Good News York by Growth Mode Content - Operations Excellence with Mark O'Donnell | GNY EP.205

Episode Date: October 21, 2026

Mark O’Donnell on Strategic Planning, Goal Alignment, and Keys to Successful Leadership On Good News York, host Noah interviews Mark O’Donnell, founder of Operations Excellence and host of the Operations Excellence Podcast, about his consulting work in leadership and organizational development focused on people, process, and strategy. Mark describes helping for-profit and not-for-profit organizations with strategic planning, implementation discipline, and serving as an outside accountability partner, plus leadership development and ongoing coaching. Using Noah’s nonprofit Syracuse Improv as an example, Mark outlines a planning framework: start with a vision statement, then mission (12–18 months), core values, critical success factors, WHY SMART goals, milestones, and action plans with broad stakeholder input to drive goal alignment. They discuss overcoming constraints, the importance of long-term vision, the Peter Principle, and learning through failure. Mark also shares a new online course with Joanne Yarro on successful leadership, executive presence, and culture, offered as seven ~20-minute videos. 00:00 Welcome and Introductions 00:27 What Operations Excellence Does 02:33 Nonprofit Talk and Palace Theatre 04:29 Consulting Approach and Trust 07:05 Strategic Planning Deliverables 10:46 Syracuse Improv Vision Workshop 12:11 Writing a Vision Statement 16:40 Dream Big Beyond Constraints 19:38 Why Vision Matters Long Term 22:46 Mission and Values 23:45 Goals and Why Smart 25:41 Action Plans and Alignment 28:10 Personal Aspirations Link 32:23 Engineer Liaison Story 35:13 Leadership Course Launch 41:54 Peter Principle Lessons 45:46 Attitude and Failure Mindset 48:09 Wrap Up and Links

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Good News York. Today, I am sitting with guest Mark O'Donnell. Mark, welcome to the show. Thanks, Noah. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Go ahead and introduce yourself for people who don't know who you are.

Sure. Mark O'Connell, owner and founder of Operations Excellence. Also had my podcast, the Operations Excellence podcast, which you wonderful folks here have been producing for a few years now. Absolutely. There you go. So, Mark, tell us what Operations Excellence does and what you do. Sure.

So Operations Excellence brought. broadly speaking is a consulting firm, but much more specialized. I focus on leadership organizational development. And really, it comes down to three key areas that I can help organizations with. And that's people process strategy. So as a matter of fact, I had a meeting with one client today who was a local not-for-profit. I do some work with not-for-profits as well as for-profit businesses. And I have been doing strategic planning with them, but also I, I, I, you know,

they meet with their leadership group regularly to review how we're doing on implementing the plan. So that's one piece of it I do. I have a process, right, to take organizations through to build out the plan. And then there's a pretty simple process. Well, I can say simple, but it's really about discipline, right, following the process, how we do in implementing the plan. It's accountability, right? And so one of the rules I can play with organizations is to really kind of be an outside

accountability check, right? Do a lot of work with leadership development, both with groups and individuals. Once people have gone through a leadership development program with me very often, not always, but very often they'll sign up for one-on-one ongoing coaching, which is, again, it's a great opportunity for somebody, and I wish I had this early in my career where I had a personal coach and mentor, because it becomes somebody now I'm accountable to, but it's also somebody who has, like, I'm not in their organization. They don't report to me. I have no skin in the game. My only role is to help them become the best version of them, right? And how are they doing with their development, right? And sometimes it's as simple as, hey, I've got this issue

going on with a team member and I help work them through that, right? Interesting. Yeah. Very cool. I mean, there's a lot of fascinating things that I want to talk about in that description. I think a few of the relevant things. Earlier this year, I started a nonprofit, and I founded a nonprofit called Syracuse Improv. And so I probably have a bunch of questions for you about that. Cool. I think we actually have had that discussion offline. A little bit.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Awesome. How's that going? It's going great. It's been a lot of fun. We just moved to the Palace Theater. And so...

My old stomping grounds. I grew up in Eastwood. Nice. Wonderful. Cool. Oh, yeah. Offline, I'll tell you the story about the former owner, Francis DeBella, who ran that theater by herself pretty much for many years.

As a kid, I'm talking a young kid, used to go there with my older siblings for the Saturday matinee. Oh, cool. And she scared the heck out of me. They told me that she was actually the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. And, of course, at, you know, five, six years old, I believed my older siblings. And they had a lot of fun with that. She was actually, I got to know her later in life.

I won't go into the, you know, the details. but she was actually a wonderful woman that really kept that theater, which is an icon of the city going by herself for many years. Fantastic. It's awesome. Adam, who, you know, is the current operations manager over there. He is fantastic. He's a wonderful person.

