The Role of the CEO with Brad Giles
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Results of a Great CEO
Clarifying what the results of a great CEO are is the first step in identifying what their role is.
A higher percentage of top performers or A players.
Higher retention
Third is higher productivity
Consistent growth
Consistent results
Roles of a CEO
1.Accountability
There is accountability for all employees and suppliers.
2. Ambassador
The CEO performs a strategic role as an ambassador.
3. Culture
A positive culture unites the team and attracts the right people.
4. Strategy
The company's strategy delivers a unique and valuable position in
the marketplace that is different from competitors.
5. Succession planning
Key risks to the business are reduced through succession planning.
** Those five roles create the results, to the varying degrees at which one executes those five.
Ambassador
The intent is that you can't be the head of the company unless you are the face, because no one trusts a faceless company.
The first component is building a public profile and working within your situation and what works for you and your company. Under the overall ambassador role, there are multiple parts to it and what works; but ultimately, these are the actions that will allow you to build credibility with your stakeholders, employees, suppliers, and customers. If you've done that well, you've activated the customer's and your team's pride. No one else in the world, in fact, can walk in and make a memorable moment, like the ambassador, the CEO. It doesn't need to be appearing on talk shows; it can be as simple as showing up to meet and acknowledge a client and support your team member through your presence.
The essence, within the lens of building a leadership team, is that all employees learn core values and core purpose stories from the CEO’s role as an ambassador… The ambassador activates pride.
Culture
Let's talk about the concept of the Employee Promise.
There can be promises that we're making to employees, and much of the time, we don't actually fulfill those promises.
What is the employee's need, and then we can deliver that in a way that aligns with the company's purpose?
Look at these three areas, and make sure they're all in alignment:
The promise to customers aligns with
The core purpose
It also aligns with what is being promised to staff.
** it's gotta be, something that you can deliver on.
if the core purpose is in the middle, what we're promising to customers and what we're promising to employees is aligned. Then, the more that we deliver to customers, the more that we're meeting that employee's need.
How do you suggest companies come up with that employee promise?
We want this to align with the other components because, essentially, we're helping our employees to actually do their job more effectively, and we are removing any barriers. And looking at; How does that align with our core purpose, and how does that align with our brand promise?
Most leaders know that the best best way to take care of your clients is to have raving fans as team members, and this is the way you do that.
Succession Planning
Succession planning influences consistent growth and consistent results. Succession planning is about avoiding risks or, reducing risks so that we can have that consistency.
What size company should worry about succession planning?
Answer: At what size business does consistency not matter? it always matters; the difference is It's to what degree.
Getting people to replace people. Having a virtual bench or people who we could hire in or people who could step up if someone resigns.
Addressing the risk around suppliers and investment decisions.
Having a backup plan for products and services
Consistency Role
What is success? The consistency that we can apply to decision-making on investments within the business to reduce the risk of bad investments.
The single biggest, correlation for, the long-term compounding success, of a CEO is the small decisions that they make about investments on a regular basis. Making the right decisions over a long period of time.
It is investing time, investing money in either staff, plant, and equipment or acquiring a business; traditional style investments.
And so, stepping back, when making investment decisions, why does that matter? Because we're making decisions, oftentimes from the gut, I think it's 70%, of decisions, are made based upon, basically, the gut.
Checking off all considerations before making a decision.
For example:
If it's not gonna give us this kind of payback period, we're not gonna do it
If it's not gonna improve our gross margin by a certain %, we're not gonna do it.
Onboarding
The first role of a CEO is accountability. The first part of accountability is, acknowledging that it's unfair to hold someone accountable if they don't understand how to succeed. Whose job is it to get them to understand how to succeed? It's not on them; It's our job as leaders.
The greatest source of misery in the workplace is people who don't understand how to succeed, they don't understand their manager's expectations, they don't understand the cultural expectations, and they don't understand the technical and process expectations of the role.
Leadership Onboarding
Who’s accountable?
If you are joining a leadership team and your manager is the CEO, Your direct report is the CEO, then the CEO is the person who should be onboarding; It is, the direct report.
How should leaders onboard that new leader onto the leadership team?
There are two parts:
The role scorecard: a document that clearly articulates what success looks like in the role job purpose, job accountabilities, metrics, and the expectations around the areas of, manager’s expectations, cultural expectations, and technical and process expectations.
The onboarding sprint plan: is a 13-week plan of how that person will understand all of the things on the role scorecard.
How should the CEO be thinking of onboarding as it relates to helping that new person build relationships with the other members of the team in a virtual or hybrid environment?
Using the job scorecard - from the cultural expectations.
The onboarding buddy- a peer, with a very specific remit and time allocation, to spend with that person to do the task that their direct manager can't. Explaining what happens when… Or whatever is needed to help to socialize the new hire in that respect. Whether it's virtual or in person or hybrid, an onboarding buddy has the responsibility to bring that person, up to speed from that peer perspective.
