Spencer Horn 00:13 - 00:36 Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to Teamwork a Better Way, where we talk about how teams can improve and lives of team members can thrive within healthy form teams. I am Spencer Horn, your host today. I want to exclude, excuse my amazing co-host, Christian Napier. Spencer Horn 00:37 - 01:13 I never want to exclude you, Christian, if you're listening, ever. Uh, and I'm always, uh, you know, sad when, when you're not with us and I know our listeners will be as well, but today I am so excited because I am joined by our guest and, uh, we are going to talk Bruce McLeod, his ear off. We're so, so excited to talk about our topic today, really about how do we build healthy cultures and companies. I'm going to read our bio here. Spencer Horn 01:13 - 01:30 But let me just share a little bit of what we're focused on today, listeners. Stop relying on superheroes. Build a company that scales. And that is something that I have seen personally many organizations rely on superheroes. Spencer Horn 01:30 - 01:57 It seems to have questionable endings and we're gonna have some stories for that, I'm sure. But let me share a little bit about our amazing guest today. Bruce McLeod is the author of The Healthy Company Framework and founder of Company Connections, a professional services organization designed to help companies and individuals who want to change their business and their life for better. Who doesn't want that? Spencer Horn 01:57 - 02:31 He has spent over a dozen years in corporate America. In those years, he's had a front row seat to the negative effects of rapid growth on companies. From increased customer drops, high turnover, and burnout of top talent, and the inability to solve new problems with new solutions. And he developed and implemented an infinitely scalable framework that addresses these problems His solution starts with taking care of the people responsible for getting the work done, the employees. Spencer Horn 02:32 - 02:52 By healing the individual, companies are able to heal their company and increase their customer satisfaction, retain superstar employees, and leave a lasting legacy. He is a native of Birmingham, Alabama, and is happily married to his wife, Emily, of nine years, is that right? Bruce Mcleod 02:53 - 02:55 Eight and a half coming up on nine. Spencer Horn 02:55 - 03:03 Eight and a half. That is fantastic. What's your favorite thing to do with, with Emily? What, what do you, what do you two enjoy doing down there in Birmingham? Bruce Mcleod 03:04 - 03:26 I mean, it sounds cliche, but it's the nothing, you know, it's just being together, whether we're, you know, doing errands or doing those kinds of things. Um, we do enjoy watching a good baseball, uh, whether that's on the TV or, you know, the sec baseball tournament is here in Birmingham. We'll go watch that, go do other things together, but just spending time. I mean, it doesn't sound too exciting, but it's great for us. Spencer Horn 03:27 - 03:28 Are you a crimson tide fan? Bruce Mcleod 03:30 - 03:53 So this'll be interesting for your fans who really know this. I am, I actually graduated from the University of Alabama, roll tide, always have been. My wife graduated from Auburn, so we're one of those houses divided. Ultimately, I had to have something wrong with me, and being an Alabama fan, if that's what's wrong with me, that can't be too bad, right? Spencer Horn 03:53 - 04:07 That's fantastic. You got War Eagle and Roll Tide, big old elephants. We have a similar situation in our house. My wife and I, though, went to the University of Utah, but we have a lot of kids that went for our biggest rival, BYU. Spencer Horn 04:08 - 04:15 So we know. Blue and red. And I think Auburn is kind of blue too, aren't they? Or orange, blue and orange or something? Bruce Mcleod 04:15 - 04:22 Yeah, yeah. They got the blue and orange and the crimson and white for Alabama. But that's all right. We make it work. Spencer Horn 04:22 - 04:51 Well, let's get into our topic. In your bio, you talk about you have seen so many challenges in corporate America, especially as these companies grow and are growing so quickly. You've watched companies grow fast and fall apart from the inside because you've been there. What's the pattern that most leaders never see until it's too late? Bruce Mcleod 04:53 - 05:07 Yeah, well, at some point your scale breaks, right? Your systems break. I've used an analogy where you have to change your technique. So, if, you know, it's you, me, and let's say it's Christian, the three of us start a business. Bruce Mcleod 05:08 - 05:40 Well, if one of us disappears, like, well, you know, Christian has today, we know that, we feel that, we don't even really have to communicate that, right? It's apparent, we know we have to deal with that. And as you grow to 30 and then 300 people, you sort of forget that connectivity. So forgetting that connectivity is one of the easy things that you go, well, hey, we didn't used to have to communicate across the silos like we used to because, well, actually we didn't used to have silos because we were a lot smaller. Bruce Mcleod 05:40 - 05:51 So I think that's one of the easy things to see break is that internal communication. Because again, you started out not having to do it. At some point, you have to learn how to do it. Spencer Horn 05:52 - 06:15 I heard somewhere that there was, Bruce, a number or a size of company that as soon as you surpass that in terms of employees, that everything gets so much harder. And so what some companies do is organize in small business units of, say, 150 employees. Have you heard that? I'm throwing stuff out here. Spencer Horn 06:16 - 06:19 But I have heard that, and it kind of fits with what you're saying. Bruce Mcleod 06:20 - 06:37 I have heard that. Yeah. The company that comes to mind, I believe, is Gore-Tex, where I heard that they build 150 parking spaces in their parking lot for their building. And as soon as they need 151 cars, they say, OK, it's time to start looking at building new business unit. Bruce Mcleod 06:38 - 06:50 another business unit because that 150 employee cap is sort of where you go, wait a second, 150 to 151, all of a sudden, new problems start happening that didn't used to exist. Spencer Horn 06:52 - 07:03 So talk about those systems that start to break down. I mean, what's happening? I mean, obviously, it's more complex, right? You say there