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Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
What Are Common Stumbling Blocks To Business Growth?
In this episode, we examine The 5 Threatening Truths of Business:
The Technical Founder Paradox: When the skills, abilities, and mindset of the founders, which were crucial to starting and growing the business, are what stand in the way of the business’ sustainability and scalability.
The Fragile Grip Principle: The acknowledgment of how the fragile relationship, between employers and employees, is handled by businesses greatly impacts their future success.
The Revenue Stabilizing Blindspot: The effect caused by businesses undervaluing positions that stabilize revenue, instead only favoring positions that generate revenue.
The Business Law of The Linchpin: The dependency businesses create on a single person or position for stability and growth that puts the business’ sustainability at risk.
The Action is Reaction Fallacy: The mistaken mindset that the business can survive and grow by only reacting, that success can come without acting with strategic intent.
Our prescription for this episode: take a step back and reflect on the degree to which these Threatening Truths are influencing your business. A fresh mindset, proper structures and processes, and strategic interventions can and will make a world of difference.
Past Episodes Referenced:
Season: 1 Episode: 10: What To Expect From The Labour Market In 2023?
Season: 2 Episode: 21: What Is The Technical Founder Paradox?
You can reach out to us to talk more about how to resolve these issues, just reach out to us at info@roman3.ca or through our LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/roman3
Don't forget to sign up for our New Quarterly Newsletter coming this fall!
About Our Hosts!
James is an experienced business coach with a specialization in HR management and talent attraction and retention.
Coby is a skilled educator and has an extensive background in building workforce and organizational capacity.
For a little more on our ideas and concepts, check out our Knowledge Suite or our YouTube Channel, Solutions Explained by Roman 3.
Breaking down everyday workplace issues and diagnosing the hidden sickness, not just the obvious symptom. Our hosts, James and Coby.
[COBY]:Did we lose a patient?
[JAMES]:No, that's just my lunch.
[COBY]:Hey, thanks for joining us. I'm Coby, he's James. And let's get started with the question. What are common stumbling blocks to business growth?
[JAMES]:Yeah. There are five kind of truths that we've identified in coined, that cause significant damage to a client's ability to grow. We, often use these terms with clients to help describe how the situation that they're facing. it can be identified, and if it can be identified, then it can be resolved with targeted interventions. Now, two of the things, two of these five ideas, that we've coined, we've talked about in the past; The Technical Founder Paradox and the Fragile Grip Principle, both really important to understand how they impact business growth. But there are three others that I think are important to talk about, to define and to address if we want our companies to continue to grow sustainably. And so the three that I want to focus our conversation around are the Revenue Stabilizing Blindspot, the Business Law of The Linchpin, and the Action is Reaction Fallacy. And I think if we spend the majority of our time, talking about those three ideas, then we can really, dig into what are these stumbling blocks and how do they impact business growth.
[COBY]:Yeah, we find, like, I guess these are five things that we have. Just five trends that we've seen in all the work we've done with businesses over the years. We've kind of identified, like, you know, these, these common situations and these common problems that it's. It's helpful to kind of, again, put a bit of a label to, and a bit of a. Kind of a bit of a visualization and awareness around. Because then businesses know, okay, this is something that's not a unique problem to me. I haven't done anything wrong. This is just kind of one of those things that kind of happen. And, we kind of got here organically. But, but more importantly, there's a way out of this. These, you know, there are processes and strategies that have worked in the past that will hopefully work for me. So.
[JAMES]:Well, one thing that you said is really important to reiterate, that it removes blame. Right. by identifying the situations and identifying how they, impact a lot of different businesses, it removes blame from any one person, as it's not a mistake that we need to correct you. It's a situation that we find ourselves in that we can work through together.
[COBY]:Yeah, exactly. And so that's why, again, like, you know, when we. We kind of identify, we kind of. We had these things that we always kind of saw, and we kind of had these kind of casual names for, but they were like, well, let's actually like, you know, put some, you know, let's put a name and definition behind it, so it becomes a bit of an awareness tool for the organization, and then we can be more formalized and more methodical and intentional in how we address them. And so when we introduced a while back, the Fragile Grip Principle, we talked about it kind of, again, it's about how employees, or how businesses kind of, handle having employees. And when we talked about The Technical Founder Paradox, like, you know, kind of at the end of, the. In the last season, it was about kind of what happens with leadership skills or the skills that leaders or founders kind of have and in their business. And so these became very topical in some of the conversations that we were having at those times, which is why they kind of bubbled at the top. But now we're like, you know what? These are things that we talk about with our partners and our clients, and they really find them helpful to go, okay, I can see. I can visualize that. Oh, I see. That's a. The problem we're running into. So we're just. By having these terms and the definitions are kind of all in the show notes, it really does make it easier for people to really kind of identify, okay, this is a problem. Now that we've seen it and now we've got a better handle on it, we can actually start to resolve it, which is really kind of the point of them.
