speaker-0: Spends you know 10% of the time working with this team to to to deliver ⁓ the strategy, the the expectations, etc., gives 80% of the time to his team to deliver on that, and then the final 10% on tweaking and changing and making you know any final adjustments. But you know, he's giving up control. I'm passionate about helping leaders get curious about the organizations and helping them create the infrastructure. And the alignment that allow them to grow and scale sustainably. Too often these infrastructure and alignment pieces are missed and it creates a foundation of sand that every time you try to grow or go to the next level, you sink back down. What I've discovered is that majority of the time, it's because leaders do not have a process they can trust. Each week, I'm gonna give you tips and tricks about how you can create a sustainable growth organization based on the concepts of trust the process. Because I've learned that to trust the process, it has to be a combination of both your leadership mindset, your operational excellence, and your culture to have sustainable growth. I look forward to seeing you each week. Hello, welcome back to another episode of Trust the Process Podcast. I am your host, John Bassford. I'm excited about our guest today, Ken Taylor. He is a visionary leader in customer success and operational strategy. Ken crafts high-impact strategies that propel startups and technical businesses toward lasting growth and industry leading customer satisfaction customer satisfaction. Known for building dynamic teams and innovative processes, Ken specializes in aligning business operations with strategic goals to maximize profitability and enhance customer experience. Ken, thank you for being here today.
speaker-1: Thank you very much. Glad to be with you, John.
speaker-0: So I I gotta ask, how did you get into ⁓ all those great things of of aligning operations of strategy?
speaker-1: Well, I have been involved in startups and technology for my entire life. My father was involved in startups when I was a kid, so so even from those days, being in and around that world and watching some of the things that he did and the people that he worked with and ⁓ you know, it's often said that ⁓ successful entrepreneurs ⁓ generally fail before they succeed. And ⁓ I I've certainly had my share of failures for sure, but also being able to watch ⁓ some of the failures and successes and struggles that he was involved in by looking learning a lot of the ways not to do things or things that don't work or potential pitfalls that you need to be aware of and watch out for and risks that can be mitigated and you know ways to mitigate them has given me a a very wide array of I guess you might say historical knowledge to draw from when applying to well w these days, I mean the the situation and the environment that we're in changes just about every day. I mean nobody knows exactly what the next hit coming down is going to be. But by being able to look back at some of these past experiences and observations, I can, you know, pull from here or there or the other place ⁓ you know, some idea to try and and see what happens and then to ⁓ revise and improve as we go along.
speaker-0: Sure. So ⁓ let's dive into some of these those problems and ⁓ hurdles that you often see. ⁓ are there you know top two or three issues that you tend to see startups, ⁓ founders and COs making running into
speaker-1: Absolutely. ⁓ one thing and and particularly in in technology startups, generally the leader of the ⁓ of the company, the founder, is a technologist. Now that's becoming less so today with the the vibe coding where where people that aren't really software engineers can code stuff, at least a first version, and get it out there. But traditionally, it was normally somebody that had the idea and had the ability to implement it. So they have ⁓ a prototype if not a fully fleshed out product. And As a founder, naturally you have to be an optimist. You have to believe in what you are doing. You you you think that it is going to be extremely popular, or you wouldn't bother. And in the past, ⁓ certainly when I was younger in many of my father's companies, there was not the emphasis on sales and marketing as it turned out to be necessary because they say, Well, we've what we've done is so great. Of course people are going to want to buy it. And unfortunately that just is not so. And I I think nowadays that's generally recognized and understood. But through through my career that has been something very much that has concerned me, and and I am not personally the salesman, but any company or team that I'm working with ⁓ that's very much of a a concern of how is that going to be done? What is the plan? Who is doing it? Do the people that are in charge of that have the necessary skills, experience, and background. in recent times there have been more. Recognition that there needs to be a team. So you might have, say, the CEO who he does have the sales and marketing capabilities, and then there would be the CTO, and he is the one that has done the technology work. And I think that works very well. ⁓ Having a team approach, perhaps there was a time when one individual could fully create a successful company on their own. Perhaps. But I don't think that it is that way today. There are too many different disciplines that require two. Many different separate expertise, no one person is going to be the master of everything. That's just not humanly possible.
speaker-0: Yeah, ⁓ so look, ⁓ I I'm someone who has a SAS product ⁓ that I am hoping to to to get developed this year. I am not a a technological person. I I'm an operations on ⁓ operations and entrepreneur individual. So like how do I know? Like how do how do I know if if I have A viable product. You know, I have a friend of mine who's in the marketing space. He's Well, you you gotta do market research. I was like, I'm pretty sure Jeff Bezos didn't do a market research of whether people wanted to buy books online. He just had an idea and executed it. So w where where do you where do you balance that in in knowing that you do have an idea that's worth creating?
speaker-1: Well sometimes you do just have to find out by putting the product out there so that people can use it. Now there is a corollary to that. There are many times that the founder will take that approach. I'm gonna put it out there, ⁓ and people will will be the path to my door. Well, if nobody ever knows that you even exist, then it may be a great product and people might have liked it if they'd ever heard of you. So there needs to be consideration as to okay, what sort of a customer would be interested in buying the product. ⁓ in the case of Jeff Bezos ⁓ he he probably did not have too too too much of that because in those days at least most everybody read books. But no doubt he had some thoughts as to well the people that do read books and that that buy books are looking in these particular places and he would advertise in, you know, perhaps certain magazines in those days or it probably didn't start with television ads, those are expensive. But he had some thought as to the kind of customers that he was looking for and how to make them aware that Amazon existed. And and that applies to anybody and and any product is to what are the kind of customers that you think want you and how can you make them aware that you exist.
speaker-0: Yeah, w when working with founders and and COs, especially again in in SaaS and technology companies, you know, one thing I have noticed, ⁓ again I I come more of a an operational ⁓ and leadership culture angle into this more than sales and marketing, but one thing I have noticed that I spend more and more of my time coaching in in advising the CEO much for from a an executive leadership standpoint of of learning to let go of control, learning to let go of of a lot of things, ⁓ getting out of the weeds, ⁓ trusting your team, trusting the process. Is this a problem that you often see when working with CEOs from your angle?
speaker-1: Very much so. In fact this can be ⁓ a worse problem with CEOs that are more successful and more competent and qualified. And I believe that I've been involved in some situations where the company was successful and and is successful and nobody would look at it and say that it was shabby, but it could have been far more successful if the CEO was willing to leverage some of the skills of the people on the team. And if you have people on the team that are very that are highly skilled, that's you'd think that'd be a good thing. I I personally believe that you should ⁓ that that's another common mistake is well I'm gonna just hire whoever I can afford. That may be a very crippling mistake. You need to hire the very best people because the best people are worth ten times of what somebody who's only meant is. But if they are the best people, they are going to expect to have Well of course they can't have complete freedom to do whatever they want. I mean there's a CEO for a reason, but there has to be some level of hands off of letting them do what they want to do to an extent within the confines of the vision of the founder and you know the CEO and the and the guidance and of course communicating, but also learning. Okay, it may be that they do something and it doesn't work out. Well then there needs to be discussions and changes. But they have to have the ability to have input and to do things and make their case and make their argument. And if that is not the case, then the best People are eventually going to get tired with that and leave. The people that are lower level, that are not as skilled, they're probably going to be more willing simply to do as they are told. And they may do it diligently and well. And people like that have great value. You need people like that in any growing organization. But if that is all that you have, then you are going to be limited by the capacity of the CEO, which, you know, could be a couple dozen, it could be a few million people, a few million dollars rather, ⁓ even a few tens of millions of dollars. And that is a good solid business. But it seems a shame to leave on the table what you could have potentially more than that, could potentially greater success, while allowing, as you say, people that are skilled to have some more liberty and freedom and the responsibility that goes with it.
speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. You know, ⁓ one way I define that or look at that is, you know, a a CO founder c can hire an A team, but if everything is still going through the CEO, you know, delays, CO's perspective, all of these things, you're still creating a C team, right? You have all the right players, but if you're unless you're tapping into their per their perspectives, their unique insights, their expertise, you're you're not you built in a team but still not gonna get a results because it all is all gonna stop with you unless Face it, you know, no CO is great at everything. ⁓ another thing I I came across recently was ⁓ I had never heard this before, but Steve Jobs ⁓ ten eighty ten rule, which it basically is revolves around the fact of you know he spends you know ten percent of the time working with this team to to to deliver ⁓ the strategy, the the expectations, etcetera, gives eighty percent of the time to his team to deliver on that. then the final ten percent on tweaking and changing and and and making, you know, any final adjustments. But you know, he's giving up control eighty percent of the time to his team to execute and do the things he's asked them to do.
speaker-1: Well yes, I think that that's very necessary. Although in the particular case of Steve Jobes, he was also well known for rejecting things. So there'd be the ten, the eighty, and then they come back for the ten and and he said, Well, we're gonna throw out, you know, eighty percent of the eighty that you did, but then we'll learn and we'll move forward and refine and and and go forward. And there were times that that got him into fairly significant trouble, ⁓ as we know. ⁓ where he wanted, you know, thrown out of Apple of course and next ⁓ he insisted on some extremely expensive aesthetic design issues that ⁓ well, next wasn't super successful, but it did make it known, and I think perhaps some of the lessons that he learnt there in the long run were very valuable when he did come back to Apple.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, Steve Jobs is always a very, very interesting ⁓ model when talking about leadership. I mean he obviously was a great innovative mind, but also known to be crass, right? And in in in in short and you know, I I've heard a story where He ran into an intern in the bathroom and and and asked him like how the first day was going or how things were going and he didn't like his answer and fired him, right? Like ⁓ so there's definitely some extremes of Steve Jobs. But you know, he also he also definitely did run the company with an eye towards innovation, growth and change. He was not interested in the status quo. ⁓ he was not interested in just doing what always been done before and and truly bever being revolutionary. And I guess maybe to some degree you gotta be willing to to put your foot down and say no. ⁓ but you know there definitely has to be a a balance there, I guess you should say, of of ⁓ respecting your team and their input input and insights as well as protecting your your your vision.
speaker-1: Well that's very much true. And and you talk about the necessity to say no, which which is absolutely essential, but I think it's also necessary to be willing to say no to yourself and to recognize when something the way that you have been doing it is not working. I'm thinking of another company that I've been, you know, consulting with that seems to have ⁓ you know gotten into that trap of where you know the founder you had tunnel vision on something and and I think that what they had was very good. Well, it wasn't working, but They were concentrating on the technical end of things when the real problem I think was was marketing strategy. And that wasn't their strong suit, which is fine. Often that's the case for the founder, but that did not receive the emphasis that it needed. And as a result, ⁓ it it you know, they reached a point where it's it's unclear what can be what can be salvaged, ⁓ because the you you do eventually run out of credibility where people say, Well, you've been doing this for how long and it isn't going. Well, now we have this new idea, now we have this new team. Okay, well, why didn't you come up with that you know, six months ago? year ago or or or two years ago, you you don't want to wait until the eleventh hour before trying different approaches. At least to have different approaches that you are trying, if you have the resources to do that, and then to learn from them. There there are many examples in businesses of where the initial idea wasn't bad, but it didn't hit it either, and they had to try some other things and they did find the fit and were successful.
speaker-0: Yeah, I I I I think you you know, that's something that, you know, from a mindset standpoint, you know learning to accept failure not as a as a negative but always as a learning curve. You know, there there's been tons of times I've launched, you know, things with my business and someone's like, did you test it first? You do that. It's like, no, like I'm I'm putting it out there. I'm gonna see how they respond. And if you know it doesn't work, then I'm gonna tweak it, change it, move it forward. The the amount of time I would have spent doing, you know, whatever they were suggesting was the same amount of time as me failing the first two or three times. Right. So why not just put it out there and go?
speaker-1: Yes, the the idea of tweaking and learning and moving forward, ⁓ in software development history there you have the original waterfall methodology where you design the entire thing and then you build it and you hope it works and not you start over. Well now we it's more common that you do with Agile. Well let's get something out there. We know it's not perfect, but that's okay. At least we have something out there we learn from we tweak and we improve. And I think that that's very applicable to business and i specifically in the the realm of remote work, which I I wrote my book Working in Slippers about, which is kind of interesting timing wise. where at the moment we're having this massive backlash where so many companies are saying, well, finally everybody not everybody's sick anywhere anymore, so we're going to drag everybody back into the office. And and then you say, well, why are you doing that? Well, because we didn't really like how remote worked. We had these issues. Well do you do that with other things? You say, well, we tried this, didn't work, scrap it, completely start over. No, no, you go back and you analyze and you see, well here's what worked, here's what didn't work. And for those things that didn't work, are there other companies that we can learn from are there other things that we you know people that did it a different way and maybe in this area, yeah, we did do it wrong. We need to do it differently, learning from other examples. You don't just throw the entire thing out. And I think that's what we're seeing in remote work. And and really that's why I wrote my book, because of the lessons that I learned in building owner as the company where I was and coming up with a model that did work with remote successfully that allowed us to leverage the benefits of that model in a way that was effective, that did not give up and to not create all these other issues that other companies are saying that's why we can't do remote work. Now, there are certain roles that that probably aren't going to work remotely. We all understand that. Nobody says that every single job is going to be working from home. That's silly. But there are, I believe, a significant number of jobs that can be done from home, and for everyone that can be, there's an opportunity for massive savings for the company. And so to to leave that on the table without even trying would ⁓ be like any other any other decision of a new technology. Think about companies that were well well, you know, the computers, ⁓ well we don't really want to deal with computers or well we bought computers and nobody used them so they didn't work. Well well maybe you didn't know what you were doing. Maybe the world didn't know what they were doing in nineteen eighty. That doesn't mean that we haven't figured it out by nineteen eighty five and and with the internet. Well the internet changes everything. Well no by all these dot com they all went bust. Well nowadays nobody would say well we give up on the internet. No you'll you'll learn what to do and what not to do and you get better at it. And you you leverage it and nobody guesses right the first time, that's fine. That's that's human nature and business nature too. But giving up and forcing things to be the way that they used to be is never the right answer in the long run.
speaker-0: Yeah, one thing I talk about in my book, The Curious Leader, and I also talk a lot about ⁓ when I when I have keynotes, i is is adopting agile operations. You know, you mentioned the software term, right? Of you know, and for you know, I use the example of, you know, you know, I was, you know in high school in the late nineties and you know, we all remember those those days where you go to a website, you see the construction sign, you know, d under construction come back later. Well, 'cause we didn't have agile development. You had to take something down, fix it, and then put it back up. We don't see that anymore. We most people even forgot about that because they make changes, tweaks in in in in shifts real time without ever coming offline and that's exactly how we have to look about all aspects of our of our business and operations. From your marketing to your accounting to to everything, your sales, ⁓ i i is being able to make, you know, creating that environment where where people are pointing out problems and bringing solutions real time and we're making tweaks and changes to it without disrupting the operations, you know, that's truly the only way to continue to innovate, grow and scale.
