Rethink the Obvious: Barb Allen on Challenging the Construction Status Quo

Barb Allen went from tradeswoman to executive over 30+ years in construction — boots on the ground to heels in the corner office — and then walked away from the built environment because she got to the top of her ladder, looked around, and didn't like the view. Her new book One Ladder to Leadership is the result. In this conversation with Alec McChesney, Barb breaks down the four kinds of rungs that make the climb different for women — missing, broken, sticky, and slippery — and why the answer isn't a separate ladder but one better ladder everyone climbs. She gets specific and a little uncomfortable about the networking and team-building traditions that quietly exclude people, why women are still just 14% of the industry, why "if it's not broke, don't fix it" is the line that will make you stale, and how her tagline "rethink the obvious" changes who you consider for a job before you ever post it. Every chapter closes with actions for leaders and actions for climbers — including the girl dads.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:05

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 meet today's incredible guest. Today's guest is Jim Brown, the author of my new favorite book, The Imperfect CEO Making the Climb to Organizational Health. It's the follow-up to the imperfect board, which I have not read yet, but I can tell you I will be picking up uh right after this episode because of how enamored I am with the imperfect CEO. Um, the story follows the imperfect board member's protagonist, uh David Slater, back up 20 years further into the leadership journey. Jim has spent nearly 30 years as a trusted advisor to boards and executive teams across North America with firsthand experience in both the boardroom and the C-suite. He's the founder of the consulting firm Org Health, which is the useful thing to know about this book. He spent two decades between the two novels in the room with the people he is writing about. And selfishly, this might be the most excited I have been for an episode of Activating Greatness because Jim and I met maybe a month and a half ago. And I think we were supposed to meet for 30 minutes and we're going long and just riffing on the topics within the book and the topics that Jim is really passionate about. And I cannot wait to just grill him with questions. And there's gonna be a lot of bad podcast questions in this episode. But Jim, before we even go any further, before I start ranting about why I love the book, I'm gonna pause for a second and I'm gonna give you a chance to maybe introduce yourself a touch further. And I just want to say thank you again for taking time out of your day to be a guest on the Activating Greatness podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Well, thank you, Alec. It's so good to be in this conversation. And it's fun for me to be on the show, Activating Greatness. The title itself tells me that your listeners are the people who are conscious enough of the reality that they get to choose. They can either kind of drift along and hope for the best, or they can choose to be hungry and dig in and look for hmm, how do I activate greatness in my world? And those are exactly the people that I want to work with. I out of this, what is it, six and a half billion people in the world. Um, there's a good critical mass of people that actually want to be the best person they could be. And that's that is the slice of the population I want to spend all my time with. So, so, so love the idea that you got a whole cloud of people that are going to be listening and leaning into the conversation. Because, as you say, in fact, it's 31 years that I've been doing this. Um, and I've had the privilege of working with those kinds of people and see they don't just try hard, they actually lean in, work together, and make change happen. So the beautiful outcome isn't their greatness. I mean, it is, but it's so much more than that. It's the greatness of the people that they're working with that they're leading. I would argue that they're serving, uh, who get to be the best version of themselves. And the whole world changes when that happens.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

I'm just gonna ditch the outline already. There, there's so much good, even in that that statement, Jim. And I love the concept of the the leading and the serving argument there. And where I actually want to start is who you wrote this book for. Because I'm not a I'm not a CEO. Um, you know, would love to be in a role like that one day. However, I work with CEOs on a day-to-day basis. I understand the work that they are going through, and certainly velocity helps solve a lot of the problems that you discuss in in the narrative in the first couple of chapters. But as I'm reading it, I am like, this is just I want to be a good human being. I I am taking this with my team, and I am saying, hey, you should read this book. This isn't this isn't just about the the CEO role. This is anybody who wants to be a leader, anybody who wants to be a good human being. And one of my favorite themes of this podcast is that people deserve great leaders, people deserve human beings that want the best for each other and work well together. And that ultimately is what can create a really positive culture. So, why this book, why this audience, why the name The Imperfect CEO? Like just get it, kind of give me the top down, right? In terms of who you wrote this for and then the impact that you were hoping that it achieved.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Well, let me let me even start a little bit further back and talk about why did I think I should write this book. I yeah. As I work with leaders, I experience the struggles and challenges that they have, and the I I have the privilege of of having the rapport with people who they tell me what they're really thinking. They might not say it out loud to a lot of circles, but they feel like they can tell me what they're really thinking, and the questions that they're asking and the frustrations they're admitting uh that they're exasperated by, the pattern just kept getting more and more emphasized. And um then I also had to recognize a whole lot of what they're frustrated with, I'm frustrated with.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