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Mike Goldman: So I'm really excited about this guest; I have known Brad for over 10 years now. We were part of a coaching organization together, and not only is he one of the best coaches that I know, but, he was so incredibly giving back to the organization, which becomes important once you go from being a coach that has no idea what's going on, to a, to one of the great coaches in the organization.
So really excited to have Brad on the show. Brad Giles has had more than 20 years experience as a serial entrepreneur, strategic planner, and leadership coach. He has twice been recognized. As a B R W Fast 100 founder, an EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist, and is actively involved in EO the Entrepreneur's Organization as founder of strategic planning and coaching consultancy Evolution Partners.
Brad works with CEOs and leadership teams to build enduring great companies. He's got two books. His first is Made to Thrive, the five roles to Evolve Beyond Your Leadership Comfort Zone. And the second, pretty recent, is called Onboarded. How to Bring New Hires to the Point of Where They're Effective Faster.
Brad, welcome aboard. Thanks for doing the. show
Brad Giles: Good day. It is a great pleasure to be here, and I'm super excited to be here as well.
[00:01:30] Made to Thrive
Mike Goldman: Excellent. Hey Brad. I wanna start off talking about your first book, Made to Thrive. It's one I recommend to all of my CEOs because the CEO role is, I think, so misunderstood, and I'm sure you agree.
Brad Giles: yeah,
Mike Goldman: Tell me first, why did you decide to write that?
Brad Giles: Yeah. Good question. I started a business. I'd started many businesses. Started a business back in, around about the year 2000, 1999 in that timeframe, and it was going really well. And I came across a book called Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by a chap called Vern Harnish, good friend of yours and mine, and probably the listeners as well.
And it was fantastic because, unlike any other book, it, in a really simple, practical, and actionable way, said what you must do to your business. Now. There was I was an avid book reader, because they're, business book reader, because there were so many, things that I needed to do to the business.
But this spelled it out, and I loved it, and that was what I needed to do to the business. Fast forward, I guess, 14 years or so, 15 years into the future, and I've run several businesses and, coached many leaders. And what's beginning to emerge is that mastering the Rockefeller habits and later scaling up is awesome at telling what you've got to do to your business.
But I couldn't find a prescriptive guide that said, what do you do to yourself? Like what is the role? Of the CEO, and we know what an electrician does. We know what a doctor does. We know what a nurse does or a chef, but what is the role? What Does A CEO do? and again, I couldn't find that prescriptive guide, and I saw it as such, an issue.
I, seeing the same things over and over again. And so I wrote it; the working title was the Five Roles of a CEO., and it evolved obviously to be made to thrive, but I wanted it to be prescriptive. I wanted it to be, hard and not soft, and it get it to a point where you could hand it to someone, and you say, just read this, and that'll tell you what you gotta gotta do.
Mike Goldman: And I've done that, by the way. So thank you. My clients. Thank you. and I love the reason why I think the book is so important; the reason why I give it to my CEOs is I think most CEOs and Brad if I'm stealing this from you, let me know. I, everything I say, I think is. is either research or stolen from someone else.
I just don't remember who I'm stealing it from. And you know, I believe that most CEOs I see, most CEOs believe their job is to do everybody else's job. And that is not only demoralizing to the people they work for, but it's not scalable for them and not rewarding to them. So that's why I think it's such an important book.
Tell us a little bit, so there are five roles of CEO. Take us through it high level and then we'll dive in where, you know, where it makes sense to, to dive in. but take us through them first, kind of high level. Give us an idea of what are those five?
Brad Giles: I'm gonna answer that question in my own way cuz it's just, cuz I, I'm a weirdo like that. And how did it come about? Because I'm trying to understand what is the difference between a good leader and a great leader. And you may, not you, Mike, but you, a person, may think to themselves, look, here's the thing.
A great leader just gets better net profit or gets better shareholder return, or whatever your single definition is, and that's fine. But if you're burning the balance sheet or if you've developed a culture that's terrible, That no one wants to work for and your attrition is off the chart, well, you're not doing your job and you're not really, you know, in the frame of great perhaps.
[00:05:24] Results of a Great CEO
Brad Giles: So I came about these roles by way of looking firstly and understanding what the results are. So I'll answer your question by first of all answering what do I interpret the results of a great CEO to be?
So first is a higher percentage of top performers or A players. Second is higher retention, so staff stick around longer. Third is higher productivity. Okay, so we're getting a higher productivity per person. Then fourth is consistent growth, and then fifth is consistent results. Super quick, higher percentage of top performers, higher retention. , higher productivity, consistent growth, consistent results.
[00:06:07] Roles of a CEO
Brad Giles: So from those results, what are the the roles that a leader must perform to achieve those results.