He does the Saturday matinee, I believe. He does a lot of different movie nights throughout the week and everything. Very, very cool. If I'm not mistaken, I don't know if it's him. Is he the actual owner or one of the owners? I don't think he owns it, but I think that, yeah. But I think the person that, yeah. But I think the person that owns it now is her nephew.

Oh, cool. That his name. But yeah, yeah, still in the family. It's a wonderful venue. We are very, very grateful to them. And they're always doing really cool stuff over there. They had a boxing night or something, which is so cool. They do a lot of local shows.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a great venue. They've been awesome. Every other Wednesday, Syracuse Improv, you guys want to go to, sorry, I'm going to plug my stuff. No, man. We set you up for a plug. Syracusembrov.com. It's not every day that you get somebody on your podcast who does a podcast. So it's like, I don't know what seat I'm sitting in.

No, you're doing great. I think it's wonderful. But, okay, so I got a question for you. So if I come to you, Mark, with Syracuse and Prove, you know, and we're like, we're looking to implement your system into Syracuse and Prove, you know, the nonprofit, what would that process kind of look like? So when you talk about, are you talking about strategic planning? So first off, let's take a step back, right? When I sit down with somebody for the first time, I honestly, and it took me a little while doing this, because before I. started this business. You know, my background is engineering and operations, but because of the jobs

I've had in my life, I've learned most functions, I guess, in business from direct hands-on experience except direct sales. Okay. So it took me a little while to figure this out, but when I sit down with somebody I've just met, right, could be a potential client, could just be somebody I met at a networking event. Maybe they're never going to be a client. Maybe they're never going to be a client. but I never come at it from a perspective of how can I sell this person. I usually start off with tell me about your business or tell me about your organization, what's going on? So I'm asking questions like, are you achieving the goals you set out to achieve?

What are your struggles? What are your pain points? And I'm trying to draw out from them where are they at in their journey. And I am listening very intently is, are there ways I can help you? And that might not even be operations excellence directly getting business and helping you directly. It might be, oh, hey, you know what? You need some financing help. Guess what?

I know people in that world and through the business context I've established. Or, hey, maybe you need IT help. Let me connect you with my friend Matt. Yeah, yeah, right? Or whatever. And so I'm always listening for those key things. Like, what's going on? How can I be of service?

Because at the end of the day, what it really comes down to is relationships and you know what? We don't buy and do business with people until we've developed a level of trust, right? And so just to want to clarify that, like, if I had just first met you, I wouldn't start off with my program. Sure. Got it. Period.

I don't come from that approach. And, you know, not only has that been more successful for me, but I've also realized that whether or not I gained you as a client, maybe we just became friends. And that might even be more valuable than a piece of business. Yeah, than a check or whatever, yeah. On both a personal and a professional level. For sure. So that's the approach I used.

So let's say we've had a conversation and like we do know each other. We've gotten to know each other. And you realize I need to have a structured plan on where I'm going with this organization and I'm not sure how to get there. So let's assume for this five minutes, that's where we're at. We both come to that understanding. Right. Then I would say, okay, I would give you kind of a verbal overview if we're sitting talking face to face or on the phone. This is kind of the process I would walk through, right? And I would talk about the process itself. I would talk about deliverables. What's it going to look like? What

do we need from you? Who in your organization is going to be part of that? Because that's a key decision that you as a leader need to make because I do believe, and this is my experience, right, it's really important that you have the right people from the organization in the room. And that might be a broader or narrower group than you're initially thinking. So part of the discussion is helping you short through that. And then ultimately we would get to a proposal that's going to say, okay, in great detail, right, here's the statement of work. We're going to meet four times, five times, six times, it's going to include this many people. And I'm going to outline for you in a certain level of detail, here's the process. And oh, by the way, for each step

of the process, you, the organization, is responsible to bring in a certain pieces of information to assist with that planning process. And then here's the output. Here's deliverable. So what's an example of an output that you've helped a business with in the past? If you can, maybe an anonymous story or something like that. Sure. Well, let's stick with the, um, not-for-profit that I just met with one of the members of the board this morning, who I'm doing business with. I've helped them develop their strategic plan, and they are not unfamiliar with strategic planning. We met through a mutual connection and the networking group we were both part of. His years were peaked or perked when, you know, he heard what I did because they had always been putting together strategic plans, but they had very

sketchy success at their ability to implement the plant. Right? So I brought more structure to it. Also, I like to look at it this way. My job, whether it's as a facilitator in a strategic planning process or in coaching, right, is not necessarily to be the answer man. And I tell people that up front. Now, I have opinions, and there are times when the answer might be glaringly obvious to me and it's not to you.

And in those times, I would certainly share it. I'm not going to hold back. But oftentimes I have to remember, like, you know your organization far better than I'm ever going to know it. You and your team, right? My job is to bring not just the structure, but I call it spinning the top, right? I'm going to keep asking the next question to hopefully help you broaden your perspective to get to a better answer. Sure. Right?

