Business Innovators Radio - Walt Brown: How to Attract Awesome People and Repel the Jerks

Episode Date: October 22, 2023

Walt Brown is an Organizational Activist, Author, and Coach. His mission in life is the removal of organizational confusion and dysfunction that holds individuals back from being the best they can be at work. In his first life Walt was a seasoned multi-company entrepreneur with a Dot com exit. In his second life he has focused on coaching leaders and team in how to create and maintain the organization they always dreamed of.Learn more at: 7q7p.comRebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogdenhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/rebelpreneur-radio-with-ralph-brogden/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/walt-brown-how-to-attract-awesome-people-and-repel-the-jerks

Your Resistance is futile. The revolution has begun. We're listening to Rebelpreneur Radio, helping you break the rules and build the business you need for the life you want. And now, broadcasting his pirate signal. Through somewhere beyond the status glow. Here's your host, bestselling author, marketing and media strategist, Ralph Brogden.

Hello and welcome to Rebelpreneur. radio. It's the show that helps you build the business you need so you can live the life you want. I'm Ralph Brogden. Well, it is a challenge that every entrepreneur eventually runs into once you develop your business beyond the solopreneur stage. And it's how do you attract awesome people to your team and repel all the jerks that want to join and they don't really fit in? You don't want to create more problems. In fact, a lot of people I talk to and work with, their first objection to scaling is I would have to hire people. I'm not good at hiring people and I don't want the extra problem. Well, that's going to limit how big you can grow.

And if you want to be limited, that's fine. But if you are interested in learning how to attract awesome people while repelling the jerks, then today's guest is really going to shed some light on that and give you clarity. I am pleased to welcome back to the show again, Walt Brown. He has been on the show before, and we had a wonderful conversation. He has been hard at work in the meantime. His mission in life is the removal of organizational confusion and dysfunction that holds individuals back from being the best they can be at work. In his first life, Walt was a seasoned multi-company entrepreneur with the dot-com exit. In his second life, he is focused on coaching leaders and teams in how to create and

maintain the organization they always dreamed of. He's author of a new book, and the title is Attract or Repel, Empowering Your People to Create Robust Organizational Health with Bight. So, Mr. Walt Brown, welcome to Rebelpreneur Radio. Howdy, Ralph. I forgot I had written that. That's pretty good. That's a pretty good title, isn't it? So the book is written, but it's not yet published.

So you're going to tease us now with all of the wisdom that you put into the book or most of it, but we won't be able to get access to it right now. You're just going to savor our or wet our appetite, and we'll just have to savor it until the big day. But tell us a little bit. Before we get into the book about who you are, what you do, and what is, what does it mean to be an organizational activist? Right. Organizational activist.

Let me start with a belief statement first. So I have a few different belief statements. This one is relevant to today. And this first belief is an organization, your company, is a fiction, a fiction that's only given meaning and power by the those who buy in, those who believe in it. And if you've got 200 people and 99 buy into this and 101 buy into that, then you have two organizations. As the saying goes, you've already been divided.

You might be on your way you're being conquered, but you're absolutely going to be on your way to be an average. And this is when we meet a lot of people who recognize that as a fact, and they're trying to create one single organization that continues to grow for itself. That's being generous to say that you've got that many people on the same page and it's evenly divided 50-50. In a lot of organizations of that size, if you've got 400 employees, you've got 400 different narratives about what it's all about. Exactly. Confusion and dysfunction.

Yep. So your goal is to remove that organizational confusion and dysfunction. Are you working mainly with leadership? first or exclusively? How do you get that to disseminate through the organization? Well, it always has to start with that CEO, owner, visionary, who recognizes that they've got this sort of missing link going on. And specifically, I'm working with senior leadership

and a lot of times sort of middle managers to get the light bulb to go off. And then what we do is we flip the script so that we're including everyone in the solution. So even though you say I'm primary working, my clients, the people I'm meeting with are the senior leadership team, but the end of the day, if we don't get it all the way out to the front lines to the feet on the street, then, you know, with just big old sacks of worthless air. So, yeah.

Or a compressed gas. My daughter was flying over the weekend, and they sent her a list of things that you can't bring, and one of it was compressed gas. And, you know, what a letdown, because I always like to carry a canister of compressed gas everywhere I go. But you're right. Without the practical application and boots on the ground and everyone buying it, honing it, really, all of it is just compressed gas and it has nowhere to go.

But when it does come out, it just makes a rude noise and doesn't accomplish. anything. Smelt bad, right. Sorry. Sorry. It's a rebel for newer radio. It's not corporate radio. That's right.

So that's one way to repel the jerks. But so back to your hook, attracting awesome people while repelling the jerks. First of all, I think it is an issue with people when they don't know when to let go.

