Designing Org Charts That Actually Work with Bill Tansey Jr.

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Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

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Speaker 1
Welcome to the Blue Collar start up podcast where hard work meets big ideas. This is your home for real talk, real stories and real strategies. From the frontlines of life and the business of the trades.

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Speaker 1
I’m one of your hosts, Mike Nelson from Five Towers Media.

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Speaker 2
And I’m your co-host, Derek Foster Daigle, cleaning systems.

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Speaker 1
How are you? I’m good man. I’m good. How are you? Good. Doing well. Taking the new year off. Let’s see. When we just recorded it on Thursday, we recorded.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, we started on New Year’s Day. Started the year off right?

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Speaker 1
We did. So we are starting I, you know, super excited. We got a note yesterday that a new sponsor coming on board, which is just an amazing way to start off the year. So just a little extra note here in for, Curtis Lumber coming on as one of our new sponsors. Super excited about that.

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Speaker 1
Very grateful. For that and for the support that they’re giving us. So, yeah, hell of a way to start off the new year. I know, I’m, I’m digging in, man. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m definitely digging into the actions that we’ve got to take here. Trying to get some work done, man. Trying to get some work done.

00;01;22;06 – 00;01;51;26
Speaker 1
One thing at a time. Yeah. Steps. Yeah. And, you know, it’s interesting you say that to the one of the. And I know it’s a little bit of a side tangent, but like one of the things I typically do. And this goes back to Andy for sellers, critical task list that we’ve talked about before. And I have a tendency to start, I, you know, every day at the end of my day, I create tomorrow’s task list and I have the tendency to, like, put on the first five things and then start to add a bunch of other things I gotta get done.

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Speaker 1
And so, like every day I roll into this list that I’m never going to accomplish. And, one thing I’ve focused on the last, what are we, seven days, six days in, the last six days, one thing I’ve been doing is, is making myself only put the five in and focusing on one day and times like, I’m just going to focus on these five.

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Speaker 1
And if I have time for other things, great. But it’s interesting of making myself do less, quote unquote, which is helping me do more. So it’s, I don’t know. Interesting little science experiment, I guess.

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Speaker 2
No. That’s awesome. And do you do the same thing with with your schedule?

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Speaker 3
So funny. Ask, as you were saying, that I’ve got a A list app, and, we were talking about phones before we kicked off, and I’m kind of sick of the phone, but the list app on the phone is pretty good. So you can kind of put your 4 or 5 for today and you can look out beyond today, which I’m a big fan of.

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Speaker 3
So, you know, it’s one thing to do today’s list or tomorrow’s list. But I tend to, to look way down the road, almost to a detriment sometimes. So having that list where you can put them in in different days out in the future helps me settle my mind, because I’ve got this stuff that I’m saying, hey, by like Thursday this and then by Sunday that, and then next Monday so I can drop those five things in the days.

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Speaker 3
And then as they get closer, I can edit, move or reposition if need be. But yeah, super powerful.

00;03;13;18 – 00;03;35;12
Speaker 1
Love it, love it, love it. As you guys probably figured out by now, today’s episode is let’s ask Bill, otherwise known as the Business Lab. We’ve got some new formats we’re rolling out this year. We’ve got the. Let’s ask Bill. We’ve got, some Catamount roundtables coming up where we’re going to be sitting down, touching on different subjects for, business in the trades with a team from Catamount Consulting.

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Speaker 1
We’ve also doing some women in the trades with, guest host Stacey Spector from Catamount Consulting coming up as well. And then last but not least, we’ve got the, the interviews from the field with kind of that standard interview that we’ve been doing for years now where we’re bringing in, people that are in the field every day, all day, whether the business owner or support staff, team members, and talking to them about their roles and what they’re seeing out there.

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Speaker 1
So really excited about some of these, new episode formats. And, of course, you know, forget, folks. We’re going to be doing our normal episode about 30 to 40 minutes here with Bill today, and then we’re going to be jumping over for about 15 to 20 minutes to our Patreon side of things. If you’re not familiar with that, you know, we fired up a Patreon account, a couple months ago.

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Speaker 1
We’re putting a lot of, special content in there. It is behind a paywall, five huge dollars a month, to get a bunch of extra content. But specifically, we’re trying to make sure that that content is focused around growing and scaling your business and overcoming obstacles and structure and all the fun things that business owners deal with every single day.

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Speaker 1
So if you are considering a leap into business ownership, or you are in business ownership in the trades and looking for some help there, that is what the Patreon accounts for. Link will be in the show notes of course, so please check it out. Please join up. You know, again, it’s not so dang, I can drive Mercedes-Benz’s.

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Speaker 1
I don’t think we would if we could. It’s more about being able to help grow the show and get more help to the people out there that need it. So please jump in. And of course, speaking of supporting the show, and I mentioned, our new sponsor, Curtis Lumber, a little bit ago, but we’re, you know, we’re we got a lot of sponsorship opportunities for people that are interested.

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Speaker 1
You know, again, this is not just to help support the show, but it’s also to help support young people in the trades or coming into the trades. We donate a lot of that money. At least half of that. Anyway, to kids that are going to post these programs and HVC, what we like to call the blue collar college.

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Speaker 1
And, you know, giving them money for tools and tuition. So, you know, if you’re interested in helping to support them, you know, please reach out to us. You can hit us through the website or, send an email to to us the which will be in the show notes as well. So and of course, shout out to our current sponsors, not just Curtis Lumber, but also People’s Martin Electric, MLB construction, the Construction, Michaels Group, Catamount Consulting, Northeast Construction Trades Workforce Coalition, Pam and Doug over there love those guys.

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Speaker 1
And of course, Derek’s team over at Data Cleaning Systems and, my team over at Five Towers Media. Let’s introduce our guest. Not that he needs any introduction at this point. You’re becoming a regular, Bill Tansey from the op shop. What’s up? Bill?

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Speaker 3
Hey, guys. Appreciate, coming back and we’ll see if we get, if we get enough, followership or watch ship on this. I guess we got a few more scheduled to. Right?

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Speaker 1
Yeah, we got a few coming up for sure. I will say, Bill, you know, I was looking at the stats the other day, putting some, metrics together for Derek. And your episodes are definitely in the top tier of listened to and watched episode. So, you know here not that not that we’ve got a Joe Rogan size audience or even close to that.

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Speaker 1
But, you know, we do have a lot of people listening to the show, downloading the show, viewing the show, and, yours are always in the top, so people must love information.

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Speaker 3
Yeah. This is a good warm up for me. Joe did reach out, and I’m waiting to hear from Shawn, but, as soon as, as soon as I’m scheduled. Those guys, I’ll keep you posted. But in the meantime, this Blue Collar podcast is a great warm up for me.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, I love it. I was like, Joe and shout like, oh, Joe, nugget and John, right? Yeah. You know, remember when you’re on that show to just mentioned, mentioned us a little bit here, we can use the help from their audience. Yeah.

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Speaker 3
You bet, you bet it at the top of my list for sure.

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Speaker 1
So let’s, introduce our topic for today. So, you know, we’ve been discussing a little bit in the last few episodes about org charts and, I think we mentioned on the last episode a little bit about functional accountabilities, which, you know, functional accountability is a term that I’ve stolen from Bill or that he’s given me, I should say it, and doing some work with them over the last few months.

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Speaker 1
So we’re going to be talking about org charts. You know what they are potential uses similar to what we talked about last week. But then really getting into some of Bill’s thoughts on them and how to use them for your business and what they can do for you. So, Bill wanted to start us off and just kind of give us a depth and your definition of what an org chart is.

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Speaker 3
Yeah, I appreciate it. So hopefully nobody’s reaching to click this thing off, not the org chart, because I feel like that comes with a lot of baggage. So hang in there guys. Give it a give. Well.

