Teamwork - A Better Way

Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Teamwork the Better Way. I'm Christian Napier, and I am joined by my physically active co-host, Spencer Horne. Spencer, how are you? Good.

A little sweaty, you know, from being physically active, of course. Now, Spencer, you're not joining us from your usual digs, so where in the world are you today? I am in Scottsdale. I'm at the National Speakers Association Influence Conference, and 900 speakers from all over the world.

This morning we got up early, 4 o'clock, did a 5 a.m. hike, Piestewood Peak, and so I haven't even had a chance to change my clothes, so luckily you're far away from me, so you can't, you know, I don't think I'm too smelly yet, but could be coming. Well, I appreciate your dedication to the cause. Maybe I should say causes because not only their NSA, but also here taking time to really introduce us to an amazing guest.

I'm super excited that he is joining us today. So why don't you go ahead and introduce us to Rob. Absolutely. Today we have Rob Ott and I got to meet Rob just recently in May.

I was speaking in New Jersey where he's based and he was a speaking at the same conference that I was at. I got to attend a session, Christian, and I was really blown away. So I want to tell you a little bit about him. He is an accomplished executive and leadership coach with over 30 years of experience in building and scaling organizations, all the way from startup through acquisition.

And he's been a co-founder of a global oncology contract research organization. Rob has successfully navigated his company through hyper growth. And that's something that really is about our topic tonight, scaling without sacrificing culture. So when you go through hypergrowth and expanding from fewer than 10 employees to over 2,000 across 10 countries, that introduces some complexity, wouldn't you agree?

I totally agree. I totally agree. I wasn't sure you were asking the question. It's my fault.

I normally don't do that. I get it. And so he's ultimately achieved a successful acquisition of precision medicine. So background in the medical field, but his operational expertise encompasses strategic planning, post-acquisition, just soup to nuts when it comes to growing strategies for 400 plus million dollar organizations and sales targets in one and a half billion.

What really sets Rob apart is how he integrates emotional intelligence with operational excellence. So often we get the numbers folks and they forget the people side of the business. Well, he brings both of that and that's something that was very impressive to me. So he's recognized for those skills and his authentic leadership and he's really dedicated himself to developing the next generation of leaders which hopefully we've got a lot of next generation leaders that are listening to us here.

He's doing that through his coaching practice thought management solutions. He's completed his coaching certification through Columbia University's Teacher College Program. I could go on and on and on, but he holds an MBA from Rider University, a Bachelor from the College of New Jersey. He really is someone that's active in the project management world.

I know we have lots of project managers that listen from all over the world. Without further ado, let me bring on our guest, Rob Hull. There you are. Hi, everybody.

Thank you for having me. It's great to be with you all. First of all, how did you get into this field? Was this something that you planned?

Was it serendipity? What got you started in creating these hyper growth opportunities? Well, I mean, if you go all the way back to when I was coming out of college, I was actually very quickly a marine biology student. And oddly enough, I found that it was a really great hobby, but a tough way for me to make a living.

And so what I really wanted to do with my life is I was spending 12, 14 hours a day in a lab doing what marine biologists would be doing. I just decided that I needed something that was going to be purposeful in my life. And I really wanted to, if I was going to trade that many, those many hours, I wanted to do it in the realm of cancer research or infectious disease, or, you know, something that I think would be meaningful for maybe more than the half a dozen or so scientists that were interested in my marine biology work.

So I got a job at a contract research organization called Covance in the nineties. was really fortunate enough to be put into the oncology franchise, which is where I wanted to go. And then spent the next few years working on a really novel monoclonal antibody, which opened the door for a tremendous amount of cancer breakthroughs and just targeted therapies that were going to really make a difference in people's lives. And so that was when I got bit by the bug.

I started out with With that, we were able to leverage that into a small consulting company. And after a good word of mouth growth, we really hit the ground running and had a tremendously successful run, building up a company that, you know, again, continued to expand. But, you know, we had principles that were really important to us that really contributed to our success. And those were all the what I ended up calling a dynamic calibration framework around people focus.

And so as I take that forward and really look at it into my coaching and the impact that I want to make on the world now, if you remember, Spencer, the theme of the conference that we were at was Tomorrow's Trends. And I spend a lot of time looking at how to build companies, how to build good teams in the context of what's going to happen in the next 10 years. And when you think about artificial intelligence and the need for hybrid intelligence and good leadership, it really becomes super important to focus on these five concepts as you build out your leadership repertoire. So let me pause there because I don't want to, you know, I can keep going.

No, no, no, that's great. I mean, that's exactly what we want you to do. I mean, you've already introduced some interesting ideas, but first of all, working in the field of oncology, I mean, I have several questions, but how do you in that field, how do you coordinate with everybody else that's doing cancer research and the therapies that are developed? Are they done in isolation in terms of the groups that you work with?