You're working with companies that are established. They've already got their teams in place, and it's more of a fine-tune and adjustment of what they already have going on. In an entrepreneur situation, it's someone who is poised for growth and ready to scale, but they don't know yet how to build that team. And I'm just wondering, is it easier to work with the team that you have, or is it easier to start from scratch with the team that is the ideal fit, right? right from the beginning so that you don't have to unlearn a lot of things. That's a great point. You know, so the most,

most of my clients are people who started out with a dream and they started off with, if you want to, if you want to paint it in a broad, broad stroke, we can call it culture just as a, I don't like that word, but we'll just as a broad stroke piece. You start a company because you always dream of creating the kind of company

and culture you always wanted to work at. And for a while, you know, the dream continues to grow. And then ultimately at a point you get too big, They're too busy and you sort of start losing sight and, you know, you can kind of have organizational terrorists can sort of seep their way in. And before you know it, you've lost sight of the dream.

So no matter what, the dream and the belief of what kind of organization you want to create is is always pure. It's always the same. It never changes from the day an entrepreneur, you know, takes the risk to lead to, you know, wake up one day and realize they've got 150 people and, you know, they aren't really surrounded by everybody that they want that they're happy. with. So it really doesn't matter, right? I would, there are a number of people who are waking up nowadays going, gosh, if they would just use the seven questions and kind of get to grips with what

that looks like before they hire or talk to their first person, then maybe they can avoid this train wreck. But normally, you know, as a entrepreneur, you're kind of a rugged individual and a rate and roll, roll, roll, and maybe a little bit younger and haven't really codified some of these things that mean a lot in your life. And a little bit later on, you wake up. But works on both ends. Get the work done up front. Awesome. Yeah.

As an entrepreneur, do it now. So for people who didn't have the benefit of the previous interview, tell us, give us a quick overview of the seven questions. And that is your website, by the way, 7Q7P.com. Explain the syntax of that and give us a quick overview of those seven questions. Yeah. Awesome, man. So as a quick little update, the branding has moved from 7Q,

7p over to B-E-7, Ralph, so it's B-I-T-E, the number 7. And what we're talking about is creating buy-in, inclusion, trust, and engagement. In order to create all those things, we've got to answer seven questions for ourselves and for our employees. And basically, the seven are, you know, as leadership, we need to define what it means to belong in an organization. What are our core values, how to we treat each other. And then we've got to get really clear in being able to paint where we're going into the future, which is all about believe. So it's long, believe, accountable, measured, herd, developed, and balanced. And once we paint the belief statement, we have to be super clear to communicate with people of what they're accountable for as we move toward this dream for what we're asking them to believe.

We need to be super clear on how people are measured. Everybody needs to know how we're measuring progress toward our vision. we need to be super clear on how the organization listens so people can be heard. We need to be super clear on how people can participate in their own development. And ultimately, what does balance look like at our organization? And let's be very truthful about what balance looks like. And balance is three things. It's work life, of course, work life integration.

What does job pay, compensation? And ultimately, you know, do we help with it regards your wellness? So we're trying to get people to say yes to seven things. And if you can define what yes means to those things. So when you're hiring people in, they're either buying in or not buying in right off the bat. And they can actually help you create an organization that honors those seven questions that turn into seven promises is the idea. Yeah. So that automatically repels the jerks, doesn't it?

When you put out the vision of who you are, what you're all about and you just, you break it down. And either that resonates with them or it doesn't. That reminds me of something Michael Gerber said. some years ago that the purpose of sharing your vision is not to convince other people to adopt it, but to see if they already have it. That's right. Exactly. And if, you know, because it's really hard for somebody to get it if they'd already have it.

Well, I'm glad you mentioned measurement because, you know, we can talk about goals, aspirations, visions, dreams, things we want to accomplish a more, concepts, but when you come down to how do we measure this, now it's rubber hitting the highway. Now we are down to the metrics, the data. And that's something that you can look at, you can analyze, you can see if the thing is up or down, off or on, left or right. So talk to us about the things that we need to be measuring in terms of your area of expertise, which is organization. trust, courage, and psychological safety, at least those three. And tell us, how do you measure that? That just, that seems so abstract that I wouldn't know where to begin.

So help us out with that. Two interesting things there. So how you measure, you know, trust and psychological safety. So we actually, I've got two pieces here. A, talk a little bit about measurement, but B, measuring is really important when you're trying to create something. And we have a index we've created called a bite index that you seven question survey based on the seven questions, seven promises are just related. And we get feedback from the organization and then from the feedback. We're able to see where we're weak. And then we can

communicate this weakness along with an action plan. And that just helps people see that we're doing this effort. Very often employee engagement, trust building efforts, are seeing. as employees is being done to them as opposed to for them. We've got to make sure we flip the script. And one way you do it is you keep it super simple. And the second way you do it is when you give them a freaking survey, you better come back with a plan. So it's very important to have one way you measure the organization's health.

