EntreLeadership - #75: Simon Sinek—Why Leaders Eat Last

Episode Date: July 14, 2014

How do you create a culture where trust and cooperation are as common as a 10 a.m. coffee break? It’s all about great leadership. And on this episode, we’re discussing the secret to great leadership with one the most influential and innovative voices on the subject. Best-selling author Simon Sinek joins podcast host Ken Coleman to discuss how you can get your team to seamlessly work together and accomplish remarkable things. http://www.entreleadership.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charismatic, passionate, as integrity, humble, servant, faithful, inspiring, persevering, positive, flexible, driven. This is who we are that call ourselves leaders. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. This is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, and for leaders. leaders, it's the Entree Leadership podcast.

I'm your host Ken Coleman and joined in studio today by Mr. Andre Leadership himself, the grand pooh-bah of all things, Entree leadership, Daniel Tarty. How about that? I've never heard those words associated with my name. I'll take it. Thank you. You'll take that.

That's fantastic. Your official title for the listeners at home. Last time I looked at my business card, it said Vice President of Entree leadership. Oh, very impressive. Whatever that means. VP, it means big shot. It means we just get stuff done. That's exactly.

It's going to happen. Hey, it's exciting. Thank you, Daniel. We're going to have a great podcast for our listeners today. One feature conversation today, and that is Simon Seneca. Simon Seneca is fastly becoming, one of the most influential and innovative voices in leadership. We'll tell you a little bit more about Simon and his new book, Leaders Eat Last, coming up in a few minutes. But let me say, buddy, first of all, it's a thrill to be in the captain's chair hosting this podcast and alongside you and your team. This is really exciting stuff. Hey, we're honored to have you.

and it's been fun to get to a place where we can, this is the first time we've brought somebody in to, as their job description, to say, hey, you're coming here to host the Entree Leadership podcast. That's how big this thing has gotten before. Now I'm nervous. Well, hey, see, I was fine until you put all that kind of expectation on. This is for real, man.

It is. You know, the reviews that we've had and the listeners that we've continued to acquire, I mean, it's just been fantastic. And the reason that we're here today is because we have incredible listeners who are consistently spreading the word about the Entree Leadership podcast. But I'd love to stop for a second before we dive in and just hear about Ken Coleman. You have a long history with Dave Ramsey and with our team, have had a lot of friends here, and now you've joined us full-time to host the Entry Leadership podcast, among a few other things.

So what was it when you were coming in looking at this opportunity? Because I know you're hugely passionate about Entree leadership, about podcasting, about radio, the spoken word. The magic of the spoken words. So what's your vision here? Because we've talked a lot about that, but I want our listeners to hear what you're excited about when you think about this podcast. Well, when you get an opportunity to take a seat on a rocket ship,

you don't fight and quibble over which seat, you just sit down. And Cheryl Sandberg kind of is credited with that quote. And it's a great statement. This is a tremendous vehicle already that is helping leaders, small business leaders, entrepreneurs in tremendous ways. And so the opportunity to be a part of a piece of media, because that's what this is. I mean, this is media. This is produced for leaders.

And when you get behind something like that and you get to be a part of something like that that literally can change the trajectory of companies, plural, which means lives, we're talking about entrepreneurs, people who create jobs, really the future of America, I believe, is in the class of entrepreneurs. I said on the last podcast, as I said in real quick with Chris Hogan, that I'm for the rise of the entrepreneur class. And that's what we're about. You're about that. John Falcons, the entire team, Don Haney, our producer. We care about entrepreneurs. And so from that standpoint, it was a no-brainer. And to have conversations, I get to have conversations with people like

Simon Seneca. We've got Malcolm Gladwell coming up, John Maxwell, Seth Godin. Hello, Gary Vaynerchuk. I'm just getting started. You've talked to a lot of these guys because if our listeners remember, you've actually been on our podcast as a guest. Yeah, I hawked my book on this thing. Your book came How about that? Talking about the power of asking questions, and you had interviewed a lot of high-profile leaders. So I'm excited that Ken brings just a wealth of not only personal firsthand knowledge from the leadership world, but also just a tremendous amount of experience with incredible guests

that we'll be having conversations with in the future. Yeah, well, you know, we're going to really work hard to make this podcast a buffet, if you will. We want to bring you a lot of options every time that you download us. We take you all seriously. We don't take ourselves seriously. we take our jobs very seriously. And so Daniel and his team and I have been working with Don Haney, our producer, to come up with more segments that meet you where you're at.

