Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Everyone talks about high performance, but almost no one can explain how to build it. Until now. In this episode, I speak with Steve Tashjian, elite performance coach and founder of the Evaluation Project. Steve's worked with national teams and Premier League clubs and now he's revealing what actually creates performance.
Alignment, empowerment, collaboration and resilience.
This is your blueprint to lead, like the best in sport and business.
So, Steve, welcome to the Cultural Leadership podcast, mate. It's a pleasure having you on, Brendan.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: I've been looking forward to this for a while. I'm glad we finally got a chance to connect and dive into what's probably going to be a great 45 minutes here.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Absolutely, mate. We were sort of laughing a little bit off prior to hitting the record button and we're both.
You're a high performer performing under pressure for many years, which we're going to dive into. And it's a high performance household I'm sitting in at the moment with a couple of little ones in the house. Never done a podcast with two little ones. My wife's under pressure, so let's just see how this goal goes. You got to sometimes. What's the saying? You just got to roll with it.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: That's it. We'll get through it together. Don't worry about it.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Absolutely, mate. I. How about. Let's dive in. So this, this thing called the Elevation Project, which is the business you've started, I'm really keen to understand a little bit more about that and really what inspired you to. To get on that journey and start this thing called the Elevation Project?
[00:01:22] Speaker B: You know what, honestly, I would say that if 20 years ago you told me that this is what I would be doing, I probably, you know, wouldn't believe you for sure. Probably most people feel that way, but for, you know, a couple of decades in professional sport, you end up being in and around environments that have different levels of excellence in them.
You start to learn pretty quickly how you contribute to the ups and downs of those environments. You quickly learn how the environment itself takes you through ups and downs and then you. You don't know it at the time. There's no labels to it.
Mainly for me, because I wasn't necessarily as well read in those moments or as mature in my own pathway to understand it. But what you're seeing and feeling without knowing it is, you know, elements, key characteristics that are critical to, you know, to really have a high performing environment.
And as I worked my way through these different periods of my career, you know, I luckily was finishing that phase or chapter in my career with the best environment I've ever been in, working under the best leader I had ever worked under in Greg Burholter with the national team. And you slowly start to realize, man, what I'm craving and what I really operated at a high level under were these amazing cultures and environments that were rooted in these, you know, key characteristics that you find in these high performing environments. So as I was knowing that my family needed something different and the energy expenditure of professional sport and the, the way it wears on you as an individual, but your family as well was something we knew needed to change. And just thinking about what it was that I thought I would do, I started to really lean into, hey, like what do I really feel like my own purposes now? It does change over your lifetime. And what I felt was a continued calling to be, you know, a servant. That's where I started with, you know, I just started with knowing that there's a calling, a specific calling I keep coming back to. And then the next question is, well, you know, serve. How, how are you going to serve? And I think a lot of that is like, let's just lean into what we feel our, you know, our gifts are, you know, what is it that we've, you know, feel we've worked good at? And so just a lot of conversations with people and saying, if I was to serve, you know, whether it's our industry or other industries, what would be the strengths that I could bring to a, you know, a servant mentality. And it was really around this idea of, you know, developing the, the characteristics within environments and helping that transformation take place, whether it's within teams in the sporting industry or whether it's in a corporate setting or whatever it might be. I'm also a musician, I'm passionate about the performing arts. And it slowly started to work itself to where I wanted to take these elements of coaching.
These, you know, incredible traits that I learned either through osmosis, through being around great coaches or through the, you know, the ups and downs and failures and successes of my own coaching and apply them into these areas where I feel like I could take that practice, take that maybe that thin slicing, acute ability to kind of read into environments and read into the organizational structures and then start to really help individuals serve them in that way where I could maybe start to mold different organizations into high performing teams.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: Mate, let's you frame that well. We're going to link everything back to sort of business and particularly small, medium businesses. Who is sort of my target market, what's for those that have not had any involvement with sort of high performance sports, professional type sport and those sorts of things, or maybe not been in a high level, in an organizational setting.
What does high performance look like in a sporting context based on your own experience?
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Ooh, yeah, I'm gonna try to unpack that one.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: It's probably a big bucket. Even if you just sort of break it down into a few key things so people can resonate with that.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, you know, quickly working our way from 200,000ft to ground level, what I'd say is I continually probably draw attention to a single statement first and foremost about what high performance is. I think, I think high performance is the relentless execution of your process.
If you're thinking about it from the idea of being, you know, moving away from being an outcome driven organization and instead thinking about systems and processes and how in general we are always within some area of a feedback loop of a very complex system. Right. That's, you know, that's. We exist in a multitude of feedback loops, we exist in a multitude of systems and the way we interact with those systems causes ripple effects everywhere. So understanding the consistency in how I execute a proven process within a proven system and how well I can do it at an excellent level continues to kind of define, I think, what high performance is.
