Welcome back to the Crypto podcast, an episode of the RCW at Discover Stop. I'm host there at this episode about the Great Biblical Values at the Biscoff. On this episode, we're joined by Larry O'Donnell. Larry is the former president of waste management, where he led one of the greatest turnarounds in corporate history. He's the retired founder, chairman of the board, CEO, and president of Rockwater Energy Solutions Incorporated, which is now Select Energy Services, a public company. And he's perhaps best known as the first leader featured on the CBS network television series Undercover Boss. So that episode actually aired right after the Super Bowl. What year was that, Larry?
SPEAKER_02Oh, it was a while ago. It was 2010.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, okay, so 2010. So, you know, the there's always the big debut show that that uh they start up right after the Super Bowl. There's a lot of hype around it. And um Larry certainly did not disappoint. Larry and his team have been recognized with multiple awards, including Ernst Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Gulf Coast and the top workplace leadership award by the Houston Chronicle. Uh after he retired from his business career, he pursued and received a master's in biblical and theological studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. And he's the author of the new book, Management Waste Five Steps to Clean Up the Mess and Lead with Purpose. Larry, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_02Darren, I really appreciate you inviting me on.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Been looking forward to this. Larry, when did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work in the business world?
SPEAKER_02Well, I've been a Christian since uh seventh grade. I was probably about 13 years old at the time. And so even in fact, I even led uh Bible studies in high school and college. So I have always viewed uh my business career as the ministry that God gave me. And so I I have tried to live my life uh in in a way that was pleasing to God. And um I tried to use the opportunities that He gave me uh to try to point people to Jesus Christ. And I had many opportunities to share the gospel and witness to people throughout my career. I'm not gonna tell you, in fact, as I look back on my career, I sometimes go, oh boy, there were probably many, many opportunities I had to do that that I let pass by because I was either felt I was too busy or, you know, I had other things that I felt were more important. But generally I did have many opportunities to do that. And I talk about that a little bit in my book.
SPEAKER_01And in your book, you said the opposite of servant leadership is management waste. What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, when you look at the typical leadership model that you see that's so prevalent in our culture today, it's what I call the top-down leadership model. And that model looks like uh what most people are used to seeing somebody worked really, really hard. They finally got to this leadership position in their career. And that doesn't necessarily mean CEO, it could be leading a team or what have you. Uh but typically what that model looks like is I've worked really hard to get here. Now, everyone that is under my authority is here to serve me and help me continue to progress in my career. You know, hopefully someday you'll have the opportunity to be a leader. And as long as you're doing what I need you to do to help me progress, you're gonna be fine. Uh, if if not, well then you're out of here. I'll get somebody else to take your place. The opposite end of the spectrum is the servant leadership model. And the key verse that I found in the Bible, because I I started looking at, you know, how does God want us to lead? And actually, there's a lot of scripture on leadership in the Bible, but it's the the key verses are Matthew 20, 25 through 28. And that's where uh just a short brief part of that, I'll paraphrase, uh, Jesus takes the opportunity to what I think actually talk about the difference between the top-down leadership model and the servant leadership model. And he's talking to his disciples, and uh two of the disciples actually ask Jesus if they can be seated on his right and left hand, uh, have those two thrones when they when Jesus ascends to his kingdom. And so Jesus takes the opportunity right then to say, look, that this is not about uh having this authority and leadership where you're higher than everybody else. And he he points out that while he's God and King, and that really hit me. I mean, here's Jesus, all powerful, King, our Lord, and he comes to earth and he says, I came to serve, not to be served. And that really struck me. Um, and that's when I saw, okay, and he goes on to say, he points out in that uh in that text, he says, look, that's how the Gentiles lead, they lord it over the people under them, under them. And he says, it's not to be so with you. And I think he's saying, I don't want you leading like that. If I give you a position of leadership, I don't want you leading where you're lording it over people. I want you to serve them. And so uh as I thought more about that and did more praying about it and studied more scripture about it and read books on servant leadership, I eventually, I got to keep things simple or I can't remember them. So I narrowed it down. I tried different things. Uh, some things worked, some things didn't. I've written about some of those mistakes I made in my book as well. But I narrowed it down to five principles, and I came up with this uh anachronym, uh CLEAN. And it basically stands for commitment, listening, empathy, accountability, and notice. And I talk about each of those principles in my book. There's other elements of servant leadership, but those five are the ones that I found. When I can put those together and actually practice them, it's led to some of the highest performing teams I've ever been on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Wow. And before you start to unpack some of those, that you you're contrasting this concept of servant leadership with management waste. What is being wasted by not by not operating as a servant leader?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and clearly uh I chose that. It's a play on words from my time at waste management. Uh, but I just view it, at least for me, I've seen when I don't put those principles into place, I'm wasting the opportunities that God has given me. I've wasted my life, I'm wasting my leadership opportunity, I've wasted all the opportunities. I'm not living my life the way God wants me to live. And what's really neat about this is I've also discovered that while I initially went down this path looking at it from leadership, from a leadership perspective, what I have found is that when I apply these five principles to all my relationships, be it colleagues, friends, family, my spouse, it changes everything. And that's probably why God told us to love God and love others. And it's it's when you serve others and place others' interests ahead of your own, that's what really makes a difference.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And you're really in a lot of ways wasting the the ability and opportunity for others to to contribute, right? And to really share their find fulfillment and the work that uh that they're doing. And they I mean, workplace disengagement is at um such uh such a high level. And so much of it comes down to and I think I think it's been shown that typically it's from a bad boss, like it's just bad management, the reason why people quit because they feel like their their gifts, their abilities are being squandered, right?
