Unleashing Potential: A Conversation with Jack Skeels on Empowered and Happy Organizations

In the bustling world of business and organizational management, the quest for efficiency, empowerment, and happiness within the workplace is a journey many leaders embark upon, yet few travel successfully. It was in this context that I had the privilege of sitting down with Jack Skeels, a visionary thinker, CEO of Better Company, a celebrated author, and an advocate for transformative leadership. Our conversation, rich in insights and groundbreaking ideas, revealed a clear path toward creating more empowered and happier organizations.

The Recipe for Empowerment and Joy
Jack Skeels, a two-time Inc. 500 award winner and a beacon in the agile transformation realm, shared his recent venture into the world of authorship with his latest book, "Unmanaged: Master the Magic of Creating Empowered and Happy Organizations." This book serves not just as a read but as a manual for those daring to venture into the depths of management innovation. Jack's journey, from a sharp, promising programmer disillusioned by the apparent disconnect between managers and their crafts, to an executive coaching guru, is more than inspiring. It's a call to action.

His book and his principles revolve around the simple yet profound notion of managing less while excelling in four key moments: the why, what, go, and grow moments of any project or organizational initiative. Derived from a Japanese technique called BA, which emphasizes unity and collective presence, Jack advocates for building a foundational understanding and inclusion at the onset of new ventures.

A New Paradigm in Management
Perhaps the most enlightening aspect of our conversation was Jack's challenge to conventional management wisdom. With each anecdote and example, he peeled back the layers of management practices that hamper productivity rather than foster it. From unnecessary meetings acting as a "tax on productivity" to the modern workplace's convoluted matrix of managing relationships, Jack calls for a radical simplification of managing. His insights into how every managerial action could potentially slow down processes and make things more inefficient were both alarming and refreshing.

Kanban: The Practical Fix
In addressing the intertwined chaos of priorities and managerial actions, Jack highlighted the Kanban system as a beacon of hope. This agile concept encourages alignment among managers regarding priorities, essentially reviving unity in management. By making work sequences visible and priorities clear to all team members, the Kanban system ensures that efforts are focused and productivity is not just a goal but a reality.

The Four Key Moments
Delving deeper, Jack elaborated on the four key moments that managers should excel in: The Why Moment: Explains the context and purpose, fostering a comprehensive understanding of the project or task at hand.
The What Moment: Clarifies what needs to be achieved, ensuring that all managers and team members are on the same page.
The Go Moment: Encourages autonomy, allowing teams to proceed with the tasks without unnecessary intervention.
The Grow Moment: Focuses on the growth opportunities for team members through the project, emphasizing inclusive and fair participation beyond managerial biases.

For those looking to embark on this transformative journey, Jack Skeels' work with Better Company and his groundbreaking book offers a starting point. It's time for leaders to rethink, realign, and revolutionize their approach to management for a future where empowerment

Transcript

0:00

What if everything that you've been taught about management is off the mark? I want to welcome you back to another mind expanding episode of the lead with levity podcast. Today we're exploring a perspective that challenges conventional leadership and structure, focusing on our theme of breaking tradition. It's 12 superpowers that we've been focusing on this year. Our guest today is Jack Skills. He's a two time Inc. 500 award winner, CEO of Agency Agile, where he's reshaping the approach to agility and efficiency in organizations. He's also a faculty member at the Rand Pardee School of Public Policy and an executive coach. So Jack has a unique vantage point that he's going to share with us today on how companies can achieve consistent excellence, which I am. Always interested in Jack has a thought provoking sort of idea that he's going to share with us as well. Maybe management isn't the solution we think it is in this episode. We're going to dive into his theories and how they have the potential to maybe potentially redefine organizational success.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 1:21

manage less, But kill it on these four key moments. One of the key moments is called the why moment. It's the moment that explains the context around everything that we're doing. And we have an exercise that we teach around it and it works very well. For example, when you're launching a new project with a bunch of stakeholders and. Team members and participants and making sure that everyone really is included in the understanding of the project. It comes from a Japanese technique called BA, B A, and it means together basically as a, I probably have mangled the exact translation, but it means to be all in one place together and that sort of conceptually. And

Jack Skeels Interview: 2:20

Welcome back to the lead with levity podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Heather Walker, and I have the pleasure of introducing our next guest, Jack skills Jack is amazing. Jack is a two time man. Inc. 500 award winner, CEO of Better Company, which is an agile transformation and coaching firm. He's a faculty member at Rand Pardee School of Public Policy, an executive coach, and he helps companies really design their organizations for efficiency and consistent excellence. And What i'm very excited about and what the reason why jack is here today Is he recently published a book? Congratulations jack. Yes Yes, it's called unmanaged master the magic of creating empowered and happy organizations Which is what we are all here for so jack. Welcome. How are you today?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 3:15

I'm doing great, Heather. Thanks for having me on the show. I've been looking forward to this for a while.

