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At Karrikins Group, we work alongside leaders to close the gap between great ideas and real results by combining business expertise with social science to help teams align on how to deliver together - driving better outcomes and stronger connections.
In this episode of the Failure Gap, host Julie engages with Nick Anderson, CEO of OneAccord, discussing the challenges leaders face in bridging the gap between agreement and alignment. They explore the importance of commitment over mere agreement, the role of personal transformation driven by need, and the balance between short-term and long-term goals. Nick shares his personal journey of weight loss as a metaphor for organizational change, emphasizing the need for consistency and shared meaning in achieving goals. The conversation concludes with a focus on mentorship as a vital component of leadership and the importance of clear communication in fostering alignment within teams.
Episode Takeaways
In this episode of the Failure Gap, host Julie engages with Nick Anderson, CEO of OneAccord, discussing the challenges leaders face in bridging the gap between agreement and alignment. They explore the importance of commitment over mere agreement, the role of personal transformation driven by need, and the balance between short-term and long-term goals. Nick shares his personal journey of weight loss as a metaphor for organizational change, emphasizing the need for consistency and shared meaning in achieving goals. The conversation concludes with a focus on mentorship as a vital component of leadership and the importance of clear communication in fostering alignment within teams.
Episode Takeaways
- The integrity of agreements is often questionable
- Apathy can be a silent killer in organizations
- Personal transformation often stems from a sharp need
- Long-term goals require incremental steps to achieve
- Successes are collective, while failures are individual
- Mentorship can change the trajectory of future leaders
- Clear communication is essential for alignment
- Identifying needs can drive engagement and commitment
- Consistency in small actions leads to significant change
- Creating shared meaning fosters alignment in team
If you would like to connect with Nick Anderson outside of this episode, connect with him on LinkedIn or learn more about OneAccord here.
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Is misalignment holding your organization back?
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Is misalignment holding your organization back?
Aligned teams deliver better results more consistently, and they have deeper connections to each other and their organizations.
Download our free Leadership Alignment Evaluation Tool and take the first step toward transforming how your team works together.
Learn more about Julie and Karrikins Group:
Learn more about Julie and Karrikins Group:
Creators and Guests
Host
Guest
Nick Anderson
Nick Anderson is co-owner and CEO of OneAccord, a consulting firm founded in 1999 that has served more than 650 organizations in the US and abroad. Today, OneAccord is dedicated to serving a diverse array of business and industry with strategic planning and operational implementation to facilitate growth and enterprise value creation. He is also founder of Chosen Leader, a brand that supports the growth and development of leaders everywhere. Anderson’s book, Six-Word Lessons for Middle Managers was published in May, 2022 followed by two additional volumes in the Six-Word Lessons series published in 2025; Six-Word Lessons for Executives, and Six-Word Lessons for Founders and Owners. Anderson became an entrepreneur following a 25-year career in financial services and a lifetime full of challenge and experience.
What is The Failure Gap ?
The Failure Gap podcast is hosted by Julie Williamson, Ph.D., the CEO and a Managing Partner at Karrikins Group, a Denver-based, global-serving business consultancy. Julie delves into the critical space between agreement and alignment - where even the best ideas falter without decisive action. Through candid conversations with a diverse mix of leaders, this podcast explores both the successes and failures that shape the journey of leadership. Featuring visionary leaders from companies of all sizes, from billion-dollar giants to mid-market innovators, to scrappy start-ups, The Failure Gap uncovers the real-life challenges of transforming ideas into impactful outcomes. Tune in to learn how top leaders bridge the gap and drive meaningful progress in their organizations.
Speaker 1 (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Failure Gap, where we talk with leaders about closing the space between agreement and alignment. We love talking with interesting people and today we're joined by Nick Anderson. Nick is the CEO of OneAccord. He's also the author of six word lessons for middle managers, six word lessons for executives, and six word lessons for founders and owners, part of the six word lesson series, each offering 100 snackable wisdom bites. I love that concept, by the way.
He's the founder of Chosen Leader, a platform dedicated to the evolution of leadership skills across various sectors. In his career in banking, held many leadership positions and he has a master's in nonprofit leadership. He's an entrepreneur, a business leader, and a community leader. His forward thinking approach is focused on making sure one accord remains synonymous with the values of truth, compassion, and service in the business community. Nick, welcome to the Failure Gap.
