Big Talk About Small Business

Economic Engagement: Beyond Open-Book Management Basics with Bill Fotsch

• Big Talk About Small Business • Episode 131

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Big companies can hide behind layers of reports and still survive. Small businesses don’t get that luxury, so we brought on Bill Fotsch to talk about what actually works when you’re trying to grow profitably with a lean team and real constraints. Bill’s an engineer by training, a former Bain consultant, and a long-time advocate of open-book management who’s seen the difference between “finance theater” and true employee engagement.

We get into how open-book management evolves into what Bill calls economic engagement: using the operating metrics your people can influence every day and tying them directly to customer outcomes and cash flow. We unpack why concepts like EBITDA often fail on the floor, and why the best metrics feel “nuts and bolts” enough that a crew lead, designer, or frontline operator can use them to win the day. Bill also tells the story of why Net Promoter Score didn’t help until teams asked the follow-up question that matters most: why did the customer score you that way?

Along the way, we challenge big-company advice that gets copied into small business culture, including the idea that there’s one perfect “right way” to run a company. Bill shares his research work with Harvard Business School, the role of mechanisms and management systems, and why employee equity by itself rarely changes behavior without real participation. We also touch on leadership isolation, getting the truth from your team, and how better systems become a practical succession planning strategy that makes the company less dependent on the owner.

If you want to go deeper, we also mention a no-cost diagnostic tool Bill offers so you can learn by doing. Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with an owner who’s stuck chasing the wrong metrics, and leave a review so more small business leaders can find the show.

Check out Bill's diagnostic Tool 

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Big Companies And Small Brains

SPEAKER_03

The thing that is a challenge with larger companies is they're like dinosaurs, very big bodies, really small brains. Well, it's true. Okay. And they lumber about.

SPEAKER_02

Well, let's get started.

SPEAKER_04

We like to keep it spontaneous here on our show on another episode of Big Talk about small business.

SPEAKER_02

All right. We gotta we do that every time, Bill. We gotta keep it live.

SPEAKER_03

I feel like I should be going yee-haw or something like that.

SPEAKER_04

You'll get another chance when we end it, Bill, so get ready. Like you'll you can this one, this one's for you to see. The next one's for you to join.

Bill Fox And Open-Book Roots

SPEAKER_02

You you got, yeah, exactly. So, Bill, we have Bill Fox with us today. The guy is really, he's pretty famous, truthfully. He's done a lot of really cool stuff. And he's worked with lots of businesses, large and small. And he's a big, big advocate of open book management, which is where I sort of connected with Bill.

SPEAKER_03

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02

But um, so Bill, tell everybody a little bit about yourself, though.

SPEAKER_03

And just a brief one was I'm an engineer by training, worked at Briggs and Stratton, that's where I cut my teeth. And I mentioned that because that is a lot of how I think. Meaning, how do things work? That's what I want to know. Um, so headed off to business school because I realized I knew a lot about manufacturing and engineering, not much about marketing and finance. Um and then uh some would say sold my soul to Bain and Company for uh six years. Uh it was the same six years that all the kids were born, so it was nice to be overpaid for a period of time. Um, I I then worked for three or I'm sorry, for two three-year stints at corporate America. By the way, the smile is working for me. Um and um I was a very lousy fit for corporate America. I understand that. Yeah, well, you you you would given our our conversations, Mark. The the notion of things should make sense, and I don't salute necessarily really well. And I never kiss rings. And and that was that like really didn't work. Um, so uh, but the the good news out of that, the two stints at Teneco and at um Litton, Teneco VP Business Development. Um, so I was the like strategy and deals guy. And it was in that um in that position that I did a joint venture with Jack Stack. Okay. And and Jack was just getting rolling with his uh great game of business, the the open book stuff. Um, and I saw what was going on there, and I thought, this is so much better than what we're doing at JIKES. It's not even close. Uh it was, I would tell you that the joint venture we did, which is megavolts, which was starters and alternators, continues to stay. The one thing I made sure was that SRC owned majority interest. Because I didn't know how long I was going to last the tentacle, and God, I was certain we'd be able to screw it up if we if we ran it.

