The Whitley Hurst Podcast
Conversations on environmental compliance, field operations, leadership, and the challenges facing today’s environmental industry.
The Whitley Hurst Podcast
Roundtable Workforce
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Want your employees to believe in the vision and help bring it to life? Give them a meaningful voice in how it is achieved. Roundtable Workforce explores how leaders can create a structure where people are heard, ideas move upward, and employees become active participants in the company's success. Learn how shared ownership and accountability can turn a group of employees into a unified workforce.
Hey everyone. Welcome. We are discussing our conversation about solution 44, a business solution that was created by Brian Whitley. We are joined once again by Brian. Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00You're welcome. I'm glad to be here. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. So on the last episode, we discussed this idea of culture. And you walked out some of the steps for how you've developed good culture in your company. But I want to dive into this next idea of Solution 44, which is the round table workforce. In Solution 44, this is a pretty interesting inspiration you had here. So before we break it down, can you give us a little bit of the backstory and what inspired this concept?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So you know I'm a parable and love to give metaphor type example person, but another thing about my life is that I'm usually on one end of the spectrum or I'm all the way on the other end of the spectrum. And what that means is that I like old stuff like old school folk stories, legendary tales, mythologies, things like that, right? And King Arthur uh provides a great example for, you know, what this lesson talks about. If you look at the principles that were surrounding King Arthur and how he had the Knights of the Round Table and the way the story was told, um, it's a common thread through the entire part in every rendition of it, no matter how many different movies you watch, or if you read the book, or whatever the situation is, and it boils down to how did he treat his people? How did he treat his subjects? The even the enemies, everyone had a voice, everyone had an opportunity, and at the end, the most important thing was that justice prevailed. So companies that follow a philosophy similar to what we're going to be talking about today don't have to read about this stuff in fairy tales. I mean, you know, they get to live it every day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So in undergrad, I studied behavioral sciences, and one of the theories that I spent a lot of time with was empowerment theory. And I think that upon introduction of empowerment, it can feel threatening to managers. But what ends up happening is that empowerment ends up creating opportunities, it increases skills, it fosters creativity, it enhances wellness. So whenever I was reading this section, the roundtable workforce sounds a lot like empowerment through engagement. It's this systematic way to enable participation of your employees. Um and ultimately that participation helps to facilitate this feeling of shared decision making and ultimately creates a real buy-in from employees.
SPEAKER_00That's very true. Um, very true. I'm actually glad you mentioned that. One of the first jobs I had, uh, I would say as a professional or at least aspiring to be a professional, uh, we had a powwow, a meeting, a meeting of the minds. We all met at the division manager's house. The owner was there, his wife was there who also worked at the company, and every major manager from all across the United States, we were all there, right? And the discussion was the policy book. We're gonna make the policy book. We're gonna talk about the things that needs to happen, right? Prior to this job, I um, you know, I did construction work and worked as a laborer and different things like that. So being in a room like this at this point was so new to me. It was, it was different. You know, I didn't most of the time I didn't even get to meet the people at that level. And now I'm sitting in a room with them to discuss what the policy should be. And I made a suggestion about sick time and lost time and PTO and and some type of payouts that would basically encourage people to work when they can, take off when they need to, but not ever feel like they were totally losing uh what they did work for, which is the PTO. They accepted that. It ended up being in a policy book, and uh, and I'm saying this story because I'm trying to uh actively articulate how I felt when I looked at the book, the printed book, and I saw my suggestion in writing as something that the entire company for all the United States was going to follow. It was a bond. It was a bond, it was a it was something that I felt a part of. You know, if you're listening to our other stuff, culture and everything, it was bigger than me. Instantly it became bigger than me, and I just wanted to continue to be a part of it. So we've all heard people say, like in the real world, in the workforce, when you go out there, who am I? I just work here. I'm just a number. These statements are company killers. When when a customer service is your main business and this is the type of people that you have, you're in a you're in a you're in a big you're in a bad place. There's a bigger picture. You want to engage your employees and you want them to be able to see there's a bigger picture.
SPEAKER_01So I love the sentiment of everyone having a voice and you know, seeing one of your ideas come to fruition. But I am ever the practical voice. It's obviously unreasonable for any company to expect to include all of its employees at the table, right? So at some point you are kind of having to filter through who gets to sit at the table. So can you talk to us about how you decide who is represented there and maybe how other companies can as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you're right, Alyssa. How smart you are. If everybody's sitting at the table, that's the quickest way for nothing to get done.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'll tell you what my mom told my sister. And this is advice on men, so it it may apply to many other people out there listening, but Okay, I'm leaning in. She says, uh pay more attention to what a man does and hardly any attention to what he says. There is where you find his true nature.
SPEAKER_01Amen, Mama Willy. Words to live by.
SPEAKER_00Words to live by. So from a company standpoint, I realize that what people say, uh, what they say and what they do, that tells you a lot of information. But you also can learn just as much from what they don't say and what they don't do. You know, and the things that you gotta remember is, you know, who's volunteering for overtime, who's not, who's the first person to get to work, who's not, who's the last person to leave, who's the first person to leave? Like all these things are little bells and and whistles of bits of information that you can stack in your brain as you're looking at your group and decide.
SPEAKER_01Who really cares? Who's really bought in?
SPEAKER_00That's right. That is right. And the thing that I love about the solution 44 methodology is that it all works together. So there's other parts to fully uh uh ID what you're asking about, like the fractionation method, or when we talk about the ground truth, and it'll go into more depth to this question.