[JAMES]:Yeah, I think it's important, before we jump into the three new ones, if we just take a second and reiterate what is the Fragile Grip Principle and what is The Technical Founder Paradox, and we can get those done, and then jump into the meat of what we want to discuss.
[COBY]:Sure. So let's start off, and I'll just come to a quick summary of the definition and of what The Technical Founder Paradox is, because we did that one the most recently. So a Technical Founder Paradox is when the skills, abilities, and mindset of the founders of the company, which were crucial to starting and growing the business, are what stand in the way of that business's sustainability and scalability. So it really is about kind of, you know, the founders got the business to a certain point, but they hit a threshold where they can't seem to break past the ceiling because the skills that they need for this next chapter are not currently what they have. So by default, it's their older skills. It's kind of what's holding them back.
[JAMES]:Yeah, we see this one frequently. and when we say Technical Founder Paradox, we're not just talking about a technical position or technology. We're talking about any skill set that is specifically like, the technical understanding of what it takes to do the job to start the business. it happens pretty organically, because the reason why we start businesses is because we have a deep understanding of an industry or a, niche within an industry, and we create a business to fill that need. But working in the business and getting a, product or service, launched and out there is a different skill set than really working on the business and being able to drive growth and performance and productivity and managing people and all of these other things. And we frequently see this, leading to things like micromanagement, where leaders just cannot get out of the weeds and get out of their own way, quite honestly.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah. And I mean, like you say, it's not just about kind of like technology. So, like, you know, if you're a excellent baker and you form a bakery or a restaurant or whatever like that, you know, and the skills that you have as an excellent baker, you know, might not be the skills you need to grow a successful business. So then you eventually you hit that ceiling. Right? So. So, yeah, so it is a really helpful thing for people to realize. This is so common, and it's something that if you understand, okay, this is actually something I can put my, I can grab ahold of then, okay. We can actually move past it now that we kind of know what is causing these problems, which is why we fought. We've talked about this one a lot recently in our work and our clients and our partners. It's a major topic of conversation in a lot of the work we've been doing lately. So it's a really good one for people to realize, and it's a good self reflection point for a lot of business owners and business leaders to go, do I have the skills to grow, to level up our business to the next stage? And if not, what do I do about it? So we don't want to go too much into this one, because, like I said, we just did an episode last season. I'll put the episode number and name in the show notes. So if you. This is interesting for you. We're kind of, we're going to move on past it. But if you want to learn more about it after you finish this episode. Go listen to that episode, because I'll put the episode in the show notes. but why don't we do the same thing with the Fragile Grip Principle? So I'll just define that one really quickly. So the Fragile Grip Principle was something we talked about, I think, kind of, in our first season around, I think we did an episode on what's coming in 2023. we kind of introduced this one there. But the Fragile Grip Principle is defined as the acknowledgement of how fragile the relationship between employees and employers are, and that the way that relationship is handled by employers greatly impacts the future success of their business. And within the Fragile Grip Principle, there are three grips. The Harsh Grip, where you grip too tight and crush the fragile bond like a raw egg in your hand. They try and squeeze out every ounce of productivity, and work they can out of employees. The Weak Grip is when they grip too loose, neglecting the fragile bond and dropping the egg on the floor. They can see hard times coming and abandon people, or they can just have to laissez-faire attitude when it comes to people, management and productivity. and the third one is The Stable Grip. And this is where we can grip with balance. We can support the fragile bond to maintain its integrity. This provides the proper attention, care and long term mutual benefit that the relationship between an employee and employer was designed for.
