Keys to Building a Leadership Team for a Smooth Exit

• 49:19

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Leadership team, smooth exit, organizational structure, decision making, roles and responsibilities, conflict resolution, team unity, data-driven decisions, psychological safety, accountability, executive leadership, company values, internal customers, process improvement, team dynamics.

SPEAKERS

Ron Higgs, Damon Pistulka

 

Damon Pistulka  00:07

All right, everyone, welcome once again to the faces of business. I am your host, Damon Pistulka, and I am so excited because we’ve got a repeat offender with us today in Ron Higgs from wolf management solutions. He’s going to be talking about the keys to building a leadership team for a smooth exit. Ron, thanks for coming back again and hanging out with us.

 

Ron Higgs  00:32

Damon, thanks for having me. I am honored to be asked to come back to a repeat offender. Come back again. This is maybe what, four times, five times like that. Keep doing it. I appreciate it

 

Damon Pistulka  00:50

awesome that you’re here. So Ron, for those that don’t know, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into helping people with leadership.

 

Ron Higgs  01:03

Wow. I’ll try to make this as short as I can. I am a graduate of the US Naval Academy. Leadership was ingrained into my DNA since I was 17 years old. Did a 20 year career in the Navy after that, again, all focused on leadership. I was a naval flight officer, and I was also we called an aerospace engineering duty officer, which means I was one of the folks in the military that worked with defense contractors on future military systems. So I worked on aircraft programs, aircraft weapon and sensor system programs and satellite programs. So I have been in the leading the teams of military folks and squadrons, leading government civilians, after my time in the Navy, leading groups of engineers. So I’ve been in leadership roles my entire career, and I have a passion for it. I also have a passion for helping others become leaders, because as leaders, I think what we need to do is create more leaders. And I my goal was every place I went to leave more leaders in my wake. Whenever, you know, after I leave, I had this thing whenever I left, I would put somebody in charge. If I was the program manager. It’s like, okay, you’re the Acting Program Manager. It’s like, I don’t want to be the Acting Program Manager. It’s like, No, you do it. You have my decision authority, talk about everything when I get back. Yeah, yeah, great stuff. And we have a lot of folks, I’ve watched a lot of folks grow, and I found that it energized me.

 

Damon Pistulka  02:37

That’s really cool, and it is, and that, I think, is a sign of people that really enjoy leadership and do it well, is to grow other leaders.

 

Ron Higgs  02:48

Indeed, I really again, I’ll just emphasize it. I love it, just watching people get it. And when you’re working with people, wait until the someone teaches you something you didn’t know. I mean, leadership is this continuous journey of learning. And I may have told you this before. A few years back, I ran into a CEO, and he says, Well, I’ve been the CEO of this company for five years. I know everything there is to know about leadership like that. Okay, well, yeah, gave them my background with the Naval Academy. I spent this time in the military, and I I spent a lot of time in leadership positions post military. I’m still scratching the surface and learning every day.

 

Damon Pistulka  03:31

Yeah, yeah. It is, it is a it’s a constant journey. And I think too, as as you are in it longer and longer, it becomes more and more apparent the amount there is to learn. And also, when you look back, you go, boy, I wasn’t very good at it when I started, but I think that’s everyone.

 

Ron Higgs  03:58

I agree. You know, again, I’ll go back to the military, and our system of feedback, I believe, is second to none. You’re always receiving feedback in the military. Remember, in the military, we go into a unit for a finite amount of time. We’re in a unit for two, three or four years, and we know that we’re progressing through that unit until you’ve learned what you need to learn, and it’s time to move on for new challenges. So you, as soon as you walk in, are being trained as a replacement, and very shortly after you, and while you’re being trained, people come in after you, and now you start training your replacements. So you can’t sit still, you can’t worry about somebody taking your job. You know that somebody’s coming in to take your job, and you’re training them to be the best that they can be. So I was a coach before the term was popularized and people started calling each other coaches, so that, I think, is where the back. Ground for what I do started.

 

Damon Pistulka  05:03

Yeah, that’s really cool. So when you were in the military, some what are some of the things that help the military create good leaders?

