EntreLeadership - #274: Build an A Team with Whitney Johnson

Episode Date: July 9, 2018

In today’s ever-changing business environment, the most effective way to keep your organization competitive is with a team that is continuously learning, according to best-selling author Whitney Johnson. New challenges are not only important to keep us engaged and motivated, but they also lead to increased productivity and better morale. Tune in to find out how to determine where you are on your personal learning curve, as well as ways to help your team members along theirs. Also joining us is Armando Lopez, executive director of HR at Ramsey Solutions, to talk about ways we are changing our interview process to ensure each candidate’s experience is a positive one. entreleadership.com/podcast The EntreLeader’s Guide to Hiring from EntreLeadership Personalized Growth Planner from Infusionsoft Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If it's scary and if it's lonely, you are on the right path to disruption. So go ahead and be a little bit scared. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation.

Our feature interview, this episode is with Whitney Johnson. She's a return guest here on the program. She's got a new book out entitled Build an A Team, play to their strengths and lead them up the learning curve. And then we get a visit from Armando Lopez, our executive director of HR here at Ramsey Solutions with some important information. And we're going to give you some Dave Ramsey content.

How about a talk he recently gave our team to beware of the summer letdown. Boy, this is relevant to all of you. If I were you leaders, I would play this clip to your entire team. How about that? That's why we give it to you. It's all free. And of course, InfusionSoft and Entree leadership bringing you some free resources.

So let's get right to it. Whitney Johnson's been on the program before. Her book, Disrupt Yourself. Putting the power of disruptive innovation to work was a great book. And we had her on in a previous episode for that book. This new book is about building an A team. Who among us doesn't want an A team? So she's going to make this really achievable.

It's practical. You're going to love it. Here is Whitney Johnson. Well, this is fun. Whitney Johnson back on the show with us. And this time we're talking about a new book, Build an A team, play to their strengths and lead them up the learning curve. Whitney, I don't think there's anybody in our audience of leaders who doesn't long for or work specifically towards this idea. They want to build an A team. but it is not as easy as just wanting to. We've got to be very intentional. Give us a quick summary

of what you're driving to here in the subtitle. And then I want to unpack some stuff in the book. Yeah, like you just alluded to, I mean, we all want to be a great boss, right? We want when people come to work, we want them to come work for us. And yet, then we've got deadlines. We've got budgets. We've got product to ship. And so when that happens, there's this feeling that we need people right where they are, doing what they've always done. And so we become that boss that we didn't ever want to be because we're not letting people ever move. And of course, it doesn't need to be that way, but it ends up being that way. So the thing that I've learned, having been an analyst on Wall Street and then co-founding an investment firm with Clay Christensen, is that the theory of disruption

that we apply to products actually also applies to people. And so for the last five years, I've been applying this theory researching and codifying it so that whether whether you're scaling an organization or building a team, just trying to get your people to be more innovative, you've got a structure to do this. And so that's what this book is about is how do you take this framework and apply it to building a great team? All right. So I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the content in the book. And one of the real keys that you write about in the book is identifying what your employees already know and then what they need to learn. Let's break that down. So let's talk about what they already know.

And this, again, none of this is like rocket science when you hear it. Yet Whitney, a lot of leaders don't do this. So let's start with, all right, what does it look like to truly, from a process, a leader to get to the bottom of, what does this person already know when they come to me? What do they already know? How do we determine that? One of the things I think about in trying to build a great team is to figure out where people are on their current learning curve because everybody is on a learning curve. You're on one. I'm on one in your current job.

I'm on one in mine. And so what you want to do is figure out where is this person, aren't they? And picture an S, for example. And so where are they at the bottom of the S where they're just starting? They're brand new, either in this domain or this job. And in which case, they're not going to know very much. And that means they're going to be kind of slow,

but it also means they're not blind through familiarity, which is going to be very helpful to you as a manager, if you're willing to listen to all those questions that they ask like, why do we do it like this? which can be kind of pesky, but incredibly helpful in terms of uncovering strategic insights. So that's the first thing is like, where is this person? Are they at the low end in experience? Or are they in the sweet spot on that steep part of the S where they've been in a role for two or three years? Or they've got domain expertise of two or three years.