Jack Skeels Interview: 3:20

Me too me too. Can you tell us a little bit about why did you write this book?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 3:27

This book actually goes back, how I started my career, which I was a programmer back then, and I was actually really sharp. Kid coming out of a great college program. And I realized that my managers like didn't know anything about what I knew. Right. And so, it's sort of the opposite of what you think of as a manager. And I, I thought, well, you know, what are, what are these managers, all these managers for anyways, and, and, and inevitably I became a manager, which was somewhat horrifying to me to just realize I was one of them, but I,

Jack Skeels Interview: 4:00

Karma

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 4:01

It is. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I've sort of decided I wasn't going to be one of them. And in other words I, and the most common thing we know when we think of managers is really the sort of over managing of the person who's just trying to get the job done. And the book very much is about that. But I've gained this mindset that just always said, do I really need to do that? And, am I adding anything by doing that? Acting like a manager kind of thing and then fast forward and actually, I thought I'd become a pretty good manager, with that mindset and the like and fast forward about 25 years or so into the global economic downturn, I got laid off. I was running the Los Angeles office of a very large consulting company named Sapient and they laid me off and one of the managers said, well, you were never that good of a manager anyways.

Jack Skeels Interview: 4:53

Oh,

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 4:55

and I thought, well, then, then it's fight in words, right, you know, and, in the meantime, I'd worked at RAND, RAND Corporation as an analyst before I got to that job and a senior analyst and researcher, basically. And I thought, I'm going to prove you wrong. And I had this name, I'd rather not repeat it on, on, on a broadcast, but it was vengeance title for a book that I'm going to show you. I know how to manage the guy you laid off, right? And. When I did the research, it was amazing what's out there in terms, and it's what most, the most amazing thing about all the management research is nobody actually knows it. Okay. And I was stunned by that. When I put it all together, this was 20, 2010 to write the book. I realized I didn't know it either. Now there's, I had never lived it. I'd never actually managed well. And so I went out, set out to do that. And that's where age, a company called agency agile, which is now a better company, was born with that idea of, how do we manage better? How do we essentially bring more out in our people and let them grow and excel and all that kind of thing. And so after we've done with 220 companies now, pretty successful at doing it. And, it's time to write a book. And, you're working on one as well. That was not a simple process, but it was also a learning journey as well. Yeah,

Jack Skeels Interview: 6:13

So when you say nobody knows, it knows what, what are we talking about here?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 6:19

well, so there's been a lot of study done and, there's a whole management sciences part of the research world, right? There are PhDs and PhD students who do research on how organizations work, optimal organizational form, optimal managerial behavior, all that kind of thing. No, but you go get your MBA. You never read a single, and I have my MBA for a very nice school. You don't learn a single bit of that stuff. You don't.

Jack Skeels Interview: 6:46

we're talking about the psychology of, of leadership, right?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 6:50

Everything cause they can study mechanics a little bit easier than they can psychology. They can study being like, for example, a really interesting idea is that the more you manage, the less productive your organization is. So most managers don't realize that every time they take a managerial action, they may actually be making the organization less productive.

Jack Skeels Interview: 7:13

So break this down for me, Jack. You just opened up a whole can of worms. We're going to, we're probably going to just dive into what you just said. Break this down for me. When you're saying that every time you make a managerial action, you could be slowing things down, making things more inefficient. What does that look like? Because that sentence alone, that's like fighting words for

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 7:40

All the

Jack Skeels Interview: 7:40

a whole category of people. Yes. All the managers out there are now going to rise up and we're going to find you. So, so explain yourself, sir. What do you mean by this?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 7:51