are silos, but what about those systems? Spencer Horn 07:04 - 07:06 Help us understand what you're talking about. Bruce Mcleod 07:07 - 07:35 Yeah, so I think with the, you know, 150 and under, you really can, I'll just say superhero it, right? You've got enough tribal knowledge, you've got enough people that care, you've got enough just sort of innate, organic things that really can create excellence, right? That's no disparagement on that, but you don't really have systems, you have people who care. And when you start getting to 200 people, you really need systems. Bruce Mcleod 07:36 - 08:07 Even if you have people who care, if you don't have good systems, if you don't have, as I call it, a good framework of things that keep people connected, Well, you end up needing more superheroes that can't fill in the gaps, and then the superheroes you have, they burn out, and they turn over, they quit, they leave, they have health problems, any of those kinds of things. I think the other sort of thing that you really don't see a lot in the 150 and smaller range is people don't really hide because they can't really hide. Right? Bruce Mcleod 08:07 - 08:33 You're going to have people that, you know, maybe aren't as good as the superstars, but you don't really have any, as some of my friends call it, C players, right? You only have A and B players in those smaller companies. As you get to 200, 300 plus employees, you start having C players or maybe even D players on your team, but they don't stand out like they used to. And that's another thing I think that, you know, creeps in that people just go, wow, we didn't used to struggle with this before. Spencer Horn 08:34 - 09:02 So what I'm hearing, Bruce, is that there's a superhero problem. And what I'm hearing is potentially those high performers are really making leaders lazy. In other words, they're helping leaders not really confront the real issue, which is creating systems that are scalable, because they're relying on these superheroes. Am I hearing that in your description? Spencer Horn 09:03 - 09:05 And so they're not addressing, yeah? Bruce Mcleod 09:06 - 09:30 Yeah, very much. Sort of the fun example I use on that is, you know, if any of these superheroes we like, Batman, Superman, any of those guys were really effective, then their cities wouldn't have problems. Gotham continues to have problems, but if Batman was actually really good at his job, and I love Batman, don't get me wrong, but if he was really good at his job, Gotham would have been healed and then it wouldn't need Batman anymore. Spencer Horn 09:31 - 09:36 What's Batman doing wrong? I mean, I know you don't have anything against him, but what's he doing wrong? Bruce Mcleod 09:36 - 09:38 I love that you are using this metaphor. Spencer Horn 09:38 - 09:47 I see we've got Hogwarts in the background. You love mythology and creativity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bruce Mcleod 09:47 - 10:02 What's he doing wrong? So Batman, like any good superhero can do the superhuman, right? Even your best employees, they can move mountains that you thought were impossible to do. They can figure out problems you never thought were solvable. Spencer Horn 10:03 - 10:04 But how many batmans are there? Bruce Mcleod 10:05 - 10:19 That almost trains ineptitude, right? Because what you're doing is you're teaching other people, well, I don't have to understand the business. I don't have to understand how to do my job. I don't have to understand how to fix any problems. Bruce Mcleod 10:19 - 10:37 And so people, unfortunately, get trained to become lazy. And ultimately, what I think that does for leadership is it trains, you don't have to hold people accountable. because your superheroes will hold people accountable, except they're not always in a position to do so, right? They may not have that authority. Bruce Mcleod 10:37 - 10:41 They may not have those other things that, you know, leadership really can and should take back. Spencer Horn 10:43 - 10:58 So thus the burnout and the frustration. And it sounds like that can lead to another issue. I think there's something that you call tribal knowledge. So talk a little bit about that. Spencer Horn 10:58 - 11:02 What is that and what's the issue and how's that related to what we're talking about? Bruce Mcleod 11:04 - 11:28 Yeah, so tribal knowledge, right? That's just the, hey, everybody just sort of organically knows because they've grown up with the company. And the tribal knowledge has a lot of value insofar as the person is there and available. at some point they need to go on to vacation, they need to retire, maybe they get stolen away, maybe they just get disinterested over time, right? Bruce Mcleod 11:29 - 11:58 And then what you lose is every bit of that investment walks out the door. Part of what I have in the framework is a middle component that I call a two-part epoxy of documentation and self-healing I think a lot of people get documentation wrong because they feel like it's a one-time event, right? Oh, let's have a company come in and document our processes. But, you know, as we talked about a little bit before, the documents need to be living and breathing. Bruce Mcleod 11:58 - 12:09 They are perpetually updated and that happens with what I call self-healing. Every time you're kicked out of your routine, you say, well, let me update this a little bit. Well, let me fix this. Let me keep this document relevant. Bruce Mcleod 12:10 - 12:32 And I think what that really does is you're able to say, well, there's no way we could ever document everybody's tribal knowledge, right? There's no way you can get a full brain dump from somebody. But I think some people use that as an excuse to never start. So you really have to be in the habit, especially as you grow, especially as you scale, you can say, how do I make sure I equip other people for success? Bruce Mcleod 12:32 - 12:45 Because one way to define success isn't the superhero that can solve the unsolvable. It's the person that can say, well, I'm going to make it such that the next person that comes in can pick up right where I left off. Spencer Horn 12:45 - 13:09 See, I think that's one of the I agree with you, Bruce. I think that's one of the I think that's the superpower, the ability to duplicate yourself and to and to develop other other leaders. And, you know, there's a there's a lot of reasons why that doesn't happen. I mean, doing that