Henry Evans - Best Practices for Driving Accountability & Building High Performing Teams (J2717)

Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for. Their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Welcome everyone. Thanks for joining us. We're so happy that you're here with us. I have a fantastic guest lined up for us, Henry Evans of Dynamic Results LLC. I, uh, going to join us and we're gonna talk about best practices for driving accountability and building high performance teams and uh I think you're gonna be very fascinated by what he has to say. So let's bring him on. Henry, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us. It's my pleasure, Bill. Henry, tell us a little bit about dynamic results. What does the company do and how did you start it and, and tell us a little bit about it. Well, the, the company was actually started following um my first and so far in my career, my last business failure, and after a company I'd built for 10 years failed following 9/11, a couple of mentors suggested that I started advising other companies, and that did not make sense to me at the time. I, I remember saying to them, so now that I'm a failure, you want me to give advice to other business leaders, that, that doesn't make sense. And they said no, now that you've emerged from a failure and you've taken a company through a reorg, you've got a credential you didn't have when you built the 1st 5 companies. And after a couple of weeks that did start to make sense. So based on their advice, I started to tell people that I was available and within 6 months had a full client base and 13 years later we're a global company with people in 4 parts of the world and our clients in 140 countries. Well, that's, that's a great story. That's, that's pretty good for, uh, from, from, uh, thinking that things weren't working out so well to turning it around and helping others to, to realize better ways to do things. And so you have a book out called Winning with Accountability, the Secret Language of High Performing Organizations, right? That's one of your books out. And then you have Step up, lead in 6 Moments that Matter. So those are the titles of workshops you also do for groups like Visage Groups and other business owners out there? Yeah, we have, um, we have workshops around those two methodologies and we also have year-long development programs. So let's take a few seconds to talk about each one of those. Let's talk about what is, tell us about winning with accountability the secret language of high performing organizations. Well, we, we believe in, you know, part of this is just being altruistic, but part of this is also the the capitalists in us. We, we believe that you can drive better business results without leaving dead bodies in the road. So, so we challenge some of the older paradigms that that you have to use a command and control, somewhat oppressive leadership style in order to drive results and When we first started offering this methodology, millennials weren't in the workforce, and there was frankly some resistance to it. If you were dealing with a leader who had used their authority or their title to drive results or use the threat of not letting people stay in the company for 20 years and collect a pension. They weren't really interested in reinventing themselves, but during the recession, people started to listen more acutely to what we were saying. And since millennials have entered the workforce, you know, it's very clear that a command and control style isn't going to retain or motivate those people. And and we based A strategic implementation methodology, so a very hard business oriented way of deploying your strategy on a foundation of emotionally intelligent leadership, and that's really what the book is about how can you drive better business results without being a jerk? OK, and, and one thing you said in there, and I think it's key to note is that the old system of the pension plan had some serious flaws in it that a lot of times people would get into a kind of a gray zone towards the end of their careers and they're just basically waiting for that, you know, the watch and the check to start and so you don't get the productivity and with the millennials, they're not thinking that way right out of the gate. You know, you can't motivate somebody with a pen with a reward plan that only begins if you stay at age 65 anymore, right? So that we had, we had to recreate uh back back in the 2000s, early 2000s, we had to recreate things like stock options or or incentive, short-term incentive type plans as opposed to long-term incentive plans. Is that, is that correct to say? Yeah, we are seeing that, and we're also seeing that if you look back at the average tenure in North America, an employee, say, in 1985 or 1990, it was around 14 years. The average tenure now is 2 to 5 years depending on where the person is on the org chart vertically. So the higher you go on the org chart, the longer that that tenure is. So. If in 1990 you came to me and said, Henry, I want you to do this thing that you don't agree with philosophically or that you think is the wrong decision, and I want you to do it to the best of your ability, because if you don't, we're not going to let you stay here for 14 years and collect your pension. That mattered to me and I was afraid of being with you less than 14 or 20 years. Today, when I joined a company, um, I'm not planning to be there more than 2 to 5 years, so you don't have that. Threat to hold over me. That, that's not gonna work. You're gonna have to find another way to not only engage me while I'm with you, but also to get me to stay with you longer. And, and we We have studied the organizations that outperform their industries. We, we, we've studied over 400 companies and We found that there's a very precise type of language that high performing organizations and high performing teams use when they're making and requesting commitments to get better business results, and the book Winning with Accountability is about that language. It's how do you make an accountable request, how do you make an accountable commitment, and how do you communicate in ways that give you a competitive advantage. That's fascinating. That really is, that's interesting. And one of the things that I've, I've heard is that you've said that your clients implement their strategies at 8 times the rate of most companies according to Harvard. So tell us what you mean by that. Sure, we also have a footnote on that because some people don't believe the Harvard research. They prefer to believe what Ramm Sharon and Larry Basti wrote about in the book Execution. Um, but no matter who you're listening to, our clients are implementing their strategies at 3 times to 8 times those rates depending