let me give a really simple example. I think when we think of managing in the very simple form, maybe like a factory assembly line or something like that. And so we're making, and they always say widgets, right? Which whoever widget is right, but we're making, so I've got my department, I'm the manager of this part of the assembly line and we make 200 widgets a week. Right. Okay. And that's, that's our job and whatever, I have eight people or something that I'm responsible for and they're making widgets and we keep on making 200 widgets a week. The department is very successful, right? But I, as a manager feel like, well, what am I supposed to do as a manager? I'm just sitting here watching them make widgets, right? So I think I'm going to do something managerial. Why don't I call a meeting? In fact, I'm going to call a meeting every day. We're going to do a quick status meeting every day just to check in. And I'm going to give them updates on things. I'm going to feel good. I've do a PowerPoint that I can show them that kind of thing. And then they have to go back to making widgets. Well, a month goes by and my boss calls me and says, Hey, I just noticed you guys have been producing like 180 widgets or 185 widgets every week. And why is that? I implemented these meetings. Okay. So we're having these meetings every day, just because I want them to be really informed and all that kind of thing. And my boss says, No meetings. Just let them get work done. Right? And my need to act managerial was a tax on their productivity. I was taking time out of their productive day, taking focus away from them, maybe even making them more confused. They walk out of my meeting and they're like, why in the hell were we in that meeting in the first place? And so this is a very, a very simple illustration of something that's absolutely axiomatic in management research is, The greater the intensity of managing in the organization, the lower the productivity of the organization, it's like proven kind of thing.

Jack Skeels Interview: 9:46

So can you give me another example of this? An example outside of widgets. So, because yes, we have factory settings and all of that, but I would say that our listeners for the most part are also in office settings. They're managing remote teams. They're, they may have team members who are more senior. They may have team members who are more junior, who need more coaching and things like that. So, I'm wondering. Are you distinguishing between management and leadership, or just, do we need managers at all?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 10:23

Oh, watch out.

Jack Skeels Interview: 10:24

Are you still asking that question?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 10:26

going to be after you as well. No, we do need managers. I think the part of the challenge, I'll give you the example in just a second too. But part of the challenge is that we have a mindset that managing is good and therefore more managing is better. That's just plain not true. Okay. That's, that is not true. One of the ways it manifests in sort of the modern workplace, like you're bringing up is that around 1970 or 1980, this idea of a matrix organization became au courant inside of, inside of organizations. And the idea that what this really does is it starts saying that like for any project I'm working on. I not only have my manager, but there are the other managers that are interacting with the project and other people called managers that aren't really managers, like project managers. And so all of a sudden I ended up with this multi manager environment and the simple factory example, which I started with is nice because I can tell that it's the manager's fault for why productivity is changing because it's very simple.

Jack Skeels Interview: 11:28

people from the line.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 11:29

Yeah. But there's no accountability in a multi manager environment because if I'm a project manager managing poorly and interrupting people all the time, no one can tell that I'm actually destroying productivity. And so if we don't have any gate on measuring whether is for productive activity and we have a bunch of people with the title managers, guess what? They're going to go act managerial. Okay. Because not acting managerial. Makes me look like I'm not a good manager, right?

Jack Skeels Interview: 12:01

Okay, so I think I can I can get with you on the productive versus unproductive activities within the organization and how you can't always, especially in modern organizations, you can't always see that direct line and that direct link between what one person is doing and the effect that they're having on the efficiency and the effectiveness of a group.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 12:24

Yeah,

Jack Skeels Interview: 12:24

I'm with you

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 12:25

yeah, you end up, I mean, the modern workplace really for the average knowledge worker is a multi project environment. I'm working on 10 different projects this week, and any one of the managers involved in any of those projects can come by at any moment. And drag me into a meeting, for example, or just interrupt me from getting stuff done. And this idea that existed way back when with a unity of management, in the simple factory example, there's only one manager. Therefore that manager makes all the decisions, all the priorities. That's great. In the modern workplace, we don't have unity of management. We have many managers and, they don't really agree on. A lot of things, right? My project's more important. It's what you should be working on. Stop doing that. Do start doing that. Those sorts of things. All those things are massive productivity killers. And there's no accountability for it either.

Jack Skeels Interview: 13:21

100 percent agree with you. So, okay. We're on the same page now, I think.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 13:25

Cool.