SPEAKER_02

So SRC, for those who didn't know, that was Jack's company, Springfield Rebuilders. What was it? Springfield Rebuilder.

SPEAKER_03

Springfield remanufacturing. Right. That's right. Yeah, they were a they were a great supplier to JIKs. And the joint venture was, they didn't do remanufacturing starters and alternators. We had a lousy supplier in starters alternators. So we were distribution, they were product. Megavolt was the name of the company. Uh, in any event, I wasn't smart enough to realize that it was a lousy fit for corporate America, so I took a job at Lytton Industrial Automation and proved the point that I was really a lousy fit for corporate America. In any event, um, as I was pretty much certain that I wanted to get the devil out of there, um, I ended up spending three days on Table Rock Lake with Jack Snack. In theory, catching fish. At least actually Jack says happened. We drank so damn much beer that I'm really not sure.

SPEAKER_02

But we're down here in our part of the country, man. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03

100% exactly right. Table Rock Lake. That's a cold. Um, and and why you have to go in a bass boat at 60 miles an hour from one part of the lake to another is a mystery to me.

SPEAKER_04

Okay, you gotta get there quick. It makes it more fun. Yeah, you gotta get there quick. I mean, the fish are bottom trying to beat the competition.

SPEAKER_03

And and I can tell you that um, given that I was in fear for my life, I saw God several times. Okay, so that was cool.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that's another reason.

From Great Game To Coaching

SPEAKER_03

Well, there you go. In any event, um, at the end of those three days, we had basically outlined the business premise for what came to be known as great gain coaching. And uh that was great. The the thing, and it really kind of leans into one dimension that I think your audience should be sort of thinking about is the whole open book, make the economics come alive, so the in effect, all of your employees can partner with you and drive the business. That was all fine. At the same time, when the financial crisis hit in 2008, it was all about revenue. And I looked at my bag of tricks, I didn't have much on revenue. So that actually spawned a fair amount of thought with respect to, hey, wait, wait a minute, how do we drive revenue? Because all the clients I we were working with, our revenue was a function of their results. So we were more than casually interested in their results. That started migrating my thinking about open book management. I'll call it kind of expanding it. The other thing that was true was with a lot of the clients that I work with, we we weren't really true to the faith in terms of it's all about income statements and balance sheets. So a really large company, as an example that I work with, which was a mining company, Zambian Consolidated Copper Mine, literally in Zambia, Africa, and that's it's its own sort of story. But with those folks, if you pulled out income statements and balance sheets, they'd laugh you out of the place. But if you talk to them about, well, the issue is generating more cash, we're behind on orders to customers, throughput is the order of the day, more tons per day, week, month. That's what drives it. Um and that's how we started evolving to what we now call economic engagement. Call it open book management with more focus on the customers and more focus on the operating metrics that drive the financials rather than the financials per se.

SPEAKER_02

Um so we're talking about like leading indicators, like marketing-related stuff, inquiries.