[JAMES]:What I like about the Fragile Grip Principle is that there is a tenuous relationship there. business needs are in opposition in many respects to employee needs, and we need to balance that in some level of fairness. The harsh grip is pretty easy to understand. it's a classical authoritarian, leadership or, style, where you're really just trying to milk every ounce of productivity out of people and you squeeze, essentially squeeze the life out of them. The weak grip. And, is something that's interesting. We've seen it actually, play out in a number of different ways. And oftentimes what we see is not only the idea of, you know, just letting people go at a moment's notice or not like, not caring about that relationship, but also like a lack of structure, or policies or rules that support performance. We sometimes see it as, being conflict adverse, you know, not willing to, hold people to account or someone who maybe they come from that harsh grip. The authoritarian environment is an over correction. And just this casual, attitude, towards employee relationships or trying to be everybody's friend, which is just going to land you in more trouble down the road.
[COBY]:Right? Yeah. And then idea of The Stable Grip is really about trying to find that balance of how do you empower employees by giving them what they need, but also. Bye. Having high expectations of their work and supporting them to deliver on that, treating them in a way that will hold on to them for the long term. So when we use the Fragile Grip Principle and kind of the work that we do, it's really easy to kind of to identify quite early on the harsh grip and the weak grip, and try and help them move towards a stable grip. But again, it is, again, a bit of a classification piece, but it can be a really helpful, kind of just lens to view the. That relationship between employee and employers through. Like, what's the fundamental principles behind a lot of that? So, like I said, we had an episode about that, that I'll put the show notes. We also have an article about the Fragile Grip Principle, on our knowledge suite. And there's a link to our knowledge suite, in the show notes, in every episode, but also The Technical Founder Paradox and Friedrich principle. If you want more about those episodes or listen to show notes, there's also articles on knowledge suite about both of them, actually. So, that being said, if you're interested in those, that's where you can find them. But let's move on and spend most of the time talking about the three new ones that we haven't really talked about in the podcast before, because I think people are going to find them as helpful and hopefully can be kind of as enlightening for people to kind of say, oh, that's kind of. That makes sense, what that is. And maybe help them identify problematic issues that might be threatening their business.
[JAMES]:Yeah, and the one. So the one that I want to talk about first is one that I'm honestly most excited about. it's such a critical piece in how we look at a number of different aspects. So it's the Revenue Stabilizing Blindspot. Ah, and really what we're talking about is the effect that's caused by businesses undervaluing positions that stabilize revenue, instead only favoring positions that generate revenue. What I really love about this is that, we see this mentality frequently in terms especially, in smaller business or at, ah, the startup stage, where everything is focused on external growth. everything is about, Well, depending on might be billable hours, or it might be sales, metrics, or everything is framed through the lens of, every position needs to be generating revenue for us. And not understanding the value, the cost savings the tremendous support that happens when you have these revenue stabilizing positions that maybe they're not focused on generating you new revenue, but they are what's going to keep, the ship running smoothly, properly, and headed in the right direction.
[COBY]:Yeah. So let's be a little bit clear when we talk about the kind of the two. So I think everyone's on the same page with what we mean by revenue generating positions. These are like sales positions, billable hours, kind of the experts that, you know, that are out there, that are holding client time, they're the ones that cause money to come in. There's, you know, whatever it is, whatever your revenue model is, those are directly responsible for that revenue coming in. Super valuable. No one's ever argued against that. But what we're saying is that sometimes those are the only positions that businesses can justify, you know, investing in. Because, you know, I invest in one person, they make enough money for me to have two people. That's how business works. But the thing is, is that so many businesses, especially, you're right, in the kind of early phases, or they're small, or at the beginning of a major growth stage, overvalue what a revenue generating position is. And they don't realize that you have a revenue stabilizing position can be the key to actually getting even more out of the revenue generating ones. What we mean by revenue stabilizing, these are the ones that are the, you know, less outward facing. These are the inward facing positions that might be support positions or admin positions, or maintenance positions, kind of whatever it is that's maximizing, and, the revenue generating positions, but also it allowing for those people to be sustained and have a long term impact, and not just a bottle rocket high up and then burnout. It's about being able to reach that high level and maintain that high level. And that is just as important as the money coming in, being able to hold on to that amount of money for the long term.
[JAMES]:And most critical to the work that we do, and probably to the people who are listening, is HR is a revenue stabilizing, position, no question. And it is oftentimes we see the way that businesses, view HR is very dependent on whether or not they understand the difference between revenue generating and revenue stabilizing. And if they value revenue stabilizing. We often hear the language of HR is a cost center, which is a really poor way of describing the value that HR brings. But HR, as a revenue stabilizing center, gets to a better, better, gets to the heart of what strategic HR management does and how. If we invest in not only ensuring that we are legally compliant, but ensuring that we have progressive, HR strategies, that we are focusing on retaining our people that we have are building, you know, that we're using our hierarchy, right. That we're focusing on removing job dissatisfaction and building psychological safety, inclusion, engagement. These things will not only stabilize your revenue, it will make it easier for your revenue generating positions to perform better.
