Tradition Meets Transformation: Jason Nickles on Leadership and Change Management

In this episode of Activating Greatness: A Leadership Podcast, host Alec McChesney sits down with Jason Nickles of Modern Woodmen of America to explore what it takes to lead meaningful change inside a legacy organization. Jason shares how leaders can modernize systems, culture, and operations while preserving the mission and identity that made the organization successful in the first place. The conversation dives into change management, aligning teams across the United States, and why building culture and trust are essential for organizations navigating transformation. For leaders guiding teams through modernization, this episode offers practical insight into how thoughtful leadership can drive progress without losing the values that matter most.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Activating Greatness, the show where we dig into what it really takes to lead with purpose, inspire performance, and create lasting impact. As always, I'm your host, Alec McChesney. And every episode, we sit down with leaders, thinkers, and change makers who are unlocking potential in themselves, their teams, and their organizations. Here we talk about the real stuff: leadership that drives culture, strategy that creates momentum, and the mindset that turns good intentions into game-changing results. Because greatness, it isn't a title, it's a choice. It's something you activate every single day. So thank you. Thank you for listening, for showing up, and for being part of a community of leaders who refuse to settle for good enough. Now, let's dive in and meet today's incredible guest, who I am so honored to introduce. Today's guest is Jason Nichols, a senior leader and chief fraternal officer at Modern Woodman of America, one of the largest fraternal financial services organizations in the United States. Jason has spent more than two decades inside Modern Woodman, serving in roles across training, field development, and leadership before stepping into his current role, really focused on modernizing and revitalizing the organization's fraternal mission. Modern Woodman serves hundreds of thousands of members nationwide through a captured field force model, combining financial services with community impact. And Jason is currently leading a transformation effort to bring renewed relevance, energy, and engagement to a legacy of fraternal model, aligning culture, mindset, and execution across teams that span the country. And not only am I excited to talk about change management, um, but I have to give away uh a secret to the listeners that Jason is also the very fortunate individual that gets to call himself Alex father-in-law. Uh and so, Jason, I can't thank you enough for uh taking me up on this and and spending some time with me and the activating greatness audience today. Before we get started, any anything else that you want to add for your introduction? Uh, because we know I will I will start running here and and start grilling you in a couple of minutes.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

No, I I think that's well said. And uh yeah, I was wondering how are you gonna throw in the old son-in-law thing there. So you did a nice job with that.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