That's really the approach. So we would go through sessions, you know, in the process typically. And again, I customize it based on the organization. It's going to be a little different if you're a not-for-profit versus a for-profit that might be a little bigger and have more moving parts, right? But the general approach is the same. So we're going to talk about the big picture. What's our vision?

Can I add some concrete to this? Maybe we'll do a quick session here. Shoot away. So what I would like to do is I would like to build a theater here in Syracuse. And that really is like our medium term goal, you know, is like let's open up a improv theater here in Syracuse. There are a few stages around Syracuse, right, but I want to make a dedicated improv theater. Very similar to what exists in Rochester right now. There's the focus theater out in Rochester, and that is run by some friends of mine.

that I went to college with, and so they've built a great little community there. And I basically want to do the same thing here, you know, have a really nice theater. We have put on three shows so far. They've all sold out, which is great. We've done a few other additional shows here and there. And we've built a really nice community as well, right? We do a workshop every other Wednesday, and there's about anywhere between 40 and 60 people that come to those, which has been wonderful.

But in getting a venue and like a permanent space that we, you know, have, we sign a lease and everything, you know, we need a strong donor network, I would assume, right? We need like, basically, I want to, I want to make sure we have double the rent coming in each month, you know, so that we're safe and not going to be wondering where our next payment's coming from. And yeah, so that's, that's, I think that might be a good, I don't know. So, so, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to table this. that for a second. And I'm going to go back to the big picture because really you always want to start with a vision. And the vision statement is it's a becoming statement. It's really shouldn't be who we are today. It's who we want to become as an entity. And it might be 10, 15 years out.

It might be a shorter window than that. But it is down the road a becoming statement. Right. And so that's that vision. And it's important to define that. And it's usually, you know, a little bit where a lot of a stretch. Like, we ain't there yet, but that's where we want to go. Could we try that a little bit right now? Is that cool? So what I would really, what I'm trying to build here, and by the way, I'm not building this by myself, my co-founder, Johnny, amazing co-founder, wonderful person. And he works very, very hard on all of these things as well. And so, I don't know. He, I am. very grateful to him. But what we are trying to build is essentially what I wished existed here when I was a kid, right? So basically an organization where you can come and learn the fundamentals

of comedy, right? You can be involved in a community where other people are trying to become funnier, make better scenes, do really good scene work, become better actors and become better comedians, right? Awesome. The idea is you can come in with, you can come in, you can engage with us for free, right? You can come to our free workshops. If you want to, you know, learn more, you can take classes and get better there and take our level system. And then eventually, so that's the nonprofit. Eventually, what I would like is, you know, Syracuse and Prov acts as like a creative hub that then other, like it's, it's more of a networking group essentially. I mean, not more of. It's a networking group in addition to the nonprofit, right? Yeah. And from there, if you want to

build a, if you want to do a film, you can go do a film. If you want to do, you know, right now we're making sketches and some of those sketches have been really great and have kind of taken off. So right. Anyway, that's kind of my vision, right? A comedy organization that produces some of the best comedians in New York State is very lofty, but that's kind of my thought. So, yeah, I hear lots of stuff in there, right? You want to create this entity that will support aspiring comics, right? But I also hear directly or indirectly, you want to promote interest and the audience for that is simultaneously. Absolutely. So there's a, and so there's a lot of meat on that bone, and it's really taking everything you just said and boiling it down into a couple of sentences that is really visionary that's going to say, ultimately, you know, my pie in the sky dream, right?

This is where I want to go. This, you know, when I sit back 10 years from now, this is what I want it to look like. Right. So it's that kind of thinking. And you did a great job, you know, sharing like, this is what, my dream. dream is, right? And that's, so that is the vision statement. Got it. So you're going to take everything you just said, and it would take a little more time offline to kind of boil that down into a couple of coherent, well-put-together sentences that everybody can go, yeah, that's it. Nice. Right? Because,

but you can do that. When you're, when you're thinking about writing a vision statement, what do you, what perspective are you thinking about it from? Because part of what I've done, as I've built this so far, is think about the different stakeholders, right? Yeah, and that's a good want to use. And to really ensure that it's really all the stakeholders, right? And a lot of times people sell short, and you'll see vision statements commonly that reference the community or the world at large, which is really important, but are you really including them in the vision? Because if that's really important to your organization, whether it's for profit or not for profit, what does that mean and what does that look like in your dream, right? And how important is it? But yes,

to really identify the stakeholders and then honestly, you know, paint that picture mentally of what's the impact that we're trying to have in our dream, in our vision, for all those stakeholders, right? What's that future look like? Yeah. Ideally. Understanding that very often you could be highly successful in your organization and you may never get 100% of the way there.