Speaker 2 (00:57)
Thank you so much. It's always humbling and honoring to hear someone speak about me. Like you just did.
Speaker 1 (01:07)
Well, you you've done some great things and I'm looking forward to diving into some of that as we have this conversation about there's a lot in there that people would agree is a good would be a good idea and it's hard to get it done. So I'm looking forward to hearing your perspectives on that before we get there though. I would love to give you the opportunity just to introduce yourself in your own words to your to our audience. Maybe share a few of the twists and turns along the way for you as a leader that have landed you in this role as CEO of OneAccord.
Speaker 2 (01:36)
that could be a three part series. So the very most important things that folks should know about me, ⁓ not things, but they're pictured behind me. It's my family. So I'm husband to Ariana father to Abigail, Christian, Eliana and Finn. ⁓ they are my, my Y my Y's they're the reason that I do what I do, ⁓ vocationally. ⁓ I think I would do the work that I do.
Speaker 1 (01:41)
You
Speaker 2 (02:07)
for free if given the opportunity because I love what I do. The reason I do it vocationally is to provide a life for my family. So that's the most important thing about me. They are the most important thing about me. The twists and turns that you brought up, ⁓ where do I start? I left high school early without a diploma and I got a job as a teller at what was called C First Bank, Seattle First National Bank.
in 1997, I was 17 years old and my career in banking spanned 25 years. As you said, I held executive roles, senior vice president, division head, et cetera. And that career also went parallel with a lot of life. So there's a deep life story. I won't go into that now, but twists and turns for sure. If I look in the rear view, what I see
is that I was often asked, tapped, selected, invited to either fix something that was broken or start something that was new. And that was in the context of working for many different banks. And so coming into OneAccord as CEO in January of 2024 was a combination of those two things. Although OneAccord wasn't necessarily broken, there was a real opportunity to rebuild
Re-clarify to the point of your podcasting, there was a lot of great ideas. Few of them getting done. Probably too many good ideas, so we had to narrow our scope and I can go deeper into that and unpack as we go. That's some framing.
Speaker 1 (03:54)
I
appreciate that. And you know, I will tell you, I don't think I've ever walked into a client organization where they needed more ideas. A lack of ideas is very rarely the problem, right? And I'm sure you have seen that as well as you've worked with leaders and leadership teams, both in the banking industry and beyond with OneAccord. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on this failure gap that we like to talk so much about, the space between
Speaker 2 (04:01)
Hi.
Speaker 1 (04:21)
seeing especially a team of leaders agree that something is a good idea and then struggle to actually make it happen. I think we see that in our personal lives, we see that in our professional lives. Is there an example that comes to mind for you that where you've either seen it work well or you've seen people struggle to make that move?
Speaker 2 (04:43)
Yes, for sure. If I was to take that whole idea and zero in on one element, it's the word agreement. And I wonder as I think back in my experiences of those things that have seemingly been agreed to but have not been implemented. I just wonder about the integrity of the agreement. We...
In the sandbox that I play in, that we play in together, there's a notion of ⁓ disagree and commit. We might debate something at length, and at the end of it, we don't get consensus, but we push towards, all right, team, for those of you who don't agree with this idea, will you at least commit to getting it done? And that's a great theory. It's nice in concept, and maybe it happens once in a while.
I just challenge the integrity of an agreement that we have, that we make, and wonder if those really are agreements or if they're rather just a communication tool to kind of pacify or get through an uncomfortable situation.
Speaker 1 (05:54)
Yeah, I think sometimes there is surrender, right? Great work. All right, I'm just going to give up and I'm going to go play my own sandbox. And you guys let me know when you're done with that terrible idea that you have.
Speaker 2 (06:05)
And I
see this, you know, I have in my direct work with clients, which is less and less anymore, but I've worked with large, you know, multi-billion dollar banks and I've worked with venture capital backed startups and they behave the same way. I've been in the room with the entire C-suite of a multi-billion dollar bank where
The CEO has an idea and it's perfectly clear that there is not buy-in, there is not real agreement, but those in the room agree because CEO said, and the initiatives they falter, they don't work. And then with this three person startup, three kids under the age of 25 that get funded,
they're wrestling with the same challenge of there's three different ideas. All of them are good. Which one do we go with? And they have to figure out just like the executive board, executive team in this multi-billion dollar bank. ⁓ So there's just me observing that human beings behave similarly. Go figure.
