83: Combating the New Age of Mediocrity w/ Bill Rice

Are you unknowingly letting mediocrity sabotage your team’s performance and culture? In this powerful conversation, Sean Patton sits down with Bill Rice—former Air Force counterintelligence officer, serial entrepreneur, and founder of a leading fintech marketing agency—to unpack the hidden forces driving average performance in today’s workplace. From the decline of real-time leadership observation to the misuse of technology, Bill shares actionable strategies to help you build a culture where excellence thrives.

If you’ve struggled with remote team engagement, avoiding hard conversations, or wondering how AI fits into human leadership, this episode will give you the clarity and tools you need.

Main Topics and Timestamps:

• [00:03] Bill Rice’s background
  From Air Force pilot training to counterintelligence and information warfare, and eventually entrepreneurship in fintech marketing.
• [07:56] Leading through uncertainty and constant change
  Lessons from post-Gulf War military transitions and adapting in rapidly evolving environments.
• [14:02] Why incentives fail to drive action
  How understanding intent and innate motivation is more effective than dangling rewards.
• [17:35] Winning with the team you are given
  Why leaders must invest in coaching and development instead of defaulting to “turn and burn” turnover.
• [21:06] When to coach up versus when to make a change
  How to know if you should keep developing someone or if their impact on the team requires action.
• [28:26] The hidden impact of remote work on leadership development
  Why the loss of observation and modeling has left emerging leaders without reference points.
• [34:29] Why tech companies struggle to prioritize leadership training
  Exploring whether it’s a messaging issue, budget issue, or mindset issue.
• [42:26] Using AI to reclaim time for human connection
  Practical examples of automating low-value tasks to reinvest in coaching and team building.
• [46:35] Time blocking, task batching, and the power of focus
  How to design your schedule to lead more effectively and reduce distraction.
• [51:13] The leadership practice that changed everything
  Bill’s insights about removing “divorce” as an option with your team and committing to developing people.

Connect with Bill Rice:

• BillRiceStrategy.com
• MyExecutiveBrief.com Newsletter
• Bill Rice on LinkedIn

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No Limit Leadership is the go-to podcast for growth-minded executives, middle managers, and team leaders who want more than surface-level leadership advice. Hosted by executive coach and former Special Forces commander Sean Patton, this show dives deep into modern leadership, self-leadership, and the real-world strategies that build high-performing teams. Whether you're focused on leadership development, building a coaching culture, improving leadership communication, or strengthening team accountability, each episode equips you with actionable insights to unlock leadership potential across your organization. From designing onboarding systems that retain talent to asking better questions that drive clarity and impact, No Limit Leadership helps you lead yourself first so you can lead others better. If you're ready to create a culture of ownership, resilience, and results, this leadership podcast is for you.

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:00)
Most companies think their biggest threat is competition. The truth is the mediocrity they tolerate inside their own walls. Today, I'm joined by Bill Rice, Air Force Academy graduate, counterintelligence officer, turned serial entrepreneur, and founder of a leading FinTech marketing agency. We unpack why so many leaders avoid the hard conversations, how remote work has quietly eroded coaching and accountability, and what you can do to build a team that actually performs. If you want to learn how to lead a team you have and win doing it, this episode is worth every minute.

Sean Patton (00:43)
Welcome to No Limits Leadership. am your host, Sean Patton. I am very excited to have Bill Rice with us today. Bill is a Air Force Academy graduate, so another service academy graduate, But yeah, so he started military during, as an officer as well in the Air Force, started pilot training.

but transitioned into counterintelligence and information warfare. After serving, he entered the tech and financial sectors, building early stage startups, scaling marketing agencies and leading organizations through rapid growth and successful exits. Today, he runs a B2B marketing agency focused on fintech companies and is passionate about helping early stage founders not only market more effectively, but also lead better. Bill, thanks for being here today,

Bill Rice (01:24)
Hey, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Sean Patton (01:26)
I'm really excited. We were just talking about your interesting transition because out of the service academy, you find out your branch, So you decide where you're going to go. I went into infantry. You branched into aviation to go be a pilot, started that journey, and then got cut short.

Bill Rice (01:40)
Yeah, yeah, it was, it was a super crazy time. So, and I'm, but I think there's some leadership lessons in here and even just about like leading through uncertainty, even in your own sort of capacity. But yeah, I kind of came into the Air Force Academy at a weird time. So I came in from 88 graduated in 92. If you remember that time, we did a gulf war in the middle of that, in like record time. And as a result of that,

it changed a lot of sort of mindset and mentality. We were so effective, particularly in the areas of air power. I think a lot of our leadership came out of that expecting that we would never fight another war, or if we did, we would always do it in this fashion. And so as a result of that, the first thing that happened to me, so all I ever dreamed about was becoming a pilot. Like I was top gun generation, right? So that was, even though was Navy, that was like, that was the only thing I knew.

to do or that I was gonna do. I had no other plan in life. So I got in. So the first thing they did was, which is unheard of at the time, everybody that went into the academy that was pilot qualified, basically had good vision, good health and all that sort of thing, went straight to pilot training. So the first thing they did is they were like, nope, you gotta be like military and academically qualified. So they created a straw for us.

which was pretty aggressive. And so most of us, we kind of felt like once we got in the academy, we like made it. And so some of us coasted a little bit, right? So we had, had to up my game obviously, and I did pretty good academically, not my first year, I was on academic probation. So, but figured it out, did pretty well, got into pilot training. And then the second round of sort of cuts. So they were washing this out, you know, at a crazy rate.