It's uh it's 10 years or whatever it is since we first get connected. And who would have thought that I'd be putting you uh on the coals here with it with an episode uh of the podcast? But I selfishly wanted to reach out because of your background and your position, and especially being at an organization like Modern Woodman that has such a fantastic legacy and history of a strong identity of we know who we are, we know what works, we know why we exist, and yet there are still ways to rethink that model and to try to take an organization and a mindset and say, let's this is good, this is working, but we can be better, we can be great. And so I'm curious, as you went through your roles at Modern Woodman to where you are today, what made you and the team maybe realize, hey, it might be time to rethink how this model shows up in today's world. It's a different era, it's a different time, and we need to adjust to that as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Yeah, great question. And uh you are right, we do have a very long history. We've been a fraternal benefit society that's been around since 1883, very old organization, uh, originally founded to care for widows and orphans. That's that was what the founding fathers uh started to around. And our members, and everybody that uh does business with us is a member, we're a member-based organization. We're united by three common bonds. We got financial security, quality, family life, and community impact. And the department I oversee is the fraternal fraternal side of our operations, which is really focused on doing good in local communities, and so nationwide we have these local member groups, what we call chapters, where members come together for uh social, educational, and then volunteer activities, and participation is not required. But as you can, as you've seen, a lot of member-based organization participation over the years has gone down, and it especially took a hit during the COVID years. And when I came back to this department after working in other areas, our president and CEO challenged me and our team to bring fraternal to the front as part of a long-term corporate vision to grow membership. And what he meant by that is we really needed to better highlight our fraternal difference so that we uh could attract new members and of course keep our existing members loyal and turn them into advocates for us. Um, and so we really had to improve that um that member value proposition that we we present. And so we just need to make sure we do better with that. And and again, I said as I mentioned earlier, data showed that a participation had dropped. And so we really weren't keeping up with the times with today's busy families. It's harder to get people to come to local events and to volunteer, do things like that. So if we really wanted to try truly highlight our unique value proposition, we needed to and the support membership group, we needed a change.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Yeah. Well, I love that you called out the unique value proposition and even these three common bonds, because you think about that from an external standpoint, and it's a great tool to show yourself in the community, but also just from a recruitment and hiring standpoint, when you can say, we know who we are, this is what we do, uh, this is at the forefront. It's also a differentiator in in the market when you can say that and and say it really confidently in internally and externally. And so you can kind of balance between the two on yes, it's an external viewpoint, but just as much it's a recruitment tool, it's a retention tool of your top team members, you know, that are maybe on the sales side or in the office side in the field, whatever that might be, having that strong lens to go back to and that value proposition is certainly a a way to advocate for the organization as well. Exactly. All right, I want to ask this question. It's not a bad podcast question. I'm allowed one of those because I make the rules for the show. This isn't this isn't the bad podcast question yet. But what I am curious on is the change that you are talking about can't happen overnight. You just brought up the history of the organization from 1883. What the organization looked like in 83 to 1983 to 2026 is certainly different, but this change can't happen overnight. It can't be mandated. And one of the topics that is so prevalent in the Activating Greatness podcast and in the circles that Velocity plays in is change management and changing mindsets first. And so I'm curious, what are some of the things that you're doing, especially when we look at it on a United States global scale? You've got teams in California, team in Iowa, team in Nebraska, and so on down the line. What are some of the little things that you're doing to shift the mindset of those teams? Uh, especially those who are used to doing it the way that we've been doing it for the last 10 years or last 20 years or last 100 years. What are some of those tips and tricks that you're utilizing to get that message across as well?

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Well, for us, it really began, uh, if I can quote from Jim Collins and his book, Good to Great, uh, gathering the brutal facts. And, you know, my background, I've spent a lot of time in like the sales and production side of things and training. And when you work in those departments, it's kind of easy to measure success, either going up or down, are you making more sales, or are you growing? But this department's about volunteering, giving back to the community, and it's a little harder to measure. And I think a lot of nonprofit organizations really struggle with this. And so, how do you measure that? So, for us, it really began with getting good data. Uh, so we really worked hard with our IT department, and we have a data department in the home office to really get better data. And for example, we always had measured uh member engagement and attendance at events, but we had never really done a deep dive on exactly who's coming, what's their demographics, uh, how many times they're coming. And then the numbers on the surface level are great because we have about 700,000 members nationwide, and we were getting over 300,000 attendees. Well, what you found when you really broke down the data is yeah, we're getting a lot of repeat attendees. So when you really look at the unique number of attendees, people come just once, uh, it's much lower than that. That and that that was an eye-opening um awakening for all of us, and so that was good data to have, and also knowing the demographics of those folks, and just having that data helped us kind of state the case for hey, we're not engaging enough members, we we got to make some changes. And so we spent a lot of time uh using that data as well as gathering data using uh detailed surveys that we did with our members, our field force, and also our volunteers. We have volunteers in the in the field that help run these chapters and so forth, just getting all that that feedback and getting good data, and that data showed that hey, for turtles is really important, it's a it's a huge attraction to people joining us and and staying with us. But unfortunately, a lot of people just don't know about what we offer, they're not participating, or they're not uh interested enough to come to anything. And so, yeah, again, it's all powerful information that we've used, and we spent the last or our first year basically just kind of going around and taking that that message to all audiences, including the board of directors and everybody in the field, saying, Hey, we got to make this case for change. And then once we got that um agreement, yeah, we need to make change. Then we kind of asked them, well, how bold do you want to go? And we took this all the way up to you know, the board of directors say, Well, we can, it's easy to make some change that sounds kind of good, it's a it's a temporary uh fix and it kind of boosts things for the next few years. But we were looking long term, long on after I've retired. And surprisingly, you know, most agreed, hey, it was time for bold transformational change that that we had never done before. So once we got that agreement, the last 12 months really, we've been just spending a lot of work on what that change is going to look like. And um, for us, it means looking at bigger, bolder events. We have just to give you some perspective, we have like 3,000 chapters nationwide. Most of those chapters are pretty small, so the events are pretty small, and so we're looking at well, what would a member rather go to? An event with 10 people showing up, or going to an event where you may have 100, 200, 300 people going showing up for a fun event where you also do some community service related to that. And and so we tested that model, and that's what we've been really working on the last uh year. We did some pilot events all across the country. We did 30 pilot events in Tennessee, and we did uh events in nine other states this last year, and really gathered a lot of that evidence. And the importance of that and helping change mindset is that the field folks can actually see how that might be different than what they've always done for many, many years. And so uh, not that all the events were perfect, but they've actually kind of experienced it, and that really helped change mindset about what it could be versus what it currently is.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