And then you communicate the results of the health survey to the employees along with what the plan and the tool is. And then the other piece is measurement in the seven questions is we're trying to. to honor our individuals with allowing them to bring this really important thing that lives between their ears called their brain to work every day. And, you know, so this is what it means to belong. This is way we treat each other. This is where we're going. Our vision is what you're accountable for. And this is, these are some measures that you can use to help guide your thinking and your strategies and your tactics about your daily job that you can measure and keep up with to know

whether, hey, man, I did a good job this week, or is this thing I'm thinking about doing and it help me get to the number. So the numbers aren't really supposed to be traps. They're supposed to be active things that people can embrace and use to do a better job and to actually feel good about themselves and feel like they belong or included and create levels of trust and engagement across the whole company. Does that make sense? It does.

Now, what is your take on the numerical? goals. For example, and I'll tell you why I ask this, some are some schools of thoughts say you set a goal and say the goal is 1.2 million, all right, 100,000 a month. And others say, wow, when you set a goal real big like that, everyone gets kind of freaked out and they get scared of the actual number. So what you should focus on is, the process. Think about what would it take you to get to 1.2 million. Think about the activities that need to occur and just focus on doing those things. Is that an either-or proposition or is it both-and? I think it's both and, you know, but really the numbers that we're trying to talk about,

you know, because if you set a little big goal and you don't hit them, we're all about hitting, setting goals you can hit in terms of the long numbers. A lot of times people refer to it as like the lagging indicators, but the real numbers that we're looking for is, you know, when you have a job, there's an ultimate objective, but then you have things called roles. Sorry, I'm getting kind of nerdy on you, but your roles are actually the roles and responsibilities that you're doing inside of your job. And if you can get smart and try to create measurables that are actually controlled. controllable actions that you can do, then it's not as frustrating.

Hey, man, you know, I was, we, we agreed. These were the activities, the actions that I can, I can basically track on a weekly basis and look in the mirror and say whether I did them or not. I can't influence the ultimate outcome because so often the outcome is being driven by someone else making a decision. And you can't control that decision. you can only control the activities that you did with the person. So it's really like 80% controllable activities and getting on the same page. And, you know, like 20% of whether you hit the goal or not. That's my philosophy.

But they go together. You can't have one without the other. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I like that. I think that's a good balanced approach. It just came to mind when I worked for a large Fortune 500 company. And, yeah, they had numerical goals for you. in terms of dollars that they wanted to see generated, but you couldn't get there just by thinking,

well, how am I going to hit my numbers this month? What you had to focus on was your activity. And the activity that they wanted was 100 phone calls per day. That's something that's totally in your control. Now, it was a stretching goal because I didn't think it was even physically possible to make 100 phone calls in a single day. And they wanted me to do that every day. five days a week. And I just, I didn't think it was possible.

But by focusing on that and then conquering that and then going beyond that and doing 125, 135 per day, then I was able to hit those. But we might even get further. When we start talking about numbers, we think that the organization is going to needs to be control of like the effort of 60% setting them. But then we need to open the door for the individual who belongs. and believes and knows what they're accountable for to help set the 40%. So it might be, yeah, you made the phone calls, but the really key is how many people

told you about their family. Did you get in a conversation where actually talked about a family event or something? I mean, 10. It's probably a bad example, but how many times were you actually able to create a relationship on the phone call? I don't care if you made 100 calls, but if you know that creating a relationship, if you get 10 of those a day, then that's going to end. up as five leads into one deal, you know. So it's sort of like even that type of idea that's not

just the calls, but the reason behind, if you can give a measure that's sort of like talking about the why behind what you're trying to get to, that helps too. Sure. Yeah. So a quantitative goal as well as a qualitative goal that supports. Or maybe it's one goal, but it's it's expressed in quantitative and qualitative terms so that we get what we're doing, why we're doing it. And if we just do those things, then the bottom line essentially takes care of itself. It follows. All that follows the activities. Yeah.

So we're in an interesting period of time where no one can agree on whether or not the economy is good or bad, whether it's getting better or whether it's getting worse, whether we're in a recession or not, whether, like, after the pandemic is better than it was before or during. We have a presidential election next year. Yep. So many things are up in the air. What is the state of corporate America, of hiring, of really trying to invest in people?

