Bill Schaninger, Ph.D. - Power to the Middle (Part 1)

We welcome Dr. Bill Schaninger to The Bosshole® Chronicles! Newly retired (but not slowing down), Bill dives into the book he recently co-authored entitled Power to the Middle.  This fresh perspective on middle management is a must-read for organizations that wish to avoid pushing their managers into The Bosshole® Zone.

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Transcript

0:00:01 - Sara
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Bosshole Chronicles. We are glad to have you again. Today we have a subject matter expert episode featuring an author and a we'll call him a retired senior advisor at McKinsey. His name's Bill Schaninger. In the book when you Must have for your Library, power to the Middle why managers hold the keys to the future of work. So this is a power-packed session, really great advice for senior leaders wondering how to maximize and optimize their middle managers. Let me tell you quickly about Bill. As I mentioned, he just retired recently from McKinsey. He was there for 20-plus years. He's an international speaker, author, researcher and he has long time been an advisor to senior executives. He's got an MBA, a doctorate. Bill has spent decades as a consultant and researcher, but he specializes in business, performance, culture, values, talent and I think you're going to pick up on that in our conversation. He speaks in real words. I think you'll find this episode pretty riveting and we even touch upon the return to work and his thoughts there. So let's jump in. 

0:01:20 - John
The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode. 

0:01:42 - Sara
Bill, it is so great to have you on our podcast. Thank you so much for giving us your time today. 

0:01:47 - Bill Schaninger
Well, thank you for inviting me, guys. I'm looking forward to it. 

0:01:50 - Sara
Yeah, and I guess we, like many other interested parties, want to talk with you firsthand about your great work, power to the middle, why managers hold the keys to the future of work. Drawing upon your decades of experience at McKinsey all the things you've done, this book is really different, and maybe in some ways it's similar to the messages out there, but you have something really critical to talk about when it comes to what we should be focusing on with managers, and so I'm just going to toss it over. You Tell us why. The answer is the problem. 

0:02:25 - Bill Schaninger
Well, thank you for having me and noticing our work. I mean, I'm a co-author with my former colleagues Brian Hancock and Emily Fields. You know we worked on this for quite a while. I like to say that. You know. The answer is, the problem is, when we started writing this and you know, I kind of knew that I was going to be leaving McKinsey within probably a two, two and a half year window. And you know I was in our global knowledge leader role for the org practice, the organization practice, and I start, you know I was rolling out of that and I started doing the future of work stuff. 

And you know we conveniently, because we're, you know, as professional services and McKinsey you're structured out and you go, hey, here's what's changing about the work and how the work gets done. And well, I don't know, it seems like the boss would know that. You know. And what do they know? And what have they learned, right? And well, what doesn't really matter anymore that they used to know. Well, the person they work for should probably know that. And hey, what are we doing about where we come to do the work at? You know we're dealing with this hybrid thing. Are we going to get, are we going to force people back? Are we going to entice them back? Yeah, and we're just going to let them work wherever. Well, who should probably coordinate that? Right, because the coordination should probably line up with the collaboration. Who's going to do that? Well, the person they work for should probably do that. 

And so when we were doing that, it kept on coming up with all these obvious, immediate answers of the middle manager. The people leader was just the answer to all these questions Well, what are we going to do about? But the minute you said that you're like, yeah, but you know, they're actually not very good at interacting with people and many of them had still doing their own work and getting buried by it, and, oh, actually many of them, and each of us, you know, brian and I and Emily we each had these stories where the role as crafted had so much administrative and bureaucracy attached to it they didn't have a fighting chance to actually be a leader, right, but it was feed the beast kind of stuff. And so that got us around to thinking, hey, there might be a there there here. This isn't an article, it actually is probably a book. And then, once we made that choice, I had really wanted to do a two-part book where the you know we're coming. 

We're right at 25 years since War for Talent was written and I thought it might be nice to say, well, what have we learned in the 25 years? And sort of, and honestly, just because I'm, you know, a failed academic right, dr Schanager hasn't really gotten them to be used. You know, I just want to say hey, there was some stuff that was really good science. You know Cleveland and Murphy on appraisal is still amazing. And good science, Tim Judge adding on to that really amazing good science. You know Junior Field and Gatewood, still the absolute Bible on selection. So there was really good research. They came out. You know Schmidt and Hunter coming out. You know McMount and Murray Barrick coming out on the big five. All this great stuff came out right in the early nineties. That said, we can quantify all this amazing stuff around talent and org psych. 