Speaker 1 (07:31)
Yeah, yeah, I think this problem is not unique to big companies or to small companies. I think you'd end up with different levels of complexity and the outcomes can be looked different, but the problem set remains the same, which is that people often shy away from having the hard conversation about who's going to get disappointed. Who are we saying no to? Who are we saying yes to? What does that mean for the business? And so we
get stuck in that comfortable space of agreement instead of doing the hard work of getting in Kerrigan's group vernacular aligned to what's it going to take to get it done and get very real about that in terms of how we lead together. I think about your example of the three, you know, under 25 that just got funded for something big that they're all excited about and they each have good ideas. Someone at some point has to say, we're not going to do that one good idea.
Speaker 2 (08:28)
Well,
Speaker 1 (08:28)
That
person has to stay in the game.
Speaker 2 (08:31)
What's interesting is amongst those two, and these are two ends of a spectrum, let's say. We've got multi-decade, if not 100 year old financial institution with a board of directors and executive team and lots and lots of resources. And then over here, we've got this brand new nascent startup. I actually see the startup team engaging in the actual hard work of arguing of
sharp disagreement and like really getting into it, scrumming, you will, around the ideas. Whereas there's some complacency in larger organizations. They don't need to act as quickly or be as nimble or take as big of risks and nor should they take the risks at the same degree. So I see what I would consider
a sharper ramp of progress around committing to ideas in the startup.
by virtue of necessity. have to stay out of it. Where a larger, more established organization, the, I don't know, the apathy is a silent killer because if they don't make this decision, agree and commit and do it effectively, the company's not going out of business in 90 days. Whereas the startup, they don't get it done. They're not getting their next round of funding.
Speaker 1 (09:40)
This is scrappier.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (10:07)
So there's, know, the urgency looks a little different and it kind of forces, you forces action.
Speaker 1 (10:14)
You know, I think this happens, as you say, across the spectrum. It's especially for us interesting at that mid to big company level where you do have that, know, maybe it's apathy, maybe it's fear, maybe it's uncertainty, maybe it's disinterest, but whatever it is, that lack of ability to really dig in and do the hard work of prioritizing, deselecting, saying no.
you know, getting really sharp about where our investments are going. And I think, I don't know about you, but sometimes I think that happens because there's a bit of a power vacuum in the room. And it's in that drive to, you know, consensus or in the spirit of collaboration or something. They think everybody has to get along a little bit. And then who's the ultimate decision maker? Like, let's get them, let's find out what they're going to say. And
I wonder if you see that materialized as well, where people are a little bit dancing around trying to figure out where their voice should be in the room.
Speaker 2 (11:21)
so layered, so complex at its simplest. just think it's a response to the externalities. It's a response to the need. So if there is a ⁓ major disruption, I think of things that Boeing has gone through in recent years.
a real sharp proximate need to make change, affect change, agree to a plan and execute on that plan to make real change. In financial institutions and the banks in the country, think Wells Fargo has really struggled in the last decade and has had needs to make real change. Look at Chase Bank.
They don't necessarily have those pressures. can behave, they can take their time. They can be a little more slow to react. Larger organizations, think, they just don't face those externality. So it's a question of need. ⁓ Do I need to lean in? Because there's risk in leaning in. There's risk in challenging the process.
Do I need to take that risk? And if I don't, frankly, I'm not going to. Why would I put my, say, mental and emotional wellbeing at risk? That's number one. Number two, you know, we're working down from Maslow's hierarchy of needs, First, I put my purpose at risk or, my identity, my acceptance, but at some point, if I lean in too hard, I'm putting my livelihood at risk. If I speak out too much, if I push too hard,
I may not be invited back into the boardroom. ⁓ And so unless there's a real sharp need, I'm not going to put that much at risk. Human nature, that's my assessment. And then if we get down to the closely held business, irrespective of size, if it's a $400 million family business, or if it's a $4 million mom and pop shop, the owner,
the owner of that business feels a need on a level that is different than the paid CEO, even if that paid CEO has a bunch of equity and their compensation is tied to the performance, it changes the dynamic. So I think it's a question of what the needs are of the people in the room that are responsible for making the decisions.