Jack Skeels Interview: 13:26

What is the fix for this? Because this is a huge problem,

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 13:31

Oh, very, very large. So we, where I saw this first is that, is that Sapient, consultancy marketing agency. And, these organizations, which we've worked with for a lot of years now, and are a typical 50 person organization has 40 clients. It has 22 managers. Um, and any given worker has 15 projects they're working on this week. Which you think about that, how little time I get to spend on any project because they have to work on, I have to touch all of them kind of thing. And so they represent the epitome of how crazy it can get. Right. And, and so we, What we've been able to do is actually solve what we call the million dollar problem, which is they're losing more than a million dollars, that 50 person organization losing more than a million dollars a year, just to the inefficiency of all that. And so the fixes look like a couple things and I'll go into a very practical fix, which is managers need to get aligned on what the priorities are. In other words, there, you need to have, and we, teach how to do this, but you need a mechanism, for example, to revive that unity of management thing, right? In other words, like, how do we get all the managers to agree? Okay. Yeah, Angela's project is the most important project this week. And then after that comes Jonathan's or Ingrid's or whatever, that, that simple activity actually quiets down managing. Okay. Right. Because now everyone knows, until Angela's project is done, which by the way, makes everyone more productive, right? Because now we're focusing on one thing. and so you need to restore some of the simplicity of management because we've gotten crazy about management.

Jack Skeels Interview: 15:14

Mm. Okay, so, what does that actually look like? What, what is that practical tool that someone might be able to use to get their managers all together? Because you're right, when you have these competing priorities, depending on how close the relationships are, how much influence that

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 15:34

Oh, absolutely. No, you're getting

Jack Skeels Interview: 15:36

loudest person in the room,

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 15:37

you're getting to the evil side of it because actually those managers engage in of several low grade often. Um, More than low grade warfare over people's attention and focus. We had one client where, uh, one of those managers was going to the CEO and saying, can I say that my project is the most important? It's sort of like a, a kid going, talking to daddy to come back and tell the other kids and just really toxic behaviors. So that's one of those things is frankly if managers, it's one name for it is called a Kanban, K A N B A N, it's an agile concept. It's basically a list of the work being done, but you can structure this sort of list. It's a Japanese idea. You can structure this sort of list and make it public so everyone knows. What the most important thing is, and that removes one of the big things you just mentioned, which is this, Hey, I was the head of sapiens office. All my projects got priority, but that's totally not fair. There's no reason except if I walked over to someone, they're like, Oh, Jack's the head of the office. I should go work on that now. And that was totally wrong, but we didn't have any other mechanism. If I had not done that, then my pro then I'd drop out of the battle and my projects get no priority, right? So it's a it's an escalating battle that can get quite and who pays in this battle? The worker. The person that's trying to get the work done. They've got they're they're they

Jack Skeels Interview: 17:04

customer.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 17:05

Oh, yeah. Not to mention. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Jack Skeels Interview: 17:08

So I, I've definitely been in environments like this and, and I've had situations where there is that competition between you and other managers, other leaders, which makes it very, very hard to move forward. And something like the Kanban chart that you're referencing, How would you introduce that to a group? Let's say you've got a team of managers who are, some of them are in it for the right reasons. They've got a good heart, good intention. Some of them are, positioning themselves quietly behind the scenes. Then you've got leaders who are completely oblivious to all that positioning that's happening. How would you introduce this, this

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 17:51

yeah. So change is difficult. I'm sure you've covered that topic in your podcast. David Prakashka is, uh, one of the famous researchers on change. And, I love his work because he basically says you just will fit change or, inertia will win unless you attack the problem in the hearts and minds of people. Not as a set of actions or rules, right? So one of the things we do in our trainings, it's kind of the fun part the book actually is sort of built this way. I call it cultural linguistic awareness. And that is, we need a vocabulary that actually brings to the surface the problem we're trying to solve. And, and my provocative statement, like managing is contrary to productivity. That's one of those ideas is to get someone to think management is not necessarily a greater good. it's like ketchup, it can make some dishes better at moments, but too much ketchup is too much ketchup and destroys the meal. And so we do a lot of sort of. Narratives and the best way, by the way, to do it is one of our cool things. We'll do a workshop where we'll, we'll give everyone this sort of set of cultural concepts, culturally, the way the organization behaves. And like, like we just did here where it's like, Oh yeah, all those managers. And then we'll say, why don't you guys all tell your stories around this? And we'll have everyone tell their story around it. Okay. Now the managers are in the room as well. And the managers start jumping in saying, yeah I'm horrible at this. Right. And so we get this sort of cultural awareness of that our behavior should change. And then blowing from that, of course, is the. And how do we do that? And that's the beautiful moment that you start saying, okay, the way you fix that is these three steps. Let's go ahead and do that. Let's build this list, this Kanban list, and see what that feels like for you guys to talk about all this stuff and make sure you agree on priorities. And people are blown away by it. It works so well. It gives clarity. It only succeeds and it doesn't succeed all the time. It only succeeds. You were sort of getting at this. It only succeeds when you've got the cultural ethos inside of the organization that, that we do care. About workers, productivity and happiness and that kind of thing, which there are a lot of those organizations out there. Are some that say that, and, but don't really do that. And then there's some literally we run into and they're like, now we're doing fine. We're just, we push people. And, if we have turnover, we have turnover, that kind of thing. But, it does have to kind of, if from a leadership perspective, as I think, change does need to come from the top as an imperative, we need to do this better. Right. That kind of thing.