Mike Goldman: Hey, before, Hey, Brad, before you go there, and I love that you stepped back and asked a better question than I did or answered a better question than I asked, but when you go through those results, and then I'm gonna let you take us through the five is. I love the first two, the A players and the retention. Yeah. Because what I see is most, not just CEOs, but leadership teams believe that's at the point where they say, oh, you know, we're gonna hire a VP of HR, and they're gonna be responsible for all that stuff. Yeah. Which is not the case, and I love that you have made that the responsibility, the accountability of the leader is all that people, stuff that, that people tend to say, oh, that's an HR thing.
No, that's not an HR thing. that's gotta start with the CEO thing. So I just wanted to point that out. That's the rest of what you said; I think most CEOs will go, oh yeah, that makes sense. Growth. Yeah, that makes sense. But the quote-unquote people stuff that they usually pawn off on HR, by the way.
I hate the term HR, human resources but that's what they tend to call it. So, so I just wanted to go in and kind of Yeah. Highlight that cuz it's so important. but take us through, based on that, the five. roles
Brad Giles: I will, we gotta saying in Australia, the fish rots from the head down. Okay. So it, the culture is dictated by the leader. Let me get into the roles. Okay. higher percentage of top performers, higher attention, higher productivity, consistent growth, consistent results. This is what the outputs are that we're looking for.
The inputs or the roles that we've gotta do are first, To your point, not other people's jobs. Okay. Just framing that we come back to accountability, number one. Number two, ambassador. Number three, culture. Number four, strategy and number five, succession planning, but not in the context of succession planning. Who's gonna take over the business? Let me just elaborate on that with a sentence on each mic.
Mike Goldman: Sure.
Brad Giles: So accountability. There is accountability for all employees and suppliers. Number two, the CEO performs a strategic role as an ambassador. Three. A positive culture unites the team and attracts the right people.
Four, the company's strategy delivers a unique and valuable position in the marketplace that is different from competitors. And then finally, number five, key risks to the business are reduced through succession planning. So those five roles create the results, to the varying degrees at which one executes those five.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful .So let's go through and I'm not gonna go through each one in sequential order, which by the way, there'd be nothing wrong with that. But what I wanna dive into is a few here that. folks typically don't dive into, and that, frankly, on this podcast, I haven't you know, dove into Dove. Yeah, I haven't, dove into, that a little different like that, that I've got a, you know, a number of episodes, you know, on accountability. So, you know, we can dive into that. but I wanna hit, so the first one I wanna hit is ambassador.
Brad Giles: knew you go there.
Yeah.
[00:09:27] Ambassador
Mike Goldman: it's a little different. And so, so I've got a couple questions there, but take us through; you gave us the one-sentence definition. Dive a little deeper into what you mean by ambassador.
Brad Giles: Okay, so I guess
A CEO or a leadership role where it's a very. Wide remit. Okay. So you can think of a CEO, like a, I don't know, a Jack Welch managing an enormous and massive company down to a very small company. So how do we find something that's, perhaps, sweet for the mid-market as you and I would probably be, more comfortable playing, or where we think the great impact that we create is.
And so ambassador. The intent is that you can't be the head of the company unless you are the face, because no one trusts a faceless company. So imagine you've got a human figure. with a, a hoodie on like a tech. People would wear a hoodie and the hoodie is down, dark, down, right over the face and the face is all dark.
And that's your CEO right? We dunno anything about them. It's this faceless figure. I can't trust them. So, so let me give you another quick and dirty example. if you go to a website and you wanna buy something off them, and it's not a big and trusted name like a Target or an Amazon. You wanna go and buy something off them.
You may click on the about page. To build your trust level with that organization. And if they don't have an About Us page, or they don't have anything about them at all, or their leader or anything, and it's just transact, transact, it may be different. Yeah. It depends on the product, right? If you're gonna buy socks, it could be different to buying something different.
But, we start with the principle that the CEO in the CEO role, a part of it is building trust. With all stakeholders, employees, suppliers, customers, and some companies have other stakeholders, but let's just focus on the most common ones. People need to trust you. So the first sort of component of that is building an a, a public profile.
Now, Half the people in the room roll their eyes and go, mate; you don't really get these; I'm not going on tv. I'm not gonna go and do talk shows. It's not who I am, and I don't care for it. And that's fine. The whole principle here is that of the whole book; in fact, both of the books is that this is an example of best practice, and your job as the listener is to interpret how to get the best practice to work best in your situation.
Mike Goldman: So, what about the leader, Brad, that says, I get it. I get, it's important, but I'm more of an introvert. You know, I'm, you know, I built this company because I'm the technical expert, and by that, I don't mean technology, but I'm the detail, you know, I'm the expert on what we do.
I'm great at, you know, marketing analysis, and that's what we do as a company. Or I'm great at manufacturing, and that's what we, you know, I'm great at what we do. I'm not an extrovert; I'm an introvert. So I'm not as comfortable being out there. What do you say to those CEOs?
