Processes Your Team Will Actually Follow with Bill Tansey

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Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

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Speaker 2
Welcome to Blue Collar Startup everybody. The podcast where hard work meets big ideas. This is your home for real talk, real stories and real strategies from the front lines of business in the trades.

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Speaker 2
I’m your host, Mike Nelson from Five Towers Media. Derrick will not be joining us today. Big happenings on the Derek front. I’ll let him talk about it. Although we did talk about it a little bit yesterday I think on the show. So if you listen to, well, now last week’s episode, you probably have a little bit of inside baseball as far as that goes.

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Speaker 2
Excited about today’s episode, though? You know, we’ve got our let’s ask Bill or business lab here. Going on. Bill Tanzi was shaken, brother.

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Speaker 1
Hey, buddy. Good morning.

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Speaker 2
Good morning. Good morning. I’m excited to talk about some process stuff today, man. You know, as, as, you know, been doing a lot of a lot of work the last year on my business, with your help and guidance, of course. And, certainly is having an impact. And, this is kind of the process. Stuff is just so important having those systems and processes, you know, before we get in that, though, I do have to do a couple little things here for housekeeping.

00;01;22;19 – 00;01;49;04
Speaker 2
Obviously today’s, let’s ask Bill episode. If you haven’t listened for a while, we’ve got a couple of formats that we’re doing each week. We’ve got the let’s ask Bill’s, we’ve got the, roundtable discussions with Catamount Consulting, Scott and Stacy over there. And, Jason was on a recent episode, we’ve got Stacy coming on. I think it’s next week, actually, for, women’s in the trades episode, where, she’s going to be our guest host and bring it on.

00;01;49;06 – 00;02;15;10
Speaker 2
Connections of hers that are in the trades. And then, of course, we’ve got interviews from the field, which the last episode that we just did, with William Day, from Bassett Healthcare, which was a really interesting, episode. If you haven’t listened to it, check it out. William was formerly with, Jurgen Construction and then recently went to Bassett Health Care, which I you know, when I first saw that, I was like, what does that have to do with the trades?

00;02;15;17 – 00;02;32;28
Speaker 2
But turns out there’s a lot of trade work going on in the health care field. So check it out. And of course, you know, going to talk about our Patreon side of things, you know, Bill and I are going to talk about for about 30 minutes today, talking about some process stuff. Then we’re going to move over for another 15 minutes to our Patreon side of things.

00;02;32;28 – 00;02;52;19
Speaker 2
This is a members only portal. You can sign up for. It’s five bucks a month. The information and content that we’re putting in the Patreon side of things is really geared towards helping people grow and scale their blue collar businesses. So if you are in the trades actively, or if you are a business owner in the trades, spend the five bucks a month.

00;02;52;19 – 00;03;16;13
Speaker 2
Definitely worth the money using. And last but not least, I got to talk about our sponsors. You know, we have a lot of sponsorship opportunities for people to get involved with the show. What we do with that sponsorship money is we donate it for tools and tuition for kids in the trades, whether it’s Boces or HVC, which we call the, the blue collar college, because of all the great trades programs we have.

00;03;16;13 – 00;03;42;05
Speaker 2
So, you know, if you’re interested in getting, involved and being a part of the show and helping kids with tools and tuition, reach out to us. Email will be in the show notes. And of course, that means I got to thank our current sponsors. We’ve got Nick over at people, Liz Martin Electric, MLB construction, Binotto Construction, Michaels Group, of course, Scott and Stacy and team over at Catamount Consulting, Northeast Construction Trades Workforce Coalition.

00;03;42;05 – 00;04;07;19
Speaker 2
Pam and Doug over there doing some amazing work for the trades, getting kids interested young and early, and getting them exposed to all the opportunities that there are in the trades. Of course, Derek’s team over at Diego Cleaning Systems, for all the help they give him and give him the space to be able to do the show and all the work that goes on behind the scenes, as well as our team over at Five Towers Media, big shout out to Taylor, who does all of our production and clipping and just makes the show great.