And, and that was, that was kind of my result. And like, again, I was devastated. Like I went to pilot training. I was going to get a weapon system. I was actually a pretty good pilot. but I had some, some shaky check rides, and, essentially got washed out. So that was like my first, like, again, for all of us been the academies, like we've got big heads. Like that was my first, like real significant life changing failure.

And so, and then I was pushed out into, know, you're in the military, we got you for another five to six years, you got to figure out what you do. So we had to compete now for what we called AFSCs or your job. So the first thing I wanted to do was combat controller, because I was just an adrenaline junkie. You know, you're one of them, right? Right, exactly. So I'm like, I wanted to be in the fight, even though apparently we weren't going to fight anymore.

Sean Patton (03:58)
Yeah, if you couldn't drop bombs, you're gonna call them from the ground.

Bill Rice (04:06)
And I couldn't get into a class, it was all full. And so there was this little thing called OSI. It was kind of like a mysterious elusive sort of thing. So it's the way I always describe it, it's kind of the Air Force's version of the FBI. But the group that I was in was a sub segment where we were counter espionage. So we did counter intelligence operations. So I was like, that sounds cool.

Again, highly competitive, but I was able to get in. And so that was kind of the short story to how I got into Intel and did a lot of cool stuff.

Sean Patton (04:38)
So at least

from those movies from your youth, not Top Gun, but at least some Sean Connery James Bond action, right? a little, you know?

Bill Rice (04:44)
Yeah,

I always take the air out of that balloon too. was like, it's always sexier on the outside that is on the inside. It's like most of my day was filled with bureaucracy and getting operations approved and like the slow methodical process that is actually Intel. Unless you're a Marine or an Army guy. It was funny, a quick story side, sidestep here, but the other thing that was big at the time was everything was joint. So I went to this joint Intel training.

sitting next to a Marine officer. And I was like, so like, hey, what's Intel to you? And he's like, I, you know, hop in a Humvee. I don't even think we had Humvees yet, but anyway, hop in a Jeep, go to the front line. I count heads and equipment. And I'm like, really? It's like, we, go to the nicest hotel and this became the joke, right? We go to the nicest hotels and we start chatting up like local business owners, restaurateurs, and everywhere that like people that

that would potentially be a threat to the base. Like that was our intel. We wanted to figure out who was a threat to the airfield. And so we were chatting up the locals and we'd go to the nice restaurants and take people out and develop sources and all kinds of fun things like that. Meanwhile, everybody else was like going to the front line and like I said, counting heads and equipment on the other side.

Sean Patton (05:54)
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a different world and there's so many components of it on the intelligence spectrum and counterintelligence. uh, you know, I didn't do, I didn't do much on the intelligence side, uh, in infantry, right. Just on the front and I, got your rifle, two meters, sniper, two meter, you know, plenty of, you know, operational or tactical, tactical level reconnaissance, uh, and getting intelligence reports, but

it wasn't thousands, you know, special forces where we got into the human intelligence and counterintelligence stuff and some of that training and, yeah, super interesting, but definitely a different time leadership wise, in those early, early mid 1990s after the Gulf war, you know, I think every, feels like every generation feels like they fought the war to end all wars. and a decade later rears its head again. Right. So it's this, it's constant, you know,

maybe outside the scope of this, but an interesting discussion to be had with people around and has been since the beginning of this country around what type of military do we want? What is the scope of it? What should its role be domestically, internationally? You know, for a long time after we first became a country was we don't all the way up until really the world wars. Do we want a standing or we didn't really have a standing army because we didn't

We were worried about its use on civilians. and, uh, and so, you know, then you have the golf war or something like that where it's like, okay, draw down. We won there. So clearly we'll never fight. You know, the cold war just ended as well. So the cold war is done. Everything's done. We're the top dog. There's, there's no way anyone can attack us now. And then 10 years later, you have nine 11 and the whole thing gets flipped on its head.

Bill Rice (07:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, and it's done entirely different. I mean, that was the fun of it. And I think that's, again, some of the things we're going to talk about is we were adapting in that time. We were trying to figure out what the next war looked like. We were doing, and again, I've always been super curious and wanting to be on the front end of things. And so my expertise coming out of that was really information warfare centers. And just creating offensive and defensive capabilities as a lot of the intelligence world, counterintelligence in particular,

figuring out what folks were doing and how they were communicating with assets and stuff. A lot of that moved to the internet. And the internet, in that time period, is mid to late 90s, the internet was just starting to be a thing. We were playing around in IRC chat, which you have to be of a certain age to even understand what that means. But those were the corners of the dark web, if you will, or the early web, where we were

starting to kind of do things differently and we had to figure it out, we had to adapt and you know to the point of leadership. I say this all the time, one of the things military taught me was we had to lead with the team that we were given. So there was no like recruiting strategies and you know we were given a team and in those moments particularly when we were getting more more technical like

You know, we had to lead that team in the right direction, help them build skill sets, even ourselves as officers, learn some of those skill sets. yeah, all those times and periods are fun. And that's why my career has done some wild meandering paths because of that. Just always wanting to be in the front end of things, so to speak.