 

Ron Higgs  05:17

I think, well, first, let’s debunk a couple things. I’ve had some challenges when I and I still do when people will say, well, we’re not looking for military style leadership. Like, well, what do you consider military style leadership? Because that’s the stuff you see on TV and in the movies. And I have to tell you, that’s not the way it is. So a lot of folks, big they get their ideas about what military style leadership is for what they see on the big and the small screen, and it’s not, it’s not that way.

 

Damon Pistulka  05:52

So the, what are the misconceptions there? Then

 

Ron Higgs  05:57

I think again, the if you see, I’ll give you a perfect example in any movie with that’s a military organization or paramilitary organization, you know, like the police or Starfleet, right? One character will look at another character and say, That’s an order like I in my military career, never said that. I’ve never had to say that. And I do believe, if you have to tell somebody that at some at some point, you’ve failed in leadership. So so that’s one and all of our positional authority. There may be some folks out there that think that people just listen to you just because of your positional authority. Remember, in the military, we lead people into situations to where we know everyone isn’t coming back. So the think these folks are doing what I asked because I told them to, or I’ve built up their confidence in themselves, in me, built the level of trust that they are all going to so that’s a big difference. Yes,

 

Damon Pistulka  07:04

that’s a huge difference, when you put it in those terms, because you’re right it loss of life is not uncommon in the military,

 

Ron Higgs  07:14

as today’s, as the events of last night showed us, you know, not just the military, but you know others,

 

Damon Pistulka  07:21

yeah, yeah, that’s for sure. So the we’re today, we’re here to talk about the keys to building a leadership team for a smooth exit and and your passion for building leadership teams, and specifically working with the founders and the executive leadership teams. What are some of the most common situations you see when you’re asked to come in and assess a situation leadership teams and the founders,

 

Ron Higgs  07:52

if they have a team. But one, do they have a team? Are they big enough to have a team? The second one is if they have people in this does happen in startups. If there’s an org chart, if I say, may I see your org chart, I may get some crazy looks like org chart, you know what’s that? And you know that another that’s a flag. And then if they do have an org chart, it’s just, it just has names on it. And I, you and I have discussed this before, the org chart will say Damon is responsible for this, Ron is responsible for this, and it’s just names, and there may not be any rhyme or reason to what those folks are doing, right? So first thing is we have to build an organizational structure that serves the company in larger companies, it ends up being some of the issues are conflict within the executive team. That’s a big one, because that conflict within the executive team can really trickle down to the entire business. If two executives hate each other, then that permeates, permeates throughout the whole business. I’ve seen this happen where, if you have a CMO and a sales, you know, CRO hate each other, or something crazy like that, then the teams themselves be like, Hey, we don’t talk to marketing people, you know, we don’t talk to sales people, those things. It just ruins the culture. So there, there are some companies that experience those sorts of issues as well.

 

Damon Pistulka  09:26

Yeah, and, and that’s a that’s a great example that the, the first of all, the structure, we’ll talk about that a little bit more again here in a moment. And, but those conflicts, man, they can just really undermine if I’m sitting there as the CEO, founder, whatever, and I’ve got a couple of my executive team members that don’t like each other and hide it well enough that I really don’t see it day in and day out. It can cause havoc.

 

Ron Higgs  09:58

Yeah. Such a hidden cost to that there’s, you know, it impacts your bottom line. It impacts your culture. Ultimately impacts retention. Top talent leaves you get a reputation. Maybe people don’t want to come. You have trouble recruiting. I mean, all sorts of issues stem from that. And we’ve probably all been in organizations that we’ve seen that, or you may have been driven yourself, been driven away from a company because those kinds of issues were happening. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  10:31

yeah. So let’s get back to keys to building a leadership team for a smooth exit. You know you’ve talked before we got on today, and then other times about there’s, there’s several steps to this process. So let’s go through the steps, and then let’s talk through each one of those steps a little bit.

 

Ron Higgs  10:52

Yeah. So remember, before last time I was alone, we talked about big pictures in terms of, well, how, where do you even start? So one is I talked about earlier, is building the right structure, the organizational structure that serves the company. So that’s ops department, HR, marketing, you know, all of those different things. And then what we’re here to discuss today, now that you have that putting the right team in place, that means putting the right people in those positions that you’ve just created. And additionally, especially when companies are smaller, you need to have the right processes in place, as when companies are small, especially when they have very few people, very few clients, very few products or services. Life is easy because they’re delivering their product or service in this environment of simplicity. As they start to grow, they have to now deliver this product or service in an environment of relative complexity driven by the numbers of people, the numbers of the numbers of people they have, the number of clients, the number of product service. Things just start to come complex. And you need a process, system and a process to not just do it, but make sure that you do it right and it’s repeatable, because when you’re small, you can almost afford to make it up every time. And I’m sure everybody’s been in a situation like this, and you turn around and go, haven’t we done this 20 times before? Why does it seem like we’re making it up every time we do it? So we’ve all been in that situation. That’s when you start to have systems and processes.

