Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Join James and Coby from Roman 3 as they diagnose issues and prescribe solutions to today's most important workplace challenges.
Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Doing More With Less: How Do You Succeed During Hard Times?
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Send us a Message! (But we can’t respond, so feel free to email us at info@roman3.ca)
This episode touches on the theme of Strengthening Culture.
In this episode, we explore some practical examples of what businesses can do to stay effective during difficult times. Much of this advice is not simple or quick to implement, but it will make for stronger and more resilient organizations.
Our prescription for this episode is to understand that for any success, you need to build a sustainable workplace culture as a foundation.
Past Episode Referenced:
S1 E11: What Lessons Can We Learn From 2022?
S1 E16: How Do We Build A Workplace Culture?
S1 E17: How Is Organizational Culture Linked To Business Performance And Outcomes?
S3 E3: What Are Common Stumbling Blocks To Business Growth?
S2 E12: Are You At Risk From The Business Law Of The Linchpin?
Don't forget to sign up for our New Quarterly Newsletter that launched in the fall of 2024!
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 a question. Doing more with less. How do you succeed during hard times?
[JAMES]:I'm gonna go with. By indulging your particular vice of choice. maybe not the best advice. Oh, and nope. Okay, never mind. Our legal team has informed me that I'm absolutely not allowed to say that, so that never happened. And I certainly do not use that strategy myself. I don't know, I don't know what's wrong with me. Anyways, to actually answer the question, I think we're gonna have to define some realistic parameters around what we can address in a podcast because a lot of, a lot of the specifics of, you know, how do you do more, more with less, or how do you kind of survive really difficult and challenging periods in business operations? It's very individually, it's very contextual to the individual situation in the operating environment that you, this strategy that you're engaged in. So we're not going to be able to lay out a fully fleshed out strategy for you in a 50 minute conversation. But where I think the general answer to this question lies, and where I think a lot of our conversation will, include or revolve around, is at the top of our workplace culture hierarchy that we call strive. so once you've addressed the factors of the workplace through, at the compliance level and you've ensured that there's psychological safety and you've created an environment where people actually feel like they belong, then you're, if you're able to sustain, motivation through engagement, you reach the top of the hierarchy that we call strive. And although it's at the top of the, it sits at the top of the hierarchy, it's one of the first things that we actually discuss with clients when we are, starting new engagements or kind of onboarding companies to our processes into our investigations. Because it, it really what you are striving towards, the operational outcomes that you are seeking to achieve, really help to not really, not necessarily define, but certainly at least it's the lens through which we look at and seek to build, each stage through compliance, psychological safety, inclusion and engagement. it's not the only thing that contributes to doing more with less. But I think it's an important piece for us to talk about. Because we haven't talked a lot about strive on the podcast before, and I think this is an opportune time for us to kind of bring that lens to this conversation.
[COBY]:No, that's a really good place to start. I think you're right, because, I mean. Well, actually we haven't really brought up much this season specifically around the workplace culture hierarchy. So it might not hurt to just take a quick beat and kind of recap that a little bit. we have some episodes we've talked about that in depth. Like we did an episode in our first season called how do you build a workplace culture? Where we dug into the hierarchy, quite, quite deeply. And then we had some other episodes during the first season around inclusion and belonging and job, dissatisfaction and engagement, stuff like that too, where we kind of reference the hierarchy an awful lot in those conversations, but just to give people.
[JAMES]:Wait, you mean people aren't going back through dozens and dozens of hours of us just randomly talking about stuff?
[COBY]:No, I think we're like pushing like 100 episodes. So I'm pretty sure that there's only so much that the common human brain can handle of our voices.
[JAMES]:Fair enough.
[COBY]:But I mean, yes, this is a really quick recap. So our workplace culture hierarchy is built on the foundation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The idea that you have to achieve the higher levels of kind of like, of higher functioning, you need to be able to make sure that you built the solid foundation on the ones beneath it because you can't really expect reasonable, again, like engagement, which it's kind of at the second level from the top, which is again, motivation enthusiasm. If you have employees that have feel they have no safety, no psychological safety, no personal safety, those that level of motivation enthusiasm is completely not an option. While they're focusing on those lower tiered, higher, closer to survival kind of kind of elements. So the stages, again, you can reference them, but let's kind of COVID them real quick. So our bottom stage is we call compliance, but it's really about complying with again, like legal standards and norms. But it's more mostly the way that we talk about it from a psychological perspective. It's about complying with employee expectations, expectations around things being competitive, sufficient and equitable. And then in the episode that we did about, psychology a little while ago, we talked, or, one of our practical psychology episodes, like our last one, we talked about Hertzberg's theory and motivation and hygiene, which is a core part of that compliance stage. Then the next, then the next Tier up is psychological safety. And that's very much the Emy Edmondson kind of psychological safety. That's about the ability to speak up, share ideas, make mistakes without fear, retribution or retaliation, in your workplace, providing that you've got that ability to speak and share and kind of have that voice. And then above that is our belonging stage, which again ties very closely to Maslow's belonging stage. That's the idea of kind of inclusionary practices and kind of being able to bring your full self to work and being able to kind of have that sense of connection amongst those you work with. Then above that is the is engagement, which is not the idea of like the social media kind of engagement, but the type of engagement that's about having motivation, having enthusiasm, having kind of, kind of having connection through your work through, whether it's through, recognition, whether it's through having autonomy, whether it's happening through real motivation and those kind of pieces like that. And then the top of it, as you said before, is strive. Now, strives, we break down into what we call the five successes of strive. So those five successes are change, innovation, collaboration, growth, internal growth as one, and then customer acquisition, which is external growth. So I think that again, going back to what you're saying, about you know, how to do more with less, since even during hard times is a bit of that. You're right, it's about that Strive component to it. Because what you're really looking for to do more with less, dealing with hard times, is stability, which is a core prerequisite requirement.