Economic Engagement And Operating Metrics

Why Customer Conversations Beat NPS

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I'd say kind of that that's right, but kind of much more kind of sort of nuts and boltsy. What do I mean by that? Um, I'll go back to the uh financial crisis. We we man, we tried everything and anything because we needed more revenue and we're we're freaking dying. And in those days, uh a guy I knew from um my days at Bain and Company, Fred Reicheld, was just coming out with a net promoter score. So we tried that. And it's like rate, your customers rate you from one to ten. It it made no difference whatsoever. It was not helpful at all. Okay, but we followed up with asking folks why? Why are you rating us? Whatever that made all the difference in the world. Because all of a sudden they're talking to us about what's really important to them. Repeat, referral, revenue starts roaring. So the the leading indicators, I'll call it conceptually, I think that's right, but it's kind of more nuts and boltsy than that. In in in like each case. Um in operations, um, if throughputs the issue, then throughputs the issue, and if that's what's going to drive the financials, but yeah, when I had the privilege of working with Southwest Airlines, with them, it was cost per passenger mile. And I mean, it permeates the whole organization because everybody's thinking about cost per passenger mile. Now, is that the thing that drives the financials? Absolutely, but they didn't really spend much time speaking about income statements and balance sheets. The other thing that's advan kind of advantageous, and there's exceptions to that, quite frankly. I'm thinking about um my buddies at MSA Engineering, we absolutely talk about financial statements. We we I mean, we did that. So it's it's sort of selective. Um when people understand what the hell they're talking about, put another way, I was at a vista meeting recently, and I asked supposed one guy said, We're all over this. I said, Really? That's great. What are you focused on right now? And he said, EBITDA. I said, really? And he said, yes. And he was, I was really quite proud of it. And I said, so EBITDA tends to mean I have no idea what you're talking about. I I think that's what EBITDA typically means for most folks. He said, no, but we trained everybody on EBITDA. I said, great! When did you do that? He said, six months ago. I said, super. Do they use EBITDA on like a daily basis? Well, well, not really. How many of the folks do you think could tell you what EBITDA is today? It's six months ago. And then he got kind of a downcast look. He is trying, he's moving in the right direction, okay? But if you're not talking in the language that people are actually experiencing, their day-to-day stuff. I I just came out of a weekly meeting with one week bath. That I own 30% of the company. They were client and became um an investment, which is kind of its its own story. What do they do? Bath renovations? Exactly right. Exactly. Yeah. And our our our unique feature is that because and Matt Plaskov is a genius, he's a really great guy. Is he came to conclude that most folks remodel baths, which is the most common remodel um in most homes, they do kind of a lousy job at it. So if you think about what you might do in applying lean principles to how you remodel a bath, that's what open book, that's what um one-leaf bath is. And so let me do it rhetorically. With our um, our business is now 70% repeat and referral. So that's all about relationships. Who do you think has the tighter relationship with our customers? I give you three choices the sales guys, the designers, or the leads on the crew that actually install the bath. Hundred percent. You're exactly right, okay? They know job one is to get a really happy customer that inevitably means repeat and referrals. So it's that's what I mean about really nuts and boltsy. So, Rudy, as an example, is one of the leads. He's a character. Rudy, are you gonna get another five-star Yelp review? Well, of course, Bill. I mean, why do I ask? Okay, Rudy, right, that's cool. Why do you think you're gonna get a get a five-star review? Bill, I speak with the the owner, she's a 60-year-old woman, every morning. I know exactly what she's thinking about and what she's concerned about. And she's had a couple of other remodel jobs, they never had any rapport like that. So it's that that's what I mean about kind of nuts and bolts-y sorts of things. It's it's not a lot of magic, but one of the things that I think very few of small to medium customers do well is actually regularly speak with our customers about what they value. So they really know, not guess.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, I think there's a lot of reasons for that, Bill. I mean, first off, we've got a lot of business owners that aren't engaged with their customers. Okay, they're all sitting there going to vistage meetings who are telling them, work on your business, not in your business, which is the biggest crock of bullshit I've ever heard in my in my life. Okay. So that's one problem um, I think that that um exists out there. Um and and the second one is there's no discipline, there's no process, there's no consistency that they apply every single time. I mean, you know, uh Eric and I are involved in a company where we've got this creative consultant, okay? And I like the guy, and I think he's talented, but I've told him I want a weekly job status report on what you're working on, what you got done this week, and what you're gonna do next week. And I cannot get the guy who says, Abs, it's a great idea, absolutely, we need to do that. I have yet to get one of these damn things. Okay. And it blows my freaking mind. So the communications, there's no consistency. And and you're, I mean, yeah, it is a pretty simple idea. It's like talk with your clients and customers. But if I'm all, you know, going to vistage meetings and and listening to all these quote experts they drag in in front of you as speakers, and I say that as somebody who is a vistage chair. Okay, I know what it's all about.

