Essential Dynamics with Derek Hudson

Jeff shares what he has learned in sport and business on finding and releasing untapped potential in people and organizations.

Show Notes





What is Essential Dynamics with Derek Hudson?

Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!

Reed:

And welcome to Essential Dynamics, another episode of Smart Talk and Essential Philosophy from the mind of Derek Hudson whom I admire. I'm your host Reed McColm and I'm here indeed with Mr. Derek Hudson. How are you today Derek?

Derek:

Reed, I'm great. Really excited for the conversation we're about to have today.

Reed:

Yes, yes, I'm excited as well.

Derek:

Can I introduce our guest?

Reed:

Yes, please. Please tell me who this person is because just by the looks of him, I have to say I have my doubts.

Derek:

Yeah, so Jeff Tetz is the Chief Executive Officer of Results. Results is a western Canadian consulting firm that, I think does some pretty good stuff, and I wanna talk to Jeff about that today. So, Jeff, welcome.

Jeff:

Thanks for having me, and, yeah, thanks for that warm introduction, Reed.

Reed:

Oh, anytime, Jeff. Love you.

Derek:

So so Reed, really likes the podcast environment because he keeps claiming he's he's, the best looking guy in the room, which is

Reed:

always which is always true. The best it's always true. I'm the best looking guy in this room, I'll tell you.

Jeff:

Yeah. I won't I won't dispute that. It's hard to prove on this platform, so I guess you can get a we have a lot of leverage and latitude is what you're, is what you're sort of telling me here, I guess. Hey,

Derek:

Derek? Yes. Yeah, for sure. So Jeff, thanks for coming on. I really wanted to get you on early in season two, because I feel like I got to sort of pay it back for the experience that I had a year ago when Results, launched their Results Unleashed webcast.

Derek:

And, you guys did just fantastic work, I know you put it together really, really quickly. And I thought you know, I was a rapt attender of season one. I was starting my business. I had time on my hands, and I really liked the guests that you brought on. But one of the things that, you know, sort of full disclosure that I found is that I would get super excited about your guest and whatever, insight they had, and they were always super compelling.

Derek:

And I would say negotiation, that's the answer. And I'd spend a week thinking about it, and then it would be employee empowerment, and then it would be core corporate culture. And I thought, just a second here. And I look at my bookshelf, and I I got books on all those topics, and I'm thinking, but what do I think? And how do you put it all together?

Derek:

And, between that that experience and then conversation that we had with Bruce Alton, which we talked about on episode one of of season two here, Bruce said, Derek, you need a framework. And so I was asking myself, how do I how do I think about things? How do I solve business problems? And with the recognition that I've learned a lot of stuff, but I didn't know how to put it all together, started working on the framework. And so created some essential dynamics.

Derek:

Jeff, you and I've had a chance to, you know, kind of talk through through what that is and how how I think about it. And I really wanted, I mean, I want your perspective on all of it, because I, admire your work. But but I'm I'm quite interested in how how you help your clients and how that might be framed in the way we look at essential dynamics. So, first of all, Jeff, thanks for coming. And and what have you seen that you either like or have questions about with the stuff that we've been doing?

Jeff:

Yeah. Well, I think I'm I'm just impressed in general by anybody that, that takes a risk and takes a chance and puts themselves out there and and is challenging their comfort zone. So, that that's the first thing that that I admire, Derek, about you is you're a very ambitious learner, and all of my dealings with you I think the first time you and I ever had a conversation was at a leadership retreat, down in in Kananaskis at the Pomeroy Lodge, And, you just struck me as a very inquisitive, curious, and humble, human being, and those are the kinds of people that I generally like to hang out with. So, I I think sort of seeing your leadership evolve and your adaptability in the last couple of years with everything that's happened in the world and with you personally, I think I think that's really admirable. And and I know that your intention behind doing this, this podcast and and being active on this platform is is genuinely about helping people.

Jeff:

So those would be some of the things that really stand out for me in terms of what you're doing and what you're all about.

Derek:

Hey, thanks, Jeff. And so I think that probably the first time I ever saw you, you were on stage speaking at that conference, and, you kind of talked about your quest.