Brad Giles: This is not uncommon. You've just asked and said, and I get that it's gotta be your flavor. Some people like chicken, and some people like beef. Some people are vegetarians. It's all good. Okay? But it's gotta be your flavor. But what we're saying is within the context of your flavor; under the overall ambassador role, and there are multiple parts to it and what works. Let me give you an example of that might be the second point, which is the CEO's attending major, contract signings, or product launches.
So going back, I'm an engineering person, or I, my focus is on marketing. Don't really want to get out there and pound the flesh. In fact, if I don't meet any people ever, it'll be pretty pretty good. Okay, so let's use the example of a home builder. Imagine you're the CEO of a home builder, and there's your salesperson who's selling, the new home, and presenting the final contract after all of the design engineering is done, and it's the final meeting where we sign the contract, and then we can start after that. You walk in as the CEO, and there's Mr. And Mrs. Smith, and there's your salesperson, and you walk in, and when you just, all you have to say is, Mr. And Mrs. Smith, it's so great to meet you haven't met you before, but I've been following your journey. It's great that Mike here is helping you out. And I just wanna let you know that we're really happy that you're trusting us with this build. I'm in the background making sure that, everything is going well and that we're building according to our standards. And, you know, thank you again for trusting us. So I'll let you get back on with it. I'm gonna step out. But again, thanks, guys. Now that's the ambassador role. I'm going back to your first point.
This is not other people's job. You're not doing a salesperson's job or the bricklayer's job. This is the ambassador walking in, the same way that the queen walks in and cuts the ribbon. Hopefully, if you've done that well, you've activated the pride in both the customer and the salesperson. And that's part of it is like no one else can be the ambassador. No one else in the world, in fact can walk in and make a memorable moment right there and then, so it doesn't need to be appearing on talk shows.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, I love it. I love calling that out as a role because especially when you're talking about smaller companies, or to your point earlier, mid-market companies, everybody feels like they're busy cuz they're wearing a number of hats. You know, very often a CEO may be the lead salesperson as well. The CEO may be the head of talent acquisition and development, you know, so, it's easy to say, well, I'm too busy, I'm, I've got my heads down getting this work done.
And what you're saying is that ambassador role, which is easy to blow off and not do. Because other people are getting the real stuff done. Why do you need to and shake hands with that, that home buyer, you know, I love stressing the importance of that because it's too easy just not to do it because there's more important things to do, and you're saying no, this is one of the important things you gotta do.
Brad Giles: And lemme give you another quick example. It's all employees learn core values and core purpose stories monthly from the CEO. Now, I don't care if it's weekly or monthly or every two months, like don't get hung up on that, but there's a system, a rhythm where core value stories, you know, are reiterated by the CEO, are recited by the CEO and bringing that's a job that, that if it's not done, again, the ambassador activates pride. That's the essence.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. and just to go off a, on a quick tangent, Brad, you're going through, I think you took us through three different points on ambassador.
Brad Giles: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: and what I'll say, and you could fill in, Brad, if I don't have this completely right, But if you read this book, what Brad is kind of taking us through is there's actually an assessment in the book of these five roles and the details of the five roles. So in case I forget to say it later, I wanna say it now. One of the great things is the ability to look at each of these five and the details below it, and from time to time assess how you're doing? So I know right now we're just talking about that ambassador role, but for each of the roles, it's a great way to assess how you're doing and where you need to put in some extra effort.
Brad Giles: Yeah, thank you. that's in the book. It's on our website, evolution partners.com.au and it's under the resources section. You'll see Made to Thrive tools. The key point there. What's the problem that you're trying to solve in terms of results, cuz that's where we started. Do you, is have you got a problem with attrition or high percentage of top performers or productivity or consistent growth or consistent results?
That's where you can start, and that's how I kind of engineered the book so that you can go, all right, we get a problem with consistent results. we just, our results are up, and they're down. Okay, we'll then focus on these roles as a CEO.
[00:17:34] Culture
Mike Goldman: beautiful. I wanna move on to, the culture role, but a very specific question within there because you've got a concept in there that from the time, even before I read the book and I saw you presenting on the book, I said, wow, that's a great concept.
And that's the concept of the employee promise. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that.
Brad Giles: So the employee promise is, for some people, they would've heard of the employee value proposition. That might be a sibling or a cousin, perhaps, to this concept. What I'm proposing here is that. Whether we document it or talk about it or not, there can be promises that we're making to employees, and much of the time, we don't actually fulfill those promises.
Let me give you an example. you see a job advert and you read it, and it all sounds exciting. It's got all of these, special words about how special this company is. And yet, when you start there and work there, it's, you might not use those same words to describe that. Okay. So maybe the marketing team, when they wrote that job advert, you know, got a little bit too excited and used, you know, things that weren't necessarily factual.