Are they done with collaboration? Because a lot of people listening have had someone in their life affected by cancer and so to me, it's very personal and I'm just curious. Yeah. And, and I mean, I think you hit on one of the main things is that you don't have to scratch anyone too deep to get to a cancer story.

And that was what really motivated me. I had family members that, um, unfortunately, you know, passed away because of it. And, uh, so like I said, that was, that was really important for me to become, uh, focused on where I can deliver an impact. Uh, you know, we only have one go around in this life and, you know, I want to hang up my clipboard or my computer or whatever.

metaphor you want to use knowing that I did something. And I just read something the other day that was really impressive. And that was, you know, the state of cancer research has advanced so much in the last 30 years. And believe me, I mean, it's not because of anything, or, you know, much that I did.

But it's nice to look back and say, you know what, we're advancing. and we're making progress. So hopefully one day cancer is something that you doctor for and maybe not necessarily die from. So that would be a dream come true.

My mother passed away 40 years ago in December from bone cancer and I'm convinced that if she were alive today that that those therapies would have kept her alive. Working in this field, I ran actually a children's cancer foundation and one of the things that I noticed is that working in a field like this can also be extremely taxing. There's a compassion fatigue that can set in. You introduced this idea to us called dynamic calibration.

What does that mean and how does that, in the context of leadership and scaling a business, and then adding the complexity of the dynamics around an organization that's working in cancer, how do you keep that culture strong and people not just losing the ... I know they're passionate about saving lives, but there's got to be a cost. Yeah, there really isn't. I mean, that fatigue is real, you know, because it's, and you know, you can have a whole lot of other conversations around burnout and how to keep yourself motivated in the face of some terrible circumstances.

You know, one of the stories that I like to tell is that, you know, very early in my career, I got a letter from a woman who unfortunately was in her early forties and had breast cancer, was on our study. and was taking the drugs that we were working on. She just wrote a letter that was so poignant because she just said thank you. She had more time with her kids.

She sent it to the people like me who were so far behind the scenes. We weren't the doctors. We were looking at the data and trying to make sense of it. I have it hanging on my wall.

It's really something that's stuck with me for my entire life. I use that as a motivation to keep me going. you know, when you get stuck looking at, you know, numbers and things that don't necessarily translate into people. But dynamic calibration, and thank you for asking me about it, is, you know, I had the luxury of going back and kind of reverse engineering our success and really thinking about it and focusing on what was important.

And, you know, it came down to five major categories that I think rounded things out. But when you look at the concept of dynamic calibration, as a leader, you're constantly tweaking these, these components of your business, of your relationships, you know, you're really leaning into the emotional intelligence components that are so important. But the dynamic calibration, when you break it down is, you know, a commitment to a mission. I don't think that's going to be, you know, a eureka moment for a lot of people, but we were, you know, we were a combination of a lot of like-minded people that really wanted to make a difference in the cancer, you know, field and hopefully find treatment for

patients. You know, we also looked at a really critical need to execute with quality, because at the end of the day, you know, you can be as passionate as you want to, but if you can't differentiate yourself and deliver with quality, those are going to be things that are going to really hold you back. We needed to be best in class in the services we were providing.

I got a chance to really sit down with a lot of my old colleagues, which was a lot of fun, and go through and really think about this retrospective. The other part that was really important was financial health. You know, it wasn't too long when we got into running the business that we realized that we were onto something special and we had created an environment that people really resonated with, wanted to work at. We were able to gather a lot of really talented people.

But most important, or one of the important things, was that we wanted to keep the lights on. So once we realized we had something good, we wanted to protect So we focused on being as financially healthy as we could be, teaching everybody to act like owners so that they had a really good understanding of how the company ran, how it made money. At the end of the day, like I said, we wanted to keep the lights on so we could come back tomorrow and do it again. Then the other part of it that was really interesting was the respect for the individual.

I mentioned in the talk, and I don't know, I think you and I talked about this afterwards, Spencer, You know, the culture of the industry in the 90s and early 2000s when I was coming out was really, it was a service organization. So they, they really focused on, you know, talent was replaceable. So we were, you know, used up for a while and then moved into a new role or somebody else took our place. So we wanted to focus on gathering the best talent we could.

and then holding on to it so that people didn't burn out. And we spent a lot of time respecting the individual and building psychological safety even before it became a kind of a watchword with Amy Edmonds's great work that she did for Harvard. And then ultimately it was transparency. When we look at, you know, what was really critical, it was building that trust and transparency in our leadership.

And even when we couldn't always share. I mean, like, realistically, you can't share everything with everyone. We had built a culture of trust because we did share as much as we could to the point where it was really gratifying in the interviews that I did. Some of the folks that we worked with said, look, we didn't even know what was going on at times, but we trusted you because we knew that you had our best interest at heart and you had the company's best interest at heart.