And so this is where all their neurons are firing. They're incredibly competent. They're incredibly confident. And the way you want to manage these people because they're really good at what they do is give them lots of constraints, lots of stretch assignments because when you put them in that box, they'll have the tools to say, I got to figure out how to get out of this box. And as they do that, they're going to help innovate for your organization. And then you might have people who are at the top of their S curve where they're absolutely masters at what they do, but because they're no longer

enjoying the feel-good effects of learning, they can get bored. Now, the role that they play for you for a certain period of time is that they've got, they're at the top of the curve, they've got this perspective, they can see. things that other people who are lower on the curve can't see. And so they can help bring other people along. They're incredibly valuable. The risk is that if you try to leave them there too long, they're going to get bored, as I just said, and either leave or get complacent and stay. And so once you get to the top, you want them to jump to the bottom of a new learning curve. And that's how you're able to help your organization stay continually fresh and innovative and avoid being disrupted,

actually. Boy, that's a really good point. And this idea of, okay, now we know what they know and what they need to learn. And I think this is interesting. I'm going to ask you a two-part question. For those who are on the bottom of that S curve and they need to learn a lot, right? So as a leader, you're assessing them, you're going, boy, there's so much they have to learn. That question is, all right, how do you prioritize what they most need to learn and not try to overwhelm them, you know,

because you're going to have to bring them along. And then let's flip that. to that person you just described at the end of your last answer, they have mastered, if you were. They're very, very proficient at their current role. And we all know, hey, they're going to get bored. We're going to have to gently push them. Or do we just say, hey, you need to jump so that you're now learning again, this idea of progress. How do you lead that process well for both of those different people, not doing too much too soon on the learning for the person who's at the bottom of the us and then maybe not push. too soon or not letting them stay too long. How do you lead through that? Great questions. So let's start with the person at the low end of the curve. I think one of the things that's really important in

terms of being able to climb a learning curve, which I talked about in my prior book, Disrupt Yourself, and you interviewed me on it. Thank you so much, is this idea of giving people constraints. And so one of the things at the low end of the curve is people need lots of feedback to know how they're doing. And the way you can give them that feedback is actually give them a constraint. Like you think about a skateboarder, they get lots and lots of feedback, like how are they doing? And that gives them information that helps them move up the curve. So when people are at the low end, you want to give them assignments of, here are the things that I want you to do during the first week on the job. Things like, I want you to have this assignment and I want you to go meet these 10 people who are your stakeholders.

These are the things I want you to accomplish your first month on the job so that they're going to get feedback really quickly. They have assignments with tight deadlines, tight budgets. And that will allow them to see how they're doing, start to develop those neural pathways that will allow them to get a sense of where they are on the job and allow you to see how well they're tracking against where you wanted them to go. So have a very specific plan in mind for their first week, their first month, there's six months on the job, at which point, if all is going well and it's actually the right learning curve for them, they should start to move into the sweet spot of that curve. So that's how I would manage people at the low end. In terms of people on the high end,

Once they become masters, and I actually have an S-curve locator diagnostic that if you go to my website, you can take it and see where you are on the learning curve. But for people at the high end, once they get there, you as a manager want to say to them, okay, I know you're at the high end. In fact, before I go there, I have to tell you this really fun story. So I think you've mentioned that you were a history buff. So here's a fun story about a person who's at the top of a learning curve, Alexander Hamilton. So Alexander Hamilton, top of his learning curve, he wants to jump to a new curve in the military. And George Washington says to him, no can do, I can't promote you over other full colonels. But that wasn't actually the problem.

The problem was is that Hamilton was so good he had become Washington's alter ego. And so Washington didn't want him to go. He liked him right where he was. Of course, there was a falling out. Unlike many bosses, Washington was eventually willing to honor his request. and Washington lost his right-hand man. Here's the thing. When a person gets to that top of that curve,

you want to have a conversation with him and say, okay, you're here. I get it. I need six to nine months from you. And then I will help you. I will sponsor your jump to do something new, whether it's on our team, inside of our company,

to a client, to a vendor. But here's what I need you to do in the meantime. I need you to, number one, be a pace car like the Indy 500. I need you to set the pace for everybody else on the team. want to hear any of this. I paid my dues. Number two, I need you to train people. Alex Haley of Root said, whenever an old person dies, it's like a library burning. Well, when someone jumps to a new curve, it's like a library is burning. So I need you to train people, train your successors.