Jack Skeels Interview: 20:37

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yes. Yes. And, when you're preparing yourself to go in and work with these organizations, some healthy, some not so healthy, everything in between, what helps you sort of Build up the courage. What helps you prepare yourself? What have you found to be really helpful in becoming the best version of yourself? Because you've gone on a huge journey, right? From, from Jack, I, do we even need a manager to, to, Oh no, now I am the manager to I'm helping leaders. I'm helping leaders with their organizations. So what have you found to be helpful for yourself in that journey?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 21:24

It's a great question. And in a way, looking inside myself, I think believing in my mission is the biggest thing because you're right, it is, I do go into, we, me and my team will go into an organization where we know we may not succeed here. And that can be just. Yeah, disheartening, right? Just right off the bat. And I think I just sort of say, if I don't bring my best self to this, then they can't bring their best self and I show up and this is something I learned from the leadership coaching training as well. If you don't believe in the best in people. And I call this the sort of humble gardener kind of thing is that plants will grow if we water them and give them sunshine and that kind of thing. If you can't find that intrinsic love of humanity, then nothing's going to happen, right? Okay. Then it's just about whether they're going to do what I say. And I think the I, I see in my heart, I just, and now I know after all these years, I always believed, but I just, I know it deeply is if we really bring people in and give them an opportunity to speak and talk about what's going on, things get better. We're good at that as humans. And I think that one of the things that fails inside the organization is people don't talk about the, it's just like relationships, by the way, that people don't talk about the things they should be talking about. And I'm for, look, I'm just really optimistic also. I don't know where that comes from, but it's just, it's in my, it's in my DNA. So.

Jack Skeels Interview: 22:52

Hmm. So when, I believe that. Where you're at is where a lot of our listeners are at as well. They believe in the best in people. They understand that it's so important for them to show up at their best, or as their best, when they're going out there and trying to convince others that this is the way forward for us. And sometimes when you're on that path and you're moving upstream or you're doing this work, pressure can build. It can start to feel kind of heavy. And we talk a lot about using levity as a way to sort of relieve, relieve that pressure in your life so that you can continue to do this work in a joyful way. So what are some things that you do when you're having those days when you feel like, whoa, why did I even get into this to begin with? How do you make sure that you're not burning out yourself in the process?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 23:52

so I'm an introvert. So my answer to almost everything is just, like go in a dark room and let myself recover kind of thing. I think the, I am, I think like many people that might be listening, I'm, I feel very driven because I'm passionate about what I'm doing. And I'm also racked by self doubt all the time, right? Which is that, am I doing it right? Am I doing well enough? Are we missing something? What else can I do? Did I do enough? Those sorts of things. And I think it was tough for me for a bunch of years. when we were working with the 10th organization or the 15th organization and it really took, seeing and actually we'd worked with about a hundred organizations and my business partner, one, one day we're walking back from dinner at a client, you know, Visiting a client. And I said, man, I hope people are just getting something out of this. I just hope that we're making a difference. And he just grabbed me, said, you've got to be kidding. And you've got to, you have no idea how much impact we've had on people. And he starts just reading me the riot act. And I think that. I draw on that at times, is that it isn't necessarily that I can experience it or feel confident in it, but that I've got people I trust that, that say we're making a difference. And, and I think, uh, underlying that is just, you know, even if you can't make a difference, it's a different thing to try than to not try.

Jack Skeels Interview: 25:18

Mm hmm.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 25:19

If I bring an energy to it, that this is all possible and there are other people that maybe believe it's possible. And we become this tribe that, that pushes it that way. And sometimes the tribe wins that game. Sometimes the tribe loses that game. But I think that that sense of death mission and destiny, I just, I don't know why I'm good at renewing it. It's a really good question, but, but I am, and I've had those moments and I just sort of go, what else am I going to do? Right. You know,

Jack Skeels Interview: 25:51

Something to ponder over the weekend,

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 25:53

I'm sure it will be

Jack Skeels Interview: 25:55

Right when you go into that dark room by yourself

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 26:00

maybe right after this recording. Yeah.