Because at the end of the day, you folks are going hard. We're talking to men and women who are literally creating jobs and creating ideas and solving problems. And that's what I love about entrepreneurs more than anything, Daniel. They see problems. And they say, that could be fixed. that should be fixed and as a result we create jobs

and we create revenue and they take the risk and say I can fix it and I'm willing to try so this is the ultimate change agent class so we're really excited and there's going to be

some changes coming up but it's going to be the same podcast that you have come to know and rely upon because we're going to bring you wonderful content we want to answer your questions

to that end Daniel tell people how they can email us because we want to hear from them if they have suggestions going forward. You want a segment that maybe you have longed for and we haven't done it. What would you say to them? Fires an email at podcast at entreleadership.com or send a tweet out at Entree leadership. And then your Twitter handle, I want to make sure everybody's following you.

They can stay tuned in with where you're at when you're out on the road with our team. Very simple. At Ken Coleman. And we'd love to hear from you because we want to know what you want. We're very, very excited. Now, I want to also mention that at the end of the podcast, we have a couple of special announcements. got a great fall event lineup coming. I know you and your team are working hard on that, so we'll get to that date, but we do want to make sure you know that we've got some special

offers. We'll mention that at the end of the podcast. But I'm thrilled to be here, man. I really am. And what are you excited about as we begin to work together to take this podcast to another level? Well, and working with you up to this point in the interview process and you engaging with our team, one thing that just stands out is just the amount of ideas for segments, the amount of guests that you have in your personal Rolodex and just all the incredible things that from an energy standpoint and just focus.

We've had some great host here and of course Chris Hogan is still going to be around. You guys are still going to hear from him but he's all over the road and it's just challenging to get a lot of traction and momentum and so to really say, hey, we're for real. We want to take this to the top

and we want this to be the source of hope for small business owners who are transformed by these entree leadership principles and who are inspired and who are able to not only get inspiration and the warm fuzzies, but actually take this and apply it to their business to grow themselves, to grow their teams, to grow their profits. And you shared that you have a passion for that vision and ultimately passions what counts when we're looking for people to join the

team. And so we couldn't be more proud and more excited to have you here with us, Ken. Well, I appreciate it. And by the way, Daniel is currently reading my book one question so he can become a better question asker. So we'll just see. We'll see if he learns. We'll see. We'll bring you back. Was this you? I don't know who to attribute this to, but someone said, the quality of your experience is in direct proportion to the quality of the questions you ask. That is true. I said something similar, but that is so true. And I got to mention Chris Hogan, on the road as we speak, as we record, he is on his way to the Cleveland Brown's training camp. He's going to be teaching and speaking to Johnny football. So we're going

to get Hogan in here soon and see if Johnny Mansell for you football fans out there. Did Johnny football pay attention to our very own Chris Hogan? He's more important than us. He's other questions. that our podcast listeners want to know. And so I shall get you the behind the scenes of that. Let's get right to our feature conversation of this podcast, Simon Seneca. My production notes say that he was our very first guest of the very first Entry Leadership podcast. And this was when he was talking about the why, right? The question, the why.

Start with why. Fantastic book. And now his new book, Daniels, called Leaders Eat Last, Why Some Teams Pulled Together, and others don't. If you haven't gotten the book, trust me, run hard. Go online, get this book tonight. If you're passionate about leaders and leadership and how it creates culture, you need to get this book.

Here is my conversation with Simon Sennick. Simon, it's always a pleasure to read your books and to get to talk with folks like you. And before we dive into Leaders Eat Last and some of the great content of the book, I wanted you to tell our listeners today, where does the fascination that you have for leadership? Where does that come from?

What's the source of that? Well, particularly fascinated with leadership, but I'm fascinated by human being. Gordon Bethune. That's right. You know, all of my work is a autobiographical. So start with Y was the result of me going through this, enjoying the work that I was doing anymore.