is a very different skill than typically the super performer is doing. Spencer Horn 13:09 - 13:45 I mean, it's human development and teaching, and those are some specialized skill sets. I have found, personally, in my work with teams, there are some reasons why tribal knowledge is Is not replicated in or what do you call it a codified, you know written down and In one case the you know, the senior leader that they wanted to really capture all of this person's Knowledge was close to retirement. So There was not a huge incentive. Spencer Horn 13:45 - 14:01 They really didn't care but worse than that They were afraid of being found out as incompetent, right? Because they didn't know how to explain or express. They just did it, right? It was just unconscious. Spencer Horn 14:02 - 14:18 And so there was some fear there that they would be exposed to the younger generations as somehow incompetent. I mean, there's a lot of dynamics that would cause that resistance to systematizing. Bruce Mcleod 14:19 - 14:37 Yeah, that certainly can be an aspect. I have seen more of what I have seen is the misbelief that there's job security and being a subject matter expert. Oh, well, if I teach other people, I'll lose my value. Exactly. Bruce Mcleod 14:37 - 14:56 And I think that comes from confusing being the most able to do something, the most competent, and they confuse that with being the only one who can, right? And those aren't synonymous. I might be the best person for the job as far as being able to get 100 out of 100. But what other value can I do? Bruce Mcleod 14:57 - 15:08 Right. What else can I do? And ultimately, if I'm not teaching other people these things, at least to get started to start making mistakes, because nobody's perfect at anything they do right out the door. No. Bruce Mcleod 15:08 - 15:26 If I'm not even starting to do that, then what? I can never take a vacation. I can never actually retire. Because what I've seen a lot of is sort of those that are close to retirement and going, Man, I didn't teach anybody all this time and now I'm afraid if I retire, I'll lose my legacy, right? Bruce Mcleod 15:26 - 15:40 What I've built will fall apart. What I've built will just crumble. And you really have to say, hey, you know what? The sooner I can teach people, the sooner I can hand things off well, the better it'll be. Spencer Horn 15:40 - 16:01 We have a long-time listener, a good friend, Kevin Martin from Texas. Glad that you're listening, Kevin. He says, in a world of firefighters, be smoky the bear and keep score of those scenarios you most likely prevented. Leaders should reward that behavior. Spencer Horn 16:02 - 16:25 As a Batman, I could create the elements of my own fires and have all the keys to recover from the firestorm I built, then rewarded as a hero. So you're creating your own scenarios. And when I should have been jailed as an arsonist? Bruce Mcleod 16:25 - 16:57 I'll just say thank you for that story because I've watched that happen where people would actually let embers, sparks turn into embers, embers into fires so that they could be seen putting out the fire because frankly, they loved the chaos. They loved the accolades of putting out the fire, you know, and all those things. In my book, I talk about this framework helps you shift away from putting out fires to putting out embers and even to preventing sparks. And because that's really what should be the behavior that's rewarded. Bruce Mcleod 16:57 - 16:59 That's that is a spot on comment. Spencer Horn 17:00 - 17:38 Well, you know, so that that speaks to something else that speaks to some some challenges within an organization. But before I go there, what is preventing leaders from from from creating these systems that you're talking about sooner and not and just stop relying on on the superheroes? What? I saw an article by Gallup April 9th that said manager engagement has gone down in 2021 from 31% to 22% in 2025. Spencer Horn 17:39 - 17:51 It seems like there might be some correlation there about what overwhelmed, burned out themselves, just relying on what's working because they just, the organizations are too flat. What are you seeing? Bruce Mcleod 17:53 - 18:11 Yeah, well, so right. What's preventing people from doing it? I think it's just even entertaining the idea that it could be true. That really is sort of my toughest barrier to entry with what I've seen is people even believing that maybe what always worked won't work anymore. Bruce Mcleod 18:12 - 18:27 And that's totally okay. I think some people have in their mind that, oh, if I admit that I need something new, then what used to work must have never been good. And that's not true at all, right? I mean, hey, what got you here was wonderful, and something new can take you even further. Bruce Mcleod 18:28 - 19:01 So be open to the idea that, hmm, if I'm starting to see these wears and tears that I didn't use to, Maybe I do need something new, and that is no slight on any work that you or anybody else has done. I think the other sort of adage, you know, thing that backs that up is the, well, it's always worked so far. And there's a lot more safety, at least perceived safety, I'll say, and saying, well, I don't want to rock the boat. If I rock the boat and try something new, I might get a worse result than I just, if I just stick with the old go-to. Bruce Mcleod 19:02 - 19:27 And that's, I'll say, tooting my own horn here, but that's really one of the geniuses, I think, of the healthy company framework is the way it builds these things. It way builds this framework in your business is it says, hey, continue to build on the good. Let's continue to build on what's already made a successful. And then let's do the things that and let's gets into the second part of that Gallup poll. Bruce Mcleod 19:27 - 19:50 Let's do the things that helps the managers feel more connected to what the business is doing. The oversimplified premise of the book is you can't have a healthy company without healthy individuals. It's important to call out that you can't just have healthy individuals and put them in a bad system, right? You need a healthy environment. Spencer Horn 19:50 - 20:02 So yeah, so you've made this distinction between healing the individual and healing the company. Why does that order matter and what goes wrong when a leader reverses it? Bruce Mcleod 20:04 - 20:30 I think if you, people may or may not like this, I sort of picked