The Whitley Hurst Podcast
Conversations on environmental compliance, field operations, leadership, and the challenges facing today’s environmental industry.
The Whitley Hurst Podcast
The Fractionation Method
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Service-oriented companies do not always need to reinvent the wheel; some of the best management lessons come from processes we already understand. The Fractionation Method applies a simple idea: separate what is working from what is not, then manage each appropriately. Learn how Solution 44 identifies and develops high performers, motivates and monitors those who can improve, and makes the difficult decisions necessary when behaviors begin to threaten the organization.
Hey everyone, it's Alyssa. Welcome back. On this episode, we will be discussing the fractionation method of Solution 44. So this section is designed to help you decipher facts versus feelings. And it can really help you put pen to paper to identify the top talent in your organization. We are joined once again by Brian Whitley, the Vice President of Compliance at EMSI and the creator of the Solution44 methodology. So thanks again for joining us, Brian.
SPEAKER_00Hello, and thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. So, Brian, before we jump into some of the specifics of this section, can you give the listeners a very brief overview of the fractionation method and why you believe it's so important?
SPEAKER_00The fractionation method is a methodology and it closely mimics a refinement process. And the particular process that I've uh kind of taken this from was crude oil. So if you're thinking about crude oil and you've heard of it, you know, you've heard of like big oil and all these different things, you have to be wondering how in the world does anything with refining crude oil have to do with the workforce, and and therefore that sounds maybe, you know, ludicrous for lack of better words. The reality of the situation is that it's very, very, very similar. So this crude base ends up being the material for such things like diesel, kerosene, gasoline, jet fuel, heating oil, all of this stuff comes from what was once crude. Now, when we look at our people, our base is very similar because that's what it is. It's the people. But what do these people end up being? They're the sources of where we get technicians, managers, supervisors, foremans, vice presidents, presidents. All of this stuff ties in together. And the funny thing about it is no matter where they end up, they all started in the same place, just like crude oil. Just one person is looking for a job and they become what they become. The fractionation method teaches you to measure it all and tip the scales in your behalf.
SPEAKER_01So this section is arguably my favorite because of how I've seen it done wrong. Um in my own experience, one of the biggest blind spots I have witnessed is watching managers and often even myself misidentify talent or watch good talent disintegrate. And that's something that's been very disappointing to me. I feel like I've been let down by watching someone not live up to what I expected them to. And then also I've witnessed good managers be burned. Um and one of the worst things to witness is watching someone come into an organization so bright and full of potential and have them fall through the cracks.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh EMSI, the company I work for, I would love to say that we had this under control and we knew it. But Lord knows we learned through the school of hard knocks just like everybody else. We went through many, many different situations where exactly what you said, you know. And that's one of the most inspirational parts of building this type of methodology to make sure that, you know, we cut through the chase because when we look at what we have, you know, we'll get into a little bit more detail later. But when we look at what we have, we we see that, you know, there is a roadmap to doing this the right way.
SPEAKER_01So I want to talk about a piece that really stood out to me. You mentioned it very briefly in Solution 44, but I think it's so important. You talk about gut feelings that managers have, and you even go so far as to say that managers who follow gut feelings can be successful. In my observation, I have seen this go both ways. And I think it's because it is so human and so frail, it is difficult to trust ourselves. Um, it truly seems 50-50 to me. Sometimes I've watched this gut feeling decision come together beautifully and the stars align, and it's like it was always meant to be. Um, but then the other half of the time I've seen it crash and burn. Um, and I think for me, there's always this fear that somehow the wrong influence will cloud my vision or something can influence my feelings in harmful ways. Personally, I know that I have never 100% trusted a gut feeling in a business scenario, and I'm sure that others have felt the same way. So, can you talk to me about how much equity we should be placing on gut feelings, or if there is some way that we can kind of mitigate the human factor when we're doing that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So for the greater part of 20 years, my close friend and business partner, his name is uh Matthew Colbert. He is the king of gut feelings. He that's that is how he operates. And in many ways it has truly helped me because, you know, what you're saying about the gut feeling being going one way and then going the other way is true. It could very easily happen. And so there's a couple of things that that uh that come into play. The first thing is you're really scared to act upon it because it's just a gut feeling. So I learned really early on in our relationship that my role was to quantify that feeling. I s uh I wish I was telling you the truth. I gotta back up just a little bit. It wasn't early on in the relationship that I learned that. What I was at that point was really kind of like thinking he was crazy, right? And what would happen is lo and behold, it would be right. Like it would be right. Um not a hundred percent of the time, but when he felt like something was wrong with someone, almost 100% of the time, it was uh it was pretty accurate.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Now he might have thought somebody was good that that wasn't good, or you know, whatever. That's that's not uh to me what's important. What was important was the process as a team that we made together that will be something that I know will be modeled for many other people in the future. If you can put the tag team of myself and him together and and the success that we've been able to have over the last 20 years, it boils down to in the simplest forms this. I trust his gut, but I also figure out a way to quantify it.