And even though superficially everything was going my way, I just, and leaders eat last was the challenge I had where I was, you know, spending time with these remarkable human beings in the military and amazing trust in times they didn't even like, you know? And yet in the business world, you know, we don't even like to give up credit. Like why can I spend time with people like that all the time and without having to be in uniform? Like where does trust in quite fascination is just sort of my own desire to live sort of filling

life like anybody? And necessarily it always seems to come back to leadership because there's always a person or small group of people who take it upon themselves to take responsibility for the lives of those who work for them. And so necessarily to live the life that I want to live. One of my favorite quotes on leadership of all time is from John Quincy Adams, and of course it is sourced in the forward to your book. And I want you to comment on this because this is a wonderful statement. John Quincy Adams once said or wrote, if your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader. And you just mentioned in your last

answer, this idea that you saw it true leadership, pure leadership, pure sacrifice demonstrated in our military leadership, but we fail to see a lot of this in the private sector, certainly in the government sectors and beyond. Back to the Adams quote.

Talk about that. What do you really mean to this idea of inspiring others and how you saw that in the Marine Corps? Well, achieve more, dream more and inspire more and less about others. and and so when I sat down with Lieutenant General George Flynn, who wrote, he wrote it in the

Ford of my book, when I met with him for the first time I asked him, what makes the Marines so great? He said to me simply, officers eat last. And what he meant by that is in the Marine Corps, they view leadership, not how all anywhere in the world. You'll see the Marines line up in the most junior person eats first and the most senior person eats last. It's not in any rule book, and no one tells them they have to. Again, it's because of the way they view leadership. and we in the private rank, then you should be able to go first, eat first, get first. And I took tremendous, you know, even in the entrepreneurial world,

you know, entrepreneurs are always told high-performing and who understands the organization. I'm totally inspired by that idea. I am as well, and I've got to ask you, Simon, do you have an opinion? I'm sure you do, but why is it that there is this gap between military culture and leadership culture and business, government, and beyond? Why do you think that it hasn't carried over, if you will?

And look, it's not so much military culture versus business culture. There's pockets of good leadership in... Well, sure. That's right. There's a bad leadership in the military. It's just that we tend to see a larger propensity of good leadership in the military for the very higher. And this is why the lessons are more good military knows everything truth and honesty. If we don't trust that our leaders are telling us the truth, we don't believe they're telling us the truth,

then the whole system breaks down and people die. Well, we don't think of it that way in the business world. in mind, the human body react to information that is given to us in terms of life and death. In other words, and so I think the reason it's different is have compounded into something quite negative. And you started to see in the 80s and 90s for various reasons that were, and it worked really. You see the repeal of a large amount of glass, work to ensure that there would not be another Great Depression to work to ensure that they would not be in. The amazing thing is it worked. We had zero significant stock market crashes for 50 years after the Great Depression.

Zero. And then after the repeal of Glass-Eagle, we had one in 1987, we had the dot-com boom, and then we had 2008. We've had three in this short period of time since. In other words, what we're starting to experience now are the effects of some of the decisions that were made during the 80s and 90s. It was a theory put forward in the late 70s and embraced in the 1980s. The idea of using people on mass layoffs as one of the first options to bounce of theory, a practice that only really began in the early 1980s, common practice today. But the point is that there were a series of decisions meant for short-term games for a few

that now have become standard business practice, and we are suffolk. No, it's great insight. I think one of the just unbelievably powerful statements in this book, Leaders Eat Last, why some teams pull together and others don't. place off this idea we've been talking about the stakes being higher, if you will, when we're talking about life and death in military leadership, but the truth transfer to business and beyond. Yes. And that is this statement. You wrote this. When people have to manage dangers from inside the organization, the organization becomes less able to face dangers from outside. And that's a simple statement, but I think profoundly powerful. Help leaders understand that truth.

Sure. I don't mean the absence of danger. I mean the absence of danger internally. So, for example, you take a military unit that's an afford operating base. Of course, there's significant danger. Danger threatened them every single day. But the dangers on the outside. They don't fear each other. In fact, they know they can trust each other to watch each other's backs. You know, even people they don't necessarily like. They know that when danger threatens, they will work together. That's what makes, that's what makes it work so well. and that analogy transfers to the modern world perfectly well. There's our competition that's threatening to steal our cup. There's the ups and downs of a stock market.

There's the instability of an economy. All of these things are a constant. We have no control of them, and these are dangers of threatness from the outside. So the question is, do we face dangers on the inside? Do we fear each other? Any organization where it's a general practice for people to send CYA emails, is an organization where people fear each other. Yes.