And it doesn't matter if you're talking about a department level, senior directorship level, you know, global leadership level, or, you know, or president CEO levels. It's really about am I in a position where I'm managing the consistent execution of our process? That's, that's a starting point. I think it's a starting point. And I think the next thing down from that would be recognizing what I think are probably, you know, I'm going to start with four buckets. I think there might be more if we really took the time to think about it. But some of the things you'll always see in high performing organizations, big or small, is one, there's alignment, there's always alignment. And in that alignment, you know, you're talking about identity, you know, identity topics. You're talking about culture, you're talking about the joy that comes from great culture. You're talking about strategy. Right? Alignment is always around. Do we clearly know who we are? Have we produced high level strategy and are we aligned on that strategy? You know, so there's an alignment bucket. I think that's super important. Culture gives us the joy. We need to live in that identity and execute strategy day in, day out, good times and bad times. Because we're, we're living in joy because of the culture that, that we're, that we get to work in. The next is kind of this empowerment bucket. You know, you have alignment, you have empowerment. For me, empowerment is the idea that there's governance, there's clarity, roles and responsibilities, governance, accountability. Also in my opinion in this empowerment bucket is the idea of this decentralized command. You know, we don't all have to wait until the top of the pyramid says yes and then we can go execute, which is time consuming and doesn't allow the speed that high performing teams need to be agile in, you know, a very, very volatile global market or, or a very, very volatile week to week professional season within sport. So the empowerment piece is super important. Next for me is there's always some aspect of high level collaboration within high performing teams. You know, there and to me the most important thing that starts with is there's this trust, there's this safety and there's this trust that you feel in these collaborative environments. There's high speed communication and information sharing, right? The collaborative area, this collaborative bucket includes that high speed communication, which is a systems and processes thing. And then there's just a connectedness, you know, that connectedness, you could, you could drill it down to a social connectedness or you could just drill it down to a, a departmental connectedness. You know, I think I equate it to a lot of groups that spend lots of times instead of trying to add processes, instead they say what do we need to do to take things away? So there's no bottlenecks. You know, there's, there are very little bottlenecks stop where connectedness stops, where speed stops, and there's this collaborative way that, that takes place. You know, so there's alignment, there's empowerment, there's collaboration and then the last thing I always see is an incredible amount of resiliency. They're resilient. High performing teams are resilient. From the perspective of one, there's high level expertise and diversity and skill. And the resiliency is because at any given moment, based on the need, there's expertise within the team and a decentralized command so that people, people will let that specialist lead, people will let that expert be an expert and solve the issue at hand. And that's what resiliency is. Resiliency is change management. Flexibility, adaptability and change manage. Change management's a big deal, especially in sport. For us, change happens weekly.
But more importantly, if you looked at it from the perspective of changing governance, you know, Sport two or three years. It's not uncommon for head coaches and leadership to be moving in and out of a sporting organization. Well, if I'm in at the department level, which I have been for a long time in my career, thinking about how I'm on track to get things done in a certain way and I feel like I'm in a rhythm and all of a sudden the captain changes. That's really difficult. That's a change in transformation that requires a group that understands how to be ready for change and then executing the small processes in a way where again we're letting experts say now with this new team, it seems like because we have diversity in our, in our group, it seems like we're going to have to lean on this different area of our expertise to be successful with this new leadership group. That change management requires us to be comfortable with. Knowing one, we know things are going to change. The only thing we can bank on is something's going to change and that change management is important. Last is conflict management. You know, a resilient group knows how to resolve conflict and that starts with people who aren't in a conflict situation trying to win or lose. Because there is no winning and losing in difficult conversations. There's no winning and losing in conflict management. There's the process of seeking to understand which is a very high level awareness, thoughtfulness, mindfulness, position to be in as a leader and then to be able to have staff that understand that well, teach that type of, of awareness, thoughtfulness to staff and let them know this is a part of our cultures is a big piece of why teams stay resilient. Because there's, as change management comes, some people are going to deal with that change well, some people are not going to deal with that change well. And the ones that don't deal with that change well are usually the ones that will, will cause, you know, some rough water. And dealing with that is, is a skill set that is present in a lot of these high performing teams within this resiliency bucket. So I, I think that's a, it's a early way of shaping it is just saying, you know, if you, if you were to look at your organization from 10,000ft and say, are we a high performing team? I would ask you, you know, is there alignment? Really, really high level alignment? Is there empowerment happening everywhere? Right. Is there collaboration happening everywhere? And do you see resiliency in the way your organization deals with the inevitable change that comes from just existing as a, as a company within our markets or as a, or As a team within, you know, professional sport which is, is rife with change.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: I love that four point model. Let's say in the details underneath that. Let me just play a bit of a speed round for you. I know you spent time at Everton Football Club and more recently or certainly in the last few years you were at the US national team as well. So involved in, you know, both fairly high performance arenas I suppose.
Let's say on alignment, who was stronger, Everton Football Club or the US National Team.
Don't go into detail, you just tell me. Put you in the hot seat, mate.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: U.S. men's National Team Empowerment. Everton Football Club or U.S. national Team?
[00:13:09] Speaker B: U.S. men's national team.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: High level collaboration.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: U.S. men's national team.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: U.S. national team Resilience.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: U.S. men's national team.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Clean sweet, mate.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Now I have to say, yeah, both were good. Yeah.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: I'm a Liverpool Football Club supporter, mate and I was severely hoping that that would be your answer for all four.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: So now that I know you've set me up.