SPEAKER_02That's absolutely right. I I saw it, you know, in my almost 40-year career. People don't quit uh, you know, because of pay. They don't quit a job, they actually quit their boss. That's who they quit. And I happen to think most people show up at work each day wanting to do a good job, wanting to contribute to the team's success, but they want to feel like they're appreciated. Uh, they want their contributions to be appreciated. And they also want to know what's expected. What is it that you want me to do and how can I contribute to the success of this team? And there's so many times that people hire people and yet they don't explain clearly what are the objectives and what do they, what does this person need to do to contribute to the success. And then when there is success, you know, it's all about the boss saying, Yeah, look what I did, instead of, you know, it wasn't me, it's this incredible team that I have. Um and so that's part of what helped me develop these uh these five principles that I talk about in my book.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I think this is uh gonna really help somebody listening right now, especially if you proceed to go get a hold of the book. Um the subtitle of the book is Five Steps to Clean Up the Mess and Lead with Purpose. And so that somebody is in the middle of a messy situation in their in their management where there's broken relationships, broken trust, just disgruntled uh workers. So we're gonna we're gonna help them, you're gonna help them clean it up. Uh clean is the acronym. Let's start with the C commitment. What's that about?
SPEAKER_02So commitment is being committed to the people on your team or others or the people that you have relationships with. And it's not only about helping them, I'll I'll take it from the business standpoint. It's not only it's it's helping them grow in their career, finding out and discussing with them what gaps they may have and where they want to go. You know, everybody has aspirations. So, how can you help them grow in their career? And that means empowering them. And I talk about actually, it's one of the my favorite stories from my career on empowerment, and it's in my book. Uh, I think people have fun watching that or reading that one. Um, but when you commit to people and you empower them, they're gonna make mistakes. That's to be expected. If you're not making mistakes, you're not learning. And so you've got to have their back when they do make a mistake. And what that does, it just builds tremendous trust throughout the organization when people see how you're placing others' interest ahead of your own and helping them grow.
SPEAKER_01And if you wouldn't mind, Larry, we'd love to hear that story.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's a story. Uh uh I went out to do a business review at uh when I was at waste management at one of our facilities. I I won't say where because I don't want to point out exactly where this was, but uh I showed up and it happened to be this facility was in a served a very large retirement community, one of the largest in the nation. And when I showed up, we were really focused on uh safety as well as getting all the trucks. Let me back up. When I went to waste management, it was the largest corporate blow up in history. Okay, and they had averaged buying a company a day for the year and a half before I got there. So think of about 1,200 companies around the world, 1,200 cultures, things not put together. And so we were trying to develop our operating model, uh, develop a safety culture, get our branding all the same. And so when I showed up at this one location, uh, typically before I got there, one of the first metrics I would look at was the safety metric, because I discovered the operations that did well in safety usually had a team that really cared about one another and were watching out for one another and helping each other avoid from getting hurt. And that usually told me if I just looked at that, I could tell you pretty quick what type of team was there and how they were working together. And I pulled up on my flight on the way out there uh their safety information, and I saw it was terrible. I mean, it was terrible. So I started digging into it, and what I found is there were almost, well, multiple times almost every day, vehicles were running into the back of our trucks. And I said, How can this be possible? I mean, we have reflective tape on the back, uh, lights flashing. It's like you cannot miss these vehicles, they're big. Uh and so I got there and I went in. I said, Hey, before we get started, what is the deal with your safety record on people running into the back of our trucks? And they said, Well, Larry, you don't understand. We the the biggest area we serve is this huge retirement community. These people should have had their driver's license taken away, you know, in some cases a decade ago. They don't know how to drive, they can't see, and they're running into the back of our trucks. And it's like it happens almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day, and we're just a victim. There's nothing we can do about it. And so I said, Well, I'll tell you what we're gonna do. Um, you all know this community better than I do, and so I'm gonna go away, I'm gonna leave, I'm gonna come back in two weeks, and I'm gonna empower you to do something, do something different, because I've read uh that doing the same thing over and over again and act and expecting a different result uh is insanity. That actually, I think it was Albert Einstein who said that. And so if you just sit back and just keep doing it the same way, I'm pretty sure your results are gonna look the same as they do here. So I'm empowering you. I want you to go do something different. Just try anything that you think might lead to a different result. And I'll be back