And so my my recognition was whatever we thought was working 20 years ago as leaders, we have to give our head a shake and just admit that the whole world has changed. Now, not everyone in the world has caught up with that yet, Alec. And and so that's part of who I was writing the book for. So I think there's some, you know, a ranking. Uh first of all, I'm writing the book for people who actually realize it's not working as well as I wish it could, and I want help. It's the people that are daring to believe that if they lean in, they could activate greatness. But I'm also writing it for the exasperated leaders who are looking around and thinking, uh I I used to do this and it used to work, and now it isn't, and that doesn't make any sense. What the heck is going on here? So I I believe that my observation with many leaders over these certainly the last 10 years has revealed that to me. But it's not just for leaders. I mean, I believe that leaders are in the position to make the biggest change, right? However, I'm actually celebrating that part of the change of our reality is that we have a generation, Gen Z, in the workforce now who just won't put up with the nonsense that Gen X and I'm a baby boomer, way old. Um, and we were conditioned to just suck it up. Get a good job, work there for the whole your whole life, and it will be good for you. Well, it was a lie, actually. Um I mean, it might financially it might work for you, right? But but meaning-wise, fulfillment-wise, this isn't likely going to be good for you unless you are the best lottery player in the world, because you likely landed in a typical workplace where leadership just commanded what wanted they wanted to have done, and you if didn't matter if you had a better idea, they're not listening. Uh so suck it up and just show up, do your best, and get paid and come back the next day. Gen Z isn't putting up with that nonsense, they are creating a new reality and it's good, it's it's past due. Uh, they're saying, no, I'm not gonna work somewhere where people treat me like an interchangeable, disposable widget. Uh, if people don't care about me and help me be better and help me do something that matters in the world, I'm looking somewhere else. And God help us create more somewhere else's that work for people because they are ready to bring their capacity and make a difference in the world. It's now up to leaders to offer it in a way that recognizes they might not be what you were most looking for, but it turns out they are exactly what you need. So let's make the best of this.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

It is so refreshing to hear that perspective of the Gen Z generation, and also the other four generations at work that are kind of waking up and looking around and feeling that same way because the negative perception is they don't know how to work and they're entitled and they have X, Y, and Z and all of these issues. And yet the data that we see on a consistent basis showcases that it's not that people are leaving because they don't get paid enough, it's that they're leaving because they don't feel seen, they don't feel like they are being invested in for personal and professional development, and that they have bad managers. And that's the real reason that people are are leaving jobs. And I loved uh in the book, you know, I think there's a one of the later chapters when, you know, a high performer gets a job offer with a little bit more money included, and the CEO's, hey, congratulations! You know, I'm not gonna be able to match that. We'll we'll see you around. And she's like, no, I'm staying. I I believe in this work, and the the gap in the money is not why I would want to leave a job. It's the the mission and the vision and the fact that I feel like what I believe in is coming to coming to fruition. And I think for a long time that was seen as a nice to have. Um, I also think it was seen as something that not every company could afford to do. And I think what your book showcases and also the work that your organization, that Velocity Advisor Group, that's so many in a similar way, and you know, all of the unbelievable thought leaders in the world that talk about this is going to, is it's not a nice to have. It's a must-have. And if you don't have that, if you don't have that element of culture and everything that you discuss, you're gonna get left behind. Your top performers are gonna leave, and there's gonna be a huge gap between you and the competitors that have it over the next five years.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

For sure. And by the way, it wasn't a little increase, it was a big increase.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Big increase.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