SPEAKER_01Um I think your comparison to the round table of King Arthur um reminds me of this idea of common goals. Um and one of the most unifying principles is common goals, right? So, um, you know, just researching a little bit about King Arthur, most of the mythologies agree that the men at the round table were the bravest or the truest or the strongest. Um, but what was really unique about it is that they were all united in their goal to protect the kingdom and the most vulnerable people, like women and children, um, and all of those things are um really valuable. Um, but what really spoke to me is that it wasn't for their individual interests that they gathered. It was really to hash out um their pursuit of their common goal. Would you say that this ideal is true of your round uh your roundtable workforce, or am I just idealizing it?
SPEAKER_00Well, what I will say is that helping people at the very core to get what they need for success will automatically give you the things that you need for success. A company's leaders should realize that from the very beginning. That sounds like we're offering a service to our employees. Sounds like I'm saying that supervisors are service providers to their employees, not people to tell other people what to do. Um if you want people to be aligned with what you're doing, then make it known what you're doing. That's why we see mission statements out there for companies. For for example, right, by the MSI, our mission statement is founded upon the core principles of environmental consciousness, customer service, accountability, preservant perseverance, and teamwork, offering you a partnership that you that will change the way you think about environmental compliance. Refacing replacing faith with full service compliance you can trust. Founded upon the core principles of environmental consciousness, customer service, accountability, perseverance, and teamwork, offering you a partnership that will change the way you think about environmental compliance. Replacing faith with full service compliance you can trust. This needs to be at the heart of every employee. In, you know, it's a lot of words, so I don't expect them to necessarily memorize it. Right. Or myself for that matter to even necessarily memorize it, but there's things that stick out in it, and you want people to know this is who we are, this is what we're about. So we need to make sure that the people that are working with us recognize what our goals are and what our obligations are to that. In this industry, you know, we have what we like to call the X factor. And the X factor for our company is our people. That is what makes the difference. So when their voices are heard, that's when we're able to get things accomplished because we're able to make moves in accordance to move the whole unit, the whole the whole company.
SPEAKER_01So um I'm curious, was this mission statement written in collaboration with your employees?
SPEAKER_00Yes, actually, uh it took us over a week. And what it is, uh the culmination of it is one of the most beautiful things, I think, from a company standpoint that you'd ever want to see. Because um we passed around a string of an email string with all these brainstorming ideas, right? And the string kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller, not in the p people that were participating, but as we were narrowing down this big list of all this stuff and coming down to finally what we are. Right? And then the icing on the cake, I think, is that once we realized that we put it all to ink and we had it where we wanted to, we put it in a frame and you know, we dialed it up and put our logo and everything on it. And then we, the people of the company, presented it to the president and asked that this be our mission statement for the company. And uh he was happy, he accepted it. And I I mean, I think it was one of the best works coming together. People from all over the United States that work for us were participating. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's really cool. I love that. You can kind of feel excitement when things like that happen, you know, like there's just like more energy um happening in an office environment and people, you know, gathering and they're talking about their ideas, or we love this, we hate this, this is awesome, this sucks. Um, so that's always a really fun experience. So back to the round table. When I'm reading this, I can't help but think that the people who end up sitting at this table are concerned with protecting or advocating for employees who either don't feel that they have a voice or they have not cultivated that sense of empowerment yet within the organization. Can you speak to that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I I I really wish I can say that it's a kumbaya moment and that it's true. But the fact is that most of the time the people we we're just imperfect, right? We have to we have to expect that the people are imperfect. We're ungrateful, we're greedy, we're deceitful. So generally, at this point in time, any board that houses just a couple of voices for the people is a victory. So the truth of the matter is really all you need is one to make the difference. What solution 44 does with culture, with the round table, with fractionation, with the you know, ground truth, all the different modules that it offers to help enlighten your mind, it is so that you do grow that number. But I would I wouldn't I wouldn't be able to tell you that all the boards that we have sitting here today are 100% thinking about their people, or even 50% thinking about their people. That's that's not a true statement. But I can tell you some of the happiest and most prosperous companies. And, you know, once again, timing is everything in right now, like the things that we're experiencing right now in 2020, those companies that do have this type of workforce and these type of people are willingly doing things that set them apart from the others.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so just in rating it, building this round table is quite involved. Um, and in any organization, identifying key players is not an easy task. Um so I just want to encourage the listeners to continue with our future um sections of Solution 44 where we talk about um fractionation, ground truth, um, and just kind of learning how to zoom out a little bit and build some of these processes for their own organizations. Um thankfully you've given us some of those strategies to help identify that talent and and build that infrastructure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the the round table, really, if I was summing it up, it's it's really all about not putting yourself up so far above other people. Be with the people that you want to lead. We've all seen the pictures. We've all seen the the little uh I guess you call them pictrograms on on LinkedIn or whatever, and they show the one guy in red and oh, this group of 10 or 15 people in blue, right? And the one guy in red is on some platform on top of the people and they're carrying him, you know, or maybe he's even behind the people and they're going up this mountain and they're pulling him. And then you have the other one. It's the one guy in red, and he's at the front, but with the people suffering what they're suffering, going through what they're going through. The round table to me is about being with your people to understand how they feel and giving them a chance to be a part of the movement that is moving forward. If they agree with your mission, then let's work together. I I'm not the smartest person in the room. In any room I go into, I think that might be true. But I am wise enough to learn that you can learn from others and listen to others. And if you put two heads together, that's better than one. Three heads are better than one, you know, and so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, and I think that buy-in that you're looking for, you you're gonna identify who's bought in, who's not, and then how you can make it better. So I definitely think those um sections will be paramount to building this whole thing. Um so I just want to encourage you guys, you don't want to miss those episodes. I know it will be a game changer. So thank you everyone for tuning in, and thanks, Brian, for your insight as always.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_01We'll see you soon.