Jeff:

Yeah. I did. Yeah. That was a that was and I guess it is only two years ago. I mean, feels like we've lost so much time pandemic that it feels like it was five years ago.

Jeff:

That was, that was a talk at fifty five North, I think, about some of the things that I've learned in my life about failure. And I think the more we fail, the more humble we are. And I think, the most the people I admire most in in my life, whether I know them personally or not, tend to be, fallible, humble characters. And so that that that's a little bit about what that talk was, was about, if I recall correctly.

Derek:

And, for for Bryn here, who's always come from a sports angle, some of your stories were about your involvement in competitive sports as a as a player and as a leader. Is that right?

Jeff:

Yeah. I they were. And I I've been really fortunate because I I've had this luxury of being, on the inside of of of coaching hockey and in the locker room with junior hockey, but then I got to see behind sort of behind the veil, I suppose, of how professional sports teams operate on the business side. And I I I was, again, really lucky that my first what I call my real job when I was still finishing up my degree at University of Alberta was working in the sales and marketing department for the for the Edmonton Elks. First time I have had a chance to use that use that term.

Jeff:

So then that was such a family business. My little cubicle was right next door to Hugh Campbell's, and you grow up idolizing these people. And so you want to work very hard for them. The harder you work, the more opportunity that you get in a small organization like that. And and so I had the the this wonderful opportunity to just to have a lot of different roles for the Eskimos over a couple of years, and then it's a small community.

Jeff:

So then I was offered a job to come and work for the Oilers, and so I spent three years working for the Oilers in their sales department while I was also trying to carve out a junior hockey hockey career. So I'd be selling season tickets during the day, and and then I'd be watching Craig McTavish put put the players through practice on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and then, of course, in the sky in the press box for for every single game. And so that was, that that was some of the best fertile learning ground on both the coaching side of things and the business side of professional sports that a person could ever hope for.

Derek:

So now you're a management consultant. You leave a consulting firm that works with, as I've been able to tell, pretty ordinary mid sized companies typically that are owned and managed by the same people. And what's translated from your work in the highest echelons of professional sport to businesses that grind it out every day.

Jeff:

Yeah. Derek, I think there's lots of parallels, and I think that's why I was attracted to this role in the first place a little over a decade ago. The whole notion of our business really comes from a foundation of potential. So it it's pretty widely agreed upon that every person and every organization on the planet has untapped potential. And when you look at that, and and that's kind of a a a common understanding, I think, the unfortunate reality is very few organizations actually care about doing something about it.

Jeff:

And when we start to look at the organizations that are intentionally trying to figure out how to be better versions of themselves, how to have a better culture, how to have more loyal customers, more referrals, a more predictable business model, we find that that segment of the market has a very difficult time figuring out the solutions on their own. And most of the reason for that is they just don't have time to figure it out. You're so busy as a typical business owner just being in the business, immersed in what has to get done today or this week. So, as we recognize that as a pattern, we have now come up with a series of methodologies, processes, systems, and frameworks that if you apply this framework over a long period of time is going to have transformational impacts on your business. At the very least, it's gonna dramatically increase the odds that you'll become a significant market player over the long term.

Jeff:

And there's honestly not a lot of secrets in the formulas and the systems anymore, Derek. I mean, you honestly, you can Google these things. And the interesting thing about the world right now is virtually any problem that we have in our lives or our businesses can be solved from a Google search, and yet, you know, you referenced all of those books behind you. It's very difficult for us to take this expansive amount of information that's at our literally at our fingertips and do something with it if we don't have clarity, of what's essential versus nonessential and we don't commit to a habitual way of behaving that's going to allow us to see what I would call the count the compounding effect of working on the right things literally every single day. So we've we've taken the framework and the tools, and we've come up with what what I think is kind of a magical way to to, to help companies implement these tools, and that's been the difference for us.

Jeff:

So just like a great personal trainer, we bring in accountability. We bring in frequency and cadence, and then we bring in the right tools at the right time to help our companies meaningfully progress over a long period of time.

Reed:

Jeff, I want to jump in here. I'm interested. At the start of your explanation, you said that everybody has untapped potential. In this case, in a corporate sense, are you talking about the employees to focus on their potential, or are you talking about your customers?