Sean Patton (09:05)
Yeah. So let's talk about that, you know, that information warfare, you know, cause people may not think of information. might not hear the terms information warfare, or Intel ops or psychological operations, whatever word you want to hit and say, well, that's marketing, but yeah, in some ways there's some similarities, right? So what does that transition like, or how was that to transition that one skill set into marketing and how are they fit together?

Bill Rice (09:27)
Yeah, I mean, that's the thread that drew my journey together, really. And I'll just be specific. So I came in Intel. I did get out of the military, went through the revolving door, became a contractor, kind of doing it for the civilian version of the Intel agencies that I had worked with and collaborated with. And so.

Again, we were working on those capabilities on both sides of that equation. And so that became sort of my specialty. Well, interestingly enough, at some point, we start to have families and we think about careers and money becomes more significant. And so I saw my sort of commercial counterparts, if you will, making a lot more.

And although the job was interesting, I was like, you know, I think I want to try something different. And so I essentially repackaged myself to information security, which is kind of the closest equation. And I went into the banking industry, which was kind of you know, kind of at the leading forefront of some of the online banking. And I got involved with an internet bank.

But it was those kind of common skill sets because we spent a lot of time in both of those fields looking at patterns and looking at behaviors and looking at how people did things in particular online. So we were obviously doing that on the Intel side with communications and all the things you would kind of expect on that. But.

it was marketing, like how can you look at something someone's trying to do and kind of coax them in one direction or another or look at their patterns of behavior and figure out like what they're trying to do. so those were kind of common things and marketing, even though I was information security for a brief period of time and we were doing pattern recognition and intrusion detection and all that kind of stuff.

and this probably goes to scaling a little bit, kind of quickly handed that off. And then I'm like, this marketing thing is really cool because marketing was just starting to be a thing on the internet. Lead generation, actually, you know, turning a person into a lead for the sales force was becoming kind of the first thing. And that actually, to me, was a little more familiar than information security. So taking a person who was doing something online,

And for the lack of a more flowery or politically correct approach, coaxing them to do something that I wanted them to do was a skill set that I had. so marketing in a lot of ways is to do that, is to create less friction or to create an offer that's compelling enough for that person to do what you want them to do, which is, in our case, fill out a form, make a transaction, make a phone call, those sorts of things. And to me,

even now in my mind, are fairly consistent skill sets.

Sean Patton (12:05)
So how would you, how would you broadly approach that? Right. I lead and when people hear lead Jen and a lot of people are business owners, they're running, but like, this is, you know, think, you know, marketing, understanding behavior, how to persuade someone to, you know, that even if you're trying to recruit for your team or you're trying to persuade internally, right. Inside of your company, you know, you've got a project, a proposal, you've got something else. Like, how do you look at that? When you say, have, you know, generically this

this action or this argument that I want to persuade and I want to identify people that to take a certain action toward that. do you have a, like what's the process?

Bill Rice (12:41)
Yeah, I think where most people get confused in a lot of these disciplines and in marketing in particular is they will inherently assume kind of an economic mindset towards solving the problems. Like, if I give them enough incentive, they'll do what I want them to do. Whereas what is far more effective is figuring out like, what is the intent?

of in our case, that consumer, like what are they trying to accomplish or what are potentially inherent motivations that they have that you can sort of assist with? Like let's just say, just take a generic sort of we're trying to get something approved or a proposal. Me thinking about

my boss, the CMO, let's say, is trying to, like, higher motivators to get a project approved is gonna be, will this make the CMO look good? Will this be a project that will look nice on their resume? Will this be a project that is actually less headache for them to get approval for?

So sometimes it's just taking away friction. If you can make it easy enough that, I don't have to fight or use any of my political chips to get this project approved, but it will probably make me look good or it'll probably be effective. Like sometimes those inherent motivations are much stronger than just saying, hey, this particular project will make us millions of dollars. And I think that's where we get stuck. Same thing on just like consumer level lead generation or B2B lead. B2B lead generation I think is

even more obvious because that B2B, you know, counterpart on the other side, they're trying to move forward, right? They're trying to get more responsibility. They're trying to look good. They're trying to achieve their objective. So on a B2B sort of sales and marketing approach, I think it's a lot easier and it's a lot more consistent with what I did before. We're dealing with a human and their inherent motivations or innate motivations are going to be stronger at getting something accomplished than just telling them this has a great ROI.

Consumers kind of the same thing, right? We say this, I do a lot of mortgage lead generation on the B2C side. And that's a lot of kind of my background when I was in the internet bank. We used to always say, and this kind of puts a nice bow on it, like consumers want the house, they don't want the mortgage, right? So when I'm trying to generate a lead, I wanna speak about the house and what that's gonna bring and what that's gonna do for my family and like.

you know what that means to me and by the way we can make your mortgage process quick, frictionless, you'll get approved like you know so again those inherent innate motivations like that's where you want to focus your attention you want to just make those stronger and call awareness to them so that that person that you're trying to convince feels at an emotional level that

Like you're the person or you're the product that can accomplish like what they're feeling or they want to do.

Sean Patton (15:30)
How does that same process of kind of seeing it through someone else's eyes and understanding intent and motivations apply to the phrase you said earlier, which is winning with the team you're given when you think about developing people. Like I imagine that there's a similar or parallel structure there.