Well, what you're doing is you're breaching the trust of the employees when you don't meet the promises that you make. So what if we codified that, or what if we were able to document that in a way that, we can understand. What is the employee's need and then we can deliver that? in a way that aligns with the company's purpose?
So the example that I would use is, of course, the example that everybody uses, unfortunately, which is Southwest Airlines. as one of the examples, I also use Uber
Mike Goldman: although these days people are using them as examples, a little less and less given their recent problems, but they were great for a very long time, and they'll probably get there again.
So keep.
Brad Giles: Yeah, and there's Uber, and there's Ford that I use. But, the point, the point being related to employees, they've got a very high employee net promoter score or satisfaction score, let's say. And so, what we're trying to understand is, what are we promising to the customer? So they're promising lots of flights, lots of fun. and low fares. what is their core purpose? it's; basically, I'm gonna get this wrong. I'm sorry, Mike. It's something like, getting the, getting passengers, to the people that they love,, in, in the most cost-effective manner. Something like that.
Mike Goldman: Yeah. And their stock symbol is love, right?
Brad Giles: Yeah. And then you look at the, you do an analysis of their job adverts, and they're, what they're promising to people, is, lots of love and a codependent team.And, you know, something else like that. So when you look at these three areas, they're all in alignment. what they're promising to customers aligns with their core purpose, and it also aligns with what they're promising to staff.It's gotta be, it's gotta be, something that you can deliver on.
It's not we're going to pay you every week, right? that's a contractual obligation. But it's something that, we can then understand who is the employee who has that need that we can meet, and then when you get that equilibrium, it matters.
Now. Imagine, what we would call a seesaw or a teeter-totter. it's like a fulcrum. And what we're trying to do is to say, if the core purpose is in the middle, what we're promising to customers and what we're promising to employees is aligned. and that we've got that, so that the more that we del deliver to customers, the more that we're meeting that employee's need.
Mike Goldman: How do you suggest companies come up with that employee promise? Is it just what do employees asking for, and let's make sure we give it to them? Is it, well, I don't know how, what is there an exercise or a technique that you suggest to help identify that, because I think that's a, unlike a brand promise or a client promise, which I think a lot of companies think about, the employee promise is new to a lot of companies. So how should they think about creating it?
Brad Giles: Yeah, don't give it to HR.
And the reason that I say that is that we want this to be, to have some strategic paint on it, if that makes sense. We wanna have some effort from the; I love HR people, don't get me wrong, but we want this to align with the other components. You know, there's a bloke called Mike Rowe.
I don't know if you've heard of him. He had a TV.
Mike Goldman: that's the Dirty jobs guy, or called
Brad Giles: Dirty Jobs, right? That's the one Dirty jobs. He said that people with dirty jobs are some of the happiest people I've ever met, right? So don't start with the presumption that we have, work that we need to do that is dirty, even if it's not dirty.
But it's not pretty. It's not, you know, like working in the theater, doing beautiful theater work or whatever it is.
Don't start with that presumption and then say, well, we pay at or above award wages or industry wages, and therefore we'll throw in some more perks like ping pong tables or something.
And that's what we're talking about. it's not; it's sometimes it can be, let's just get the paperwork out of the way of the people and the administration burden out of the way of the people who actually want to do the work. give them an easier way to operate. So if you've got, let's take anyone in that mic, because this is, I'm going down this path because this is often the people that we might be dealing with and having trouble with in that mic row world of dirty jobs.
Like what is it that annoys those people? It's not the fact they've gotta clean up the muck or whatever it is that they do, it's ah, now I've gotta go and deal with the office. So, so maybe it's like let's give them a good operating environment where they can do what they enjoy and give them the happiness around that.
And maybe the socialization and that kind of thing can formulate the employee promise. And then you go back to, all right, so we're helping our employees to actually do their job more effectively, and we are removing any barriers. How does that align with our core purpose, and how does that align with our brand promise?
You can see how these jigsaw pieces can begin to click together, perhaps.
Mike Goldman: Love it, and I think what's important, you know, so many companies that love to say, you know, the client is number one.
You know? Yeah. The customer is the most and that sounds beautiful and it's nice on a website, but I think most leaders know that the best best way to take care of your clients is to have raving fans as team members. and this is the way you do that. So, so I love that.
[00:24:11] Succession Planning
Mike Goldman: The third one I want to go into the third role is succession planning, and this is so important, I think, and I was just having this discussion yesterday.
Now when this comes out, it won't be yesterday. So whoever my client is not gonna know, I'm talking about them. But this just came up yesterday with one of my clients, and it's a, you know, mid-market company, and I think the thought is for smaller companies and mid-market companies; succession planning is for the billion dollar companies.
Weak succession planning. You know, we're lucky we have somebody in every role, and no, we don't, you know, we don't pass the hit-by-a-bus test cuz we just don't have that much money to pay a ton of extra people to be here. It's really easy for mid-market companies to blow off succession planning. And say, that's not important for me, but you and I both know that's garbage.