Jeff:

Yeah. So it's all of that, I think, Reid. Like, when when when we first started having conversations with companies, it's always with the senior executive team. And if if the senior most team can't get its act together and can't model the behaviors and the habits that, they desire their employees to model, it's gonna be very difficult for there to be any sustainable difference made. And, and then, you know, we also take the same approach with our own employees.

Jeff:

But if we can get the executive team working in a certain way, being really efficient, really cohesive, high functioning, then we'll often start to help them get their, get their their functional teams throughout the organization, all their leaders, managers, and employees sort of drinking the same Kool Aid, so to speak.

Reed:

Do you think that pardon me, Derek, for interrupting on your guest, but do you think that there's a chance that changing CEO's behavior trickles trickles down? Excuse me? Do you think that's how, if the owner or the COO or the executives in a company are all moral examples, will they automatically recruit the same beneath them?

Jeff:

Yeah, well I think there's actually some evidence of both of those things. One one of the one of the big problems that we see in the world of business is what we would call leadership incongruency, and it's almost always a blind spot. It's almost always unintended unintended. And what I mean by that is there's a big difference between what most leaders are saying and what they're doing. And we know that what sets the standard and the tone for any team, any organization is what people do, not what they say.

Jeff:

So a common example is accountability. And I I've never met a business leadership team that doesn't espouse the benefit or the desire, to have a highly accountable culture. And the moment that they that they express that, and then you have them actually make a list of all the employees that are underperforming and then get them to describe all the things they're doing to proactively confront that noncompliance and underperformance, the list of employees is quite long, but the list of of actions that they're taking to mitigate that underperformance is quite is quite short. And the moment that that's the case, there's an unintended miscommunication and incongruence between what the leadership says and what the leadership does. So the moment there's more congruency between the words and the actions without even changing any performance management, without even changing meeting structures, without leaders even acquiring more sophisticated leadership capabilities, the standard has already been raised in an organization.

Jeff:

And there's also some good evidence, Reid, on you kind of allude to the hiring piece of it. We often will not hire above our own level of understanding and competency. So the more competent we are, the more, you know, the more, the more aware we are, the, the more we're clear about the habits, behaviors, and standards that we're willing to tolerate and accept and not tolerate and accept, that's the moment that we've also raised the hiring standard because we're intuitively gonna look for those people. And there's lots of ways that we can refine the hiring and the screening process, of course. There's lots of inherent bias there.

Jeff:

But, those behaviors have a trickle down effect without even trying. So it's a great question, Reed.

Derek:

So, Jeff, I wanna go back to something that you said. My notes are insufficient, but you said, I think you used the word habitual.

Jeff:

Yep.

Derek:

And, when I think about the the framework that we've set out with with essential dynamics where there's a a purpose and there's a path that we go on and people take the path to accomplish the purpose and speak it very simply. The path is what we call systems. And in my mind, you can't improve if you don't have a system that you can look at and improve. And so one of the things that I'm really interested in is if you can make a system habitual, then you can step outside it and look at it. And what what what success have you had in seeing companies develop habits?

Jeff:

Yeah. So lots of lots of success in that, Derek. And I and I think that, if I was to take a sort of a step back, we're big fans of trying to understand how do human beings naturally wanna behave. What are the environments that will create human beings that naturally aspire to do great work? There can be a tendency to over process things, to, over systematize things, to over measure things, and metrics and repeatable processes are really, really important.

Jeff:

But I would say not at the expense of the environment and climate that those that the employees are are are behaving in every single day. So we're always very, very careful to to start with the deeper, more aspirational environmental type of type of things, and what I mean by that is it's it's critical that organizations and leaders figure out three key things, and it's it's vision and culture pieces. Clarifying what those are is all employees wanna know three things from their employer. They wanna know where we're going, how we must behave, and why the work that we're doing actually makes a difference in the world. So often, companies skip that step, and they go to metrics and dashboards and KPIs.