SPEAKER_04

I'll I'll add a all right. I'll add a third one there. What's that? And Bill kind of hit on it when we talked about MPS scores, EBITDA, these other things that major like the big company, the big, big companies have to do because there's massive structures, shareholders, all kinds of freaking red tape, blah, blah, blah. My one of my big problems has been was like that there's some sort of perfect right way to do it. And if you don't do it that exact way, then you're not doing it the right way. So you get all this advice from outside or from bigger, and you naturally look to bigger companies because I'm like, oh, well, they they obviously have it figured out because they're big, they're they're where I want. Right, they're successful. They're successful. Right. And I mean that that lie, that self-lie has been one of my biggest freaking bottlenecks for me to just drive the way I know I should. And Bill, what I love about what you were talking about earlier is like, you know, who who is the right if we're if our business grows and our revenue grows because there's it's a relational business, who on the team has the closest relation to that? Focus on that, put metrics behind that. So you're you're talking about what I love, I love that it's even making me think. You're talking about taking wide worlds of MPS scores, which I've in I've implemented, didn't do a damn thing for me. The only thing it did for me before was that my previous company gave me a score that my acquisitional company was gonna buy as that's what they wanted. So I we we did it. And we came back with high reviews. Like they're like, this is the best damn MPS score you've ever seen in our life. I'm like, yeah, because I know what our customers care about. You don't fail them, you call them back. Like it's very relational. Like in I'm bleeding every day for 12 years, but I knew the right way to handle the business, but I didn't ever put a method. But what I like about Bill, it makes me excited to think I can have more confidence as an entrepreneur that's in touch with my audience, zeroing down in a really small world. Where's the one thing that like I got to do to your point, discipline every single day? Yeah. Where do I focus in on? And that's kind of what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and well, and uh as soon as you are really partnering with your employees on serving customers profitably, by the way, just let me stop there for just a second. Partnering with the employees to serve customers profitably. What company does that amount not apply to?

SPEAKER_02

Uh at all.

SPEAKER_03

It applies to unfortunately the the the thing that you were saying, though, about um larger companies. The thing that is a challenge with larger companies is they're like dinosaurs, very big bodies, really small brains. Eventually, well it's true, okay, and they lumber about, and it and it's it's like a huge flywheel. You can screw up on stuff right and left.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, thank God. You know, that was always my my gripe with good to great, which a lot of people acted like was the greatest management Bible of all time. Give me all these companies that are frigging 30, 40, 50 years old that are billions of dollars in revenue, okay, and and say that what applies to them applies to the rest of us out here who are fighting for an existence. It's insane.

SPEAKER_04

It's a big corporation CEO book to breed. Yeah, it's good for them. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. As long as they don't mind modeling themselves after businesses that are out of business, it's great. Circuit City and Fannie Mae and all that. But yeah.

Small Business Discipline Over Big Advice

SPEAKER_03

I have a bittersweet relationship with Jim Collins. Okay. Okay. Let me start with the sweet part. Before Jim published Good to Great, he had given an advanced copy to Jack. Jack gave me a copy and said, Read this, tell me what you think. And I read through it and I said, Well, one thing for sure, I see what he was talking about about mechanisms, repeatable processes that go beyond any given leader. That's what great game of business is. I mean, he didn't happen to say great game of business, but that's what it, I mean that's what it meant. He says, here's his phone number. Call him up, tell him that. I said, sure, I don't know Jim from Adam. He said, no, just call him. Okay, so so I called Jim, and Jim answers the phone. Well, he wasn't a big shit then, yeah. Exactly correct. Well said. By the way, you're you're heading to the bitter part, okay? But nonetheless, nonetheless, I said, um, I I hope it's okay. Jack gave me a copy of your book. I read it. The the thing I really like was mechanisms. Because that's what we're doing here. That's what Great Game of Business is. He says, that's what I'm telling Stack. I said, you two need to get together. I'm just like a middleman here. Okay. So that was a happy discussion. Um, when Good to Great and Built to Last had were out for quite some period of time. I did the following. I looked at the 18 companies and 11 companies that it was that they were based on. And I looked at, because it was all about they were chosen as a function of their stock performance in the prior 20 years, right? That was that was why they were chosen. So I looked at their stock performance in the 20 years after the book was published. Yeah, it probably sucked for most of them, didn't it? Yeah, that um several of them had gone bankrupt. Okay, Circuit City was an example of that. Right. As a group, they substantially underperformed the SP 500. So I I wrote an article that I sent to Jim, and the article was why the Built the Last companies didn't last. I bet he loved that. Well, and I said this isn't the article. Jim, I should not be writing this article. You should be writing this article.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_03

And um, by the way, I ended up speaking to his chief of staff. Never spoke with Jim. He was, I forget they had an oh, in monk mode. He was thinking about the next book. He was in monk mode, I think. Oh my god. Um don't disturb him.