I wanna I want to double-click on this data collection phase first, because a lot of times when we talk about change, one of the reasons that people inside organizations are so resistant to change is because it just feels like somebody is making a decision out of the blue. Hey, we need to do things differently. It here's what you have to do, go and do it. But it sounds like there was a dedicated effort, whether it was a year or six months, to collect this data and then actually share it with different teams. You mentioned board of directors, field, field reps, all of the above to say, guys, we're not just saying we need to change because we feel like it, we've done this due diligence to showcase, and we're not even recommending a solution yet. We're just recommending that we need to have uh an adjustment or a a period of change. I'm curious when you were going through that process, were there any like what were potential roadblocks or uh obstacles that you were going through as you're doing that collection of the data? Was there ever a moment when you were like, gosh, maybe we don't need to change, or maybe we do? Like, what does that look like? Because I really appreciate the team taking six months to a year to actually prove the case that change was needed, and now you're implementing different solutions uh to try to find the best answer going forward.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah, that's a great question. And one thing that I've learned over the years is data is powerful. We take it for granted, but when you're trying to make a case for anything, if you can have the data to back up what you're trying to do, it helps answer a lot of the questions. And so, yeah, there was many times when I'd be talking to, let's say, for example, a regional sales office, and they're like, Oh, we have great attendance here, we have wonderful events and so forth and so on. I could just pull out the data and say, guys, this this is what the data shows. This isn't me, this is your unique member engagement. Again, different from what we had measured before, and we'd always measure dollars and volunteer hours, which are still extremely important. But again, to grow membership, which is the corporate goal and everything you want to do, it needs a tie back to corporate goal. That's that's super important. That that really helped us make a case. So data is powerful. Um, it can't be underestimated, you know.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

It yeah, what's the difference? Well, it's objective, right? You know, you could you I like how you said this isn't me saying it, it's it's the data saying it. And I think too, uh, many of the arguments that I've had with you over the years and your your son Luke are are the balance of the eye test versus the numbers, right? You talk about the eye test a lot of times. Hey, no, this is working. We're we're fine, right? We we don't need to change. And then you talk about the numbers that are telling a different story. And I think to your point earlier, you you said something along the lines of in sales and training and different parts of the business, it's really easy to show what's working and what's not. It's really easy to show ROI when you implement a new sales program. Sales either went up or sales went down. But there are some things that you just can't have a perfect ROI for. And so you have to figure out how are we going to measure success? How are we going to gauge if this worked or not? And it seems like as part of the change from individual effort to collective impact in in terms of some of the changes that you're making and going from maybe a 10-person event to a really entertaining 200, 300-person event, you were also just asking the question what do we actually want out of these events? What do our audience members want out of these events? What does success actually look like? And maybe those questions, for lack of a better term, are the ones that started to unlock how you're trying new events in 2025 and 2026. Uh, there wasn't really a question there, but I got excited about that concept. So anything that you want to add to that before I take us in another direction?