Jeff:

But if you haven't captured your employees' imaginations, if you haven't inspired their hearts and grabbed their enthusiasm and intrinsic motivation, all of those metrics, and KPIs and dashboards are not gonna have nearly the the the effect that that you'd like them to. So once you get those things in place, then it becomes important to to measure what are the outcomes that we are trying to achieve as a company and then distill those down to every department and then literally every single employee. Every single employee that works for you should know exactly how their roles are getting measured. So then the habits start to become a lot easier, Derek. So once you have those things figured out, literally, every single team and every employee would be involved in a weekly discussion with their manager and with their direct colleagues about how their team has performed in the last week and how their contributions personally have contributed to the team's success, failure, or otherwise.

Jeff:

That's just sort of one demonstration of how those become habitual.

Derek:

Hey, that's fantastic. So one of the other ways that I talk about systems is drivers and constraints. Yeah. And I think what I've heard from you is the best driver is a sense of purpose that an employee has that aligns with the organization. Is is that what you're talking about when you talk about that that intrinsic motivation?

Jeff:

Yeah. Absolutely. And I Daniel Pink's one of my favorite authors, and, one of my favorite business books of all time is drive. And what Dan Pink did in that book was he studied environments that were known for, for developing and generating intrinsically motivated employees. And what he found is there were three key things that were at play.

Jeff:

So number one was autonomy. So it's basically measure outcomes, not behaviors. And if my outcomes are not generating the desired result, then we can start to can look at my habits and behaviors. But start with the outcomes, and then let me be my my myself. So get out of my way.

Jeff:

Don't micromanage me. That's the autonomy. The second piece is is mastery. So it's having a chance to learn, grow, be pushed, be coached, be developed. And then the third piece was purpose, and those three things are critically important to any environment.

Jeff:

So that purpose I I talk about Disney as an example. Disney's got a very simple core purpose. They're They've got cruise ships and theme parks, and they're in the movie business. And you think about what their core purpose is, it's as simple as making people happy. Disney, when they're a large organization, surely they've got lots of pitfalls and things they could be better at.

Jeff:

But one of the things they're great at is onboarding culture and training. And if you look at Disney, some of the most impactful advertising they get are from their lowest paid employees. There's, there's hundreds, literally hundreds of videos that have gone that have gone viral of custodians and theme parks drawing Disney characters with wet mops. And the reason that those, that those spontaneous events occur at theme parks is because they're so deliberate at hiring, onboarding, and training all of their employees that they're there to do one thing predominantly. It's to make people happy.

Jeff:

And then here's how we measure your performance, but it's not at the expense of that deeper why we do what we do. Those are the kinds of transformational impacts any company can have with their employees if they start with the heart and the mind and the aspiration at the beginning.

Reed:

That's fascinating, and I so appreciate what you're saying about Disney and the lowest paid. Lowest goes right down the scale to the janitors making custodians making cartoon characters with mops. I love that. Now I didn't read, I'll be honest, I did not read Drive, but I did read Christine by Stephen King, so I hope there's a parallel there. Wondering, Jeff, how does a corporation deal with failure?

Reed:

I know it depends on the size of the failure and the circumstances, but in a general sense, your team has come across an obstacle they did not overcome. Tell me how to deal with that.

Jeff:

Yeah. Well, most companies deal with failure very poorly. And the reason for it is that the basic human reaction to failure is to go and find someone or something to blame. And shouldn't be afraid of that response, but what we should recognize is just because that's sort of the the initial response that most of us have to that, it doesn't mean it should govern our actions. And the reason that that that's the instant response is we're we're still working with an old operating system.

Jeff:

Our brains are are designed to keep us safe. And so when mistake and failure happens, the first thing that we wanna do instinctively is we wanna make sure that our position, our authority, our power on our team and our organization is not being threatened. So if it's somebody else's fault or someone else's fault, I'm gonna be protected. So we know better now. We don't have to listen to these old operating systems.

Jeff:

So a better way to deal with failure is learning is learn it learn from it. Create them create learning opportunities from them. One of the easiest ways to do it is to create a mantra internally as opposed to asking what went wrong with your teams is to ask what can we learn. And there's even a couple simple ways to embed that in into your organization. You can do, you can do, quarterly, planning reviews where you're actually talking about what the expected outcomes for the next ninety days are and what could go wrong.