But right at the same time we had reengineering, restructuring, offshoring. You know E-HR. You know the run up for the dot com bubble. Then the crash, crazy fixation on options. You know, until accounting rules changed we had this long run. You know, is this going to be lean? Is this going to be six. Is it going to be lean six? The era of fads, like, basically punctuated in three, 10 year periods, you know, 90 to 2000,. 2000 to the crisis crisis to COVID. 

It just felt to me like we were at a situation that wasn't just the moment, but of the derivative, you know, of what had been going on over the previous three decades, where we've we took people who probably, when they start on I'm 54, just turned 54. I would have started work in the early 90s. My parents would have believed that it was cradle grave employment right. And in my lifetime, here I'm in Eastern Pennsylvania, in Lehigh Valley. Betham Steel went cold, lucent went away, mack trucks went to South Carolina, right Fuller company was sold. I mean, like you had, you know, you had the up and down of AT&T, the up and down of IBM, up and down of the auto industry writ large. That to me just felt like the Gen Xers in particular, almost had the contract changed overnight, where it wasn't enough to be like an esteemed vice president For PPL or a steam vice president for air products. It was like, well, you're under threat always. 

And so I really wanted to look at that front end bit of how did we make this mess now. Okay, the HBR and McKinsey both said, Bill, that's a wonderful idea, we're not doing that. That could be a chapter Now, didn't we get here? But the, the Genesis was what the heck happened, that we found ourselves at the moment when we need this cadre the most, where they're really unprepared. And Then. So that was, that was the essence, right, which was the answer, is the problem. And then the second part is and, by the way, we made this problem. Yeah, okay, we did, we did point to, we made this problem. 

We who slavishly followed six by six and ring that ring, you know, ring the working capital, like we have the financial capital. We've made this issue cutting T&L budgets, not investing in cohorts, not investing in real coaching and feedback during performance Appraisal, making it about the form, right. So you know, when you look around that I go like, oh well, who needs middle managers are not very good? Well, one, we all need them. Everyone does. Everyone wants to believe that the work they're doing makes sense and ties to something important. Well, you need someone to help you figure that out. Mm-hmm means someone you know. Could you imagine? Do you have kids who've played like soccer? Oh yeah, remember six-year-old soccer, right. Oh yeah, it's horrific. 

0:07:54 - John
It's like bees, a little cluster ball is what we called it. That's right. 

0:07:59 - Bill Schaninger
I mean, that's what an organization would be like if you didn't actually have something resembling decent leadership. No, no, we're gonna spread it out. You each have a role to play. You're gonna Do so. You're gonna stay in the goal and be the goalie. You're gonna go over here. I mean, could you imagine paying For, like, piano lessons or dance lessons and discovering that the instructor never talks to your kid Mm-hmm? Well, I mean, we've created context where all the manager has time to do is go to the most problematic employee and Feed the beast, right, because of what we set them up for. So that was that was the essence of this was like, look at what we've created. And then it was to try to say, okay, well, it's, it's enough to you know, admire the problem, but what do you do about it? Right? So that was that was the point. It's it, and you know it seems to be resonating pretty well. I do think it's. It's straddled the line a little bit between people in these roles feeling heard and seen. 

Yes right, which I think was really kind of. I thought was important to acknowledge that For many of these folks, they don't give out of bed in the morning and say, gee, I'm gonna be a little worse today, mm-hmm, right, you know it's. It's a difficult situation, right, they're just trying to struggle through it. But also for the executives and the HR organizations to say this also doesn't have to be fade a complete, we can do something about it. 

0:09:12 - John
Okay, so sticking with that Bill, and I don't think it's unusual. Well, I don't think it's. I Don't think it's what's the word I'm looking for. Not unusual, but it shouldn't surprise us that Gallup's recent research that says Disengagement is at a nine-year high. So when you talk about our decade, sort of that window of those decades, how is it that we should be so shocked that you know, 50% of the American workforce is disengaged, 17% is actively disengaged. And that catalyst, I mean that middle manager, it plays such a critical role and yet it's like, wow, how can people be so disengaged? It's like, oh my gosh, we have, we have brought this on ourselves. Well, my question, our question to you, is how long before we really Substantively do something about it? You've you figured it out, you've seen it, and your co-authors, but what is it gonna take for crying out loud Other than our podcast? 