But if I'm here now and I have this lofty vision and I get here, well, that's pretty darn good. Yeah. Like, we've moved the ball, and guess what? I think I'd be really happy with that. Mm-hmm. So I think it's important to really make that vision. I think it's human nature for most of us. Me, certainly, and most people I've talked to, when we do this exercise, right?

And when I do it with individuals, you know, it's about a dream inventory, right? I usually have to tell people to go back a second, third time, or more because we put these artificial guardrails on ourselves. And I always tell them the best exercise is a clean sheet of paper. No constraints. Like forget about whatever your quote unquote real life constraints may be today. If you had no constraints, what would that look like? So you kind of start there in my mind because you can always, it's easier to kind of tone it down a little than it is to stretch it. Sure. Right. And most people come up short. They don't dream big enough and their vision is not broad enough. That's actually fascinating. I would expect it to be the opposite, you know, where like they're trying to do

these big, crazy, grandiose things. Sometimes, but not most of the time. Most of the time, you know, especially business people, right? We live in a world of constraints, and we're used to functioning in a world of constraints, and we have to deal with the real world, which is what it is. But when you're talking about building out a vision and a dream, that can be limiting, and we can artificially limit ourselves. Right. If you're think about innovation, innovation happens, the greatest innovations, because people didn't believe the constraints or they blew through the constraints. Now, you don't do that if you're not willing to take some chances and literally say, I don't believe that's a constraint. I think that's artificial.

Like, I think we're putting that on ourselves. Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense, and I resonate with that very hard. Sometimes I will occasionally, it happened earlier on before I think people begin to know me a little bit more, but I would meet people that have those, that dogmatic view of like, well, we can't do that. Because I've never seen that done, so I'm not going to be able to do that. Right, right.

Right, exactly. Yeah. At the beginning, Johnny was like, he's like, a sold-out improv show is a foreign concept to be, right? And I'm like, I understand. I've never seen that happen. Right. And it's like, well, let me, I got it.

Like, let me, let me cook for a little bit, you know. And then I think over time people are like, oh, cool, okay. Like maybe there's more here than I thought there could be. Yeah. And typically what happens is as people or entities, organizations, start pushing through those that's never happened before scenarios, the belief grows. And now it becomes this self-fulfilling, self-fueling, end. You know, the engine that knows it can because it's done it. Right.

And little by little, you build up to those things that, how did we do that? Wow. It happened overnight. Absolutely. Right. What do you think? I'm sorry, we probably should move on, but real quick. What do you say to people who are like who dismiss that conversation about vision, right?

Like, why are we having this idealistic conversation? We're living in the real world. You know, we got to hit our numbers next month. We're going this way. You know, why do I have to sit down on a piece of paper and discuss like this lofty, I don't want to talk about my dreams from when I was 12 years old, right? I have to make money. Like, it's capitalism, maybe let's go.

What do you say to those people? Well, I tell them that, and I'm going to try and boil this down because, right, I grew up playing sports and I've got a lot of older brothers. And so I have to be careful sometimes because I can have a locker room mouth and mentality. I will totally own that. But I'm, you know, you also can't necessarily say the first thing that pops into your head. Look, if you're just looking at short-term immediate results, then you are actually going to be buffeted by life. And it's kind of like the individual who doesn't really have any goals and has never thought about the long-term vision of their life. And why are so many people today walking the face of this earth unhappy?

It's because they have never really allowed themselves or taken the time or for whatever reason set longer-term goals or really thought about what are their dreams and aspirations. And they literally are just pinballs buffeted by what happens day to day in life. And I'm here to tell you this is not just Mark saying this. Go, you know, look at any organization. You run an organization like that, you're going to fail eventually, right? Because guess what? Life does happen, right? And, yeah, you have to adjust your plan based on real world circumstances.

All true. But if I don't have a viewer of vision and where I'm going, how the heck am I ever going to get where I really want to be. So you're typically going to always be unhappy or you're going to be short selling yourself, right? You're never, you're going to be mediocre at best. You might have peaks where I do, hey, we're doing pretty good. It's not sustainable. Got it. Right? Yeah. So that would be my pushback on that. Yeah, that's a good answer. And if they don't, if they don't want my services to help them get there, then I'm happy to walk away. Yeah, right, right. And I don't mean that in a bad way because, you know, at the end of the day, I do not want to work with individuals or organizations

that don't see value in what I do because all I have is my reputation, meaning they're not going to be happy because they're not going to succeed if they're not really buying in to the work that's got to be done to be successful. Right. I can help them, but I can't do the work for them. Right. You can't make them believe in something. So I'm the first one that's going to say, God bless, good luck. I can't help you. Cool. Fantastic.