SPEAKER_02

I'm sorry. I said, don't disturb him when he's in monk mode.

Good To Great Under The Microscope

SPEAKER_03

Well, I I think he he, in fact, was disturbed, and my analysis had suggested, in fact, that was the case. Okay, but that that really didn't help. So the funny thing, I I like mechanisms. I think big hairy audacious goals is bullshit. Um, and the reason I say that is take um, what was the name of the the company that um it was gonna revolutionize the office space starting in New York? Oh yeah. Uh WeWork. We work. We work, yeah. Okay. We work had a big, hairy, audacious goal. I don't think it was the goal was to burn through four billion dollars of SoftBank's money. I'm not, I don't really think that was the goal. That was what they achieved. Okay, but so if you say big, hairy, audacious goal with folks that were really successful, by definition, you're right. But it's not predictive. Okay. Um there are other aspects, and then there are various things that people like the hedgehog and all that kind of crap. Um I'm Yeah, get the right people on the bus and all that. But level and I've seen if you get the wrong people, that's bad. But like, I don't think I need a book to tell me that. I mean, well, they pretty much got that one.

SPEAKER_02

It's the problem I the biggest problem I had is the whole level five leadership concept, especially when it applies to smaller companies, okay. We're not all ready for level five leadership, okay?

SPEAKER_03

Well, and and and frankly, the notion that it was research-based is nonsense. Yeah, exactly. And that the the research that I ended up doing subsequently is what research is about. You you look for data to test a premise. The premise I was looking to do was say good to great are built to last. They were recipes for success going forward. Let's see if that's true. No, it's not true. Okay, oh, geez. The the and I'm kind of anal on that because um, as as you know, Marvin, um I ended up doing years of research with Harvard Business School. I I I, by the way, can tell you firsthand what purgatory is like. Because I've been there. It's slow, it costs money, and you have no idea what the outcome is going to be. I mean, that's just that's that's what research is. The thing that was kind of interesting, though, is the research that we did on, let's call it defining. Are you guys okay?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, sorry, guys.

SPEAKER_03

Mark's breaking my mic fell off.

SPEAKER_04

I'll do it.

SPEAKER_03

Eric, do you get hazard pay working with Mark?

SPEAKER_04

I don't, I don't, uh I feel very, very vulnerable.

SPEAKER_02

We didn't mean to interrupt your story.