And and here's a little insider information. That is an actual account of something that happened in my company where a great performer was serving a great company, and they made this obscene offer that I could never come close to matching. So I was, you know, I was prepared to say, dang, I'm losing this great person. But she said, Why would I leave? Oh, I love that. Like, there's nothing in me that that thinks that the money will make up for everything that I've come to experience as fulfilling in my role.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Yeah. I um it that was one of my I think that was my second favorite storyline uh within the book. I'm gonna say the the first, which doesn't count, is the end when David's riding the horse and his grandson's happy. I absolutely adored that part. That was we'll get into that later, but I did also love when uh I think it's Dennis comes in from the board and they start to really understand what they are talking about. And you have this definition of the healthy company, right? That has the collaborative culture and leadership accountability, strategic mentum, and then the talent aspect. And they ladder into each other, but it's not a pyramid, right? Where one has more weight than the other. And I love just the way that you described it while keeping revenue at the forefront. And this is where I love to go, devil's advocate, and I love to go bad podcast question this early on. Everything that you talked about, I don't think there's a single person that I've met over the last year that would say they disagree with it. However, there's a lot of them that would say, I'm not gonna budget for it. I can't put that into the budget because we've got to hit targets and we're having a bad quarter. And so it's not time to invest in the the people, or it's not time to invest in an executive retreat to get the team together. And so, you know, for lack of a better phrase, how do you make this argument when someone says, hey, I hear you, that's all nice and dandy, but ultimately the only thing that matters here is revenue. What's your thought process on that, Jim?

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Well let me explain that the imperfect CEO is written to people actively working in leading businesses at the front line. But there is a next layer that needs to be part of this conversation. The board of directors that has the ultimate control of the purse, and and many times the CEOs who feel so um affected, I don't mean controlled, but uh watched by the board that they're gonna be really careful with that part of it. What they're what they are noticing is that there are risks in our business that must be managed, and we need a good plan to manage it. So so we're going to a whole new level that we haven't even put in this book. Let me let me dare to tell you that those four elements of the ascent model are they map to critical risks that we would argue are hidden in most businesses. Scalability is all connected to the collaborative culture, execution risk is connected to leadership accountability, growth risk is connected to strategic momentum, and then people risk is connected to talent magnetism. And what boards are wanting to hear is what are you doing to understand what the real risks are that we are grappling with that we might not even be able to see clearly, but we know are there. Um, and what what is the payoff going to be for managing those risks? Because the question isn't what about revenue, the question is what about net? And there's no way of measuring how much revenue we lost last year because people gave 60% of their effort all across the company rather than 100%. There's no way to measure that, but math is pretty clear if they only gave 60% of their effort, there's a good chance you only got 60% of the revenue. Do that. What would you do if you had 40% more revenue than you had last year? Is it worth investing a hundred K, a couple of hundred K in a 20 million, 50 million, 100 million dollar company? Uh every board is gonna say, Yeah, let now you better make it pay, you better make it work, but of course, we can justify that cost. And this is this is one of the difficulties that that I am working through, and I encourage you and other companies that are trying to help companies be more effective. Organizational health, which I completely believe is essential for prosperous companies, hasn't yet been adopted as a imperative by people at the board and most senior level. When you say organizational health, most of those people think it's an HR initiative, yeah, and and that's worth about 20,000 a year and let HR figure it out. But if you say, no, actually, we have a scalability risk that if we don't deal with it, we're never gonna get to where you, board, said we needed to go. We agreed that we should double our market penetration and revenue in the next four years. And the question that I would have for the leaders is what would happen if you doubled? Yeah, if you had twice as many customers with twice as many demands, could your current workforce and system meet it? Or would they actually would it reveal that the same few people are doing the hard work? And uh you can't find enough people to make up the difference because there's a revolving door, people come and they stay for 10 months, and then they find somebody that's gonna pay six dollars an hour more, and they leave. How do you address it? Uh, you build a collaborative culture.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

I have not heard so eloquently the 60 effort, 60 revenue. And I think that's such an important piece of the puzzle when we talk about engaging our employees, and the old way to try to go from 60 effort to 100% effort is not the way that works anymore. And I think hitting them harder, though. Correct. Yes, you know, tracking how many clicks are on the mouse and when we're going to the bathroom and the 15-minute breaks. And I I think it's so essential that this isn't rocket science, but it is intentional effort and programs and mechanisms that you have to put into place. And you talked about it in the second half of the book where we leave the narrative and you actually go into hey, here are some programs that Southwest has done or WD40 has done. You're you're showcasing on a large scale and on a small scale, there are different ways to comp individuals, there are different ways to reward them, there are different programs that we can put in place. Um, I think it was um, um I don't remember if it was the HubSpot example or the Ship It Days, where hey, you get 24 hours to get rid of your task and you just create and do things out of the box. And we don't always have to think about rewarding and engagement in terms of uh a dollar incentive. There's other ways, there's flexibility, there's autonomy, there, there's other opportunities to bring to the table. And again, not things that are gonna cost you three, five, 10 million dollars. They're not gonna cost you a ton of time, even. It is just that intentionality. And saying we want to listen to what our employees want and help them feel seen, heard, and appreciated.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