Okay, so let's say we've got the pie in the sky vision. Here's where we're headed. We've got the North Star. Yep. What's next? Yeah, what's next? What are we doing next? So right then, and just real quick, because we could talk for another hour.

I'm sorry, yeah, I don't know. Because there's a lot of meat on this bone, but kind of big picture, right? From there, you're going to develop a mission statement. And the mission statement is in the next 12 to 8. 18 months, right? What does it need to look like for us to advance toward the vision? So it's a little shorter window of time, right? That's the difference between a vision and a mission statement. So now I've got those two things. Typically, we're going to then identify what are the core values of the organization, right? And there's going to be three to five typically, and it can vary

a little. But these are key statements of non-negotiable values. What are our non-negotiables? So I've got those. Okay. If you want to hear them, maybe not. Okay. Well, hold that thought. All right. All right.

But then from there, right, now we're going to start identifying what are the key goals and results, right? What are the key things that we need to accomplish in the next 12 months to move us to that mission statement, which will move us towards, right? Because you see now how this is all, it's building blocks. Right? We were talking earlier about how I'm a linear guy and engineer by background love these processes because that's the way they operate. And it makes perfect sense to me, and they work because they are all connected. So, okay, now I identify those key results and goals. And by the way, goals have to meet specific criteria.

Excuse me, too much coffee today. It has to be Y-Smart, which is written, harmonious, yours, specific, measurable, attainable, realistically. high and time sensitive. Sounds like a mouthful, but there's a lot there. Otherwise, it's not a why smart. I've heard of smart goals, but why small? Well, the why is added because, you know, and I love this one, because, right, this is me, it's not real until it's written. Otherwise, it's just floating around your head. Harmonious is simply that if it's in conflict with another one of your goals, there's an issue. Let's resolve it because it's not going to work out well if it's not harmonious. And oh, by the way, if it's not aligned with your vision, it's not in harmony either.

And yours, you know, whether it's an organization or individual people, you know, oftentimes we think something should be a goal, but it's really because of outside forces. It's not ours. It's not true to us. Right. So that's, those three things I think really matter when you're talking about goals. So now we've identified the goals. We may identify key milestones, right? Which Sometimes we're going to break that down into shorter-term goals, right, to reach a bigger goal. There might be multiple short-term goals under a longer-term goal. And then we're actually under each goal, right, and there's a process to do this. We're going to identify the key actions, the specific steps, actions we have to take to connect the dots and achieve each of those goals.

So a step in there I did leave out before we identify the, specific goals, we would have one higher level which are called critical success factors. And I like those because usually there's four to six of those for an organization. And it's kind of a stoplight chart. Like I could look at those at any point in the process during the year, how are we doing on that critical success factor? Is it green, yellow, red? Okay.

So we've driven it all the way down to an action plan level. And, you know, depending on the size of the organization, that's going to include. actions for the key executives, for department heads, all the way down to the functional people at every level. And guess what? Now, when you go to those functional people, they may have input as well if you're talking a group, you know, a for-profit that has, you know, a for-profit business that has engineering or project management, whatever. Okay, here's the specific things for the department. I might not identify each individual contributor, but now we're going to have them have input to how we're going to achieve these department goals.

So now that also goes back to something that's a key aspect of what I do called goal alignment. Because now they've had input, they've got skin in the game to developing their own targets, their own goals, what they're going to be measured on. And they also can see, because now I can show them right through the process, this all connects to the organization's success, which, by the way, we're successful, you're successful, right? So now it's all tied together. That is really insightful. And I, from my perspective, just thinking about my organization that I'm building here, we've done most of these things. Yeah. I never, there are certain stakeholders that, you know, are doing wonderful

work for us, but I never thought to sit down and be like, hey, like, let's come up with, like, what do you guys think that your goals are going to be? And that's, that's a wonderful idea and something that I want to implement for sure. Well, you know, it's something that at a certain level intuitively, I think I've known for some time, but really it became much more solidified concrete for me in doing what I do now. Goal alignment, I really do call it the secret sauce because and it really, with individual performers, I mean, what it really comes down to at a human level is every leader for every member of their team should be connecting on a human level with that team member

so they understand from the team member's own mouth, what are your personal dreams and goals and aspirations and then helping them understand how to connect that dot, those dots, to the organizations. Right? Like, okay, my aspiration is, I want to be able to put my kids through college. I want to be able to take care of my elderly parents.

Hey, I'm getting married next year. You know, a couple of years down the road, my wife and I are going to want to buy a house so we can have a family and have a nice home. And it's different for everybody. But everybody has them. And some people might say, well, I don't want to be the CEO. I don't want to be king of the world. That's great.