 

Damon Pistulka  12:39

Yeah, that’s a that’s a great point, the systems and processes and, yeah, yep. So as you’re looking at the team components, we’re talking about the team itself, we’re talking about you’ve got a structure, you’ve taken the time to lay out the roles, and now you’re looking at the team. You’re looking at the people across the team. What are some of the aspects when doing that, that you really want to keep in mind when you’re looking at your team, or you’re building out your team and and because you know that this is what we need to go, we gotta do something to get to the next level,

 

Ron Higgs  13:28

right? So first, I’ll back up a little bit. Remember those that organizational structure has to be clear, and it has to clearly define who’s responsible for what. So those roles and responsibilities have to be clear. And I’ll give you an example. When I work with teams that are in conflict, the first thing we do, and it seems silly, is, let’s go over all of our individual job roles. What’s written down, okay? And then what do you really do? Because I think it’s important for the executives to understand their job and understand all the other executives jobs. And a lot of the conflict is driven by overlap in those roles and responsibilities, or perceived overlap in those roles and responsibilities and and it may stem from something that happened in the past. So in the past, say, on my job description, it says I’m responsible for the TPS report. But you’ve been doing the TPS report for the last couple of years, going back whoever had the job before you was doing the TPS report, because the person in my role, the CEO, says I don’t like the way he does the TPS report, so I want this other person to do it, and so it doesn’t necessarily make sense role wise, but it’s something that happened a while back because they were making up for, you know, another one human being not doing it to somebody’s liking or not being capable of it, which means you had the wrong person and, you know, the wrong person. In the wrong seat. It says those are those overlaps, and those overlaps really cause a lot of the conflict. So one you really have to understand those roles and make everything very, very clear. The next thing is to have the right people in the right seats. The first time one of my clients I worked with. It’s like, hey, my team is good, but they’re not great. We need to get them to work better together. I want them to be be great. I said, Okay, so the first thing I asked, it’s like, so does everyone in the room belong there? Do you have the right people in the right seat? Is there anyone there that you have a question about, or that’s struggling, or you think is in over their head? Long pause, I go, Well, we’re not going to be able Well, we the best way for us to move forward is to have all of the right people in the room. From the beginning. Yeah, she ended up demoting that person?

 

Damon Pistulka  16:03

Yep, that’s a tough one, because it is, you know, they could be people that have been there a long, long time. And I glad you segued into this, because one of the things that that, I think owners, high level executives, that have, that have, you know, started a business and grown it considerably with, with some of these people that were, you know, started in the beginning, literally, it could be the other person in the room when they started the business, but they’re an employee, and now we’re five years down the road, and that person is like a fish out of water and is not comfortable with what they’re doing, and really is not a fit for what the company needs anymore. Talk about that just a little bit well

 

Ron Higgs  16:53

stage of growth. So the analogy that I use is that the people who build the foundation aren’t necessarily the people that build the house. And then I said that to a colleague who I met in person for the first time recently at a coffee shop. And her response to that, she goes, that’s great. I use this analogy because she’s from the Seattle area. She said, the person that gets you to the top of Mount Rainier isn’t the person that could get you to the top of Mount Everest. And so those are, I think those are really good examples of just having the right people at the right time. So you have some foundation builders out there, and you have some people that can help you scale. You’re right. That is tough, because they may have helped you, helped found the company they were there in, you know, when things were tough? Yeah, so those are the hard decisions that have to be made, because when you’re going to, for lack of a better term, grow up, not everybody’s going to make the trip with you, and that is very difficult. And as a CEO, I’m sure some people out there have had to make really difficult people decisions, and that is part of the job. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  18:15

yeah, that that is, and I’m glad you said it the way you did. You know, the person that builds a foundation is not the one that’s going to build the house and and it really happens a lot in business. I think when you talk to a owner or CEO or the business has stagnated if they haven’t thought about roles and responsibilities and who are in the seats at that point, I think they’re often overlooking the root cause of what they’re they’re experiencing, and even if it’s they should look in the mirror.