speaker-1: Absolutely. And and it should be constant it should a constant state of continuous improvement. It can't just be, well, this is you know, this is our year's plan for the changes that we're gonna make and we'll come back in a year. It should be an ongoing process. And of a small scale, and with experiments and pilot programs, and sometimes you might find a pilot program that fails disastrously. Okay, so we're obviously not going to roll that out. We we learned that lesson. Right. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't worth trying, because as long as you learn the lessons. And I think that's where some of what you're talking about is that people are reluctant to learn a lesson maybe because they have some vested interest. They they don't want that to be successful for whatever reason and so they don't really flesh it out fully so as to learn the lessons where it could have been made to work. They they'd really rather it not. They're just sort of doing it to check a box. Hey tried this didn't work you know let the record show. And that's again not good business.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. You know, the the the days of ⁓ you know, I'm also reminded of the old ⁓ Romco Food Dehydrator infomercials that I grew up watching. It seemed like every every weekend ⁓ for you know several years. ⁓ th they're famous for the line set it and forget it. Well y you can't run your business that way. Like you've gotta be constantly tweaking, constantly changing a and making sure you're making improvements. ⁓ you know, again those you know, look at Places like Blockbuster, right? They they kept doing the same thing over and over again for decades and and they were great for for as while it lasted and then failed to make that shift to to to streaming and digital and and you know, I I think there actually is still one ⁓ Blockbuster store that's left in the northwest somewhere, I think Oregon or something. But other than that, you know, that that that company went under because it was three years too late shifting to streaming and digital.
speaker-1: Well, that's true. Although, you know, I want to give a Well, not exactly a counter argument, because we all know Blockbuster has destroyed their business, but they could say, well, gee, the entire business is completely different, had to all shift to streaming. And yet, and yet, there is something that Blockbuster had back then and still has today that the streaming giants don't, and that is Blockbuster had the ability to have every title because they could buy any videotape or DVD that they wanted to. ⁓ Streaming can't do that. Right now, think about the fragmentation. Now, there was a time when Netflix had just about everything, and that was great. I don't have Netflix, I did for years. I don't anymore, for exactly that reason. I'm not going to pay subscription fees to seven different companies. So I can so I'm just gonna you know dump them all. I'm not gonna do any of that. But back when Netflix had the DVDs for everything, you knew you guaranteed there's no way if the DVD existed, Netflix had it. Blockbuster had the ability to do that, and they still do. In principle, there's no reason today why Blockbuster couldn't go back to that and say, hey, you know, fifteen years ago Netflix had this thing with mailing DVDs around. There's no reason we can't do that, and we can buy DVDs of literally everything so we can rebuild that one stop shop that used to exist and right now doesn't. There is a market gap. They're not interested in it. Nobody else believes in it. The assumption is well it's been tried and failed. No, this piece has been tried and failed, and that piece has been tried and And isn't exactly what people want, there's a room in there if somebody wanted to give it a try.
speaker-0: Mm. Yeah. That that makes sense. Yeah. ⁓ getting back to how you help people and work with them, is there a process that you go through when when you when you take on a new client to you know figure out where they are and and and find out, you know, what's the best way to help them?
speaker-1: Well the first part is of course fact finding as you say, find out where they are. What exactly is it that they're doing? What isn't working? Are they not having customers? Do they have too many customers and they're not providing the necessary support? Do they not have d do they have not not have the product market fit? They're they're they're not getting ⁓ you know, they're not getting people awareness? Is it what exactly is the issue? Or do they have maybe they do have customers but they're not making any money at them? ⁓ is that because they're not doing an effective job of upselling or or perhaps they're Their prices are set badly. Well, what's the competition look like? What what are the differentiating factors? And also, what is the founder's vision? Does the founder have a particular and specific vision? This is sometimes where conflict can ensue when the founder has a specific vision that is at odds with reality. Can there be any negotiations? Well, we can keep this part of your vision, but you're gonna have to give up that part because it just isn't working. And that requires a fair degree of of time and communication and discussion, not just with the founder, but with with anybody else that's involved, any other key players, even any low low end players. I mean sometimes there's a disconnect between the founder and the people that are on the edge of the wedge talking to the clients. Which you think that the founders should spend a lot of their time talking to their customers, and many founders do, but it's kind of start like how many of them don't.
speaker-0: Yeah, ⁓ a couple of things that that struck me while you're talking there is, you know, you mentioned like going through that discovery phase and and and asking the questions and and fact finding. You know, I think a lot of times us consultants are are kind of seen as ⁓ the people who provide solutions for our clients. And I actually think it's it's it's more on that questioning phase. I I I think the the value that we bring to the table is asking the right questions to get to the root problems, to get to the issues that you're facing. you know, having that objective third party view, not bogged down to your habits, not bogged into how you see your company, not bogged in all these things, and really truly coming into it from an agnostic standpoint of of asking these questions that that that get to the root problems and issues that you're facing and from there you create the solutions because if you're not finding those root problems and the true causes of of why your business isn't growing, you know Your GPS map can't work unless it knows what side of the street you're on. Right. It doesn't know whether to send you right or left if it has you doesn't have you on the one side of the street or the other because it's gonna just send you a random place, right? You gotta know exactly where you are, at least roughly know where you are, in order to to take that path to move forward.
speaker-1: Well absolutely and and it's so very easy to get tunnel vision, ⁓ and this is also another common mistake that I that I see with founders, or common problem at least. There is the common view, and this dates back a long, long, long time to ⁓ you know, some of the some of the famous you know positive thinking and and ⁓ sales ⁓ you know speakers and things of well make a list of what are the the most three important things that you need to do today and do those things. Well There is there is certainly value to that. If it's important, you probably need to attend to it. I'm certainly not saying that that's entirely foolishness, but if you are just doing the most three important things today, then really all you're doing is fighting fires, isn't it? And if all you're doing is fighting fires, then you're not, well, for example, investigating the root cause of why you have the fires in the first place. And I've dealt with so many leaders, managers, executives that that's all they do. And I well, if if you can't step back from fighting the fires, Fire, you will never get to a better place. You need to look at it from a more holistic, higher level standpoint of why am I fighting these fires? Why am I in this situation? ⁓ why how did I get here? Is there something that's more fundamental that I can do that will put me in a better position that I have a little bit more breathing space?
speaker-0: Yeah, part of the work that we do, I I call it the the clarity to dis to execution framework. And it's it's it's all about helping them create clarity. You know, w when when COs and founders are constantly putting out fires, constantly reacting, it's because they don't have a process they trust. ⁓ either because there isn't one period ⁓ or the one that exists is isn't working well and that's causing constant issues, constant distrust in your staff, the the the process, et cetera. So we go through a process where we we help them look at their decision making alignment ⁓ from the leadership standpoint. We we look at their oper operational strength. We look at operational efficiency. We look at the culture. Because unless you're the lead singer of a one person band, you've always got to bring your team along with you and and if you wanna innovate, grow and change, you you can't do it alone. And so these are the important things that you need to be looking at. And obviously from the sales and marketing side comes into our operational strength, ⁓ where we're trying to find the gaps and holes and and and you know Are are there a few particular questions ⁓ that every founder and CO needs to be asking of their of their sales and marketing to find out if there is a missing piece?
speaker-1: Well yes, and and i well, this is one that I learned from ⁓ a CEO that I ⁓ that I worked with for for a long while, and they were very aggressive personally about speaking with their clients on a regular basis. And ⁓ and the question they would always ask whenever they met a client is what is the thing that you hate the most about my company and my product? Now, most of us don't like to be told where we stink, but if you don't know that you have a problem, then you're not gonna do anything about it. And most of the time the the line Workers, you in customer support or whatever, they probably know what they're getting yelled at, or at least what all the questions are that they're constantly getting. That oftentimes doesn't make it all the way up through into product or engineering or to the CEO. And for the CEO, they they need to hear that, they need to ask that. If they're not asking that, they need to be told that. Then you get the problem of the bearer of bad news. And and this can be you know, but again, it's something with a mentality to say no to themselves, say no to your own. Well, I know everything because I'm the CEO. No, no, you do not. You cannot. Nobody does. Nobody does. ⁓ Whenever I would bring on an entirely new hire, a new person, I always view that as an opportunity. And I say this openly to them. You are bringing new eyes. ⁓ those of us who have been here a while, our eyes are blind because we're used to it. There may be things that we're doing that are stupid. Maybe they made sense back when we started. We're just doing them by habit, but things have changed, and now they're stupid. You're coming in with new eyes. You need to challenge us. You need to say, Well, why are we doing this? It seems stupid. Now maybe there is a reason that you don't. know 'cause you're new. But we who have been there a while oughta know that. We ought to be able to explain that and oughta make sense. And if it doesn't, if there isn't a reason, well maybe you've provided a great service.
speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, so some really good points in there. You know, I I I tell a story ⁓ in my keynote ⁓ on the Curious Advantage. You know, we we've all experienced that that CEO, manager, whatever, who who has a some ⁓ aha moment. They they discovered something that's wrong not working well, and they go to the staff, they announce you know what they've discovered, then they go to the junior person who who handles that particular piece on a day to day basis, and and the person's like, Yeah, I know. I I've known for six months. Like w you know, what what's the you know, this isn't something new. It always happens. The CO gets mad at the employee for not speaking up. Well, I flip that around and say, Why didn't you create the environment that allowed for that? You know, too much of our of our management and engagement with our staff revolves around what are you doing and how are you doing it? But you flip that around and like what are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are the problems we need to solve instead of this this top-down way of looking at it? That's when really, you know, creating a curious culture that that creates an environment where people speak up, speak out, bring ideas and solve problems. problems, you know, more quickly again, tackling that that agile operations, that's really where it shines.
speaker-1: Well, very much so. And and this again is something where having a wide breadth of knowledge that the you know what I tried to bring to the table is very useful because what you have just described is a very apt description of Kaizen, which you may have heard of. Now that's predominantly found in manufacturing environment, but that that was put together by Edwards Deming back in the forties. And you know, Toyota uses that to this day, very much so, but they they understand that the line worker, the lowest level person, have insight that the CEO and even the engineers often don't have. And I've a little bit of time in manufacturing environments and and that's very much true. And well that's a Kaisen is a manufacturing thing. Well yeah obviously if you're in a in an office an office or service based thing, you're not gonna do it exactly the way that Toyota does it on an assembly line. But the philosophy is still every bit is valid. The person that is dealing with the customer that is deal every day on the the sharp end of the sword has knowledge that needs to be captured and you have to create an environment so that that knowledge can be captured, otherwise you're gonna be misguided. I in in You could apply this in in a ship. The captain needs to know what the most junior watch officer can see, otherwise he's got problems.
speaker-0: Right. Yeah, and you're comparing, you know, organizations that have Doc Kaisen, which is that constant way of looking at things and and from different perspectives, but you look at you know, the US model of manufacturing where, you know, you had the s one person doing the same job forty times a day, and he's doing that job regardless of what's happening around him, without that that up and down communication, you know, today's organizations, you know, outside of manufacturing, that's not how they operate. Most businesses are small businesses. ⁓ you know, accounting has a view into how sales and marketing works. vice versa. I mean, I I often look think about ⁓ Fisker, the car company that went under. You know, when all the news was coming out during their bankruptcy, you know, one of the things that that show was showcased was they were shipping cars to people before accepting payment. You know, we're not talking about a ream of paper or a pack of pens. We're talking about forty, fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollar automobiles that are being shipped across the country without being paid first. I mean that's just a breakdown in operations and structure and process, likely because there wasn't that up you know, that that back and forth communication and perspective into what was working and not working. ⁓ so that th I I love that you brought up the the the Kazan analogy there because it's something I I I talk about and use quite often.
speaker-1: Yeah, that that is a ⁓ I mean a shipping product before being paid. That I mean there are situations where you do that. There are some companies where that's the whole business model works. But that's gonna have ⁓ you know, down the line consequences that need to have at least been thought through. And when you and I think when you have ⁓ when you have that lack of communications, certainly that's gonna be a problem. But then you can also have tunnel vision. ⁓ for instance, ⁓ you you talked about accounting and and finance with with Fisker. That's one where maybe they might have done well to listen to accounting and finance a bit more. But then you have counter arguments of for instance General Motors and that was famously when it became run by accountants, lost the engineering moha mo mo mojo and and they they could have lost the plot. Well everything has to be run by the numbers, we're gonna nickel and dying. Everything to death, and if you nickel and dime everything to death, then you're going to be misled. And so we have key KPIs, which KPIs are essential. You need to have key performance indicators. You can't run a business without them. But are they the right ones and are you truly tunneling down into the details? And I think both with accounting and with KPIs, we have plenty of examples of where it was not done properly, where it was not tunneled down into, and mistakes were made and decisions were made that looked good on paper and seemed good paper. For a while and ultimately failed out. For example, Boeing. For years and years and years, they were making a ton of money by cost cutting. until they stopped. Well, but it was working fine. It's worked fine for twenty years. Well no, that's because you got rid of these inspectors, you got rid of the continuing education, you got rid of those engineers and eventually you ran out of track and you no longer have the ability to design things new that work. And then you lose the ability even to build the stuff that you've been building for thirty years because you cut back all these guys that knew how to do it because they were expensive. And you can get away with it for a while. Until you can't anymore and it's really hard to rebuild. But on paper it looked great. Because their costs were cut, their profits were up, all the executives made these huge bonuses, the stock price was great, but somebody was not being responsible for looking into the actual internals.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I I agree. You know, the more and more I work with with ⁓ small businesses, startups, founders and and even non profits, you know, what what's clear to me is is that if you you wanna be sustainable, you wanna innovate, grow and change, you have got to be taking a look at that combination of leadership, operations and culture. There the I I I to this day I can't talk about one without referen referencing the other two because there really is such an overlap. And I think that's kinda what you're talking about. You can't get pigeonholed into saying, ⁓ we just need More money on advertising, or we just need new people, or we just need this. ⁓ if if your people are are notoriously not getting the job done, I would say the first place you look at is your leadership. ⁓ you know, that that's because if if it's happening across the board, there's something deeper happening than just the individual people you're hiring. And and it's important to to do that diagnostics, to do that deep dive. into the operations, into the culture, into the leadership, you know, to find those gaps and holes. So ⁓ our time is wrapping up here, but I want to I want to give you a chance here ⁓ to to give, you know, if there's one piece of advice that that you can give to to founders and COs, ⁓ whether a startup, small business, nonprofit, whatever it may be, what is that one piece of advice and also tell everyone ⁓ where we can find you? We'll obviously put your information in the show notes, but ⁓ it always helps to to kind of hear your voice ⁓ say the best place to find you.
speaker-1: Certainly. ⁓ I you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm Ken R. Taylor. You can my book is w ⁓ Working in Slippers and you can find it at WorkingInslippers dot com ⁓ it's available on Amazon and you can contact me through that website as well. The what I think that the the founders and CEOs need to need to remember and be aware of is you need to be constantly looking, constantly watching, as we've already talked about, but also looking at why, looking at the underlying reasons and challenging your assumptions because if you it's so easy to look at the top line numbers, the top line reports, but Why is this the case? Is there something hidden that I am not seeing? And for that you need to go and talk to and welcome the input from people that are lower down, oftentimes much lower down. And that is a is a very difficult thing and a very hard thing at times for ⁓ because you add layers of insulation and then eventually people just realize, hey, look, nobody wants to hear what I have to say, nobody cares, nobody listens, and they keep it to themselves. And it's gonna take a while, but ultimately that will lead to failure.