SPEAKER_04

Anyway, Mark can bankrupt me at any moment.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. Well, I do like to break off the camera that's right against the door opening. Yeah, yeah, you do do that. That has been a problem. But anyway, um, Bill, Bill, go back. So Harvard Business School research, though.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, the the thing that was good about it, um I had a bittersweet relationship with a lot of good folks, I guess, but um, with a HBS professor who I was introduced by the dean. I was my both of my boys went to Harvard Business School also. So I spoke with Dean Norria, who I think is a really great guy, um, Indian by descent, very humble by nature. You would never pick him out as now the retired um dean of Harvard Business School. In any event, um, he connected me with a professor, so I had him uh the professor visit a variety of folks I had worked with. And um, to his credit, he asked what was a life-changing question. He said, Bill, what's your end goal? I said, Oh, that's that's easy. I want to change the world. He said, Yeah, by that time, he was used to my Midwest kind of comments, right? He said, What do you mean? I said, business is a huge force for good. Yet we got folks talking about socialism as the way to go. And most folks, if you ask, is business evil or good, they will say evil. That's the average. Well, because that's that's how it's portrayed in pop culture. Well, exactly right. Uh, although albeit at times, I mean, men are laid off 10% of their workforce earlier this week. Well, that's business. The the upshot is my my premise was business is this huge force for good. If business practiced well, it in fact is a force for good. And then he said something that really screwed up my life. He said, Bill, Galileo changed the world. He didn't do it with a winning smile, he didn't do it with a story, didn't do it with an anecdote, he had researched. I said, shit, does that mean I have to do research? He said, only if you're serious about changing the world. I couldn't figure out any rational way out of it. So that's why I literally spent three years, a little plus of that. And but the the details are kind of tough for a um a setting sort of like this. But suffice it to say that what we did was define in what ended up being five drivers, what fundamentally running a business well is. There are three questions each that measured like, how well are you doing on this driver object? And they really measuring mechanisms. That's what we were doing. So one of the one of the questions on customer engagement was do you regularly reach out to your customers and get input on what they value? Always, sometimes, never. And it's so it's not, by the way, the you know, how employees feel. That's not what we're asking about. We're asking about management systems mechanisms again to use the Jim Collins thing. Well, the bottom line is after we did eight waves of 50 to 150 companies per wave, and we saw every damn time that if you were top quartile, you had double the profit growth of the average, and the average had double the profit growth of the bottom quartile. When you see that once, it's interesting. When you see it eight times, it's kind of statistically significant. And and that's the um uh that that's was a a a real insight um why Harvard Business Review would refuse to publish it after we'd already published five other articles is a mystery to me.

SPEAKER_02

I took that up to the editor-in-chief. And you've been in HBR a lot, so it's not like you're breaking.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah, it wasn't like I was unknown. Right. Yeah, we I we we've written five articles. I I I having had several conversations with the folks, I I I guess I conclude that there are that's one of the reasons I'm enjoying this on the Sunday. I'm canceled in a variety of settings. And you don't even know you're canceled. I mean, it's not like a flag goes up. Okay, you you just all of a sudden, like emails don't get responded to.

SPEAKER_02

Well, are you too much of a shit disturber? Is that what happened?

Harvard Research And Five Drivers

SPEAKER_03

Um let's let's put it this way. I'm for sure a jerk. Okay, no question about it. Hands down, if my wife Joy of 45 years came in, by the way, she would first say 46 is no guarantee. Okay, that's the first thing she would say. Um, but if she heard me say I'm a jerk, she'd go, yeah, okay, I don't know what Elsie said, but that's a fact. Okay, that's a I'm I'm a well-intended jerk, but but a jerk nonetheless, I hate bullshit. Yeah. I'm with you. And and I I throw the flag and I go, like, that's bullshit. And um, there's a lot of folks in various um settings that really don't like that at all. Um, uh I'll give you an example. Um, the professor connected me with a guy by the name of Pete Savros. Pete is the um a very senior KKR um partner, and Pete was just starting what he calls ownership works, which is to say they put three percent of the stock distributed to the employees, and that's gonna like create some sort of magic.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, well, it's just like the whole Aesop philosophy, which I think you and I have talked about in the PR.

SPEAKER_03

It is it is it's I mean, in a way it's worse. And well, let me let me tell you what I mean by that. If a hundred percent ownership of stock does not affect employees' behavior, and that's really well documented. I mean, there's a it's not like up for discussion, then what's the likelihood that 3% of stock? I mean, you know, it's like who's getting who? So when he he very proudly explained that to me, and I said, that is such a nice bad idea, and the professor nearly had a coronary, and what do you mean by that? I said, Well, look, I I don't have an acts to grind in this. I'm just saying that we already know that 100% ownership by employees does not affect their behavior. It's the mechanisms that affect the behavior, it's the way in which they're participating in the company. That's what affects their behavior. So if we know that you're not going to get any movement in performance, but it's really nice. I'm guessing nobody turned down the stock. It's so true. Well, yeah, and and um, by the way, does Pete hate me? Yes, yes, he he hates me. It by the way, it got even worse. Um, he wrote an article about how uh giving employees equity was a bit like this game changer in capitalism, and it was in fortune. And I wrote an article a month later that said, well, maybe, you know, if you get the folks engaged in the business. Um so uh and and one of the things that's hard for an individual like Pete is how many folks do you think tell Pete you're full of shit? Oh, exactly.