[COBY]:Yeah. And we talked about in, a few previous episodes, our strength based, team model. Our spectrum program, which is about the idea of strength based teams, are built on complementary skill sets. And the key is that if you have a revenue generating team, they should be supported by a revenue stabilizing team to complement them. Because if you don't want all that extra p, all those extra, like, you know, administrative pieces or all the non revenue generating activities to be taken up by all that time and has them, you know, less, doing less sales and doing more men work, then you need the positions that will allow them to kind of play their strengths and let those that are generating revenue focused on generating revenue by probably supporting them and stabilizing that work and their work and processes and systems to make sure that the stuff is going to be not just short term beneficial, but long term beneficial. And that's the thing that we often see when businesses undervalue. Again, revenue stabilized. Positions like HR have a very short term view of business sustainability and people sustainability. So they're not seeing the whole picture. So if they want a more long term view, then they need to get past what we call the Revenue Stabilizing Blindspot.
[JAMES]:Yeah, we saw this very clearly with a, client we worked with in the past that when we started the conversations with them, well, first of all, their model was very, fillable, hour based. All of their employees, had direct client, facing responsibilities, and all of their performance metrics were based on the number, of billable hours that each employee was able to bring in. What this led to was that nobody held the responsibility for, performance management, for attraction, and retention. Hr, in all of its forms, was done off the side of the desk of one, of the leadership, because everybody had to be focused on generating revenue. And what happened was we had all. There were all of these structural pieces that were not in place properly. And because nobody was dedicated to it, nobody was really accountable for it. And it just. It continued to snowball and create this, negative effect of everybody feeling constantly pushed to book more client time, but not being supported to do all of the other aspects of their role that they needed to do to be successful. And so this idea of not like they, in my mind, exemplified a business that, at the start, really did not understand the importance of the revenue stabilizing. They went so hard on revenue generating that it became a detriment or as kind of going back to our stumbling, our question, a stumbling block to their growth.
[COBY]:Yeah. And the thing was, is that without revenue stabilizing positions, you water down the impact of the revenue generating positions. Like these employees at this business were only hitting like, you know, 40% in some of their abilities, 40% productivity, or they're only hitting 40% of their sales goals because the culture started to kind of fall apart and communications started to fall apart because everything that was stabilizing the business was done up the size of the desks of the founders. So it all started to crumble because they just could not get past this blind spot they had about cost centers, and they could not see that there was a real value in stabilizing the revenue with key positions that were not outward facing.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And it put a tremendous amount of stress on the leadership, team.
[COBY]:Oh, yeah. The anxiety and the sleepless nights and the…
[JAMES]:Well, and, I mean, when people aren't playing to their strengths, I mean, yeah, it causes a lot of negative impacts. But anyways, we've got two more to try, to address in a short period of time.
[COBY]:Cool. So let's move on to the next one. The next one is actually the one that I was the most excited about. So this is the Business Law of The Linchpin. So what this is, is the dependency businesses create on a single person or a single position for stability and growth that puts the businesses long term sustainability at risk. Now, what this whole thing is about is the idea of, even when things are going great for a business, sometimes we have these natural, kind of organic, successes coming from a key person, or often as a key person, where we locked in to the talent and the versatility that this person has, that, ah, we're hitting great success just because we had this great person that kind of came fully formed and being this great success. But we've done nothing to protect or ensure or create contingencies around making sure that they're going to always be there. So it's the idea of creating linchpins, key elements that if that person or that position were to be gone, it would create a domino effect that could potentially take the business down. Or it's the idea of our success is built on a house of cards. And if that key card falls, then the business could fall itself. And again, we see linchpins in often very successful business where everything is going great. We can identify a linchpin, but we also see it a lot in. Because sometimes, sometimes we get brought into businesses after a crisis, and the crisis is usually because something happened to the linchpin.