That's dirty.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: You walk straight into it, buddy.
You walk straight into it.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: And here's the other thing. You got a liver. A lifelong Liverpool fan with the name Brandon Rodgers. Right.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: I know how, how uncanny.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: You must unbelievable crap for that. Yeah. I would say.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Well it used to get me places. It used to get me.
At least if I, at least if I call up people.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And here's the thing.
It's, it's tough to, it's tough to choose and it's tough to say it to be honest. It is. But the truth is you're dealing with. I was in a circumstance at the time at Everton Football where we were, we were winning at a high level with, with, with not the resources that other clubs had. You know, David Moyes is an excellent leader and your question was who did it better? And that's where I have to choose. The U.S. men's National Team. You know, the, my time at Everton, the one area where I would say I felt the lowest level of excellence in those four categories was empowerment. I was just in a position within English football in England where it was difficult, it was difficult to be a fitness coach, sports scientist, high performance coach in, in England in general.
And there's always this healthy level of conflict between fitness coaches, performance coaches and head coaches. And I was young, you know, in, in terms of my own maturity and I think my empowerment issue was just as much my own doing as it was, you know, David Moyes resistance to giving me more ability. So I think it's Also about the fact that, you know, I was in my mid to late 40s with the US men's national team. I was in my mid-30s at Everton football, early to mid-30s at Everton football Club. And a lot of those issues around mainly that empowerment bucket were just as much my issue as it was, you know, David Moyes management style and that, that is what it is, you know, resiliency, it was really hard to choose because you know, in my time there we never finished worse than eighth place. But we also had moments where we were in the bottom three. Like that's real resilience. You know, that's being able to, to always finish in the top eight no matter what in a five year period. Even though sometimes at Christmas we were in third, sometimes at Christmas we were in 19th. That it's a, it's a pretty resilient culture that David was able to produce, you know. But in the end, gun to my head and we're asking it about best.
Yeah, when you compare the two I have to give the nod to the national team, mate.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: And look what I love about that is the environment you've come from, the sort of person you are, the high performance level. You've got to, is that honestly if I was to ask, and I did think about this, if I was to ask people that are doing let's say normal run the mill stuff or whatever they're achieving in their level, but people have come from a background of yours. When you put them under pressure like that, you make a decision and that's a big difference for me around high performance, isn't it? Like the ability to make decisions under pressure.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And you're. I think that's the biggest adjustment I've had to make now, you know, is we're used to moving at speed and when I first transitioned into consulting, especially when some of those, some of those leads within the pipeline were corporate leads, I would, I'm, I'm pretty confident I chased some people away because I'm always moving, I'm ready to move and, and a lot of folks aren't. They' you know, we, we tend. But it's also a weakness because we tend to do that because of conviction in the sporting world and conviction isn't always a positive thing. You know, there's times when it's, it's been the reason why I've had success in, in environment that needs to move really fast. Other times it's now a weakness that is truly rooted in biases and you're, you're operating on these biases in a very factual way, which is dangerous.
So sport is really an area where we do a really interesting dance between conviction and bias, healthy conviction and non healthy conviction.
But it's the need for decisiveness that drives that. Brennan. It's a really, really good point.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: I want to ask this question in the context of David specifically because of his journey and obviously you've got a relationship with him that I've got a lot of respect for a guy like that and particularly when you talk about the resilience side of Everton Football Club and a lot of those clubs that are sort of, you know, moving around in the Premier League or other leagues around the world. With someone like David though, what's your view or your opinion on evaluation? I suppose on, you know, he, let's say he performed, as you said, at Everton Football Club and the club performed with limited resources compared to others and then he has the opportunity then and takes it to go to a club who supposedly has more reasons, more resources, namely Man United, but doesn't reach reach those sort of heights with the resources around it. What is it about the individual? What is about the environment? What is about the, you know, the misalignment or whatever that, you know, enables that to happen, in your view?
[00:18:39] Speaker B: You know, I really will put this more on Man United than I will on David. And this is pure opinion.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: I'm happy for you to do that, by the way.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Yeah, of course you are.
This is pure opinion.
But you know, we've all watched the last, you know, David went there, the 2013, 14 season, right. So we're now talking about a good 10 year stretch, 12 year stretch of, you know, of a, what you would call relatively underachieving for men, Man United, especially in the last few years. You take this year to see man United with 20 losses in a single season. I don't think they had 20 losses in my five years in England with Everton. I don't think I, I maybe, maybe and I. It's clearly started with Sir Alex Ferguson's departure. So my question around it is, is it coincidence that it seems a club that has lost identity, which alignment is rooted in identity, let's face it. And if you want to narrow it down to vision, mission and values, which a lot of people roll their eyes when they hear it and it's disappointing if they do roll their eyes. Alignment is about understanding our mission. It's about understanding what our legacy is going to be and our impact on the world, on something bigger than ourselves.