0:10:08 - Bill Schaninger
Yeah, well, let's, let's hope this helps. A good shout-out to Jim Harder and the guys at Gallup, who are excellent. Yep, Jim Harder is really, really, really good. You know, there's an interesting thing there under the Under the engaged metric, it's the what percent of leaders who are engaged have disengaged teams. And then what? So what the derivative is. You know what point you find the breakdown. Yep, that's a huge issue, I think, because, particularly when you start looking at the volume of turnover For many organizations, you know it's some saying well, well, it's not really the attrition, it's the reshuffle. No, it is attrition. Mm-hmm, you're leaving one place and going to another because as soon as that person walks out the door, the social capital is gone. Right, the person coming in doesn't know the language, doesn't know the norms, doesn't know the code speak. You used to laugh and say the best, the best sad for a bad operating model is a great culture, you know. But cultures go away when the people go away. That's exactly right. 

0:11:08 - Sara
That's right. 

0:11:09 - Bill Schaninger
Right. So I mean, I think it really is. It feels tenuous because it is, I think, the great attrition, great attraction stuff which my colleague Aaron just met and I and, and you know, a bunch of other colleagues you know, worked on over the last three, four years. You, the earliest part of that data was just so alarming in that the employees who were leaving were saying, yes, I've left, yes, I'm actively considering leaving and yes, I'll walk without another job. That was remarkable, right? I mean, at one point the spread between open slots and the people who could fill them was like right around 9, or just under 9 million, or something like that. I'm in the right ballpark. It was the same number of jobs that were lost in the financial crisis, so you would have had to take all those out just to get us back to parity. 

When you start thinking about that, you're like oof, and then you start looking at what they're saying I want to work for a company that I can be proud of. I want to be respected as a person, I want to work, I individually do to matter, I want to know that there's growth and development and, yes, I want to be paid fairly. But that was never the top number. It was just table stakes. 

So when that first started happening, you saw this run of commentary by executives broadly pointing their finger outside my competitors are being irresponsible, they're just chasing the buck. But when you looked at what the employees who were actually leaving were saying, it's like oh man, turn the finger around, right, they're running away from you. It's you, yeah Right. You and the cadre that you have installed. I mean and so this is the part you know the part two about we've made it this way Every leader you choose to hire and everyone you choose to allow to continue being a leader is on you, yeah Right. And they become the gift that keeps on giving, particularly when they're bad. 

0:12:58 - John
Right. 

0:13:00 - Sara
So the answer is the problem. The problem is of our own making. What's the third point? 

0:13:07 - Bill Schaninger
Well, I mean, look, the good news is you can do something about it, right. It requires a couple of difficult steps. Notably, you have to be willing to look incumbents and call it straight. You know, and you know, broad, broad cuts probably a third are pretty good and could just be better with. Actually, you were lucky enough to get people who were inclined to be okay. Yeah, a third are probably never going to be all world, but they can be okay. But a third are probably never going to be up to it and are probably doing damage every day. Yep, and so amongst that group, what's interesting is how many of them were really good individual contributors and would be ecstatic if you allowed them to just go back to doing the thing they love. Right, treat them respectfully, pay them for their impact, not, you know, not for the role they're in. I mean, with all due respect to the people from hey, the hey Point system has caused some challenges for us. 

0:14:01 - Sara
Right. 

0:14:02 - Bill Schaninger
You know people are looking to accumulate employees customers budget. I mean, it's, that's the old school. It's the thing that bloated the Sloan BU model, which was how do you job grade Right? Where's the impact there? You know, if you're an incredibly good GC who does an amazing bit on, let's say, ip or on security, why do you want them leading anyone? Just protect us. I mean, if you get somebody who's really good at the transition from legacy to cloud in banking, you know what you need them doing. That's not trying to do something that you've not trained them to do. 

0:14:44 - John
And we will be right back. 

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0:15:57 - John
Okay, let's get back to the program, Bill, when you talk about culture and then connecting back to the idea that, look, if we've made a mistake and we've put somebody in a leadership role, supervisory role, it is not equipped, doesn't even have a desire to develop other people, you know, do it with honor and give them a chance to step back. However, however, we still have a number of organizations whose culture would look upon that as that's a walk of shame. It's like wow, man, you couldn't cut it. That goes right to the C-suite. I think of creating that atmosphere, or starting to create that atmosphere. What that's on us? No harm, no fall man. We are going to give you a chance to step back, go back into that individual contributor role and support you in that. That is a big shift. 