[JAMES]:Stability and focus, really. Right. Like, I mean, if we're going to break it down very simplistically, you need to have some level of stability in order to achieve your goals. And you need to know what you're working towards in order to know whether or not you've been successful. And so like we've talked many times about kind of that, that key question that we've asked ourselves that you know, what needs to exist first for this to be successful? that question really guided the entirety of the development of the workplace culture hierarchy. Because in order to achieve particular outcomes when we look, that's why, that's why the outcomes or the goals are at the top of the hierarchy. Because what needs to exist first for any of those to be successful is that people need to be motivated to do. They need to feel, they need to be engaged in the work, they need to have motivation and purpose. Right? And then we just keep working down. They need to be, feel like they belong, that they're part of something, that they aren't ostracized. Realize that they can bring them full selves to work. They need to feel like they can, speak up, share their opinions, with op. Fear of retribution. And they need to feel like the basic factors of the workplace are not working against them and that they're treated fairly, equitably, and that it sufficient.
[COBY]:What businesses are looking for during hard times is, is that sense of stability which you're right. What has to exist kind of first before that as well. If you're trying to be able to kind of do more with less, you have to make sure that you have some level of, again, these elements of the hierarchy in place that your factors are. Workers are not acting against people. People feel that they have a voice. You'll feel there's a connection to their workplace and they have some motivation for what will be asked of them to be able to survive these hard times and to do more with less. So I think that's a piece that we should not completely lose because we've got like we have, we have four things we want to talk about getting into the actual meat of this episode. But there is an expectation that when we're talking about these things that for these things to be, to be successful in your workplace, you kind of have to be able to have some of these core functions of the hierarchy already in place. Like again, if people are completely dissatisfied with their jobs and they're constantly, looking for, looking for other job opportunities and they're not going to be doing some of these pieces that we may share with you to help with your, you know, with your ability to kind of, you know, do more with less or if someone feels totally disconnected from their workplace, then any of the advice that you kind of give on, how to kind of motivate your team if they don't feel, if they feel like they're an outsider looking in none of your motivation rally.
[JAMES]:I have yet to meet a business that does not rely on its people to produce goods or services. You should not be actively driving people out of your organization if you want to succeed. And a lot of businesses are doing that. They're actively driving people away by ignoring many of these core foundational pieces around how, compliance and the factors of the workplace. Compensation and safety and environment and consistency. Oh my goodness, consistency.
[COBY]:Well, I mean one of the things that, again, that we talked about again in some past episodes, especially around kind of what we called kind of the five threatening truths of are the idea that the concept of the fragile grip principle. Right. M. Where that this idea is that when we hit difficult times, we tend to do one of three things to our employees, to the fragile relationship that exists between employers and employees. We have the harsh grip where we squeeze them too tight and we monitor them too closely. And, and we kind of overburden them and push them too hard.
[JAMES]:And this is the traditional, how do you do more with less? You squeeze every ounce of productivity out of people by instituting harsher penalties or more significant, you know, pushing more work on them and raising expectations without raising resources and supports.