And the third thing that I need you to do is I need you to mentor and facilitate collaboration, because you're not going to have the same kind of skin in the game on this particular curve, because you know you're about to leap to a new curve. So I need you to facilitate that collaboration. And then once they deliver on that, they finish strong. It is your responsibility to deliver to them to help them then jump to that new learning curve. Okay. Excellent stuff there. All right, let's move forward.

Another, I think, key service that you do for readers and leaders in this book is talking about designing jobs that actually fit the talent you have, the people that you have. And again, nothing complex here in this idea yet. It's not as easy to practice because leaders get in this rhythm of this is the job description. I need you to do this job description. And in reality, when you get somebody in there, if you're not paying attention as a leader, you can get somebody that could lay dormant for years, not fully maximizing that role or themselves. Walk us through the challenge in the book here, this idea of designing the jobs around the people, not trying to fit the people into the role or the job.

Yeah. Let me give you an example, because I think that really will illustrate it well. There's a fellow by the name of John Cave. And he's a fellow by the name of John Cave. he works for the National Football League, the NFL, and he has really advanced the game of football in terms of the technology that the coaches use to talk to one another. But it may not have happened had he not had a boss who was willing to do exactly what you just said. Her name is Michelle McKenna Doyle. She's a CIO of the NFL. And when she came on board, she was looking at all her people and said, you know, I've got really good people, but they're not great. And I think it's because they're not slotted to their strengths.

John Kay was a perfect example of this. He was in charge of all the systems enterprise-wide. And she looked at him and she said, you know, what he's actually really good at is building things. So why is he doing payroll systems? Like, I wanted to start building things. So she says, okay, John, here's what I want to do. I want you to move here and do this.

But he resisted it because it felt like a demotion. It felt like she was taking something away from him. And so she's like, trust me, you're going to be a great innovator. So what are the lessons here? Number one, I think you as a boss need to recognize that sometimes when you hire people, they lead with what they do well because they worked hard to learn how to do it, but not always what they do best. And so you want to, as a boss, be able to identify what they're actually great at

and then persuade them to do the job that you can see they will really be excellent at and also that the business actually needs. And so it's really a two-step process, is identify. the strengths and then persuade the talent that you have that this is actually where you need them and when they are willing to go there, then they're learning, they're innovative, and they move the organization forward. Now, we don't have time to go through all of the seven accelerants of learning and growth. This is a chapter in the book that's so fantastic chapter number two.

But I want to highlight that. I just want to run through them real quick and then let you dive into one or two here. The right risk, become a talent developer, two distinctive strengths, people, pinpoint employees' talents and utilize them. Three, embrace constraints. Use time limits to motivate and hone focus. Four, battle against entitlement. Celebrate success and be generous in helping the employees fulfill their potential.

Five, step back to grow, sacrifice short-term productivity to encourage curve jumping. Give failure it's due as number six. Let employees take on uncomfortable challenges and support them through failures. And then seven, be discovery-driven. Shift players on your team as their skills. and talents emerge. Okay, I love number three because I think it really challenged my mindset, you know, and I'm thinking of this, not just as a leader, but also as a parent, as I tend to do. Yes. You know, I mean, it's so rich. We have leaders that are listening in. I always try to draw

parenting parallels here. I want to tee you up to talk about embracing constraints. Use time limits to motivate and hone focus. Yeah. So if you think about when you're climbing this learning curve, right as you start to move into the sweet spot of that curve, There's this tendency. In fact, there's research that's been done is when you move to the sweet spot, you look at your people and you're like, wow, they're a high potential. Fantastic. And yet the research shows that we, because we're afraid that the high potentials are going to fail, we stop challenging them. We stop giving them stretch assignments. And so one of the ways that you can get people to really climb that curve quickly because they need friction. We know that it's a lot of physics that people need friction is you give them stretch assignments, you give them constraints. And so you give them hard things. to do. There's this wonderful example of her name is Alana Golan, and she was a fighter pilot in the Israeli military. And then she goes to work at Intel in Israel as an intern. So on the one hand, she's an intern, but on the other hand, she's a fighter pilot. And she's been in charge of lots of other fighter pilots. And so her boss, Ziyadhana, says, okay, I'm going to give her a stretch assignment.