So tell us a little bit about succession planning, and is there a point if you're a, you know, if you're a 10-person company, is that too small to even think about succession planning? Is it when you hit a certain level? Give us a sense of size, if that matters. and then dive a little bit deeper into what succession planning.
Actually, let me flip that around, and dive a little deeper into what succession planning means. Yeah. And then talk a little bit about the size of company as it relates to that.
Brad Giles: Great.
What does succession planning mean? Well, what are the results that we're trying to achieve? Let's start with that.Iif you can imagine, each of the results. Each result has two influencers. So let me explain. So succession planning influences consistent growth. And consistent results. Succession planning is about avoiding risks or, reducing risks so that we can have that consistency.
Let me, what size, well, at what size business does consistency not matter? Like, that's the jerk's response, but give it to you you anyway.
Mike Goldman: I like that.
Brad Giles: yeah, well, you know, it always matters. It's to what degree, so, I go back 15 years or so, maybe 12 years ago, and I'm sitting with a client, and I'm, starting the meeting. How's it going there? Christine, and she's like, yep, it's been a nightmare. Okay, what's going on? Well, our largest client, who represents 70, 75% of our business, they. We're on a plane in Africa with the whole board and leadership team.
The plane crashed and everyone died, and now that business doesn't exist and they're trying to appoint someone else. It was a listed company trying to appoint someone else just to meet the obligations, but the devastation is something that you just can’t, comprehend. so there are multiple points of risk there. A, for that company, obviously, everyone shouldn't be on the plane at the same time. The whole story is actually in chapter 5.5 of the book. but this is the shortened version. For Christine, the waiting of one client, which you and I both know, everybody knows, you know, you gotta have minimum amounts of waiting to any client.
But this was such a this company just grew, they were listed, they were in the mining space, and they, they just. You know, when you build a mine, your, requirements can go from very small to very quick, really quickly. And they did that. And so suddenly, you know, she's got this massive, gaping problem, with her.
So, so that was one of the things that happened in my career that kept on making me think, well, succession planning matters, you know, or risk reduction matters. Don't, again, don't get hung up by the word succession planning, thinking it's about leaving it to your children. It's not about that. It's about removing risk.
there's another story from the book of a, friend of mine, who who had a retail business, all of the stock. Was purchased from one manufacturer, in the Northern Hemisphere. We are in the Southern Hemisphere. And they said, and it was a seasonal retail product, and they said, Hey, we're gonna shut the factory, to retool or whatever they were doing.
And all orders are stopping for three or four months. And that was their ordering period. And so they couldn't get the stock because it needs to be shipped across the world. And it destroyed basically the hot period of a year's revenues—so another example of how risk reduction, it just massively impacts consistent growth and consistent results.
And so how do we avoid these things? so the subs to that are, where you gotta get people. To replace people, you gotta have a virtual bench or people who we could hire in or people who could step up if someone resigns. Because if someone comes into you and says Mike, you're not gonna believe it. I just won lotto last night. I just won $5 million, so I just thought I'd pop in. I thought it'd be the right thing to do. The wife and I we're on the first-class plane, off to Europe tonight. and this is one of your key employees. You know, this is the stuff that happens regularly. Who's gonna step up and solve, from within, at least patch that hole immediately?
I mentioned products and services. They can go to south, suppliers can be problematic. So we want to, address the risk around suppliers and then investment decisions. This is an interesting one, and I probably subsequently from the book, I probably haven't thought enough about that or emphasized that one enough, you know.
[00:29:51 ] Consistency Role
I saw something recently, and they said that the single biggest, correlation for, this, the long-term compounding success, of, CEO is the small decisions that they make about investments on a regular basis, and it's just all of those, making the right decisions over a long period of time. That makes…
Mike Goldman: and is that in investing money? Investing time? Both. What do you mean when you say
Brad Giles: Yeah. Well, investing time, investing money in either staff, plant and equipment or acquiring a business like, in traditional style investments. And so, stepping back, why does that matter? Because we're making decisions. oftentimes from the gut; I think it's a 70%, of decisions, are made based upon, basically, the gut.
And so what we're trying to recommend here is. A simple checklist, where we can say, all right, if it's not gonna give us this kind of payback period, we're not gonna do If it's not gonna improve our gross margin by 2%, we're not gonna do it. If the new employee isn't gonna give us, more than, five to one ratio on their salary or whatever it is, then we're not gonna do it.
So just thinking about what is the success? And consistently consistency that we can apply to decision-making on investments within the business to reduce the risk of bad investments. This last role is all about consistency.
Mike Goldman: Got it. And what's helpful is, so you are really broadening the definition when most people, frankly, when I think of succession planning, I think of, as you said, you know, am I giving it to the kids or do each of my leaders have a number two in case they get hit by a bus?