SPEAKER_01 15:50

No, I think it was well said, you know, as one of my uh co-workers on my team said one time, these kind of events, what does it what does it say about your your brand when when you whatever you do? Like so if we had an event and five people showed up, even though it's maybe uh you're doing a volunteer service for a good cause, what does that say about your brand versus if you had a hundred people coming together and you know building that that community, that feeling of community, and doing the and doing even more work and increasing the volunteer service hours. So that would that kind of hit me when she brought that up. That I was like, you know what, that what does that say about our brand and and how how do people perceive you? And so that's been something that's on the back of my mind throughout this whole process. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

I I well, I think it kind of also goes to that quality versus quantity argument as well. And so I'm curious. Um, you know, you mentioned 3,000 chapters nationwide, and obviously each of those chapters has its own unique perspective, it has their own unique individuals, and you have regional differences, but you also have the corporate brand, and you have to maintain that consistency from one chapter to the next in some regards. And so, with the teams spread across the United States the way that they are operating in local markets, how are you creating alignment and consistency across the board while honoring the unique aspects of those organizations? Is there a committee? Is there uh you know a way to communicate between all of those? Is that the home office? What does that look like to really be able to ensure that that capability across those 3,000 different chapters?

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Well, for us, I think it's it's having a system that's both turnkey, that's that's kind of established the same at everywhere we do it, but also having flexibility because we've got regions in very urban areas, and one of our most successful regions is in Southern California, in Orange County, Los Angeles area. Their type of activities and their type of members may be different than rural parts of the country. Well, we should also also have that. So allowing them the flexibility with guardrails to do advanced and type of uh service that fits their communities is important. And so that's that's what's what I would say there's giving that flexibility, but making a turnkey, giving in some guard guardrails. And as we look to our chapter model of the future, we're looking to even add more flexibility. Whereas before we've been kind of like, okay, you check these boxes, then we're the chapter's been a success. Did you do a fundraiser? Did you do a volunteer project? Blah blah. But like you said, it really wasn't focused on the quality. It was more, yeah, we just checked the boxes. Check the box. We want to improve the quality of those events and do them differently, and that's what we're looking at.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

What has here's my bad podcast question. I'm so excited for this to take us down a tangent. But what's the reception been? I mean, you talk about 3,000 chapters, that's a lot of human beings that that you're spreading this message out to. What has the reception been to the messaging from your team to them about how we want to make this change? Has there been immediate feedback, early adopters, just kind of you know, without giving too much away, what has that reception been like to what feels like uh a fair amount of change, right? Even if it is change for the better, what's the reception been?

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Great question. And I will say right up front here, we're in the middle of it. So this is not done. So we're still in this process, but um, so far, based because of the data, because of the experiences and the tests that we've done, the pilots, we've had good feedback. Now we still have some things to work out because people what we found is people like to hold on to their things they've own the way they've always done it. This is the it change is so hard, change is so hard. So we know that's gonna be a kind of a constant battle, but I think it's really important to get advocates, and that's what we've done. We've been very strategic about getting key advocates in the field that see what we're doing, believe in it. I'm very grateful that our board of directors and our president are very much behind these changes, and so that helps knowing that you've got important people around you that believe in this and know why we're why we're doing it. And that's not to say it's gonna have some issues or we're gonna have some growing pains, but uh so far the experience has been um overall positive, but we're still in the middle of it. I actually just did a call yesterday with a group of sales managers, presented them this chapter model of the future, which we've kind of developed. And uh, and then I called a lot of them individually afterwards, hey, what'd you think of that? And again, most of them said, Hey, I I really love the direction we're going. But there's always this, but what about this? You know, what about that? And and that's the discussions we'll continue to have. And actually, I welcome those discussions because some of the thoughts they may have, like, oh, I hadn't thought of that. We can make this change, make it good, but we can make it even that much better if we just tweak it a little bit. So we're we're in the middle of that, but so far it's been positive.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