a fight with Friedman back in the 70s who said, you know, the sole premise of a company is to provide value to the shareholder. and if you just focus on that, the shareholder, and make sure the company and the employees are fine. I think that pendulum has swung so far that you say, hey, I don't really care how much I burn out my superheroes. I don't really care how much dead weight I have. Bruce Mcleod 20:30 - 20:55 As long as I hit my quarterly numbers, as long as the shareholders are happy, the business must be good. And I've come in with this sort of individual first approach to sort of shake up that old mentality of, well, as long as the numbers look good, the business must be fine. So even though I start with the individual, it's about building a framework that allows the individual to be healthy. Does that make sense? Spencer Horn 20:57 - 21:16 It does. And I still have some heartache about it, because if you think about it, yes, in the framework that I use, you have productivity. That's the numbers that you've talked about. But in order to sustain that productivity, you need healthy individuals. Spencer Horn 21:17 - 21:42 You need connection. You need relationships. So, but I believe you have to address both at the same time, because if you just address the health of the individual and put them back in a sick company, they're going to get infected again. So, you have to address the system at the same time, otherwise you're going to create You're not going to ultimately solve the problem, in my opinion. Bruce Mcleod 21:42 - 21:57 100% agree with that. And so what the framework does is it says, hey, you've got all these company measures, right? But what you probably don't have is the individual measures that connect the individual to the company. I think that's where people get unhealthy, right? Bruce Mcleod 21:58 - 22:18 That's where your underperformers just slack off and ride the waves. Your superheroes understand it, but maybe they can't explain it. Like we talked about, you know, the person that can't teach it, that can't do those things. That's the framework bridges that gap between your company measures that makes you successful and including those individuals that allow them to be healthy. Spencer Horn 22:20 - 22:42 So you talk about this healthy company framework and you say it starts with vision and purpose and maybe tying that to what the leader does and even the individual, but you're very specific that a vision statement alone is not enough. So what's missing and what's missing in how companies define their vision, I guess? Bruce Mcleod 22:43 - 22:54 Yeah, and I don't know that anything's necessarily missing in how people define their vision. I do think a vision needs an action, a who, and a benefit. What are you doing? Who are you doing it for? Bruce Mcleod 22:54 - 23:02 And ultimately, for what benefit? Right? Because that people need that to buy into that sounds really good. That's what I want to do. Bruce Mcleod 23:02 - 23:20 And then I think, unfortunately, a lot of companies stop there. They say, all right, got my vision, checkmark, you know, check that off my list. And then they just hope that everybody else understands how their role contributes to the vision. Hope is not a strategy, right? Bruce Mcleod 23:20 - 23:34 Hope is wonderful. It's not a strategy. So that's where I bring in purposes. What's the purpose of having an HR team, of having a product development team, of having any other department in your business? Bruce Mcleod 23:35 - 23:50 Because if you can't explain how that supports the vision, you end up with two very dangerous things because somebody could say, well, my work doesn't matter. Therefore, why should I try? What does that do? That brings down the quality of your work and the experience of everybody involved. Bruce Mcleod 23:50 - 24:07 You also run the risk of somebody saying, oh, well, I support the vision by doing this wildly inappropriate thing over in left field and inappropriate could just mean this isn't serving the market. We're trying to go to like you're working hard. You're doing a lot of wonderful things, but. We're not going to Albuquerque. Bruce Mcleod 24:07 - 24:20 We're going to New York. You went off in the wrong direction. And leaving that up to hope and to chance, you know, I think is really the beginning of where you start getting misalignment, where you start getting that disconnection and unhealthy things. Spencer Horn 24:33 - 24:41 So it seems like that introduces then what you're talking about now is your concept of units per group. Is that right? Bruce Mcleod 24:42 - 24:42 That's right. Spencer Horn 24:43 - 24:47 Why don't you just describe that? What does that mean? How does that relate to what we're talking about? Bruce Mcleod 24:48 - 24:57 Yeah, so I've drawn this out on a board. I don't have a whiteboard behind me, but you know, the company's got a vision. The company has KPIs. They've got their measures. Bruce Mcleod 24:57 - 25:08 They've got their things. And the individual almost usually has nothing. They're just told to support the company and to hit the company metrics. So that's where, for vision, I bring in purposes. Bruce Mcleod 25:08 - 25:20 Okay, this is how your specific work matters. And it answers the why, right? Why does my work matter? And ultimately, what it does is it puts the manager and the employee on the same page to cut through the gray. Bruce Mcleod 25:21 - 25:42 You can automate black and white stuff. But you hire people because they're going to be things that you go, gosh, how do I navigate this? That purpose is help give direction to, I'm headed towards New York, to hit our vision using that thing I just used. And units per group say, here are the routine chunks of work that you're going to do day in and day out. Bruce Mcleod 25:42 - 25:56 Because most of the time, people don't think in terms of the month end or quarter end reports. They're the targets that they're aiming for. They're the goal lines that they're trying to hit. But day in and day out, what are they trying to do? Bruce Mcleod 25:56 - 26:05 Well, hey, as a salesperson, I've got to make my cold calls. I've got to do my demos. I got to get proposals out. That's how I think of my day and my week. Bruce Mcleod 26:05 - 26:28 And ultimately, that leads to quota and revenue. So units per group is a fancy way of saying the daily activity. Some people call them the leading activities or other