00;04;07;19 – 00;04;14;19
Speaker 2
So thanks to everybody for all the help and all the work you do. And without further ado, let’s talk about some process Bell.

00;04;14;21 – 00;04;25;09
Speaker 1
Cool, cool. So you mentioned Jason. Man, that guy does such a great job at talking about what he does. I just listened to the recent podcast that dropped for you guys. I was at 117. Maybe I don’t, I said.

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Speaker 2
It sounds about right right.

00;04;26;10 – 00;04;34;21
Speaker 1
Around there. And yeah, I just like, listen, Jason, I sent him a text afterwards, congratulating him on a job well done for that. He’s good.

00;04;34;24 – 00;04;55;09
Speaker 2
Yeah. That whole team is great. I really enjoy those guys. I, you know, they have just a wealth of knowledge to pass on to people. They’re very passionate about that knowledge transfer to and getting people, whether it’s mindset, growth coaching, you know, then of course, the safety side of what they do, the leadership side of what they do that they’re just they’re great.

00;04;55;09 – 00;05;07;07
Speaker 2
We actually, Chris and I had dinner with, Scott and Stacy and, Jason and Scott’s wife, recently, and, just great time and.

00;05;07;22 – 00;05;33;16
Speaker 2
Shared some funny stories and, you know, it’s, they’re they’re a good group people. Yeah. So, Bill, let’s talk about some process, man. It’s, you know, I feel like, at least for the last few months, we have talked a lot about process on the show. You know, when it comes to business in general for years, I’m, I’m very passionate about the power process and what it can do.

00;05;33;18 – 00;05;47;09
Speaker 2
But, you know, I, I think we should for people that are just getting introduced, the process, we should probably talk about what it actually is. Right. So when we say process, what are we talking about? Systems, SOPs, habits, culture, all the above. What is process.

00;05;47;09 – 00;06;15;13
Speaker 1
Built. Yeah. So when you when you mentioned that’s what you wanted to focus on today, I thought to myself Holy cow. Like I can’t believe we haven’t talked about this yet already. Because you’re right. Right. What is what is process? So, when I hear the word process, what I hear is like the layman way of saying a written standard to execute, to, and if you will, like in the biz or industry speak, we call it standard work.

00;06;15;15 – 00;06;39;17
Speaker 1
So, when we think about process processes are written standard to execute to and more specifically, if you kind of work in this space, you refer to that process or that umbrella term is standard work. So standard work sums up all the different kinds of processes. And, and that’s where it could start to become overwhelming for some people.

00;06;39;17 – 00;07;07;22
Speaker 1
But we simplify it by using a simple like three piece hierarchy. So when we talk about standard work, at the top of the hierarchy is policy. But policy is procedure, and below procedure is work instruction. And quite simply, policy is more of a vision setting component of the standard work and work instruction is the gritty details of how we execute or transact day in and day out.

00;07;07;24 – 00;07;40;02
Speaker 1
And, and that makes up the, if you will, the bottom tier of that hierarchy of standard work. And if we if we organize, if we think about our process in terms of standard work, and if we organize our standard work as policy, procedure and work instruction, that really helps us manage the document lifecycle and how we create, approve, publish, utilize, edit eventually obsolete that standard work, and it makes that standard work digestible for for the team.

00;07;40;04 – 00;08;03;22
Speaker 1
And and you mentioned culture. If you’ve developed the standard work in a way that’s digestible, again, using a simple hierarchy like the one I just explained, that’s where the team can start to embrace the standard work and use it to their benefit. And you can pivot the culture over to a culture of, process change, which we would call a continuous improvement culture.

00;08;03;24 – 00;08;26;24
Speaker 1
And and having that continuous improvement culture is usually highlighted, or illustrated. Do I have a continuous improvement culture that I guess the answer to that is yes. If, you ask somebody how they do their job, number one, they’re able to point to a document that very simply helps them do their job. That’s number one. And the number two is do you have a continuous improvement culture.

00;08;26;24 – 00;08;53;20
Speaker 1
Meaning when there’s a shortfall, when a metric isn’t achieved or when something’s turned red as opposed to green? Do the people on the team huddle together shoulder to shoulder and try and improve the process, or do they point fingers at the person next to him? If you have a process based culture or continuous improvement culture, everybody knows how to do their job and they can tell you where it’s written down, so they know what success looks like in writing.