Speaker 1 (14:07)
And I think we often focus instead of on the needs of the people who are in the room, we focus on what we think are quote unquote the facts, right? Like what's the business case? What are the details? And we're not really thinking about what are the implications for the people who are needing to get aligned to deliver on this big ambition or this big goal. Yeah, I think that's really interesting way to think about it. What are those needs? And curious Nick, when you think about for yourself, we've all been in the failure gap. ⁓
ourselves. I always laugh because for me it's foreign languages. Like I would love to be able to speak another language. I agree that it's a great idea and I have never gotten myself a lot to do it. I try, you know, I dabble in it every now and then but have not been successful for lots of fine reasons but it truly is a failure gap for me. I'm curious if there's something like that for you in your life where you've experienced ⁓ this idea that you think something would be a really good idea.
But man, it's just hard to get there. Or where you've been successful with it.
Speaker 2 (15:09)
It's a story of both. If this podcast were being recorded in September of 2015, as compared to September of 2025, you would be looking at a version of me that's about 80 pounds heavier than I am today.
Speaker 1 (15:28)
Well.
Speaker 2 (15:29)
For most of my adult life, I was significantly overweight, like a lot, walk around at 305 pounds. And every day I saw that in the mirror and I thought, well, that should change. I wish that could be different. No fewer than a hundred times in my life did I make a commitment to myself to change.
but the need wasn't great enough. No doctor told me you're about to die. I had a wife and children. My family loved me. I was accepted in work and in society and community. There wasn't a need for me to actually change my life. That was like proximate that I was living with every day other than I was disappointed with what I saw in the mirror.
In February of 2016, ⁓ my wife, the mother of our boys, was taken from us in a sudden and tragic accident. And all of the sudden, there is a need that if I didn't improve my health,
I might not live long enough to see my grandkids. This is the shift that happened in my head. I am the only one that my boys have.
So I have to stay alive.
And that was the need, my perception of need shifted and changed. And from that time forward, my behaviors have changed. My outlook has changed. I put myself into different social circles. I consume different media. I do different things for fun. And I attribute it back to a need.
Speaker 1 (17:30)
Yeah, so that need became very sharp. I'm sorry for your loss, by the way. And it sounds like you've moved ⁓ forward in a way that has been really, end of the day, productive for your boys and for you and now your beautiful new blended family. So I think that's a huge journey to take.
Speaker 2 (17:53)
Thanks for saying that. It has been, continues to be. I'm a man of faith, so I say thanks to God for walking along with me through that season and then bringing into my life a whole new season. I never thought I'd be a girl dad, and I am. ⁓
Speaker 1 (18:15)
Yeah, well that's that's an adventure in and of itself.
Speaker 2 (18:19)
Yeah, a whole new set of needs. it's beautiful and it's great.
Speaker 1 (18:22)
Exactly.
I like your connection to this idea that alignment sometimes is forced by need and that we can actually learn from that from a business perspective in that when we're asking people to take on, for example, a big transformation in an organization, that can be hugely disruptive to people in terms of their short-term goals. So we create a need for them to meet short-term goals.
but we also ask them to buy into doing something that's more long-term, more visionary. And I don't know about you, but I think the number one trade-off that I see leaders wrestle with is between short-term and long-term outcomes. And you might have seen it even in your challenges with your health, the short-term decision of what to do today can look very different from the long-term decision of where do I want to be in a year. And sometimes we have to bring that need
very close in to create the behaviors that we need to see to get to that longer term goal. And I'm just curious, you know, as you think about your ⁓ work with leaders and leadership teams, is there an example that you can share where you've seen a team really try to figure out how to stay true to a long-term big transformation while balancing those short-term needs productively?
Speaker 2 (19:52)
Yes, the thing that I've observed, the lesson that I've taken away from observation is that the long-term objectives, the long-term goals, which are not supported by incremental steps, are never achieved. And the general cross-section of folks that I've engaged with,
are more focused on the long-term objectives and less aware of the incremental steps necessary to get there. So how many times have I heard from the owner of a $10 million business, I want to be $50 million in three years.
Well, first of all, that's a want, not a need. Secondly, I don't know if it's grounded in data, but let's just put all that aside and say, okay, you need to be at $50 million in three years. How are you going to get there? Well, more sales. Okay. What else? Yeah. So the, the, the folks that I see that are effective in making progress towards those long-term goals.
Speaker 1 (21:02)
Right? Right.