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Speaker 2
The good news Bill is, on our New Year’s New Year’s Day episode, we, we started touching on this subject and, you know, I think it’s a good segue into, you know, hearing what you have to say on it. And, although it’s kind of dry, it is extremely important. So hang in there.

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Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, hang in there, guys. It is hard to make it exciting, but it’s certainly impactful when applied correctly. So what is an org chart? An organization chart is the simplest communication tool that I know of. To communicate, how your organization is structured, something we call organization designed in support of your organization’s goals. So, as we look at the your chart, we should see a collection of standard roles, not people.

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Speaker 3
And those standard roles should be organized in a way and visualized in the org chart that it supports your goals and those goals, or, you know, the goals for the upcoming year, the goals for the next six months, three years, etc. we can talk more about that. But, it’s organizing the people to drive the success, or the vision that you have for the organization.

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Speaker 3
Love it.

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Speaker 1
I gotta say, guys, you know, as we get into this and for our listeners, there is one aspect of my business personally that has been such a challenge for me over the years and still continues to be the challenge. But one of the tools that has been the most helpful recently in trying to figure this out is my org chart.

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Speaker 1
So I’m, I’m excited about, digging into this more and, and hopefully learn a little bit more about it. So,

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Speaker 1
Bill, one of the questions that we have for you, as far as org charts go is should your organizational chart be representative of your current state or what you’re trying to grow into next?

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Speaker 1
Hey, everybody, just taking a quick break to talk to you about one of our sponsors, Curtis Lumber. Curtis Lumber is the professional’s choice for home improvement from windows and doors, roofing and siding, decks and building packages to floors and more. Trust the pros at Curtis Lumber for expert advice and daily delivery for locations, visit Curtis lumber.com. That’s Curtis lumber.com.

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Speaker 1
Bill, one of the questions that we have for you, as far as org charts go is should your organizational chart be representative of your current state or what you’re trying to grow into next?

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Speaker 3
Yeah, and that’s something that’s always challenging as we start to visualize anything in the organization, whether it’s org charts or other tools, if you don’t make the explicit decision with the people in the room, whether or not you’re going to do current state or future state, it immediately becomes muddy, confusing, and and you’re you’re kind of destined for less than success.

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Speaker 3
So, the short answer is, I like to look at the organization design in total, including the org chart, standard roles, functional accountabilities, some of the things I think we want to talk about on this, on this podcast, I look I like to look at those, and document them so that they represent the current state today.

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Speaker 3
And they have some considerations for the future state of only one year out. Right. So, so in essence, if we think of the org chart, there’s a bunch of things that we visualize on the org chart. But one of them is current state org versus one year out. And I simply change the color of the boxes or the standard roles on the org chart based on that timeline.

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Speaker 3
So there may be one color for current W2 employees, one color for, for example, 1099 employees or not two not employees, but 1099 contractors. There might be one color for outsourced partners, and then maybe a fourth color for any roles that are going to be filled at some point in the future.

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Speaker 1
Interesting. I don’t think I knew that, actually. And that’s very helpful too, because I know as I’m looking at some of the growth that we’re looking down the road, three and five years, I’ve been looking at my org chart and gone like, I don’t I don’t even know what I’m going to need here, but let’s just make something up, right?

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Speaker 1
Like, I don’t know, I like I, I think I might need this person down the road, but you’re saying don’t do that. Just look at it. What it’s going to look like next year.

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Speaker 3
Yeah. So you know, we typically this is the time of year when I’m kind of wrapping up strategy deployment for the clients I work with. So that’s annual and three year strategy deployment. And as we’re wrapping up strategy deployment we’re saying okay, now we have our our strategy. We’re about to deploy for the next 365 days. So for 2026, for example, you know, right now it’s January 2026.

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Speaker 3
So let’s let’s go revisit our organization design and make sure that the way we designed our organization still supports us today. And by the end of the year. And that’s the that’s the only gap that we want to bridge with regard to the org design that we revisit years after. And as we as we dive into this, one of the things that makes that possible is, is developing standard roles in the organization.

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Speaker 3
So we should probably talk about that because if if you don’t have standard roles, it’s really hard to scale. And then you run into all sorts of problems, as you’re saying, like trying to think out into the future without standard roles, like almost impossible. It’s hard to scale when you get to the future if you don’t have standard roles, because your organization’s own kind of doesn’t make sense.

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Speaker 3
It doesn’t work anymore. So one of the presuppositions to a successful org chart is the understanding, development and use of of what we call standard roles. And, on other podcasts we’ve talked about standard work. You can’t have standard work if you don’t have standard roles first, for example. Right. So, so, I think it’s important maybe, maybe we want to dive into that just briefly and talk talk about standard roles and how they become the components that are visualized on on the organization chart.

00;14;07;22 – 00;14;43;06
Speaker 1
Yeah, I definitely think we should do that. But before we do though, I just wanted to, back up one second it because it’s interesting, I thought that occurred to me is like one of the things that Derek and I talked in in our last episode was about the need to be revisiting things like your org chart, let’s use the word occasionally, but this kind of sounds like it really is something that we should be at least looking to make changes to every year, based on the type of growth that we want to achieve or anticipate, is that fair or.

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Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. As we as we talk about anything strategy related. Right. And again, if we’re aligning an organization for aligning a group of people to support our business strategy, this is all strategy, if you will, adjacent stuff in my mind. So as we talk about anything strategy related, it’s my belief that if you do a good job of it at the beginning of the year, you should probably check in halfway through the year, just to be sure and to re communicate and reinforce.

00;15;11;16 – 00;15;37;13
Speaker 3
But it really shouldn’t change throughout that year. And I will say, I’ve been part of organizations that have supported organizations that use the word entrepreneurship as a surrogate or an excuse for poorly organized or poorly run organization. And all day long, this has application and startup and entrepreneurship. It doesn’t matter whether there’s six people on the team, 36 or 360.

00;15;37;15 – 00;15;59;03
Speaker 3
It has it has application. And again, if done right, it shouldn’t consistently change. And I’ve seen it done right over and over again and I’ve seen it last just like I’m talking about. There’s a, there’s a quote I don’t, I’m bad at recall from memory and, but, I believe it was John F Kennedy talking about putting a man on the moon.

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Speaker 3
And, when we’re working inside the strategy realm, it’s really easy for folks to get excited and say, let’s put a man on the moon, right? That’d be cool. That’s our strategy for for 2026. But what they forget to add to that strategy is a second part. And that’s let’s get them home safely. Right. So if we’re thinking through our strategy work and if we’re talking about breakthrough and organization, all the things that come with strategy, we need to be thinking about putting a man on the moon, but not forgetting to get them home safely.

00;16;26;26 – 00;16;43;19
Speaker 3
And if we don’t forget to get him home safely, we’ll have a strategy and an org design that sticks for that year. For sure. And, and it doesn’t matter how fast you’re growing or how fast you’re changing if you do it right. It’s been my experience that it sticks for a year, with very rare exceptions.

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Speaker 3
And I think I’ve mentioned those rare exceptions on other podcast with you guys, but, a rare exception might be radical change in government or policy or compliance or something of that nature that you couldn’t have possibly seen coming. War. That impacts your business directly or.

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Speaker 1
Okay.

00;17;04;02 – 00;17;06;28
Speaker 2
So I got one follow up for that, Mike, if you don’t mind.

00;17;07;01 – 00;17;08;01
Speaker 1
So I don’t mind at all.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, I’m going to button. So built in, in, a service oriented business such as ours or in, let’s say, a construction business, you obviously you have your field technicians or, you know, field oversight. That’s a pretty self-explanatory position on the org chart where, you know, I’ve always had a bit of a challenge. And, you know, we kind of guessed and made changes as we went, the overhead roles that support the actual field work and business structure.