Bill Rice (15:47)
Yeah, absolutely. And I always try to remind that and I use that and I think I like the way you say it better, like winning with the team you're given, that's really the whole thing in a package, Because particularly for a founder or startup, but even larger organizations, like oftentimes you don't get to be a part of that initial sort of hiring.

process and team, like you maybe come into a role where you have a team, particularly in the military, like we were just handed a team. And then the second part, that winning part is you're expected to accomplish the mission. Like there was no like, oh, you got an average team, so we're going to expect average results. Like it's kind of all or nothing in that context. And I think in a lot of ways, it's the same way when we're given a team or we walk into a role there. And I think we're

And this has been frustrating. And I think it's getting worse a little bit because of we have so much of this remote virtual environment. It's easier to kind of use the typical commercial approach, which is a sink or swim. Like, I'm just going to throw you in and you're either going to produce or you're not. I'm not going to give you any training, support, coverage, like nothing. Like you're just tossed in there. And I just, I don't love that approach. So for me, again, same thing.

Whenever I come into a new organization or a team, whether it's the military or even now, I think I kind of take the same approach. I want to look at the whole team. I want to kind of survey it. I want to understand their levels of motivation, initiative, creativity, all kinds of like, just like what are their innate sort of operational modes? And then the second thing is what are their skill sets?

So, and we were kind of talking about this before, like when you put together a team, everybody has a specific responsibility, probably more aligned with their skill set, right? So like I might have somebody that's like really good at data and analytics. Well, that's gonna be my person for that. And I've got somebody that's maybe a little more creative and, you know, gets interested in kind of either on the design side or copyrighting or something.

So I want to understand those hard skill sets too. And then I'm going to sort of structure my approach, my plan, if you will, my strategy around using the resources that I have, the team that I have and figure out how we can kind of hit that expectation. And then I'm going to support them. I'm going to know where their gaps are. I'm going to start training, support, checking in with them, figuring out kind of where they're at, where their mindset's at, what are their frustrations. Cause just like in marketing.

As a leader, oftentimes we're in a position to more quickly than the individual employee, take away frustrations, kill friction, give them support, give them encouragement, find them training, and then also finding, and I think this is really important, and I've always, if a leader is really confident in their own abilities, they should also create a safe environment for failure, right? I think that's really important. So you want your folks,

to be risk takers in a calculated way, of course, and feel confident that they can kind of reach out and they can take control and that you're gonna be there to give them cover when things go a little bit south.

Sean Patton (18:53)
Yeah. So how do you decide as you, get people, know, right people, right seats, right bus or right seats on the bus, all that. And, and, and you do that in the way you just spoke. And if someone's struggling, how do you determine, when we're coaching up or when to stop coaching up and when it may just not be the right person.

Bill Rice (19:10)
Yeah, I think probably the biggest indicator that I see the most often that will make me react the fastest is when it starts to impact the overall team. And usually that's not like a skill problem. It's usually an attitude or, know, it's something you're either allowing something that's below the expectations to persist with a path, you know, just giving it a pass.

that affects the whole team. They're like, why should I work so hard? You know, this person's like getting away with murder or like, you know, never has any consequences or they're just cancerous, right? So narcissists or whatever, egos. And sometimes you can kind of coach that stuff out. But for the most part, the moment that it starts impacting the overall performance mindset attitude of the team.

then usually you've got to pull that person out.

Sean Patton (19:58)
Yeah, you know, it is interesting. I will say what I've seen and I'm interested in your take on this is that often it's not necessarily like a major toxic sub performer or toxic leader. What gets companies is tolerating mediocrity and middle management.

Bill Rice (20:19)
Totally, totally. just, literally had a conversation yesterday about exactly that. It's like, hey, you know, we, so here was the conversation. We hired this person for this role, and then it seems like this person wasn't able to fill the role as we expected. And so leadership just kind of moved them or even created a little bit of a hybrid role.

And now we're hiring for that position. So like, what did we do there? And at the same time, this person felt like we weren't giving them the resources they needed to do to do the job that they were responsible for. So it was almost like, you know, this person was kind of moved over, given a pass, we're hiring somebody else in there. But because

of that person, it's impacting the resources that I have access to to kind of get the job done. And so it was this like weird shell game that that person felt like was taking place. And he was really considering like, do I have a place to grow in this organization because I'm getting less responsibility. I'm not doing what I was like what was communicated to me like.

this is what you said was kind of the path to growth. And now the resources are constrained that I'm not getting there. And I'm sort of just kind of like doing this other thing. Meanwhile, I feel like, he's right, this person was impacting like his ability to do his job well. And so, yeah, it was exactly what you described as they just kind of instead of having the difficult conversation or the training or, you know, doing the hard work as leadership and management.

Like we just kind of kicked it over to the side and said, hey, why don't you just like do this thing? It's probably all you're capable of. we'll just, want to, we won't. I'm a big fan of talking about this too is like, there are no consequences. it does, it feels like, I'm becoming old and a curmudgeon, but it just feels like one component that's largely missing in a, in a, in a world in which.

We seem to be afraid of hard conversations. There's no longer consequences. It's like, if you don't perform, there's not a consequence. I mean, that could be just a hard conversation. It feels like we're constantly sort of avoiding the hard.

Sean Patton (22:31)
So do you say that that is the difference between a high functioning or successful high growth company or startup versus one that flounders?

Bill Rice (22:42)
Yeah, I think it's a big part of it because I mean, one of the things that, know, that obviously early startups and folks with high growth, mean, generally the ones that succeed, you know, folks are all in, they're moving forward, they're busting through barriers, they're...