things there. I'll ride this wave a little bit more and say units per group carries with it a lot of important elements that then unify the communication style across the organization. Bruce Mcleod 26:28 - 26:50 So as work flows through the organization, everybody can speak in terms of, well, here's what I do day in and day out. Here's about how long it takes me to get this stuff done. So I can now really, without having to go to a calendar, understand my scheduling. I can understand my work, you know, throughput throughout my organization with very little effort. Bruce Mcleod 26:50 - 26:51 So that's really. Spencer Horn 26:52 - 26:59 Sorry, this is really great. Could you give a, could you give a real live example of what you're talking about? Yeah, so work in real life. Bruce Mcleod 27:01 - 27:23 So the biggest one for me is, I was working in the contract world of an organization, and it required a lot, it required four or five different teams to do input to make sure everything was right. And, well, those other teams are doing other work that they don't care about the quoting of the sales team. They ought to because without sales, what don't you have? You don't have revenue. Bruce Mcleod 27:23 - 27:35 You don't have work. Well, they would get things done anywhere from the same day to a month later, just kind of whenever they felt like it. And when you go through and say, hey, we need to find these units. We need to define this work. Bruce Mcleod 27:35 - 27:59 Let's put together a max duration on this stuff that this takes no more than three business days. Well, now the salesperson can say, it's not a crapshoot now of whether or not I'm going to get my work back to me. I know I'm going to get it within five total business days, because across all the groups, it ended up being five days total of the work getting done. So they could say, great, I'm going to go see this customer next week. Bruce Mcleod 27:59 - 28:09 I'll put my work in now, and now I know I will get it, as opposed to the old embarrassing of, hey, I showed up without a proposal, and I don't know when I'm going to be able to give it to you. Spencer Horn 28:11 - 28:49 How would this relate to say, let's put the role of a project manager who is on a specific project and has individual responsibilities for certain parts of moving the project forward. and yet doesn't have authority over the different departments who have to create deliverables that this project manager is responsible for. And that these other departments, which this project manager has no authority over, does exactly what you say. They sometimes deliver something in a month or three days. Spencer Horn 28:49 - 29:22 And so the project manager literally can't move forward until they wait for someone else to do their part. And so the project manager attempts to step up and take a more of a leadership role and challenge and invite. How can an organization fix that dynamic? How do you, without having the authority to say, hey, you got to get me that stuff, when we're oftentimes talking to peers who are letting you down? Bruce Mcleod 29:23 - 29:51 I'll just reinforce, this speaks to why you have to implement the framework company-wide and heal the company and the individual at the same time. This is a phenomenal example of why both have to happen to have a healthy company. And when you say, okay, how do these people talk about these things? I think some people can misunderstand sort of the units per group and the time elements to mean, well, this is how long it takes me. Bruce Mcleod 29:51 - 30:14 And then separately, they talk about a schedule, right? Because that's really what the project manager is dealing with is scheduling. How do I get all of the dominoes to line up and fall in in the right order? When you bring in something like units per group and you put it in the way that the healthy company framework teaches, you end up saying, hey, we know this is the expected deadline for when this is done. Bruce Mcleod 30:14 - 30:33 And we're communicating overlappingly, almost like a relay race where you hand off the baton. We now have built in communications between each other of what we're expecting. What am I expecting from the person who hands me work? Am I correctly handing off my work to the person who receives it? Bruce Mcleod 30:33 - 31:08 When you build all those things in together, people start developing a cadence and a pattern that goes, oh, I know this is supposed to be done in five days. I've got three people out this week, thanks to whatever it is. I'm going to proactively communicate to this person now so we can get ahead of things. So the way the framework is built, it generates more communication and more proactive communication around those issues so that ideally, yeah, you and your peers can solve things without having to say, well, I'm going to tell on you to my boss, and then my boss is going to Bruce Mcleod 31:08 - 31:11 chew out your boss is going to chew you out later, right? Nobody enjoys that. Spencer Horn 31:12 - 31:21 So this sounds like the start of healing, right? That communication. So your framework includes something called self-healing. What does that mean? Spencer Horn 31:22 - 31:27 And how do you build a team that learns from its own mistakes instead of repeating them? Bruce Mcleod 31:28 - 31:43 Ultimately, companies are really good at the reactive healing, right? Right, yeah. The PR people are so good at spinning a story and doing all those things. And usually that's enough for people to say, phew, let's get that out of the news cycle. Bruce Mcleod 31:43 - 32:00 It's fine. Even if the news cycle is your internal, you know, things are going well. But they leave off the second half of self-healing, which is the proactive part and go, how do I prevent this from happening again? This goes back to Kevin's point of putting out the embers before they become fires. Bruce Mcleod 32:00 - 32:24 So self-healing is that both a reactive and a proactive healing that you teach everybody in your organization to do. And it starts with, I'm going to go back to why the framework is so connected, those units per group. I call those units the routine chunks of work that you loop through. Well, when you loop through your same work again and you get kicked out of it for some exception, that's when you apply self-healing. Bruce Mcleod 32:25 - 32:35 You say, oh, hey, this threw me out. Oh, this is a new feature from