The answer that you gave means it wasn't my bad podcast question because I that that's exactly what I was hoping to hear. And I think what a lot of the leaders and executives who listen to our show also need to hear. And there's a couple of things that I want to call out. I feel like I can't record an episode of the Activating Greatness podcast without somebody bringing up the saying that's how we've always done it, or we've always done it that way. And that is where good ideas go to the graveyard, because if we're living in that mindset, then we're we're not gonna be successful. We're not gonna find better ways to evolve. But I it also sounds like the buy-in, you mention the key advocates in the field, you mention the you know, the executive team that are brought in as well. But I love hearing that you had a presentation yesterday. Here we're in March, you're in the thick of this, and then you're having those one on one conversations with individuals. Even if you don't take all of their feedback, they're still being hurt. Through this process. So they feel like they are a part of the future rather again than you come in and you say, This is how we're doing it. If you have any questions, email HR, right? Like you are engaging with them, you're looping them in. And what we have seen across the board at velocity over the last two decades is getting that level of involvement and buy-in throughout the different levels of the organization, not just the executives and the C-suite of the board, but also the managers, the directors, the individual contributors. That's really what makes change stick and not be a uh a band-aid solution for where it works for six months and then we go back to, you know, we regress back to the norm in 2027.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Right. Yeah, exactly. And actually, next week, uh, it's very timely we're having this call, but we're actually bringing in a group of 20 field people, reps, managing partners, directors, for a three-day in-depth uh what we're calling think tank, where we're just gonna say, all right, here's some of the facts we've already shared, repeat that, but then talk about here's where we're where this is going, and here's some of the evidence we've seen that this is the right direction, and present our plan and then continue to get more feedback. Um, not going backwards, but going forward. And I think that's gonna be very fruitful. And yesterday's call was kind of a precursor to that with a part of that group, and so just gonna be have ongoing conversations, and that's just gonna continue to happen. Bring them along so this is we're all in this together.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Well, and then it it also limits the shock factor, right? And uh an episode that will air maybe a week or two after this recording is is with an individual named Jeremy Maskell, the chief communications officer at Omaha Public Schools. And we talked about communication. And if you have the right communication structure, which it sounds like you do in this project, when you bring these 20, 25 individuals in for a think tank, they're gonna leave and help integrate the new messaging to their teams, to their colleagues, to their counterparts. And that spreads and the energy coming from that group a lot of times is more effective than the energy coming from your group because hey, that's the leadership team, that's the you know, that's home office. They have to say that. But if you get those 2025 advocates that are bought in and like, hey, this is good for us. This is this is gonna be better because of X, Y, and Z, that message infiltrates the rest of the organization in a in a in a really positive way as well.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Okay, I want I want to jump to you brought up our our friend Jim Collins uh and good to great. And I I am, you know, this is uh more of a generic overview question, but when you think about good to great, and let's let's assume that we're gonna call modern women a fantastic organization, but in this context, we're gonna say the fraternal side is good. When you think about the next chapter, what does great look like? And how how are you measuring that? When we talked about defining success, how are you gonna be looking at that? And I both mean literally looking at it, and also is this a hey, every six months we're gonna come back and we're gonna look at it. Is it we we're planning for once Jason retires in a couple of years, right? How are we measuring success and how do we know we're making progress against that?

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Great question. Uh, I begin by just stating that we recently reworked our mission statement in the department. So our team sat down and said, All right, we need a clear mission for where we're going with this. And we came up with the statement our our goal is to captivate the next generation of members through meaningful modern experiences. And the vision on top of that, then the long-term vision, is that we want to make fraternalism the defining force in the modern woman experience. We're a financial fraternal organization, so we provide financial security through our uh financial planning that our field reps do. And you can get that anywhere, right? You could go to a non-fraternal organization. There's a lot of great organizations out there that have similar products. For us, it's like it's that membership side, that fraternal side, what we give back to the community that makes us unique. We want that to be the defining thing. And so we've decided that uh we can look at a lot of things, the dollars we put back and all that, but we're really looking at again back to member engagement. We try to keep it simple because we feel like if you engage more members, that means you're attracting more members, that means they're more excited about what you're doing. Otherwise, they wouldn't be engaged, and that will lead hopefully to advocates for us. And last year we started measuring that, even before we've made you know wholesale changes. We did some of these pilots and so forth, and we're able to increase uh engagement significantly. So that's a good first step. And again, we're kind of continuing down this journey, but uh, and we're only scratching the surface. But for us, that's what we hope to get to is setting some goals and and taking it from good to great.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