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Speaker 2
Is there a methodology or a way that you advise people to to look at those roles and set minimums or financial targets as to when you actually really need that role versus the owner maybe taking that role on themselves.

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Speaker 3
Yeah. Great question. So, we should only be adding roles into the org standard roles into the organization design or on the org chart, with two things in mind. One, they’re required for financial growth or two, financial growth requires the addition of the role. Right. So it’s all tied to the success of the organization. And in some cases we need to bet on success, which means we have a plan.

00;18;23;11 – 00;18;41;24
Speaker 3
So it’s it’s not chance. It’s risk. We understand we’re betting that four months from now a contract’s going to close and we’re going to need this person that right. So the difference between chance and risk risk is quantified. Right. So we’re not going to just take a chance. And staff a role. We’re going to quantify the risk associated with staff and the role of that staff.

00;18;41;24 – 00;19;12;07
Speaker 3
The role. Alternatively, we have growth in the organization requiring the role to come on board. But I think to answer your question, in growing organizations, especially small organizations, the well, your chart is always made up of standard roles. I keep coming back to that in growing organizations, it’s common. Not even common likely that somebody’s name will show up in two, three, or maybe four of those standard roles.

00;19;12;07 – 00;19;34;10
Speaker 3
So if Derek is the the president and the leader, he may show up there 10% of the time. And then 30 or 40% of the time Derek may show up as operations manager. Right. And then Derek may show up as business development leader as well. 10% of our compliance guy or what have you. So we we call that full time equivalency.

00;19;34;10 – 00;19;54;18
Speaker 3
And we we want to schedule the full time equivalency of the people that are filling multiple roles for a number of reasons. One is, setting annual goals for that person if they sit in three roles. Well, we know the annual goals should be like five or less and we could get into detail, psychology, etc. but let’s just assume that to be true.

00;19;54;21 – 00;20;19;08
Speaker 3
So five or less annual goals for somebody on the team. If that person sitting in three roles, those five goals need to be split up between those three roles. Number one. Number two, that person’s leader needs to know they are only acting in that department or that role. X percent of the time. And there needs to be some expectation that they’re working with the other leader in the other parts of the business with this employee.

00;20;19;08 – 00;20;44;07
Speaker 3
And they’re they’re kind of transient moves between. And then number three, the people that work with that person also need to clearly understand that that person is 20% or 30%. They’re 50% here, for example, so that their expectations of their peers, or if there are some burden of that person, their expectations of their manager are reasonable as well, knowing that they’re filling kind of multiple roles.

00;20;44;11 – 00;21;08;07
Speaker 3
Of course, as the organization grows, and as demands, become more evident, then that person will kind of shrink back to two roles and then to one role, obviously. But that idea of full time equivalency and that split in in where they’re focused is critically important early on in the growth phase of organizations. And I would argue, necessary.

00;21;08;10 – 00;21;33;11
Speaker 3
I’ll add something more to that, that maybe you guys have seen. But when organizations haven’t gone through an organization designed initiative, when they don’t have a organization chart with standard roles, what we see to bridge this same gap is we’ll see the manager of, the kitchen, bathrooms and, you know, baseball fields, right? Like you’ll you’ll be the manager of multiple things.

00;21;33;11 – 00;21;51;18
Speaker 3
You’ll have ends in the title. Right? That is a sure sign that you’re building your organization around a person and not building an organization around standard roles. And that’s that’s the death of the organization or a large encumbrance to a successful growth.

00;21;51;20 – 00;22;11;11
Speaker 1
That’s so funny you say that, dude, because I, I totally did that. We have the, you know, the vice president of web and print production, right? And that’s totally based around Kelsey. Like 100%. That is like just because of her skill set. What she’s great at, what we need, like totally based around her.

00;22;11;18 – 00;22;34;17
Speaker 3
Kelsey’s a rockstar, right? So she’s going to show up as the vice president of web at 70% and the vice president of print or production or whatever. You said, you know, 30%, and not combine those two departments around. Kelsey. So if we talk about doing organization, design or organization charts, the first thing we do is we take all the names off the board.

00;22;34;19 – 00;22;46;05
Speaker 3
Yeah. So teams are gone and the standard roles are developed and then organized in an organization chart in support of the strategy. Then we come back and play pin the tail on the donkey and see who fits where.

00;22;46;07 – 00;22;53;04
Speaker 1
That’s, that’s that’s funny. That is so funny. I’m. I’m guilty of all the wrong stuff.

00;22;53;06 – 00;22;54;28
Speaker 3
You’re not alone, though. I mean, we are.

00;22;55;01 – 00;23;08;25
Speaker 2
We are too. And. Yeah. So that’s part of the reason I ask the question is, you know, I plan over the next few weeks to sit down with our team and do that exact thing, pull it apart and remove the names.

00;23;08;27 – 00;23;24;08
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. It’s critical. And the other thing, removing the names to us too, is it is it takes away the emotion, at least temporarily, so that people can think more clearly as they work together to do the work. Because, you know, we’re all committed to our teams. We all want to support our teams, our teams that supported us.

00;23;24;10 – 00;23;41;16
Speaker 3
And, this organization design and org chart and the work we’re talking about can be really burdened with with emotions. And, and you can’t think clear when you’re burdened with emotions. Right. So we need to make as objective as possible, as long as possible in the process to get the best outcome.

00;23;41;18 – 00;23;56;22
Speaker 1
Bill, I know one of the things we want to talk about today is functional accountability is. And I feel like that may tie right into the standard roles and design of those. Can you kind of give, give us just a definition of, of functional accountability?

00;23;56;24 – 00;24;16;01
Speaker 3
Yeah. So, well, I, I, I often joke that functional accountabilities are the secret decoder glasses for the org chart. So if I, you know, coach slap it, org chart up on the wall, you know, back in the day you used to present on the wall. But if they, you know, we put your chart up on a TV in the conference room.

00;24;16;03 – 00;24;38;11
Speaker 3
And if we don’t have functional accountabilities on the table in front of all the people viewing the org chart, it’s it’s we’re ripe for conflict. So the functional accountabilities are the secret decoder glasses. It helps everybody see through the same lens and understand what they’re seeing in the org chart. So what are they? Functional accountabilities are we try and limit it to three, rare occasions I’ll stretch to four.

00;24;38;13 – 00;25;03;17
Speaker 3
So my point is simple. Typically three bullet points that outline the key responsibilities, that role. And another thing I commonly joke about with functional accountabilities is, most of us have been at a Thanksgiving table or family dinner or visiting a friend’s family, and somebody’s grandma says, oh, Derek, what do you do at work every day? You know, well, grandma, these three things, right?

00;25;03;17 – 00;25;17;00
Speaker 3
And grandma goes, oh, Derek, that’s wonderful, I get it. You know, like, so the functional accountabilities are the 3 or 4 things that most simply sum up what the person in that role does.

00;25;17;02 – 00;25;25;03
Speaker 1
Okay. And so how how is that used on a day to day basis. Great.

00;25;25;05 – 00;25;56;01
Speaker 3
So the functional accountabilities sum up the you know, the key three things or four things that that standard role does or the person filling that Santa’s role is expected to do. The functional accountabilities are typically heavily aligned with how that person interacts with the other roles on the org chart. So on a job description, you may have a line that says, you know, you know, ultimately responsible for leading the new client onboarding process.

00;25;56;03 – 00;26;17;14
Speaker 3
Right? You go back up to functional accountabilities, and they’re higher level on on how that role interacts with the roles above and below it. So you may see something like, on the functional accountability. You may see something like accountable for understanding the annual strategy and translating that annual strategy into tactics that the team can make measurable success with.