And please understand, those aren't just wild ideas.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Those are actual ideas that my clients and contacts have employed and proven are working.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Gary Ridge, who was the CEO for over 25 years at WD40, he was so far ahead of his time, our time, making this work all of those years. And the conversations that I've had with Gary of just really, he just dared to believe that if we invest in people, it will pay off. And then it started to be proven that let them get more bold in investing more. For example, back in 2008, 2009, when we had the the Great Recession, right? They did not lay off anybody in that company. They never laid off one person in the 25 years that he was the CEO.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

That's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Well, how did they do that? Oh, they had a conversation, literally, as an entire company, and they said it wouldn't be good if a few people have to suffer terribly with this economic downturn. So we're gonna figure out ways where all of us are gonna have to tighten our belts a bit more. We're all gonna suffer a little bit so that nobody has to suffer so dramatically. And people just signed up and said that's fair and that's good, and let's keep this together. That was an investment, sure. And by the way, he was at the front of the line of reducing his salary to make it work. That more than paid off later. Like he understands the world we live in well enough to know that it was just a cycle, and we were at a weird trough, and we would get out of it. And when they did, everybody is they're not just given 75%. In fact, the engagement scores at WD 40 are in the high 90s, they're they're incredible. And by the way, 60% wasn't a pick it out of the blue number, right? Right. The the Gallup polls, not polls, studies that they do all around the world on workforce engagement, is that on average it's 60%.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Uh well, the math again, it's just obvious. And by the way, it's even worse because there's a there's a uptick the more that you make people believe that you trust them and value them, yeah, and you resource what their ideas are to try things, it's not just a straight line of improved productivity, it's a hockey stick.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Yeah. I I I had to call it out because it it was one of my favorites, but that Gary Ridge, the formula for success, culture time strategy equals outcome. I I just absolutely adored that as a I was like, that needs to go in the home office that I can look at on a consistent basis. I do want to ask you though, Jim. You just talked about the growth. And when we do it right, we could go to this hockey stick approach. And what I what I felt when I was reading, as David and Dennis and team are calculating it all out to say, yes, this is what we need, and we should meet on it, you know, every six months and then yearly, and all of this stuff. That there was obviously a sense of patience that, hey, obviously, revenue is still important, but we understand that there are things that are going to take time. On the flip side of that, we've never been in a more minute-by-minute culture, right? You know, the 24-hour news cycle, the results today. You know, we at Velocity work a lot within the life sciences, where I joke that the average salesperson doesn't even stay long enough to close a deal when the deal cycle is 12 months, and you give them nine months to sign contracts because they came in and they had three months to learn, and then six months later they're got deals in the pipeline, but they're not closing. Well, let's move on to the next one because of the impatient nature of the world. And you know, I think my pretty firm take on this is we just collectively aren't patient enough, and we have to understand the long game and we have to understand the process. If we do the right thing consistently, the right things will come. Yes. And yet, I also own a sales quota, and I understand that if I don't hit those goals, that someone will be looking down upon me to say, what's the situation? And so I'm just curious, in your conversations and in your perspective, how do you balance this is the right approach, but we also know that we live in a short-term world that puts more emphasis on next quarter than we do on three years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Oh man, there's just so much in that. What I was thinking of is a company that I worked with where every year for like eight years in a row, they had increased, you know, they went from year one, they had four percent increase. Okay, good.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Year two, five percent. So and it had increased not only at a flat level, but an increasing level for eight years. And then leadership got so convinced that that's the way the world works, and we just we're gonna set the goal of 12% increase for next year. And you know, two-thirds of the people didn't do it, so they didn't get their bonuses, they lost all hope of it working for them, and they they realized, huh, it doesn't matter how well we do, it's always gonna be more required later, and that was demoralizing. Yeah, the opportunity is what what if we just believed in our people pay them well, reward them well related to the work that they're doing in a way that encourages them to work together, um, and not say, and we've got to take a bigger cut of it every year. What anyway, uh an example I shared in the book was a company that I worked with. I explained that this uh one country's uh operations had been singled out by the global headquarters that if you don't turn this around, if you don't move from being the highest cost producer to a much more reasonable cost base, uh, we're gonna shut the plant. And I I said 500 jobs, it was closer to 700 jobs, actually. Wow, almost every company out there, Alec, allows divisions to compete with each other. The leader of the division has a budget and an output quota, right? Performance expectations, and rather than them recognizing that the better I work with the others around this leadership table, so we all can do the part we need to do to make this company perform well. No, I don't I don't have time for all of what they have to do. I'm just gonna do my part, and so they compete with each other for budget for the best people. Um, they lie to each other about things, and this is what we went after in this operation. We got the team recognizing that the better they could work together as a leadership team, the better it would be for the whole company, and it was only a matter of I don't know, it might have taken three months, which sounds like a terrible long time, but when you think about it, we're talking about 700 people working together within three months. The the leaders of departments, divisions started meeting every week and saying, what's the biggest bottleneck we have in the company here in our country, and what has to happen to change it? And they they problem solved together. They started saying, Yeah, but I don't I don't have the budget to do that. Oh, I'll give you some budget from my department because if we don't fix this, we're closed within the next 10 months, right? So the urgency made it real. It it was like, stop this. Uh I'm I might not get as big a budget for my division next year if I sh give up some this year. Yeah, that's that is not your problem. Make it happen this year, and then they even started saying, Yeah, but there's no way we can get things boxed up and shipped before the deadline for these customers. We don't have enough people. Uh well, how many people do you need? I I need like 12 people. Oh, I can give you four from my division. I I think I can find six. Yeah, they figured it out, and people just moved. That's incredible. Within 12 months, Alec, they became the lowest cost producer. I'm telling you that because I want us all who are listening to recognize every company has that opportunity, it's that big. If we went from we're just doing things the way we do it, to we are a high-performing, collaborative culture where the leaders are always accountable, the strategy is clear, and we are not just delivering on it, we are repeatedly delivering on it to the point that everybody that works here actually likes their job. And they tell people they like their job and they become ambassadors so that we don't have to spend. I literally work with companies that spend over a million dollars every year trying to attract employees. They don't spend these companies, they don't spend anything, they have a line of people wanting to work there. That's a million dollars of savings right there. Yeah, and there's nowhere to count that in your records, right? Right? Because that's not the way we keep track of things. Well, it's the way we need to start learning to keep track of things. Yeah, it's not just what does it cost to do this development? The question is, what does it cost to not do this development?