on whether you're reading Sharon and Bosti or you're reading the Harvard research. But let's use the Harvard research. They say that less than 10% of the actions that are written into a North American strategic plan are implemented on time. And the 7 year average of our clients who utilize us for strategic planning and implementation is 86%. So if you're reading the Sharon and Boity research which says that average number isn't 10%, it's 30, then our clients are doing almost 4x that. And if you believe the Harvard research, they're doing more than 8X that, but they use the language we outlined in the book to write their implementation plans and to follow up on those plans for better results. Which, which of those two studies had more subjects? I mean, how that they polled or what was the broader Research, do you know? I don't know. Um, yeah, I mean, it'd be interesting if, you know, one of them surveyed 100 businesses and the other one surveyed 1000 businesses, but any, any way you slice it, 10% to 30% is not really a great number. It's kind of surprising that it's, it's that low that the average company tasks assignments are completed on time. That that's pretty low. Now one reason why, and we encourage our clients to to do this sometimes as well, sometimes you don't implement what you said you would do within a plan because the environment changed and what you thought was a good plan turns out not to be 3 months later, 6 months later, 9 months later, but that's not usually why plans don't get implemented. They usually don't get implemented uh because people. Prioritize other things and they fall into what what we call the sucker's choice where you say, well, do I take care of the customer needs of today or do I work on the stupid strategy stuff that won't generate revenue for us today? And we say that at lower levels of an organization, you, you can think in that binary way and still keep your strategy alive. But if the leaders of the organization are falling into that trap of thinking, do I take care of my customers today or do I work on the future, your strategy's dead. The leaders have to be able to do both, and they have to understand how to bring other people along in the very challenging work of doing both. So your accountability method and your approach to generating leadership at every level, two different approaches, they've both gotten a lot of press, but what, if anything, do the approaches have in common? They're definitely both based on the concept of emotionally intelligent leadership. So, so my co-author on the, on the new books Step Up Lead in Six Moments That Matter, he's, he's the world's first PhD in the emotional intelligence space. But what's interesting about him is he's a CFO by trade, so he's not an academic or a clinician. Uh, who wrote about emotional intelligence. He's a business person who ended up going into leadership development after a successful career in finance. And um they both assert that you can drive the results of a team. You can drive the results of a team in a way that builds relationships, and you can do this from almost any level of the organizational chart, so you can do it with or without the formal title. OK, um, and, and one of the, the issues I've heard is that your methods have gotten a lot of press. uh I, I think you've been in Inc Forbes, Washington Post, Fast Company Huffington's Post, you've been an entrepreneur, but some, some of these, um, some of these uh periodicals are saying that you, the issues, the methods are counterintuitive. For example, you promote the idea that it's OK to get angry at work. Uh, can you say more about that? Yeah, if you read Step Up, Dr. Foster and I opened the book with an apology, and we're basically apologizing to our clients of the last 10 years because we were doing the same thing that the rest of the emotional intelligence community was doing coaching executives. We were saying, you know, never get angry at work, never show feelings like frustration at work. What we noticed, because we work with some of the highest performing companies in the world, is that the highest performing leaders we worked with did not follow that advice, and they actually used the full spectrum of emotion in their leadership style. They, they did show feelings like frustration. They did show feelings like anger, but the difference with the exceptional leaders we work with was that they could remain intelligent. While feeling and experiencing feelings like frustration and anger, and here's the difference. When I'm unintelligent while angry, I say or I do something that I later regret and that probably caused relationship damage. If I understand how to leverage those feelings in an intelligent way, I still remain authentic, so I'm, I'm not pretending I'm not angry when I am. I'm not pretending I'm not frustrated when I am. I'm expressing those emotions, but I'm doing it in a way that actually builds relationship. And one of the techniques we offered that was very sticky in the media that that got us a lot of press was the idea of um Getting angry, not, not stupid. And one of the ways we talk about doing this is, Bill, if you offer an idea that I don't like in a meeting. I was raised in Brooklyn, so I was raised to damage our relationship when I hear an idea that I, I don't like, um, use a, use a pretty assertive, maybe even aggressive, maybe passive aggressive style and say something like, so Bill, are you going to give me a good idea or just that one? That's one way that I might respond to you or I might just say, you know what, that's a stupid idea or maybe I've done some personal work and I'm not that. Offensive in my language, but you can see by my facial expression that I've just written you off as a person because of that idea. Attacking the idea, not the person, means that I still don't like your idea and I'm not going to pretend that I do, but I'm not going to characterize you as a person because of this one idea, and I'm going to say something like, Bill. I usually like your ideas and and understand why they're good. I'm struggling to understand why this idea you just put on the table is good. I don't see how that's gonna help us generate cash flow and maybe I'm missing something. Can you help me understand how it would help generate cash flow as an example? Um, that that doesn't make me feel like you're very angry. Uh, just so, so the point is, is that you're, you're dismissing or you're asking for more from, from the individual at that point, right? I think you just picked up on an important distinction. Maybe, maybe in that example I gave you, I, I wasn't feeling angry. So let's try and simulate a situation where I was. Let's say that it's a topic that I've asked you not to bring up again in a meeting because you brought