00;08;53;27 – 00;09;09;11
Speaker 1
And then two, if the team falls short of success, they get together and they collectively look at how to improve that standard work or how to improve that process, to improve the outcomes as opposed to pointing fingers or pointing blame.

00;09;09;13 – 00;09;29;11
Speaker 2
I, I love what is a few things that you said there. One thing that you said, the written standard to execute to. I love that I actually wrote it down after you said it. If you saw me looking down like I was on my phone, that’s what I was doing, was writing that down because I want to make sure I reuse that, that bill ism.

00;09;29;14 – 00;09;47;29
Speaker 2
The because it says so much to, you know, in that one sentence. Right. Number one, that process needs to be written down. So it can’t just be something that’s in somebody’s head or, you know, I hear this all the time and I’ve been guilty of this, like, well, we have a way of doing things. We have a process, but it’s not written down everywhere, anywhere.

00;09;47;29 – 00;10;12;10
Speaker 2
It’s just what we do. Right. But then also like to execute to. And I think that is a very important thing as well, because we forget how important execution is, right? We have a way we do things. Maybe we have it written down, but executing to that standard, really just says so much about like, no, we have we have a minimum standard that we need to execute to.

00;10;12;12 – 00;10;21;12
Speaker 2
And then rolling into that improvement process or that improvement culture, I think is how you phrased it like, or how did you phrase it.

00;10;21;15 – 00;10;22;27
Speaker 1
Continuous improvement culture.

00;10;22;28 – 00;10;42;24
Speaker 2
Continuous improvement culture. Because that’s actually something that I’ve been noticing a lot lately is, you know, I did a ton of work third and fourth quarter last year on getting every getting processes written down, getting a document. Certainly not perfect by any means. But progress. Not perfection, I guess.

00;10;42;27 – 00;10;43;24
Speaker 1
Absolutely.

00;10;43;24 – 00;11;02;21
Speaker 2
But then even just rolling into the first quarter, I mean, we’re just hitting second month and we already, because of the work that I would been doing with you on the org chart, which has been monumental in helping get some more structure in the business. We had to change a bunch of processes. We moved some things around.

00;11;02;21 – 00;11;12;22
Speaker 2
We noticed that, like when we were looking at the org chart and the what the hell’s the term bill? Functional accountabilities or accountabilities?

00;11;12;26 – 00;11;13;04
Speaker 1
Right.

00;11;13;10 – 00;11;35;13
Speaker 2
So we start laying out those functional accountabilities and then realizing that like, hey, this functional accountability really is a part of this role on the chart in this person is executing that role. That means we need to move this process over to them, which actually changes the process. So now we’ve got to improve the process. We’ve got to change that rigid and standard work.

00;11;35;13 – 00;11;42;10
Speaker 2
Like it’s just so all interconnected and and it is just to be fair, like it is a lot of fun.

00;11;42;12 – 00;12;02;28
Speaker 1
Yeah. So it’s funny, I, I enjoy it, but man, to the contrary, there’s people out there that did this frightens the living daylights out of, you know, when we talk about this stuff and, you know, in any organization you’re going to have a mix of both types of people. So bridging that gap and transitioning over to that continuous improvement culture is a is a substantial objective.

00;12;02;28 – 00;12;23;20
Speaker 1
And I think, I think there’s a lot of people out there that are scared of it as a just a general statement. And then there’s others that just have don’t have a full appreciation for what it takes to convert. So because of those two categories, there’s a lot of people that have been exposed to some of the stuff we’re talking about that has let’s let’s left a bad taste in their mouth, if you will, because of that.

00;12;23;22 – 00;12;41;13
Speaker 1
You know, that lack of follow through, that lack of seeing it through to the finish, and, as, as I go into the work that I do, that’s always something I have to kind of watch out for is really quickly. I need to get, the detractors, the people that push back because of their past bad experience with something like this.