And that was something that was really invaluable to us. So, you know, those are things that we've built over time. And then, you know, when you look at, The other components of Dynamic Calibration, we had a lot of healthy friction on our leadership team. We knew, we coined that term, I guess, early on, because we knew that we were going to battle over things.

But we always came, came out of that, you know, even when we disagreed, we were, we were locksteps, you know, shoulder to shoulder. And we always, you know, worked together respectfully after that, after we had our little, you know, healthy friction sessions. And then it was an authenticity. I mean, I was really fortunate to have the team that we had.

We all came from different backgrounds and represented different areas, but we were able to be authentic and, you know, really work together as a group. And that was a huge difference maker for us. All right. Well, there's a lot to unpack there, Rob.

I want to come back because I know there were five categories, but I noted at least eight things that you just said there. The first one that you mentioned was commitment to mission. And one of the questions I have for you is, when it comes to something like cancer, there's a natural motivation there for a lot of people, but not everybody works in an organization that has a really, such an altruistic mission, right? So, what do you say to both leaders and, workers, employees, who work for an organization where the mission may not be so obviously impactful?

Or how do they create a mission that they can really get everybody behind? We're not saving the world by paving a driveway, but how do you create that? Well, I think you have to, you know, it's a really great question. it's, it's something that I think leaders and, you know, people need to, to work through.

And part of that is creating a value proposition. I mean, you know, like if you're paving roads, that's important, like, you know, and, and finding the, the power and the, and the utility in that and connecting people, you know, you know, I think that it's, if whatever you're doing, you should really look at how do you engage people and catch them on fire over it? Um, you know, and be authentic about it.

I mean, like you can't, you can't fake that, but at the same time, you know, hopefully you're in a, in a world or in a position that you're, you're building something that you really believe in, uh, because it will ignite the, the, the, the group and you can really do a lot by spending some time. So I would think as a leader, it's, it's really understanding what you're doing and why you're doing it. And as an employee or as a, as a member of a team or a company like that, It's stopping and saying like, I mean, I remember hearing stories about like the janitors who would come in and say, look, I want to make this the best office it could

be. And, you know, those are stories like those are gems. Like those are like people like that are, you know, just interested in doing a good job for the sake of doing a good job, but they find meaning in what they're doing. And so, you know, it's like everybody has value.

And I think there's a, there's a dignity and an importance in everything that people do. And it's really tapping into that. And so if you just gloss over it, and you don't even highlight it, and there's, there is a degree of you have to cheerlead for some of this and really point out why we're doing something different. But you know, that's a soul-searching question that I would encourage every leader to do.

Because listen, like I said, you only get one go around here. And I don't, you know, if you were in a, like something that just emptied your soul and didn't give you any kind of value then you might not be in the right spot. I don't know. I don't want to generalize but that to me is a really important component of leadership and building a company is why are you doing this and what value are you bringing to the world.

Yeah, I mean you got to find that passion and connect what you're doing and how you're making the world a better place and that's a leadership function and I agree with that. You talked a lot about teaching everyone to act like owners. I'm really interested in how you did that and I've got to believe that part of your formula, transparency, helped with that. I don't know if you've ever heard the book The Great Game of Business, but I forget the author's name, but he talks about share, what's going on with the business so people understand.

It's not just about, well, I deserve a raise because I want more money, but what's the value that I'm bringing and how does that impact the bottom line? People need to think like owners. I think that's so, so valuable. How did you do that?

As you grow, this is always a challenge because you know, you bring in folks that are, you know, that as you expand, it becomes more and more important to do this. But one of the things that we always focused on was in a service organization. So we're, you know, we're not making any, we're not manufacturing anything, we were providing service. And what we tried to do was really instill in everyone the value of, OK, what, like, what you do day to day, what is the impact on that on the bottom line of your project profitability, your company's profitability.

I was laughing when you just started to say this. I think I overshared in some ways, but that really helped with the transparency. I would get together with my department every month and let them know how we were doing. We would have project financial health meetings on each project.

We had project review, which I think is a pretty generic review process. You know, in my old world, project review was like a firing squad. You went into a meeting and you just basically listened to the senior executives tell you, you know, how you either weren't making your metrics or how it wasn't, you know, you weren't performing the way you were supposed to. Our project review was a lot different.

We had collective expertise across all different disciplines. And we looked at that as an opportunity to teach our leaders and our project team, our frontline workers, how to basically run a project You know, we, we were collaborative in our problem solving, but at the end of the day, I wanted them to draw a straight line between an hour that they spent on their project and what it did to the, to the profitability of that project. We weren't all about the money all the time, but again, like I said, we wanted to be able to put the lights on at the next day.