Jeff:

You can actually have after action reviews where you're talking about what the results you intended to achieve were and why you didn't achieve them. So you turn it into an actual learning opportunity where you all embrace that. The other part of mistakes that's important to read, though, to also clarify is there are some bad mistakes. So not all mistakes are created equal. So mistakes where you're consciously taking a risk and experimenting in the marketplace or with your culture and you fail from those, those are great learning opportunities.

Jeff:

If somebody happens to send the wrong document to your to your to a competitor or if they send the wrong invoice to the wrong customer, I mean, are mistakes that that we wanna make sure that we're looking at, whether it's a training or a process issue. But if it's that good category of mistake, we wanna be very intentional that the senior most leaders are embracing and creating a philosophy of learning from them. Almost, you know what, celebrating mistakes, that's the degree we have to get to.

Derek:

I just want to go back, Jeff, to talking about purpose. And, you know, it's one thing to line up with the purpose of the happiest place on earth. It's another thing when you're making rig mats or something like that. And you have a lot of, you know, customers that, you know, may not capture the public's imagination

Jeff:

Yeah.

Derek:

But but they still find purpose in their work. Can you give us some examples? Don't break any confidentiality, but some examples of, you know, employees that really appreciate the the purpose for these, like, you know, good good Edmonton companies.

Jeff:

Yeah. It's such a Derek, it's such a good question. And we actually work with a ton of construction companies just by nature of how large the construction sector is. And I and I think that the construction industry is more predisposed to partnerships, so that that helps us too. We're kinda like a sub trade for them on the business execution side of it.

Jeff:

And every single company has a core purpose, but they have to sometimes be a bit more resourceful about it. One of the hang ups that a lot of leaders have is they they they think that their purpose has to describe the work that they do, and it's actually not true. So a really valuable exercise that companies can do is to is to think about all of the end users of the work that they do and what the deepest level of benefit that they will derive from the work that they do is. And, an example that this is going back about ten years ago now. We worked with a with a traffic light construction company at Assured Park, and that's all they do is they put up traffic lights.

Jeff:

That's what that that's their job. And and they've now evolved into more of a technology company where they're monitoring traffic flow and congestion and coming up with more strategic advice for municipalities. But very quickly, they recognize that the value of of of really well designed traffic flow is not just for traffic flow and congestion, but it's actually for safety. And the light bulb for them after much discussion was that if they do a great job, they are actually authentically getting people home safely to their families. And that was the thing.

Jeff:

It actually makes the hairs in the back of my neck stand up. All they do is put up traffic lights, but it's not just that. And so every time somebody goes through something, we just take these little daily things for for, for granted. How many traffic lights are we gonna drive through just in the next five hours? But if it's done right, we're gonna get home hopefully safe and sound, and they're gonna reduce collisions.

Jeff:

They're gonna reduce accidents. And it caused them not only to take more pride in their work, but they actually created a more innovative culture when they recognized if they could get better at what they do, they could actually make road conditions safer and maybe even have an impact on serious injury and fatalities.

Derek:

That's a fantastic example, and that's kind of where I'm you know, I started, I guess, with what's the purpose and purpose x and purpose y. And if your purpose was only to get people home safely, it's hard to figure out what, you know, what the business model is. But it Yep. If you have a

Jeff:

stuck. Yeah. Derek, that's where people get stuck is they think that none of these tools and habits are for use in isolation. So if all you do is figure out where you're going, what your values are, and why the work matters, well, that like, that's just the start. And, you know, I mean, you'll get you'll get you'll get some up you'll get some lift from that, but you're not gonna have transformational results.

Jeff:

You you then have to clarify exactly what's the problem that you're solving in the market. Are there enough customers that have those problems? So it doesn't get us it doesn't absolve us from having strategy and having metrics and having high levels of accountability, tough conversations, and hiring and firing and reprimanding and correction. And there's there's I mean, there's that's why one of the things that makes business just so unpredictable and challenging. There's literally thousands of things that we have to do as leaders to create the kind of long term effect and impact that we desire.

Derek:

That's a thanks thanks very much, Jeff. So I think what you're telling us is it's complex. It takes a lot of work. It's better if you're intentional about it. And ultimately, you gotta line up the the interests of the people with the purpose of the organization and then never be satisfied that you can always learn and do better.