Generally, especially in the startup world, which I spent a fair amount of time in this this world, but we're generally trying to convince the market or our customers to do something different. We're not a replacement. Often we're trying to like, no, there's a better way to do it. There's newer technology. There's a new approach or whatever. And so those people.

have to be persuasive, they have to be all in, they have to feel like the whole team can kind of accomplish whatever lofty goal is given it. And so, in order for that to happen, and I think we give a disproportionate amount of...

thought process to like, I've got to get a list players. Like, so we think about the individual employees instead of thinking about like, no, I need the leadership to like pull that whole team forward. And so I think a lot of times, and I see this with a lot of startups is we'll just, we'll just turn and burn.

a bunch of folks until we get something that fits. But in the meantime, you're just losing ground, right? Every one of those turnovers usually set you back a little bit. But yeah, I think that's a big differential. Folks that can have hard conversations, trust each other, build that trust, those are the ones that succeed.

Sean Patton (24:11)
Yeah. So, I mean, there are so many costs associated with, with that turnover, right? Like, I remember. Stat I saw one time was, I think it was replacing the middle manager cost the company, you know, all in right between recruiting or, you know, lost product tip. Like six to nine months of whatever that person's salary is. ⁓ and

Bill Rice (24:29)
Yeah, easy.

Sean Patton (24:31)
And then you don't know the next person you're getting Ziti better, right? You know, it's always an unknown. It's a crap shoot if you don't know that person. So it's like, that person may look like an A player on LinkedIn, but you never know until they've been working for you for 90 days. know, why do you think it's so prevalent? I guess two questions. Why do you think it's prevalent this turn in Burr mentality, right? That I just don't have the right people versus development. what, what's the background of that? Is it just that leaders are

Too scared to have tough conversations? Are the expectations not there? Is the training not there? Mentorship? What's lacking?

Bill Rice (25:03)
Yeah. mean, you know, things I hesitate to like my gut reaction is to say, and you don't want to blame everything on this, but and I think that throughout history, we go through these, you know, different cycles. But we did have this weird thing in the middle of like COVID, right? We were transitioned to a situation where where most managers and leaders.

had direct access to their people. Coaching and interaction and having conversations and everything like that was an inherent part of what we did. You were in a building with people or even in the military context, you were out in the field with folks and like you were in close proximity. And so two things happened there. One,

you were forced into those conversations and those interactions. you just, you were co-located, right? So you're going to have those. Plus you as a young leader or even as an individual contributor or whatever.

got to see those things. You got to witness and observe. So you learned a lot from just kind of observing what's happening around you. Then we have COVID. Everybody kind of goes to their safe corners. We cut out all human interaction. And it was for a significant amount of time, anywhere from 18 months to two years, like our interaction as far as leadership and management and even as employees, which are the people that are going to

become managers and leaders was like, it didn't exist. My wife is a teacher and she talks about kind of the COVID group that's coming up. Like, you know, they're delayed in a sense, because they didn't have social interaction. So they're relearning how to, so I think we're all sort of a part of that. And then we layer onto that.

this notion that became very comfortable of remote and virtual work, which all my companies are like that, right? We don't have a physical office anymore. But what it cuts down to, and I guess the point on the whole conversation is...

there is no way to observe management and leadership anymore for the most part, right? It is a direct message conversation in Slack or it's a direct video conversation one-on-one with this, but like you don't get to observe any of that interaction and maybe you get a little bit on some strategy calls or some team calls, but you know, even within internal, you know, companies.

Like a lot of times those are small groups and sometimes the calls are just completely like inefficient anyway. Like you leave here, got too many people or not enough people. And there's a lot of folks that are going back to the office, but even that's been a struggle. my two oldest boys came into the work environment at the end of COVID. They graduated college there and they went into those work environments and they're still.

you know, and they work at really big companies as software engineers and they're still trying to figure out like their managers are missing skills. They're trying to figure out how to lead because they're starting to get leadership positions and like, there's just no context. It's like, so anyway, it's a longer conversation probably, but just no context. There's no way to observe good management leadership, even if it's taking place, it's really hard to see. And we're not taking the time.

to truly coach it and teach it anymore either. there's, go into an organization, I would love to do a poll on this. Like you go into an organization, I would guarantee that probably 80 to 90 % of new hires don't get a single moment of training for their new role. And just walk in, they're like, here's your computer, here's how you log into Slack, go for it. You know, it's like.

Sean Patton (28:29)
Yeah.

Bill Rice (28:30)
There's no SOP. There's no like standard operating procedure. There's no formal training. And if it is, it's like go watch a couple of videos or maybe some little videos that are stuck away in Notion and like hopefully you'll figure it out. But there's no, yeah, it's different and we got to figure that out. And I'm not sure we, I'm not sure I have a good answer to that, but it's a challenge.

Sean Patton (28:50)
Yeah, you know, it's so interesting you say that. I mean, just being candid about.

few years ago with my business, I thought my focus is going next few years is going to be on tech because I saw exactly what you're talking about. And I'm not saying maybe I have the complete answer, but what I do believe is that leading in a virtual world, even managing if we're not even going to try to take it to effective like leadership, just like effective management is going to take a lot of intention.

And a lot of training, right? A lot of, as you mentioned before, was those conversations, those developments, those developmental conversations, those one-on-ones, those group, you know, the observations inside another meeting of someone else getting coached up, like just sort of happened. And now it has to happen with intention. Like it has to be put on your calendar. Like it has to be made a priority that part of your role is to have this developmental conversation and,

and to set out clear goals and mentor and coach and teach those underneath you.