[COBY]:Yeah. And the second grip is the weak grip. And that is when we just basically just let them go. We just lay people off. We. Or we kind of like. Or we kind of give them too much, almost like, almost like passive autonomy, and we stop and we stop providing them support. We cut supports from them and then we leave them alone on a drift. So either we're, we're, we're not holding onto them tight, tightly enough and m by or either letting them slip through our fingers and lay them off, or we're just kind of like pulling back and saying, you're on your own. Figure it out. Both are failing, strategies. And then the third grip, the one that we suggest, the one that we're really kind of talking about when we talk about the workers culture, hierarchy, making sure that you're asking what needs to exist first before whatever our plans are going to be will be successful is the stable grip. It's that stability piece. It's providing them that stable, consistent, well balanced grip that gives them enough support to give them what they need, but also is being able to care for the, Be able to push them, to kind of be able to be motivated to do more with less, to try a little bit harder, to be able to kind of like, take some of these strategies that we're going to suggest here today and may actually want to run with them and not actually trying to actively work against you. So that's kind of one of the core fundamental pieces that really we talk a lot about when it comes to kind of difficult times is that fragile grip principle. I do have episodes. I'll reference those in the, show notes if you want to learn more about those. But I do think that I want to jump into kind of the four ideas that we have that are probably a little bit less conventional than what you might hear from kind of other podcasts or, kind of oriented articles or stuff like that, because these are things that again, we have seen great successes with, in some of the work that we've done. they're a little, they're not simple, they're not like, you know, these, you know, these two tricks and you'll be totally fine. These are a bit more, you know, like, these are a bit more involved. They're quite complex. But they, but they have a lot of, of flexibility. and they can be quite effective.
[JAMES]:Well, they're also, they will also build resiliency in your organization, which is a key factor to surviving difficult times.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah. So let's jump into the first one. So the first one is what we call kind of the idea of again this, this, the stability, the stabilization. So we call it revenue stabilization. And this is actually a reference, to one of our other, parts of the, of the five threatening truths, which is the revenue stabilizing blind spot. Now the revenue stabilizing blind spot is the common practice in most workplaces to prefer or to overvalue or to over invest in revenue generating positions. You know, the rainmakers, the sales teams, the ones that are bringing in the clients, the money. Which makes perfect sense why you'd want lots of those. But it's often prioritizing those at the sacrifice of the other positions that are revenue stabilizing. This is like your admin teams, your hr, your finance, you know, the internal comms, the stuff that actually makes the, the everything else work by overburdening them. That's where the breakdowns happen. Because if your sales team lands big orders, but they don't have the, you don't have the internal infrastructure, you don't have the, the talent, the, the talent to build the widgets that you need to sell, or you don't have the communications line that everything gets slowed down, or you don't have the tech that you need in order to kind of make this stuff scale, then you are, then you're not just losing those sales, you're breaking your reputation in the, in the business world. Right. So this idea of overvaluing revenue generating and undervaluing revenue every stabilizing, this is what this whole blind spot is about. And this is something that can be a major breaking point. But during these tough times, looking at revenue stabilizing is actually even more important.
[JAMES]:Yeah, I mean, what always comes up to me, for me when we talk about this is the man, a manufacturing company that we supported who, you know, great product, really found a niche in their marketplace and decided they were going to lean in hard, brought on several new sales staff and really invested in their outbound sales team. pounding pavement out in the communities, regional, regional offices and lots of push and resources to support those people to increase, to drive sales. And they were incredibly effective. They essentially doubled their revenue in m. I think it was the first three months. Within six months they had nearly they had over tripled their month over their monthly revenue. Like they, they. I think at the end of the first eight, six to eight month period they were, they were close to a 4x on their orders because of this really effective sales team that they hired. And they were ecstatic. Of course they were. They were making money hand over fist. The problem was that was where the investment stopped. They didn't also invest in the. In more production to be able to actually. Okay, so what happens if these great people do exactly what we've hired them to do and land a whole bunch of contracts? Well, do we actually have the internal operational support to fulfill these orders? Do we have the people in place? Do we have a pipeline developed? Do we have HR resources? Do we have the finance team in place? Do we have managers who can manage the increases? Do we have. We. How is our shipping department, you know, logistics, supply chain. All of these elements that feed into being able to capitalize on the opportunities that your sales team just developed for you. So it was a, I mean fascinating business to work with. incredible success in a very short period of time. scaled their business very, very quickly but also very very frantically because the investments that they made early were made in isolation. They were made from a single standpoint of we want to grow our. So if we're talking from a hierarchy perspective they're. What they were striving towards was external growth. They wanted to increase market share. They wanted to increase their presence in several different communities that they were working throughout their state. And they, that was the goal that they that they wanted to pursue hard. But they didn't do the work of what needs to exist first for us to be successful. It was we want to grow. We need. In order to grow we need sales. We're going to hire sales reps. Yeah.
[COBY]:Very much in isolation.
[JAMES]:Pretty much in isolation.
[COBY]:Yeah. So the weird piece of advice we, we can actually give you for revenue stabilizing is to. Is very counter to common practice which is the idea of promoting your HR to being strategic assets and moving them out of being kind of the funnel for administrative tasks that exist within your organization. So it's about taking your HR people, your HR professionals or your HR approaches and making them more about strategic internal consultants that build capacity and be able to allow for a lot of the administrative kind of tasks be provided to managers and provided to other teams. So the idea of like shifting HR from administrators to advisors, from being policy enforcers to being capacity builders, to being the ones that kind of being the, the processors of forms and documents, actually being the problem solvers and the, and the go tos for your management team. This can actually be a massive way to do more with less because you're able to properly delegate instead of removing things kind of like, you know, kind of having like, you know, things kind of in a weird pipeline, actually having your building capacity in your existing teams to be able to handle more stuff. It also gives more autonomy to those teams to function without everything being kind of like passed off the HR and they're hoping to come back.