 

Ron Higgs  18:52

Yes. So another example of this is that I had a client demote someone, and then I asked, you know, was the person relieved? And they thought back and went, Yes, so here you had a person who was in over their head but did not want to disappoint the CEO by saying, I’m in over my head. I can’t handle this. Keep talking. CEO didn’t want to disappoint that person by demoting them, when, in reality, that’s what they both wanted and needed. So the person who got demoted was relieved, yes, and ended up being put in a better position and thrived in that position. That’s really you’re not talking about. You don’t have to necessarily get rid of people. You just may have to put them in a role that’s more suitable for their capabilities.

 

Damon Pistulka  19:48

And that is a great point, because that same person that was there with you in the beginning, if you ask them to do something that they may not like, they might say yes, just because they say, I really. They need to help do this, because this is what I’ve done forever, and then they are three years down the road and something they don’t like,

 

Ron Higgs  20:07

right? I think, as you well know, people operate best when they’re engaged, when they do things that they love,

 

Damon Pistulka  20:13

yes, yes. So as you’re helping people through this, and you’re getting these people in the right spots, or helping the leaders to understand the right roles. What are some of the the really tough things you encounter when you’re like we see this team, we know what we need to do, but we just can’t get there.

 

Ron Higgs  20:43

Well, ultimately, as a consultant, as a coach, you know, I make recommendations, my clients make decisions, and a lot of those things are tough and difficult to to get past. I have an example where you know some people, as the company starts to grow, and as you start building this organizational structure clearly defining roles and responsibilities, some people lose their autonomy. That’s what we all like. Lot of folks are scared of losing their autonomy, and they push back on everything. So I was in a situation to where lots of pushback, lots of just stonewalling all the things that we’re trying to do, I’m trying to help with, to move the company into a position to where it was, to where it was scale. And finally, I had to have a discussion with the CEO, saying, as long as this person is in that role in this company, you’re not going to be able to move forward, right? That person is holding you back, and they’re not going to change. It’s like but, you know, he’s my best friend, and he helped me start the company. Well, my work here is done. So, I mean, as a consultant coach, you know you’ve probably had to walk away from clients before, and it wasn’t necessarily walk away. It was a mutual agreement that, well, I think we’ve reached an impasse here. The other thing is that not every company needs to grow to be a behemoth. So there’s a certain point to where you can go and scale and keep scaling, and then there’s a certain point where you get through and you just can’t break through to start scales like we’re stuck. We’re stuck at between eight and 10 million it’s perfectly okay to become to be stuck at eight to ten million in revenue and not grow. So then you can focus on other things. You can focus on being more efficient. You can focus on increasing your margins. You can do that. And that’s what that company ultimately decided to do with that person it and it was great, because now they knew that they were no longer seeking. We’re going to build this thing and we’re going to scale. No, we’re actually okay and we’re fine stand at this point that we are. So now let’s focus our efforts on doing better work and not necessarily growing.

 

Damon Pistulka  23:18

That’s a good point, because, you know, not everyone really, even though they think they may want to scale, not everyone really wants to scale once they understand what it takes. And that’s

 

Ron Higgs  23:31

the biggest thing, because, because almost guaranteed you’re going to lose people and now, yeah, those decisions are too hard for folks. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  23:40

yeah. So one of the things that we’ll talk about here for just a moment, and then we’ll roll into, you know, what you really want your leadership team to look like for a smooth exit, is a little bit about culture and extremely talented people that are not good for your culture, because I think a lot of smaller companies often fall into this trap that you know our culture is not where we want it to be, because our leadership team, or or someone on their leadership team, is undermining some things, but Damon’s really talented, and he gets so he he just makes stuff happen. What you how would you coach someone through that situation? Because that, I think, comes up a lot, and it’s something that scares the heck out of founders and CEOs, and is something that causes way more damage than they they ever realize.