00;26;17;16 – 00;26;34;09
Speaker 3
Right. So and one of those tactics is onboarding, which I just mentioned is on the on the JD. So the onboarding process is part of the JD. But at a higher level on the functional accountabilities, it just says, you know, I’m a mid-level manager, so I have to see and understand the vision and the strategy from the person above me.

00;26;34;17 – 00;26;48;06
Speaker 3
And I have to turn that into tactics, ways of executing. So the people that report to me can be successful. One of those tactics is onboarding. I’ll bet one maybe off wording I don’t know. Right. So and then you kind of build those details out.

00;26;48;09 – 00;26;55;07
Speaker 1
Interesting. I just had a thought too, and I lost it.

00;26;55;10 – 00;27;16;04
Speaker 1
And well, and I know that we’re going to do a whole episode talking about job descriptions or what you call JD’s. Right. But I guess, you know, as we kind of look to wrap up the the main portion of this episode here, what do you think are some of the biggest mistakes that you see with people when they’re setting up org charts or trying to relay functional accountabilities?

00;27;16;04 – 00;27;18;13
Speaker 1
I mean, I do have a couple of questions specifically around functional.

00;27;18;13 – 00;27;43;28
Speaker 3
Accountabilities, but sure. Yeah. So biggest mistakes, I think we’ve we’ve touched on the biggest one and that is building the organization around the people you have today, not building the organization around your your vision, your goals, your strategy for the future. So, and that’s the single biggest mistake, that we see over and over and over again in the work that I do is building the organization around the people you have today.

00;27;43;29 – 00;28;14;20
Speaker 3
Like you said, Kelsey’s a rock star. So suddenly she’s the manager of three different things that are otherwise unrelated. Right. So, that’s the most common mistake. The other common mistake, I think we we kind of touched on this a little bit maybe the last time we talked as well. And that is that, once teams start working with an organization chart and they start seeing the benefit of it, they now have this communication tool that they like, and they try and make it communicate a bunch of other things that maybe a different, separate tool would be better for communicating.

00;28;14;23 – 00;28;34;27
Speaker 3
And I think that’s a common mistake with a lot of tools, especially communication tools. Suddenly the manager sees a little bit of traction, the owner sees a little bit of traction is or charting is really helping them think through stuff, helping them communicate to their team, set expectations, talk about escalation and communication and how it flows to the organization.

00;28;35;00 – 00;28;51;19
Speaker 3
And then suddenly they’re like, well, what about can we represent how we service the customer through the org? Don’t like that. There’s a separate tool for that, right? So I think the first mistake is building the organization chart around the people you have today, not around your goals, your objectives and where you want to go. That’s mistake number one.

00;28;51;19 – 00;29;10;28
Speaker 3
And then the the second mistake is as soon as you start to build traction, this idea of trying to communicate lots of things to the org chart, another common mistake is communicating, cross-functional teams in the org chart. The org charts a functional org chart. So functions only, we communicate cross-functional team charter in a different way as well.

00;29;10;28 – 00;29;12;21
Speaker 3
For example.

00;29;12;24 – 00;29;37;10
Speaker 1
Okay. Question I have about functional accountabilities. And this is a question because I just did this and you gave me some feedback on it. Where, you know, I’m looking at functional accountability and I’m thinking about on these standardized roles of all the things that these people need to do. And so all of a sudden, I’ve created a list of like 7 or 8 things as functional accountabilities.

00;29;37;13 – 00;29;58;04
Speaker 1
And the feedback you gave me was you need to make that list smaller, right? That it needs to be that 3 to 4, tops. What, how do you make the discernment of, of what should be considered a functional accountability? And something is just, you know, a part of their duties and responsibilities?

00;29;58;07 – 00;30;41;17
Speaker 3
Yeah. So, first off, I think starting with a list like that is where everybody starts, right? And, and I think that’s important to start there and to kind of be exhaustive. And then once you have that kind of exhaustive, complete list of everything, it’s to start to cook it back. And, and I think the, I think there’s themes throughout that exhaustive list and eight, ten, 12, 15 things, that will start to emerge, if the person is in a leadership role, depending on where they are in the hierarchy, whether they’re the the president or somebody that reports a senior team or a manager or supervisor under the senior team, if you’re in

00;30;41;17 – 00;31;06;06
Speaker 3
a leadership role, you have to understand where that role is in the hierarchy and then establish some, some common language for that role. So for example, if somebody, as Derek mentioned on his team, you know, he’s got the folks out in the field doing the cleaning, the folks in the field doing the cleaning should not have any language in their functional accountabilities or their JD or their job title.

00;31;06;09 – 00;31;35;21
Speaker 3
Standard role that, involves things like lead or manage. They are not leaders or managers. They are executor’s. They coordinate, they complete, they they achieve measurable results. Likewise, as the president or the senior team, you should also probably not have, supervise or manage, right. It should be set vision, set direction, set strategy, communicate strategy, communicate vision, that kind of thing.

00;31;35;23 – 00;31;57;08
Speaker 3
And then in the middle manager component of it, it should be hearing the strategy or the vision and understanding it and converting it into how we execute or how we behave. And those are the tactics. So if we kind of look at that hierarchy and start to establish language in the different parts of that hierarchy of an org chart, we can then start to apply that language.

00;31;57;08 – 00;32;22;08
Speaker 3
And again, themes will kind of pop out. And the themes are commonly around how, that standard role relates to the standard rules adjacent to it, above and below it visually on the org chart. And, and I should add to as I, as I introduce the word hierarchy and the roles above and below, the your chart doesn’t represent significance or importance to the organization and also doesn’t represent compensation.

00;32;22;10 – 00;32;46;07
Speaker 3
Those are common mistakes as well, really common mistakes. So I probably should have mentioned when you ask that question, is that people mistake the org chart for saying, well, that person is on the top of the org chart, so they’re the most important and paid the most. That’s not the case at all. As we explore that more, an example, I commonly come back to that, actually, I probably need a new example because not everybody I work with today remembers when the space shuttle blew up.

00;32;46;07 – 00;33;15;24
Speaker 3
I know we do. But when the space shuttle blew up, it was an engineer that designed an O-ring or specified an O-ring that caused the explosion. The space shuttle, that engineer is an individual contributor, and they are represented visually on the bottom of the org chart, but pretty important. Yeah. Likewise, we’ll have specialty scientists that are individual contributors that are on the bottom of the org chart that are oftentimes paid more than the person that leads them.

00;33;15;27 – 00;33;27;07
Speaker 3
So, so the org chart is not a representation of importance or compensation. And, it’s rather how we relate to each other, to carry out the goals or the objective or the strategy of the business.

00;33;27;09 – 00;34;00;07
Speaker 1
Yeah, I know, I know we’re gonna jump over to the Patreon side, but I just got to say that hierarchy that you talk about with strategy at the top of how we do it, tactics, what’s being done and then execution, doing it. Very helpful for me in looking at this org chart and defining roles and, and standardized roles and figuring out like, okay, you know, because I would put someone in an org chart somewhere and then I realize that, like, they’re not actually in charge of how we do it.

00;34;00;08 – 00;34;20;26
Speaker 1
They’re actually in charge of what’s being done, which means I need to reevaluate where I’m placing them in that org chart and how I’m looking at the whole thing. And it’s super, super helpful. And I feel like it makes the org chart more usable and more, predictive of that future state of what I’m trying to grow over the course of the next year or so.

00;34;20;26 – 00;34;22;14
Speaker 1
I love it, absolutely love it.