[JAMES]:And there are a lot of opportunities right now to streamline those time, those labor intensive ah, administrative tasks. there are tools that you can use to automate a lot of that. Yes it requires strategy and foresight and investment. But it's these, this is the, this is the counter to the what the theme that we're gonna hit on every single time here is if you want to do more with less, you need to set yourself up properly which is going to require investment in different ways. Right. said just saying do more with less and then say invest more doesn't really help, but it's what you prioritize, it's how you choose to address these issues. And there are a lot of really effective automation tools, some effective AI tools that can help you with these types of more labor intensive process type administrative challenges. But if you can move your HR team or if your HR team is not upskilled to really play that strategic role. Fractional support is a really effective way of getting some expertise on your team to upskill your team or to provide that strategic vision. Really what a big part of what we are pushing with this idea is the fact that you, if you want to be effective you have to have a strategy. And if you want to build an effective strategy then you have to have people on your team or on your side who actually know what they're talking about, who know how to craft a strategy, who know how to integrate a strategy, who know how to operationalize a strategy, who know how to link that strategy to other strategies so that you're not bottlenecking things and you don't have departments fighting against each other and you don't have confusion at every step of the. There's a tremendous amount of work that can be done to streamline, internal operations, to create an environment where people actually feel supported and engaged. But it starts with asking the question of what needs to exist first for this to be successful. And that is at the heart of your strategy.
[COBY]:Yeah. So a good example of what this can look like is. I had a conversation fairly recently with an organization that kind of had. They had a very small HR team. They had kind of an HR manager and they had kind of an HR generalist. And you know, and what was happening was when I looked at kind of their workflow, a lot of the stuff was very much, you know, like a lot of the, like a lot of the really kind of lower administrative pieces, like routine approvals or kind of capturing basic employee data and a lot of things around like scheduling everything that was very much kind of just like, you know, dumped onto the HR team. And again, and the manager was doing a lot of like very, very time consuming, very low stakes, very kind of like, you know, basic employee function, work. And the management team and the middle management team had very little hr almost like involvement. Everything's kind of get passed off to HR and then kind of. And it was almost like HR was a bit of. Almost like a black box. Was like, well, this from goes to HR and then we just. And then something comes back at some point and then it was keep on going. And it was very. And which actually caused a lot of rifts because it was almost like stuff was being slowed down or stuff wasn't being done properly or people didn't know what's going on because it was all living in this black box. Which, which is what it.
[JAMES]:Well, it creates a silo. Right. And it creates a silo that m. Just creates friction because people don't understand the work that goes into it and that how time tensitive it is. And it's a. Well, why aren't they getting back to me? Because I submitted the form.
[COBY]:Yeah. But a lot of it was really not set up very well. So one of the conversations that I had with the leadership team was again, I've used this analogy in other contexts, but it's kind of like the metaphorical idea of why restaurants fail is often because the chef's too busy chopping the lettuce. Okay, again, bit of metaphor. The idea of that, you know, why you want, you know, you don't want to have your, your skilled, trained, strategic, big picture staff doing frontline, very basic, you know, kind of like you know, general work when you should be building the capacity within your team to let the appropriate people do the appropriate work. Whether that's a high level work, the high level staff or low level work for the lower level staff, whatever that might be. The idea of you should be utilizing the assets that you have. So the shift that we, we made with this organization was to move, was kind of again was to move the HR manager into almost like a, almost like a higher level role where they were actually building capacity and streamlining processes through the leadership team. A lot of the stuff was funneling through the leadership team team. They were developing SOPs and standards around documentation so and supporting kind of investigations when needed to being able to. And then they were taking on the more difficult stuff that was very important yet very very specialized like immigration, management and kind of like. And some of those more like higher level like you know the really
[JAMES]:complex things to navigate around government relations. And the generals and the generals moved
[COBY]:more into to, to an HR advisor role where they were working more with the, with the middle level managers and supporting again almost like them to take on more of the scheduling pieces, more of the general employee relations task. Knowing where the disciplinary pieces kind of went from middle managers to managers, then from managers to HR and being almost like that, that kind of go between almost like an HR BP type of thing. And that made a huge difference for how the managers and middle managers felt more empowered with their organization but also allowed for things to happen a whole lot faster and it allowed for hiring to move faster and everything. And that was a big shift. It took a long time to get to do that but it was super impactful. And when the tougher times came they were more again resilient, able to kind of handle it because they had this internal consultancy piece and they were able to kind of delegate stuff more effectively which allowed workflow to happen a lot faster.