Windows that we have to deal with with our product. This is a new government regulation. This is a new whatever. Bruce Mcleod 32:36 - 32:59 Well, you can say and scream to your boss and do all these things, but if your organization is in the habit of going, hey, let's prevent things, let's build that into our work cadence, You now have an organization that heals, not just your own job, but heals how it communicates with other people in the organization that does nothing but benefit the customer and every other beneficiary of the business. Spencer Horn 33:00 - 33:07 So what happens to a team when no one knows how their work connects to the bigger picture? Bruce Mcleod 33:08 - 33:30 Yeah. An old coworker of mine used to say, if you optimize every department in a silo, you'll drive the throughput to zero, right? Because every team is just going to say, well, I'll do as little work as I possibly can to get it off my plate. So when you do what you said, you end up with a company that everything gets dropped. Bruce Mcleod 33:30 - 33:41 So, right, the customer is now having to babysit their support ticket. The product, it gets riddled and riddled and riddled with more and more quality issues. You're having to fix more and more things. You get more rework. Bruce Mcleod 33:41 - 34:03 You have more wasted money due to wasted time or literal wasted product of what you have. So, that's a very real world. I think most companies have found that, you know, Unfortunately, most companies wait till it's a multi-million dollar problem as opposed to building in a proactive way to prevent those things. Spencer Horn 34:04 - 34:15 Did you say that pain is a lagging indicator? What does that mean for how leaders should read their organization when that pain appears? Bruce Mcleod 34:17 - 34:48 I'll lead by saying, right, you can't, you know, react to everything that everybody brings you. You've got a limited scope. I think what gets missed with that is, and I actually, I wish I remembered the study, but in my book, I talk about how business leaders are the last to find out about something wrong, right? It's the customer, and then the frontline knows, and then other people know, and then your profits know, and then that's when you find out is when, uh-oh, The numbers are going, the lines are going the wrong direction on the graph. Bruce Mcleod 34:48 - 35:16 So I think one of the biggest things business leaders can do is when they first hear rumblings of something, understand that it's been going on way longer than you realize. There are exceptions to that just like there are to everything. You might just have an irate customer who had a true fluke instance. But care a little bit more, lean in a little bit more, be more curious about the rumblings you hear because the higher up you are in a company, the longer it takes for you to hear those rumblings. Spencer Horn 35:32 - 35:46 You write about the first 20%, the middle 60%, the last 20% model for understanding how work flows as we're talking about workflows right now. So break that down for us and how does it change the way that people think about their role? Bruce Mcleod 35:47 - 36:19 Yeah, so the third principle of the framework is know what you're doing and I call that the 20-60-20 way to know what you're doing. I think all of us at some point in our lives have experienced the, we're going to shove you in the deep end, immersion, drink from a fire hose sort of approach to doing one's job. And what that ultimately does is you could say, well, that, yeah, that weeds out the really smart people, you know, the, you know, the, the people that can swim, we'll figure it out. They'll figure out how to solve this problem. Bruce Mcleod 36:20 - 36:37 I argue that actually creates superheroes. That approach. is what is part creating the superheroes in your organization. But what that also does is it teaches sort of a heads down, blinders on, hear no evil, see no evil, just get your job done approach. Bruce Mcleod 36:38 - 36:55 Now, you have to know what you're doing, right? You have to know, you have to be competent at what your job demands of you. But that's just 60% of it. The first 20%, as I talked a little bit earlier, the first 20% is knowing where does my work come from? Bruce Mcleod 36:55 - 37:06 Who's handing me work? Part one, and am I communicating with those people? So it's not enough just to know, oh, yeah, I get tickets from the customer. Okay, which customers are handing you work? Bruce Mcleod 37:06 - 37:24 Did you get a support ticket from the CEO or from somebody who's on the front lines? Because those arguably should be treated a little bit differently. Did you get a support ticket from somebody who can't process payroll? Because that's very different than somebody who's having a bug issue on a screen. Bruce Mcleod 37:24 - 37:44 So who is handing you work? Are you aware of why they're asking you your job? That is incredibly important to know and be curious about and have built into I'm going to draw it back to your units per group. It's important to have those things built into, we expect you to know this as part of your job competencies, right? Bruce Mcleod 37:45 - 37:59 The last 20% is the inverse. Who do I hand my work to? And not just who do you hand it to, am I handing it to them in a way that sets them up for success? I used a reference to the baton relay race. Bruce Mcleod 37:59 - 38:17 I'll tell a quick story about the Japan men's team. I think in 2019, it was not the Olympics, right? We all become experts at the track and field events and the baton relays and stuff every four years. But in this instance, it was one of the other, you know, sort of lead up events. Bruce Mcleod 38:18 - 38:32 And the Japan men's team was the winner, right? They were going to be the winner. They were phenomenal. I forget if it was the second or third handoff of the men's 4x4 100, this guy tries to hand off the baton and they bobble it. Bruce Mcleod 38:33 - 38:59 And it gets bobbled, and bobbled, and bobbled, and somehow the guy like elbows it, and the second guy is able to like catch it and do it, and they end up doing really well. Except unfortunately that bobble was a forward pass, which you can't throw the baton, and so they were disqualified. So it's not even just about knowing who does my, who do I hand my work to, right? He knew who he handed it to. Bruce Mcleod 39:00 - 39:27 Are you handing it off in a way that sets them up