But if you were to ask yourself did they have an identity with Sir Alex Ferguson? Do they have an identity now? Your answer would be yes, they did and now they don't. Which tells me that the identity was not connected to Manchester United. The identity was connected to a person. And I don't care if you're Man United, I don't care if you're Intel, Microsoft, I don't care who you are. Small business, mid business, large business. If your identity is connected to your leadership, you're in trouble. Because leaders come and go, people come and go. That's what we know is going to happen. We talked about with that change management piece. The identity of the organization has to be attached to the organization, not to the individual. And so if I'm going to be critical, David stepped into a really difficult situation. And knowing who he is, how good he is as a man manager, knowing how good he is at producing culture. Everton was an incredible club to be a part of when I was there. For me to go to England with just me and my wife, no family, just us two. And then we had our first child in, in the uk. We're on, we are by ourselves. The way that club seamlessly just wrapped us in their arms and gave us the feeling of support was down to the way David created culture within the building and then that, that, that never stopped. Like the connectedness within those four walls was incredibly powerful and it policed itself. It was, it was an incredible environment for someone like that who can create something like that to move to another environment and find it very difficult. You know, there, there's definitely for me an alignment issue when you're trying to be successful in especially someone who knows the sport, who knows what success looks like and then goes in and has difficulty producing success.
You know, I'm, I tend to, I tend to look at the organization and ask why was somebody this good not able to be successful? Now there's, there's many people that I've heard say doesn't matter who took that job after Sir Alex Ferguson, they were all going to fail. And you could argue that everybody has failed since Sir Alex Ferguson if you were going to hold, hold the standard to what he was able to accomplish there in his time. And I do think it's, it's unfair what I've heard around, you know, David Moyes and his, his lack of success there. So, you know, for me I would lean towards the conversation which I've had a lot now lately around where does alignment lie? You know, and it, it should be those types of powerful identity moments. What I call identity collisions should be happening all the time within your organization because the identity lives within the building. It's there regardless of leadership. It probably is also the reason why some individuals have a hard time finding their next leader. Because if there isn't a really clear identity to the organization, how do I pick who the right leader is? Right. I'm. I can't, I can't jump on a ship as a captain onto a boat without a steering wheel and guarantee you I'm going to be successful. It's very difficult to do that. So I think a lot of it came down to, in my opinion, a situation that we're currently watching in real time now with Man United and looking at a group that's struggling to really find what they're, who they are and what their impact is going to be beyond football because it can't just be about winning trophies. Winning trophies and winning the Premier League is a goal that's not a vision. So I think there's a lot, I think there's a lot there that can to be developed and something that will probably point to the reasons behind some instability and lack of consistency in performances for that club over the last 10 years.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: I'm sticking to this point for a few reasons. There's so many lessons to be learned when you translate this across to the business world in your model of. And this first one, alignment. Is this where succession falls in? Because you talked a bit about, you didn't mention the word succession, but following after Alex Ferguson, you can relate to again my team, Liverpool and sorry to bring it back to that, but you've got Klopp who, who's finished up but then again, I obviously don't know the inner background workings of how that's happened. But then you've got Arnie Slott who's taken over and he's won the championship or won the league in his first season. That would be Seymour. That's a pretty successful succession plan, isn't it? In place and alignment to the organization and how it's played out.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: Yeah, you can't argue with it, you know, and for me to be able to say yes, it's because there's clear, you know, a clear identity and purpose behind Liverpool and nowhere else. It's hard to say. But you can't argue with the success from coach to coach as it relates to definitely within the last 10 years. So I think, you know, it's, it's interesting too that this is, this is, you've, you've brought up a great point.
This doesn't just this doesn't was the best way to say this. The benefit of the way identity drives succession is not just about CEOs, presidents and board members, senior VPs. It's about everywhere in your organization. Everywhere in your organization. The, the way we know who the right person is. If you think about that question who's the right.
The first thing you would ask is right person for what? If you can't define that, then you're leaving it to chance. In my opinion at that point, the right person doesn't have anything to do with whether they were successful at another company, whether they were successful as a coach at another club. So you know, you're currently dealing with that at Man United. Now an extremely successful young manager who did amazing things in Portugal with Sporting Lisbon comes here and it's just disaster. Not even close. And the succession piece from any organization's perspective would be really around alignment first without a doubt. And being able to answer the question who are we? Is vital, critical. Before you go answering the question who's next?
[00:25:37] Speaker A: And to that point, let's go. I mean look, I could just dive into that, this element all day with you, I think and you'd probably be able to talk about it all day, which would be fantastic. Maybe another conversation in the future, mate.
But, but I really do want to unpack those four elements that you talk about just from a business perspective because again you explained perfectly the learnings from that and even your journey as a 30 year old around Everton Football Club and then into your 40s or whatever with the national team. And I can certainly relate to that journey. There's a lot to be Learned in that 10 year space, isn't there?