[JAMES]:Yeah, you're building up your support right. So that when, when the storm comes you can weather it. There are, there's a lot that you can do by not bottlenecking everything administrative or process related at your hr within your HR department that will.
[COBY]:It's actually not even that. It's that often when we hit these hard times one of the first areas of cuts is to the administrative team is to the HR team. That's where most of the, where most of the, the quote unquote fat that gets trimmed comes from which is. Which is just weakening the organization because that would have been the. If we hadn't intervened and where. And what had happened where things are kind of right now that's probably would have been the leadership team's kind of probably assumption would be, well, let's just cut this whole department because they're just administered.
[JAMES]:They're not doing much anyways.
[COBY]:Yeah, exactly. Or everything takes so long rather, which just weaken their ability anyway. But now it's a matter of saying, you know, now they're actually poised to scale. Now they're actually poised to do more with. With less because the things are more automated and they, and they can actually look at more versatility that they need. they're in a much better situation to weather the storm than. Than they would they were without the intervention. And especially if they had end up cutting those, those supportive revenue stabilizing positions.
[JAMES]:Yeah, they've got the structures that will support growth.
[COBY]:Exactly. Okay, let's move on to the next one. That's when you kind of alluded to a little bit talking about bottlenecks because bottlenecks really are one of those major, major issues that tends to be why we can't, you know, why we are not doing more with less in most organizations is because of bottlenecks. But I want to talk specifically about bottlenecks that break your people strategy kind of as you were. You were talking about. Right. So these are really like, these are your kind of human capital efficiency killer pieces. And a big one of those is micromanagement.
[JAMES]:Oh, right, yeah. My personal pet peeve and bane of my existence when I was an employee. Yeah, I don't know why. I don't know why it's such a common. Like I do know why. it largely stems from a lack of confidence or often, sometimes confidence, sometimes ability, sometimes a lack of support to the managers. But holy cow, is it prevalent, the tendency to micromanage people to feel like you have to check and double check and triple check what people are doing, where they are working, when they are working, how they are working, what tools they are using. Did they put do this in the proper order or did they like, just focus on outcomes? People tell people what you need them to do, give them the supports to do it and get out of their way. My like, oh my word.
[COBY]:It's.
[JAMES]:I know, I know I rant. I know, but you tuned in to listen to me rant, so this is on you. But yes, micromanagement with there's very few things that will kill your team's productivity and motivation faster than a bad manager who micromanages 100.
[COBY]:and you're right. And sometimes it's a matter of they're, they're often we see that because a lot of time middle managers is where this lives. Tend to live more often. but not only with them but I mean the idea of…
[JAMES]:I don't know man, I've seen it at some very senior levels of people who just control.
[COBY]:Yes, I have. Okay, I have to.
[JAMES]:Sorry, I will let you, I will let you speak.
[COBY]:And psychologically it does come from things like not being properly prepared, from being feeling like they're, they're carrying imposter syndrome. There's all kinds of stuff of why and where it comes from. But a core way to combat that is always going to be proper management training. That should always be something that is, is you know, is invested in, you know, good times and bad times is always making sure that you're training your managers. But that is one example and I think that we don't need to dig into that too much. Breaking that is important. I think everyone knows that but we definitely had to mention it. But another one that I want to move on to and this is actually kind of like ties into a little bit is when is when organizations have unpractical or non existent standard operating procedures. When they don't know what to do or who to talk to when something happens or when or just or what the proper protocol is. So every, they have to pause and figure it out every single time. And they, and because there is just no when this, when X happens we do Y. There's just not built into it. And that is one of those, the most failing pieces that, that bottlenecks people strategy. It often causes micromanagement because people don't know what to do. So they, so they, they often. They are not active at all. Which is why managers are all over them. Because you should be doing something. You know, this is a work day and so this is kind of. It often feeds into it. But building SOPs standard operating procedures is one of those pieces that is not fun, it's not sexy. But it is so fundamental to making sure that you've got streamlined efficiencies and improved productivity. That's something that really needs to be addressed and it's something that has to be implemented for any kind of doing more with less.
[JAMES]:It's so critical at all stages but especially like I, I think about this a lot in terms of onboarding and with new, staff. Because when you hire somebody, you need them to get up to speed as quickly as possible to be productive to so that you can actually achieve a return on the investment on the salary that you're paying them. A lack of SOP slows that down significantly. Somebody there, if somebody has, as they are onboarding to a new role or if they are trying to, if you want to expand what somebody is doing and give somebody more responsibilities or just work more efficiently and effectively as a team, if they don't know what to do in a particular situation and, and you have created a culture that does not allow people to fail, they're not going to take a risk, they're not going to risk doing something wrong. They're going to stop and then they're going to find somebody who can answer their question and then if that person doesn't have the question, then the answer to it, they're going to stop. Right. This, all of these are interconnected in how they play out. Because the way in which you adapt, so the way in which your management team, your middle managers support their teams plays a significant role in whether or not somebody is going to feel safe to figure it out on their own. In they shouldn't have to. There should be standard operating procedures in place that guide them. But if those aren't there, do they feel safe to figure it out on their own or are they scared that if they make a mistake they're going to get fired? Right.