0:16:48 - Bill Schaninger
Oh, enormous. And if you think about all the social norms that we've allowed to creep over the years, which is, we allow green effing to happen, right, we allow people to play, oh, we have values of respect. It's respectful to mention to somebody else that you think that person is terrible at the job, but not say it to their face. It's respectful to make them wondering where they stand. You want to know why anxiety and depression arise? Because people don't know what they can count on at work. 

0:17:14 - John
Exactly. Yes, that is so true, yeah. 

0:17:17 - Sara
So, if we're talking about what you have written in the book about called the mishandling of managers, for the reasons we've been discussing here, what can a senior leader do? But what's some practical advice? What would be a first step we need to take? I mean, I'm talking keeping it basic here. Oh yeah. 

0:17:38 - Bill Schaninger
I mean I would start by revisiting the roles themselves. Okay, you know I mean. It's interesting. Often when you hire somebody, you put them into the role as left by the last person. 

0:17:48 - Sara
Sure. 

0:17:49 - Bill Schaninger
Not what the role should be and most people, when they're in a role and they're pretty good at something or they have some excess capacity, you load them up. You play an economy of scope game because, the person has capacity to do it. 

But you know if every time you put somebody new in, you said, well, what does the job actually need to be, what are the few activities critical to driving value or reducing risk? And then, starting from there and making sure that you automatically built it enough for time. On talent, not doing administrative, not doing bureaucracy, I think the roles would look really different. And so first one is revisit the role. Then you can say, okay, if that's the role, then let's work through a checklist. Do they have a good enough team around them? Do they have enough authority and decision rights? Do they have enough budget Right? Are there's a clear where they fit into the operating model? 

Because you know, what everyone loves is when you start playing hunger games for even the smallest amounts of capital and decision influence. That's right, that's right. But as soon as you have that sorted out all of which is controlled by people above you, I might add executives Then you can say, okay, if that's it, then what's the ideal candidate? What's the ideal candidate look like? And then in only then you get to say what's the knowledge, skills, attributes and experiences? That would be ideal, right, but you know somebody who's really good in a place that has a little bit of hunger games in their culture. May not be great at a place that needs to be completely collegial and cross-functional. 

0:19:17 - Sara
Good point. 

0:19:18 - Bill Schaninger
Right and there is like pick the person fit for the role and the culture and the strategy and the operating model and the people on their team. That's how you dial it in Right. It means you know hashtag selection matters. Yes, right so that to me is a big one, right there, right, go back, but it also requires an acknowledgement that a good portion of your incumbents are not up to it. 

0:19:41 - Sara
Yeah, so can you double click on that for a minute? What are leaders overlooking that they probably already know when? Why are they overlooking that news? Yeah, this, this, this section of people aren't really fit for the job. 

0:19:58 - Bill Schaninger
Well, fear people fear is at the core of all of that, right, I mean, think about how many of the people who listen to you and or you'll probably know in your own life. Why do people stay in lousy relationships? 

0:20:07 - Sara
Because they know it. Yeah, yeah, because they know it. 

0:20:10 - Bill Schaninger
Right, and to see it, oh what if it's going to be better than this? I mean, our willingness to normalize lousy is pretty, pretty strong. It is Right, and they're not going to be great, but they're mine, or they can be destroying everything underneath you, right? And so you know that the thing I think that most leaders fail to recognize is they're in action speaks just as loudly as their action. 

0:20:36 - Sara
Right. 

0:20:36 - Bill Schaninger
Right. So when you see, when you see youngsters looking around going. What's the secret to success here? Well, I should be an A-hole. Right and I yeah, yeah, right, exactly, you know, and I should. I should step on people you know for my own personal, and I should. You know, I should always look to showcase me. I mean, that sort of stuff is embedded pretty quickly. 

0:20:58 - John
Yeah. 

0:20:58 - Bill Schaninger
You know that's when you're taking a look at the incumbents. It should come in the context of purpose, strategy and culture to make sure you're being overt in signposting to the organization. Right, we know we've allowed it get a little sideways here or we've had a thousand flowers blooming. Just think that the challenge from a leadership scale standpoint, when everybody runs the place the same way, you have a reasonable assurance that you can move a leader from one area to another and it will work. When you allow it to be called to personality, you have no idea if it's going to work every time you move somebody. 

0:21:34 - Sara
So there is something about get really clear. 

0:21:35 - John
Yeah. 