Speaker 2 (21:15)
identify them, work backwards. So if it's five years out, where do we need to be in three and one and 180 days and 90 days and down to, we're going to track this weekly. Now I'm gonna juxtapose this to my personal health journey. Yeah. Okay, I want to lose 50 pounds. That was my start. I wanna lose 50 pounds. I had to break that down into
how many calories am I going to consume in a day? And I had to track them. Otherwise today would go by, I wouldn't track and I would miss my number. Sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot. And then I think, okay, well, I'll start again somewhere. So I wasn't on that daily tracking. When I developed the discipline to track those behaviors daily, I didn't...
lose 50 pounds in four days. I started to lose a pound a week or something. So it's really discouraging because that that big goal is still out there. And on the in the short term, it doesn't feel like progress. But if I go 30 days without doing the daily things, I either go backwards or don't make any progress at all. And then I'm feeling, you know, deflated and disappointed. And the same thing is true
in the business is we set these long-term goals. If we don't track them on a regular short-term basis, stay on top of it and then reassess and reassess and reassess. People have been talking about this for decades, centuries. Like this is not new. You set the goal, you break it down, you track it. That's just it. And for some reason,
The human mind wants wants us to think that we don't have to do that or that it doesn't work or something and
Speaker 1 (23:20)
We want things to be more exciting, more catalytic, right? We want that dopamine hit. And I think that is a real challenge. And, know, at Carica's group, we are always saying small things done consistently over time change the world. The only thing that does, right? And yeah, I think it is when we talk about the failure gap and we talk about people agreeing that something sounds like a really good idea and we should definitely do that and they don't do it, it's because they're not
Speaker 2 (23:33)
That's the only thing that does.
Speaker 1 (23:49)
getting going on the small things that if they do them consistently, we'll get them towards that goal. It's very rarely that they're not doing enough big things. I mean, think about this. I don't know about you, but I have clients who have kicked off the same transformation like five years in a row. This is what we're going to, we're going to become an innovative company this year. And there's a big kickoff and everybody's excited. And then they go back and no innovation happens because they're not doing the small things consistently over time.
Speaker 2 (24:19)
We have an initiative inside OneAccord. It's my initiative, something I want. There's one other person in the company that wants it. There's 35 of us. So Huba and I are the two that want this. In order for us to make it happen, we probably need five or six other people on the team to commit to doing those daily small things. I am not going to give up.
What you just said speaks into my direct personal experience right now. I've tried to launch, I've tried to launch this initiative and it hasn't found traction yet. And so I just believe that I haven't connected this initiative to solving a problem that our team has so that it creates a need.
for them to engage. So if I can properly articulate to our sales team that, hey, if you bring this offer to market, it's going to increase the number of sales that you can close. It's a very low ticket item. So the sales team probably isn't excited about it because the short-term gain is very small. So just to unpack it a little further, it's a...
It's an entry level offer for entrepreneurs and business owners to come to our office and do a one day workshop. And the price tag on it is like a thousand bucks. So if somebody sells a ticket to the workshop, their sales incentive is a hundred bucks.
that doesn't get them excited. But hey, if the person comes to the workshop and they sign up and they hire us to do a longer term engagement, well that looks like a much bigger sale and there's a much bigger sales bonus for you that you may not have had if they didn't come to the workshop because it's a great way for them to be interested. And so here I'm trying to sell this to the team but it's all me trying to, you
push this initiative. so I am the CEO of the bank that I just described where I've got an idea. My whole leadership team is like, okay, Nick wants this done. yeah, we really don't care about his workshop idea. And then I feel like I want to be the startup kids. I want to argue about it. anyhow.
Speaker 1 (27:02)
You know, we see that all the time though. I mean, you're in good company in the first place. And I can't tell you how often we go into an organization and you probably have this experience too. And we talk to a bunch of people and they're like, we don't know what the strategy is. We've never heard about it. Nobody's ever told us. We have no idea. And then we go to the CEO or the president or the head of the functional area or whatever, and they lose their minds. And they're like, everybody knows what the strategy is. I have.
Nailed them the PowerPoint. I had a town hall. I can show you the video of me talking them through the strategy. And then I hear them often say it's unacceptable that they don't know what the strategy is. Wow. And I kind of get it because they're frustrated, right? They feel like they have communicated out what the strategy is. And now I'm telling them I talked to 30 people in your organization and none of them know what the strategy is.