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Exactly right. And I think that one of the things that we talk about all the time in our leadership development programs is the gray. There, there's so much nuance to all of this. There's not just gonna be a black and white answer to to these problems. That that story of, hey, I've got four people and I've got six people, we'll share departments. Like that is not it, it's so nuanced. And it takes uh leadership agility in order to be able to pull it off. And I I'm gonna pull that snippet of your answer out because you ended up kind of talking to each of the areas that I was really falling in love with throughout the book. But the the one that I say on almost every episode is the the saying, well, we've always done it that way, is where every good idea has ever gone to die. And if I ever hear it, if I ever say it, I'm I I want somebody to just give me a phone call and tell me to retire. If I get to that point where I say those words and I mean them, I'm gonna be so sad. And that's what it felt like, right? Like throughout the whole process of reading the book and and and applying it to conversations that I've had, I kept coming back to there's better ways to do the things that we are doing. There's better ways. And not only do I deserve that, but the company deserves that as well. And I think the the last piece of that puzzle was the leadership accountability and that if if there is an exception to the standard, it breaks the standard. And it whether that's the CEO, the CCO, the head of HR, whoever it is, if that if that standard is broken and we make an exception for it, then you don't have standards. And I just absolutely loved, loved that philosophy. Um, Jim, I've got to be honest with you. I just looked at the clock. I see that we've got the world. We've already been recording for 37 minutes. And I am like, I could, I could listen to this. Um, I'm geeking out a little bit. Um, and everybody knows that we were interviewing today. So I had a bunch of people sending a text like, oh my gosh, you're talking with Jim. And I'm like, I can't, I can't wait to be talking with Jim. And I I'm gonna have to coerce you to bring a new back on for more episodes of Activating Greatness because I think it's what it's what you embody. But every guest that comes on the show, I have to ask the same four rapid fire leadership questions, and I've got to ask you a positive gossip question. I make up the rules to this rapid fire question. I give out points for every answer. Uh, the points system is completely made up. All I ask for is your your first thoughts, 30 seconds each for the answer.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Are you prepared?