 

Ron Higgs  24:52

Yeah, so there are a couple of categories of people that you have out there, right? You have some people that have potential. Initial as we say, but they’re coachable, and they can they can be taught. They can learn. And a lot of us, you know, you have the that whole system of values, your company values, and that’s what you hire for, right? Everything else you can teach, or most everything else can teach. So you look for things that you can’t teach. You can’t take work you can’t teach work ethic, you can’t teach motivation, you can’t teach curiosity and or willingness to learn things like you can’t teach that, right? So you look for those types of things and then focus on the things that you can’t teach. You have to make decisions about some people, are they coachable and are do they share our values? Then yes, that’s person we’re going to keep. So here’s the thing, the superstars, or they may not be superstars, if there’s those people out there who are really, really great at what they do, but they’re toxic and they don’t align with your values. So do you want to keep people around that don’t align with your values. That means we’ve all seen this. So and so is the top salesperson, but everybody hates them. They go around the processes. They may do some inappropriate things, but they put up with it because they’re the top salesperson. But you just do your value system out the window, because you get more what you tolerate. So that person is going to be a cancer. And in your organization, even though they’re performing, we’ve all seen this, that person needs to either be reassigned, and, in some cases, reassigned out of the company, I mean, but some serious coaching about values alignment. I mean, those are the strengths. And then there are people that just kind of like, aren’t good, they aren’t good at what they do, and they’re not coachable, so they’re out, yeah, that’s, you know, that’s an

 

Damon Pistulka  26:51

easier decision. I think that’s for sure, that’s easy.

 

Ron Higgs  26:55

So, so if you think about it that way, there’s no way to sort of eliminate the hard decisions that are going to be made. But I do think the kinds of people that I just described, the high performers that don’t align with your values, I would guess that everyone has seen that at some point in their career. Witness someone who just who everybody? I would say they hated. They were just good. They made all the sales, they did everything, but they were difficult to work with. Didn’t follow the rules and just got away with murder, yeah, and what did that do to your, you know, your culture

 

Damon Pistulka  27:35

and in the performance of the other people that have to work around them,

 

Ron Higgs  27:38

right? How many people did that person drive away? How did that impact your talent? How did it really impact your bottom line? Yeah, for making sales, but it would cost.

 

Damon Pistulka  27:47

Yeah, I just, I remember years ago someone said, and I about the time they said this, I really realized how long they would be a leader, as they said, well, sometimes you just have to, you have to put up with those talented people that aren’t very nice or something to that that effect. And it you could tell that was the prevailing attitude in the company, because it was not a great place for people to work because of that. And you had about a million different values. People allowing, like you said, you get more of what you tolerate. They tolerate an awful lot, a lot of directions, and those organizations don’t retain, I would, I would bear it to say even good people for the for the most part and and can only tolerate, will only retain the people that have to stay there.

 

Ron Higgs  28:47

Yeah, you’re absolutely right, and there, you’ve seen it too. There are some people that come in to work for a paycheck. Yes, that’s what you get. 100% of their motivation come in, do their job the bare minimum required. And,

 

Damon Pistulka  29:07

yeah, yep. Well, that’s awesome. So far here, Ron, now I’m excited because we’re going to turn our adventure into building this leadership team for a smooth exit. Now we’re talking to people that they they’re going to be 3235, years, ready for this exit. What are some of the things specifically beyond you know, we’ve got an org structure, we’ve developed roles, we’ve got our team. We think we’ve got some people in the seats. Now, what do we really need to be working on? Well,

 

Ron Higgs  29:42

one, this is not just for an exit, as you well know, this will increase the value of any business. This will increase the efficiency of any business with this. But a couple of the things that a lot of companies don’t have this and when, when I introduced the concept, I think I’ve only been. With one client so far that already had one of these, which is an effective decision making process. Let’s decide how we’re going to decide. Right? How do you make decisions? How does the team make decisions? And you have to look at a couple things. One is internal customers. That’s another thing that some folks don’t think about. Who’s your internal customer? What kind of interactions are you having with internally amongst your executives, where decisions have to be made, and if that needs to be escalated, when are you going to escalate it? How are you going to escalate it? Who are you going to escalate it to? So let’s say if the production person and the ops person or something have a disagreement. They decide, okay, we’re going to take it to the COO. If in the COO will help us. And if we can’t decide the COO, then all three of us will go to the CEO the other thing. And then once you in the big team meeting, are we going to have majority? Are we going to have a super majority? Are we going to have a unanimous are we going to have consensus, whatever? Are we just going to let the seat or we do? Do we make a recommendation to the CEO and have the CEO make final call? Sounds simple, but having that decision making process in place. Really, really helps things along, because then everybody understands how you make decisions. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  31:28