SPEAKER_02

He's a big KKR partner, no way. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, you know, so it's true. That's that's always a bit of a problem. That's why I've told my wife this a million times, but it's really true. So if this, by the way, stays in our, you know, doesn't get edited out, that'd be great. Um I was gonna say joint kicks me in the ass like daily. I mean, and I'm not talking about like once a day.

SPEAKER_02

I can't say that I can't identify with that, Bill. And and uh Eric knows my wife. We've all worked together in the same room before, so he knows it's probably true.

SPEAKER_04

Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I I get it.

SPEAKER_03

Well, but um even biblically, um think about this for a second. Saint Paul, he's actually speaking to God, right? Road to Damascus, most prolific of all of the apostles, no one else is close, but they talk about a thorn in his side. They don't ever describe any any details about it, but there's a thorn in his side. Why did God give him a thorn in the side? My answer is to make sure he understands he's human.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah. We we all we all need a yeah, that that's a problem if you have somebody that everyone's afraid to say something to, and then they I mean it's not even good for them, it's good for no one. Why do you do that?

SPEAKER_03

Eric, I couldn't agree more, but uh it it's also not something that you regularly seek what you need. Yeah, right? I mean, I assure you, it's only Joanne and I it'll be 46 uh this June that we'll be years that we'll be married. For the first like 20 years, she would say something and it would just bother the hell out of me. Now she says stuff, and I go thank you. I get you. And and and and and the real secret is meaning but meaning it when you say thank you.

SPEAKER_02

No, I I get that. I'm in the same boat. I I can identify with that. But I do think that that that happens that that isolation, because in many cases the high-level people don't get out on the floor and they don't do the actual work of the business alongside the workers and get, you know, they're they isolate themselves, they're they've got special parking places, they've got a bigger office, they only go out to eat with each other, okay? They create all the they've got these gatekeepers that they're answering their freaking phone.

SPEAKER_04

Executive assistants, okay.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Executive assistant agents now, like it, yeah, they isolate themselves. Exactly. I have the so that that I agree, that is a big problem. I know. I have another problem. My problem is I can't get the damn truth from people. Yeah. Because of what you were talking about a second ago, Bill, like my staff may not want to tell me the truth about what's going on.

SPEAKER_03

It's a it's a really great point, Eric. But part and part of what I'm saying is if it's very clear that we all have the same goal, yeah. At the end of the day, our checks are signed by our customers.

SPEAKER_04

That's a yes. Amen to that. Sure. Damon, I say that all the time. Yep.

Truth Telling Leadership And The Floor

SPEAKER_03

But well, and the the other thing that would tell you is there are there are companies that get this and then they perform like crazy well. I'm pleased to tell you, uh, my son, uh, my oldest son, is working at Taco Bell. Okay. Do you know, and he's part of the senior management team? Okay. Do you know what Taco Bell is part of the senior management team? First of all, when he came on board, he had to spend 15 eight-hour sessions and all kinds of different franchisees working eight-hour shifts right next to the folks. Well, can you imagine all the great stuff that that does? Absolutely. There's a reason that Taco Bell is the star of the Young Brands group.

SPEAKER_02

Sure. You know, Home Depot does that too. My friend, he was the senior vice president and controller for Home Depot. And they made all of their executives go out and work in stores for a week at a time.