Any organization where it's common practice for employees to keep folders on their good work or on the irresponsibility of others so that if anything were to bite them in the ass that they would have this folder to protect themselves, these are demonstrations of people taking action, spending time and energy to protect themselves from each other. And every minute we spend doing that to protect ourselves from each other is a minute we've taken away from protecting the organization,

from the outside dangers or missing the opportunities outside. In other words, the more we protect ourselves from each other, the more we weaken the organization as a whole. And there's a guy to break it. I couldn't believe it. And so I said something. I said, why do you have to treat us like that? Why can't you treat us like human being?

And the gate agent said to me, quote, if I don't follow the rules, I could get in trouble or lose my job. All she revealed to me was that she fears her own company. She fears her leadership. The reason we love flying Southwest is not because they have some mystical ability to hire great people.

It's because the people who work there don't fear their leaders. They don't fear each other. The result is we get treated better. That's right. So when someone is preoccupied with their own safety from their own organization, guess who suffers? Us. When someone does no longer fear each other,

then the person who benefits, the group of benefits is not only the customer, but the amount of idea exchange and energy exchange and innovation, all, you know, people are much more willing to share ideas and share learning with people they trust. If we don't trust each other, we hoard all the information because we believe that's where our value comes from. We use that as our security so we can't get laid off because we know more than everybody else to the detriment of the company. Yes. And see, what we're speaking here to folks is culture. And I want to stay here for a moment because you source, a great story in the book. I let you set it up, the CEO Bob Chapman. And this is what you

write here. And I want to set you up to take this. But you write, Bob Chapman did not set out to change the employees, he set out to change the conditions in which the employees operate to create cultures that inspire people to give all they have to give simply because they love where they work. This is a great story and a great lesson for entrepreneurs. Bob Chapman has a different view on leadership. He recognizes that no one wakes up in the morning with a desire to go to work to be managed. No one wakes up to be managed. That's right. That's right. We wake up to be led. We want to. to be led, nobody wants to be managed. And so what's the point of hiring managers? We need leaders.

And he also understands that we are social animals, and we respond to the environment. We're in. In other words, you can take good people, put them in a bad environment, and they're capable of bad things. You can take people who society has given up on, put them in a good environment, and they're capable of remarkable things. And Bob understands that. And he understands that he can create the right condition and take care of the business. Like, that's how it works. He's committed to taking care of the people. So one of the stories I told about Bob was this wonderful story when he's sitting there in the pews

watching this wedding happen and he sees the father walk down the aisle and then ceremonially the father gives away his daughter to her future husband and that he goes saw this he sort of it it sparked an idea

he realized that this father has devoted his life with sacrifice for his baby girl for his precious baby girl and now both ceremonially and kind of in actuality, gives her away with the hope that her future husband will sacrifice and look after her equally, if not more, than he has. And she will take his name, symbolically and traditionally, to show that she's joining

a new tribe, that she's joining a new tribe who will look after her. And Bob realizes this is the responsibility of every CEO that every single person who works in his company is someone's son and someone's daughter. and they have given him their son and their daughter with the hope that he will look after them with as much intensity as they have looked after their own children. He realizes that was his responsibility. The lives, the precious lives of these sons and daughters.

And so this understanding, this metaphor, really guides Bob and a lot of the decisions he makes in the way he creates conditions. And just like a good parent, we offer our kids' opportunities, we allow them to fail, we allow them to pick themselves up sometimes, and sometimes we pick them up for them. Sometimes we have to discipline them. We offer them opportunity and education,

but most of all, most of all, they get unrequited love. Yes. We love them. We trust them. And though they may not be perfect, we would never do anything to hurt them. And if danger were to threaten them, so Bob embraced that I was learning

existed in the Marine Corps, even though he had zero connection with the military. He came to these conclusions himself and understood that these, are very, very human values. Absolutely. And for the cynics in our audience, are those who maybe think,

well, this is romanticism here. There's some data in the book where I want to talk about this, because it seems to me that this data and what you just shared, Simon, takes the pressure off of leaders who are always thinking about performance and training and all these type of things.

You mentioned in the book that only 20% of Americans actually love, love their job. So it seems to me, Simon, that if I'm a leader, I'm thinking, hey, this takes the pressure off. If I just love my people, we're going to see improvement. Do you believe that's true?