I think that’s a that’s a great point. And I remember, I don’t know, I’ve heard it several times about decision making and pushing that decision making to the lowest levels possible. And something to forget. One of the hotel chains, the better hotel chains, had had a while ago anyway, had given their their people that that work anywhere in the hotel, a certain amount of money they could allocate, I don’t know, over a given time period to solve problems for people and give that decision making process to those, those people that were closest to the customer. And I think when you talk about these things, we don’t often think about the decision making process itself. And that’s why it’s great for you to bring it up, because how does, like you said, how does a ops manager know what they can decide and what they shouldn’t be able to decide or shouldn’t decide, what the ownership or the CEO wants them decide, or not. One How does a customer service know? Service person know what they can decide and when they’re interacting with a customer? There’s all these decision steps all the way up the chain that if they’re clear, everybody knows what to do. If I’m a customer service person, if I have a, you know, $100,000 order, I may have to go get some approvals, and my boss may even have to get some approvals. But it could be that I know, hey, this is what we do in this situation. As long as the money is about this much, we’re good. And that’s, that’s a great point, because in a leadership team, if you don’t know this, I’m sure you’ve seen where one person making a decision and someone else making another one, and someone making a third causes some confusion,

 

Ron Higgs  33:14

absolutely, and then also bottlenecks, right? You don’t want to be a bottleneck as a COO, you don’t want to I was in a structure where I came in as a COO, but the person there was another person, they had a different structure before, where it was a managing partner. Managing Partner did all of the proposals, let’s say, all sorts of different things, right? So bottleneck there. So we worked on the process. We had account managers. What happens? Change Orders are big. When you’re doing proposals, you got a client, got everything. What escalates every, every we have this problem in engineering. We have it everywhere. What customer request? What is it that escalates it to a change order? Because they always ask for a little more, a little more, a little more. So now we’re going to have to do a change order. So previously, they had to wait for me or the person in my position to do it, and so I just gave the account manager the authority to sign the change order. Easy, right? But, you know, like, oh, we hadn’t thought about that before. Am I comfortable with that, yeah, because that’s also part of that person’s growth. Because I always looked at my job as a leader to help everyone in the company achieve what they needed to achieve for their next job, right? So giving them more responsibility would it would help them when they’re ready to promote. So just by pushing that decision down, we were able to get change orders and proposals out a lot faster. Yeah, simple, simple, simple example of something that was really able to streamline a process and break. A bottleneck that existed,

 

Damon Pistulka  35:02

yeah, because if you had 100 change orders going and you had 1010, of those managers that had each one had 10 change orders going and they all had a one person, it could be really slow,

 

Ron Higgs  35:16

absolutely, especially if that person is traveling. PTO, everything just came to a screeching halt. One of the other small things in that example was there was always more than one person that could sign off on anything, and so you didn’t have you didn’t have to wait for human being. The whole the whole train didn’t come to a stop when one human being is absent? Yes, yes.

 

Damon Pistulka  35:44

And that’s important, because just as we said, people are going to go on vacation, people are going to get sick, things are going to happen when they’re out of out of the office. It could be a client meeting, whatever it is, and and thinking about that, as you’re you’re building a leadership team that’s going to be able to operate a business smoothly. You have to think of those contingencies absolutely so as we move beyond this Ron, let’s talk about the owner that really wants this team that’s going to enable a smooth exit or a well running business, what are some of the things that they’re going to start to see happening, or the final things that they’re really going to do now, they’ve got roles and responsibilities. They got the right people in the right place. They talked about the decision process. Now, what are some of the other things they want to ensure within their leadership team for that smooth exit or a better running business. You

 