If you just had to pick one or two things from a business perspective in your experience, what does alignment look like or what should a business owner, business leader focus on? To bring alignment that makes know is sort of that lever or the two couple of biggest leverage points.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I was, I was looking for a book just to add to the collection and something different from an author that I hadn't read before and I saw Rasmus Ankerson's book and it was interesting because he's. He owns football clubs, he's a businessman, but he owns football clubs. I thought this will be interesting and the book's called Hunger in Paradise. It's a super short book but I read something in there that's the starting point for this conversation. And in the book talking about vision, which is a, is an important point in the question you asked, he Makes a small, quick statement that says, vision is not what you make, it's what you do. And that was super impactful for me. And, you know, very recently, I just went through, you know, two years of, of helping a company, a large company, a billion dollar company, reevaluate and refine, redefine their vision, mission and values for the, for the whole organization, corporate space. And we leaned into this because they actually manufacture a product. And for them to say, our vision isn't about the product, but it's the impact we are going to have with our product on something bigger than ourselves. It's difficult to wrap your head around something like that. There's great examples of it. You know, Lego is a company that I admire quite a bit. And their vision statement was to inspire and create the builders of tomorrow. There's nothing in that vision statement about toys. You know, Patagonia's vision statement is Patagonia is in the business of saving the planet. That, that's amazing. And there's nothing in there about outdoor gear. And then retrospectively, if you look back on the company in the last five to 10 years, you go, you know what they live, they're living it. Maybe think about it, what you know about that company and the way they use their resources and the way they use their financial resources to try to live that at a high level. You couldn't argue with them. It's not lip service. And if you walked into that building, I bet you everybody would be incredibly proud to be a part of Patagonia for that reason, because the alignment around their purpose.
So that's interesting because with the US Men's national team, you know, if you're talking about a sporting organization, nine times out of 10, the answer I hear when I ask, what's your vision? It's to win the Champions League, to win a trophy, to win this. And, and, and in the end, you know, when we really shaped it with the national team, you know, Greg came to us and said, we're going to change the way the world views American soccer. I was like, I could. I would have. It hit me like a sledgehammer. Brendan. Everything I do has meaning. Every single detail matters 10 times more than it did before. My relationships with clubs, the trust I build with my players, the processes we, we put into place so that we can be successful in how we operate as a group and the product we create on the field, everything has more meaning because it's not about winning anymore, because I can actually change the way the world views American soccer and lose A game. And I can still change the way the world views us without a doubt. And so that's the first piece is any organization, whether you're making cups, plates, clothes, your vision isn't about what you make, it's about what you do. And then the mission statement after that is, is the what and the how and when. The way I think about that is it's a statement that says if I do this every day, I've had a great day at X Company, right? And you know, we'll go back to Lego who then says that, you know, their mission statement is and I'm going to get this wrong. So I'm going to paraphrase, paraphrase this.
Something around the builders of tomorrow through creative play. So it's interesting because the what was around this idea of developmental learning, right? So we are going to create developmental learning. That's the what, how through creative play. Now every, if I'm in product and development at Lego, I know exactly what product is going to be a yes at Lego and exactly which one's going to be a no. If it doesn't inspire creative play, it's not Lego. That's right. These are things that are incredible filters for us to use to understand how we excel day to day.
This is the reason why I pray people don't roll their eyes when they hear vision, mission, values. It's so impactful in the clarity that's needed. And all of this underpins your long range strategic plan. If your identity isn't in place where people know what I'm doing and what I'm moving towards, then the long range strategic plan actually doesn't matter because that plan has to be rooted in your identity or else that's not real either and sustainable. The last piece is, you know, your, the, the, the idea of, of core values. And I've always looked at this from a resiliency that's one of those buckets, I think as it relates to your identity. The values portion of your identity is the one thing that's most strongly connected to the resiliency of your organization. Because those are the pieces that when, when you go through the process of creating this for an organization, the easy part is creating it. The hard part is living it. And it's tenfold difficult to live versus right. And in this space it's about our behaviors and attitudes, our acceptable behaviors and attitudes within our organization. And those are the roots. Those are the roots that keep us upright. Every single time you, every time you communicate the way to solve a situation by Using your values, the roots go deeper into the ground. Every time you police your culture, police threats to your culture. By using your values, the roots go deeper into the ground. Every time you mentor, provide growth. Anytime you reward, anytime you provide constructive criticism by using your values, the roots go deeper and deeper and deeper. Because what we know about any industry, whether we're in sport, whether we're in the corporate space, is that the hurricane's coming whether you like it or not. And I forget the book that it was in, I read it somewhere.
I think it was the. The CEO at SAP said every single company in the world, big or small, is five years away from bankruptcy. I thought that was such an interesting statement.
And I think what they were saying was that the hurricane's going to come. But the nice thing is, is that values is the reason why once the winds come and then they go, it's the reason why you're still upright. And that's so incredibly important within any organization around the alignment that's needed for any success to take place over the top of it. Because we are part of complex systems. We talked about this earlier, Brennan, and complex systems, whether they're biological or whether they're, you know, architectural, it doesn't matter. Complex systems in and of themselves do not show their weaknesses until they're placed under stress. Think of a hamstring. Nobody knows its strength or its weakness until it's placed under stress. Nobody knows the fragile point of an organization until it's placed under stress. And then the financial mistakes that have made, that maybe have been made over the past five years show themselves. Right? These things in complex systems don't show themselves until stress is placed. And then when it breaks, it's too late. Right? So in essence, it's the ability for us to build on top of foundations that are strong because complex systems are, are fragile in hidden places. And I think that's an important thing for any business as it relates to the starting point, the work that should be done on the front end. And it doesn't mean that if you haven't done it, you can't address it, but you're going to go through transformation, you're going to go through change management. If you're an organization that's been moving at high speeds for a while and then have to backtrack and say, wait a minute, like, we can see that it's getting difficult to navigate. We don't know where we're going. And we, we need to level set this. And you will have, you know, some, some winds of Change that people will like and some people won't. And at that point, you. You have to get through that and then the clarity in purpose becomes extremely powerful, mate.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: Very well said. What I would say, again, so many things that I could unpack. I want an opportunity for you to at least share a point for each of the other three in your model as well.