00;34;22;21 – 00;34;41;24
Speaker 3
Well, set. I’m glad you brought up that strategy, tactics and execution component. We didn’t talk about that earlier on the podcast, but you’re absolutely right. It’s great to hear you kind of recite it and use it. Yeah. Critically important. That’s what it’s communicating is the expectations of success. And, I know everyone’s heard me say this before, but good people want to win.

00;34;41;24 – 00;35;01;29
Speaker 3
So as leaders, it’s our job to position them and enable them to go win. And, that first step is organization design. And organization design is visualized in part on a org chart and part with functional accountability is again the secret decoder glasses. So when we look at the org chart, we know what that standard role means, because we know the 3 or 4 things that it’s responsible for.

00;35;02;02 – 00;35;07;01
Speaker 3
Yeah. As well as eventually job descriptions and a couple other small components too. Yeah.

00;35;07;04 – 00;35;24;10
Speaker 1
Love it. That’s perfect. Excuse me. That’s a perfect spot for us to wrap up the main episode here, folks. We’re going to get into this a little bit more here on the Patreon side. So please hop on over. Bill, before we jettison this main episode here, how do people find you? If they want to learn more?

00;35;24;11 – 00;35;25;20
Speaker 1
They’re interested in working with you.

00;35;25;22 – 00;35;40;02
Speaker 3
Thanks, Mike. So it’s, Bill at the top x op shop. Com or, the, you know, the failsafe is LinkedIn, and it’s, William and then parentheses. Bill Tansey, junior. Later.

00;35;40;05 – 00;36;00;04
Speaker 1
Love it. Thanks, everybody. Of course, for listening. You can find this episode in the other episodes Bill’s been on with us here over at our website. Blue collar startup.io. Of course. You know, you can listen to our episodes on Spotify, Apple Rumble, and YouTube. Please make sure you give us a like, subscribe, share the show, send it to a friend.

00;36;00;06 – 00;36;05;07
Speaker 1
Appreciate all the support and appreciate you listening. And, you’ll hear from us next week.

00;36;05;07 – 00;36;33;08
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Bio or email us at hardhat Dot CSU at gmail.com.

00;36;33;08 – 00;36;45;14
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building. Keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

00;36;45;14 – 00;37;00;26
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

00;38;32;08 – 00;38;47;18
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

00;38;47;18 – 00;39;09;16
Speaker 1
All right guys, we’re going to get started on the Patreon side here. Welcome back everybody. If you listen to the main episode, we’re, jumping in back again with Bill Tansy from the op shop, talking about org chart and functional accountabilities. And of course, just a heads up. Everybody might have to jump out here shortly, but we’ll make sure we get all these questions answered.

00;39;09;18 – 00;39;19;11
Speaker 1
Bill, first question for you, if someone’s building their first org chart or looking to edit theirs based on today’s conversation, where do you think they should start?

00;39;19;13 – 00;39;45;26
Speaker 3
Yeah. Awesome question. And we we started to touch on that a little bit a moment ago. First thing the first place to start is, is, the corporate or business strategy. So to have a really clear view and an easily retail strategy that everybody in the room understands, and that strategy should or only needs to extend out, by my assessment, one year to, to have success with the organization.

00;39;46;00 – 00;40;07;00
Speaker 3
So that’s the first step. And then the second step, which we touched on briefly as well, is to throw out all the names. So there’s no discussion of names of people during the organization design activity and during the construction of the org chart. The org chart is constructed based on standard rules that support that business strategy. Okay. So those are the first two.

00;40;07;03 – 00;40;33;17
Speaker 3
Those are the first two steps. And I would also argue that, having the right people in the room is like a, there’s a presupposition that should be made explicit, having the right people in the room, to go through the activity, is critically important as well. And, those are people that, again, understand that easily retold strategy, understand the challenges of leading a business.

00;40;33;19 – 00;40;40;26
Speaker 3
And, can take the emotion and the names out of the discussion.

00;40;40;29 – 00;40;47;25
Speaker 1
Excuse me, as I was actually going to ask, who are the right people? Right. Like, how do you know who the right people are to be in that room with you? Sure.

00;40;47;25 – 00;41;13;20
Speaker 3
So when I work with a business or a team, the organization design discussion starts between myself and the principal, the leader, and then, very quickly grows to the senior leadership team. And the senior leadership team is usually 2 to 5. Depending on the size of the organization people and that five person leadership team, it could be tremendously large organizations, right?

00;41;13;22 – 00;41;35;01
Speaker 3
That’s that’s where it starts. Because as you can imagine, that leadership team has cognizance of the different functions in the business. And those are the functions that will be represented on the org chart, and the standard roles will be applied to. So we need the intelligence that they bring about their functional area. To be successful.

00;41;35;03 – 00;41;49;25
Speaker 1
And so this is when you’re looking at the organizational design component of it. But is there is there a, a time or a place or state in which you bring your entire team in to have conversations about this, or is that something that happens individually?

00;41;49;28 – 00;42;19;09
Speaker 3
Yeah. So the, depending on the size of the organization. So if we’re talking, you know, thousands, tens of thousands of employees, then we’ll go lower than that senior leadership team. Right? We’ll go into business unit etc.. However, I’ve never involved the what you might want to call like middle manager, supervisor and individual contributor layers in the organization.

00;42;19;09 – 00;42;43;29
Speaker 3
So we talked briefly, Mike, and you mentioned the strategy, tactics and execution. Those three buckets, if you will, that we split the org chart into when we’re doing organization design as a strategic activity. And only the people on the org chart responsible for strategic work are involved in it. Very quickly I find it starts to spin out of control when people that normally don’t play in a strategic role are asked to come and play in that role.

00;42;44;01 – 00;42;55;25
Speaker 3
Right. So I think there’s a professional maturity, there’s a set of learnings and experiences that are expected of somebody in that strategic layer of the organization chart, and that’s the expectation. Your design activity.

00;42;55;28 – 00;43;28;27
Speaker 1
So so the idea like, you know, I know a lot of smaller companies especially let’s say, like mine where you’re trying to be inclusive with everybody. Right? You want everybody weighing in, you want everybody being a part of it and feeling empowered. And, I think what I hear you saying is that it can actually be counterproductive because some of the people on the doing it side of things don’t necessarily have the skill set for strategy, and they’re they’re not going to really understand or be able to contribute to that conversation in a way that’s meaningful or constructive.

00;43;29;00 – 00;43;52;10
Speaker 3
Really. Well said. Better said than myself. Absolutely. 100% correct. And not often or likely, but, every time I can’t think of an exception. I mean, you’ll get bright people on the team that are younger in their career and in execution roles that probably could help, with the activity, or be a positive force in the activity, the organization design or the org chart activity.

00;43;52;13 – 00;44;11;26
Speaker 3
But they’re, not necessary. And you don’t take the chance of finding that 1 in 100 person on the team or what have you. So, yeah, to your point, I think it’s counterproductive. And and that brings up an interesting, I guess, little side note too. There was a time and I think it’s come and gone, but it’s still resonates a little bit.

00;44;11;28 – 00;44;41;23
Speaker 3
There’s a time when there was, like the dev guru and Seal guys were writing books and talking about business, and they’re talking about self-directed work teams. Right. And and everybody got really charged up because their stories are undoubtedly super cool and admirable. And there are these self-directed work teams that are just kicking ass. Right. But what they often leave out is, is never mind all the prior training and indoctrination they go through before they get to the special ops community.

00;44;41;24 – 00;45;01;18
Speaker 3
When they get to the special ops community, a lot of these guys are training up for like two years before they ever actually execute, right. And in our businesses and the businesses I support, nobody trains up for two years before executing. I mean, like unless you’re government funded, tax funded, you know, like how how would you rightfully do that to create a self-directed work team?