Like, we're going to give her something hard to do. So he says, I want you to figure out, where is technology are going to advance and where are their holes? Where are their problems? Well, she discovers that verification tools, those tools that test the quality of the software, which are kind of boring, but incredibly important, are going to fall behind. He's like, great, find a solution. So she starts looking around. She looks in academia. It doesn't quite work. So yeah, it's a stretch assignment, a few, you know, missteps here and there. But then she discovers this startup in Sweden, it's railway software, interesting, of course, outside of the discipline. He's like, okay, test it, build a prototype and then see what you've got. Well, it worked. Intel buys the software and they used it

for several decades going forward. And to me, the lesson here is that he gave her a stretch assignment. There was the real risk that she could fail. And I think this goes actually to number four, which is the battle of entitlement. Sometimes we don't want to see people fail. We're afraid to have them fail because we're feeling emotionally entitled of wanting them to do well. And so when we're willing to give people stretch assignments. We're not only giving them the opportunity to step up and potentially fail, but we're also battling our own sense of entitlement of wanting us to just feel good that everything's working. That may feel good in the short term, but in the long run, we can't really develop people unless we're willing to let them have some type of failure. Yeah, well, that leads

beautiful. That's a great segue. I wanted to talk about number six, which is give failure it's due. You've already just really introduced this. Let's keep you going here because, again, this is not something that we do as leaders nationally, the idea of promoting the opportunity to fail and not being worried about it. In fact, expecting failure because, again, Whitney, you know this from your research and writing and the people, the men and women I've been able to interview. If there's anything they all share in common is, they learn their greatest lessons through failure. That's right. And yet, why as leaders, are we so anti-creating an environment where we expect and almost want our team to fail? Yeah, well, and I've got one word for you. It's called shame. Because you think

about it, we all fail all the time. And most of the time, we're actually okay with it. We do it all the time every day. So the question is, I think most of the people that are listening to us have this conversation, we're bright as young kids. And there's some wonderful research by Heidi Grant Halverson, who says that one of the things that happens is very young, in a very young age, people are like, you got an A on that test, you're smart, you got to be, you're dumb, or that's the implication. And so we grow up, and we start to think, if I do well, then I'm good. If I don't do well, I'm bad. And so our identity starts to get tied to our doing something well. And so that happens over and over and over again. So when we get into the workforce, if something doesn't go well, instead of saying, well, we iterated it,

it didn't work. Let's move on. It starts to feel like a referendum on us, like our identity, like that core of who we are. And so the first step is really to be able to separate out, those two and say, okay, this didn't work. Is this about this not working or is this about my sense of self? And I think that's a very important task. Some people are better than others, but I think it's certainly a task that we all need to take on. And what I would say is that as a manager and as a boss, one of the best things you can do for your people is to have their back and make it safe for them to fail. And the way that you as a manager can do that is you manage your manager. So when there's a project that comes in you're like, let's go after this. You've got to say, okay, let's do it. It's the right

thing to do. There's a 70% chance, for example, that it is going to work, but there's a 30% chance that it's not. It may not work, but I still think it's the right thing to do so that if it doesn't work, there's none of this off with their head. It's just like, we took a calculated risk. Here's what we learned. Let's move on. There's no sense of this being tied to anybody's identity. I love the quote by Zig Zig Ziglar. Failure is an event, not a person. And that to me is so powerful. Yeah, that is so good. And you said something that's key.

You said calculated risk, not risk. There's a very big difference between a calculated risk and just some crazy, we're going to jump off a cliff and hope that there's something soft for us to land on. A calculated risk means you've been responsible as a leader. Your team knows what the risk is. We plan for it. We've mitigated it around to the best of our ability. And we're going to go for it with that 70, 30 situation.

And then we're clear on that. doesn't that take a lot of the fear of failure out of our individual team members and teams and even the leaders underneath of us when we can say, hey, it's a calculator risk, let's go for it. And they feel from us as leaders that, hey, we're not going to die if this doesn't work. We're not going to shut the business. Paychecks are still going to show up. That's right. There has to be some modeling, doesn't there?