Maybe their greatest aspiration in life is security. I want to know I have this job and that this is going to be here and I'm going to be able to support my family, and I want to go home at 5 o'clock every night, spend time with my kids and my wife and live my life. That's an aspiration. That's a dream. Yeah.

Right? And that's important to them. So it's really understanding what's important to each individual and then helping them clearly understand how that personal stake is related to the organization's success. That's the ultimate goal alignment. And then you can take it all the way back and forth on that chain I just described. if you have people that totally buy in because I see what's in it for me, and I don't think

that's selfish, that's just human nature, right? Because one of the greatest definitions of leadership is getting somebody else to do something you want them to do because they want to do it, not because I said so. If you had an organization with that, that'll walk through a wall because they see the value in it to their own life, you're unstoppable. Yeah. I mean, How good is that organization going to be? Pretty darn good, no matter what your endeavor is. Yeah. That's, it's, I really love that perspective.

I'm sorry. You got me thinking about lots of different things in my life going on. See, Danny, I got his wheels turning. Success. No, it's great. It's been in the top. I've definitely thought about those things from a, from a high level strategic level of like, okay, well, here's how I want people to kind of like

interact with the organization. Sure. Ways and things. But on a one-to-one individual level of like, hey, like, what do you personally want out of your life or out of your career as a performer as an entertainer and comedian? Right. How does that, you know, and doing that with an individual level, especially with people who are, you know, donating their time and giving their energy to the organization, right?

That is a huge thing that I probably need to spend more time. doing and with the number of things that I'm juggling. Like, you know, we get really caught up in the small things of like, okay, you got to make sure this social media post goes out so that like people show up to this thing, which is important, but it's probably less important than, you know, hey, connect with, connect with somebody, realize, oh, hey, this person has experience with social media. Right. And one of the things they want to get better at is this type of posting and they want to practice that. And so, hey, if we delegated that and we wrote that, you know, hey, this is our mission, this is one of the goals that you have? Wonderful. And you can suddenly, I don't know,

the cool thing that you're touching on is by really making the effort so that you can achieve goal alignment, you're going to learn stuff that is probably going to inform functionally and even with the company's goals that might tweak, right? Because the way you just described it, yeah, you know what? Maybe that individual has different aspirations and abilities than you even knew. I mean, if you don't ask, you don't know. We had an engineer one time that we tried like, heck, to turn him into a manager, and it just wasn't his bag. And he made a valiant offer and finally came to me and he's like, this isn't for me. And I'm like, okay, no worries. Right. But brilliant, technically. And then during his review, you know, six months later, like, you know,

I really got him to open up. And we, we have. had connected because we had been through this process together of trying to help him become a manager and he had finally opened up and said, you know, yeah, it's not me. Okay. No harm, no foul. Mm-hmm. So he says to me in his review, when I asked the question and genuinely out of I care, like, what are you, what are your aspirations? I had no idea. He, you know, he was a Degrade mechanical engineer and brilliant to what he did, but I'd like to get more into the control side of the business. I said, really? Well, it was control for people who are? So this was, so it was these were electrical mechanical systems. So we had a controls engineering department that that did the electro controls, right? We had our own proprietary software that controlled these systems, but we also did the mechanical design and build. So it was really, you know, multiple. But, but,

The two lived in different worlds. And there was a separation that was not good for the function of what we were doing. And as soon as he said that, and I'm listening to him and I'm drawing more out, my brain's going, holy cow, this guy could become the ultimate liaison between these groups that are constantly, whenever something goes wrong, no, it's mechanical, no, it's the other side. He's controls. You know, they were constantly in a conflict. And he did, over time, start to become that liaison only because he had this strong desire to learn more about that side.

So his technical yearning to learn became a great asset, not just for him but for the company. Wonderful. Yeah. That's really cool. And I think that that's a really interesting example of an unlock, right? Like he's like his skill is compounding, right? instead of just being like the knowledge that he is putting together is uniquely valuable. That's awesome.

Yeah. I mean, he was building his skill set, but he was really feeding for him a basic human need of, you know, he was one of these people I would identify as a lifelong learner, but in a very technical sense. Like his brain was not happy unless it was challenged to develop and learn more at a highly technical level. Cool. Right. That is fascinating. Mark, thank you so much for your time. Sorry to, I'm sorry that the conversation is winding and all over, but I'm having fun, and I hope that I hope you've enjoyed it so far.

Yeah. Love it. Cool. So let's talk a little bit more about, so I heard that you have launched this course. We've helped you develop this online course. Can we talk a little bit about that? Yeah. Yeah.