Well, you know, these ideas are not new. Yeah. And the companies that seem to outperform their competition, we very offer sort of ignore them and call them outliers, former CEO of Southwest Airlines. He talked all the time about, you put your employees first, your employees will take care of the customers,

the customers will take care of the numbers, and the numbers will take care of the shareholders. Like he talked about it all the time, which is that an organization hailed for remarkable customer service did not believe that the customer comes first. They believe the employee comes first, you know? Yeah. You know, there's case study, have to case study at the case study that prove this over and over again.

The problem is, is that most of our CEOs are incentivized by short-term gains, and most them don't last very long. They don't, they don't, they don't, for them to make decisions that are good for the short-term. The result is they may make money and they may do very well in the short-term, and at the same time they damage the organization as a whole. You know, we hail GE and Jack Welch may have done brilliantly well in the 80s and 90s after the, after 2008 from the government.

So what kind of strong foundation was that where they literally were almost self? That's right. And though they may have performed well in the short term, it's not a stable organization. Even if you look at the stock price, it's like a roller coaster up and down and up and down and up and down, and if you time it at the right timing,

you might have made a ton of money. If you compare that to a company like Costco, constantly criticize them for investing too much in their employees and their customers and not enough on their shareholder, has accused them of having a flat stock price. Yes, if you look at it in the course of a quarter, it looks pretty flat. September of 1985, you see a slow, steady, very stable growth. If you invested a dollar in Costco and a dollar in GE the day that Costco went public, you would have made 600% on your money in GE, would have made 600% on your money in the S&P 500, and 1,200% of your money in Costco. In other words, it is good for the shareholder.

It's just not a roller coaster. Yeah. And all too often, we treat the stock market like betting, like gambling. I bet on your new CEO. I bet on your product. I bet on your merger and your acquisition. Investing, we invest in things like the future. Invest in things like our children.

We invest in things like education. Investing is about waiting to see the fruits of our investment. It's about belief in our children. And if we invested properly, you get Costco. And I don't have a problem per se with the gambling profile. The problem is that we have an unbalanced too many of the company. Boy, that is a great statement. Earlier you mentioned the airline employee who was terrified because of breaking the rule

and what would happen. I mean, she was just worried about the penalty. She was worried about the reaction. That's right. That's right. Instead of the principle, if you will. And you have a whole chapter dedicated to this. Chapter 9 folks in the book is called The Courage to do the right thing, knowing when to break the rules of the idea there. And entrepreneurs by nature, we kind of sense when to do this. But I want you to break this idea down, this idea of rules matter, but there are times where we've got to have the courage to just do what we know is right, regardless of what the rules say. Absolutely. So rules are there for the norm, and they're absolutely designed to keep the system running and keep it in order, and the rules are good.

And in those cases, we have to trust the human beings to know what to do. That's right. The rules are for normal operation. And sometimes the rules provide for, and this is why experience matters, and this is why trust matters, and this is why giving control to the people who have experience who are on the front line, because they usually know what the right example I gave, the air company. traffic controller uh... monitoring of flight lying from uh... and while in flight ellip like this works you don't know what it is you don't know it's coming from you don't know it's going to get worse and you want to get that plane down the problem is there's certain rules about air traffic control and those rules are there to keep the particular day there was a military exercise and there was military airspace by the fly into

the airspace without to fly uh... within a fat lot of fly within five miles of each other if they're on the same altitude for obvious reason and so what he did was it was a There's a plane beneath him. And if he was going to put this plane that was in trouble down on the ground, he had to fly within the five miles exception. And he did it anyway. He did not ask permission. He just did it.

And he simply told the plane beneath him, by the way, there's going to be a plane coming off your, up your nine o'clock. He's declared a May Day. I just need to get him down. He repeated that three times until he got the plane on the ground. He broke tons of rules. Yes.

Okay? Sure. Of course he didn't get in trouble. Because we trusted the human beings. being who knows what to do and we would rather he do that then follow the rules there are many circumstances when we know what thing to do is people ignore um i know a story of a of a military aircraft were being they were and they accidentally and they got in trouble i know another story where there was a prevent emergency happening and they were commended