Absolutely. And I think to the extent that they can see us make mistakes. I think it's really, really important. I mean, this goes back to what you just said a minute ago about being a parent, right? You know, we talk such a good game. And then I watch myself, you know, if I make a mistake, I think, how am I reacting to this? Because I know my children are watching me. How is mom reacting this?

She can talk about it all day long, but how mom and dad are reacting to us. And it's the same in the workforce. If we make a mistake, how do we respond? And then they see how we respond. They know what we really think, what we really feel. And if we can model that for the people who work for us, they'll start to feel. feel like it's psychologically safe to take some risks. And then this really all ties back into what we've been talking about of getting people in

their strength zones so that, again, failure is almost mitigated, you know, to the highest extent that it can be because if people are performing something, they have the strength to pull off. It's not like they don't have the aptitude. They have the aptitude. Now it's just about getting in there and learning from whatever the task is. Absolutely. And the way I like to think about it is you give people Goldilocks assignments, not

too hard, not too easy. And I think as a leader over time, sometimes you're not going to do that very well. But again, you get to learn how to do this. And you'll be able to calibrate with people. And sometimes they're going to be on the wrong curve and then you figure that out. And then you ask yourself, are they not working hard or is it just the wrong curve? And I would say, I'm making the all-priority assumption that everybody who's working for you, they're on this curve. They want to be here. And so most of the times it's some type of ill fit. It's not the right curve for them or you brought them onto the team and there was someone else doing the job and so they can't actually do the job so they're trying to play where other people are playing. Most of the time, if you are willing to

recalibrate, it's not that they don't have the will. It's just that they're not in the right slot. Let's talk about that for leaders. We've really been talking about this from leaders, you know, being able to examine the S curves, if you will, for their team and those that they're leading, other leaders under them. But how would you challenge leaders to make sure that they've got somebody in their life looking at their own curve and putting themselves in this continual. So we got leaders listening, Whitney, and we're going, all right, you're doing really well. How would you challenge them to make sure that they're doing this process for themselves? What's the best way to go about that? Well, I would say, you know, if you want to be an

agent of disruption, first become a subject. And so for me, I mean, that was the whole point of the prior book, Disrupt Yourself, whereas Build an A team is for leaders. And I would say to you, you know, if you want to continue to be a good leader, you will be willing to disrupt yourself. So when you get to the top of your learning curve, you will find ways for yourself to jump to a new one, to learn and leap and repeat. And physician heal thyself, I don't know how many aphorisms I can pull out on you. But I think this framework of disruption, a personal disruption, it begins with the individual. Companies don't disrupt. People do. And so if you want your organization to be vibrant, you yourself will need to disrupt yourself. And that would be the advice that I would

give to you. And if you've been in a role for three, four, five, six years doing the same thing. You're feeling a little bit bored. I feel a little bit complacent like I've paid my dues. Almost always when I talk to people about this, there are a few people who kind of raise their hands and go, yeah, I know it's time for me to do something new. We know it. We know it. Instinctively, we know it. And I would say to you, you know it. You might be afraid to do it, but here's the thing. If it's scary and if it's lonely, you are on the right path to disruption. So go ahead and be a little bit scared. Yeah, love that. Okay, early on. the conversation, Whitney, you mentioned your website, which had this S-curve, and you can kind of

take a look at it and see where you're at. I think it's a great little assessment. I want to give you just a minute or two to talk about that and other resources attached to the book where our audience can go get those and how they need to use them. Okay, so if you go to my website, it's Whitneyjohnson.com backslash diagnostic. You can take the S-curve locator and see where you are on the S-curve. And then what you can also do is you can have the different members of your team take the S-curve. And what I want you to understand and recognize is that if you've got too many people on your team at the height of that S curve, basically you're at risk of disruption because you've got too many people who are bored. So it's a great little barometer for you personally if you're trying to figure out if you yourself need to disrupt yourself.

And then it helps you also figure out how to load balance your team. So that's the best place to find me is Whitneyjohnson.com. Obviously, you can email me at WJ at Whitneyjohnson.com or find me on LinkedIn. and I would love to hear from you. There you go. She is Whitney Johnson. The book is Build an A Team, play to their strengths, and lead them up the learning curve. Whitney, good to have you back with us again.