00;45;01;20 – 00;45;23;23
Speaker 3
And even though there are self-directed work, teams are surrounded by hierarchy, you know, good, bad or otherwise. But there’s a reason that’s where we keep falling back to. So I think that just like I said, entrepreneurship on the, before we came over to to to Patreon, I said that entrepreneurship is a lot of times an excuse. For bad behavior, bad leadership, etc..

00;45;23;25 – 00;45;42;26
Speaker 3
I think inclusion, self-directed work team, everybody has a voice. Also is is a disruptive thing. And the way I sum it up when I talk to the teams I work with is and this actually, this comes from a mentor of mine who was a US Army general.

00;45;42;28 – 00;45;43;26
Speaker 1
And.

00;45;43;29 – 00;46;09;01
Speaker 3
He said that and I, I’ve taken this to heart. I’ve used it over and over again with great success. He said it’s critical when leading a team to let them know when the decision cycle is open and they have input, and when the decision cycle is closed and it’s time to fall in line and follow. And I’ve never seen the decision cycle open on organization design to the individual contributor level, and seen that work positively.

00;46;09;06 – 00;46;29;10
Speaker 3
Right. There’s other times the decision cycle is open for those guys, and it should be, and their voices should be heard. I just haven’t seen it produce a positive outcome here. It’s kind of the old like if, you know, if nobody’s shoveling coal, the ship doesn’t move. And if nobody’s up, sail on the ship, you know, you sail on to the iceberg, right?

00;46;29;10 – 00;46;38;10
Speaker 3
So like, there’s a role for everybody on the organization. There’s times to engage them in, times to include them, and there’s other times when they should fall in line and follow.

00;46;38;12 – 00;47;09;02
Speaker 1
Love it. Bill, I know that we talked in the main episode about how often we should be looking at the org charts, you know, and it from what it sounded like, the consensus was, you know, roughly every year, at a minimum, we should be looking at it, what are going to be some indicators that we should be making changes to the org chart, and not necessarily during that yearly review when we’re trying to strategize, but at other times of the year.

00;47;09;04 – 00;47;29;29
Speaker 3
Great question. So there’s, there’s a difference between changes in the org chart and hiring or onboarding a new person. Right? So and those are often kind of become conflicted in people’s minds. So mid year whatever. You know two months into the year eight months into the year doesn’t matter. Somebody leaves the team and you have to backfill that person.

00;47;30;01 – 00;47;55;20
Speaker 3
Derrick expressed a little bit about this. Also, if you’ve done an appropriate job of creating organization based on standard roles, somebody is leaving a standard role. That standard role should have very clear criteria on what success looks like. And you should be able to interview somebody new to fill that criteria. If you can’t go interview somebody and fill that standard role, then it probably wasn’t a standard role to begin with.

00;47;55;20 – 00;48;24;28
Speaker 3
It was probably crafted around a person that would then kick off change in the organization. Right? So if we’re diligent, fastidious about the organization design and the org chart during that strategy phase of the year, the only thing that should change the organization at any point mid year is, is, for example, we recently had some terrorist going to place those tariffs impacted businesses good and bad.

00;48;25;00 – 00;48;54;12
Speaker 3
Those were unforeseeable. When those businesses did their strategy work 62 months before those tariffs were announced. There’s no way that they could have said, hey, but what if there’s tariffs? Right. So the world is flat, right? We work in a global economy, global socioeconomic, socio politics. Those are the things that impact the organization at times that are not that strategy time.

00;48;54;14 – 00;49;02;27
Speaker 3
Other than that, if we’ve done it right, we we really shouldn’t mess with the organization. We shouldn’t need to.

00;49;02;29 – 00;49;29;26
Speaker 1
Is it? So like, one of the things I talk about with my team when it comes to process is that their job is to follow the process. And what is going to happen is that other people on the team circumstance, clients are going to pull them out of the process, and their job at that point becomes getting everyone back into the process at the next possible step in the process.

00;49;29;26 – 00;49;51;08
Speaker 1
Right. And so as you’re talking about that, it kind of sounds similar with the org chart that like there are going to be factors beyond our control that are going to pull us out of our org chart, maybe temporarily. And our job becomes trying to get us back into the predetermined org chart that we came up with for the strategy for that year.

00;49;51;12 – 00;49;54;00
Speaker 1
Is that is that fair or is that. Well, yeah.

00;49;54;00 – 00;50;13;24
Speaker 3
You nailed it. You know, strategy is as much about choosing what we’re not going to work on or not be distracted by as it is about choosing what we are going to work on for the next year or for the next period of time, I should say, again. So that’s a different discussion. But for the next period of time, most commonly a year seems to be appropriate.

00;50;13;27 – 00;50;33;15
Speaker 3
So strategies about choosing what we’re not going to work on or be distracted by. So great point. When those distractions come, the team has to recenter around what is important. Otherwise it’s a kind of shiny object squirrel, you know? And next thing you know, we’re we’re going in a bunch of different directions. And those directions do not align with the strategy.

00;50;33;17 – 00;50;54;16
Speaker 3
Then we’re not working towards a strategy at the end of the year. The strategy is not achieve the business has it move forward, likely move backwards. And so so yeah, any time you’ve done the diligence to build the process, to look at the org chart, if you get bumped out of that, you need to very quickly lesson learned what happened.

00;50;54;19 – 00;51;16;00
Speaker 3
And then ties and say should this legitimately have bumped it, you know, is this a little continuous improvement activity. Can we learn you know, the the 2% and and edit something 2% or is this a, you know, a phase where you got to go back into radical redesign, right. Not continuous improvement and what have you, but most of those bumps are, hey, there’s something to learn here.

00;51;16;03 – 00;51;24;25
Speaker 3
What happened? How do we get bumped in this direction and how do we get back again? Let’s learn from that and not let it happen again and just get back on track.

00;51;24;28 – 00;51;53;19
Speaker 1
So I question for you I so yesterday right. So I’ve been going through doing a bunch of work trying to figure out some scalar scalability issues that we keep running into. And one of those scalability and and I’m I’m not kidding when I say this is like a ten year problem for me. And so and one of those issues is that I cannot seem to find a person to fill a standardized role that I have.

00;51;53;21 – 00;52;21;26
Speaker 1
It’s a standardized role that I have been the only one able to fill that role for the last ten years. I have yet to find another person that can do that role with a level of competency that I do that role with. Right. And so yesterday I had like this moment only took me ten years. I’m a quick study, that I’m like, maybe this standardized role just does not exist, right.

00;52;21;26 – 00;52;41;27
Speaker 1
Like maybe like, do I need to break it into two roles? Do I need to change it like so? I guess who I’m looking for some just, you know, guidance or words of wisdom on because I’m sure other people have this. All right. So there the business owner, they’re doing these duties. They have this role in the in the organization.

00;52;42;03 – 00;52;46;26
Speaker 1
And for the life of them, they cannot find someone to perform that role. Like, what do you do.

00;52;46;28 – 00;53;08;00
Speaker 3
Yeah. So another one of those things, it’s, you know, a common problem. And none of these none of these are unique. The first thing I usually guide the team into a discussion on is it can we not find it or can we not afford to find it? That’s the first question, right. So at different phases of growth the business can afford different levels of talent.

00;53;08;02 – 00;53;18;29
Speaker 3
So if it simply means we could find the person, but it’s a $200,000 a year job and we’re only budgeted for 125,000 a year. That’s a different problem.

00;53;19;01 – 00;53;34;29
Speaker 1
That’s actually exactly where I’m at with it. That’s why they say that because I continually am thinking in my mind. I’m like, if I realistically had to find someone with the skill set, the competency of what I need them to have, I’m going to have to pay them way more than I can afford to pay them. Yeah. And so?

00;53;35;01 – 00;53;36;10
Speaker 1
So what do I do?