Jeff:

Yep. That's right. And you started off by asking me a question of the parallels between my my sports, you know, my business experience in sport and my coaching experience in sport with what I do right now. And I'll just tell you that I've never met any overnight success as an athlete. The best players in the world, they don't get that weight just because they're gifted.

Jeff:

They start with perhaps some certain God given or biological advantages, but it's what they do with those opportunities. Billy Morris has become, over the years, just an amazing mentor to me and so many others, but, he told a story quite often that when he was coaching Gretzky in his final year in the league, they were, they were trying to they didn't make the playoffs that year, but they were in a playoff push. And so I think it was January or February of Gretzky's last year. They were on the ice at Madison Square Garden in Morningskate, and, he was working with the defenseman in one end, and and Gretzky was taking the five on three power play unit in the other end. And out of the corner of his eye, he just something intuitively caught his attention, and it was that Gretzky was getting the puck the top of, at the top of the umbrella at the blue line on a five on three, and, there was a very small little thing he wasn't doing.

Jeff:

He wasn't faking a shot to freeze the penalty killer to draw them up and create a passing a dangerous passing lane. So Billy stopped what he was doing, skated down the ice, said, hey, Gretz. I I know you're trying to work on the five on three for tonight. I just I noticed one little thing you're not doing, and, and it's just important that you remember that little small little thing. And Gretzky said, wow, Billy, thank you so much.

Jeff:

I got sloppy on that. And, I don't know if they scored a goal on a five on three that night, but here's the best player to ever put on skates in his literally, in the last 25 games of his career. And he was not only open to the feedback, he was gracious and grateful for it. And if Gretzky can do it, what's our, you know, what's our what's our excuse for not being receptive to that kind of feedback and continuous improvement?

Derek:

So I just wanna close, Jeff. You you talked about untapped potential in people and organizations. Have you run across an organization that doesn't have potential that with a little work can be revealed and built on?

Jeff:

Yeah. Lots of them, and it's the ones that just don't admit that they have it. So but no. I never I never have. And look, I I don't I don't begrudge anybody for running a business the way they want.

Jeff:

There's just consequences to that. And I I I think that what we're seeing now, there's just way too much. The the research that organizational psychologists are doing now on what makes successful companies the way they are, they're demystifying what we need to do to do that. And and in the world of business, there's always gonna be, different approaches that will work and and experiments that we're gonna continue to learn from. But I I believe in my heart that twenty years from now, the only companies that will legitimately be successful are ones that that have a a mindset of creating an environment where their employees are really, really valued, every single one of them, that the lowest paid employee is paid a lot more than what they're paid right now, that relationships matter, that we care about people's growth, we care about them as a whole person because more and more employees choose where they work.

Jeff:

We don't choose them. And if we're gonna be an employer of choice, eventually, people are, and senior leaders and owners are not gonna have an option. They're going to have to create what the people are demanding. And, and I'm excited about that because work is just so important. We spend most of our most of our lives is spent at work.

Jeff:

And if we don't enjoy our our work, if we don't derive at least some level of satisfaction and meaning from it, if we don't not only like our coworkers but actually love some of them, then I think that's a real shame. And so that's what drives me every day, to help ambitious leaders that are humble and lifelong learners create those kinds of companies. Derek, I appreciate the question.

Derek:

Well, thanks so much for your time, Jeff. That was fantastic. It's an MBA in a box here.

Reed:

Jeff, where curious listeners find you or read more about you?

Jeff:

Yeah. So they can go directly to our website at unleashresults.com. And if you don't mind the occasional NFL Tom Brady New England Patriot tweet interspersed with some leadership tips, you can find me on Twitter jefftetz. Happy to connect with people there.

Reed:

Great. And Derek, where can people find you?

Derek:

Derek hudson. Ca. And I usually don't brag about my Twitter handle, but Jeff's one of my most prolific people I follow. And so it's derek huds on Twitter.

Reed:

That's great. This has been a really enlightening and wonderful discussion. I so thank you, Jeff, for talking to us. You brought back some wonderful memories for me of when I played with Gretzky and used to give him advice, and I so appreciate that. For Essential Dynamics and Bryn Griffiths in the studio, I'm Reed McColm.

Reed:

Until next time, consider your quest.