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Most popular business content is directed at CEOs and entrepreneurs. This episode helps those deep in the middle of an organization apply the principles of Essential Dynamics to make difference.
Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Hello there. I'm Reed McColm, your handsome host, and that playing the guitar kind of tires me out, but I've got to find a maybe we'll try something acoustic next time. I'm here to tell you about Essential Dynamics, but I know very little about it in comparison to the man I'm interviewing, and that is mister Derek Hudson. Derek, are you there?
Derek:Reed, good afternoon. It's it's great to be with you.
Reed:I'm nice I'm glad to see you as well on on Zoom, if nothing else. We're still we're still recording apart, but getting the job done. So I'm glad to see you. Derek, we've had a lot of discussion about great leaders and CEOs and examples and such, but what about the middle guy? Not the first person starting out, as we've discussed before, the 18 year old.
Reed:Now, I want to talk about the guy who's on his way up, doesn't really have a plan perhaps for where he wants to end up. Maybe he is ambitious, I don't know, but right now he's middle management. Do you have a do you have a thought about how essential dynamics can help him perceive his career?
Derek:Sure. So I'm I'm really glad we're talking about this because I think that there's kinda two levels in business that get all the attention. And one of them is the CEO Yeah. And the other is the entrepreneur who is probably the CEO as well, but there might not be more than one person in the company, at least when they start out. And they get just tons of attention, tons of bandwidth, all the all the books and the lectures and all that kind of stuff for how to be an awesome entrepreneur and how to do great things with your company.
Derek:And there's so many so many people that don't have that opportunity or that inclination. And if you think about all the products that we value, there's a lot of managers, frontline supervisors, and frontline people, you know, dispensing out the products and services that we all enjoy that
Reed:There's a big gap of people that are unseen on an episode of Shark Tank between the sharks who are have already done it and the people pitching who are about to. Is that correct?
Derek:Oh, sure. And there's just, you know, a lot of people who work hard every day. And, you know, maybe they don't consider these things in this way, but I like to think that they're adding adding value to our society, and there's principles they could apply to add even more value and get more fulfillment out of it.
Reed:Okay. So what does the how ambitious should a middle manager be? I want to go back to something you said in a previous podcast, and that was that to be a good leader, you need to be a good person. Is that true of the people who are being led?
Derek:I would say to be a good person, you have to be a good person.
Reed:Oh, did I misstate that?
Derek:No. No. I'm I'm picking it up. Right? Like, really, isn't it more about being a good person than whatever sort of position that you get?
Reed:One hopes. Yeah.
Derek:Yeah. And so to the nice thing about being a good person and becoming a a better person or a more effective person is, you know, that you can't really do that or it doesn't really matter unless that's something that impacts other people. So, you know, I I suppose you could just learn something and keep it to yourself and, you know, maybe there's people that never go out of their house these days and get their food delivered and, you know, read books and write essays.
Reed:Thank you. That's my life. Yep.
Derek:But it's it's when you share them with someone that you have an impact. And Yes. Yes.
Reed:But I you but if you don't share anything with anybody, you completely overcome rejection.
Derek:Now you sound like Marty McFly.
Reed:Well, it's always been my philosophy ever since I went back to the future.
Derek:So so, yeah, I you know, I don't know that you can separate sort of the leadership question from the person question, which I think is what what what that means is that, you know, despite the attention on CEOs and entrepreneurs, everyone can both learn to be more effective and through that have an impact on their organization and the people they're with and society generally. So I don't tend to distinguish as much, but I'm excited to talk today about if you're, you know, in deep in the middle of an organization, how do you use these principles to to make a difference?
Reed:Well, Dan, tell me. I'm a little discouraged. I'm a middle manager. I'm feeling like I don't have much impact on the world. The people I work over have have essentially been grumblers, and the people I work under are definitely grumblers.
Reed:So tell me, what am I going to do?
Derek:Okay. Well, I'm sure that if we had an audience of millions that the people who related to that comment would be most of the millions. So here's some thoughts. First of all, we always like to put things in the context of a quest. Well, that's that might be a stretch for, you know, a middle middle manager in a big, you know, insurance agency or bank or something like that.