Jack Skeels Interview: 26:03

Like oh should I have said that no, but what you're what you said makes sense so sometimes people think about levity as all jokes and humor and all of that, but, but really at the root of it, the, the Latin of it, it's all about sort of floating, rising above pressure. And And when you, when you're out there in the water and you've got this pressure that's kind of taking you under the water, once that's let go, once, once that's removed, you're going to bounce back up. And that's what happened when you had that conversation with one of your clients and they said, no, let me tell you about all of the good things that you've done. And that removed a lot of that self doubt that removed. Some of that am I even making an impact and gave you more perspective,

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 26:57

yeah, yeah. I actually real quick story. I was at a conference speaking and, of the end of the day and everyone's going their own way to go get dinner and the like. I walk out of the building and, and I didn't really know it. You know, I was there. It's sort of a tell the story and see if someone wants to do business. And I'm a hundred feet away and someone's yelling behind me, Jack, Jack, Jack skills, please wait. And I turn around, it's this woman. I don't remember her from any, uh, person or anything like that. And, about 35 years old. And she comes over and she goes, I know you don't remember me. You trained our organization, whatever it was three years ago in New York city that I said, Oh, well, cool. Great. She goes, you changed my life. You changed the way I think about work and working. I just wanted to grab you and say thank you for that. And I was like, I still remember that to this day vividly that even if it's just one person, right? I know it's more than one person, but the it's, you know,

Jack Skeels Interview: 27:58

the ripple

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 27:59

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jack Skeels Interview: 28:00

The ripple effect is huge and that's something that you don't always get you don't get to see it. Honestly

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 28:06

Yeah.

Jack Skeels Interview: 28:07

Oftentimes it's an invisible ripple but you are having that impact on the world. So I want to make sure we have a little bit of time to talk about this scenario. Are you ready?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 28:17

I'm ready.

Jack Skeels Interview: 28:19

Okay, so We have a scenario for you. I've experienced this personally. I don't know about you jack

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 28:27

We'll find out.

Jack Skeels Interview: 28:28

We have poor Jorge who, uh, started his job and he's just kind of feeling like he's been left and he's wondering if he's got to just go at all on his own, he's feeling lonely, he's feeling isolated, people are too busy to check in with him to introduce themselves. We know community is so important. So what were your thoughts when, when you heard this scenario?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 28:56

Well, I think that's the standard onboarding program, isn't it?

Jack Skeels Interview: 28:59

Well, not, hopefully not anymore.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 29:03

Um,

Jack Skeels Interview: 29:03

I think that, that, that is the traditional onboarding, like, let's put you in front of a big tube TV. We're going to pop the VCR tape in there. Some people are not even going to know what I'm talking about. And you're going to have to sit and watch, like, sexual harassment training and compliance. Yeah. That's onboarding.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 29:22

yeah. Yeah, I think there's a, I'm going to tie this to the book a little bit as well, because I think there's a, if we talk about what managers should be doing that they're not doing today, I think it plays very well into that in the book. We talk about the four key managerial moments. Cause one of the problems is if I say you're over managing, then you're like, well, how do I know what to manage less of? Right. So what we really say is manage less, But kill it on these four key moments. One of the key moments is called the why moment. It's the moment that explains the context around everything that we're doing. And we have an exercise that we teach around it and it works very well. For example, when you're launching a new project with a bunch of stakeholders and. Team members and participants and making sure that everyone really is included in the understanding of the project. It comes from a Japanese technique called BA, B A, and it means together basically as a, I probably have mangled the exact translation, but it means to be all in one place together and that sort of conceptually. And the activity actually looks like if we took chorus for stay. And we believe in this as an organization, and I believe it as a manager, I might say, we're going to spend 2 hours with Jorge right at the beginning. I'm going to bring in the people who he most likely will deal with in his day and all the people in my department. We're going to sit down. And I'm going to say a little bit about the department just to give some context and that kind of thing and have Jorge say a little bit about himself so we all sort of get grounded. I'm going to actually have everyone talk just a little bit about themselves, okay? So I'm going to create a little community, okay? And then I'm going to do something that changes it all. I'm going to say, Jorge, what is it that you are concerned about? What do you want to know? What do you want to understand about what we do? And all that kind of thing. And we wait, because Jorge's not ready for that question, right?