Ron Higgs  36:42

know this is counterintuitive, but you want the owner to feel more and more unneeded around here, like because you and I have discussed this, the owner will typically end up being a decision bottleneck, a sales bottleneck, technology bottleneck or relationship bottleneck. So you don’t want that. If things are happening and no one’s coming to to ask you, nobody’s coming to for you to bail them out or anything, that’s that’s where you want to be. To back up a little bit. One of the other things with that team, you build that team and you have an effective team. One of the best ways to ensure that the team stays effective, and we’ve seen this before, is to make sure that the team is all unified. So along with that decision making process comes people should be whatever the decision process is. If you decide that it has to be unanimous. Okay, I don’t I think that decision right there holds a lot of businesses back, making sure that everybody has to agree. I don’t think so. People should be willing to be outvoted. I’ve always, I think one of the things I got along great in most of the teams that I was on, because I was on because I was always willing to be out voted. I was like, Hey, I’m gonna I’m gonna give you my concerns. But if everybody else you know votes same way, then I’m on board. And that’s the thing everyone needs to realize that that team, especially that leadership team, that’s the first team. You’re not there to represent ops, you’re not there to represent finance, you’re not there that represent production. You are there to lead the business that is your first team, so prioritizing company interest over your individual departmental concerns is paramount, right? Yeah, and once the decision is made, collectively, using whatever decision process you came up with, everyone walks out and supports that decision as if it’s the one that they made, right? And communicates it that way too. Because as soon as you walk out, rolling your eyes and going, Oh, the team decided to go do this. I think it’s a stupid idea, but I guess we got to do it right. So that’s it. Just undermine everything. And I’ve seen that a bunch. That was one thing in the military that we learned early on was that once commander makes a decision that said everybody supports it and and so you lead with one the team leads with one voice, and you can’t afford for people to come out and undermine what the collective has decided. Whether you and that’s tough, especially a tough pill to swallow, especially if you were, if you were did not support the decision that was made.

 

Damon Pistulka  39:26

Yeah, but it, I think this is a critical piece in a in a long performing team, because if you have a team that A will do this and believe in it and work that way over time, you get used to getting out voted once in a while, and it gets more comfortable as a leader at that point and saying, Well, this is what I think, but I want to hear what other people think. So we make the best decision. And it’s funny because it happened. To me this morning, and I was the one that was, I was the one that I was like, You’re right. I’m not right. This is not what we should do, and I think it’s part, partly the the highest level leader needs to demonstrate that to the team, that whatever decision making process is, even if it means the highest level leader is outvoted in this point, at this point and they’re going to move forward the way the team wants to doing that a few times, enables everyone else to see how they should really do it. It

 

Ron Higgs  40:37

also helps build that trust, because this is important where they have to start building that trust and working together and also creating that, that environment of psychological safety, you know, buzzword, right? You want everybody to be comfortable, to say their piece, to disagree with everything, to be the contrarian, for somebody to raise their hand and go, I think that’s a stupid idea, and here’s why, but back it up respectfully, and then respectfully, listen to everyone, yeah, and we all learn something in all of those things. And just like you did this morning, wow, you know what? That’s total wrong way to go. And I’ve learned that. And there are some things you can also consider, are, are are the decisions that we’re is the decision that we’re about to make reversible, right? So if it is, there’s really nothing wrong with learning a hard lesson, turn around and going, we made the wrong decision. Now we’re going to go back and do this. Let’s move let’s take it as a learning, a point of learning, and move forward.

 

Damon Pistulka  41:41

Yeah, that’s that’s really good. So that unity amongst the the leadership team is is critical. And I think that you’re right there and by the the highest level leader, if they can keep encouraging that and working on it, and then also having, one of the things that I’ve seen, and when you talk about this, unity among the amongst the leadership team is really when the highest level leader sees an individual on their leadership team that is not part of that team, like that and not supporting that unity. They have to have those tough conversations, because you will cause if you want a smooth running business, you have to have people in there working together,

 

Ron Higgs  42:27

that’s right, but that’s important as far as you onboarding your executive onto the leadership team, right? That’s part of it. That’s the discussion that you have to have when bringing that person aboard, when they get that promotion, offered that promotion, here’s what your responsibility is going to be. This is now your first team. This is how we make decisions. Is that going to work? Right? Because the minute I see that you’re not supporting that with everyone in the team has to

 

Damon Pistulka  42:57

Yeah, yeah. Again, tough

 

Ron Higgs  43:01

decisions to be made. I I’m sure all the CEOs out there have been in difficult

 

Damon Pistulka  43:05

Yeah, yep. So when you see this work really well, what’s, what’s cool stuff that happens? What? What are things that are happening? You go, man, this they’re doing it right.