Yeah. Uh I love hearing the mission and the vision being reworked. And I know this is uh this wasn't in our original prep call, but what made the team do that? Like, was that just part of hey, Jason's coming on and we're taking a look at it and we know we can be better? So let's do a let's do a session as a team. Like, why did that come up that we felt we needed to revisit the mission and the vision? Because I love hearing that as a true north and a roadmap for not only the organization, but specifically your department too.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

I I think doing a periodically looking at your vision and mission is so important because, like you said, it gives you that roadmap. And our department uh old statement is one that I inherited when I came back here. And not that that was bad, but it's time for a refresh, especially looking at what we're trying to do in the future. So when you have a clear mission statement like that, it kind of helps you drive your activities. And you can always ask yourself Am I the activities am I doing, or these projects that am I doing, or they do they tie in with what my mission is, right? And if they're not, then yeah, you're probably doing the wrong things. And uh so it just it just gives you that clear sense of direction. And what I found too is getting everybody on the team and my team, we've been kind of repeating this constantly so they know what our mission is. That just gets everybody on the same page. And so there's no surprises when they ask, Why are you making this change? Well, remember, this is our mission. We want to capture big old members, so it just helps.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Yeah, it it it gives you the the I like to call it the true north, but it gives you that that shining star that says, This is what we are doing. Does it fit within that mission? And if it doesn't, we need to come back and say, is it worth it? You know, that's where a lot of shiny objects come in and things start to distract us. And it says, no, that's that's not that's not who we want to be. It's not what we want to be known for. So I love hearing that. And I do have, before we go into our four rapid fire questions, I've decided that I'm allowed a second bad podcast question. Um, this is the father-in-law tax, and I am I am putting myself myself in the shoe of an executive, uh, a CEO board member who loves hearing this, right? Love hearing, hey, change is possible, change management can work and it can work successfully. But maybe I'm not patient. I struggle with the idea of the pace of change taking a longer period of time. And so I just want to hear from you. Yes, I know. I as I that's why I'm bringing this as the father-in-law tax, because I know you as an individual. How have you balanced, hey, this is the right way to do this? And also, I'm a little impatient and I want it to be fixed now. Like that's that's a huge issue that we see. Hey, we need to change, and we want this change overnight, and we want it to be big and we want it to be monstrous. And a lot of times, change is conversation after conversation after conversation, and small micro moments that are gonna make a bigger impact for modern woodman in 2027, 28, 2030, 2050. Right. But I want it, I want it in 2026, and I want the bottom line to be impacted in 2026. So that is a tough question, but I want to see where where you are at in that in that regard, Jason.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

That's a really good question. And I will say, I will admit that is tough for me because I want things done now and yesterday. And yeah, I've had to learn, and my teams, I give them a lot of credit, has helped me slow down and uh take things at a pace that you need to do. I I think what I've learned that you gotta do is celebrate the small wins a long way. Uh, I don't think we do that enough. So let's say uh it may not be sexy or glamorous what you're doing, some part of the puzzle you're you're doing. Well, then when you've done that, hey, great, you've made progress. You've you can celebrate that. And what did you learn from that? And and how does that change the the next steps that you take? And so that's the thing is one that I think we've really tried to learn to do is celebrate the success. And at the end of this last year, for example, we got our team and I have a team of uh 17 people. We got together for a luncheon and we just went around and celebrated all the wins for the year. And actually, when we went through all those, we're like, man, we completed a lot of stuff. Now, it's not like you know, when you look at the big picture, we didn't hardly do anything because the big, you know, the big ultimate change we're trying to make is still in the works. But when you added up all the things we did along the way, it's a lot, and I think that's it's important to just stop, take a breath, celebrate those small victories, and then just keep plugging forward.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Yeah, I'm I'm glad I asked that. And that's that's probably going to be pulled out on on LinkedIn because you talk about, you know, we we talk about the the B Hags, right? The big, hairy, audacious goals that that teams put in place. And a lot of times we we set a goal just to set a goal. And it it's whether it's achievable or not, it can feel daunting. And when you look at it and you connect the dots going backwards, it's like, wow, maybe we didn't reach the end goal, but we're 93% there, which means we're 20% better than we were two years ago. And and a lot of times teams forget, like you said, to stop, uh, for lack of better phrase, smell the roses a little bit and give each other a pat on the back to say, hey, we're we're making a lot of progress. And even if we're not exactly where we want to be, we're in a much better position than we were six months ago, 12 months ago, 18 months ago as as well. All right. Listen, I've got to put you on the spot for rapid fire questions that we're gonna rip off here. Um, very rarely does anybody actually answer these as rapid fire as they were intended. So we'll see how you perform. Uh, the quick the first question is what is one leadership habit that you rely on every day?