speaker-0: Ken, you're absolutely correct. I mean that is exactly why I wrote the book. The Curious Leader, where it talks about how we shift, how we think, how we work, and how we connect. And it absolutely talks about all those things and how we have to constantly be looking beyond our the status quo. And what I always say is curiosity helps us look beyond our current situations and limitations by constantly challenging things, constantly looking things different, and bringing our team along along with it to have those unique perspectives. So ⁓ there's so much more we could talk about. But Ken, I want to thank you for being part of this show. ⁓ for all the listeners, ⁓ please make sure you are subscribing to the podcast as well as the YouTube channel. ⁓ this you know John Bassford is the channel on ⁓ on YouTube. You put my name in ⁓ you'll find it. ⁓ but Ken, thank you for being here and being such a great guest.
speaker-1: Hey, I appreciate having you on and look forward to speaking with you again in the future. Have a great day.
speaker-0: Good luck, Ken. Have a good one.
speaker-1: Thank you very much. Glad to be with you, John.
speaker-0: So I I gotta ask, how did you get into ⁓ all those great things of of aligning operations of strategy?
speaker-1: Well, I have been involved in startups and technology for my entire life. My father was involved in startups when I was a kid, so so even from those days, being in and around that world and watching some of the things that he did and the people that he worked with and ⁓ you know, it's often said that ⁓ successful entrepreneurs ⁓ generally fail before they succeed. And ⁓ I I've certainly had my share of failures for sure, but also being able to watch ⁓ some of the failures and successes and struggles that he was involved in by looking learning a lot of the ways not to do things or things that don't work or potential pitfalls that you need to be aware of and watch out for and risks that can be mitigated and you know ways to mitigate them has given me a a very wide array of I guess you might say historical knowledge to draw from when applying to well w these days, I mean the the situation and the environment that we're in changes just about every day. I mean nobody knows exactly what the next hit coming down is going to be. But by being able to look back at some of these past experiences and observations, I can, you know, pull from here or there or the other place ⁓ you know, some idea to try and and see what happens and then to ⁓ revise and improve as we go along.
speaker-0: Sure. So ⁓ let's dive into some of these those problems and ⁓ hurdles that you often see. ⁓ are there you know top two or three issues that you tend to see startups, ⁓ founders and COs making running into
speaker-1: Absolutely. ⁓ one thing and and particularly in in technology startups, generally the leader of the ⁓ of the company, the founder, is a technologist. Now that's becoming less so today with the the vibe coding where where people that aren't really software engineers can code stuff, at least a first version, and get it out there. But traditionally, it was normally somebody that had the idea and had the ability to implement it. So they have ⁓ a prototype if not a fully fleshed out product. And As a founder, naturally you have to be an optimist. You have to believe in what you are doing. You you you think that it is going to be extremely popular, or you wouldn't bother. And in the past, ⁓ certainly when I was younger in many of my father's companies, there was not the emphasis on sales and marketing as it turned out to be necessary because they say, Well, we've what we've done is so great. Of course people are going to want to buy it. And unfortunately that just is not so. And I I think nowadays that's generally recognized and understood. But through through my career that has been something very much that has concerned me, and and I am not personally the salesman, but any company or team that I'm working with ⁓ that's very much of a a concern of how is that going to be done? What is the plan? Who is doing it? Do the people that are in charge of that have the necessary skills, experience, and background. in recent times there have been more. Recognition that there needs to be a team. So you might have, say, the CEO who he does have the sales and marketing capabilities, and then there would be the CTO, and he is the one that has done the technology work. And I think that works very well. ⁓ Having a team approach, perhaps there was a time when one individual could fully create a successful company on their own. Perhaps. But I don't think that it is that way today. There are too many different disciplines that require two. Many different separate expertise, no one person is going to be the master of everything. That's just not humanly possible.
speaker-0: Yeah, ⁓ so look, ⁓ I I'm someone who has a SAS product ⁓ that I am hoping to to to get developed this year. I am not a a technological person. I I'm an operations on ⁓ operations and entrepreneur individual. So like how do I know? Like how do how do I know if if I have A viable product. You know, I have a friend of mine who's in the marketing space. He's Well, you you gotta do market research. I was like, I'm pretty sure Jeff Bezos didn't do a market research of whether people wanted to buy books online. He just had an idea and executed it. So w where where do you where do you balance that in in knowing that you do have an idea that's worth creating?
speaker-1: Well sometimes you do just have to find out by putting the product out there so that people can use it. Now there is a corollary to that. There are many times that the founder will take that approach. I'm gonna put it out there, ⁓ and people will will be the path to my door. Well, if nobody ever knows that you even exist, then it may be a great product and people might have liked it if they'd ever heard of you. So there needs to be consideration as to okay, what sort of a customer would be interested in buying the product. ⁓ in the case of Jeff Bezos ⁓ he he probably did not have too too too much of that because in those days at least most everybody read books. But no doubt he had some thoughts as to well the people that do read books and that that buy books are looking in these particular places and he would advertise in, you know, perhaps certain magazines in those days or it probably didn't start with television ads, those are expensive. But he had some thought as to the kind of customers that he was looking for and how to make them aware that Amazon existed. And and that applies to anybody and and any product is to what are the kind of customers that you think want you and how can you make them aware that you exist.
speaker-0: Yeah, w when working with founders and and COs, especially again in in SaaS and technology companies, you know, one thing I have noticed, ⁓ again I I come more of a an operational ⁓ and leadership culture angle into this more than sales and marketing, but one thing I have noticed that I spend more and more of my time coaching in in advising the CEO much for from a an executive leadership standpoint of of learning to let go of control, learning to let go of of a lot of things, ⁓ getting out of the weeds, ⁓ trusting your team, trusting the process. Is this a problem that you often see when working with CEOs from your angle?
speaker-1: Very much so. In fact this can be ⁓ a worse problem with CEOs that are more successful and more competent and qualified. And I believe that I've been involved in some situations where the company was successful and and is successful and nobody would look at it and say that it was shabby, but it could have been far more successful if the CEO was willing to leverage some of the skills of the people on the team. And if you have people on the team that are very that are highly skilled, that's you'd think that'd be a good thing. I I personally believe that you should ⁓ that that's another common mistake is well I'm gonna just hire whoever I can afford. That may be a very crippling mistake. You need to hire the very best people because the best people are worth ten times of what somebody who's only meant is. But if they are the best people, they are going to expect to have Well of course they can't have complete freedom to do whatever they want. I mean there's a CEO for a reason, but there has to be some level of hands off of letting them do what they want to do to an extent within the confines of the vision of the founder and you know the CEO and the and the guidance and of course communicating, but also learning. Okay, it may be that they do something and it doesn't work out. Well then there needs to be discussions and changes. But they have to have the ability to have input and to do things and make their case and make their argument. And if that is not the case, then the best People are eventually going to get tired with that and leave. The people that are lower level, that are not as skilled, they're probably going to be more willing simply to do as they are told. And they may do it diligently and well. And people like that have great value. You need people like that in any growing organization. But if that is all that you have, then you are going to be limited by the capacity of the CEO, which, you know, could be a couple dozen, it could be a few million people, a few million dollars rather, ⁓ even a few tens of millions of dollars. And that is a good solid business. But it seems a shame to leave on the table what you could have potentially more than that, could potentially greater success, while allowing, as you say, people that are skilled to have some more liberty and freedom and the responsibility that goes with it.
speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. You know, ⁓ one way I define that or look at that is, you know, a a CO founder c can hire an A team, but if everything is still going through the CEO, you know, delays, CO's perspective, all of these things, you're still creating a C team, right? You have all the right players, but if you're unless you're tapping into their per their perspectives, their unique insights, their expertise, you're you're not you built in a team but still not gonna get a results because it all is all gonna stop with you unless Face it, you know, no CO is great at everything. ⁓ another thing I I came across recently was ⁓ I had never heard this before, but Steve Jobs ⁓ ten eighty ten rule, which it basically is revolves around the fact of you know he spends you know ten percent of the time working with this team to to to deliver ⁓ the strategy, the the expectations, etcetera, gives eighty percent of the time to his team to deliver on that. then the final ten percent on tweaking and changing and and and making, you know, any final adjustments. But you know, he's giving up control eighty percent of the time to his team to execute and do the things he's asked them to do.