Jack Skeels Interview: 31:27

No, he's, no. Jorge is like, I just came to learn. I I was expecting a video. No,

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 31:33

Right? No, exactly. Can I watch that sexual harassment tape again? And what I've done is I've signaled and I wait, okay, I don't let Jorge off the hook because I know Jorge is capable of asking questions. And I want people who ask questions and think about their work and think about my department. And I'm patterning right away. That's not only okay, but it's essential. That we think about what we're doing and why we're doing it and all that kind of thing. And Jorge, believe me, I've had some very uncomfortable moments. It feels like forever. Five minutes feels like a half hour, right? But when everyone knows this is the drill, everyone will shut up and wait for Jorge to speak. And when those questions come out, then we'd be responsible. We're responsive to it and we start building a patterning and we all start getting a sense of how Jorge is wired. Okay. How Jorge thinks, what Jorge needs, what experiences, he needs to have to feel like he's more integrated with the work. And in doing so, we, we bring up these, uh, pro social mechanisms in our brain that are all about how we build tribe. tribe and community and group understanding and that kind of thing. And in that hour or two, even if we spent two hours doing it, we make him feel like he's got a right to be here. He's valuable to us. We're giving our time to him and that he has a right to go ask other questions. Because that's, by the way, that's the single biggest determinant of success in a career position is the velocity and depth with which you ask questions, right? That you asking for help, asking for knowledge, asking for support, is

Jack Skeels Interview: 33:12

The squeaky will gets the grease.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 33:14

It does. Yeah, exactly.

Jack Skeels Interview: 33:17

Yes. That's only one of the four key moments. So, I'm not going to ask you to dive into all of the key moments, but we've got the why. What are the other three?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 33:27

Yeah. So basically the why is the broader context for why this is happening, why our department exists, or in the case of a project, why this project exists, the what, so it's why, what, go and grow and the what is the, what it is we're trying to do, and it turns out a But a similar, similarly clever activity is available for how do we make sure everyone understands what we're trying to do. And the funny thing that comes out when you do that is if you have a multi manager environment, usually the managers don't even know or agree on what we're trying to do. You've seen that before, I'm sure, right? And, and so that does a clarification there. And then go is when people go do the project. And this is that idea. Can we just leave them alone? And let them do the work and that's a lot of the unmanaging and then grow is in fact, an emphasis on this idea that, that we need to have methods for how do we make sure everyone gets a chance to play? And I know we don't want to dive into DEI and inclusion pool right here, but I do want to point out that if, if it's left to managers, this is a big piece of managerial inefficiency. It's left to managers to choose who gets to play the biases. Ridiculously significant the, job evaluations, assessments of who's capable of doing it are wildly often skewed by these notions of people that I feel more relatable to are the people that are better at it. And that's

Jack Skeels Interview: 34:58

right. Exactly. And Jack, we can dive

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 35:02

Well, I didn't know. Sure. Sure.

Jack Skeels Interview: 35:05

We can dive into it. It's okay. I'm just curious about this, this Grow, because choosing who gets to play after they've already, after you already set them off to go do, it seems off. Like I was expecting, I was expecting Grow to be. All right, how can we ensure that we have mechanisms in place to, to learn from what we're doing and, test and iterate and, so you threw me off there.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 35:34

so yeah, the diagram in the book has why, uh, why what go as a top thing and grow is underneath it. And so that, yeah, it's not a, not a complete chain of, of sequence. There is grow stuff that you do at the end of the project, right? Which a lot of people call it the retrospective or frighteningly, frighteningly the

Jack Skeels Interview: 35:54

the postmortems.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 35:55

death, right? Yeah, exactly.

Jack Skeels Interview: 35:57

Uh huh.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 35:58

It'd be nice to have the post life, whatever that would be in Latin. The bigger thing around grow is that people throughout that project had the opportunity to grow. And that's through the choices we made about including them early on. So they understood, but also giving them challenges, and giving them opportunities because I think the big challenge inside of our workplaces around DEI, we work with the four a's American Association of Advertising Agencies and they have a program called map, which is in a multi multicultural, intern program. And one of the big things if you wanna work in the agency space is you need to get an internship. And so they're doing a lot of work to actually drive, a more inclusive. Diverse, if you will, workforce that gives people a chance to even be chosen, right? That kind of thing. It works really, apparently works really, really well, according to the research they've done on it. But the other thing is once they get in, once that worker gets inside the environment, how do we make sure that they're getting a fair shot at succeeding? And that comes down to this terrifying idea that managerial choice works, and it doesn't. It's horrible. Deloitte, I have it in the book. I talk about in the book. The research is very clear. Managers choose poorly, and they choose with a very, very large, there's no surprise,