Congrats on the book. We appreciate you. We're better for your time. Thank you, Ken. I really appreciate it. Hope you enjoyed Whitney again. By the way, this was fun. Marshall Goldsmith, who was with us on episode 241, told us about Whitney.

And we said, well, we know Whitney, but thanks for the heads up on this new book. And I mentioned that Whitney was a previous guest. For those of you who weren't with us at that time, you can go get that episode 118. Really good stuff. Thanks to Whitney for being with us. The team at Entree Leadership here giving you a great resource, the Entree Leaders Guide to Hiring. So we've just been talking about getting an A team. Well, hiring is a big part of acquiring A people to put an A team together.

In this tool, we're going to give you our 12-step hiring guide. This is how we do it. You're also going to get some great nuggets like top 10 interview questions. you need to ask, and we're going to give you an action plan to get started with this new action plan. How about that? So you don't want to miss this. Think about this. If this free resource saves you from a bad hire, think about how much money. We're talking into the thousands, tens of thousands of dollars that this resource could save you by helping you make the right hire or by helping you kick somebody the curb that shouldn't even be in the interview room.

So go get it by texting episode 274. That's episode. So 274. Text that to 33444. That's 33444. Well, we keep bringing you the expertise, the goodness. Armando Lopez. He is our executive director of HR, but this guy is a big-time veteran in this space before he got to us. A widely respected and acclaimed HR executive.

Here is my conversation with Armando Lopez. Armando, good to have you back, man. Glad to be here. So we love having our resident HR guru with us because this topic is never going to get tired here on the Entree show. And so I want to start today and really spend our time. You and I were talking before we started recording about the reality in Tennessee. And it's also a pretty good snapshot of most states in America right now. We've seen some recent data come out that there are more jobs right now open in America than there are people.

who are unemployed. It is a jobs bonanza. Now, that sounds great, but where we're going to focus our conversation is on what reality is kind of this downside reality in that. It's harder to get talent because there aren't as many people out looking for gigs. So what do we do? What does a three-part play for us when we're looking for talent? First of all, let me comment on what you just said, because we are considered to be in full employment, right? So under 3%. I think the latest that at the U.S. at 2.7. Right. And so we're in the full employment market. So anybody that wants to be employed is gainfully employed already.

Right. So that's the first. To answer your question, three-part kind of strategy for how do we get the right people in, right? So the first one is sourcing and we can go more into it, but call it generating applicant flow, right? So sourcing. Selection, how do we pick the right people? And then onboarding. How do we onboard them correctly and keep them here and keep them happy and reinforce their decision to join us?

So they feel great that, hey, I joined the right company. Yeah. Okay, so three parts there. So let's go for sourcing. What's our mindset at Ramsey Solutions? How do we do sourcing? Anywhere and everywhere where we can find great talented people, right? So we have a strategic approach, a shotgun approach that says, okay, we're going to be visible in all these places.

And then we have some very niche sites and niche things that we do. It's a little unfair to the listeners that are hearing us because we have 13 million listeners on the Dave Ramsey. show and X number of listeners on the Ken Coleman show and X number on other shows. And of course, we utilize all of those shows to say we're hiring. All right. So there's the sourcing. And then there's the selection. We've made jokes. We've talked about it very openly on this program that we have a lot of interviews, that it's harder to get hired here than it is to get elected Congress. Okay. But you said something before we started here in the selection process, you call it the candidate experience, that you've been really working hard with the leadership of the company to say, okay, yes,

we're going to be thorough, but how do we make the candidate experience better? Give us a snapshot of where it was, where you're trying to take it, and why? So where it was, and we all joke about the 73 interviews and et cetera, but the candidate was expected to take time off to be available for us at X number of times, right? And so we've kind of said, why can't we utilize technology? Remember, these are all gainfully employed people. Unemployment's the lowest it's ever been. So in that situation, why can't we use technology, Skype, Zoom, FaceTime, et cetera?

Why can't we do some interviews where they don't have to take time off from their employer, right? They could do it at lunchtime, they could do it at breakfast time, they could do it during their breaks. The idea is not to bring a candidate in here, not to require anyway a candidate to show up at the office more than twice. Okay. That's different for us. Yeah, it sure is. But it's keeping into account that candidate experience.