SPEAKER_01 37:07

Uh no.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

That's what I want to hear, Jim. You already get five bonus points right out of the gate for that. The first question that I have is what is one leadership habit that you rely on every day?

SPEAKER_01 37:25

Um I believe that I am the hardest person to lead in the world. And so my habit is I have to start every day asking, what do I need to focus on myself today so that the people that I'm serving will be better served, as opposed to what do I have to get them to do? It has to start with me. If I'm not leading me better than I'm leading anybody, I'm it's hopeless.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

That is the first time in 50 episodes that that has been the answer for that question, which means you get 20 bonus points right out of the game. That's that's that's a big deal. That's a big deal, Jim. Question number two: what is the most underrated skill that a leader needs in order to be successful?

SPEAKER_01 38:24

Closing their mouth.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

Do you want to add anything else? I love it, I love this answer. Do you want to add any other context to it?

SPEAKER_01 38:41

We leaders are so guilty of thinking that people are needing our answer and loving our answer. And the best thing that we could do if we want to create a culture that isn't dependent on us, but is served by us, is to stop being the answer person and uh actually ask them. So it's oh, what do you think is the most important thing we should do this year? Alec, what a beautiful question. I'm so glad you're thinking about that, and that likely means you've been thinking about an answer. Please tell me what do you think would be the answer to that question? Oh, I don't know. Yeah, but what might it be? And somebody's in the room when the question gets asked and answered, and then I turn and say, What about you? What do you think is the most important thing we could do? And the beautiful thing, leaders who are listening, the beautiful thing is it will almost always reveal something that you would have said. So it's not that your leadership knowledge didn't get into the conversation, it's that it came from somewhere other than you, and you should celebrate that because it means that the culture isn't dependent on you, the culture is bigger than you, and you get to either be the cap of it or be the uh like the the one that's fanning the flame on it.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

Yeah, I even though we went well over the 30-second mark there, Jim, I'm so glad we did because the story, that example, comes back to a philosophy that you know, we actually talked about these last couple days when I was on site with the client of the leader's job. You were a star. That's why you became a leader. And now you don't need to be the star anymore. You need to be a star maker. And you need to give that opportunity, and that's such a good example of really doubling down and giving the time and the space. And obviously, we talk about psychological safety to have the opportunity to give ideas, but for me, it's it's an environment to answer that question. And if you have the engaged employees, then they are already thinking about it. And when you give them the chance to think about it and ask and raise the opportunity, they're excited, they feel empowered and and all of the things. So I absolutely love that that example, Jim.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

By the way, let me say that if you respond when they answer, if you respond, say, oh, oh, that's not so good. That's the last time they'll answer.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Uh absolutely, absolutely. Hear them out, don't shut them down. We can't have the PTSD of them sharing in a group meeting and and never wanting to come back and do that. Right. Um, all right. Question number three is on the flip side, which is what is something that great leaders should stop doing?

SPEAKER_01 41:56

I mean, it it's we could say it's related. They should stop answering all of the questions. Um they should stop doing what made them a star. Because you're right, they they're now star makers. And this is this is the most universal problem that I see with leaders in companies that we work with. They are so enamored with what made them successful, they can't stop themselves from doing that. So the the CEO, who was a financial officer before he was the CEO, they spend way too much time looking at the finances rather than celebrating the new chief financial officer and the brilliance that that woman is bringing to this important role. And asking, what could we do to help you have more of what you need to make this be the best finance department? Whatever. Like we it's the executive leadership team. How much of our day is leadership and how much of it is doing? The leaders have to stop doing and start actually leading every day.

SPEAKER_00 43:19

Yeah, that's a heck of an answer. I you can't you can't be the one who solves every problem in the room, right? You got to give the space for that to for that to be able to exist within the rest of the team.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Our last question Because you would become the you would become the the limit.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Yeah, you're the bottleneck. Yeah, absolutely. And it feels good like, hey, I can figure it out, I can do it. I, you know, it'll take me less time. I don't want to train you. There's a thousand examples, a thousand excuses, and it just limits that you go back to the scalability problem, right? And if if the buck stops with you, the scalability does too. So um, I absolutely love that. Our last one here what is the best leadership advice? That you never received again.