[JAMES]:Yeah, I mean, there's a few examples that pop into my head, immediately talking about this one is with a client who, honestly, they experienced phenomenal, growth in their sales, over a pretty short period of time, almost doubling their monthly sales revenue. And in large part, the success was due to one person, one key employee who was just carrying the weight of the success of that company. Which is an amazing. To have that type of asset in your business is phenomenal. But one of the things that we had to really talk about early is, how are you protecting that person? What happens, God forbid, if they get hit by a truck or they get offered a, you know, they're incredibly successful. What if they get offered a new position with, one of your competitors? What are you doing to protect the company, to protect that person in their role, but also ensure that they, not only are they support it, but that there's that institutional knowledge and the processes and the support to ensure that if that person is removed, or that we, or even if you want to replicate that person and grow even faster, how do we do that? How do we put those supports and structures in place? it's not what I, what I like about this one is that it's not always crisis point. It's often a significant risk factor. and unfortunately, as you said, we sometimes get brought in after the fact because you are more likely to address a problem once it blows up in your face for some reason. but what's interesting is kind of the other example that I think is really interesting here is a friend of mine who is a successful business owner. he owns three, different, three businesses within the related field. each one of them independently is quite successful. they're, you know, everybody has struggles with talent, attraction and retention from time to time, but largely there's pretty, low levels of job dissatisfaction, pretty low levels of employee turnover. people are pretty happy working there. Their, you know, clients are well served. It's the, it's honestly fairly well run. And this person, although they have a, very technical understanding and that's why they got into this, field, they, from the beginning, identify that they wanted to develop their own skills and so they didn't kind of fall into that same Technical Founder Paradox that we often see. But they are the linchpin, that business owner. If anything were to happen, if they get sick or if they get burnt out, or if anything were to happen to that person, the livelihoods of dozens of people is at risk. The business that he is trying to build, generational and pass on to, his kids is at risk. If that person is not properly supported, he has turned himself into the linchpin of the company.
[COBY]:Yeah, and that's something that, you know, it's funny cause like, you know, we worked with businesses and they're like, well, you know, we, we don't necessarily need any help because everything's going great. Like, you know, we've got, you know, lots of, you know, employees are happy, our numbers are good, our profits are good. So, you know what? You know, we're set. We don't need anyone's help. And we're always happy to hear that, but we're always like, you know, let's just, let's just do a quick check just to make sure that there's no risks and liabilities. And when we come across situation where we have the law of the linchpin, we're like, do you not realize you have this massive area of risk that could take down the company quickly and you could have, so many people could be out of business and you could just wreck everything because you didn't protect the asset, you didn't create consistent or, redundancies or contingencies or you didn't. Because like, one of the things that's so almost like, ah, a big, indicator of the Law of The Linchpin is the success or the luck that you have by having this person in this position that you, the business didn't put that didn't make that happen intentionally. They didn't have a good hiring, process that upskilled and onboarded and developed them and turned them into this asset. They just lucked into this asset.
[JAMES]:You found the unicorn.
[COBY]:Exactly. And when you do that, that's, that can be a huge indicator of the Law of The Linchpin, because if you can't replicate that, you don't have the internal infrastructure, contingencies, redundancies, whatever it is, to make that standard operating procedure, then you put yourself in the law of the linchpin and it's going to hurt your, sustainability if anything happens to it. You're constantly at risk. So it's one of those things where we just always caution people that even when everything is going great, it doesn't hurt just to give everything kind of a thorough look at for risk mitigation because you don't want, you know, everything you've built to fall apart because you weren't prepared.
[JAMES]:Essentially, it boils down to, is your business dependent on a person? If you've created that level of dependency, there's a very high probability that you've created a linchpin. And a linchpin, when removed, will collapse the host of cards. The, you know, whatever domino's analogy there, too. that I apparently wasn't paying attention to what you were saying.
[COBY]:I said, the dominoes will fall.
[JAMES]:Domino's will fall. Yeah.
[COBY]:But the other thing, too, is that, so this is the, that's the big doom and gloom worst case scenario with linchpin. But there's also kind of some smaller linchpins that are more still damaging, but not so much, not so catastrophic. And we see this sometimes, and I'm sure, I'm sure people listening can relate to this. Sometimes we create a position where the it person in our workplace, if you only have one, is a linchpin where you know, where they are, you know, they hold all of the information, the passwords, the, you know, the only ones that can fix a problem, and they go on vacation, and the servers go down and they're not in their incommunicado, then you have created this linchpin that's not going to tank your business, but it's certainly going to disrupt it significantly. So sometimes linchpins are not as big and catastrophic, but it is important to, again, look at these areas of risk. And again, anyone that's familiar with risk mitigation and risk management, this is something that I'm sure is not a new thing to them, but I do think it's something that, you know, we need to look at this more, you know, more intentionally in our business and let this kind of be one of those, again, common stumbling blocks that businesses overlook when they're trying to build and grow is just, this idea of, you know, of understanding and identifying linchpins so you can just protect yourself against them.