If their management is not set up with the abilities or the expectation that's going to happen, where's it going to come from? And so I, in my head was like, well, this, this is where my work is going to be the next five years. Right. Cause like, cause you mentioned it's still, it's, it's needed. And I might, my wife works in tech technology sales and I see it. I see it every day with her job. so, and.

And maybe, you know, I need somebody like you to help me with lead Jen and marketing. But what I found was when I went in is there didn't seem to be an appetite for For someone like, you know, someone like me, there's something, you know, to come in and let's bring in a coach that like, let's, let's, let's look at your systems. Let's look at, let's set up a leadership development program. You know, how are you training to make your managers be senior managers? Like, what does that training look like? It's non-existent. What's it look like before someone becomes a director? What, additional skills are you checking that they know how to now be lead at a different level?

non-existent. and instead it's really interesting. I find my work now being in areas of manufacturing, construction, healthcare, right? The in-person roles are now like I'm, I'm there helping them. and I'm not sure. I'm not sure for me, honestly, if it's a messaging issue, if I haven't found the pain point, or if there just isn't an appetite on the spend side or maybe because it's

It's, know, VC money, they're not seeing the value in it, or they think that again, you can go, go completely flat organizationally eyes and just put out DMS. And that's going to have people like everyone's an individual contributor and leadership and management hierarchy doesn't exist. Like, I'm not sure right.

Bill Rice (31:21)
Yeah, and I think part of that is they're just, and that's probably where you're getting most of your opportunities and these folks that are reconstituting on-prem. Because I think they're running into, they're the first to really detect the problem set. It's like, oh my gosh, these managers are now coming back to.

We see this, we're obviously, I'm in Michigan, we're in auto country. Some of these managers are just now coming back to or showing up on the line. Everything had been emails and text messages. Now, I think they're probably the first to realize, we don't know how to have these interactions. We don't know how to coach and...

And I think it's in surprising places. Like one of the conversations, and again, we're totally virtual, and I'll just use our own company. So we have a bunch of account managers that work on the agency side, and they're working with customers. And I had a pre-seasoned account manager that came to me and said, hey, I'm on these calls. There's this one person that's leadership on the client side.

And he's a jerk and he's like, he's kind of abusive. One, he's obviously always kind of pushing on us pretty hard because we're the contractor, the vendor, but he's also like.

kind of abusive to his own employees. Like there was an employee that was like obviously sick and forcing him on the call and he's like why don't you speak up? Like his voice was hoarse I can't hear you. Anyway she didn't know what to do. Like she didn't know how to push back. She didn't know how to like how to deal with that. How to be productive in that scenario. And she used that as an example but the bigger problem was like

How do I deal with difficult people? It's my client. I want to keep working with the client. My direct sponsor on this program is good. I like them. They're not toxic in any way, but they have leadership that's pushing on us or, know, anyway. So again, how do you persuade people? How do you deal with difficult folks? How do you deal with adversity and, you know, change it? So I think...

That's one of those things where we live in the virtual environment. Like I didn't realize, like my account managers are pretty autonomous. And I thought, that's a good situation. Like they kind of do their thing and they're learning. And now I'm realizing to your point, put it on the calendar. I was like, you know what? We're going to kind of reconstitute what we used to have. We're going to have an account manager meeting. And the only focus is what are the challenges? What are the, what's the friction? what, and that's.

And that was literally happened within a week and within the last week is like, okay, we're to put on the calendar sometime to just, you know, be able to communicate about the challenges that we're running into. And I think for you, probably the same thing, the people that are realizing they need coaching or they need to, to work with the new middle management that probably never observed middle management happening or because they're on prem, there's, they're, they're realizing it faster than folks like I.

who have a completely virtual company, like we don't know the problems that are sitting behind Slack or, you know, just, you know, ready for somebody to just quit, right? And that's another really expensive problem, right? It's like, okay. And she continued to share, like, she's like, I don't have time to do anything. Like, that's the other thing that happens in the virtual world. It's like, well, you got time on your calendar, then let's book a Zoom meeting. It's like, I looked at her calendar and like,

She's on Zoom meetings all the time and she's not actually doing any, you know, so anyway, there's a whole bunch of those sorts of things. So she, you know, she doesn't, she hasn't built some of those skills and she hasn't had anybody teach them. I certainly didn't teach them. And, you know, she's gotta be a manager at some point and like she's never observed management. So even for me, so.

Sean Patton (35:00)
So moving you look at that in the future, what are you going to change in your own companies to win in this new environment?

Bill Rice (35:05)
Yeah, I think, this kind of segues into something that we talked about earlier too, kind of off camera a little bit. I think it's kind of really interesting, and this is virtual or like physical locations. I think managers and leaders in particular, because we sit behind, you know, these laptops, we feel like there's like constantly things for us to deliver and do and catch up on emails. And there's all this kind of feedback.

with the onset of AI and chat GPT and things like that, I personally have said, okay, I need to create more space for me to get back in the leadership game, for me to get back in the coaching game. And so AI is gonna do that for me. Like there are going to be deliverables and there are gonna be things that I do. Like one of the things that I do that used to take me an inordinate amount of time, but was super effective is after every meeting,

I do a lot of sales and business development after every meeting. Most salespeople fall down because they never do a follow-up. They never sent out a follow-up. They never sent out an email that says, this is what we talked about. This is the strategy. And here's what I think next steps are and make it concrete. And that does a couple of things. Just that one email does a couple of things to help sales move forward. One,

you became a great assistant to me, the prospect, because you you laid everything out. I don't have to think about it. I don't have to take notes. I don't have to remember. You gave me a roadmap and I appreciate that. It also creates some accountability for you and that person that you're talking to. And this could be just regular meetings too. Well, I would sit down and do that intentionally because I got great feedback. People were like, hey, thanks for doing that. yeah, let's definitely move forward on that.