Um, so everybody knew, uh, what their project, uh, targets were, and then we would discuss them and go through it. Um, we would offer corrective like suggestions if, if things were out of whack. But at the end of the day, we wanted them to think like owners and we wanted them to take pride in that. You know, one of the challenges that we often had to manage was the over delivery of services because that ended up costing the business some money too.

And, you know, as much as we were delivering with quality, we were trying to strike that right balance between, you know, is this time well spent? Are we getting done what we need to get done? Or are we, you know, overwhelming the client with service, which in some ways was acceptable. You know, if we knew that we had a, an opportunity for a good business relationship, we would do some of that, but it was all purposeful and all thoughtful around where the, that money was being spent.

And so that was the, that was the idea is really just, if I can call back on one thing, Spencer, it was the, you know, what you do in this hour and what it impacts on the project budget overall. When you talk about over-delivery of service, I think about the restaurant manager that comes by too often asking how your meal is. Just leave me alone, right? There is a Goldilocks spot.

There is a spot where it's just right. It's funny. I was out to dinner on Friday night, and we had one of those where I was like, I'm never going to give anybody a hard time about that. But I was like, OK, we're good.

I mean, we're OK. We're having a great time. We just want to be here by ourselves now. Exactly, exactly.

Okay, I got a question following on that. When it comes to the measurement, especially today, there are so many data points that an organization can measure. How did you go about figuring out what were the really important metrics to pay attention to, because it's easy for organizations to get lost in the weeds in data. And so how did you kind of get your head above water over that and figure out, okay, well, these are the five things, or these are the three things that we really need to nail, and we really need to pay attention to on these projects that will determine

our success or our failure? How did you, how did you come up with the metrics that, that were so important for you to measure? And how do you work with leaders today to help them understand how to measure what is really important? Yeah, and that's a great question because you can and I've seen that happen.

You can get paralyzed by the data that you gather. You know, very similar to what we did with financials. I'm going to pivot into what we used to call study quality metrics. And this was a service that the company offered.

And to your question, Christian, I think the big divider there was behavior, behavioral based metrics. And so, you know, when you're looking at, say, a research study or any type of project, you can track everything. and it becomes very noisy and you lose the signal for the amount of data that you're pulling through. And so we spent a lot of time looking at what activities or what actions we're going to move the needle and how can we track that.

So, you know, we would look at things like in the very specific world of clinical research, we would look at how long it took data to get from the patient into the medical records and into the chart. Because if we could shrink that down, we could actually have a meaningful outcome on, you know, productivity or things like that. So, you know, when I say behavioral based, we were really looking at if there was something that was just data for data's sake, We had a tendency to either deprioritize or even not capture it or not collect it because if I wasn't going to do anything with the data and I was just going to sit on top of a pile of numbers or information and it didn't have meaning for me.

We moved it along, we didn't worry about that. We really spent some time focusing on what was gonna be a needle mover for us. And I think you have to do that. Especially in this day and age, it's getting easier to track information.

But you can also paralyze yourself with just too much information that you can't act on or doesn't have meaning for the business. Our episode title is really about scaling without sacrificing culture. Would you talk about that? You said you had this company that went from 10 to 2,000.

I talked with a lot of organizations, Rob, that as the company grows, there's this feeling of we're losing our sense of soul. We're losing who we are because so many people when they feel like they no longer have access to maybe the founders, or they just feel there's not that same intimate feeling that they once had. I'm really curious as to how you transitioned, how you manage that, and just your perspective on that. Yeah, thank you.

And I think that, you know, the transparency was important, but, you know, hand in glove with the transparency is we kept a very flat organization. So there's probably a number of components there, Spencer. The flat organization was important. making sure that like, you know, even our, our, our president who was amazing is an amazing person.

She was always involved with even day to day operations at a level that was still let her be strategic. So she was aware she was one of those like Uber people that could just keep track of all the details and then, you know, effortlessly move between the high level strategic and the tactical to help people. So, you know, we had that, that whole focus of, You know, there were seven or eight of us on that executive leadership team, and we all tried to model that behavior where we floated around and stayed engaged with everybody that we could. Now, is that possible all the time?

No, but what you hope is you get that, I don't know if it's Prel or whatever it was, it was I'll tell a friend, you tell a friend, and then all of a sudden this, you know, this, this expansive culture builds. But we were very much focused on hiring the right people. I can't, I can't underestimate or overestimate or overemphasize that, sorry. Um, you know, that, that was really key, uh, because you, you, like you, when we hired wrong, we could tell that there was going to be a problem that was going to reverberate through the culture.

So we were very, very, um, focused on hiring the right people, but then also the accessibility, the transparency. You know, we had built a kind of a, you know, we early on, we built our company values that, you know, we could all point to and operate and act, you know, in accordance with, which I think really was the glue that helped gel that culture together. And, you know, there is it did get difficult, you know, as you move from a couple of hundred people to a thousand people internationally. You know, I spent a lot of time traveling to the different offices, basically In a lot of ways, you know, to do work, of course, but to also just build relationships with people.