speaker-1: Well yes, I think that that's very necessary. Although in the particular case of Steve Jobes, he was also well known for rejecting things. So there'd be the ten, the eighty, and then they come back for the ten and and he said, Well, we're gonna throw out, you know, eighty percent of the eighty that you did, but then we'll learn and we'll move forward and refine and and and go forward. And there were times that that got him into fairly significant trouble, ⁓ as we know. ⁓ where he wanted, you know, thrown out of Apple of course and next ⁓ he insisted on some extremely expensive aesthetic design issues that ⁓ well, next wasn't super successful, but it did make it known, and I think perhaps some of the lessons that he learnt there in the long run were very valuable when he did come back to Apple.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, Steve Jobs is always a very, very interesting ⁓ model when talking about leadership. I mean he obviously was a great innovative mind, but also known to be crass, right? And in in in in short and you know, I I've heard a story where He ran into an intern in the bathroom and and and asked him like how the first day was going or how things were going and he didn't like his answer and fired him, right? Like ⁓ so there's definitely some extremes of Steve Jobs. But you know, he also he also definitely did run the company with an eye towards innovation, growth and change. He was not interested in the status quo. ⁓ he was not interested in just doing what always been done before and and truly bever being revolutionary. And I guess maybe to some degree you gotta be willing to to put your foot down and say no. ⁓ but you know there definitely has to be a a balance there, I guess you should say, of of ⁓ respecting your team and their input input and insights as well as protecting your your your vision.
speaker-1: Well that's very much true. And and you talk about the necessity to say no, which which is absolutely essential, but I think it's also necessary to be willing to say no to yourself and to recognize when something the way that you have been doing it is not working. I'm thinking of another company that I've been, you know, consulting with that seems to have ⁓ you know gotten into that trap of where you know the founder you had tunnel vision on something and and I think that what they had was very good. Well, it wasn't working, but They were concentrating on the technical end of things when the real problem I think was was marketing strategy. And that wasn't their strong suit, which is fine. Often that's the case for the founder, but that did not receive the emphasis that it needed. And as a result, ⁓ it it you know, they reached a point where it's it's unclear what can be what can be salvaged, ⁓ because the you you do eventually run out of credibility where people say, Well, you've been doing this for how long and it isn't going. Well, now we have this new idea, now we have this new team. Okay, well, why didn't you come up with that you know, six months ago? year ago or or or two years ago, you you don't want to wait until the eleventh hour before trying different approaches. At least to have different approaches that you are trying, if you have the resources to do that, and then to learn from them. There there are many examples in businesses of where the initial idea wasn't bad, but it didn't hit it either, and they had to try some other things and they did find the fit and were successful.
speaker-0: Yeah, I I I I think you you know, that's something that, you know, from a mindset standpoint, you know learning to accept failure not as a as a negative but always as a learning curve. You know, there there's been tons of times I've launched, you know, things with my business and someone's like, did you test it first? You do that. It's like, no, like I'm I'm putting it out there. I'm gonna see how they respond. And if you know it doesn't work, then I'm gonna tweak it, change it, move it forward. The the amount of time I would have spent doing, you know, whatever they were suggesting was the same amount of time as me failing the first two or three times. Right. So why not just put it out there and go?
speaker-1: Yes, the the idea of tweaking and learning and moving forward, ⁓ in software development history there you have the original waterfall methodology where you design the entire thing and then you build it and you hope it works and not you start over. Well now we it's more common that you do with Agile. Well let's get something out there. We know it's not perfect, but that's okay. At least we have something out there we learn from we tweak and we improve. And I think that that's very applicable to business and i specifically in the the realm of remote work, which I I wrote my book Working in Slippers about, which is kind of interesting timing wise. where at the moment we're having this massive backlash where so many companies are saying, well, finally everybody not everybody's sick anywhere anymore, so we're going to drag everybody back into the office. And and then you say, well, why are you doing that? Well, because we didn't really like how remote worked. We had these issues. Well do you do that with other things? You say, well, we tried this, didn't work, scrap it, completely start over. No, no, you go back and you analyze and you see, well here's what worked, here's what didn't work. And for those things that didn't work, are there other companies that we can learn from are there other things that we you know people that did it a different way and maybe in this area, yeah, we did do it wrong. We need to do it differently, learning from other examples. You don't just throw the entire thing out. And I think that's what we're seeing in remote work. And and really that's why I wrote my book, because of the lessons that I learned in building owner as the company where I was and coming up with a model that did work with remote successfully that allowed us to leverage the benefits of that model in a way that was effective, that did not give up and to not create all these other issues that other companies are saying that's why we can't do remote work. Now, there are certain roles that that probably aren't going to work remotely. We all understand that. Nobody says that every single job is going to be working from home. That's silly. But there are, I believe, a significant number of jobs that can be done from home, and for everyone that can be, there's an opportunity for massive savings for the company. And so to to leave that on the table without even trying would ⁓ be like any other any other decision of a new technology. Think about companies that were well well, you know, the computers, ⁓ well we don't really want to deal with computers or well we bought computers and nobody used them so they didn't work. Well well maybe you didn't know what you were doing. Maybe the world didn't know what they were doing in nineteen eighty. That doesn't mean that we haven't figured it out by nineteen eighty five and and with the internet. Well the internet changes everything. Well no by all these dot com they all went bust. Well nowadays nobody would say well we give up on the internet. No you'll you'll learn what to do and what not to do and you get better at it. And you you leverage it and nobody guesses right the first time, that's fine. That's that's human nature and business nature too. But giving up and forcing things to be the way that they used to be is never the right answer in the long run.
speaker-0: Yeah, one thing I talk about in my book, The Curious Leader, and I also talk a lot about ⁓ when I when I have keynotes, i is is adopting agile operations. You know, you mentioned the software term, right? Of you know, and for you know, I use the example of, you know, you know, I was, you know in high school in the late nineties and you know, we all remember those those days where you go to a website, you see the construction sign, you know, d under construction come back later. Well, 'cause we didn't have agile development. You had to take something down, fix it, and then put it back up. We don't see that anymore. We most people even forgot about that because they make changes, tweaks in in in in shifts real time without ever coming offline and that's exactly how we have to look about all aspects of our of our business and operations. From your marketing to your accounting to to everything, your sales, ⁓ i i is being able to make, you know, creating that environment where where people are pointing out problems and bringing solutions real time and we're making tweaks and changes to it without disrupting the operations, you know, that's truly the only way to continue to innovate, grow and scale.
speaker-1: Absolutely. And and it should be constant it should a constant state of continuous improvement. It can't just be, well, this is you know, this is our year's plan for the changes that we're gonna make and we'll come back in a year. It should be an ongoing process. And of a small scale, and with experiments and pilot programs, and sometimes you might find a pilot program that fails disastrously. Okay, so we're obviously not going to roll that out. We we learned that lesson. Right. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't worth trying, because as long as you learn the lessons. And I think that's where some of what you're talking about is that people are reluctant to learn a lesson maybe because they have some vested interest. They they don't want that to be successful for whatever reason and so they don't really flesh it out fully so as to learn the lessons where it could have been made to work. They they'd really rather it not. They're just sort of doing it to check a box. Hey tried this didn't work you know let the record show. And that's again not good business.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. You know, the the the days of ⁓ you know, I'm also reminded of the old ⁓ Romco Food Dehydrator infomercials that I grew up watching. It seemed like every every weekend ⁓ for you know several years. ⁓ th they're famous for the line set it and forget it. Well y you can't run your business that way. Like you've gotta be constantly tweaking, constantly changing a and making sure you're making improvements. ⁓ you know, again those you know, look at Places like Blockbuster, right? They they kept doing the same thing over and over again for decades and and they were great for for as while it lasted and then failed to make that shift to to to streaming and digital and and you know, I I think there actually is still one ⁓ Blockbuster store that's left in the northwest somewhere, I think Oregon or something. But other than that, you know, that that that company went under because it was three years too late shifting to streaming and digital.