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Well, this was a phrase that was given to me many, many years ago. It probably came from John Maxwell, one of those great leaders that people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And so I've I just try to make it a daily habit of talking to everybody in my team, even if it's just passing, passing by in the hallway, just checking on them. And usually it's not even talking about work, it's just hey, hey, how's the family? How's your evening? And uh that just helps having those conversations because later when we have to have some tougher conversations, we have that relationship built. So it's all about building relationships.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Oh, I love that. I have not heard that quote, but it goes with you know, our our philosophy on meeting people where they're at and communicating through relationships. And then one of my favorite books is Radical Candor by Kim Scott that just talks about the only way to be kind is to be able to have clear conversations, and the way to do that is to have a great relationship first. So fantastic answer for number one, and it was in the 30-second time frame. So kudos to you. Question number two What is the most underrated skill that a leader needs in order to be successful today?

SPEAKER_01 34:37

Again, this is something I struggle with from time to time, but I think being good at prioritization, and it seems today we're in more and more meetings, we got more projects going on than ever before. And I think back to my career when I first started, it's completely different. And it's really easy to get distracted, get off track, and that's why it's super important to set clear priorities uh on the things you should be working on, eliminate the distractions as best you can. If everything's important, nothing's important, as the old saying goes.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

Yeah, and uh a huge problem in today's world is we're gonna set five priorities in January, and then in March we're gonna add three more, but we're not gonna get rid of those other five. So, uh, also something that as a scatter-brained individual, uh, I struggle with that ability to keep that on track. So love it. Uh, question number three on the opposite end of the spectrum here, what is something that great leaders should stop doing?

SPEAKER_01 35:39

I think we need to stop having so many meetings. Uh, I once heard it say, it said, if a person's in a meeting, they're not working, and there's a lot of truth to that. So the shorter, more concise you can keep meetings, the better. And it's also okay to say no to some meeting invites. I get invited to more meetings than I really should probably attend. And uh, and a lot of my folks go to meetings, they probably don't need to be there, and so it's just being more thoughtful with your time. And again, it goes back to prioritization, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:09

There is not a single person that listens to this show that is gonna disagree with that. And you know, you think of I always think of the memes and just the this could have been an this could have been an email, and I think one of the reasons it wasn't an email is because we are not effective at communicating. And so if I would have sent the email, Jason would have taken one note and Jennifer would have taken another. And next thing you know, we're scattered, and so you have to have this meeting. And so if we can communicate better, if we can communicate more effectively, then maybe we can have less meetings. And I also would appreciate less meetings too. Uh, the final rapid-fire question before we wrap up here and see who we should interview next is what's the best leadership advice that you've ever received, Jason.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