Jack Skeels Interview: 37:21

Yeah, there's so many biases at play. Mm

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 37:23

And so when you think about growing people, you need to think about not using managerial choice as a key criteria. Yeah. Which is sort of counterintuitive, there are other solutions to it, okay? I can use a take turns approach. It's Angela's turn to do this, right? Not who do I think is best, but it's

Jack Skeels Interview: 37:43

sort of a round robin

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 37:45

and so then the question is, if Angela's going to do it, maybe she doesn't have a lot of experience doing it, so then what do we need to do to make Angela successful at doing it? Rather than say, we'll wait until Angela fails, right? That kind of thing. I tell a story in there where the, person that chose to do one of the hardest parts of a project, because no one else was available, Was a guy who a year before had won a yo championship and had never done, never done any programming at all. And everyone just laughed when I suggested maybe he could go do it. And I said, okay, let's assume that he can, what would he need for support? And everyone jumped in again, that sort of use of a question and he killed it. He killed it. He did a great job and everyone was blown away. But if you had asked anyone, was Eric the guy to do it? No, no, he wasn't.

Jack Skeels Interview: 38:35

that does solve for a very common issue that I see where in leadership levels whenever there's an opportunity for a new project They're always Picking high performers, people who have a lot of ability to get things done. And those same people get tapped again and again, and again for project after project after project until they're burnt out and they can't do anymore. And what's unfortunate about that is there's so many other people within the organization who could get that job done. It's just that leader who's making those choices doesn't have the visibility into the capabilities. within their organization or interest levels or any of that availability. So they continue to reach out to the same people that they know, like and trust. And yeah, that's a huge

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 39:25

And it's a very flawed management behavior. There's a, there's another effect I talk about, which is called the pecking order effect, which comes from studying chickens, right? And what it is, is that the chicken that pecks the fastest gets more food, which means that chicken gets stronger, which means the chicken pecks faster and is stronger and can push other chickens away. And that's the thing that happens as well as the reason we, Have the high potential people, the hypos as they're called a lot of times, right? Is because we actually believe they're hypos. And so they get the best projects. They get the best challenges. They get to learn more and faster. I'm always shocked when a manager, by the way, complains about their people, like half my people, we should be replacing them or something like that. And I think, no, the person you should replace is the manager yourself, because it's your job to not have that situation. It's your job to create a department filled of, filled with my potential people, not to say, look at the one person I created on the backs of everyone else, right?

Jack Skeels Interview: 40:25

Right, right. And you know, I heard this, one of my clients actually mentioned this to me and I want to share this. And I think it's important for everyone to know everyone has potential.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 40:39

Totally.

Jack Skeels Interview: 40:40

the question is for what? And once we, once we turn it a little bit like that and start to look at that and ask that question for what potential, I know you have it. I just have to figure out, how can we unlock that and apply that to different things? That opens up so many possibilities. Yeah,

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 41:10

had a book, and I think it's The Blank Slate, I forget which one, but he cited some research that showed basically anyone can learn anything. It's just a matter of how long it takes. And so I agree with what you're saying and that you may not have enough time for that person to learn that thing. But, but a lot of times like Eric, the yo yo champion, right? It's, it's a matter of what do they, let's just assume they can get there, right? And let's make the investment and it may not be as fast as you wish but at the end, in the end, you'll succeed because they want to succeed as well. And, I think there's, we don't realize just how powerful. All of us humans are all of us. Humans came from, proto humans that survived the brutality of the world. 400, 000 years ago. Okay. All your ancestors are saying it's her turn right now. Okay. She's ready. She's been preparing for this for 400, 000 years. We got her ready by learning how to do things and building it into our gene pool and everything. I think that. The potential inside of organizations is probably 50 percent squandered, at least in terms of what people could be doing.

Jack Skeels Interview: 42:28

you're probably right about that if we could sit down and actually measure it. So Jack, this has been a really interesting, thought provoking conversation. Thank you.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 42:37

You're welcome. A real

Jack Skeels Interview: 42:38

And then if anyone's interested in learning more about you, what you're about, where should they go?

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 42:46

I'm easy to find on LinkedIn as our most business folks these days. Please just reach out to me. Happy to talk. And, also of course, better company, it's better company. co, but you'll find it if you search on better company. And we would love to work with you and your organization, if that's something that's interesting to you as well.

Jack Skeels Interview: 43:04

Perfect. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jack. I hope you have a wonderful day.

audioJackSkeels11071730005: 43:10

Thank you. You too. It's been a real pleasure. Great conversation.