As we acquired new companies, we spent a lot of time making sure that there was a good cultural fit. You know, we tried to, you know, date, quote unquote, ahead of time before we actually went forward with a merger or an acquisition. And so there was a lot of that that went on, and those are important components. I want you to keep going, but one of the things that I think is so important about what you said, and I want to emphasize it, a lot of times leaders of organizations, Rob, Christian, are so interested in efficiency.

that they are not focused on being effective. You say you travel around to build relationships and some people say, well, how does that impact the bottom line? How is that an efficiency factor? I need to be doing, I need to be checking the list off, but what ends up happening is you talk about hiring the right people and then keeping them.

The opportunity to keep the right people reduces the stress load on the organization because you have less of that churn that you have to reintroduce new people and to teach them the culture and bring them along and bring them back up to speed as to what we stand for and where we're going and how we're doing it. That takes a lot of energy. And so by investing that time in those relationships, you are actually increasing efficiency.

In my experience, would you would you concur or push back? 1000% I would agree. I mean, you know, there was a lot of what my job was, I was the leader in business operations. And so I did a lot of work with the back office finance team, as well as the operational delivery folks.

And so and I and I moved in both worlds. And I looked at my role as a harmonizer, you know, more than anything else. And harmonizing for me was communicating and You know, yes, I had, I, listen, I was a very productive person. I, you know, I, I, I actually spend a lot of time thinking about time management and, um, how to help leaders do that.

But at the same time, uh, I did not just get lost in the tick the box and, you know, completed my to-do list. My to-do list was, you know, connect with so-and-so in Carlsbad or so-and-so in Budapest, you know, like it was building those relationships and that was important to me. So. You know, I knew, and again, I'm speaking for myself, but it was a plurality.

Like, I mean, a lot of us had the same focus and it was, you know, I wanted to know who was working with me. I wanted to know them as people. Um, you know, we always used to tell this story about like when I was really early on in the oncology, uh, you know, uh, realm where I was meeting with the, what we call principal investigators. These were the lead doctors on the, um, on the studies.

And I always said I didn't want to show up to their office for the first time with a problem. You know, I wanted to just drop in and say, Hey, you know what, we had a great visit. Your staff was doing excellent. I have no questions for you.

Do you have anything for me? So that they knew who I was when, you know, things went south or we had a problem that we had to deal with because I had built those relationships. And, and, you know, that was the behaviors that we modeled for our leaders. So we spent, you know, and I, and I, I think I mentioned this to you and I didn't mention this on, on this, on this, this setting here, but our whole company was virtual.

So, you know, when you, we started in 2000, you know, we had a laptop and an air card at the time. And we were, you know, we had, we could do whatever we wanted to do wherever we were. So we spent a lot of time investing in bringing people together and that relationship component because we weren't in an office every day and we didn't see each other around the headquarters or, you know, around a water cooler. We had to create those water cooler moments virtually before it became, you know, a kind of a more of a common trend.

So, you know, I mean, I always tell the story when COVID hit, you know, we woke up the next day and we're kind of business as usual. I mean, like we were all remote as it was. So it was, you know, but that did put a special emphasis on, building that relationship and not just focusing on getting my to-do list. I mean, we still have to get things done.

Oh, I went and did it, Christian. I cut him off. Yeah. No, I was actually going to repeat myself.

So that was, that was, that was a well-placed break in. So there you go. Thank you. Hey, I've got to come back to what you talked about hiring the right people.

I understood from your comment that maybe you didn't bat 1,000, like you didn't always hire the right people. But for your organization, what was the profile of the right person? And how did you recruit for that particular kind of profile? And then in a parallel question, sometimes we can think of the right people as just people that think like us.

So how do you get the right people, in quotes, in while still keeping diversity of thought? So not everybody's coming in and just reflecting. We're not just hiring a bunch of yes men or yes women, but we're bringing in people that feel empowered and they feel like they can actually add value to the organization. Hold on.

And I love that. Can I add, how did you get rid of the wrong ones too? Yeah, that's, that's great. So I think that, you know, I'm going to pivot back to what I was saying around not being constrained by geography.

And so, you know, we used to, we used to talk about this early on. We would, we were building our dream team. And that really meant looking back at people that we had worked with, you know, in different areas. So like, I always use the example of when we were doing our quality and compliance hire, you know, we sat down and we said, who would we want, who have we worked with in the past that would be the right person for this job?

And it didn't take us long to get to our colleague Joe. You know, Joe was basically at that time in, I think, the San Francisco area. So we had no California employees. But we said, you know what, it's more important for us to solve how to get Joe than it was to get, you know, a person that was close to headquarters.