What I would say to those, to our community listening and watching this, is that every one of those businesses that you name, Legos, Patagonia, whatever, they don't start as multibillion dollar companies.
They start small, start from the ground up. But what they do have is exactly what you said.
There might be some iterations over time, but fundamentally there's some really common purpose vision there.
And the other thing I would say is about the American national team, mate, is at least in my head, you succeed.
I can't remember what World cup it was, but whenever you guys made the semis or the quarters or whatever, I actually remember thinking, actually, us, they know nothing about football, but actually they're probably not too bad now. They mustn't be too bad because they do. All right, so you guys succeeded in my head around your vision to change the way the world viewed it, mate.
[00:35:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Results always help, right? Yeah, for sure.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Oh, look, absolutely. But, you know, you got there and again, you didn't. I think you, you know, wherever you end up, fifth or sixth or something like that, but it's still, I mean, you've got to be a decent, quality team in order to reach those sort of levels. So, mate, let's look at empowerment now. Again, if you could just choose one thing that you want our listeners and watchers to our community to take away in their own business, what could they do to encourage this empowerment?
[00:35:33] Speaker B: Bucket, decentralized command.
That's the big one, you know, I think.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: How. What would you suggest they do?
[00:35:40] Speaker B: So a lot of times it starts with the structure, the organizational structure of the company. You know, I'm a very teams of teams type of.
Of operator. If you've never read that book by General McChrystal, it's a great one to read through. Just understanding how you can increase the speed at which decisions are made by understanding expertise, giving expertise, governance. And when that expertise is given governance and they're operating within the boundaries of your identity, you know, you can allow them to lead these platoons of departments and really get a lot of decision making done very, very quickly as it relates to best practice, best decisions, and speed up the way in which an organization moves. Because the one thing that will kill an organization within global market instabilities is, is bottlenecks, you know, and that helps to free that up to be in a place where instead of it being a very, you know, traditional pyramid like organizational structure where you're looking at governance over functions in these straight columns, you know, it's really more about understanding how that, how a cross functional approach is going to help you and then really just executing things within pods of, of diverse, you know, sub teams that know how to be very project based and solve things from a project level. And if I'm very project driven, if I'm very product project driven, then I might know that I need, you know, supply chain represented in this pod. I need product development, marketing and salesforce represented in this team. Because if they're all there and they're executing off of the understandings of their departments and the way in which they can speed up or slow down the process, then working together in that cross functional group is going to get you to a decision faster than if I have to go all the way up my vertical column, find out whether it's a yes or no, come back down the vertical column, then move across the column, say hey, this is what my person said. Okay, give me a second, let me see what mine says. Up, back down. And this is all operating out of a lack of trust, a lack of safety. And that's not the way high performing organizations operate. Kind of scrambling up that conventional organizational chart, looking at things where lines aren't going vertically, they're going diagonally, they're going horizontally. And then naturally there's a cluster created is really about what the team of teams approach is about as it relates to decentralizing command and really giving people governance in a way that's empowerment. Right. That makes me feel like, okay, I don't have to go and listen as a leader, it's great that people aren't coming and asking me permission for everything like that. That's not a high performing organization. So empowerment for me would be decentralized.
[00:38:30] Speaker A: Command, certainly a great one and very relevant to the SME type business owners out there. They've started something from scratch, maybe from their own card table or whatever, and all of a sudden they're trying to relinquish their power, let's say. But there's so much to be said for that high level collaboration.
What's a key element to promote that within an organization that you'd say at.
[00:38:52] Speaker B: The root of collaboration?
Willingness to take risk. Because in collaborative situations you have to accept that the outcome is not totally under your control. So collaboration is about trust. So for me, the biggest one is, do you have an environment of trust? Because vulnerability is essential. You have to be comfortable with being vulnerable in collaborative environments because of that risk, because of the element of risk and collaboration. Right. And I think it's a big one. And for me, I was always, I was always a leader that, that was willing to be vulnerable first, put up my hand, apologize, suggest something risky. Just the idea that I would say it out loud, right? What if we tried this and people go, whoa. You know, and then when somebody criticizes it, go, yeah, you're not wrong. And just being okay with being wrong. Like there's this freedom within collaborative environments that comes from this trust. So that I am totally fine with being vulnerable. If you got a group that won't take risk.