[JAMES]:Yeah, it's really kind of going back to ensuring that we have policies, processes, structures and supports in place so that the success of our business isn't dependent on any one person.
[COBY]:Right? Yeah, absolutely. And just, you know, so, you know, it's one of those things where, like, again, having people that can come in and build and build good processes and put you know, make standard operating procedures. Honestly, going in and what's funny is going in and stabilizing your revenue by, by having people that can make sure you are protected is, is, is a vital way to protect yourself against linchpins.
[JAMES]:Yeah, that's a good point.
[COBY]:Yeah. All right, so let's move on to the last one. And this, and this one is interesting, too. So this is called the Action is Reaction Fallacy. And what this is, is the mistaken mindset that the business can survive and grow by only reacting, that success can come without acting with strategic intent. And we, see this idea, we see this happen a lot in workplaces that are like, we go into more workplaces, do address culture issues or HR issues, where the HR team is in every day is reaction mode. Every day is firefighter mode. It is just going from one crisis to another. And that is a typical day. It sometimes is because they can never get ahead. Because it's almost like there's this fallacy of, well, isn't this what business is supposed to be? Isn't this reaction?
[JAMES]:Are we supposed to react to and resolve problems as they arise? Well, yeah, it's important to be able to react and resolve problems, but it's also going to be, you're going to be much further ahead if you can put strategies and strategic and tent in place so that the problems are manageable, from the beginning, rather than, you know, said, as you said, putting out fires constantly.
[COBY]:Yeah, because a lot of, because again, this is kind of when a lot of the leadership team a lot or a lot of the, those kind of, a lot of decision makers just kind of have this, again, this fallacy that the actions that they're supposed to take are inherently reactionary. It's almost like that's just the, their basic understanding is that by the things that they're supposed to do, the actions are supposed to do are really more about responding to things rather than actually trying to get ahead of things. It's almost like foresight is something that they don't have time for or they don't carve out the intentional investment in. It's always about paying for things after, paying for things, you know, when you needed it yesterday, or, you know, this whole idea of just always being behind the eight ball is just because, again, especially small businesses are often very chaotic. So that, so it's not surprising that there's still a lot of reacting that happens. But the fallacy is, if you think that's the way it's supposed to be, that's the fallacy. The actions you're supposed to take are all about reacting. That's a fallacy. If you can't plan and you're not ever investing in foresight or investing in getting ahead or have any kind of intent or strategy behind what you do, then you're likely falling into this fallacy.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And I think the, the key is really around intent. Right. Are, are you looking forward or are you navel gazing? Right. If we are constantly. It's. It's also a vicious cycle. Once you get into this habit or this situation where you are constantly reacting to situations that come up, it's very hard to take a step back and lift your head up and look around. Right. It's very. Because we, all of your time is spent just responding to issue or challenge or problem after problems. but if it is critically important in every aspect of the business, like, as you said, we see this a lot in the way that people approach HR. it's kind of an, if this is their approach to HR, it's kind of indicative of how they approach many other aspects of their business. But it's not only, that case. It is so fundamental to be able to look forward at not just addressing the problem that's in front of us, but how do we resolve the issue that causes that problem to keep coming up? Because if you're just continuously slapping a band aid on things, finding a workaround that resolves the challenge, for now, then you're never really getting at the heart of what caused these problems and being able to put strategic priorities around resolving those problems.
[COBY]:Yeah. So one of the things that pops into my head when we think about this one is, I remember we had a client as a nonprofit, a few years ago, that they were a very progressive nonprofit, but they were really about responding to opportunities as they came. They didn't really have a strategic plan, to my knowledge, or the way that they talked about it. It was more like they saw pots of funding, they chased a pot of funding. If they got it, then they had to figure out what they were going to do about it. It was always this, like, you know, this constantly chasing things and reacting to opportunities as they came, whether or not they had the ability, the internal talent, or the infrastructure just to actually complete these things, these funding products that they got, they were always in scramble mode. And the thing was that we saw them, this was kind of how they thought this was supposed to be. You know, if there's funding, you chase it, then you figure out what you're going to do about it. That's the normal thing. And in a lot of nonprofits, that's not an unrealistic expectation for what you're supposed to do, but that's not the way it's supposed to be. You're supposed to have business plans, core operations. You could have a position or a department that does that, you know, that, seek does those opportunities..