for success? I argue that is so important to understand for your business. Do people understand that they aren't just closing a ticket, they aren't just getting a job done, but they're actually making sure that the problem was solved, that the next person who gets it in line gets it. That's all built into how you build the framework and how you make sure you elevate everybody up, not just your superheroes working extra hard. Spencer Horn 39:28 - 39:45 Sounds like very valuable information, and that's in the book. Yes, yeah, it is. So you share the story of Susan, who's the burned-out all-star, who leaves and can't be replaced. So what's the leadership failure that created that? Spencer Horn 39:45 - 39:47 And how common is that? Bruce Mcleod 39:49 - 40:04 I think it's more common than people want to admit. The superstar leaves and you go, oh, well, we just can't compete with this private equity money. Or, well, they just changed their mind. They just wanted to go pursue a different opportunity. Bruce Mcleod 40:04 - 40:21 And maybe that's what they said on their exit interview. I know a lot of those stories and I know me personally, I can't just magically stop caring about something, right? If I'm passionate about something, I don't wake up one day and go, well, I'm done. You know, I still care. Bruce Mcleod 40:21 - 40:45 So it's a long, you know, sort of decline of why people decline and seem to just check out. And ultimately, I think that comes from, at least in Susan's case, as I use Susan amalgamation of, you know, a dozen different stories and people. Right, right, right. It comes from saying, well, Susan hasn't complained so far, and the company numbers still look good. Bruce Mcleod 40:45 - 41:22 We'll go back to the old adage of 80% of our work comes from 20% of our workforce and just be okay with that. I don't talk about this so much in the book, but it sort of comes down to the concept of people are who they're allowed to be. And ultimately, I think a lot of company leadership allows the superhero to be the superhero, but they also allow the underperformer to be the underperformer. And eventually, the more that you allow that, the greater the divide is between your superstars and your underperformers, which creates friction and frustration and breaks your system. Bruce Mcleod 41:22 - 41:30 And that's why it's tough to replace them. And then you talk about, you have now C and D players because you haven't created a culture of accountability. Spencer Horn 41:31 - 41:38 Yeah. Talk about, then there's the Jerry's that you talk about. What's the difference between Jerry and Susan? Bruce Mcleod 41:39 - 41:57 So Susan's your frontline superstar that burns out. And Jerry is, you know, very well could be her boss. Jerry is the one who's, you know, worked his way up through the ranks, been around 20, 30 years. And ultimately they just go, yeah, you know what? Bruce Mcleod 41:58 - 42:08 I can see the horizon and that's retirement on the horizon. So I'm just going to sort of let things be as long as I still look good. Right. That means I don't hold people accountable. Bruce Mcleod 42:09 - 42:24 That means I just say, hey, as long as you make me look good and don't rock the boat, you know, that's that's great with me. But what does that start doing? It starts masking problems. It starts shifting away from putting out those embers that we want to put out. Bruce Mcleod 42:24 - 42:43 And then all of a sudden you start having more fires, which may look good. Right. You know, as Kevin said, you may have some arsonists in your company. But if you've got a Jerry that's going to protect them and you reward that behavior, you may have some Jerrys around you that go, wait, why are we having more fires than we used to? Spencer Horn 42:55 - 43:15 So if a leader is listening to this and they finish our conversation, Bruce, and they want to start implementing one piece of your framework tomorrow, where do you tell them to begin and why? Give some, you know, other than go get the book. Where do they start? Bruce Mcleod 43:16 - 43:24 Well, the framework is built sequentially. It's got three principles. They're numbered as such. So start with your vision and purposes. Bruce Mcleod 43:25 - 43:42 Your company probably has a vision. Start with purposes. Can you say, well, if I'm the CEO, what is the actual purpose of my COO? my chief HR, my VP of sales, chief sales officer, what is the purpose of each of them? Bruce Mcleod 43:43 - 43:58 And don't think of the people, think of the role, right? Because those people, they're going to retire at some point, right? Or maybe you're looking to hire for those things. Start with those purposes, and then pick your favorite, your most frustrating one, either way, and say, well, now who reports to them? Bruce Mcleod 43:59 - 44:06 What are their purposes? What is the action that they do? Who do they do it for and what's that benefit? Go think about those things. Bruce Mcleod 44:06 - 44:16 Go implement those things because I guarantee you'll find while you may innately know it, you need to be able to communicate that to other people because you've asked other people to come work for your business. Spencer Horn 44:18 - 44:36 You know, we were talking earlier before the show and we were talking about another Gallup report about employee engagement going down. As we start to wrap up, I mean, what is it that you want our listeners to hear and anything that we haven't covered that you really want to focus on? Bruce Mcleod 44:38 - 45:12 I think it's very easy to get lost in the gloom and doom and even the blame game. And so what I really hope you can take away from this is that you are in so much more control of the health and culture of your company than you realize. It may not feel that way, especially as we talked earlier about, you know, you go from that smaller to larger threshold, and that may not have been 150 employees for you, but you're in so much more control than you realize about how to really instill that health by making sure you have the right connectivity points throughout your business. Spencer Horn 45:13 - 45:33 So how long does it take for a culture to heal? I mean, I'm sure it's different, obviously, there's things that, you know, size and complexity of the system, but give us maybe some success stories or some examples of what you've seen work. Bruce Mcleod 45:33 - 45:51 Yeah, I think, you know, there's a difference between