There's somebody; I dunno why everybody's always getting hit by buses. but uh, that's the way I think about it. That's the way most leaders think about it. And what you're saying is, of course, it's about that, But it's more than that. It's really about risk management, so I love that.
Brad Giles: Yeah. Okay. So if we don't have risk management, think about the average mid-market business. If we don't have some formality of risk management that if the C E O either owns or ensures happens around the kind of stuff that we've spoken about, who else is gonna do it?
Like maybe you got lucky and got A CEO, sorry, A CFO, a financial controller who's been burned before and is a bit twitchy every time they think about failure.
But really, like this role, this risk, this consistency comes from setting these things from the top down.
Mike Goldman: so so is the first step there to cause. Cuz with all these things, it's not like you flip a switch and go from, wow, I'm not doing any of those things to, I am a superstar, you know, with these things. When it comes to this risk management, succession planning piece is the first step to evaluate where your risk is largest and figure out what you need to do to hit that?
Or is there another way to look at.
Brad Giles: Can I clarify that question around all five roles or just the succession program?
Mike Goldman: No, just the succession planning. Because the succession planning piece seems to be about risk management, right? I think all of this to some degree, may hit risk management, but yeah, succession planning hits that right smack over the head.
So what's the first step? Cuz there are many different pieces of that succession plan or you know, four or five different pieces. What's. is the first step to evaluate where your risk is greatest and set to work there. If it's an organizational risk, that's the greatest set to work on making sure you've got, you know, some additional folks that can play those roles.
If it's, you know, too many eggs in one basket from a customer standpoint, go work on that. Is it stepping back and saying, where do I have the most risk and hit that first, or is there a different way to think?
Brad Giles: No, I think you've, I think you've, you've addressed it well there. I think it's where is our risk? just because that company all the leaders got on a plane. Maybe you don't catch planes. Okay. Maybe it's a different style of business. My overarching, philosophy is this is an example of best practice.
How do we get it to work best in, in the listener's, situation? but a, a simpler answer is to look at the components of the checklist.
The ones that you're doing tick 'em off and then ask which one's gonna move the needle? Which one is worthy of effort?
Mike Goldman: Yeah, that's it. Which one is gonna move the needle? I think is great, yeah. Okay. I wanna move us on. to spending a little bit of time, and we could spend a whole other episode on it.
[00:34:29] Onboarding - book
Mike Goldman: You and I could probably spend three days talking about it, but I wanna move on to your second book. So we've talked about Made to Thrive, and we've focused on the role of the CEO. Your second book focuses on onboarding. And again, we're not gonna dive as deep into this one cuz we're kind of rounding the home stretch here.
But Why did you decide to write that book?
Brad Giles: Because in Made to Thrive. The first role is accountability. The first part of accountability is, well, you can't; it's unfair to hold someone accountable if they don't understand how to succeed.
Okay, and so whose job is it to get them to understand how to succeed? It's not on them. I've seen people who've said, I need to onboard this new hire, and it's their job to onboard themselves.
That's a completely ludicrous statement. Right. Okay. So, the greatest source of misery in the workplace, in my humble opinion, people who don't understand how to succeed. They don't understand the manager's expectations; they don't understand the cultural expectations, and they don't understand the technical and process expectations of the role. So they just don't know. They start the job; they get the computer, they get the desk, maybe people tell 'em where the bathrooms are, and that's it. And they say, go free and succeed. And then they say to themselves, look, if they're an A player, they'll work it out. And it's the biggest load of bs. It's our job as leaders if we are truly leaders.
To grow the people around us. And if that's the case and you accept that, then we come back to, well, let's work to address the greatest source of misery in the workplace, which is people who don't understand how to succeed. And all of that wrapped up came back to, to,
okay, how do we get people to succeed?
Well, when do you do it? You don't do it after being there for three years. You do it in the first 90 days, and that's why there's a legal probation period in almost every country in the world.
Yeah, some of them are slightly different, but my research said, let's just work with 90-days approximately. And then, okay, how do we make that the most impactful?
How do we make it simple, practical, and actionable that anybody, any manager, can do?
Mike Goldman: I wanna drive us to, specificity there there for; drive to a very situation and get your thoughts. So these days, you know, you mentioned, you know, get, you know, get the laptop, know where bathrooms These, in a lot cases you don't have to show people where the bathrooms are, They're working from their home and they know exactly where their bathrooms, So in these days of remote work and hybrid work, think of, of that. And then the the second uh, specific I'll add on is again, the lens for for this show is creating a, a, a a better leadership team.
Brad Giles: Yeah.