 

Ron Higgs  43:16

When people are, when they genuinely, you can tell when they’re genuinely enjoy each other’s company, when they can sit around and and say whatever they need to say, and understand that it stays in that room. There’s no personal attacks, there’s nothing and people learn something. They learn from each other. I always had this goal of learning from everyone around me, all the other leaders, even people that work for me. I want to learn something from everyone around me. When those folks are interacting well and there’s they’re getting along great. Personally, they’re making hard decisions. They’re not scared to bring up. All of us have those situations where there’s an elephant in the room and nobody wants to bring it up, but when they some of them will start with that, okay, hey, we can’t let this fester any longer. We’re gonna have to talk about this, right? And then when they disagree with each other, like, hey, Damon, you really let me down. And here’s why you said that you would have this done by Friday, and Friday came and it wasn’t done. And what I would have expected from you is on Thursday for you to say, Ron, I’m not going to have it done. On Friday, not going to be able to get it done till Monday. Here’s why. Apologies. You know, let’s deal with that, not just let me do that. And in those relationships, when people know personal attacks, right? When they can work with each other and look at each other and go, Yeah, I screwed that up, or I let you down. How often do people say that?

 

Damon Pistulka  44:56

Yeah, that’s a good one. I mean, because you know. When someone says that without being provoked at all, and just said, you know, I really made a mistake here, and own up to it in a team setting, in a room with several people or many people, and sometimes that really does strengthen the bond between those people working and show that they care about each other.

 

Ron Higgs  45:22

I believe so, and then ask people to hold you accountable. They’re asking each other to hold them accountable. Yeah, hey, I let this down. And here’s the things that I’m trying to get better at, I need your help to hold me accountable. So if I am screwing this up, and if I’m not doing this on time and I’m not doing it, I need you to tell me, don’t let me get

 

Damon Pistulka  45:41

away with Yeah, that’s awesome, especially

 

Ron Higgs  45:45

with my wife,

 

Damon Pistulka  45:48

yeah, yeah, get away

 

Ron Higgs  45:49

with that. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  45:50

yeah. That’s, that’s a good one, because we, and that’s, you know, a lot of lot of things are applicable in a lot of areas. I’ll just say that. So as we go back, we’re going to we’re going to summarize, I’m going to summarize quickly here, Ron, there’s about time for us around round up the the show today. So in, in building a leadership team for a smooth exit or a better running business, there are some things that I think that we can look at that you you covered here is about building the org structure. First of all, do you have an organizational structure and then they then after that, you talked about the the getting the right people in the right or having the roles and getting the right people in those roles. And then the third part was get your decision making process clear, and then get unity amongst the leadership team with clear communication. Yes, good stuff, man.

 

Ron Higgs  47:00

Yeah. All sounds good. One thing I will say in the decision making process, and this is something I I just thought about, the decision making process. When companies are small, they can use anecdote and gut feel to make decisions. At some point the company has to grow, and then they’re the decisions have to be data driven. They have to be data driven decisions. And where is the data coming from? What’s the truth data for that decision? And some decisions can’t fester. Some things have to be made quickly, right? And there’s a there’s things to do that that’s more into the how than the why. But I thought that was worth mentioning. As far as that data driven decisions, because those become really important,

 

Damon Pistulka  47:51

there will be a point that we have to use that because it’s too big to use gut feel anymore, or too complex to use gut feel anymore. Not for sure. Well, Ron, I just want to thank you for being here again today, talking about the keys to building a leadership team for a smooth exit. If someone wants to get a hold of you, what’s the best way to find you.

 

Ron Higgs  48:12

Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it again, especially being a repeat offender. As you say, I am on LinkedIn. That is my channel. You can find me on LinkedIn, look for the airplane picture, reach out, shoot me a question, anything, I’ll do my best to help you or point, point you towards the right person that can or just follow me and engage with some of my posts that would be greatly appreciated. Awesome,

 

Damon Pistulka  48:39

awesome. Well, again, we had Ron Higgs here today. Go back, if you didn’t listen the whole thing, go back from the beginning. He dropped a lot of great leadership content, information, ideas for you to improve your leadership team. I want to say thanks for uzman for being here today. Greetings from uzman. Thanks for being here today. We had someone else. I can’t see who it is, but they dropped by and said hi as well. Thank you for being here today, Ron. We’ll finish up offline. Thanks everyone. We’ll be back again with another incredible guest. Thanks. Damon, you.