00;53;36;13 – 00;53;58;25
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. So if, if that, if that turns out to be the root, that I can’t afford to hire that person, then, I think there’s two things that commonly pop up. One is prioritization. Right. So, you know, dunderhead moment, what are the 3 or 4 critical things? Not necessary functional categories, but what are the 3 or 4 critical things I really need this person to do?

00;53;58;25 – 00;54;25;02
Speaker 3
And then I myself as the president or Kelsey or somebody else can maybe picked up a couple things that we can. We can make it work by prioritizing and by prioritizing. Do we reduce the cost to the person? So for example, if a business is in transition, they, they need a leader who has led through transition. And that’s a different leader than a leader who has led in steady state.

00;54;25;05 – 00;54;45;05
Speaker 3
So one of the ways to slice that is hire a less expensive leader, somebody that’s comfortable leading and steady state and augment that leader with a coach, executive advisor, you know, consultant to for a short period of time to help them through the change, because the change is only going to be six months. And then things are going to stabilize, for example.

00;54;45;07 – 00;55;06;18
Speaker 3
Right? Or you yourself, as the president, step in and augment for six months. And, and you can get a, lesser expensive manager or leader who can lead in steady state and doesn’t need to have the change expertise, for example. So that’s that’s one way to do it. The other way to do it is what you start to allude to.

00;55;06;18 – 00;55;41;25
Speaker 3
And that’s to look at, is there another way to slice this? Right. So, can we break the role up? Can we phase into where we want to be with this role? Is there a interim or fractional person that could participate in that role to hit our budget where a full time person can, so we kind of get into those, those alternative structures that, that are allow us to get through the transition so that we can then afford to hire the person that we really think we need.

00;55;41;28 – 00;56;02;17
Speaker 3
And oftentimes we learn through that augmented situation, through that transition. And we may we may learn different we may learn, oh, you know what? Now that things have settled down, we don’t need the $200,000 a year plus leader. You know, we can get to 120,000 the final way, is development and to develop that person in-house. And this is tough.

00;56;02;17 – 00;56;17;07
Speaker 3
I think a lot of people say they’re going to do this. I recently talked to a business owner that said my second location’s not going the way I wanted it to. I told myself and the team the second location at a minimum of once a month, I would coaching and I go, well, how many times in the last year?

00;56;17;07 – 00;56;40;27
Speaker 3
Because it’s been about a year. How many times in the last year have you been up there to coaching once? First of all, that was it. So, you know, she realized, well, I said I was going to develop, but I didn’t have a strategy, a plan or tools in place to go develop. So the development option, I tend to encourage people to shy away from because I don’t think they realize the lift required to do it successfully.

00;56;40;29 – 00;57;00;17
Speaker 3
If it’s in-house, if you have the right partner that can do the development. You know, you mentioned Catamount as one of the sponsors. I think they do some of that kind of work. Someone like myself maybe could help. But you, if you’re going to do the development work internally, that’s a tough lift for, for most growing businesses.

00;57;00;19 – 00;57;26;19
Speaker 1
Well, you know, it’s interesting that you say that because the strategy that I have been convinced for the last ten years was going to work was the development strategy, where I’m hiring someone at the do it level, the execution side, and in my mind, they’re going to learn how to do all the stuff. And then the next step up using your tiered approach is going to bring them into the what is being done side of things.

00;57;26;25 – 00;57;49;20
Speaker 1
So they’re moving from the doing it, the execution side to the what is being done, the tactics side and I legitimately like I just it’s it’s continue to not work. And so yesterday I was literally like, this is it’s never worked. And I and at this point I can’t even say that it’s because I’m doing it wrong. But maybe I probably am.

00;57;49;26 – 00;57;56;12
Speaker 1
But also like, maybe it just doesn’t work and I need to change my strategy or keep having this issue.

00;57;56;15 – 00;58;18;03
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think you do. I think the is the strategy flawed is the question. And what are alternative approaches to achieve the same outcome. Alternative strategies like it sounds like that’s where you’re at and and to be fair, it lines right up everything you said lines right up with with, multiple experiences across multiple organizations before again, not a new problem.

00;58;18;03 – 00;58;20;29
Speaker 3
Just your first time navigating the problem, you know?

00;58;21;01 – 00;58;41;10
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, it’s you know, it’s interesting because, like, what I found in trying to do it that way is the people that I am hiring to do the work at the execution level. They want that. They want that job, they want that role. And then I get them in and maybe it’s a year or maybe it’s six months and they’re doing an amazing job.

00;58;41;12 – 00;59;10;03
Speaker 1
And I have one of these, I have one of these team members currently. But also this is consistently happened where when I started talking to that group of people about moving to the other tier of what’s being done on the tactic side, they don’t want to do it. They’re not interested in that role. Like I, I have had that conversation over and over and over again for ten years now where they’re like, yeah, I don’t I don’t really think I want to do that stuff.

00;59;10;03 – 00;59;19;02
Speaker 1
Like, I, I really like doing it. I don’t want to be the person that’s deciding what’s going to be done. I want to be the person doing the work.

00;59;19;07 – 00;59;55;17
Speaker 3
So. So this is awesome because classically this comes back to I don’t know if I guess it would be sociology or the psychology of teams or who, you know, it but as a component of org design. So classically this would come back and we’d say, well, this is where some of those tools, like the Gallup Strengthsfinder disc, mBTI, some of those tools come in handy here to understand where people’s natural strengths are and if they whether they think they want to do it or whether they don’t want to do it, where’s their natural strength.

00;59;55;17 – 01;00;19;27
Speaker 3
Right. So to kind of so some of those tools really come in handy in, the assessment of, of does somebody really have what it takes to kind of go to that next level? Number one. But number two, there’s something else I’ve seen increasingly in recent years in organizations, and that is that the people executing are often the, new, newer to the professional world.

01;00;19;27 – 01;00;41;15
Speaker 3
Folks so younger by age. And although, I’m not a fan and that’s a bigger discussion about talking about Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z Gen, like I, you know, breaking stuff into ten year increments, like, I, I, I don’t like it. But in the younger population, which tends to be the people that you’re talking about in the execution roles newer to the professional world.

01;00;41;18 – 01;00;56;22
Speaker 3
There’s a lot of those folks today relative to 30 years ago in America, specifically other places to in America specifically, that don’t seem to have a desire for more.

01;00;57;21 – 01;01;25;08
Speaker 3
And in the absence of the desire for more, there’s no upside to them taking on more responsibility, learning something new, being pushed into a new area they have. They don’t take joy in learning. They don’t take joy necessarily in succeeding. And they have no desire for for more and more money, more opportunity. And, and I think that’s a more recent problem that didn’t seem to be nearly as pervasive years ago.

01;01;25;08 – 01;01;47;16
Speaker 3
That also plays into this discussion. So years ago was my desk, etc. figure out where their sweet spot is, align them to where their sweet spot is at, work with them accordingly. Right? Now we layer over that, especially with with younger folks. And again, this is the 80, 20 or 9010 rule that I’m talking about. And there’s pockets where young people are still kicking ass, to be clear.

01;01;47;16 – 01;02;14;12
Speaker 3
And one of those pockets that we regularly see is in the technology side of things. You know, engineering, for example, like they’re driven by learning. They want to succeed, they want to grow. They want to take on the next challenge. But in the space that you’re in, particularly, Five Towers is in, that’s a space where it’s on the other end of the continuum completely from the technology folks, where we’ve got the folks that are that are, comfortable kind of coasting, you know?

01;02;14;14 – 01;02;31;28
Speaker 3
Yeah. And so that’s an important thing to, to really try and set out is, is, you know, are they still on mom and dad’s health insurance or mom and dad have means, or are they comfortable living in an apartment with two roommates and have no desire for anything more than that? Right. They sussing that out, I think, is an important part of this discussion, too.