in two weeks. I want to see what you came up with. So I came back in two weeks. And when I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed there were four trucks over there. We were painting all our trucks green, like you see today, but there were four trucks that were painted yellow on the back. And I said, Huh, interesting. I wonder if that's what they've done, because I knew that wasn't our new paint scheme. So I went in, sat down, I said, Okay, tell me what you tried. And they go, Well, did you notice those four trucks? I said, Yeah, I did. It so tell me about it. They said, Well, you're not gonna believe this. We painted those four trucks yellow in the back, and since you've left, those are the only four trucks that have not been hit uh since you left. As soon as we painted them yellow, they have not been hit. I said, Well, gosh, why didn't you paint more of them yellow on the back? And they said, Well, we know that you want this branding, all the trucks to look the same. That wasn't a paint scheme, and we knew you were coming right back, so we thought we'd talk about it first. And I said, My goodness, you might have just discovered something. Paint them all yellow in the back. Let's see what happens. Well, it it turned out that that almost completely eliminated that is an issue for them. And so the point is, you know, you got to empower your people to try something different. And what I love about that story, you can no matter where your listeners are today in the country, if they see a waste management truck, if they look at it, they're gonna notice it's painted yellow in the back. We discovered we didn't have to paint the whole thing yellow, just the bottom part. We called it Project Yellowtail. And that led to significant reduction. I uh there's probably a number of lives that have been saved as a result of it. Yeah. Just because a small team was uh empowered to go try something new, try something different. Uh, so it's a great lesson on empowerment. Uh, and I'm so proud of that team for for what they did. In fact, many other truck fleets have now copied that. And I've seen trucks on the highways now that have yellowtails, and and that's just to me, I I love that. It's the highest form of flattery, you know, that, but at the same time, I know that that saved lives. And so it's a great story about empowerment.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And uh, and there's I'm sure problems like that all throughout the marketplace every day. And but so many uh so many managers, leaders feel like they have to be the one to come up with the solution. And um, I mean, who better to come up with the solution than the people that are actually getting rear-ended by these uh um by these these folks? Um and and they could come up with a better solution, even than you would have been able to as the as the leader. Because that's that's that's what leadership is. It's not having to come up with uh the solution, it's it's empowering the people to come up with the solution, right?
SPEAKER_02And that's what the listening uh characteristic is. Uh, I actually learned that from my dad. I grew up in our family's construction business in Houston, and uh my dad impressed upon me very early on. He said, your job is to talk to the frontline. That's those are the ones that are our face to the customer. They're the ones doing the tough job. You need to ask them two questions. One, what gets in the way of them doing their best work every day, or what causes their frustration every day? And number two, if they could change anything to help us serve our customers better, what would it be? And so I always used that throughout my career. And when I got to waste management, I'm primarily an oil field guy. Uh, I went to waste management from Baker Hughes. And at the time, Baker Hughes, as I mentioned, was the it was the largest corporate blow-up in history at the time. So think of Enron, WorldCom. Um, and that wasn't on my watch. I they fired the whole leadership team there, and I was part of the team to help turn it around. And that's that's what I was doing. I'd go out at four in the morning, for instance, and meet with drivers and tell them what we were doing about uh turning the company around, answer their questions, and I'd pick a driver and say, today I'm gonna go work the back of your truck with you. And people would say, Larry, you're the and this was before undercover boss, way before, but this is when I first got there because I didn't know that business. But I knew if I went out and spent time with the people doing those jobs, I could then get their input on what our operating model ought to look like for the entire company. And today that that's still serves as the basis of the operating model for waste management. I'm sure they've improved it greatly since I left. Um, but you know, it it's it's getting the input from those frontline employees. And what happens is then that gets around. That helps build trust because you know, a lot of people would ask me, Larry, you're the president of this, you know, Fortune 200 company, $13.5 billion revenue company. That's a isn't that a waste of your time going out picking up trash all day? And I'd tell them, you know what, I learn more about what's working and not working in this company by spending one day out there doing that than I do sitting in my ivory hour, ivory tower office in downtown Houston. Um, and so you know, I encourage people to try it. Work with your work with your team and understand what they're dealing with and uh figure out what you can do to make make it so they can do their best work each and every day by clearing out those little things that you may not even be aware of.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so good. What's another story you like to tell as it relates to this clean model of cleaning up the management waste?