And so they would react and respond to that and nobody else did it. They're like, you're the first person that's done that. Well, that would take me a couple hours at the end of the day to wrap all those things up. Today, I shoot that thing. I have a dedicated prompt that I copy and paste every time. I load in the transcript, put the prompt, boom, shoots it out, copy and pastes the email within five minutes. And now that response is even bigger. They're like, my gosh, that was awesome. Thanks. You're so responsive. You know, that's fast.

But guess what? That loaded up like another two to three hours in an average day that I don't have to do that. And oh, by the way, my pipeline, my capacity got much larger too, because like all of those roll-ups are sitting there for that next conversation in my CRM, because they're already baked, right? I don't have to go back through a transcript. I don't have to scrub through a video or whatever. AI has allowed me to pull out all the important information and then I have context.

And then, oh, by the way, that two to three hours that I'm trying to reclaim in a day, I'm trying to reallocate that back to the team and do more like physical coaching, leadership, conversations about accounts to help kind of fill in where I've been negligent for, you know, a couple, three years at least.

Sean Patton (37:58)
How else? I love that. I love, you know, I think a theme I've heard, least with a couple of different, you know, AI speakers, thought leaders, podcasts, stuff like that is...

how AI can support us in having more human connection. And I think as leaders inside companies, we need to resist the urge of this, of the, I don't know, the...

Worshipping at the temple of productivity. And instead of seeing it as like, Oh, that means now I can talk to a hundred clients instead of 50, but like using that time to invest in the human connection and the people that are going to create the long-term success and thought just do more of the same. So what other tools or how do you see that working with, you know, the technology that's, that's coming out or is available now so that we can use it.

to free up time, either use it to free up time to be better managers and leaders or assist us in being better managers and leaders.

Bill Rice (39:00)
Yeah. So I think the first thing we have to do is one, what you said, like be intentional about the fact that I am going to create time. I'm going to time block out, you know, leadership and coaching. So one, as I free up time,

I don't want it to just, to your point, I don't want it to just be consumed by more productivity. I was like, I can do more. can, you know, do, you know, 10 times as many emails as I could before. So I think one is be intentional. It's like, okay, whatever time I reclaim, I'm going to try to invest that back into, you know, personal connections with clients or with my team. Right. So in both of those regards, I want to free up time.

And then where is that time going to go? It's going to go to these types of activities. So once I have that mindset, I'll give you some very specific steps that I've personally done. one, everybody hated it at first. Now I think everybody loves it is the, the, the famous calendar link, right? Calendly. And before everybody's like, that's offensive. You gave me your link and told it. But now I think people on the other side of that link is like, I get to control. Like my time.

Right. And I don't have to go back and forth. Like I have control of when that interaction takes place and what it's convenient for me. And that's the way I position it. But the sneaky little trick on my side is as it pertains to the sales and business development and podcasts and some other meetings that I have, there's only a framed amount of time on the backend of that calendar link or whatever you use for the scheduling link. I get to tell that link when I'm available.

So I have X amount of hours on the back end of that. And I have slots, time slots that are available. So for instance, I don't do anything like that on Monday or Friday. It's all constrained to Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And increasingly, it's constrained to roughly the afternoon.

The second part, so one, I've carved out all that other time around there that I can do other things with. I can definitely book because I'm essentially funneling in all of those meanings into a place and a time set where I can keep, that's my mindset for that period of time. So it's blocked in. And then the other thing that again, sort of sneaky little trick for this, particularly in sales and business development, when I send out that link and somebody looks at it,

We know if you've ever studied persuasion, what's one of the really interesting factors in persuasion is scarcity. my gosh, there's only two blacks. I better get one. So it also creates this sort of sense of exclusivity and scarcity. And on the back end, you're freeing up time. But again, you have to be intentional about where are you going to invest that time before or

Sean Patton (41:18)
Scarcity, yeah,

Bill Rice (41:33)
you'll create just a bigger problem because you'll, you'll sock in a bunch of other technical tasks into there.

Sean Patton (41:39)
I love that and the...

ability to, avoid task switching and the car, mean, all the neuroscience psychology around, you know, switching. know for me, like, podcasting is, is something I enjoy doing. but if I had to do this podcast and then right after that, I'm going to switch and work on the creative on my new keynote. And right after that, I'm going to have a coaching call.

And right after that, I'm going to have, you know, it's like, it's just an after I'm going to write, you know, something it's just like, it's, it's, you're so ineffective at all of those things. So the ability to start blocking time and sort of getting a groove on one, one task and, and focus. And I think you mentioned it before with all the emails and, the conversations and the calls and the, it's just like the notifications and the pop-ups and the slacks.

The world has never tried to distract you more than it is today. And I think in the modern world moving forward, in life, in business, in leadership, focus is the new superpower.