Right? And it sounds like, you know, at a smaller scale, you're having a little bit of that experience. And I think part of it, we always say to leaders, you need to talk, not tell, right? How do you have the conversation with people about what it is that they need to make sense of for themselves, rather than telling them instructively about what it is that you want them to do?
And you can't always do that at scale. There's different techniques and different ways of doing it, right? But engaging people in that dialogue to create shared meaning, in my experience, has helped people get over the failure gap, get into that alignment because people start to make sense of it for themselves rather than having to digest something that they're getting on a slide. And I think that's really an interesting... ⁓
idea to explore if you're a leader who's frustrated feeling like I keep telling people what we need to do, how are you talking with them about it and creating the space for those quality conversations where you create that kind of shared meaning.
Speaker 2 (29:06)
You might have just quoted me a week ago as you were going through that. And I was I was told by somebody on our team. Nick, I've been at this for two years and I still don't know what the long term strategy is. And I'm like, are you reading your email? You know, it is bullet pointed out like I what you just said. OK, so.
Speaker 1 (29:10)
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:33)
So I have this mantra that I learned from a colleague in banking years ago and it's successes are we and failures are me. So if there's anybody on my team that does not clearly understand the strategy, that's because I haven't done my job to communicate. And so I got the feedback a couple of weeks ago and I called an all team meeting. So we had 22 people in the room and the rest of our team was on zoom.
And I went through in two and a half hours the most efficient kind of visioning strategy session. And it was very elucidating because it was the case that half the people were really clear on the strategy. You know, I asked the question in our long-term strategy, where's our next destination? Hands went up and people understood.
When we reach that destination, what's going to occur? Hands went up and people acknowledged that's when there's an equity transition to the people on the team. So I could tell that some people were paying attention at a deeper level or had greater communication. They had made sense of this themselves. Here is, I'm hung up on a theme in our conversation today. I don't know why, but those who were engaged
I can ascribe a greater need. And those who were not engaged had different needs. And really, the folks that are financially motivated, because what we're endeavoring to do at One Accord is transition ownership of the company to partners, create a partnership. And so for those whom that is very important, they are dialed in.
And for those whom that is not important, their borderline checked out. Not right. ⁓ And so so here's a fundamental question that I'm endeavoring to answer.
Speaker 1 (31:32)
Interesting to them.
Speaker 2 (31:45)
What do we do with the folks that are not dialed in?
Speaker 1 (31:49)
Yeah. Can I ask you a question about that scenario? And by the way, thank you for sharing a personal connection to what this looks like, because it is a challenge. Would you consider yourself to be in that first category of people who are engaged in part because of the financial realities of what you're trying to do? And so does the strategy lean towards those financially driven goals? ⁓
Speaker 2 (32:19)
I might need you to ask the question differently, but I'll try to answer. For me, this whole thing is, it's practically my opus. This transcends money. ⁓ I am endeavoring to test every theory that I've ever preached, to take every prescription that I've ever written and do the things that I believe.
are the right things to do to create enterprise value, to grow a very good company. And so if this doesn't work, I this is my identity. This is my life's work. is everything, all of it. Yep.
Speaker 1 (32:58)
You have a lot on the line.
And then I guess the click down on that for me with your people is what is the need for the people who you feel like are a little detached? If they're not motivated by the financial plan of the strategy, then are there other things that those people need that would connect them to that vision?
Speaker 2 (33:24)
I don't know. so that is the, you know, this is question. What do I do with these folks? How do I, do I find something else that connects them into a vision and, or not? So.
So I don't know, I don't know the answer to that, but what is clear is that there are, there are individuals who absolutely want to own a piece of this company and in there just demographically, they've got a career runway that's at least 25 years. ⁓ and there are other folks that might have five to 10 years in the runway. And so for somebody who's got, let's say 20 years,
they can invest a lot over the next five to have some equity in the company. And then, you know, let that be really fruitful for the next 15 or 20 for someone who's got five years earning equity in something that then, you know, is, is going to grow is, is less of a motivator. So why would they lean in? And, and I don't, I don't know yet. I think that will come into an individual for some it's
They wanna give back for some, wanna stay engaged. Some want to earn a living for the next three years and that's it.