I kind of alluded to this earlier, but I think just making sure your actions within the department or your realm of operation support the overall corporate goals and to evangelize those corporate goals regularly to your team. Because if you can help your team see the big picture of what the corporation's trying to accomplish and connect the dots, then it makes your initiatives easier to um uh process for them, you know, makes change a little easier because then they know why you're doing something and uh you get better buy-in for the change you're trying to lead.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Yeah, the the phrase that you use there at the end, that buy-in, is something that organizations all over struggle with. And a lot of times it comes back to they have no idea why you're doing this, they have no idea what change, like why is this being made? Is it gonna impact the patient? Is it gonna impact the community? Is it gonna impact whatever it might be within the industry that you are in? And so being able to, as you said, you know, you're in the granular levels, let's bring it back up to that 30,000-foot view to understand where the organization is headed, where the company is headed. And a lot of times that gets people to rally behind it, and especially for your organization, where that rallying cry is kind of why you were created and the separator between you and the industry and and certainly some of the competitors in the landscape is is how how and why you exist as an organization as well. So I so I love that. Um, Jason, 40 minutes of fun here. Um, I I this is exactly this is exactly what I I wanted. I know I've got to ask you this final question, and we've gone back and forth on this, and I know you have some great potential guests to recommend, but who is one leader that you believe that we should interview next? Uh, somebody who is is doing meaningful work that others can can learn from. I'm I'm intrigued to see where you end up going on this one.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Well, I referenced this region earlier, but we have a regional director in Southern California ran by uh gentleman named Chad Foster, and uh the things he's done down there are amazing. You know, here's a guy moved from uh rural areas in Texas and had to move out to huge metropolitan area of Los Angeles and and create something from basically nothing. And uh things he's done has just been very, very inspiring and wonderful. So I encourage you to talk to him.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

Absolutely. Well, I'll reach out to Chad, send him this video, and maybe say, uh, do you want to come on and give us the other side of this? Uh we'll see if uh everything, everything Jason put together, uh, if it all lines up for him.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

Uh you might say what I don't know what direction they're going. It's the wrong way.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

I I love it. Um, Jason, I I just want to say, you know, when we talk about change management, I knew uh from our prep call there was a lot of good in here, but I want to say thank you one more time for taking the time to walk through those different examples. Because again, I think a lot of times when we think about change, we think about it in this massive way. And a lot of it is, hey, let's go collect this data. Let's go have this conversation. And if you if you break it up piece by piece, or you know, what's the old adage uh and saying of you gotta eat the elephant, the best way to do it is is one bite at a time. And it sounds like that is how you and the team have have taken advantage of that strategy here for Modern Woodman. Any final thoughts on change that you wanna that you want to put out here or on Modern Woodman before I get you out of here for the day?

SPEAKER_01 40:32

Hey, one one piece of advice I got recently, and I love it. And this is nothing new. A lot lighters, a lot of leaders do this. Uh adopt a word that kind of uh your theme for the year. Last year, our theme was bold. Again, bold ideas, thinking out of the box, challenging ourselves. This year, the theme I've been using is imagine with the idea is imagine how this would what this is gonna do for you, for the members, for the for the areas, the regions, and it really helps with messaging and also keeping you on track uh as you're going through changes, having that motivational word for the year.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

You always are full of surprises, Jason. I I didn't see that one coming. It's something that Velocity inherently believes in. All of our coaches bring that to our coaches. Uh, we actually just went through our word of the year exercise, and I uh I my word for the for the year and theme for the year is consistent consistency, you know, trying to get off of that roller coaster and and the scatter brain. Um, I love imagine. Um, and just imagine if we did this a little bit better, imagine if this looked a little bit differently. So uh what a great way to to end this episode. For those that are are listening to this, make sure that you go and connect with Jason on LinkedIn, let him know that the Activating Greatness podcast is where you you heard of him and send him a connection request. And as you're listening to this, you're probably thinking, this is the best episode yet. And I have to leave a five-star review. You want to leave comments, you want to engage with it. Um, this is episode 16 or 17 that I think is is out live now that we're going two weeks, uh, two per week, uh, 16 or 17 out of 70 already on the calendar, which is pretty incredible, but I still have to prove that it works. So make sure you sign up for the downloads, you sign up on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. And if you are listening and think, wow, I should be on the podcast, or my my boss, my manager, my leader should be on the podcast. Please reach out because we would love to have them on the show. Jason, one last time. Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking your time and sharing your expertise with us today.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

You're welcome. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

Absolutely. Thank you as always for everybody being a part of community, the community of leaders who refuse to settle for good enough. And we'll see you next episode.