[COBY]:Yeah. And that's just. Yeah. And going back to the hierarchy.
[JAMES]:Ah.
[COBY]:And that stage of psychological safety that again, if there is this sense of I don't know what to do, but I'm afraid to ask questions or I don't know what to do, I'm afraid to try anything that just kind of like it feeds this beast of inefficiencies and poor productivity because they're not sure what to do. There's no consistency in their actions. And then. And there's major consequences if they do the wrong thing despite the fact that there may not even be a right thing.
[JAMES]:Right.
[COBY]:Yeah. So these are all of the things that are, just killing your people strategy and bottlenecking your processes. The other one, just to add to this is another one of our threatening truths, which is the action is reaction, fallacy.
[JAMES]:Oh yeah.
[COBY]:The idea of we are. The nature of our work requires us to always be reactive. So we have to just react to stuff as it comes and there's just no other way. Around it. Well, that's false. no matter what industry you are in, you do not have to react, you have to respond. You have to have a plan in place. And usually those are SOPs. What do you do when X happens? You do Y. But often when something happens the first time, it may be a new thing. You might have to figure it out that first time, but then it should never happen again. You should, we should figure out what you did right, what you did wrong, debrief, make a SOP to address it for next time so that someone else doesn't have to fumble through it like you did too often. We don't do that too often. We just say, well, we'll just have to figure it out again next time because what can we do? Well, what you can do is you
[JAMES]:can, we got through that crisis, we'll never have to deal with that again.
[COBY]:Exactly. But these are the bottlenecks. Yeah, but these are the bottlenecks. These are the things that absolutely break our organization because we just don't learn from pieces or we don't take the time to put in the SOPs. Like I know when we talk to business leaders, often business owners and we talk about SOPs, there's a bit of eyes glazing over. There's a bit of a. Yeah, you know, but because this is the unfun, unsexy, uninnovative, things that people don't usually get prioritized. But these are the dirty, important, vital elements that allow you to do more with less, that standardize your processes. Plus also, hey, business owner, if you feel this way with SOPs, SOPs are actually going to be one of the ways to increase your business's value. If you have standard operating procedures and you know what to do when everything is built in processes and systems, your business is worth more because you don't have to rely on the people who could leave in order to make things happen.
[JAMES]:Yeah. If all, I mean, and it links in the business law, the linchpin as well. Right. Like it, it's a way of, it's a way of strengthening your organization by decentralizing the information. Right. If all of the processes, if all of the knowledge in your organization is held in the head of one or two people, whether it's the business owner, whether it's a senior leader, or whether it's just a long term staff member who has been crushing it for the last 20 years, that's a huge operational risk.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:they are a phenomenal asset. Absolutely. But they do present A large operational risk. Because if something were to happen, if they were to get a better job offer, if they were to get sick, if they were, God forbid, get hit by a bus, what happens to all of that knowledge that just disappears from your organization? That's why it's so important to create these standard operating procedures, to create these rules that govern how we, and why we respond to things, but also to be able to be responsive to them.
[COBY]:Like, our third piece of advice, which is about prioritizing cross training and operational safeguards.
[JAMES]:Right?
[COBY]:So one of the things, again, when you're doing more with less, sometimes it's a matter of, of utilizing the talent and the people that you have and also the system that you have to create more of those redundancy pieces. So, cross training, where you have one staff from one position be able to pick up, or be able to be given access and kind of rudimentary training and some familiarization with another department, another role to allow for better coverage. That's something that a lot of organizations know they should do but often don't. But is a huge asset to being able to succeed during hard times. It creates more, again, more people able to kind of pick up on stuff. It allows for you know, work continuity to kind of happen during vacations or during leaves or whatever else like that too. But you also can put in things to create more operational safeguards like having multiple signing authorities when it comes to things, giving people more backend access to stuff, having those pieces in place where you're taking say someone from, I don't know, your admin operating team and you're training a few of them onto payroll systems in case your, small payroll team ends up having a major illness, and then they're all off sick, someone can still m. Make sure people get paid. And then you can give and that they've got the training and they've also have the access. They can just step right in or during busy times you can allow, you can allow one person from one department be able to kind of like, you know, pick up extra work and help another team out to provide those more pieces. That level of cross training, operational safeguards is a huge way to help you make sure that you get that resiliency to succeed during hard times.