Oh, like it's, that's, that's a real, that's a real danger to long term sustainable success. Because change management resiliency, there's always an element of risk of saying, listen, we've, we're informed. I think we've got high speed communication happening. Our best guess at market trends is xyz. You know, here's what we're seeing. Listen, anybody saying, yep, that's what we're going to do is risky. But you have to do it in a way. You have to do it in organizations that deal with pressure or else you just succumb to the pressure. Like inevitably there's a moment where you feel risk and then you gotta take it. And those are best done in trusting environments where the information that's driving the decision was a collaborative process. So for me, it's trust. Trust, vulnerability is very important, mate.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: Feel free to correct me, but my view is that around what you've just spoken to, I believe that's the fundamental reason why when you take your example of coming from a high professional sporting environments that you've been involved in and how you become so successful in the corporate arena, because again, you correct me if I'm wrong, but what generally happens, people that aren't vulnerable aren't collaborative, aren't creating an environment of trust in the world that you've spent a lot of time in. They don't survive in that world. You have to be like that, otherwise you're off the team pretty quickly. I think you get found out pretty quickly, but then that's your natural DNA. So all of a sudden you bring that in the corporate environment where that's so far from the main fabric of organization is not funny. But you guys thrive in those sort of environments. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but what's, what's your view on that?
[00:41:22] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. And I think that it's also a reason why the conventional organizational chart allows individuals who aren't willing to take risk to survive because it's siloed and you can hide, you know, there's, in cross functional situations, it's very difficult to hide. Very, very difficult. Because now the whole entire process doesn't come down to your leader saying yes or no and it's their fault. Right. The decentralized command means yes. You get a chance to say yes or no, but you also assume the responsibility for the outcomes.
So all of it really takes away the element of the ability to hide. When there's this, you know, decomposition of the traditional org chart and this move towards more clustered, more cross functional, you know, clusters is that, you know, now your expertise is needed and you have to voice it and you have to make decisions. You have to have the right type of conviction in order, you know, to produce a, you know, a Navy SEAL like team within your organization that can really make high level decisions and pressurize situations.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: And let's wrap up, wrap this up in a bow mate. Resilience. Tell us what resilience looks like in a organizational setting. How do we achieve resilience?
[00:42:37] Speaker B: It's hard to choose one characteristic in this one. It is really, really difficult world, you know, diversity and skill, diversity and thought. Yeah, you know, we said one of them was expertise in diversity and, and diversity in your expertise like that whole bucket I think is an important one.
It probably underpins why you'll be successful in change management. It probably underpins why you'll also have success in conflict management. Because there's, there's an element of diversity of thought that allows people to see all the perspectives that are required. And you know, in any given situation when trials come and you're tested, it's going to require diversity to get a 360 degree view of, of how to create the right solution. You know, whether that 360 degree view or the diversity of thought is listened to as a leadership level issue. But the requirement of having the 360 degree availability of information is about the diversity of skill and thought. So you know, resiliency is very much to me starts with, you know, what type of, what type of mastery do you have in your group? You know, and, and that's for me the starting point for, for how you begin to solve things. It's the discussion tables. It's the, it's the, hey, what do you think? Questions. And I think it might be one of the great questions that any leader can ask. Well, what do you incredibly. And, you know, it actually kind of as a, as a practitioner within that environment, you go, oh, man, now I actually have to have an opinion. And it's good. It's a test that, you know, creates this, this vibe within a group that allows us to feel comfortable saying whatever we want because there is no right answers, wrong answers. We're just getting things out there. But you lean on skill. I think more often than not, you lean on expertise, you lean on diversity of thought, you lean on skill. And in the end, if you, if you have a very open environment that allows that skill to speak, that allows that thought to be present and have a voice, you're probably going to find more often than not, you're going to find the right solution in any given context. And getting things right is one great way to be resilient.
[00:44:51] Speaker A: Linking that back to the relentless execution of process, which you said at the top of the show, if I'd answer that question, I would have.
I think I would have said something along the lines of just be comfortable to try stuff and fail. Use trying as learning stuff, whatever. But again, linking back to that relentless execution of process, then there's a step before that, which you just spoke about. You've got to be willing to have the conversation about what you're going to try.
I love what you're saying.
That was my takeaway from what you said before. I'm answering this bit. There's this bit. You've really broken it down from a process perspective.
[00:45:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I think there's a balance to the idea that, you know, mistakes are necessary for high performance because then you can go to the other side and too many mistakes means a lack of high performance. So, you know, it's. It's about the learning process, for sure.