SPEAKER_01So you're kind of, you know, setting out this structure or maybe like this more scientific approach to leaning into a gut feeling, but to not rely on it alone.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell That's right. I'm not saying that you need to ignore it, but get some scientific data, get something behind it that can help you understand it. And now I can I can really go back to specific situations where he felt a certain thing and identify what that thing was or or that, you know, did or didn't happen to make us uh realize that something was going wrong. It's it's and honestly, now it's a beautiful thing. We can literally, the two of us can sit in a room with people, have a open conversation, and a private, silent conversation that nobody knows is happening but me, him and I. Wow. Yeah, that that takes a long time and a lot of understanding of a person. And when we walk out of a meeting, we are never wrong at how well it did or didn't go. You know, other people might think something totally different, but we're usually spot on with how we feel after it's over with.
SPEAKER_01So this fractionation is essentially a method for how other people can have that same sort of like silent conversation, but you know, leaning into their gut feeling with like a more systematic approach. Um so let's talk about the two prongs of the fractionation method. Um so in solution 44, you talk about the feed, and then you talk about employees as you describe as the good, the bad, and the ugly, because we know that you like to have the metaphors. Um and you know, however uh you need to recall what those things are, this idea of good, bad, and ugly and the feed is actually really wonderful insight about employee behavior. And I think it's kind of the best I've ever heard to kind of categorize what types of employees that you're working with and then what you can do about those categories. So I just want to uh have you talk a little bit about those two components.
SPEAKER_00Well, whether you got 20 people working for your company or 2,000, the percentages generally run the same. Generally run the same. That's scientific, right? So the latest studies show that these are the numbers you want to remember. 20 percent, 60 percent, 20 percent. 20 percent of your people are actively engaged. They're the people that are gonna go the extra mile, that are gonna show up early, work late, do the things they need to do because they want to see this company be better in some kind of way. They feel like by the company being better, they're gonna be better also. 60 percent of your workforce is what we call disengaged. What does that mean? They show up to work, it's just a job, it's the same people that you have say, what am I just a number, or am I really supposed to be somebody special? I just work here. You know, those people are 60 percent, the greater majority of your workforce. The last 20% are what they call actively disengaged. And the actively disengaged people are not just like, I'm just a number, I don't work here, but they're the ones at the at the water uh cooler or in the smoke shack or in some place where, you know, other people are gathering and all they're doing is bad mouthing and planting negative seeds for all these people. So I've ever replaced those words with the good, the bad, and the ugly. You know, the funny thing, the thing that you gotta really look at is that this study doesn't have, you know, it goes from actively engaged to disengaged, or in my case, straight from good to bad. There's no in-between. Yeah. Um, and the reason for that is because only the actively engaged people are really pushing forward. If you're not doing that, if you're not helping me, you're not moving forward, then what are you doing? You're a part of the group that's standing still.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that is not something that you want to have, right?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So when you think about it, so when you think about it, the people are the inlet to the company. That's our manpower stream. That's that's our that's our product, that's what's coming in. Now, where do they go? You know, in many cases, we call the people coming into the company, we call it the feed in in this methodology, right? And that feed consists of, get this, it can be honorable men and women, but it can also be thieves. It can be hateful people, it can be cheaters, it can be workaholics, it can be loyal people. It is just the feed. Where they fall when they get into your company is largely due to how you break them down.