[00:37:38] Leadership Onboarding
Mike Goldman: And within that, of course, that impacts everybody in the company. but if you are a leader, let's say you're a, you're the CEO. or a member of the, that team and you onboarding a leader who's sitting around that table of direct reports to the CEO, so you're onboarding a a new new leader and it's a remote or a hybrid work environment. How should leaders thinking about onboarding that new leader onto the leadership team
Brad Giles: In the same way as they think about onboarding everybody else. Now, the only context I need is that per, who is that person? That new hires manager.
Mike Goldman: let's say that they're reporting into the CEO, they're a that executive team. That's all reporting CEO
Brad Giles: Perfect. Perfect. So the first part is who is accountable for onboarding? Is it hr? No. Is it people? And coaching? No, it's the new hires manager. Right? So if you are joining a leadership team and your manager is the CEO, Your direct report is the CEO, then the CEO is the person who should be onboarding you.
Okay. So it is, this is the direct report. Now, how was your question? There's two parts to it. The first is what we call the role scorecard, and the second is the onboarding sprint plan. So the Role scorecard is a document that clearly articulates what success looks like in the role job purpose. Job accountabilities metrics.
So the very specific measures of success, eg. Take revenue from 17 million to 22 million by, August, 2023, whatever that is. And then the expectations that I spoke about before around those three areas, managers expectations, cultural expectations, and technical and process expectations; that document exists In the role, number one, and then number two, the onboarding sprint plan is a 13 week,plan of how that person will understand all of the things in the, onboarding, excuse me, on the role scorecard.
Mike Goldman: And what about, and this can go, I'm stick to that executive team reporting up to The CEO. My question, I'm sure can apply to any team; Is there part it, maybe is part of 13 week sprint, is there a part which is, hey, getting to know, getting to understand who your peers are around, that leadership table and the reason why I'm focusing there and asking question there is because I you know, three, four years ago; When it was, most of us in the office and remote only from time time you got to know people because you had lunch with 'em. You met them in the hallway, meeting before the meeting after the meeting. But now such a part of our life taking place on Zoom. That doesn't happen as naturally as it should. So how should the leader, in this case, CEO, it could the leader of any team. How should the CEO be thinking of onboarding as it it relates to helping that new person build relationships with the other members of the team?
Brad Giles: Yeah, so there's two parts. the first is one of in the job scorecard. One of the considerations, is the cultural expectations, right? See, the team goes bowling every second Friday. If you don't get a bowling, you're not gonna fit in this team. Now, that's a silly example, but there's stuff that is culturally common and that should be addressed through the scorecard and the sprint plan.
The second part is a section in the book, called the onboarding buddy. Which is not my idea. it's just a principle. So in your example, you would pick someone, a peer, to be the onboarding buddy,and they've got a very specific remit and time allocation within reason, to spend with that person to do the task that their direct manager can't. You know, Saying, this is what happens. Ah, no, that's what's really going on. Or whatever it is to help to socialize in that respect. And whether it's virtual or in person or hybrid, still an onboarding buddy and they have that responsibility to bring that person, up to speed from that peer perspective.
Mike Goldman: Love Love it. Brad, what I love about your stuff as kind of wrap up here is, you know, you and I both though, cuz we've read so many of them, there are are so so books on leadership, you
Brad Giles: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: How do you motivate people? How do you communicate? What's the difference between a leader a manager? and I'm kind saying it's sarcastically, but there are a lot of a lot of great books there that talk about that stuff. But I think your two books. And I'm sure you write a third, say same thing about third, but your two books are kind of very sp you much more focused than just saying, oh, leadership 101, it's much more And they're both in areas where, you know,I don't know a lot any other that talking about role of the CEO.
I assume there may, there probably other books about onboarding out there, I haven't read any of them and I've read a lot of books, so there's not a lot out there.
So I love how you've kind of, just taken a problem and I would imagine your first thing was, Hey, problem with my clients. I should probably read book about And then you said, oh, I'm finding a book about that. I guess I better write one. So, so, so I love it. and thank you so for that.
Where, Brad ,people go if they wanna find out more about you, what you do, how you could help them, your books, where should they go.
Brad Giles: Sure.
Thank you, Mike. it's such a pleasure to be here. so you can find me. At Evolution partners.com.au. E V O L U T I O N. Hopefully you can hear through that Australian accent. yeah. Evolution partners.com.au. it's got everything about our team and what we do. We've got a lot of free resources in these two books.
The two books again, are made to thrive and onboarded. and I've also got a podcast, called The Growth Whisperers. And I, talk garbage with a chap called Kevin every week about all sorts of stuff, to do with business. But, yeah, it is. You know, Mike, I was really excited when you said, come on the show and let's just find what we can talk about.
Mike Goldman: That's great. Yeah, I'm excited. and all those things. If, if you're having trouble understanding the accent, sure you're not. very clearly, but it's all gonna be in the show notes.
and, Hey Brad, Great. Thanks so much for doing the show,
Mike, what a pleasure. Thank you. I've had a blast. And, yeah, I, it's great to be here. Thank you.