one did it knowingly and by choice and the other one did it because right yes the same thing the rule is not preeminent it's the reason we broke the rule another phrase from the book that i love in our is getting nigh, so I want to give you time to take this. But I think this is a great statement and a great challenge to leaders. You wrote in physics, the definition of power is the transfer of energy. Organizations and leaders operate exactly the same way. Now, we can read that, Simon, we know what that means. But I think it's a whole other issue to lead that way and to lead transformatively. Yeah, or of a light bulb. We know that a hundred-watt light bulb than a 40-wet light bulb, right? Well, what's happening in physics is it's transferring more, like, electricity into heat and light, right? So it's the transfer of energy that creates power. Leadership works exactly the same way. It's the leader that's able to give more, or not the ones that hold it, first of all, it's an unstable model, not to mention the fact it have the people. That's right. And the leaders that have the people are the ones that give, and then trust them to know what to do to get there. The most powerful companies with the most powerful leaders

aren't necessarily the ones with all the... I'm going to ask you the final question, Simon. I've always love to ask authors what they learned from a process. Because when you write a book, any book, and certainly a book like this, inevitably you come away with something that maybe you saw from a different angle or maybe something you observed differently. If you could just give us one example of something that pops the top of mind that you learned in writing this book. You know, writing is a solitary experience there. This book was, I'm taking a messy subject like human behavior and trying to organize it in a straight line in a linear fashion. And it was, it was really, and there was one experience I had, couldn't do it, it was too hot up from my desk,

and I just went for a long walk. And I literally was planning in my head how I was going to get out of this. You know, I didn't, I'd give the money back to the publisher for the advance, suffer a little embarrassment. And at the end of the day, it'll be fine. You know, it literally doesn't do it. In the Air Force, don't think you need the mission. Wow.

I said, I need you. It's what do you need? You know, it's one of those. Yeah, right. And he said, and he tells me a story. He said, we had this mission in Afghanistan. He was flying Paveloat at the time. He said, it was a suicide mission, and everybody knew it.

And he said it wasn't one of those missions that even the sacrifice was worth the result. He said, because the mission would have failed, and we would have lost guys. And he said, he was known to everybody. It was a suicide mission. And his wingman who would be flying next to him, what do we do? He used to fly? Like, what do we do? His friend turns out so we go.

And it ended up the mission ended up to fly it. And then he said to me, he said, Simon, you chose to do this. he says you have no choice you have to do this did you not take it for that reason yes he said did you do it for the money I said no he said did you do for anything else besides advancing the vision

I said no he said no if you believe it's worth it you have no choice you have to do it there's no sugar coating or anything that's so good that is so good well Simon so what I learned is that none of us can do anything without the help of others that's right

that's what I learned we have our courage comes from the courage of others oh wow that's good well we don't have courage it's okay to borrow it from others wow You know, when you do the Marine Corps marathon, there are Marines who run the marathon in full gear, right? And when the Marines are struggling and they don't think they can do it, they scream out, motivate me. They scream out, motivate me. In other words, they make it the team's responsibility to keep everything.

Wow, that is so rich. That great. Oh, it's good. Well, Simon, I've got to tell you, I'm confident in saying this on behalf of our entire Entree Leadership podcast audience. We're grateful not for just this book that you finished, that you finished well. and I can tell you that those who read this and leaders who desire to get better and learn from this book, they will be better.

And we're better off for this conversation. We know you're a busy guy, and so we appreciate your time, as always. It's my pleasure. Thanks for giving me a forum to share my ideas. I really appreciate it. Well, again, I want to thank Simon Seneca, a very busy speaker and writer,

and we take this kind of opportunity very seriously for a guy to give us his time, and he's very generous, and I know you all are better for it. Daniel, so much we could talk about there. Man, what a great conversation. I want to talk to you about this.

I want to set this up because I want to go back to something I said in the interview, this idea. Bob Chapman, one of the CEOs that he profiles in the book, and this is what Simon wrote about him, and I want you to weigh in on this from your entree leadership experience. He said, Bob Chapman did not set out to change the employees. He set out to change the conditions in which the employees operate to create cultures that inspire people to give all they have to give simply because they love where they work. Daniel, this is not a pipe dream. This is reality.

It can be achieved. I think it's tempting as times for us as leaders to feel like we need to control people because we're used to controlling circumstances. We're used to imposing our will on the marketplace. We're used to fixing problems, fixing systems. We cannot control people, but we can control the environment. Yes. We can control the culture.