I love the book, the fifth discipline. Great book about, you know, learning organizations and what a learning organization looks like. And, you know, that's, you know, trust means for me to be in an environment where I trust. It's because, you know, I might make a mistake and it's going to be okay. I'm going to be supported, we're going to learn from it. But now I'm expected not to make that mistake again. Right. Like, that's, that's the aspect of this expertise. That's because expertise is about learning. You know, you're never really an expert. Let's Be honest. If the truth of the matter is you always have something to learn, which we accept as a universal truth, there's always something learned, then really, the word expert is actually a little bit weird that it even exists. Right. If we know that really the. The growth and the pathway is really the. Is really the objective, you know, so some of it comes down to that. You know, I definitely feel like there's a balance to that where a lot of times get misunderstood. Yeah, we're good. This is a learning environment. We're good with making mistakes, and mistakes are great. And I was like, whoa, like, mistakes are essential. Like, mistakes are going to happen. I wouldn't say they're great. I would say they're essential in learning, but they're not great. Like, you don't. You want to learn from them and. And minimize them as much as possible. That's what it means to. To execute your process. The relentless execution of your process is about not making many mistakes. Right? Like, that's. That's really the point of it. So it's got its role. Mistakes, quote, unquote, failures are important. More important is what happens after them so that you can create refinement. So systems and processes create resiliency and they get stronger. And now the execution of them means you're continuing to minimize mistakes down the road. So, yeah, that balance is critical.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: Spot on, mate. I guess if you're the goalkeeper in the US national team, if you make too many mistakes, you probably won't be the goalkeeper for too long, will you?
[00:47:26] Speaker B: Probably not.
[00:47:29] Speaker A: Mate. Question we ask all our guests is the final question on the show. What's one thing you've done to build a culture of leadership?
[00:47:35] Speaker B: Oh, man.
The biggest one was.
I'd say the biggest one was within the national team.
We made it. We made it clear that this is a place where you could be vulnerable. Right. Like, you know, it is. It was. It was very complex project. When we took over, we had failed to qualify for the World cup in 2018. U.S. soccer was in flux. There was a lot of instability. And when we came in 2019, you know, there was a lot of trust building that needed to take place. We needed to reshape some things. Internally, there needed to be more trust. Externally, with the clubs, there needed to be more trust. So. So I think the biggest thing was we took steps to make it clear that we would be vulnerable first so that we could develop relationships again. And so we did it internally to heal things within the organization, but then we also did it externally, and that was probably the most impactful thing we did was we needed information sharing to be successful because we don't have the players year round. We have them for a limited time during the year. The clubs have them more than us, but they weren't sharing information with us.
And I think maybe in the past that sharing had been abused. Why am I going to provide you information? It's just something you might use against me later on type of deal. So we said, you know what, we're going to make all of our information available first. And we did that as just like an open book type thing. And people said we were crazy because it meant all of our mistakes would be open to everyone to see. And I just said, well, guess what, that means we, we better not make any mistakes then, you know. So we operated in a way where we just said, we're going to commit to our expertise, we're going to commit to the skill we have in our group, but we are going to take this massive step first. And. And it worked. You know, they went, wow. Our external partners just thought of that in a way where all of a sudden the sharing just became incredible. You know, we, we as a group physically performed incredibly at the World cup. And a lot of people give us credit for that. You know, we don't have the players, we don't prepare them that way, we don't make them that physically resilient. But the work we did to collaborate, facilitate that physical resiliency, the way we supported, promoted and kind of wrapped our arms around North American soccer, we was started with our position of saying, listen, let's just cut the bs, right? We're going to throw it all out there, we're going to open it up, we're going to show you what vulnerability looks like, because we trust you guys, you know, and now let's start taking steps towards seeing it happen and reciprocity. And it did. It did. I would say that was the biggest thing in that particular environment.
[00:50:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Vulnerability is always the.
It starts with a person being open enough or a person or an organization have the courage to do that and just remind, you know, when I'm working with, with various organizations and always like to start the. Whether we're just doing a workshop or a strategy day or a couple of days or whatever. But there's always that little vulnerability question at the start. And if I feel like the leader's not gonna quite get there in conversation we've had and he's not quite there or she's not quite there yet, then I'll always start that vulnerability point because the starting point actually leads to the openness in the room, doesn't it? So important and well done. And the courage that I guess at the time a minnow and say a minnow in the football, certainly not a minimum on the global landscape to be able to do that, have the courage to do that. So, mate, I could, like, literally, you could fascinate me on this conversation for hours.
I could do that, but I really have to respect the community that we're building here or that we've built. So, mate, thank you very much for your time. It's been an absolute privilege and a pleasure having you on the cultural leadership podcast today.
[00:51:03] Speaker B: Likewise. I really, really enjoyed that, Brendan. Thank you, man.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: Pleasure, buddy. These are my three key takeaways from my conversation with Steve.
My first key takeaway Confident leaders relentlessly execute proven processes.
High performance isn't a buzzword. It's about showing up consistently with precision inside a proven system.
Confident leaders trust the process and develop the discipline to execute it day after day, especially when under pressure.
My second key takeaway Confident leaders decentralize command to empower activity.
They don't create bottlenecks. Instead, they build trust by giving governance to experts on the ground, speeding up decisions and unlocking agility across the business.
Empowerment isn't permission, it's structure and trust.
My third key takeaway Confident leaders design for resilience before the storm hits.
They know that pressure exposes the hidden weaknesses of any system.
By prioritising diversity of thought, skill and decision making, they build businesses that can adapt, respond, and thrive in any condition.
So, in summary, my three key takeaways Confident leaders relentlessly execute proven processes.
Confident leaders decentralized command to empower action and confident leaders designed for resilience before the storm hits.
Until next time, always remember, the best outcome is on the other side of a genuine conversation.