0:21:36 - Bill Schaninger
Get really clear on how you want to run the place and pick for that. So much of that has gone out the window. I mean, as we've, you know, as we've really leaned on HR and we've, you know, said, oh, hr, you have to come up with the perfect nine box, the perfect form, the perfect appraisal. The hiring manager shouldn't, should be allowed just to do unstructured interviews, because they'll know it when they see it Break. It's so bad when you see all the bad stuff being used way more than the valid stuff, like inversely correlated. 

0:22:03 - John
Yeah, yeah, a real quick story Sidebar. Well, this I'll put it in here, you will, you would. I would love to have had you in the room Bill for this one. But I had a client say well, yeah, I know, I mean real good ventures. You provide objective data, you equip us to help understand, you know those elements of a person that have our highly predictive on the success in their role. But we're kind of just going to go with our impression during the interview. This is a, this is an organization that is global, that employs over 10,000 people. And I and I was stunned, I thought they were joking with me and I said really, you're, you're just going to go with sort of a gut emotional. How does it feel during the interview sort of thing, when that subjectivity is completely, completely unpredictive and prescriptive? And I was shocked. 

0:22:53 - Bill Schaninger
Well, it's, it's. It's amazing how prevalent it is. I mean, I used to laugh in the earliest days of my experience in McKinsey and say you know, when you get a million resumes for 5,000, you know roles you can afford to be terrible at selection. That's true. That's true, right. When sourcing, when sourcing is so good and recruiting is so good that everyone in the pool can do the job, you are basically picking on fit, which then whether or not the local partners can conceive of you and think you'd be a good mesh matters, right, most organizations don't have that kind of brand, so selection does matter and board. 

You get in trouble because then it's like every hiring and plus every hiring manager wants every entry level job to be treated as a unicorn as opposed to a pool role. But if you treat it like a unicorn, you're doing a deal, you're allowing them to negotiate. The minute you allow negotiation to occur in those pool roles, you are inviting a comp disparity problem. You're inviting a disparate treatment problem, right? I mean, so much of this is like again the negative, the negative annuity that you'll benefits 10 years down the road, right, right. 

0:24:04 - John
That's wise. Can I get back to the word fear really quick, because a couple of weeks ago we did an episode on the whole return to office topic and I'd love to get your perspective on this because, you know, shortly after the, after, we started to come back from the, from the pandemic, and there was an immediate push to really mandate people coming back to the office. Now we're looking at data that is saying a lot of executives are regretting the heavy handed, you know, bringing the hammer down. You're coming back to the office and what they're realizing is they said you know, we failed to do, we failed to ask our employees what they thought. Even though there were a lot of surveys put out, just generally we did not ask. And then we're losing tons of people Yet again, in the face of all the objective data that is available and the tools we have, we had a lot of organizations just revert back to that old way because I think it was fear that we've lost control of the traditional way of doing business. 

What's what's your take on that? What advice are you? Can you give our the middle to consider the new world of work after the, after the pandemic? 

0:25:17 - Bill Schaninger
That's a great question. Look, I'd say, in the first instance, for the people who are currently in charge, they are likely in like in their last or their second to last role of being in charge. Okay, so the stereotypical old white dude, you know, who is holding on, holding on with desperate, desperate grip, saying this is mine, I'm going to hold on to it. Now, if we were really empathy oriented, we'd see that for a good for a good number of those folks. Their identity is likely tied up at work. It's true, the important portion of their identity is their importance and part of that importance is their crew and they were probably used to coming out of their office and seeing a C, a cubes or other offices or whatever filled with their people, their people, yep, and they were getting their work done and they could walk around and poke in and check in and see how things are going. All of their management by walking around principles are useless. Even if they come into the office, there's no one there. So how do they know that their stuff is being done Right and will they be exposed and will they hit their numbers? 

And so, yeah, there is a lot of fear there, because you fear what you don't see, you know you can't be sure of right. So I mean, I have a certain amount of empathy for that I do. It doesn't mean we should continue doing things like that. But you know, as my, as my daughter and my daughter and my stepdaughter and my partner like to say to me, all emotions and in anger it's like fear, fear, anxiety, disappointment, rejection, and you know you're either elated or you're angry, right, and I do think, I do think there's a little bit of that right, but that's for the exacts. But this fear thing that you're describing, I think, more broadly, let's say, both sides in air quotes, the employee force and the company force, we've allowed this to become, you know, a fixed sum, one in zero, sort of equation, and I think that's a mistake. Okay, I mean you know this idea that you know it's not a light switch, it's a dimmer. 

0:27:17 - John
Yeah. 