Speaker 1 (34:48)
It's like you've got your bell curve, right? So you know that there are people who get it because they want it and they're excited about it and they're bought in and they're motivated by it. And then you've got those outliers who you need to scoop up because their discretionary energy and focus needs to be directed towards the vision. So they need to understand it, but they're not in the bell curve, right? They're a little bit on the fringe. So how do you...
I think, Nick, know, we might have to have you back on the failure gap in a few months and see how you're having those conversations and what you're discovering about the mindsets that people have towards the longer-term vision and how you overcome that. I think that would be really interesting.
Speaker 2 (35:34)
It's a story that I think will unfold over several years. ⁓ I'm happy to give you chapter updates as we go along.
Speaker 1 (35:43)
Yeah,
that would be exciting. That would be exciting. Well, I think this has been so interesting, Nick, as we talk about both personally, professionally, with teams, with clients, with our own companies, with our client companies. We see this phenomena of the failure gap coming up over and over again, where people sit in that, sometimes it's complacency, sometimes it's that idea of surrender, I'm just gonna go do my thing, sometimes it's...
I don't know how to speak up in this space, so I'm just going to agree that they get stuck there and it turns out that because there's not alignment, we're not taking progress towards the goals, both short and long term that we need to hit. So I really appreciate you sharing some of your experiences with it and how you're managing it for yourself, for your company and with your clients. I think that's really exciting. I would love to ask you our final two questions. One is if you could get the whole
I know some community in your world, whether it's your company, your family, your community involvements. If you could get people aligned to do something together, what would that something be? What would you like to see people put shared energy and attention towards that would be really exciting that they could create an outcome that they might not be able to create on their own?
Speaker 2 (37:02)
Such a good question. And the answer lives in the ethos of mentorship and or apprenticeship. I think that every generation has an obligation to the one coming behind it. And if I could get the whole world aligned around that.
but let's just take it to our company, the 30 some odd people that are in and of OneAccord. If everyone here took on a mentee, it's why we love interns. I love interns. ⁓ That I think would change the world. There are so many of those.
20 something entrepreneurs, 20 something year old entrepreneurs or 20 something year old ⁓ first job, second job in industry and in a company that just would benefit so greatly from having a mentor. That if that could just be in just an everyday part of our kind of cultural norms, that I think would be world changing.
Speaker 1 (38:22)
I really appreciate that idea of how do we mentor this next generation and also creating those apprentice opportunities for people who may not be following a traditional path forward. You yourself did not follow a traditional path. I think that that's really interesting too. How do we create opportunities for people? And how would our generation take the responsibility for creating those opportunities for people who don't want to follow that traditional high school, college, first job path?
on what are the avenues that we could provide to give people the opportunity to make meaningful contributions. And I think mentorship and apprenticeships are great ways to do that. Yeah. So our last question, I feel like should be a softball for you with your six word series, which is if you were going to help somebody really think about how to get a team aligned to deliver together, what words of advice would you give them?
Speaker 2 (39:02)
That's right.
book, The Four Agreements comes to mind. Have you read the book, The Four Agreements?
Speaker 1 (39:27)
I have, yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:30)
There are two of those four. Be impeccable with your word. Don't take things personally.
Those two elements are necessary for what I refer to as clean and clear agreements.
Agreements have to be clean, meaning ⁓ you are, if I'm asking, if I'm inviting you into agreement, it cannot be coerced, it cannot be pressured, you cannot feel as though you have to. It must be clearly understood so that you know exactly what you're agreeing to. And I think most often agreements are not clean.
And most often they're not clean because they're not clear or there's some outside for. So be impeccable with your word. Don't take things personal.
Speaker 1 (40:31)
Great advice for all kinds of situations. And I think especially as leaders and organizations, how we show up for our colleagues, our customers, our clients, our partners, and whoever else is in our ecosystem. So thank you so much for sharing that, Nick. It's a great takeaway. Be impeccable with your word. Don't take things personally. I think I would also say the six words I might take from you would be identify a need and chase it.
Those are my six words from you. I want to say thank you to all of our listeners for joining us here on the Failure Gap. If you like this episode, please share it with your friends and colleagues. Give us a like, give us a review on whatever platform you're listening on or watching on. And I want to thank my guest, Nick Anderson, CEO of OneAccord. It's been wonderful having a conversation with you today. And we will see you next time on the Failure Gap.
Speaker 2 (41:05)
Yeah.
Thanks, Julie.