Bill Rice (42:31)
Yeah.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, and that's where I like to focus. mean, some people like to get into task managers and project manager systems and like that's where, and this has changed over time, but that's where I think the calendar is really important because if you're leveraging the calendar, you're time blocking. And when I say time blocking, the other mistake I've made personally, just to say, I'm to give two hours on Thursday for me to write. Like that doesn't work. Like when I say time blocking,

Like I need to move physical task into that location and a particular project or topic that I'm going to write on. And I'm prepped and ready to go for that. So that's another sort of technical thing. But to kind of what you were saying is the moment that something comes into my kind of need to do world, like I have to find a spot for it. And if I don't,

then I have to prioritize. So the other thing is kind of making that calendar and time blocking with like very specific items and items that are prepped. I use Notion for this and the Notion calendar is great. Like I pull a task out of Notion or I create a task and they literally share that on my Google calendar. So everything's there together. And so when it's done, it looks a little bit like, you know, the Jenga board or whatever. But

Like then I have to make decisions and it makes it a lot easier because I can look at this priority and I either I'm going to say no or I'm going to move this and put this in here. So again, it makes it I think easier to make decisions and you make everything far more intentional. And then you carve out time for leadership, for coaching, for the things that you need to do to keep that team sort of growing and healthy.

Sean Patton (44:17)
Wrapping that up, what is one leadership practice that you wish or would recommend to every leader right now to get better at leading their people?

Bill Rice (44:28)
so this, and this isn't perfect. so this, this changed everything in my marriage when I was an early married person, but the moment that I took divorce off the table, like changed everything. Like,

our relationship got stronger, like we worked through the hard parts and everything. And I think to some degree, and again, it's not like a perfect analogy, but I think to some degree, and this is why I always say, like lead the team that you're given, is because like I saw that work. I had, I can't actually, when I was in the military, can't remember moving anybody off my team. So I think from a leadership standpoint, probably two things. One,

make it a harder and I've fired people in my companies and commercial. it's a little bit different, but make it harder.

Like make it not the first option, make it like really hard to get rid of somebody on your team and invest in them again, unless somehow they're impacting the rest of the team and then that's maybe a different decision. So I think to that analogy to flush it out and you can see there's probably some problems with that or whatever, but take more of that option off to just discard the team and then intentionally put time in your day.

To be with them and then I think the second thing we have to do specifically in this virtual world And I don't have a good answer to how we do this, but somehow we have to pull folks around us so they can observe us leading and managing Before they're put you know in that role

And I don't know how we do that again in the virtual world. In some of the places where you're coaching, think you just have to remind people to do that because there's some more proximity. But somehow we got to figure out how to do that better because that's one thing I appreciated in the military. I watched my senior NCOs. I watched my senior leaders. And that's where I got.

Like I went to the academy, like probably most of my practical leadership was watching people do it well and quite honestly do it poorly. so I guess those are the two things. One, take just turning and burning, you know, off the option block as much as you can. And then number two, figure out a way to pull people around you so that they can observe, you know, hopefully you're a good example, observe you leading and managing in a good way.

Sean Patton (46:38)
And I guess they're both great. And I also want to say that that last point is something I honestly don't think I've heard like that. I just want to pull out the listeners how powerful that is, that observation that we're not just losing the human to human contact or the you know, the water cooler talk, right. But really the power of watching others lead and do their jobs

You know, we're watching, we're missing maybe the ability to watch, even our leaders present to other clients or speak to a leader. We're losing that observation where we learned so much. And so I think that one takeaway of like, that's something I'm going to think about with the companies I work with, and leaders I work with of how can they. Inject that back in and, know, maybe instead of, instead of,

it, your small team of managers that you're in charge of instead of it all being one-on-one, you said, maybe it's more of a group format where everyone bring one issue and then they get to hear and learn. It's really a meta experience, right? Because you're not just learning because whatever problem your peer has, you either probably have as well or are going to have in the future. So you're, get to observe that. So it's more efficient as a manager, but then also you're to get to watch that.

that leader above you, you know, coach and mentor in that group setting and not seeing that as inefficient because you're in an observation role, but as a chance to learn. so that mindset shift in itself, I think is a powerful way, especially for those with remote and hybrid teams. That's man, that's so good. Man, this has been awesome, dude. If you want to learn more about what you do or get in contact with you, what's the best way to do that?

Bill Rice (48:17)
Yeah, so I'd love you to be a part of my newsletter, myexecutivebrief.com. So I share a lot of this kind of stuff, insights, sales, marketing, leadership, trends. Like I'm a big believer in kind of watching trends so that you can be like.

Everything you heard early on in this conversation is like I like to be on the front edge of things that we need to be paying attention to so a lot of that takes place in the Newsletter also becomes a hub for the content I produce stuff on YouTube and that sort of thing if you want to have a personal conversation I'm very active on LinkedIn so you can search for Bill Rice Direct connect with me on there very open to starting a conversation to get linkedin on that platform and then BillRiceStrategy.com is my website

So you can go deeper there if you want to as well.

Sean Patton (48:58)
That's awesome. We'll make sure we get all of those links in the show notes so people can go down and do that. Well, Bill, it's been great getting to know you and having this conversation today. I know I learned a ton. I'm sure everyone else did too.

Bill Rice (49:08)
Oh, it was my pleasure. I love the conversation and our shared backgrounds. Always fun to talk about. There's some strength in that. all right. All right. Take care.

Sean Patton (49:16)
Absolutely brother. All right, man. Till next time.