0:27:18 - Bill Schaninger
And you know the mandate was a stupid idea. I mean, there's there's no need to sugarcoat that. It was a dumb idea. When you're one of the biggest brands on the planet, let's say in professional services or banking, okay, and you put out a decree that everyone shall be back and collectively, your workforce gives you the double middle fingers. Right, where do you go from there? It's like mom and dad figuring out that you can't actually force your kids to eat the food on their plate, and when the kids figure that out, you're screwed. 

0:27:46 - John
You are Right, you're going to have to plant that flag and you've got to stick with it. But you are screwed, you're right. 

0:27:51 - Bill Schaninger
You're right. You're right, you're riding that. You're riding that like, like the Hindenburg, right? I mean it's going down badly. Yeah, I think the challenge was and I was begging people not to send memos Please don't send that memo. Please do not send that memo. At minimum, just say to them hey, we're trying to figure it out. We're all still worried about being safe. Many of us have parents at home or whatever in kids. We're figuring it out. Just, let's take a breath. If we can keep this thing running, let's figure it out in a way that works for all of us, as by some time. 

The thing that has surprised me is that there's been a relatively small group that's gotten the idea that you should match the level of coordination required to the level of collaboration required by the work. So when you're kicking off a project, yeah, we're going to be in for, like you know, seven days straight, we're going to get it right. But once you're up in your work streams and running, then it starts looking a little bit more like regular project management or performance management. Sure, if you said to a worker, being part of us means this One day a month is for the company, we're going to get together, have a nice meal, maybe some drinks, celebrate what's going on and include you know what's happening with the company. Yeah, two days a month are going to be for the unit you work in Same sort of stuff, but probably a little bit more tactical planning. So everybody knows what everybody else is doing. 

And then the rest of the time it's up to you and your direct supervisor to figure out when the level of collaboration means we actually have to be in each other's presence, right, right, with one big exception when you join, onboarding must be in person and probably needs to be for at least six months. The thing is, we all deluded ourselves in the earliest days of COVID because we were rolling over social capital built up over years. Right, people who knew the language, knew the shortcuts, knew who to call. What the hell is going on here? Who do I go? Right? Yeah, if you go into a place and the only thing you know is written down, the stuff written down is not that. 

0:29:46 - John
That's true, that's true Right. 

0:29:49 - Bill Schaninger
I mean we've. We're now what going on in a year or three of this? I worry that we're backing our way into the gig economy without even thinking about it, because when everyone is more focused about me and what works for me and not we, you have a dressed up vendor, Right, and that's. It's on the company. It's on the company to make it more attractive to want to be part of we. 

I just worry that this stuff, you know, with the mandates and the stops and the starts and whatever we've made and we it's amazing about this We've made it so transactional that we've lost sight of the social part that's so important for people to feel like they belong to something that matters, Right. I mean, think about where I live in the Lehigh Valley. Here it's like this logistics hub. You know we have the airport and the highways all coming together. In northeast we would have on Billboards what the hourly starting wage was, and then they started going to daily pay. Oh, oh, okay, pay people daily and, leading with just a dollar, you might as well drive around the flatbed and pick people up to go out and work in the field that day. Right, it's true. 

0:30:51 - John
That is true. 

0:30:53 - Bill Schaninger
I mean talk about companies who are thinking they were being competitive and responding to the market. No, the market wants you to be in the ballpark, but they don't want. They don't want you to treat. I mean, it's like when you start getting to the point where I pay you, therefore I can treat you like you're not human Right. 

0:31:08 - John
It's a transaction. 

0:31:09 - Bill Schaninger
It's. When it's so transactional, it erodes the underlying essence that gives companies the resilience they want through the human capital. You know, when people line up and go, hey, we're not going to let this thing go down, we're going to line up and we're going to do what's necessary, that's because they care. 

If you create this environment where they don't care, because it's all about what are you paying me? You get what you have now, which is well, I don't have to come in. You can't force me, and that's why I think, that's why I think it's in a weird secure way. The only person to broker, initially, detente and then to actually people giving a crap is the person they work for. Yeah, and they either have the skills to do that or they don't. You know what I mean and I worry for many of them. 20 years have been about the task you know, not about the person. 

0:31:57 - John
What a great part one of our interview with Bill Schaninger. Make sure to tune in next week when we will hear even more from Bill about his experience in the world of consulting, but also his experience as a leader in the business professional. Make sure to check out the show notes and all of the links in there. We will see you next week on The Bosshole Chronicles.