SPEAKER_01And so what you're essentially saying is like this feed of people is only gonna go one of three places.
SPEAKER_00That is correct. And that's the principles of fractionation.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So ever the bleeding heart. The hardest part for me in this good, bad, and ugly breakdown is realizing one that the ugly truly does exist, people who are actively seeking to harm you, um, and understanding that there cannot be a place for them in your organization. Um I know many managers who have a really difficult time parting ways with employees. And I know in my organization, sometimes that can be pushed to another department or someone who does not directly interact with that employee because it is so difficult. So, do you have any tips for kind of reconciling this experience and just helping people who have a lot of difficulty around letting employees go or just really identifying employees that are harming them?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell So before we had our act together and we were still figuring each other out, Matt and I would argue about this a lot. Um and in the beginning, you know, I wouldn't it especially when it was in his wheelhouse, I wouldn't really overly like involve myself with it. But there's plenty of times where you say something's not right about this guy or something's not good, like there's something I just something I don't like about him. And, you know, when the end results turn true, that's when I realized I, like I said before, that uh I had to figure out a way to quantify it. But one of the things that were as a byproduct of this is almost every single time, every single time, we got that much closer to someone who would finish our sentences, someone who shared our goals, someone who was in a that that aligned themselves with us and we we were working together. So every time that we had to let someone go or change uh end employment for someone, what was on the other side of that was a blessing. You know, and that was something I was prohibiting myself from from getting, right? So if you remember that 60% of the workforce is disengaged, it's such a thin line from disengaged to actively disengaged. If you let that cancer sit there, you're gonna change your 20% of actively engaged to maybe five. And that 60%, that number might shrink, but it's because they're going to the bottom right now. The 20% is 30 or or 40%. You have to protect yourself from that. Now, I want to say that you're not in a rush to disregard these people and fire them. You are in a rush to identify who they are. The process of identifying who they are will many times help people fly right. You heard that phrase, straighten up and fly right? Like that happens because you're called to the carpet, because you have you have those tough conversations prior to the point. So this is this is not a method for firing people. Um this process of identification, it really gives ample opportunity for the overachievers and the achievers to reach those goals and for you to be able to be, honestly, for you to bear witness to the whole event. So when you find them in the ugly category, it is because of their own choices that they fell through the cracks. And um in a fractionation system, there's a tray for everybody. If the tray you end up with is the ugly tray, the bottom, that's the that's the sum of your own choices.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think for me, whenever I hear the um 20, 60, 20 statistic, 60% seems so huge to me. And I'm like, over half of your organization is disengaged. Like that seems crazy. How is it that that many people can end up in that tray, as you would say? But it is because if you're not, you know, magnifying these categories, it's easy to just hide, to kind of tuck yourself behind complacency. And more often than than not, I would say that it is easier to slip into the ugly category than it would be to suddenly wake up and be like, I'm a super motivated employee and I just suddenly love my job and this is awesome. You know, like the longer you sit in complacency, the more likely you are to become, you know, actively disengaged. Um, but there's something that you said at the end of that where you you talk about um this ugly category, um, and you say they they end up there by their own choice. Is there ever a situation where someone finds themselves in that category because of external factors or something that just happened to them rather than by their own choice?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it does happen. It does happen. I can think of a couple of people, and I'll give you a couple of examples. Um There was this one gentleman who I trained from scratch to be a supervisor, and he he did a really good job. Really proud of him. He was liked by my clients, he was kind of a cornerstone for where we were, and then he went through a divorce and it tore him completely apart. Now, you know, you can argue whether or not the divorce was his fault or the breaking up of his family was his fault, but the choices that he made post that moment to the point that he got to where he was no longer an asset for the company, he wasn't even disengaged, he was in a negative place of actively disengaged and lashing out at other places that, in my opinion, was was not warranted. Those were his choices. So something happened to him that, you know, I've I've had, you know, one of my safety managers go through a death of his mother. And it it tore him up, you know, it's this it's the when we are offering a partnership and when we say that Flaps is our company and our our mascot and you know it's uh fun, loyalty, adaptability, people, service, all these things say that we're going to work with you in this situation, you know. We can't be the only one working in the situation. We'll definitely give you that time, we'll definitely give you that opportunity. But if I'm answering your crest question directly, it will always come back to the choices that that person made to have him in this ugly tree in our tower.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So just to push a little bit more, would you say that there is ever a toxic work environment or just a failing of management or um direct supervisors of an employee that can cause them to become actively disengaged when they may not have otherwise been?