So keys to successful leadership, executive presence in building an impactful culture, which is a bit of a mouthful. So my friend, Joanne Yarrow, who we've become close through a group that we're both part of outside group. And she approached me after, you know, getting to know me a little bit. And I've done some work and coaching with her and her husband on developing their side hustle, really, which, you know, they started their own consulting business. They both have, quote, unquote, day jobs. But she approached me months ago and said, hey, I've got this idea. Because she works not only in the performing arts space, but she has expanded her business to, you know, do some coaching, utilizing and helping executives in the for-profit world develop their skills,

speaking skills, how to command a room, really this whole concept of executive presence, right? How do you come across? How do you connect with people? As we just talked about, critically important for anybody in a leadership role. And a voice coach, I mean, she literally voice coaches people who do, you know, they're voice actors, right? which is a big deal. Yeah, cool. Cool.

Very cool. So she approached me and said, you know, geez, what I do, Mark, you and I should think about putting together a workshop or a seminar because, you know, your more classical leadership development approach. But if you couple that with what she does, boy, there could be power in that. And, of course, right away, I'm like, I had never thought of that. Yeah. So the more we talked about it, that's really what we did,

we put together this workshop. You folks here at growth mode content, guys did a wonderful job recording that. And that was Matt's idea. Originally, we were going to do a live workshop and, you know, 15, 20 people. And he's like, well, that's great. But would you like to reach more people? Well, sure.

That's always the goal, right? Not just financially, but, you know, I think Joanne, I know Joanne and I have this passion to what we do can help people and help them advance their development and their careers and their lives. So the more people we can reach, the better. So Matt came to us and said, hey, let's record this. So, yeah, I think it's a really unique workshop. And of course, I've seen what's out there.

There's people, whether it's individuals or organizations, they're looking online for online training for leadership development. There's a ton of stuff out there. personally, I think you're better off if you go to somebody directly, whether it's me or somebody else in the field, right, that can work with you and customize a program. But that can be a little expensive. And not everybody, especially if you're an aspiring leader or if you're an existing leader that's further down your career. And maybe your organization doesn't have a budget for that right now, right? That happens.

So we put together this program. It's seven roughly 20-minute videos. You know, we're offering it for $99. And I know right now we have a special offer that we're doing a 20% discount. Because, again, we really want to reach people and get out there. And it really does combine everything I discussed

about what Joanne does with some of the classical things from really helping people understand what is leadership, what is successful leadership. And, you know, the great thing about answering those questions in the workshop, it's not necessarily what people initially think of, right? So it's really helping people gain a different perspective about leadership and beginning to introduce them to some of the skills and knowledge that's important to become a successful leader. Like I, and the great thing about what I do, which is kind of a dual edge sword, if you will, it's impossible for me to, quote unquote, fully teach you leadership. Because the truth is, I could never cover every circumstance that you're ever going to

encounter in your life as a leader. Humanly impossible. What I'm really trying to do is help you build the skills and the knowledge, but also help you understand how to build the proper attitudes, right? Because sustainable change requires the right attitudes. and the attitudes of a successful worker or doer can be very different from the attitudes of a successful leader, right? Because as a leader, I no longer am going to succeed by being really good at being X, whether it's an engineer or project manager, a production worker, you know, whatever, right? I'm going to succeed by having the best team I have.

So my real job is helping my team become the best version of them. Yeah. Cool. Right. I succeed through others. That's awesome because, I mean, I bet that that's really rewarding because you get to kind of watch people transform and kind of help that process along. And so when it works. It is.

But again, you've got to have the right attitude because it also, like I can tell you from my own experience, you know, going literally on a Friday many years ago now being an engineer. and being promoted and, okay, on Monday, you're going to be the engineering manager. It can be very frustrating when you haven't had the opportunity to develop those different skills and knowledge and attitudes because you're so used to doing it. Like, okay, I just need to work a little harder or I need to, you know, figure out this technical problem. Now, you're going to succeed by helping your people be the best version of them. and sometimes that's helping them learn how to solve a problem. But if I always just give them the answer,

it's like the old adage, I can give you a fish and feed you for today. But if I teach you how to fish, you can feed yourself for the rest of your life, right? So it's becoming ultimately, you know, there's this concept of servant leadership. And, you know, it's really about being a coach and a mentor and a teacher. And what do I need to do to put you in a position to succeed? And that may be helping you develop your. skills, giving you opportunities to learn some different skills, etc., etc. Cool.

I got a final question here, just because I listened to a podcast on this a couple months ago. Yeah, and it stuck out into my head. Have you ever heard of the Peter Principle? Oh, sure. Yeah. Oh, that's that. Yeah, we used to talk about that when I was a newly minted engineer 40, well, 40 years ago. Yeah.

Yeah. So for those of us who don't know, the Peter Principle is like this saying, like, you rise to your level of incompetence. Correct. So basically people who are really good at sales, right? They rise to management, right? And so they might be incredible at closing deals, but yet they struggle quite a lot with managing staffs of people. And I think, right, there's that, you know, that came into fruition because there's so many real world examples of that happening. And in fairness to individuals that maybe have gone that route and failed, I think if you really peel back the onion and look at the Why? It's because they were never given the opportunity to develop those different sets of skills and knowledge and attitudes that are required to be a successful leader.