[JAMES]:That can be an aspect of your business?
[COBY]:Absolutely. But the whole business shouldn't operate that way. And this was the problem was they did, everything was scattered. Everything was kind of all over the place, and they burned through employees like crazy because everything was so chaotic all the time. And it's a, it's a tough place because, like, if everything is always after the fact and you're kind, of always waiting till it's too late to do something, it's really hard for people to feel a sense of, you know, productivity or, you know, or satisfaction in their job. It's almost like they're just, you go in, you fight all the fires you can that day, and that's a good day's work. And that's how you measure success is, by how busy you were, rather than how productive and how effective and how meaningful the work was. And it's something that, especially in today's issues around employee retention and attraction, the Action is Reaction Fallacy that governs a lot of the mindset of a lot of business owners, leaders, and stuff like that is a fundamental piece that's going to make it really hard for you to have a good talent acquisition strategy because nobody wants to work in the kind of environment.
[JAMES]:Yeah, I like your nonprofit example, and I think, an interesting parallel in private sector is, the flavor of the month mentality. and honestly, I'm probably going to get hate mail for it, but honestly, a lot of the AI garbage that's out in the marketplace now is exactly that. It's businesses that are chasing flavor of the month and trying to figure out labeling new things as AI or trying to chase this new shiny object rather than creating a strategic, intentional plan for product development and for market penetration. It's, ooh, this is a hot button topic. Let's relabel everything to be related to AI or to be related to whatever that flavor of the month ends up being. It, it causes what? It's a chaos solution, right?
[COBY]:Yes, absolutely. No, you're right. And that whole bandwagon jumping approach, who that is a very, you're right, is a very big, warning sign of the Action is Reaction Fallacy. And it's something that again, you know, we're because, like, especially because we're trying to like, you know, trying to grab attention on social media, trying to stay relevant, trying to the shiny to that. If you're just trying to get reactions from people then you think that is what you're supposed to be doing. That is the fallacy right there. Right now. The big thing is for a lot of these is that what do you do about it, right? And we don't really have a time to really get into the answers. We're going to give you the problem and then we're going to walk away. But no, this is often a lot of the work that we do is we try and help resolve a lot of these issues. But if I give you kind of a high level where the solutions come from, they really do kind of come from good. Like, you know, again, a good strategic approaches. Like, you know, we, because again, we see these mostly through the lens of the HR realm, people operations, because that's just the realm we work in. But like we work with other experts in like, you know, operations or in, you know, customer experience or whatever it is, these things are just as relevant there as they are in the people operations realm that we operate in. But a lot of these are about creating strong standard operating procedures, planning ahead, having good systems in place, having good processes, bringing in the experts and the talents you need to invest in your Long term,
[JAMES]:Identifying risks.
[COBY]:Yes, because a lot of these are probably, if we had to say what is the biggest common thread through all these? A lot of them is short term thinking. A lot of them is just thinking, well, this is what I have to do to get through today or this is what we need for right now. And not taking a step back outside of the chaos of our every day and going what is going to be best for us in the medium and long term, what do we, how do we invest in securing our sustainability and our secure and our stability I guess is really going to be about that. And you know, understanding that, you know, we have to get past some of these blind spots. We have to, we have to be more intentional in mitigating our risk. We have to be more, you know, strategic in our intent. The work that we do, we have to treat our, the relationship we have with people kind of with more intention. And we need to able to look at our own skills and abilities as owners and founders to look at how do we make sure that we can be successful in the long term and not just try and make myself as comfortable in my comfort zone as I can in the short term. So really, I think it is about looking at having someone that can come in with an objective view to kind of say, here's the problem you're running into. It's not your fault. It's not because you're a bad business leader, or whatever like that, or your company is doomed. It's, you made kind of a, you know, common, you know, stumbling. You fell over a common stumbling block. But there are systems and processes that can improve it. You just have to be willing to make them happen.
[JAMES]:Yeah, I. One of the things, just to reiterate, like being able to put a label on things, to be able to makes it more tangible and removes that accusatory piece. So if you are, an HR professional or you're somebody who wants to identify and resolve these issues within your organization, maybe these labels, these frameworks will help you to talk about it with, with some, intent, since we're kind of on that theme. But talk about it in a way that removes the idea that, Johnny, this is your problem, because you didn't do x, y, and z. Well, no, it's actually, here's a common, issue that has a label that had, that can be resolved, that we, for whatever reason, find ourselves in. Let's identify it so that we can address it and so that we can move on.