SPEAKER_00That is true. How my, how smart you are. That is true. That is true. That is possible. It can happen, and that's another reason why you know we wrote and love Solution 44. One of the things that we all talk about is the ground truth, right? And then and then talking about the ground truth, it allows upper-level management and high-level management to get the truth of what is going on all the way down to the person that is touching the way the money comes into the company. You know? And it allows you to compare and see if there's congruency in what we preach, you know, uh all preachers that say, what I preach at the pulpit, do I practice in the streets, you know? Um, this is the exact same situation. We can see, we can stand in the in the high tower, as they call it, and say all the things that we want to say. But if the people in the streets feel a totally different feeling, then all that is for not. So, you know, there is a module for that. It's not it's not in this particular lesson, but there is a module for that. And I I look forward to having the opportunity to talk to you about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So before we move on, I have one last question for you on this section. Um, something that just kind of stood out in the reading. You mentioned in this section that um if managers are not careful, they can end up being swallowed by their group. So I'm curious, um, did you include this? Because this is something that you've witnessed in your career? And if so, can you just kind of give us some insight on that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that type of situation would generally show its head in two different ways. You know, when you think about somebody getting swallowed by the group, generally the first way is that the company realizes. So if you're in a situation where you are not actively managing and you do have actively engaged people, then how well do those actively engaged people look to the people that are above you, your boss? You the because in this system, it will be seen, it will be shown. They will show up on reports, they're in categories that are different than other people's categories, and these people are spotlight people because as a company trying to grow, you always want to grow those things around you. So if you're one of the supervisors or managers is in a situation where you become complacent or you're not pushing it, that's the first place that it'll be seen by the client, by the company itself. The second place is that the client may end up realizing it. And that's the worst. Because if the manager is in a situation where he can prove or at least show us in some form or fashion that he's doing what needs to be done, but he's really not, you know, all we have, we can have at the end of the day, you can have all the bells and whistles. There's always times when someone's gonna fall through the cracks. Um and this other person working along the path is doing a better job, and the client is the one who realizes it, then essentially at that point our hands become tied. And that's probably the ultimate way to kind of get swallowed up. And in the end, honestly, the company survives because of this system exists and it allows actually for something like that to happen. It's not the way you want it to happen, but in both situations, the best person putting the most effort to align themselves with the company's practices uh is moving forward. So I always encourage them to. I think it's a healthy competition type thing where everybody's kind of working toward that same goal. We we don't have finite supervisor spots or finite manager spots. It's not finite. Like it it could change overnight. And in my career, it's only ever been going up. So we always need more. And I and I'll, in closing, I'll tell you this. With the model that we've developed, the reason why this thing became so important and solution 44 became so important was because we had no problems getting business. We had no problems having the opportunity to make more money. The thing that we had the most problem was people development. So I went into my dungeon, as I like to say, and put something together that would allow us to quickly, more quickly, identify these type of people and then cultivate them in the right atmosphere and develop them so that we can have better, quicker access and essentially grow faster, which helps everyone.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah. Um, this section in particular just reminded me of this need for transparency. And while it can kind of look employee-facing, um, you know, people who are kind of in like the bottom, more foundational position in a company, it actually enhances transparency for all levels, um, not just the employees that are, you know, making up your labor force, but also for managers or supervisors. By default, they're kind of under the microscope as well. Um, and not in a negative way, like you're hyper-assessing every single person, but it's kind of just showing you and shining a light on all of the talent that you have. And sometimes, you know, the cream rises to the top.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. Yeah, I will definitely agree with.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, thank you for joining us again. And I look forward to hearing a little bit more about solution 44 in the following sections.
SPEAKER_00Well, you're welcome. It's good to be here.