It's saying to them, hey, one, we would never hire someone with poor integrity. Right. But, Ken, what do you think happens when you're interviewing for a position that requires you to be there a couple of times? What are you saying to your employer on, I need time off? Right. We want the highest level of integrity people, right? But after your second or third PTO day, the right, the right employer is asking.

That's right. What is going on, right? What's going on? Why do you need so much time? Short notice, typically, right? That's right. So people are asking what's going on. And that puts pressure on the candidate, to your point. And a great candidate experience now goes down the tubes, right? Right. Because I don't feel good when I'm having a lie to anyone. Right. And normally I'm not going to do it. So I'm going to tell someone, I'm interviewing for another job. Right. And that's going to potentially cost me my job. No question. It just creates all kinds of unnecessary tensions, which again speaks to the experience. Okay. So then, We select. We say, okay, we want you. We make the offer. They say yes. Now onboarding, which what I love about our process is, is there's a lot of intentionality. I'd love for you to talk about what it looks like, how you've built that experience as well. Because for some people, onboarding is just, yeah, here's your, here's your fob. And here's how you do this. Here's your computer. Okay. Go, go, go. You even stretched it because even that is a lot, right? For some people, one, they forget that you're coming that day. Yes. And so you show up and they're like, oh, yeah. Yeah, you're coming in today. Oh, yeah. So sometimes that poor communication between the people that are there, between that team, between that leadership, we're not even ready for them to get there. And so then they feel like an inconvenience, right? And that's not what we want anybody's first day to feel like.

Yeah. So some of the things we do now, Ken, is because of scope size, right? We're a lot bigger. We can do a lot more. And so some of them are like reserved parking spots. Right. Now, some people listening to this are probably going like, what's? It's the big deal. Right. But here at Ramsey Solutions on your first day, do you think you're going to find a parking spot here? No chance. No chance. And then you're freaking out because you're late on your first day because you don't even know where to go.

And you don't even know that we have mall parking in a shuttle that runs back and forth on your first day. So we reserve spots for new hires. We tell them in an email that there's a spot reserved for you. It's got a blue cone. Gotcha. And it says new team member. And so park there. You are the new team member we're waiting on, right?

Good. Good. And so they park there. They come in. Martha's place is open. Now, normally, Martha's place is closed at 8 o'clock in the morning on a Monday because we do staff meeting. However, on Mondays that are start dates, it's open. And guess what's coming out of Martha's place? Oh, well, just all kinds of good smelling stuff, whether it be the coffee or the baked goods. I'm guessing they don't get to park there day two, right? Not day two, can't be. You're laughing, but by day two, you know we have mall parking. That's right. And you've written in the shuttle because that's part of our onboardings to actually ride in the shuttle and gets to see where the parking spots are. And so they get a chance to do that. And so by day two, you don't have a parking spot. By day two, you don't have Martha's cookies waiting for you. Right. Yes. But you know where to find the break room and you know where to get your own cup of coffee. Yeah. See, that's a big deal. It's a very important point. Now, what about stretching into that first month, second month, third

month that gets into that 90 days. And then if you make it past your first 90 days, you spend time with our founder. Obviously, the founder here, it's tremendous. tremendously important to understanding why we do what we do. It's a massive culture thing to have this. It was rap with Dave when I did it. It's still called rap with Dave. And it's because they're wraps. Yes, it's chicken flair chicken wraps. And so that's what it is. Yeah. So onboarding doesn't end day one. Right. So there is a leader's guide that kind of helps leaders cover certain topics during the 90 days. Okay. If that team member has not had a chance to sit in on a live, debt-free screen, we want them to. This is what we do. And so we want them to get that experience

of being in the lobby and listening to a debt-free stream. We have certain things that are also covered inside of those 90 days that we want them to be able to do. For a lot of team members, if they work in this building, for example, which we are not at the main building of the corporate office right now. So if they work here, they might not get a chance to see that building very frequently. And so there's a couple of tours to get them to be able to see that and be a part of that. So inside of the 90 days, there's things they have to do. And it culminates with that wrap with Dave.

where Dave really knights them and empowers them to now own the experience for someone else. It's not that they haven't been, but prior to that 90-day nighting ceremony, they were really a part of consuming the culture and learning who we are and what we do and how we do it. And there's tons of grace extended all the time, but even more so inside of the 90 days. And post the 90 days, you still get the grace and all that, but now you're in charge of somebody else's experience and continuing that great culture. And you get the time with Dave, everybody gets to ask a question. Oh, yeah.