[COBY]:Yeah. So be really interesting for you listening. There's a send us a message option in the show notes. I would love. I'm asking you right now, if you could m take a look at these definitions and say, are any of these in your workplace? You can just type it in and send it to us as a message, because we see these in the work that we do. But we would love to get an idea about what are some, the more of the common ones that are out there. And this is just a great way to do that. And, you know, we would suggest you send us, you can send us a text message. It'll come up, as a text message on your phone. We can't respond to it because of the system, the messaging system that we have through the podcast. But I would love to just have our inbox full of just my workplace heads, The Technical Founder Paradox. My m workplace has a law of linchpin. Just to kind of get an idea about one. Are these landing with you? But also, you know, what's, what do you see most often? I mean, you might see some. You might see numb. You can tell us about a current job or your past job. But I would love to just get a, the kind of response about, are these something that you have seen? and again, if you have any questions about it, let us know. And we can't respond to it, but we can talk about it in an upcoming episode.
[JAMES]:If you give us your contact information, then we'd be happy to respond to you.
[COBY]:Absolutely, yes. And while you're in the show notes, check out, our mailing list for our newsletter. because we want to have a great engagement with people and provide more content resources. Maybe we'll build this, into an infographic and make these available to people and send them out through our next newsletter.
[JAMES]:Yeah, that'd be helpful, I think, if we can nail, this down and give people something, a cheat sheet to identify and resolve.
[COBY]:Yeah. So sign up for the newsletters to get access to that infographic in that cheat sheet so you can have these available to you to kind of help you kind of maybe look at your workplace with it with a different perspective. And also, you know, again, maybe you've had more intention in the way that you look at kind of the long term viability of your workplace.
[JAMES]:Cool.
[COBY]:So, yeah. So I think I'll just do a quick summary.
[JAMES]:Sure.
[COBY]:Anything else you want to add before I do?
[JAMES]:No, I think I'm good. let's, hit the highlights.
[COBY]:All right.So what are the common stumbling blocks to business growth? Well, we've kind of coined and developed these, these truths, that we call the five threatening truths of business. So the first one is The Technical Founder Paradox, which is with the skills and abilities and mindset of founders, which are crucial to starting and growing a business, are what stand in the way of the businesses sustainability and scalability. Big area, but trying to improve how the founders and leaders, skills that they have to bring the business to the next level. Next was the Fragile Grip Principle. The acknowledgement of how the fragile relationship is handled between employers and employees and how it's handled by employers greatly impacts the future success of their business. Within that principle is The Harsh Grip, where we grip too tight, The Weak Grip, where we grip too loose, and The Stable Grip, where we grip with balance. And the way that we hold on to that fraudulent relationship can really define how we, retain and attract, employees, both now and in the future. Next is a Revenue Stabilizing Blindspot. The effect caused by businesses undervaluing positions that stabilize revenue instead only favoring positions that generate revenue. So this is about understanding that roles like HR, admin and support positions and maintenance positions add a huge value to your business by stabilizing your profit areas and your growth to make sure that you're not just successful in the short term, but you can be successful in the long term and stabilize that success. Then there's the Business Law of The Linchpin, the dependency businesses create on a single person or position for stability and growth that puts that business's sustainability at risk. Making sure that you're not over leveraging or over trusting key employees to make to, you know, who are going to be, if they go for whatever reason, can end up being the the swift downfall of your organization. Not building a business that's really just a house of cards. But when you hit that, that key card, the whole thing collapses. And last is the Action is Reaction Fallacy, the mistaken mindset that the business can survive and grow by only reacting, that success can come without acting with a strategic intent. We need to realize that we can't always be after the fact when we make our decisions, or, we can't wait till it's too late before we do anything. We have to make sure that we have foresight and distributive content, that we're not just always fighting fires, that we're actually building bridges. Okay, so that about does it for us. For a full archive of the podcast and access the video version hosted on our YouTube channel, visit www.roman3.ca/podcast. Thanks for joining us.
[ANNOUNCER]:For more information on topics like these, don't forget to visit us at www.roman3.ca. Side effects of this podcast may include improved retention, high productivity, increased market share, employees breaking out in sponsorship, instantaneous dance dry mouth, a version of the sound of James' voice desire to find a better podcast..