So, you know, and I think where it really came down to, so Christian, you know, when you think about how do we identify the right people, it came down to the values. And so, I mean, like we had values like quality, client champions, you know, winning mindset, being solution-oriented, integrity. And so if we could check those boxes and we knew that that person, you know, was fundamentally sound in those areas with us, or at least on the same page, we were, you know, we were more inclined to hire. And, you know, I'll talk about a colleague of mine, who is our CFO, who, you know, was diametrically opposite me in just about every way when we first started working together, other than the values.

I mean, we shared a lot of the same values, but he saw the world very differently than I did. Um, and it was really interesting because I, you know, I'll be honest, I think I can speak for him at this, at this point too. He's one of my, he came in and we were like, I thought this guy was a villain. And I was like, I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to work with him.

And he is probably one of my professional best friends. Um, and one of the greatest people that I've ever worked with after 13 years of working together. So it was really, you know, but we saw fundamentally the importance of the value prop, you know, proposition of what we thought were core values. And that was, that was, that was key.

Spencer, to your point, you know, around like letting people go or, you know, that, that sometimes is difficult, especially when the person comes to you through an acquisition as opposed to a hire. So there, it wasn't as if those were easy conversations to have. But I think when you fundamentally work from a space where your emotional intelligence and your, you know, your, your honest and your authentic, and you can talk about things not being the right fit. We had a person early on in our company who joined us in a more or less senior leadership position, and she's a wonderful person.

She just did not get what we were doing, and it became apparent really within the first few months of working with her. And so we ended up having a couple of difficult conversations, and she eventually moved on. But it was an honest conversation, and I went to bed you know, sleeping easily after, you know, being, you know, I guess I'd say it's authentic, but we were honest. You know, we, we just, we, we came from where we were.

It wasn't like we were judging or being critical of her. It just, it wasn't the right fit. So, you know, I, you know, we were able to part ways relatively amicably. I don't think everybody was happy with the outcome, but it was, it was, you know, it was handled professionally with dignity.

And, and I, and I like to say class, you know, that was really what was important to us. You know, in my experience, Rob, if you don't handle that, you set up the entire organization for failure because they can see that you're not addressing or willing to address difficult behaviors or non-value alignment or wrong fit. And then it becomes, well, you're hypocrites, and so what does it really matter? And that undermines everything that you say.

And so it's so important not only that we hire the right people that we actually invite those that are not, or change, or just don't fit to leave, because there's a great cost to that as well. Yeah, those types of untended challenges will have a really negative second, third order effect on morale, and just your authenticity, and everything else that you just said. So I completely agree. Well, so this kind of leads into my next question.

We've actually kind of identified some of the problems that crop up during hypergrowth. I mean, you identified that one of the ways that you actually experienced hypergrowth is through acquisition. Not every company gets there through organic growth, right? I mean, you're bringing in bits and pieces from all over the place.

And so one of the challenges that you're going to have is not all cultures are aligned as you bring them into the fold. But what are other really pitfalls that you find as you went from that 10 to 2,000 growth in maintaining the culture? Well, I think it really is the introduction of new people. And it becomes really important to, I'm going to say, calibrate.

I don't expect people to all think the way I do. And I wouldn't want that, because that takes you down the path of groupthink and all the other things that go along with that. And we need fresh ideas and diversity of thought. But what we also need to do is to really look at what people, where their value system is.

And, you know, if they're making a decision, people can make decisions that I didn't agree with. I mean, like, and that happened quite a bit. That was the whole genesis of that healthy friction. But if you're going to do something that's out of sync with our values, then we're going to have to have a conversation, you know, that that is going to be you know, more focused on that, you know, not so much the individual decision, but how are you coming

to these conclusions and what are you putting first and prioritizing in the company? And, you know, it gets harder. I mean, like, there's no question about it. It's real easy to have a homogenous culture when you're, you know, 25 people.

But when you start to get into a couple hundred, and especially if you're bringing in people from different cultures, you know, they made our company richer and, you know, more diverse and more, you know, more powerful in a lot of ways. But it also required, you know, a lot of attention from the leadership team to make sure that, you know, we were, we were, you know, rowing in sync. I mean, like you could see when, you know, on a crew team, when somebody's oars hit in the water differently, then you've got to, you got to really, you know, look at that and see how you can correct it or adjust it, you know. Well, I want to come back to, I think on the same kind of theme, looking at my notes that I took at the beginning of our conversation with the five categories, which I wrote down eight.

One thing that you said was healthy, healthy friction, right? So healthy friction is the secret sauce. So you've got five and then there's three secret sauce, the authenticity, the calibration and the, healthy friction, so that's why you're getting it. I love that you're paying attention.

I love that you're focused on my framework. I call it productive conflict, man. Yeah, it's it. I know it's something that Spencer touches on this a lot, but how do you foster healthy friction?