Derek:So there's two ways I think that can go. And one of them is, you know, connect yourself with the purpose of the organization. Because every organisation, every business and many other organisations exist to make some portion of society better. To make some people's lives better. And so can you connect with the the purpose of your organization in that regard?
Derek:Now, you know, my profession's accounting. And if you're working accounting or a finance department in a big organization, you're not making the product. You're not at the front lines putting the thing in the box that ships out to the product. You're not at the counter providing the service. But what finance people do is essential to the operating of a good company.
Derek:So if you can connect yourself with the purpose of the organization, then that starts to give this you know, you can build a quest out of that. This is meaning like, my organization exists to make sure that people, for example, in insurance, are able to get through catastrophes in their lives without worrying about money. You know, well, that's that's a that's a pretty noble purpose. And one of the ways they do you know, we're able to do that is if we manage our expenses better, then we get to stay in business and, you know, provide that insurance for people, for example. Now the essential dynamics opens another dimension of that up, which is there's always a purpose x and a purpose y.
Derek:So as an employee, you know, is there is there one of those that resonates more with you?
Reed:And are you Maybe of my purse of my personal purpose x and purpose y or your or the business's purpose?
Derek:Well, I'm I'm still on the organization, but, yes, there there's a personal aspect to this that we should get to in a minute. So so, you know, one of the things we talked about with the organization is, you know, purpose x might be more short term or financial and purpose y might be more long term or, you know, good for society and things like that. And so you may say, I, you know, I work in the oil business and I really wanna see this become a sustainable, you know, contributor to long term society. And I can, you know, impact that by being a good worker in this company right now, you know, at at sort of any level. So there's that.
Derek:And then, yes, Reid, to to your point, sometimes the quest might be enabled by a job, but it might not. You might not really identify that much with your organization. So it could be your young person starting out. My quest is I wanna make a difference in this world and my reality is that I need to get a job post graduation to pay off my student debt or start a family or, you know, something like that. This job is a really important part of my life plan right now and I should do everything I can to be a good employee and learn from it so that I can take all that with me to my next job.
Derek:That makes you an effective employee, which actually improves your chances of, you know, continuing with that organization and being, you know, useful to some other organization. And it's never bad for your employer, you know, when you do that. So having your own if you're on a personal mission and this is a part of it, a job's a part of it, then that really helps. The other thing that I would say related to essential dynamics is you always like to take a systems view and the path part of people, path, and purpose is that system. So, you know, we talk about a mid level manager.
Derek:You're stuck inside the organization. You you're not in executive meetings. You're not setting policy. My advice is to think one or two levels up from where you work. So, you know, think like the CEO.
Derek:Think like the VP. Think like the director that your boss reports to. And what are their problems? What are they interested in? What are they concerned about?
Derek:You know, one of the most sort of frustrating conversations I've had with employees is is when and this is at, you know, multiple levels, including vice presidents. They say, well, we've got this figured out for our division. It's the rest of the company that's messed up.
Reed:And that happens in government. It happens in it must happen in every business. I don't know. I've never been a car manufacturer. But I'm sure that the finger pointing is a go to behavior of virtually every business in the world.
Derek:Sure. Sure. So manufacturing, I'll just give you a classic example. Sales promises something. Engineering can't figure out how to do it.
Derek:They blame sales. Once engineering figures out how to do it, manufacturing can't make it. They blame engineering. Right. Right.
Reed:It's just a vicious circle.
Derek:And, you know, if you don't make the car, selling it doesn't matter. So so the you know, it's always the bigger system. So if you're a middle manager and you're in this department here, just look up what what's your boss concerned about, what's your boss's boss concerned about. And if you can be an agent to bringing the system together better, you're gonna do really well in the organization. But so many really, really bright people would rather say this is my bit here, and that's the only thing that I wanna be responsible for.
Derek:But, of course, they're not actually helping the organization. And there's a lot of organizations that reinforce that that re yeah. There's a lot of organizations that reinforce that kind of So it's not necessarily easy to get to, but my That's what
Reed:I was going to get to. I what if your path does not agree with the with your business's path? What if you are not as committed to company profits as the company is?
Derek:Well well, sure. Sure. That's the case. So but let's think about employment. Mhmm.