[JAMES]:And cross training is not a new concept, but it is an underutilized concept which is like, it's, there's a lot of value that comes from it. And what I like about this one particularly, I will try my best to Stay on topic. right. We're talking about how to do more with less and cross training is an excellent example of that. And I'm going to break exactly what I just said because it not only does it help during hard times but it sets you up for success when, when your fortunes turn around or when the, when the marketplace changes. It creates internal succession opportunities of where people actually have exposure to other opportunities within your organization. They have skills that you can rely on, that you can draw on when vacancies happen or when you are posed for growth. It provides people with a sense of accomplishment and purpose and the ability to grow their career with you. It right there. There are some significant retention benefits that come from the cross training as well. But fundamentally when, when times are tougher, when you are getting blasted with constantly changing or evolving situations, the more people you have on your team who understand the roles and responsibilities, even just understanding the different departments within your organization can be a huge piece towards improving team dynamics and productivity because it breaks down silos. It allows people to get a better picture of where the organization is heading and it allows people to buy into a number of different benefits like the increase in opportunities or the avoiding that feeling of I'm just stuck in the same role for the next 20 years.
[COBY]:Right. And and again part of that too is also again is around the operational safeguards is putting in again those pieces of having people with backend access to your technology. You have multiple people on a min account. So someone leaves that people you're. You can still access your CRM even when, when you're hitting marketing.
[JAMES]:Weird man. The number of times we've encountered, we've gone into organizations and encountered absolute structural messes.
[COBY]:Yeah. Sign checks like, like.
[JAMES]:Well this is just it. We've literally gone into organizations that have lost one or two key people who seen very senior people who have held all of that corporate knowledge and they were the only people who were who had signing authority or who had log, who had the credentials for different like fundamental core business operational technologies that are essential to keeping things running like it yeah. Cross training, standard operating procedures building in redundancies. You, you need to weatherproof your business. And this is, these are strategies that will help you do that. And if you do it during the hard times, it's going to serve you well in the future. If you do it when times are good, it's going to be you're. You will weather the storm far more effectively. There is no bad time to Start these things.
[COBY]:No, you're right. Okay, let's move on to the last one because I think this one may end up going off the rails a bit too.
[JAMES]:not with me. I'm always on point.
[COBY]:So the last one was alignment between operational and people strategies, which is kind of again yours.
[JAMES]:Oh yeah. I'm going off on a tangent.
[COBY]:Yeah. Okay. I mean trying to think how I, I think we're, we're running close on time. So you can't go off on too much of a tangent. But I'm going to let you, I'm gonna let you start and then I'm, I'm probably gonna have to reel you in. So go ahead.
[JAMES]:Okay. So where do I want to start with this. So this is a big, this is a big piece for me. This is something that I'm very, that I think is absolutely crucial to operational success. It's also one of the areas that drives me absolutely bonkers.
[COBY]:Fortunately.
[JAMES]:it's a short drive. anyways. One of the biggest problems that I've seen as we've engaged with more businesses, as we've engaged with larger businesses, especially as we start to work more and more with larger entities with a more centralized corporate structure, strategies happen, but they happen in a vacuum. The operational operations team will craft, there will be sign like big overarching operational goals that the company is working towards. You know, they've just secured significant investment. They have these big operational targets that they have to hit, that it, that affects every aspect of the business and they create a really strong operational plan for how they want to achieve that. And then HR creates the people strategy for independent of the operational strategy and how they want to achieve that. And then the comms marketing and comms team creates a communication strategy for how they want to support that overarching goal. And then the sustainability team creates their own strategy in a vacuum of how they, how sustainability plays a role in this. And the fragmentation between all of these different strategies ends up landing squarely on the heads of middle level managers. You have operations team directing management mid level managers on how they, what they need to do in order to achieve the operational strategy. Then you have a memo sent from HR with instructions for how they're supposed to achieve the people strategy. Then you have a memo sent from the sustainability team for how they're supposed to talk about and achieve the sustainability targets. And never have these departments actually communicated with each other. They've never sought each other out for input. They've never even thought that maybe we should all be on the same bloody page. And the misalignment between operational and people strategies in particular, creates such a unnecessary bottleneck. barriers, roadblock, friction, whatever you want to call. Also contributes to managers feeling like they have to micromanage everything because they've got four, four different bosses telling them four different things. And then they have to try to relay that to their team members in a way that makes sense when it doesn't make sense in the first place.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah, no, you're right. It's something that we definitely see more with the large corporate pieces and we,
[JAMES]:I mean it happens in all businesses to a degree. but there's something about,
[COBY]:well, it's, it's when the organization scales, the silos become thicker, the wall of them become thicker. They're, they're. The separation becomes broader. And that's really a lot, a lot of what it was. But I mean, again, that's often the role that we play when we start working with organizations early on is we're like, okay, let's just figure out how to align your operational strategy with your people strategy. So everybody's focusing on, focusing on the same thing and we're able to kind of build some momentum.