it up 3 months in a row, and I said no, we're not doing that 3 months in a row. You said, OK, I won't bring it up again, and now you are. So now I'm feeling frustrated, if not angry. I might say something to you like, Bill, I'm starting to feel really frustrated, uh, that you're bringing the subject up again and here's my challenge for you. You've brought it up in the past. I thought we agreed you wouldn't bring it up again, but since you are, what new data or new information do you have that could possibly convince me that this is a good idea when you know that everything I've heard thus far leaves me thinking that it isn't? OK, so I'm still trying to. Yeah, just separate the idea from the person and not, I might even say something like, wow, Bill, I usually feel like you and I are in high alignment and I'm feeling frustrated because I feel like we're repeating a conversation we both agreed not to have. What am I missing? Well, it's better than calling me a broken record and, and belittling me. I can see where the point there is that you have, uh, you have shown me that you're not happy with where we're headed with the particular situation, but in, in a way that makes a lot of sense. Um, So yeah, yeah, continue that that's, that's great stuff. Let me, uh, tell us a little bit about step up lead in 6 moments that matter. So we, we also noticed that, you know, Cam and I specialize in working with the people that run companies. So in the larger companies we're operating in the C-suite and smaller and mid-cap companies we're operating, let's just say on the top 2, perhaps 3 levels of the organizational chart. But we noticed that the people that actually drive change in these companies don't always come from those top positions. The, the people who have the most influence or who may be demonstrating the best leadership competencies. They're not always the people that are in the lead roles. So we through Colm's PhD research, which was 5 years and also about 10 years of our own case studies. We found that leadership happens in critical moments. And that if you understand what those moments are and you're willing to step up and demonstrate leadership in those moments, you can do that with or without the formal title. As an example, one of those moments is reversing the momentum of a negative interaction. So if you, if you and I are in a meeting and I'm bringing up a concern I have about a problem. And it's stated and I communicated it clearly. Now I'm just repeating it. I just keep saying how worried I am about it, uh, how it's holding us back. Maybe I'm your boss, so you don't have the formal title, but could you say something to me like, Henry, I think you've done a really good job of establishing this uh problem, and I think we all understand what it is now. What do you think we can do about it? If you can redirect my energy and my focus, and also the energy and focus of everyone else in that meeting to a solution, you are the leader in that interaction no matter what your title is. You're the one who's you just properly allocated our collective resources to doing something that is actionable and positive when I was sucking us into a redundant dialogue. And we're saying that you should promote those people. Another Another idea we offered is that you should Stop ostracizing and hating the pessimists in your organization. We say that you should get a pessimist on every team because they point things out that people like me that have a positive bias don't see. They might point out problems and obstacles. We also offered the controversial. Advice that you don't promote them because nobody wants to be led into battle by somebody saying we're going to die on the battlefield. So appreciate your pessimist, thank them, include them on teams, but don't have them lead teams. OK, and, and with a leader that has a strategy for these six potential moments in leadership, really has a powerful, uh, powerful, uh, strategy in their back pocket, don't they? Well, we think that if you understand these six moments, first of all, it tells you what what you might want to consider doing as a leader, but what it also does is give you a roadmap for who to promote and who not to. If you have people, two people of equal technical expertise, and one of them is demonstrating these leadership competencies all the time and the other one isn't, you have a lot less work to do with the person who's already demonstrating these skills. So, uh, you now you give both of these, uh, both of these talks to visage groups. Do you typically do one or the other? Yes, um one's a phone. Yeah, uh, these are completely separate programs. And we deliver them to not just to Visage but to companies worldwide. OK, which one has is it too soon to tell which one is more in demand right now? The accountability program is the one that really put us on the map because we proved that organizations can generate better business results using this method, but a lot of those companies are now bringing us in to do the the step up lead in 6 moments that matter training. That's good. So they're bringing you back because they, they like what they heard before, but these, uh, I like the concept of the six moments that matter because it seems like, you know, every, every leader is gonna face some, some turning point, critical moment. At their, their tenure, in their tenure, and they need to be able to be ready for those particular areas. So, uh, those books, yeah, books that are available on Amazon as well, right? Those are the titles of the books as well as workshops. Yep, and there's also a lot more information on our website dynamicresults.com. And do you give talks all over the country, all over the world? How, how far do you travel? In the last 8 weeks, I've delivered work in India, Germany, I've been in Portugal, all over the US and Canada. Wow, that's fantastic. Well, congratulations on your successes. Thanks very much for joining us today. The best place for our listeners to go to find out more is your is it your website? It is that that has information about all of our services and it also has links directly to the Amazon pages if people are interested in learning more from the books. It sounds fascinating. Thanks so much for joining us today. I'd love to go into more depth with you on another interview at some time, but we're out of time today. So thanks very much and look forward to our next conversation. Thanks for having me, Bill. We're gonna take a short break and we'll be right back after this, so please stay with us. You're listening to Exitoachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing top advisors for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new one minute tips every day. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.