What is the outlook? Well, it's funny. I'm going to do a typical politician. You ask me a question. I'm going to give you a little different answer. But it's in the same vein. What you described is all of the anxiety that the average person is living under nowadays. They turn the radio on and they're just, they're met with things that are meant to make them fearful.

You know, and they don't have the answer and things are beyond their control. And what we're trying to do with this attract or repel is we're saying to folks, we're giving them promises. We're going to surround you with people who can say yes to these seven things. things. And then if you keep your promises, then what you've done for this individual is they're no longer uncertain about the organization they're walking into on a daily basis or what they're being asked to believe in or what they're accountable for or measured or who they're going to be surrounded by. And you're actually creating this zone of comfort that ironically lives at work and it doesn't live anywhere else in their life. That's an amazing thing to contemplate. It is. And then

And then they're able to, when you get rid of all that fear, they're actually able to go up Maslow's hierarchy of need into enlightenment. And when they're at that level, then they actually have interest, they have enough energy to reflect back on the world and put positive energy back into the world that they can't do if they're freaking out and fearful. then all they do is just jump in and get ground up by the machine that's talking to them all day long. So hopefully that's one of the main things we're trying to do is get rid of that dysfunctional confusion. Get rid of that fear because we're in a big old fear mode right now, aren't they with all that uncertainty? So what you're suggesting is that you can be uncertain in every other area of your life. But if you get this right in your organization, people can come to work and actually enjoy coming to work and have psychological safety as well as enlightenment and comfort and free from fear

there at least one third of their life and not have and not have to worry not bring all of that into not only am i suggesting it ralph but i'm telling you and then i'm what another thing we're talking about in bites seven is we're measuring it and we're taking it and we're taking action on it at least twice a year. And how you go about doing that or some other things in the book. But, you know, it's like, this isn't just a suggestion. It's like, this is reality. And we see it playing out in our clients who embrace it and flip this script and actually

tell their employees, this is what I'm doing and making promises and then keeping those promises. You know, promises are an amazing thing. When you make a promise, you're actually, you're actually giving rights to the person you made a promise to to hold you to that. promise, right? Yeah. So it's a big flip.

It's sort of the way people look at employees and organizations. But yeah, it's more than just suggesting. It's patenting out there. Wonderful. So it's a, and you've got some of the metrics on your website, byte7.com. Since you gave me the new website, I'm already on it and checking it out. Lots of interesting and useful information here. You're giving us some of the metrics, 10.

higher customer loyalty, 18% higher sales, 18% less turnover and high turnover organizations, 43% less turnover and low turnover organizations. That's just a few. 81% less absenteeism. Wow. Yeah. 23% greater profits. And so this is, I think we- that absenteeism number. So much remote work nowadays. Right. People can be absent without being absent. Quite quitting, all of that type of stuff. I don't have numbers on that exactly, but that's what that means. Yeah.

Very powerful. Very powerful. So what, you've got a book that delineates all of this. Tell us about your book and give us a general overview of that and when we can expect to see it. Well, it's being, I guess, a word shocked or passed around to publishers right now. an agreement two weeks ago. And so you can get an early version now. If you go to bite7.com or wallet at bite7.com, I'll send you an advanced version.

I'll even sign it for you and you can read it and give me reviews and stuff. But basically the book talks about the journey. It talks about that psychology of psychological safety and trust. And like Bray Brown's, you know, courageous organizations, it gives you some diagnostics to see where you currently are on the seven questions. and it gives you a pretty strong guidance on how to get to yes to the seven questions. So it's a how-to book along with a Y book. Wonderful.

I think it's a hundred ninety-two pages. Okay. That's drawings and pictures in it too. Yeah, I love any kind of a diagram or anything that Stephen Covey's book was always really instructional along those lines. So lots of things. to digest very practical, very down to earth, but also based on psychology and science. And a portfolio of clients that you've worked with that are seeing these results. So the website to go to is Byte 7, B-I-T-E, just the way it sounds, byte7.com.

You can find out more about Walt, about the book, and get a copy of that book as well. get an advanced copy and go ahead and get immersed in these seven questions and begin to at least learn the framework and the philosophy so that then you can you can begin to implement these ideas in your organization and attract awesome people while repelling the jerks. And it just happens automatically, doesn't it? It does. Yep. As long as you keep your promises, you empower your people.

And the irony is you're not doing it any longer. It's the people who are squirting them out. It's your way in that are squirting them out. Yeah. And if your organization repels jerks, that doesn't leave room for you to be one. That's right. Starts at the top or at the pop, I want to look at it. It's true.

Well, Walt Brown, thank you so much for being on Rebelpreneur radio today. I really appreciate your wisdom and best wishes to you and with your book. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ralph. You've been listening to Rebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogden. Download the show notes and much more at Rebelpreneur.com.