SPEAKER_02You know, one good one is uh noticing others. And the notice aspect actually has two pieces to it. It's it's noticing others, and when they do a good job, uh actually thanking them and letting them know how much you appreciate what they do. But it's also getting to know them so well that not just on a superficial level, not just talking about, you know, the whatever sort of Sports team played over the weekend. I'm talking about really getting to know them. So when they show up at work and you you and they're having a bad day, you know that immediately, just because you know them well enough. And what I found is that then when I've noticed that, I can then say, hey, it looks like you're struggling with something. You want to talk about it. And if they wanted to talk about it, we'd talk it over a little bit. And then that would lead many times to I would then say, Hey, can I pray with you about it? And of course, they'd look around and go, pray at work. I mean, isn't that illegal or something? It's like, no, it's not illegal. I don't want to make you uncomfortable. And I never made anyone feel uncomfortable about it. But I can't think of a time that anybody then refused me. And what I found is then after doing that, it might have been the next day or some days or weeks later, they'd come seek me out and they'd say, Larry, there's something different about you. We just see this peace. You know, we know about uh, we haven't talked about it here, but uh I had a kind of a shipwreck with my daughter that I'd be happy to talk about. It's in my book. We know about that. We know we've seen you in situations where you know we're going through a tough time or something here, or you just always seem to be at peace. Where does that come from? Well, there you go. Now I have the opportunity to share the gospel, talk about what Jesus Christ has meant to me and my faith. And uh I I had many of those opportunities at work. So we're called, one of the last things Jesus said was to go make disciples. That's what we're called to do. He modeled that for us, and that's what we're called to do. And by the way, I went and studied that passage, you know, for a long time, Matthew 28, uh verses 19 through 20. And he doesn't say pastors go make disciples, the pastor's job is to equip us to make disciples. Our job is is here to help others have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And so uh I'll ask your listeners so how you doing in that job? How you doing? And it wasn't an option, it was a command. That's what we're commanded to do. So who are you pouring your life into? Uh, I think we each have lots of opportunities to do that every week, and we may be passing those opportunities by. And you know, I'll ask you, when you become a Christian, why doesn't God just zap you up to heaven? Well, that's not his plan. Uh his plan was to come here, live 30 years a perfect life, show us how to live, spend three years training his disciples. Uh, he spent three days on the cross dealing with our sins, and then he ascended into heaven, and he left it with the disciples and then us as believers to help others uh place our faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And that's the plan. You mentioned your daughter. Um, share with our listeners um about your daughter and what you went through uh when she was just a baby, and then how that um how God used that to develop you as a leader.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh my wife, we've uh we'll have our 40th anniversary here in just another couple of months. Um our first child, her name's Lindley, she was born totally normal, and we were so excited, elated to have our first child. And when we got her home from the hospital, we discovered that right after her feeding, she would be very distraught. You could tell her stomach bothered her, she couldn't sleep, she just was not a happy camper. And so my wife shared that with her mom, and her mom reminded her that uh my wife had been intolerant to lactose as a small infant. She eventually outgrew it. And so she said, just put her on a soy formula, and I bet you that'll solve the problem. Well, sure enough, we did that, and immediately everything's great. I mean, she was sleeping through the night, happy, everything was great. When we went in for the two-month checkup with our pediatrician, he said, Yeah, that's gotta be what it is. But just to make sure, I'm gonna send you down to the medical center and let's have some test run and just make sure that's all that's going on. Well, unfortunately, we got with a doctor who had never done this test on a little two-month-old infant. Uh, he had only done it on adults, and he used an instrument that was for adults that then blew a lot of air into her stomach and caused her to throw up and aspirate. Long story short, she was in intensive care for about four months, and eventually they said, Why don't you just take her home? She can dive peacefully at home. She's not going to make it through the week. And we were distraught. We took her home, made funeral arrangements, but uh it was a shipwreck for me. And as I had mentioned, I'd become a Christian uh at 13 years of age, and so I had my faith. I didn't lose my faith, but I was very, very angry at God. I was saying, you know, how can this happen to me? This isn't fair. Look what I've done. I've led Bible studies in high