy from them, to use them. And now, yeah, it's not the same feeling anymore. Everybody is sort of just doing the bare minimum. And you see it. You can see it. For most of us you can see it the minute you walk into a restaurant. You can feel whether the staff is happy and is enjoying what they're doing and are liking the idea of service and we're gonna provide good service. And the group that just said, I'll show up and I'll make it through to the end of the shift.

Ed Drozda 15:07

Another question for you. Servant leadership. A lot of people get confused about servant leadership, what it means, how it relates, what does it mean to you?

Norman Leach 15:18

A couple visceral things, I guess. It's leading from the front, so that means that I won't ask people to do what I won't do myself. I'm a believer in that zoo CEO picking up a piece of paper. There's no job that's beneath me in the company so we go and we do that work for them. It's also being emotionally intelligent to recognize that if someone's had something bad happen at home, whatever that is, a sick child, I can force them to be in the office by threatening to fire them if they don't show up. And I will get nothing out of them because their mind is on their sick child as it should be. I have children. I know what it's like. You worry about them. You consider them, so I'm quite happy to walk down to that person and say, look I know you're having a bad day. Go home. We'll see you tomorrow. Go home, be with your family. Sort this out. You need to not be here right now because somebody needs you more than we do, but you have to be aware of that. You can't just slither by people and say I didn't know that they had a bad day. That's your job to know they're having a bad day and to set up systems that feel comfortable. I feel comfortable telling you that. I have a lady that I've taken with me to a couple jobs. She's my absolute voice of sanity. She will come in and say you need to know this about the office. So and so mother was injured last night. They spent the night in the hospital. They came to work, which for me is the perfect intelligence to go back out to that person immediately and say, in the nicest, joking sort of voice, what are you doing here? Your mom was injured. Go home. Do you need us to get you a taxi? Can you drive? Are you okay? And it's not disingenuous, it's real. You have to care about the people that you have. I don't have a checklist. If someone is sick, send them home. You should just want to do that as a human being. Servant leadership for me is remembering that there are real people there, not just, that's why I hate the term human resources, like we use it like natural resources. We have oil in the ground, we have natural resources, we have human resources. We have people that we use like we might use a raw material. It's wrong, and I'll stand by that forever though I've had employers who disagreed with my point of view. We didn't last very long together.

Ed Drozda 17:42

Human resources is a very odd label. Indeed. In a fundamental way we have resources. They could be human, they could be materials, they could be processes, and so on and so forth. But you're right. Human and resource together. I never thought about it this way before. It does kind of make it impersonal, doesn't it?

Norman Leach 18:08

Yeah, it sets up for impersonal. I don't like the term and I discourage people from using it in meetings, et cetera, because I just think it sets a tone that this is something we can just look the easiest way to turn any business around, the easiest way is layoff staff. It's the biggest in 90% of businesses probably, I don't know, guessing it's 90% of business. The single biggest cost is human beings. So if you want to be the guy that charges in and fixes a company, you lay off a bunch of people. But did that really fix the company or did we just reduce costs to the point where we might not have a viable business anymore?

Ed Drozda 18:49

Yes, I can lop some money off of the expenses right away. Boom. And yes, that looks good on paper. On the other hand I haven't thought about what happens once I do.

Norman Leach 19:00

That's because in North America the average tenure for a senior person, Vice President, President is about three years. And that's because they come in, in the shiny armor on the white horse, lay a bunch of people off, save a bunch of money. The board loves them and then three years later they realize the impact that that had, and the company cannot meet its requirements as a business. It's a cycle we keep repeating. I point out to everybody that Sony, the big Japanese companies have a 200 year business plan. They have a 200 year business plan. Now, do they know exactly what they're doing? No. But we will be the leader in the world in consumer products. We will compete with our international customers, which means then Ed, when you get down to it if I tell somebody I've got a 10 year plan they're going I am not going to be here in 10 years. I really don't care. They're gonna be gone, that President, CEO, they're gonna be gone. They want something In three years. At Sony, if you go in and say I have a 10 year plan to get us to leadership in CCTV technology, they go against a 200 year plan. 10 years is nothing. Let's go, let's get doing it. We have to take a longer view of things. Three year business cycles, their point of view is four years out, I might not be here. What can I get done? Most things today take more than four years to do so I am trying desperately to tell people you need to have a long-term view of things.