01;02;31;28 – 01;02;44;10
Speaker 3
Which which is, which is a we talked about technical tools before the technical side of it. Now we’re talking about the social side of it, the people side of it. And that’s a it’s another part of the discussion for sure.

01;02;44;12 – 01;03;21;03
Speaker 1
Yeah. It’s interesting because, and this was also like one of the, I don’t know how I didn’t consider this before, but my thought in trying to fill this role for the last ten years and failing miserably, was that I needed to have a creative person that had a certain set of skills right? And what it occurred to me yesterday was, I am doing the role that I’m looking for, and I’m doing it well, and I have none of those creative skills that I’m looking for in a hired.

01;03;21;06 – 01;03;42;08
Speaker 1
So all of a sudden I’m like, I’m obviously doing this completely wrong. Like if I’m doing the role and I’m doing it really well and I don’t have any of those skills, that would mean that the person that’s going to do it in a similar fashion to me probably doesn’t have those skills either. They have other skills that are needed for that role, which kind of comes back to the functional accountability side.

01;03;42;08 – 01;03;55;27
Speaker 1
I think, right, of being able to evaluate and vet and hire a person based around those skills rather than skills that you think you’re going to develop in someone that doesn’t currently have them, or the ability to have them for that matter.

01;03;55;27 – 01;04;19;15
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. And what you’ve discovered is that if I hire a creative person, they don’t have the structure or the discipline to do the other part of the job. That’s, common conflict. And it’s very hard to find a wildly creative person that also, works well and rewards, structure, discipline and the things that come on that side of the equation.

01;04;19;15 – 01;04;56;05
Speaker 3
Likewise, a common screw up like that one that is, is the difference between hiring somebody that gets, intrinsic reward from solving problems versus somebody that gets intrinsic reward from doing the exact same thing every day. Perfectly. That’s another place where we see screw ups all the time. Is hiring the problem solving, grow, learn type into a role that requires repeated perfection, or hiring a repeated perfection person into a role that requires problem solving, communication.

01;04;56;07 – 01;05;11;01
Speaker 3
You know learning. Right. So, so just like the creativity versus the structure, we see the repetitive task versus the figure it out. Those are areas of major conflict that often pop up when we’re doing organization design work.

01;05;11;03 – 01;05;36;20
Speaker 1
Yeah. You know, it’s funny you say that too, because, I personally love the opportunities that chaos affords me with being able to overcut like, I mean, you know, me personally, so you know that I, I love to challenge myself and overcome those challenges, right. Like I, I’ve often said that I don’t know, like to me, the point of life is overcoming challenges and leveling up.

01;05;36;20 – 01;05;59;18
Speaker 1
Right. And so I it’s I look for that. I’m constantly, starving for it. Whereas I don’t think a lot of people are like that. So I need to find someone for that role that is going to enjoy that chaos and that ability to overcome challenges. Not so much. Someone that’s got a creative acumen that can, you know, really, so interesting.

01;05;59;21 – 01;06;22;25
Speaker 1
I know we got to wrap things up. I just, one last question for you before we do is you had mentioned, you know, obviously, you know, blue collar startup. We’ve got a lot of different sized businesses in our audience. We’ve got the the solo entrepreneur that’s trying to build their business. And we’ve got $100 million construction companies that have hundreds, if not thousands of employees.

01;06;22;28 – 01;07;01;04
Speaker 1
When you are a smaller business like mine and you can’t afford to hire that position, right? Because realistically I would have to pay, I don’t know, 10 or 20 grand more than I can actually afford for that position in order to do it. You had mentioned earlier about potentially outsourcing that position. Do you do you think that that’s a viable strategy to have someone to be able to come in and be a, let’s say, a stopgap as an outsource solution for that position until you can afford to pay an actual employee 100%.

01;07;01;05 – 01;07;21;19
Speaker 3
If yes, it’s 100% viable. I’ve done it myself. On an interim basis, for or with clients. The challenge is the same challenge as the hiring the person challenge. That is finding the right person. Right? So in this case, finding the right organization, if there’s multiple people, and then getting them on a fractional basis.

01;07;21;19 – 01;07;45;19
Speaker 3
So for example, instead of paying a full time employee $100,000 a year, plus 30 or 40% overhead to have that person, you’re going to pay 140 grand a year, you know, because you can share whatever the benefits are time off, computer lights. Instead of paying a 140 grand a year, can you go out and get a fractional person that can engage with the team, you know, a few hours a week, a day, a week, whatever for the same price, right?

01;07;45;19 – 01;08;04;02
Speaker 3
So that’s certainly 100% an option. It’s one I’m happy to talk more about. And if I can fill that role, I’m happy to. And if I can’t, I’ll be really transparent with people that I can’t. And of course, that’s self-serving for me. Just to be clear, because I get all of my business through referral, so I don’t ever sign up to something for the money.

01;08;04;02 – 01;08;37;02
Speaker 3
I’ll only sign up if I’m pretty confident that we can achieve radical success, and that you’re going to tell other people about it, right? So just to put that out there. But the other component too, is if you’re only 10 or 20 grand under budget, the other thing that we didn’t talk about is an incentive compensation structure built around the rule and getting somebody in and, tying that last 20 grand a compensation to a performance measurement, assuming that same performance measurement brings revenue into your business or drives cost out of your business.

01;08;37;08 – 01;09;13;08
Speaker 3
Right. So if we can tie their performance to revenue generation or margin growth cost out, that’s another way to achieve that. And then, and shop it to some hungry folks, you know, younger folks that want the opportunity to earn that, incentive component. So, so that’s another, another piece as well. And oftentimes, just to be clear, that incentive comp piece, like let’s say again, it’s $100,000 roll and your 20 grand under budget, you really need $120,000 person that instead of comp piece wouldn’t just be 20 grand.

01;09;13;08 – 01;09;37;13
Speaker 3
The first goal would be 20 grand. The second goal would be another 30 or 40 grand. Right? So that you incentivize that person to choose you with the incentive comp plan, not go with the 120 guarantee with some other organization. Right. Because the upside is exciting to them. So that’s another way to slice that as well. If it’s only 20 grand, a lot of times when I talk to organizations, the gaps bigger than 20 grand, to be honest.

01;09;37;13 – 01;10;02;08
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, I’m I’m small. I’m a little guy. I just look at, Bill, I, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Of course, you know, like you always do. And, and in a way, giving me a free coaching session here in the form of a podcast. If people are interested in what you’re talking about, they want to learn more, or they want to potentially look to bring you on to help their organization.

01;10;02;11 – 01;10;03;15
Speaker 1
How do they find you?

01;10;03;17 – 01;10;25;26
Speaker 3
Yeah. Well, hopefully people in your story, hopefully people find similarity and maybe this kind of situ, so always good to to use your stories and your experience, to talk through it. So thanks for that. Yeah. You can find me at Bill at the op X, which is op x sharp com or on LinkedIn. And also, you know, they can reach out to you and you can connect us.

01;10;25;26 – 01;10;37;25
Speaker 3
Worst case, if they’re lazy or if it didn’t come through clear in the, the podcast itself. But you can get me on LinkedIn to and it’s William and then parentheses. Bill Tansey Jr on LinkedIn.

01;10;37;27 – 01;10;44;27
Speaker 1
Awesome. Thanks for your time today, Bill. Thanks, of course, everybody, for being one of our Patreon members. And, you’ll hear from us next week.

01;10;44;27 – 01;11;13;00
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Bio or email us at hardhat Dot CSU at gmail.com.

01;11;13;00 – 01;11;25;06
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building. Keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

01;11;25;06 – 01;11;40;16
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.