[JAMES]:It's usually kind of your people strategy can enhance your operational strategy. It should, like that's, that should be the purpose of it. And it's often, it's often the stated purpose. Like if you look at like reading through like strategy documents that clients have produced, it's like, yeah, this sounds fantastic. Until you get to the implementation. The operationalization of these strategies in silos just CR Kills any wonderful state of purpose that they have.
[COBY]:But you're right though, is that, it often is the middle level managers or we work with large corporate entities. It's like the, the regional managers or in retail store managers, they end up absorbing that contradiction.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:And they are asked to implement these decisions or these approaches or these strategies or these efforts that they had no involvement in and they don't really understand themselves. They're asking their team to do something that they don't fully get and they're not totally bought in for. And they often have the resources that. To match them. Right. So, I mean, the goals and the resources are often far apart as well. And they have no ability or authority to push back or have any kind of implement or any kind of like, impact or influence, I should say, on these pieces. And then they're wondering why they burn out or why they're ineffective or why these things fail. And it's, it's, it's comical when you can look at it from like, from the view.
[JAMES]:That's comical when you're not involved directly, when it doesn't affect you directly.
[COBY]:Yeah, but like when we look back we're like, well yeah, this is obviously set up to fail and you just followed this all the way through to failure. We're like, well we could, you know, like it's pretty obvious when you look at it in hindsight or you look at it kind of again from that 30,000 view that we often get to when we see these raw pictures. But like the problem is everyone's so focused and they have their blinders on. They're focusing just on what's in front of them and they're, and they're really just kind of like, you know, just kind of like horse racing where they just have, all they can see is the track in front of them and they can see nothing else. And that's usually why it takes a third party like us to kind of come in and be able to help them find that alignment and have everybody focusing on the, on the right pieces, make sure that the resources match up and everything else like that as well. And why everyone's bought in, change management, all those kind of strategies too.
[JAMES]:And this is why like we start with like tying this back to our hierarchy. There's a reason why the foundational stage of the hierarchy is focused on the frontline experience people are having day to day in the workplace. The factors of the workplace, what happened, like using this scenario that we just talked about of fragmented strategies, three or four different directions being given to middle level managers or site managers or regional managers who have to pass this information on and then they are rightly asked by their team why. Yeah. And the answer is. Because we're told to.
[COBY]:Yeah. because corporate says.
[JAMES]:Because corporate says that makes you look bad to your employees. It makes you look disorganized. It makes it look like there is no strategy and it makes people feel like what they do doesn't matter because it can change on a whim and often does. And they don't feel like they've been respected enough to actually been told why. Yeah, you don't, it's really hard to be motivated about what you do and what you are trying, what the organization is trying to accomplish if you don't tell people why it's important.
[COBY]:Okay, so this has been a good conversation. I think that instead of me doing a bit of a Summary. I think I might just talk about kind of some of the core elements that we talked about that people can find other podcasts on. So again, because a lot of this stuff is like, you know, is application of kind of some core theories that we talk about routinely. So our work with culture, hierarchy and, and the stages of it, and again, the five successes that we mentioned earlier, but we also brought in unintentionally. We brought in kind of like four of the five threatening truths that we talked about in other podcasts. We talked about the fragile grip principle. We talked about the revenue or, sorry, the revenue stabilizing blind spot, the law of the linchpin and the action is reaction fallacy. These are all common issues and common topics that are really those fundamental pieces. Like part of it is when we say what needs to exist first before what you want to do is become effective. Some of the things that have to have to exist first is your understanding of how this stuff works, how organizational psychology guides the practical application of many things, what these common, pitfalls and the threatening truths that exist actually are so you know, to avoid them. Because again, doing more with less is often stop making the same old mistakes that, that you've been doing for a long time and actually start to do the things that are actually going to make a difference. That's probably one of the biggest pieces of advice that we could probably, that
[JAMES]:we can probably stop running headfirst into that wall.
[COBY]:It hurts, right? So knowing that there's predictable common things that you could stop doing and a broader, more grounded and impactful and repeatable understanding about how things can, can go well is probably going to be one of the first things that we, that you really have to do. Because all this other kind of stuff requires you have some ability to stop making the same mistakes and some foresight into what's going to be effective. All right, so that about does it for us. For a full archive of the podcast and access to video version hosted on our YouTube channel, Visit Roman3.ca, thanks for joining us.
[ANNOUNCER]:For more information on topics like these, don't forget to Visit us at Roman3.ca. Side effects of this podcast may include improved retention, high productivity, increased market share, employees breaking out in spontaneous dance, dry mouth, aversion to the sound of James voice, desire to find a better podcast…
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
The Human Side of Business Podcast
Ange MacCabe, CEO Intuity Performance
Circle Up & Get REAL Podcast
Jodee Bock