school, college. I read my Bible every day, I pray every day. You know, I'm going through my resume. This isn't fair. Uh and that that anger evolved into guilt. I started saying, well, I must have done something. I must have sinned in some really terrible way to bring this. This is the result. Uh, this is the penalty. This is what God is is doing now because I've I sinned in some really bad way. And so this is the result, the consequence of it. And uh one day I was studying my Bible, I was happened to be in the Gospel of John, and I then came to chapter nine, and the story there in in John 9. Jesus is walking with two of his disciples, and they come across a man who'd been blind from birth, and they ask Jesus, so who sinned this man or his parents to cause his blindness? That was my question. Awesome. This is my question. And Jesus answered and said, it was neither this man's sin nor his parents, but it was so that my works, my glory could be shown through this person and their blindness. And that hit me. The Holy Spirit definitely used it in a way to show me how self-centered I was. I then realized even though I thought I was living my life as a Christian, I was so self-absorbed. I wanted, I was so focused on my career and me growing. And I wanted to be somebody in my career rather than be a servant, even though I had begun uh this was early, early on. So I probably was not quite where I was looking at servant leadership uh like I did after that. It led to that. Uh and I realized I was self-reliant. I was focused on my plan rather than God's plan. And I'm one of these type A driven individuals, you know, planner, uh get her done kind of guys. I'd probably I'd already planned out my daughter's life. I mean, you know, she was gonna be an athlete or a cheerleader, she was gonna go to college, she was gonna get married, give me grant. I already had it all planned, you know. And God was telling me, Larry, it's not about your plan, it's about my plan. And you got to trust me and live my plan, not your plan. And God used that in a way to show me empathy, which is one of the other characteristics. And to me, really, empathy is the magic that makes everything else work because I saw how precious life is, and I saw um that it truly is about caring for others and not about myself and serving others and not about myself. Uh, it was a huge discovery. And empathy wasn't even a tool that I could have found in my toolbox before God used that terrible tragedy in my life uh to really help me. And the other takeaway is God wants to use every one of the difficult trials and tragedies that you go through in your life in a very powerful way, and it can transform you if you'll let it. And God used that terrible situation to totally transform me.
SPEAKER_01Wow. So sorry you had to go through that, but um but thank God for his redemption and and just how he he brings glory to himself and and um and just uses even something as as tragic as that uh uh to um to just make us uh stronger, make us better, and and help us to help more people. And you've you've certainly done that uh over uh over your career. Um, Larry, as we wrap it up here, uh in light of everything you've shared and and your story, what what would be your parting advice for our listeners today?
SPEAKER_02Well, I just say that God has left you here uh for a reason. And how are you living out that plan that He's given you? And so I was led to write this book to try to help people. By the way, I'm not pushing the book to make a bunch of money. All the profits from this book go to charity. Uh, he led me to do that and share with others the mistakes I made, but the also the learnings that he taught me from my almost 40-year career, as well as through the tragedies I've been through in my life, and how he can use those. And these five simple steps, if you just allow Jesus to use those five steps to clean you up, you can lead your life with purpose and live your life in a way that you give up control and live the life that God designed for you rather than being management waste, which is wasting the opportunity and the and the life that God truly wants you to live.
SPEAKER_01So good. And Larryodonnell.com is the website. Uh, anything else you want to say about the uh the the podcast? People need to go tell tell them the name of the podcast.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've got some other tools as well. Uh you can sign up for that on my website, LarryODonnell.com. I do a weekly podcast that comes out on Monday mornings. I also do a weekly blog where I write primarily about servant leadership uh topics, and that comes out usually on Thursdays. And you can also access my book. Another easy way to access both of those, if you're a text message kind of person, you can just simply send a text message to 56316. And that should be easy to remember because 56 on the phone is JN. So if you know the verse, John 316, there you go. You can remember. Type in 56316 down in the message, type Larry and hit send, and you'll be signed up for both of them.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. All right. Well, Larry, thank you so much for sharing your time. Thank you for your example and for imparting to our listeners today. We sure appreciate you.
SPEAKER_02Darren, I really appreciate you having me on your show.
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