Derek:Yeah. Employment is an exchange of value. So the employee brings services that help solve the employer's problem, and the employer pays you for it. So if you can't bring yourself to move that forward every day, I don't think you should be taking the employer's money. Mhmm.
Derek:Mhmm. So there there is there is there is that part of it. And if you're gonna take their money, then give them as much value as you can because then you can walk home, you know, people don't leave the office anymore. You can finish your work day Mhmm. Feeling good about yourself.
Derek:Plus effective work is stuff that's transferable. You learn. Now if the purpose of your organisation is something that you don't fundamentally agree with, then you should, you know, really try to find something else. But it may be that you're you you really need a job and this is the only job. In which case, you know, let's step back and get your get your quest personal quest sorted out and put your work in in context and either, you know, adjust and move on or reconcile yourself to the fact that this job is important so that you can do other things in your life that are more important.
Derek:And then Well, Derek, quickly.
Reed:How do you how do you reconcile a someone who has been who may be in the in a bad on a bad path who recognizes it twenty years in or fifteen years into their career choice and they realize they want to change their path, how do you start over? That's something I've had personal experience with. And I wonder if you have thoughts on that.
Derek:I have a few thoughts, Reid. And one is that consider this idea of transferable skills. And, you know, it's it's really important in in today's economy that you don't define yourself by the jobs that you've had. You define yourself by the things that you've learned how to do and the way you've learned to look at things and also the relationships that you've developed. So someone who's twenty years in isn't starting like an 18 year old.
Derek:They've got they've they've learned a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff And the question is how can I take that and use it, you know, in some other way? And then the other thing is that there's also this accounting concept which we refer we refer to as sunk costs.
Reed:So Right. Yes.
Derek:Money that I spent yesterday and that I can't get back is irrelevant to my future decisions. And a lot of times we put, you know, and this you see this in in in governments and businesses, Like but this thing cost a lot of money, so we have to save it. And so you keep pouring money into the business unit or to the Losing even more. Old hockey arena or whatever it is. And that it it doesn't matter.
Derek:You can't change what you did, but you can today move forward. And so I I think if you think about the fact that anyone at any point in their life has this, you know, wealth of experience they've accumulated And they don't owe any part of their life any particular thing because it's past. Yes. You know? So it is actually today is actually the first day of the
Reed:rest of your life. So be optimistic and embrace it?
Derek:Yeah. And then if, you know, you think about, like, some of the stuff we haven't talked about in, Essential Dynamics, find the driver. You know, find the driver like the driver in your life. You know, hang on to it. Because if the cool thing about drivers, like, by definition, they move.
Derek:Like Yeah. You just grab onto them. And it's so much better to have a driver than to try and you know, everything has to be, like, brute force.
Reed:I like that. And that brings up a whole new issue and series of questions which I'll have to save for another time. Derek, how can people reach you?
Derek:People can find me at derek hudson. Ca on the web. And I would be thrilled to hear what what questions people have about what we're talking about. Can I just okay? Let me ask the question.
Derek:K. Derek, what's what about the people side of middle manager? Okay. Thank you, Reid, for asking that question. Thank you, Derek, for asking that question.
Derek:Yeah. Because I do wanna get into that. So because this is this is something that's really critical. I don't know if I can't remember where I heard it, but I've seen it multiple times. People don't quit jobs at companies.
Derek:People quit managers. Oh. Oh. Oh, boy. People don't leave the employment of an organization.
Derek:They escape a bad manager relationship.
Reed:I like that. That's very that's we're gonna have to explore that further.
Derek:So just flip that around a little bit. If you're the middle manager, don't be the one that people quit.
Reed:Yeah. Wow. That's that's great advice, Derek. Thank you. That's a great place to stop.
Reed:I think we'll end it there and continue the ramifications of that at another time. I'm Reed McCollum. I'm the handsome host and learning every day. And that's partly because of my friend Derek Hudson, who Derek, they can reach you at derekhudson. Ca, right?
Derek:They absolutely can. Reid, thanks for asking those questions today because I think middle managers are the unsung heroes of the current or the modern economy.
Reed:Okay. And for our engineer, Bryn Griffiths, who is always looking quizzically at us and going, what the heck are you talking about? This has been a good day and a good talk and we look forward to our next one. And until then, consider your quest.