Because you can go on one end of the pendulum, which is we have no friction ever, because we all are just yes men, or we're too afraid to say anything, so we just do whatever the leadership says. And the other, it becomes very, very destructive. So how do you find this kind of happy medium where you have productive conflict or healthy friction? Yeah, it doesn't happen organically very easily.

So I mean, I think the first thing I would say is you have to call it out and recognize that we are going to sit down and we're going to really hash this out, and you're going to be honest, and you're going to say your position, and you're not going to just yes us to death. And we are going into this episode knowing that there's going to be healthy friction. You know, a lot of times there was a, do I want to put this resource on this project, even though it's not the most financially appropriate?

Because we know that in the long run, it's going to be a win. So my CFO and I might fight over that. And you know, fight is, I don't want to say it in a negative way, but we're going to, you know, we're going to defend our position and we're going to come to a conclusion and you know, when you, when you think about it from a conflict standpoint, sometimes my view came out on top and sometimes his did.

And so, but, you know, fundamentally, there was that respect that we worked towards. And I'm going to just, I'm going to make a little pitch for my industry here. We had a coach that really helped us guide through these, these conversations. Early on, it was harder than it became over time, because, you know, this is something that grew in this team.

You know, we did come, we did come in with a group of really emotionally intelligent leaders. But you know, self-awareness, I had blind spots that I had to develop and learn and address. And we had our coach help us guide our way through these types of discussions, Christian, because yeah, like you know, it's real easy to get your, you know, your feelings hurt or to feel like you're not being heard and then retreat. And, you know, and I think the whole group suffers because of that.

And I do remember times when we see that happen and we wouldn't let people retreat. We would say, look, you know what you like, we would gently, I mean, without, you know, being condescending, but we would say, look, you have a point, let's talk through it. And, you know, we're not going to just ignore you. You know, and, and that helped us at the end because you know, even if there was something that I didn't agree with, I still would stand up and, and take that position because that's what our team agreed to.

And, you know, that, that became really important for us. So I think you have to, you can't, you can't just hope it happens. You have to really work at it and invest it as leaders. You said something in there that was just kind of thrown in kind of casually, team agreement.

I think that's so important. A lot of teams do not create agreements. You can actually have agreements around how you have conflict and knowing, creating the psychological safety that people need in order to feel safe speaking up and I think that's really an important exercise is to create that. One of the things I do through team coaching is we identify the four team toxins, right, blame, criticism, stonewalling, and contempt, and those are things that are going to happen even in a discussion of healthy friction, but if they are sustained over time, that's anathema, that's what breaks

the team down. But if it shows up and we call it out, hey, listen, you're withdrawing, you know, you're, you're blaming or you're, you're, you know, whatever, you got to call it out and say, Can we, can we get through this? Can we, you know, and, and I think that's really important is to not allow people to retreat, because then feelings don't get addressed, and they back up and people leave the organization, and we don't ever hear about it. Yeah, and we spent a lot of time even just taking healthy pauses.

I mean, because when, when conversation, like our leadership team, We would gather our entire company together, because like I said, we were virtual. So once a quarter, we would pull everybody together for like a week. And as part of that, we would have a leadership team meeting. And, you know, there were times where we were like, Look, this is getting a little hot.

Let's, let's take a, like a 15-minute break, or let's take an hour and come back. And we'll, you know, we'll revisit where we're at. And we'll order ice cream. Yeah, I mean, whatever it took.

So it was one of those, like, you know, it felt like, oh, God, we have so much we want to accomplish. But even taking that step back, let us take four steps forward, because we were, we came back stronger. And we were, you know, we were less inclined to retreat and take it, you know, have all those toxins, you know, creep into our relationship. Christian, we're kind of getting up about 45 minutes.

This has been a great discussion, but it's surprising of how much of your organization is virtual. A lot of organizations struggle to create a strong culture. when teams are dispersed and virtual? And one of the things that I'm hearing that you do that really helps that is to meet regularly and to invest in the team so that you can be face-to-face regularly.

What else would you do besides that to create strong culture when you're a virtual team? Yeah, and, you know, I will say that we were 100% remote. And I think what I learned through that, Spencer, was that, you know, hybrid, there's probably some happy medium in there. I already mentioned that we, we would bring the team together, you know, once a quarter, we would all meet in Lambertville, which was just a, you know, beautiful, like location on the river, the Delaware River here in right outside of Pennsylvania.

And we would spend a lot of time during those meetings, not focused on just like project stuff because a lot of times when you're remote, you get focused just on like what's in front of your face and the project. We, we really built those meetings around how the business was doing overall. Um, you know, being as transparent as we could be, but then also just giving people time to like bond. Uh, because that was, that was where I think we really separated out, um, you know, that just purely fracturing around your project needs, or your department, or whatever it is that you do.