Ed Drozda 20:35

That makes sense. I think it's a question of how you put things like that together. You know, formulating a plan 200 years for example, it's gonna require a lot of, I'll just use the term squishiness. There's so many factors you can't account for, but I think what I'm hearing you say is that the idea is to create an overarching vision that allows for that squishiness to occur.

Norman Leach 21:01

But just think about it. If you go to work at a Japanese company where they have a 200 year plan you're not wondering what tomorrow looks like. If you're going to work in a North American company you're going I don't know if I want to commit to that Norman Leach guy, 'cause he'll be gone in three years and there'll be somebody else. And I don't want to be seen as on his team when he leaves. Because it's gonna hurt me. Right? So, you asked about the people. Well, they will do what's best for them and their family. And the best thing for them is not to commit to anything too solidly 'cause if you do, when that guy goes you might be swept out with the wave.

Ed Drozda 21:43

Absolutely. That's a very fascinating insight. I've not ever looked at things like that. I appreciate you explaining that. So Norman, our time has buzzed by and we are at the end of our time. So I'd like to ask you before we go, is there anything you'd like to share with us? Anything particularly important to you?

Norman Leach 22:05

I think there's been some pivotal points in history when things have changed; when the way we look at the world has to change, and I think we're right and of course almost impossible to know that when you're in it. But I believe we're in one of those pivotal points. What we've done for the last hundred years is not going to work. We have to think differently about our businesses. We have to think about what the new generation of workers looks like. We have to look at what the new generation of technology looks at and what this generation of customers, and I don't mean generation by years in the human calendar, but you know, one of my favorite quotes in the world is from Henry Ford who said "if I'd asked my customers what they wanted they would've said faster horses," because he completely changed how people looked at transportation. And I think we're in one of those pivotal moments that Henry Ford was when he recognized the horse was no longer the answer. I think we're there.

Ed Drozda 23:03

And at that pivotal moment we're faced with so many challenges. Not just the notion of being a pivotal time but all the factors, all the things that are going on around us that will impact that. It's pretty substantial isn't it?

Norman Leach 23:20

Well, if you wanna take a look at what's happening in current events, and I'm not trying to say, I gotta be careful how I word this, but you know Henry Ford faced the same thing. He could have said it's so crazy, we're going into war in Europe. This is a bad time to start a company. No one's gonna buy cars 'cause we're going into World War I and in fact it becomes the catalyst to changing everything. War doesn't have to be part of the equation, but chaos will always be part of the equation.

Ed Drozda 23:49

This is definitely part of the equation, and among other things such as you mentioned war and things of this sort, we can add the complexity of things like AI to that chaos. That is a conversation in itself. Who knows?

Norman Leach 24:05

But Ed, the same comments we are hearing now around AI is what you would've heard about Henry Ford in 1910 from the people who made buggies, the people who made harnesses, the people who had delivery stables. All of would've said this is a horrible thing. It's gonna destroy our economy, it's gonna ruin everything. And yet the automobile went on to completely change North America, at least maybe the world too. But it completely changed the industry in North America, including things like automated manufacturing all came out of that decision of Henry Ford to change the world.

Ed Drozda 24:43

Right. Well, we're in for a interesting ride aren't we now?

Norman Leach 24:48

We are. Absolutely.

Ed Drozda 24:52

Well, I appreciate you taking the time to go on a short ride with me today, and I am grateful for the information and discussion that you brought. My guest today is Norman Leach, and Norman, I want to thank you. This was really enjoyable, I appreciate it.

Norman Leach 25:09

I had a great time. Thank you.

Ed Drozda 25:12

As things evolve there'll be more conversations for us to have, so I look forward to that as well. This is Ed Drozda The Small Business Doctor, and here at The Water Trough I wanna wish you a healthy business and to remind you, hold onto your seat because we're in for an interesting ride ahead. All the best.