Right? Like I wish at early 30s when I went one day from being an engineer to being an engineering manager that I had a coach and mentor, whether it was somebody like me or some different version of that because I had to learn through the College of Hard Knox, right? Like, I had to learn by trial and error, right? Or, like most people do, right? I would model, like, okay, hey, when I worked for so-and-so, what they did really worked well. Okay, I'm going to take a piece of that. Hey, when so-and-so was my boss, that didn't work well. Okay, cross that off the list.

So it was trial and error and modeling behavior that I saw in both the good and the bad. Yeah. Right? And that's how most people that don't get development piece together. Yeah. piece it together yourself over time, and that's tedious, it's time-consuming, it's not going to happen overnight, and hopefully you can survive long enough to get to the point where you've learned enough. So it's a bit of a roll of the dice, right? Like, are you going to survive in those

leadership roles long enough? And some people don't because of the pressures and demands, they fail. And I think that's more of an organizational failure. Because believe it or not, even in 2026, right? Many years after that thing I described in my own life, in my own career, too many organizations only give lip service to really developing the next generation of leaders. Yeah, especially nowadays when I feel like the focus is less on,

develop the new talent that's coming out of school, right? And more so like, hey, we can automate all of this with a robot and have that kind of take over. You know, which, and we could talk forever, and you guys in a company like this, far more position than I am to talk about AI and all that kind of automation. But the truth is, you're never going to automate certain roles and certainly leadership roles, right? It's all about people and it's all about relationships. That's not ever going to be automated. Yeah. Yeah. No,

it's a, it is a people's skills are always useful, I think, for sure. Like, I think that that's really great. Mark, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for coming on. And absolutely. I truly appreciate it. And thank you for like the advice and the inside too. Like I mean, seriously, some of the things that we've talked about are definitely going to impacts. If you wanted to, you know, go further down that path, I'd be happy to offline. Because as I said, I gave you the Clifto version of it. And certainly there's stuff. There's probably even some information I could give you free of charge that might help you with that. because I really like what you're doing.

I think that's pretty cool. Thank you very much. I will take up on that. That's amazing. Yeah, it's been a great journey so far. And I, uh, somebody, I had a, I had a former boss at one point who told me that, uh, you know, it was like, it was like business development is personal development, right? Like as you, as you grow your business, like you have to change, right?

I really like that you're, I really love the mentality of focus on attitudes, right? Because you can learn skills. You can get the means. will get the leverage and the resources eventually if like you if you persist long enough, right? But like if you have a poisoned attitude about a certain thing, if you're closed off. Yeah. So many people like have such negative self-talk. And that is so destructive. If you think you can't, you won't. Right. If you think you will fail, you already have. Yep. Right. Like it and you know, ultimately if you're really developing, whether it's a business

or individually, you can't be afraid of failure. Well, said differently, we all have some of that fear, but you have to learn how to walk through it. Right. Yeah. Because you're, you know, by definition, if you're trying new things, you will fail. There's a great story about the life of Abraham Lincoln in one of the chapters I use in one of my leadership development programs. And if you, I'd never knew this until I read this section in the chapter. He failed at everything he ever touched.

failed as a lawyer, failed as a businessman, failed as a soldier, failed in his first foray into politics. But he didn't let it stop him. He would pick himself up, learn from it, and move on. Well, you know, everybody, you know, becomes the 16th president of the United States and, you know, arguably one of the greatest presidents in the country's history. Well, that didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened because he kept striving through his own failure. and didn't let it stop them. That's the ultimate story of success, right?

The whole thing about people talking about overnight success doesn't exist. I would challenge anybody because behind every quote-unquote overnight success is a story of toil and struggle and failure. The difference is those people didn't let it stop them. Yeah. Right? Yeah, that's very powerful. I have a lot of thoughts on that, but I don't know.

I appreciate your time, and I'm sure you have things to do today, and I truly appreciate it. Thank you for the invite. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Mark. Guys, thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed, please hit the subscribe button, hit the like button, share our stuff with somebody that you think it might help or might like it. Also, guys, thank you so much for our sponsor, ads on the go. Get ads on the go.com.

Mark, one more time, how can people find your stuff? Operationsexcellance.com. Operationsexcellance.com, and that is Excellence, the word without the E at the beginning. So, yeah, operationsexcellance.com, and I know Danny's going to put up... Yep, in the description. Yeah, in the description, how to connect for that, for that. that workshop. So please do hit that up. It's a great workshop, great value. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Mark, and thank you guys for watching. Have a great rest of your day.