We can control the things that we fight for. things that we stand for, the things that we say, we believe in this principle and we're going to stand firm here, and people will step up or they'll step out based on those calls that we make as leaders. And so I think what I hear in that is you can't force people to do what you want them to do. All you can do is create a culture, create an ecosystem where the right people want to hang out there, where the eagles flock in and the buzzards flock out. And ultimately, that's challenging because we want to control it. We want to just force our will into that. thing, but we can't. So that's the temptation we fight as leaders. Now, I mentioned this in the

interview with Simon, but I got to ask you practically, it seems to me that that would take a lot of pressure off of our entrepreneurs and our leaders out there, that they don't have to worry about changing or over-training. Now, training works, and training is a necessity. However, doesn't this take the pressure off of us if we adopt this idea that, hey, I want to train them, I want to build into them, but at the end of the day, I can affect the culture a lot easier than I can, individual behavior, correct? It completely takes the pressure off if I don't have to have a different team tomorrow. And so the lesson here is leaders is we have to start upstream with enough lead time to where we're creating the culture and the environment so that over time the right people show up.

If we need the right people tomorrow and we're trying to force buzzards to turn into eagles today because the vendor or the customer or the whatever, the thing's on fire and we have to fix it right now and it has to be this huge quantum leap for somebody to grow personally in order for that solution to work. By that point, we're screwed. We don't have enough time to course correct. So I think the lesson here is as leaders, if we want to feel the pressure release and not have to fill that responsibility, we have to start early enough to create the environment so that by the time the problem shows up, we get the right team in place.

The other thought that occurs to me with this story, and for you leaders out there who have just taken over a situation, whether you bought a company or you're coming into a new leadership position, and there's already a pre-existing culture. Here's one thought that I want you to chew on. You cannot immediately change all those people and what they believe about the company, the values in you, as Daniel said. But what you can do are small little culture changes. You know what I mean?

It could be as simple as corporate activities, if you will. And when I mean corporate, I mean corporate is in community. Or it could be scenery change. Little itty-bitty things. like that that immediately change the environment, which is a part of the culture. So if you're starting something new, taking over someplace new, really think about, don't get so hung up in strategy, just be simple and do something that is so very different than what has been done prior and keep it around experience and people. And I think you'll see at least some positive reaction

as you begin to gain credibility and trust along the way. Well, credibility is an operative word there, I think, I think about the axiom of people don't know how, they don't care how much you know. So you have to establish trust right out of the gate. If you don't have trust, you can't take your team anywhere. So that's good, good word. Good stuff. All right, Daniel, we've got a great fall coming up very quickly. We just want to cover our event lineup.

It's going to be fantastic. Tell us what's on the calendar. We will be all over the map with our one-day events. And specifically, I want to underscore our Entry Leadership Master Series event. It still has some room left. This is the one that Dave personally teaches here at our office for five straight days drinking out of a fire hydrant of content from Dave, from our leadership team. You can sit down one-on-one with our leaders and get mentoring on site. It's just an incredible VIP experience.

I think we've got about 30 seats left for that event. It's filling up quickly. You think, well, that's not until November. I can wait. I'll see how my schedule works out. Guys, by the end of August, it'll be gone. That ship is sailing. So November 9th through the 15th, lock in your seat today.

Just give us a call at AAA 22 piece. Ask about Entree Leadership Master Series. AAA 22 piece and the website, Entreeleadership.com. Entreeleadership.com. Daniel Tarty, give us your Twitter handle. If people want to reach out to you, are you on Twitter? Please tell me you're on Twitter. I'm on there.

They can find me. It's Daniel Tarty, but I don't tweet. I sense that you're not engaged fully. Well, I wasn't engaged with my kids fully. Oh. I had to off the Twitter. He smacks it back to me across the neck. I was always looking at my phone instead of the...

Hold on one second. I'm deactivating my Twitter. I can be dad of the year. No, that's good stuff. They should talk to you on Twitter because you're... Very good. That kind of guy. Hey, we'd love to hear from you at Ken Coleman.

It's my Twitter handle, of course, the mothership brand at Entree Leadership. We'd love to hear from you. And again, send us your thoughts. We have a new segment coming up called Ken's Electronic Mail. That sounds fun. We want to hear from you. What do you want to hear from? Did the podcast help you in some way?

Please email us your comments. Podcast at entreleadership.com. Well, folks, that is going to do it for my Maiden Voyages host. It was fun. Hope you had a blast. You killed it, man. Oh, it was great fun. I want to thank Simon Seneca.

And on behalf of Daniel Tarty, our producer, Don Haney, and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.