speaker-1: Well, that's true. Although, you know, I want to give a Well, not exactly a counter argument, because we all know Blockbuster has destroyed their business, but they could say, well, gee, the entire business is completely different, had to all shift to streaming. And yet, and yet, there is something that Blockbuster had back then and still has today that the streaming giants don't, and that is Blockbuster had the ability to have every title because they could buy any videotape or DVD that they wanted to. ⁓ Streaming can't do that. Right now, think about the fragmentation. Now, there was a time when Netflix had just about everything, and that was great. I don't have Netflix, I did for years. I don't anymore, for exactly that reason. I'm not going to pay subscription fees to seven different companies. So I can so I'm just gonna you know dump them all. I'm not gonna do any of that. But back when Netflix had the DVDs for everything, you knew you guaranteed there's no way if the DVD existed, Netflix had it. Blockbuster had the ability to do that, and they still do. In principle, there's no reason today why Blockbuster couldn't go back to that and say, hey, you know, fifteen years ago Netflix had this thing with mailing DVDs around. There's no reason we can't do that, and we can buy DVDs of literally everything so we can rebuild that one stop shop that used to exist and right now doesn't. There is a market gap. They're not interested in it. Nobody else believes in it. The assumption is well it's been tried and failed. No, this piece has been tried and failed, and that piece has been tried and And isn't exactly what people want, there's a room in there if somebody wanted to give it a try.
speaker-0: Mm. Yeah. That that makes sense. Yeah. ⁓ getting back to how you help people and work with them, is there a process that you go through when when you when you take on a new client to you know figure out where they are and and and find out, you know, what's the best way to help them?
speaker-1: Well the first part is of course fact finding as you say, find out where they are. What exactly is it that they're doing? What isn't working? Are they not having customers? Do they have too many customers and they're not providing the necessary support? Do they not have d do they have not not have the product market fit? They're they're they're not getting ⁓ you know, they're not getting people awareness? Is it what exactly is the issue? Or do they have maybe they do have customers but they're not making any money at them? ⁓ is that because they're not doing an effective job of upselling or or perhaps they're Their prices are set badly. Well, what's the competition look like? What what are the differentiating factors? And also, what is the founder's vision? Does the founder have a particular and specific vision? This is sometimes where conflict can ensue when the founder has a specific vision that is at odds with reality. Can there be any negotiations? Well, we can keep this part of your vision, but you're gonna have to give up that part because it just isn't working. And that requires a fair degree of of time and communication and discussion, not just with the founder, but with with anybody else that's involved, any other key players, even any low low end players. I mean sometimes there's a disconnect between the founder and the people that are on the edge of the wedge talking to the clients. Which you think that the founders should spend a lot of their time talking to their customers, and many founders do, but it's kind of start like how many of them don't.
speaker-0: Yeah, ⁓ a couple of things that that struck me while you're talking there is, you know, you mentioned like going through that discovery phase and and and asking the questions and and fact finding. You know, I think a lot of times us consultants are are kind of seen as ⁓ the people who provide solutions for our clients. And I actually think it's it's it's more on that questioning phase. I I I think the the value that we bring to the table is asking the right questions to get to the root problems, to get to the issues that you're facing. you know, having that objective third party view, not bogged down to your habits, not bogged into how you see your company, not bogged in all these things, and really truly coming into it from an agnostic standpoint of of asking these questions that that that get to the root problems and issues that you're facing and from there you create the solutions because if you're not finding those root problems and the true causes of of why your business isn't growing, you know Your GPS map can't work unless it knows what side of the street you're on. Right. It doesn't know whether to send you right or left if it has you doesn't have you on the one side of the street or the other because it's gonna just send you a random place, right? You gotta know exactly where you are, at least roughly know where you are, in order to to take that path to move forward.
speaker-1: Well absolutely and and it's so very easy to get tunnel vision, ⁓ and this is also another common mistake that I that I see with founders, or common problem at least. There is the common view, and this dates back a long, long, long time to ⁓ you know, some of the some of the famous you know positive thinking and and ⁓ sales ⁓ you know speakers and things of well make a list of what are the the most three important things that you need to do today and do those things. Well There is there is certainly value to that. If it's important, you probably need to attend to it. I'm certainly not saying that that's entirely foolishness, but if you are just doing the most three important things today, then really all you're doing is fighting fires, isn't it? And if all you're doing is fighting fires, then you're not, well, for example, investigating the root cause of why you have the fires in the first place. And I've dealt with so many leaders, managers, executives that that's all they do. And I well, if if you can't step back from fighting the fires, Fire, you will never get to a better place. You need to look at it from a more holistic, higher level standpoint of why am I fighting these fires? Why am I in this situation? ⁓ why how did I get here? Is there something that's more fundamental that I can do that will put me in a better position that I have a little bit more breathing space?
speaker-0: Yeah, part of the work that we do, I I call it the the clarity to dis to execution framework. And it's it's it's all about helping them create clarity. You know, w when when COs and founders are constantly putting out fires, constantly reacting, it's because they don't have a process they trust. ⁓ either because there isn't one period ⁓ or the one that exists is isn't working well and that's causing constant issues, constant distrust in your staff, the the the process, et cetera. So we go through a process where we we help them look at their decision making alignment ⁓ from the leadership standpoint. We we look at their oper operational strength. We look at operational efficiency. We look at the culture. Because unless you're the lead singer of a one person band, you've always got to bring your team along with you and and if you wanna innovate, grow and change, you you can't do it alone. And so these are the important things that you need to be looking at. And obviously from the sales and marketing side comes into our operational strength, ⁓ where we're trying to find the gaps and holes and and and you know Are are there a few particular questions ⁓ that every founder and CO needs to be asking of their of their sales and marketing to find out if there is a missing piece?
speaker-1: Well yes, and and i well, this is one that I learned from ⁓ a CEO that I ⁓ that I worked with for for a long while, and they were very aggressive personally about speaking with their clients on a regular basis. And ⁓ and the question they would always ask whenever they met a client is what is the thing that you hate the most about my company and my product? Now, most of us don't like to be told where we stink, but if you don't know that you have a problem, then you're not gonna do anything about it. And most of the time the the line Workers, you in customer support or whatever, they probably know what they're getting yelled at, or at least what all the questions are that they're constantly getting. That oftentimes doesn't make it all the way up through into product or engineering or to the CEO. And for the CEO, they they need to hear that, they need to ask that. If they're not asking that, they need to be told that. Then you get the problem of the bearer of bad news. And and this can be you know, but again, it's something with a mentality to say no to themselves, say no to your own. Well, I know everything because I'm the CEO. No, no, you do not. You cannot. Nobody does. Nobody does. ⁓ Whenever I would bring on an entirely new hire, a new person, I always view that as an opportunity. And I say this openly to them. You are bringing new eyes. ⁓ those of us who have been here a while, our eyes are blind because we're used to it. There may be things that we're doing that are stupid. Maybe they made sense back when we started. We're just doing them by habit, but things have changed, and now they're stupid. You're coming in with new eyes. You need to challenge us. You need to say, Well, why are we doing this? It seems stupid. Now maybe there is a reason that you don't. know 'cause you're new. But we who have been there a while oughta know that. We ought to be able to explain that and oughta make sense. And if it doesn't, if there isn't a reason, well maybe you've provided a great service.
speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, so some really good points in there. You know, I I I tell a story ⁓ in my keynote ⁓ on the Curious Advantage. You know, we we've all experienced that that CEO, manager, whatever, who who has a some ⁓ aha moment. They they discovered something that's wrong not working well, and they go to the staff, they announce you know what they've discovered, then they go to the junior person who who handles that particular piece on a day to day basis, and and the person's like, Yeah, I know. I I've known for six months. Like w you know, what what's the you know, this isn't something new. It always happens. The CO gets mad at the employee for not speaking up. Well, I flip that around and say, Why didn't you create the environment that allowed for that? You know, too much of our of our management and engagement with our staff revolves around what are you doing and how are you doing it? But you flip that around and like what are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are the problems we need to solve instead of this this top-down way of looking at it? That's when really, you know, creating a curious culture that that creates an environment where people speak up, speak out, bring ideas and solve problems. problems, you know, more quickly again, tackling that that agile operations, that's really where it shines.
speaker-1: Well, very much so. And and this again is something where having a wide breadth of knowledge that the you know what I tried to bring to the table is very useful because what you have just described is a very apt description of Kaizen, which you may have heard of. Now that's predominantly found in manufacturing environment, but that that was put together by Edwards Deming back in the forties. And you know, Toyota uses that to this day, very much so, but they they understand that the line worker, the lowest level person, have insight that the CEO and even the engineers often don't have. And I've a little bit of time in manufacturing environments and and that's very much true. And well that's a Kaisen is a manufacturing thing. Well yeah obviously if you're in a in an office an office or service based thing, you're not gonna do it exactly the way that Toyota does it on an assembly line. But the philosophy is still every bit is valid. The person that is dealing with the customer that is deal every day on the the sharp end of the sword has knowledge that needs to be captured and you have to create an environment so that that knowledge can be captured, otherwise you're gonna be misguided. I in in You could apply this in in a ship. The captain needs to know what the most junior watch officer can see, otherwise he's got problems.
speaker-0: Right. Yeah, and you're comparing, you know, organizations that have Doc Kaisen, which is that constant way of looking at things and and from different perspectives, but you look at you know, the US model of manufacturing where, you know, you had the s one person doing the same job forty times a day, and he's doing that job regardless of what's happening around him, without that that up and down communication, you know, today's organizations, you know, outside of manufacturing, that's not how they operate. Most businesses are small businesses. ⁓ you know, accounting has a view into how sales and marketing works. vice versa. I mean, I I often look think about ⁓ Fisker, the car company that went under. You know, when all the news was coming out during their bankruptcy, you know, one of the things that that show was showcased was they were shipping cars to people before accepting payment. You know, we're not talking about a ream of paper or a pack of pens. We're talking about forty, fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollar automobiles that are being shipped across the country without being paid first. I mean that's just a breakdown in operations and structure and process, likely because there wasn't that up you know, that that back and forth communication and perspective into what was working and not working. ⁓ so that th I I love that you brought up the the the Kazan analogy there because it's something I I I talk about and use quite often.
speaker-1: Yeah, that that is a ⁓ I mean a shipping product before being paid. That I mean there are situations where you do that. There are some companies where that's the whole business model works. But that's gonna have ⁓ you know, down the line consequences that need to have at least been thought through. And when you and I think when you have ⁓ when you have that lack of communications, certainly that's gonna be a problem. But then you can also have tunnel vision. ⁓ for instance, ⁓ you you talked about accounting and and finance with with Fisker. That's one where maybe they might have done well to listen to accounting and finance a bit more. But then you have counter arguments of for instance General Motors and that was famously when it became run by accountants, lost the engineering moha mo mo mojo and and they they could have lost the plot. Well everything has to be run by the numbers, we're gonna nickel and dying. Everything to death, and if you nickel and dime everything to death, then you're going to be misled. And so we have key KPIs, which KPIs are essential. You need to have key performance indicators. You can't run a business without them. But are they the right ones and are you truly tunneling down into the details? And I think both with accounting and with KPIs, we have plenty of examples of where it was not done properly, where it was not tunneled down into, and mistakes were made and decisions were made that looked good on paper and seemed good paper. For a while and ultimately failed out. For example, Boeing. For years and years and years, they were making a ton of money by cost cutting. until they stopped. Well, but it was working fine. It's worked fine for twenty years. Well no, that's because you got rid of these inspectors, you got rid of the continuing education, you got rid of those engineers and eventually you ran out of track and you no longer have the ability to design things new that work. And then you lose the ability even to build the stuff that you've been building for thirty years because you cut back all these guys that knew how to do it because they were expensive. And you can get away with it for a while. Until you can't anymore and it's really hard to rebuild. But on paper it looked great. Because their costs were cut, their profits were up, all the executives made these huge bonuses, the stock price was great, but somebody was not being responsible for looking into the actual internals.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I I agree. You know, the more and more I work with with ⁓ small businesses, startups, founders and and even non profits, you know, what what's clear to me is is that if you you wanna be sustainable, you wanna innovate, grow and change, you have got to be taking a look at that combination of leadership, operations and culture. There the I I I to this day I can't talk about one without referen referencing the other two because there really is such an overlap. And I think that's kinda what you're talking about. You can't get pigeonholed into saying, ⁓ we just need More money on advertising, or we just need new people, or we just need this. ⁓ if if your people are are notoriously not getting the job done, I would say the first place you look at is your leadership. ⁓ you know, that that's because if if it's happening across the board, there's something deeper happening than just the individual people you're hiring. And and it's important to to do that diagnostics, to do that deep dive. into the operations, into the culture, into the leadership, you know, to find those gaps and holes. So ⁓ our time is wrapping up here, but I want to I want to give you a chance here ⁓ to to give, you know, if there's one piece of advice that that you can give to to founders and COs, ⁓ whether a startup, small business, nonprofit, whatever it may be, what is that one piece of advice and also tell everyone ⁓ where we can find you? We'll obviously put your information in the show notes, but ⁓ it always helps to to kind of hear your voice ⁓ say the best place to find you.
speaker-1: Certainly. ⁓ I you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm Ken R. Taylor. You can my book is w ⁓ Working in Slippers and you can find it at WorkingInslippers dot com ⁓ it's available on Amazon and you can contact me through that website as well. The what I think that the the founders and CEOs need to need to remember and be aware of is you need to be constantly looking, constantly watching, as we've already talked about, but also looking at why, looking at the underlying reasons and challenging your assumptions because if you it's so easy to look at the top line numbers, the top line reports, but Why is this the case? Is there something hidden that I am not seeing? And for that you need to go and talk to and welcome the input from people that are lower down, oftentimes much lower down. And that is a is a very difficult thing and a very hard thing at times for ⁓ because you add layers of insulation and then eventually people just realize, hey, look, nobody wants to hear what I have to say, nobody cares, nobody listens, and they keep it to themselves. And it's gonna take a while, but ultimately that will lead to failure.
speaker-0: Ken, you're absolutely correct. I mean that is exactly why I wrote the book. The Curious Leader, where it talks about how we shift, how we think, how we work, and how we connect. And it absolutely talks about all those things and how we have to constantly be looking beyond our the status quo. And what I always say is curiosity helps us look beyond our current situations and limitations by constantly challenging things, constantly looking things different, and bringing our team along along with it to have those unique perspectives. So ⁓ there's so much more we could talk about. But Ken, I want to thank you for being part of this show. ⁓ for all the listeners, ⁓ please make sure you are subscribing to the podcast as well as the YouTube channel. ⁓ this you know John Bassford is the channel on ⁓ on YouTube. You put my name in ⁓ you'll find it. ⁓ but Ken, thank you for being here and being such a great guest.
speaker-1: Hey, I appreciate having you on and look forward to speaking with you again in the future. Have a great day.
speaker-0: Good luck, Ken. Have a good one.