SPEAKER_03

It's it's I think it's brilliant. The the one that I really enjoyed when I was working, I mean, I was working at Southwest Airlines 20 years ago when Southwest Airlines was Southwest Airlines. I'm not too sure who Southwest Airlines is today. And and by the way, I invested, it was the only stock that Joy and I invested in come on a business school. We didn't have very much money. And we but we invested in Southwest, because I I we I did uh case on it. I thought this is like, this is like too good. I want to be part of this, and it it'd go up and split, go up and split. Here's the story. I'm working with the pilots because I found with real large companies you got to work with all the small groups, not corporate. So I ended up working with the pilots of the Orlando branch, and they were they it was great, and we were just like churning out additional money. It was, I mean, it was so much fun, it was ridiculous. And somebody says, this is a lot like what do they call it? I'm trying to remember the exact name. Cutting edge. This is a lot like cutting edge. I said, What the hell is cutting edge? He says, Well, about 20 years ago, one of the pilots, they they when they when they land, they always stay at the same hotel. Okay, they get the good rates and you know that kind of stuff, right? Uh, you know, well, at least when they're not at their base. And um they were having a discussion at the bar, and one of the pilots said, you know what the problem with us? The other pilot says, What's that? He says, We're starting to get uppity. We're starting to get like just like the competition. You know, we're just full of it. And the pilots are the worst. And somebody else says, you know what we ought to do? What's that? We should get like 20 of us. And for a day, every once in a while, just descend on a particular terminal and we'll do the ground cruise work for a day. Because you know, that's the shit job, right? That's like emptying the layouts and all that stuff. Anyway, so they did it. There was no corporate support for this. The pilots did it all on their own. I said, that is so great. He said, Yeah, we actually have a uh cutting edge event scheduled for Orlando. Orlando was where I was working with them. I said, has any nonpilent, non-Southwest employee ever participated in cutting edge? And the guy, Kent, I won't give him the last name because you know it's a long time ago, but I still think he's safe. He says, Um, I see exactly where you're going though. And look, if we go through channels, we'll never get this approved. So we're not going to go through channels. I said, Well, I mean, let's be clear about this. I don't look good in orange. I don't I don't want to be arrested. No, no, it's won't be wrong. Um arrive at four in the morning to go through the safety briefing, and then through the day, tote bags and empty labs. You learn stuff about the way the airline really works, but the camaraderie thing. Because the the ground crew guys are now telling the pilots what to do.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

The pilots don't know shit.

SPEAKER_00

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SPEAKER_02

Yeah, exactly. It equalized them instead of always being here.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Hey, hey guys, we got we gotta wrap it up. It's time. Oh my gosh. Unfortunately, Bill, I mean, I would love to keep but I do before we get, Bill, if you could quickly tell our audience, like you mentioned these five mechanics and principles. Uh how how do how do our listeners get more information about the things you're talking about? Like how do we how to how do they rate you?

Free Diagnostic Offer And Wrap-Up

SPEAKER_03

Really good. Um uh you've got my my email address, uh, but I'll go you one better. Um any of your listeners who would like to actually experience this diagnostic. So I'll send you the link.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_03

Done, no cost, and because the the reason I say it that way is I found that I mean, I'm more than happy. There's an ink article that describes this and so forth and so forth. But I find that learning by doing really works and is going through this yourself as though you were one of the research participants because it's the same tool. Sure, yeah. So I think that is probably the most effective way. Um, but it dawns on me. I'll I'll include, I'll fire off to you the um the ink article that provides a couple pages that provides a little more background and so forth.

SPEAKER_04

Great. So we'll have that included in our descriptions on the show and stuff of that nature. So good. Bill, it's been fantastic talking with you. I could talk about this all day. I love it. Yeah, appreciate it so much. Yeah, a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_03

The only thing I'd I'd raise is because I did something similar to this. I'm just starting to do the like the podcast thing, which is great. I'm I I have a great time. Um, but um I I mentioned one thing, and that is the topic of succession plan is something most companies suck at. And the same tool the putting the good management systems into place is an awesome way to do succession planning because the business becomes less and less dependent upon you. Sure. That's right. Um we'll tell you what, as a reminder on that, there's a an article, there's a different article that I'll share with you. You may not include it with this group, but um uh let me simply say I've really enjoyed our conversation.

SPEAKER_04

I'm here. It's been fun talking with you, Bill. Yeah, Bill, and join it, join in with us when we do this exit. This has been another episode of Big Talk Small Business.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Big Talk About Small Business. If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show. Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business, and be sure to head over to our website to read articles, brought episodes, and ask questions about upcoming shows.