to start healing and to be healed. The to be healed depends on how bad it is, right? Just like any sort of surgery or break you have in your own body. I think it's very easy to start seeing healing within 30 to 60 days. Bruce Mcleod 45:51 - 46:23 If you really say, hey, I'm going to come in and get this done, I'm going to come in and care about and be genuine about what I'm doing, you can start seeing results within a quarter. I know I said 30 to 60 days, maybe a quarter is easier to think about it. But if you said, hey, what if by our next, you know, even internal earnings report, if you're not public, You can see that. One of the success stories that I think is, to me, the most drastic I've seen is I worked at a place that very much had a sales versus operations mentality. Bruce Mcleod 46:24 - 46:45 It was not sales to operation, it was sales versus. And boy, they love throwing each other, pushing each other under the bus, holding them down so they would get hit by the bus. But when you started saying, hey, ultimately, neither side was doing what they needed to. They weren't handing off that work well. Bruce Mcleod 46:46 - 46:59 We're able to implement a lot of things that said, hey, well, let's make sure the sales team actually is doing what they're supposed to, because they weren't. And operations team, you really didn't understand what you needed. And that's OK. We can help you understand what you need. Bruce Mcleod 47:00 - 47:20 Really bridging that gap between, I didn't know you needed this. Here's what you need. It didn't, it healed the sales versus operations. And sorry, I'm speechless here because it really is tough to put into words how drastic and how much of an improvement that is. Bruce Mcleod 47:20 - 47:49 And you may know that at your company from product, even product versus product. It could be managers versus employees. But the success that I think is the most real to me is those instances where you say, hey, we've got people on the same page now about getting the work done. So now it's our team versus the work, no longer our team versus the other half of the team. Spencer Horn 47:56 - 48:12 All right, Bruce, we have what we like to call a lightning round. And I give you just these short questions, and your response is just one sentence, one word, whatever is appropriate for this. Are you ready? Bruce Mcleod 48:13 - 48:14 I'll do my best. Spencer Horn 48:14 - 48:22 All right, here we go. Which is the better instrument, tuba or trombone? Bruce Mcleod 48:22 - 48:25 Trombone. Spencer Horn 48:25 - 48:32 First 20%, middle 60% or last 20%, which is where most teams break down? Bruce Mcleod 48:33 - 48:34 Last 20%. Spencer Horn 48:35 - 48:39 Vision statement or no vision statement, which is worse if it isn't believed? Bruce Mcleod 48:41 - 48:47 Ooh, I'm going to go with no vision statement. Spencer Horn 48:47 - 48:50 Finish the sentence. Great teamwork happens when? Bruce Mcleod 48:51 - 48:54 People care about the success of everybody on the team. Spencer Horn 48:55 - 49:07 One word for what a company loses first when it grows too fast? Communication. Individual accountability or team accountability? Pick one to build first. Bruce Mcleod 49:09 - 49:10 Team accountability. Spencer Horn 49:12 - 49:15 Have you ever been Susan, Jerry, or neither? Bruce Mcleod 49:16 - 49:19 I have definitely been Susan, hopefully I have not been Jerry. Spencer Horn 49:22 - 49:25 Documentation or communication, which saves more companies? Bruce Mcleod 49:26 - 49:27 Communication. Spencer Horn 49:28 - 49:33 Fill in the blank, a leader's job isn't to be the answer, it's to? Bruce Mcleod 49:33 - 49:36 Help people discover the answer. Spencer Horn 49:38 - 49:46 Yes, I 100% agree. Healthy company or growing company? If you could have only one, which would you choose? Bruce Mcleod 49:47 - 49:47 Healthy. Spencer Horn 49:48 - 49:53 What's one thing every leader should stop tolerating on their team starting today? Bruce Mcleod 49:53 - 49:57 Excuses. Spencer Horn 49:58 - 50:22 Well, Bruce, we really enjoyed having you on the show and great, great information for our listeners. We thank you so much. If our listeners are wanting to reach out to you and learn more about your system and the Healthy Company framework, how do they get a hold of you? How do they get a hold of the book? Bruce Mcleod 50:23 - 50:31 The book is available on Amazon. Just look for the Healthy Company Framework on Amazon. You'll find it. Best way to get in touch with me is through my website. Bruce Mcleod 50:31 - 50:45 So, my business is Company Connections. The website's company-connections.com. And actually, the best way to do it is through the contact us on the website. That makes sure the email filters don't catch a direct email or anything. Bruce Mcleod 50:45 - 50:55 Uh, that's the best way to get in touch. I'd love to hear about your situation. If you're going, I don't know if this is going to help me or not. I'd love to tell you how I think it could, or, you know, maybe it won't. Bruce Mcleod 50:56 - 51:04 I'd love to tell you that too. If, um, you know, but we'd love to hear about your situation and, um, just engage in what's going on. Spencer Horn 51:04 - 51:39 We'll put your website and a link to the book in the show notes. And listeners, we are so grateful that you joined with us today. Like and subscribe our podcast, Teamwork a Better Way. We are working hard to bring you great content to help you lead and help your teams perform in a healthy, productive way that when they leave those careers, they will have left a legacy of not only great performance, but teams around them that have also created the same Spencer Horn 51:39 - 51:50 legacy. That's really what we're wanting to do here is create something that you're proud of as leaders and team members. And that's why we spend so much time. We care about this. Spencer Horn 51:50 - 52:10 We're so grateful, Bruce, to you for bringing your perspective on this very important topic. Thank you all and we'll catch you on Monday. We have a special episode since I remembered. We don't always do that, but I remember we have our guest. Spencer Horn 52:11 - 52:37 Oh my goodness, I'm on the wrong day. There it is, the 18th. May we have Ricardo Vargas from Portugal who we've had before so come back and listen to our show on Monday morning if you're in the Western Hemisphere or wherever you are join us morning noon or night and we will talk to you aga