Which, you know, that's a valuable thing, I think. A guy who loves questions. It's a great opportunity to ask Dave questions. I got to go through it. Everybody goes through it. It's a lot of fun. I think it's a really unique experience. How many founders are still part of new hire onboarding?

How many CEOs in big corporate America? Very few, I would imagine. Yeah, so it's really good stuff. He is Armando Lopez. Great stuff, as always. Really gave us some great things to think about. And we appreciate you hanging out with us. Hey, thanks, Ken.

Big thanks to Armando for hanging out with us. What a treasure he is. By the way, can I just say this? Just a little commercial. If you're a leader out there and you're thinking, I don't need an HR person. Yes, you do. And two, you need to get somebody like Armando. You talk about a guy that's just dedicated to that role. Unbelievable. Let's go to Dave Ramsey. Now, from time to time, we will do this. And very grateful to Will the producer. Because he's pulled for you the audience. A portion of you. of our staff meeting. Every Monday morning, the entire team, 730 plus now, get together in one room and we communicate. And every once in a while, Dave will kind of give a mini talk, if you will, to fire us up. And this is so good we wanted to pass it along to you because no one is immune

to the summer slowdown. So this is Dave talking about that. Check it out. When you're here, it's game on, even if the public is not game on. Just because it's, everyone else takes the summer off mentally or just because from Thanksgiving to Christmas, most companies people don't work at all at the company. They show up and collect checks. But we get work done around here. There's not a lot of us considering we're impacting the entire freaking nation. And so we have a lot of work to do, a lot of work to do to get the field ready for the next crop, to bring in the crop, whatever it is, wherever we are in that. So a lot of you have family vacations planned and that's perfect.

You know, your PTO and all that. That's great. Do it. And don't be answering 73,000 emails while you're on vacation. Go on vacation. That's what it's for. Recreate. Recreate.

That's what that word means. It recreates inside of you. Take your weekends and recreate. But then when you come in, be game on. So when you're here, it's game on. When everyone else is not game on out there, is not permission for us to not be game on. We're playing for the Super Bowl.

Every hour we're here. We're prepping for next season. Every hour we're here. I don't care what it is. We're in the season. We're coming out of a season. We're going into a season. Whatever it is, we're game on when we're here.

We're adults. We're grownups. We have stuff to do. And there's important stuff to do because on the other side of every single thing we do is someone's life being changed. So don't ever let up on that. Never let up on that. When you're here, when I'm here, it's focused and it's game on. That's how I've done 15.

hours of talk radio and grown a business for almost 30 years. Because when I'm here, it's game on. Again, thanks to Will, the producer for that. Tim the engineer for pulling that together. Hey, our friends in a fusion sought have got the personalized growth planner for you as a free tool. And you just heard Dave, just preach at you. Come on. That's what he did. Steps all over your toes. Don't let down. And for some of you, the key to not slowing down is actually to engage in an intentional growth plan, a plan that's going to help you and your business. How would you like to attract the right customers? How would you like to sell your brand better by creating an experience for customers? How would you like to just blow them away when they come in contact with you and

your product and your service? Infusionsoft knows that this is a key challenge, but they know how to do this. The personalized growth planner contains everything you need to keep your small business on track through the summer all year round. So go get it. Infusionsoft.com slash get my planner. That's infusionsoft.com slash get my planner. Wow, that was chalk full. We should charge some of you people for that. We really should. Some of you haven't been with us a long time, we should be charging you. That was so good. But we won't do that. On behalf of Will the producer, Tim the engineer, and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again. very soon.

Hey folks, I want to make you aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions. Here's a sample of the Ken Coleman Show. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70% of Americans are disengaged at work. If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just trying to make it to the weekend, the Ken Coleman show is for you. Everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot is at the intersection of your greatest talent and greatest passion. We will help you discover what.

it is you were born to do and then we'll help you create a plan to make your dream job a reality. You matter and you have what it takes. Join the conversation on the Ken Coleman Show. To hear full episodes, just search Ken Coleman in iTunes or go to Ken Coleman Show.com.