We would get everybody together, we would do team building stuff, we would focus on, you know, upskilling and training, that may be not related to the project, but we had a lot of common and shared focus in that area. I think I froze up a little bit. Yeah, I think we're dealing with Spencer's incredible bandwidth at the hotel that he's staying in. Is that what's happening?

I think so. But my question, my final question for you today is, so you did this for a long time. Eventually you got out and then you transitioned into this new period where you are actually coaching, mentoring, helping organizations. So why don't you tell me or tell us and our listeners and viewers a little bit about that.

Like, okay, now I've moved on from this 2,000 person organization and now I'm gonna focus on doing something different. I'm gonna take the lessons that I learned and I'm going to help other organizations apply those and become more successful. Yeah, thank you. That, so I did that, I did that role for 22 years.

And I got to a point, I guess, around 2021, 22, where I just was thinking I want to do something different. And so, you know, I worked with the folks that that eventually the acquired, the company that acquired us made an amicable exit, but then I spent some time just saying, all right, what do I want to do with myself? What really jazzes me up? And I think after, after a while, I settled on two things.

And the first was, you know, I like to solve business problems. So I do some consulting, some strategic advisory, I do some fractional COO work to help small businesses and entrepreneurs really get launched and think about looking around the corners around their, the things that are going to be coming up on them and, and sharing my, my knowledge that I learned. But probably more importantly, and the one that I really love is the development of people.

I was always focused on that, even in my, my role in the corporate world, and just helping develop leaders. And I'm in a space now in my life where I can do, I can provide like, you know, an impact and an opportunity to share what I learned. I mean, you know, coaching was a natural next step for me. I had a coach when I was going through my development.

I had a mentor who was also a coach and she was a tremendous influence on my life. And I really look at like the next phase of where I want to go and part of it's giving back. So I coach emerging executives and I coach what I call emerging professionals. So these are students that are transitioning into the workforce for the first time.

and helping them launch their careers. It's kind of a labor of love for me, but I also spend a lot of time coaching entrepreneurs, doing some entrepreneur bootcamps, but that's kind of food for my soul. I really love the idea that I've amassed a body of work of 30 years and now I can give back to people and help them on their way and maybe give them a smidgen of what I got when I was coming up in the world. So it's a way for me to give back.

Do we have time for a lightning round? Sure. I'm always game for it. Let's do it.

Okay. So Rob, basically just quick answers, just as fast as you can. Biggest leadership lessons you've learned the hard way. A step back from the wrong direction is a step in the right direction.

Yeah. Your favorite reset activity when you were mentally overloaded. I like to hike, scuba dive, and hang out with my family. Awesome.

One book every leader should read. Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith. Great book. First thing you do to build trust on a new team.

Get to know them. Talk to them. Just learn who they are. One word that describes your leadership style.

Authentic. Most underrated leadership skill. Listening. Yeah, if you weren't coaching leaders, you'd be?

Mentoring Boy Scouts or young people. Volunteering. Do a good turn. Coffee, tea, or what fuels your day?

Coffee. Lots of coffee. Lots of coffee. Any good places you recommend?

You're in Pennsylvania? New Jersey. I'm a pretty, I'm not a coffee snob at all. So like, I am just, you give me a cup of Joe with some, like, you know, some good creamer and I'm ready to rock and roll.

That's all I got, Christian. All right. Well, thanks for being a good sport with Spencer's lightning round there. Final question that I have for you is, if people want to learn more about how you could potentially help them or help their organization, with your dynamic business calibration framework or other offerings that you have.

What's the best way for folks to reach out and connect with you? I think there's a couple different ways, but the one that I'll highlight is just getting on my calendar. If you go to LinkedIn and look me up, you can find me and there's a calendar link. I like to talk to people.

I do a lot of writing. I try to do some speaking. I guess I shouldn't say I do a lot of speaking, just getting to know me and me getting to know you is really where that connection happens. So you can hit me on the, on LinkedIn.

I have, my website is ottmgt.com. So ottmanagement.com, but just abbreviated. And, uh, I published a sub stack, um, a spark of leadership, uh, twice a month, uh, which is just the topic of, you know, emotional intelligence. I'm getting focused on AI a little bit more and more because I think leaders are going to need how to learn how to navigate that world too.

But those are some easy ways, but I would just love the opportunity to talk to people. Fantastic. Folks, please reach out to Rob Spencer. You've been helping teams becoming, or organizations, build high-performing teams for decades.

How can people reach out and connect with you? Reach out to me on LinkedIn. It's one of the best ways. You can message me, you can schedule a call with me there as well.

Spencer Horn on LinkedIn. Rob, just hang on for a second as we shut everything down. It'll be a few seconds, we forgot to tell you that. Yeah, no, I'm good, I'm here.

We're good. Okay, well, listeners, viewers, thank you so much for taking time to share our conversation with Rob. We really appreciate you. Please like and subscribe to our podcast.

We'll catch you again soon.