SPEAKER_01 44:14

I think it's that I have to be mindful that I'm actually leading two organizations. I'm leading the organization that exists today, but I must also be leading the organization of what we will be five years from now. And if I don't keep that, we're not there yet, but we will be and we must be in my mind. Unintentionally, I just let us keep being the organization we are. I have to leave two organizations.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

I love that. I love it. I the good news is that you've won the House Cup for this episode. Uh, multiple bonus points provided throughout. I loved, I love the examples that you gave, uh, especially when we talked about the the leaders needing to be more comfortable being quiet in the room. And I'm not shocked that that's your answer, uh, Jim, when when I went through and and read the book, and and so much of it was David learning how to give space for other answers and him really adjusting to what worked for him for 20 plus years now is not gonna work in the same way. And I think learning to unlearn those things that made me a star or made David a star is is such an important piece of that puzzle, too. Before we get you out of here, we have a final section called Positive Gossip. And this is an ode to our friend over at Pfizer Center one, Tony Burkhardt, where we ask you, who should we interview next? Who is a leader that is doing great work and the activating greatness audience can learn from? I I love this. Uh, one, it gives you a chance to shine a light on somebody who is doing great work. But two, it's one of my favorite things to take the snippet and say, look at what Jim just said about you behind your back. Uh, want to share it with you. And if you're open to being on the podcast, we'd love to have you on. And so, Jim, um, I see your mind racing. I'm sure there are hundreds and thousands of leaders that you could bring to the table.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Not thousands, but but there are many for sure.

SPEAKER_00 46:27

Who are who are you thinking about? Who is a leader that the activating greatness audience would learn from?

SPEAKER_01 46:34

Um, the person that came to my mind is Jonathan Goodman. Jonathan led the consulting practice called Monitor, which became a Deloitte monitor.

SPEAKER_02 46:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

And um he's he's retired from that now. And he is still passionate about helping leaders understand strategy and risk and um and people. Yeah. I love it. I just get charged up with my conversation with Jonathan, so I'm gonna put a big check mark beside Jonathan Goodman.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

That's a it's a perfect plug. And anybody that that fires you up, I can only imagine that they are gonna fire me up because uh, like I said, the first time that we connected when we go back and forth on LinkedIn, and as I'm reading and feeling your impact through the book, it has um it has supercharged me in a way that I was not expecting. I I love um I like to consider myself well read. And I'll, you know, I'm reading over here and I'm reading, and I'm always firing off the text like, wow, this part of Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 was so good. Or, you know, I love atomic habits, but I found myself being like, hey, everybody, you need to read this. You need to, you need to take time. Um, it's such an easy read. Everybody that's listening to it, I'm gonna hold it up one more time, but we're gonna link it in the show notes. The Imperfect CEO making the climb to organizational health. It's uh it's going on a must-read list for Alec McChesney. And that doesn't mean a ton, Jim. However, uh, it's the first book that I have said it's going on a must-read list in a public setting like this. And so uh that's uh that's a big deal. Um I I might lie, I think that might have been a lie. I think I gave a huge shout out to Dan Heath on a couple of these episodes because I absolutely love upstream and make it uh make it stick. So maybe I maybe I'm I'm not 100% honest there, but it is uh it is absolutely a must read. And I can't thank you enough, Jim, for having a conversation, you know, with the activating greatness audience. I think a lot of people are gonna learn a lot of things from this, and I I hope that people will pick up the book as well.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

Alex, it's been fun. Your passion is contagious and infectious, and uh yeah, I would be eager to have another conversation.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

That's a deal. I'm gonna I'm gonna hold you to it. I think the audience is gonna hold you to it. And remember, the only reason that we're able to do this, we started out with a goal of 20 episodes. This is damn near episode 50. We're on pace for 80 episodes in the calendar year here in 2026. The only reason we're able to do that is the incredible guests like Jim, but also the audience that continues to give us positive feedback and say, hey, we're listening to this piece and we applied it today. So as you listen, reach out to Jim, connect with him on LinkedIn, tell them you bought the book because of the episode, tell them what you liked about the episode and about the book. Uh, if you did like the episode, leave it a five-star review. Um, you know, Jim and I had a lot of fun, but I'm still proving that this podcast thing works. And so the more times that you leave reviews, you download, you share, uh, it's just a sign that this continues to land with the audience that we have here for Activating Greatness. So, Jim, one more time, thank you so much. And to everybody listening, we'll see you on the next episode of Activating Greatness.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

Thank you.