00;12;41;16 – 00;12;58;03
Speaker 1
You know, I have to quickly get their objections out in the open and be able to address them, to get them to consider the idea of, like, quote, trying this again, you know? Yeah. And then show them how it’s different when it’s done. Right. So, but yeah, part, you know, continuous improvement culture. You nailed it.

00;12;58;06 – 00;13;15;28
Speaker 1
These are not static documents. And I mentioned a minute ago that if we organize them in that three piece hierarchy there, that helps us manage the document lifecycle. And that’s critically important because these are evergreen processes that are you’re going to find a shortfall or a problem, and you’re going to change the process to fix that problem.

00;13;16;01 – 00;13;31;14
Speaker 1
And if, if they’re not organized correctly, that editing and changing of the processes and then retraining based on the process becomes overwhelming in itself. And that’s just a structural thing, right? That’s easy to overcome if you know how to structure the system. So it’s all real.

00;13;31;16 – 00;13;54;12
Speaker 2
Yeah. It’s interesting. You know, we actually I actually built a table of contents document spreadsheet essentially to be able to, you know, because one of the things that’s always happened in the past with me, with processes is we have folders for written processes and you can’t find a damn thing. And then you’re like, looking for something. I’m like, where is this?

00;13;54;12 – 00;14;14;29
Speaker 2
Who’s got it on their on their hard drive or on the, you know, where is it Google Drive and you’re searching. Then you find four different versions of it. Sure. And so one thing we did was we, we created a spreadsheet table of contents. And then I have it broken up basically by each, I forget what the term that you call it is.

00;14;15;01 – 00;14;16;01
Speaker 1
Each function.

00;14;16;04 – 00;14;18;28
Speaker 2
No, no, a valid value stream.

00;14;19;00 – 00;14;20;04
Speaker 1
Oh. By the value stream.

00;14;20;04 – 00;14;38;05
Speaker 2
Sure. So I had that broken down by value stream. Right. So then, so that it’s easier. So like, someone that’s working on our buying local value stream can find all the processes for buying local. They can find the website, the, value stream processes. They can find the marketing support services and go through each one like that.

00;14;38;05 – 00;14;57;22
Speaker 2
And then but one thing I did was I added a date last edited column on that spreadsheet so that I can see when was the last time that we edited this document. Like what was the last time we updated it so that that way I know, like if there’s a process in there that we haven’t touched, we haven’t updated in six months, is is it still working?

00;14;57;22 – 00;15;22;14
Speaker 2
You know, so I can go through on a quarterly basis now and, and look and see like, hey, this process hasn’t been touched in six month. I need to revisit it with the team, make sure everything is still this is still the way we do it, right? Like we haven’t changed something and not edited the document so that if we need to do a knowledge transfer to a new hire, it’s, there’s just so much value in all this work, and it’s, like I said, it’s fun, but staggering.

00;15;22;14 – 00;15;45;07
Speaker 2
And I wanted to ask you, not to go too much off on this tangent, but I know we’ve got other questions to ask you, but you had mentioned the detractors, and I everybody runs into this right where it’s like you either it’s the employee that you hired and they just don’t like following a process, or they’re constantly pushing back.

00;15;45;10 – 00;16;04;29
Speaker 2
Well, this process doesn’t always work because if this happens and then this happens. So like as a as a business owner, how do we deal with employees? I know the simple answer is fire them. Right. But like it’s not always an option and not really the the attitude we want to walk into my way or the highway situation.

00;16;04;29 – 00;16;12;25
Speaker 2
But what do business owners do with team members that just really struggle to follow the process and really use the documentation?

00;16;12;27 – 00;16;30;18
Speaker 1
Yeah, so that’s a really good question. And and ironically, you know, how do you fix it long term. Will you have good process in your in your hiring process. Right. So you have a well documented hiring process. And then in the future you’re not hiring people that are detractors in a, in a continuous improvement or process culture. Right?

00;16;30;18 – 00;17;03;20
Speaker 1
So the the irony of the question is the long term fix is to, you know, put together, bullet proof, staffing or onboarding and hiring practices, you know, screening practices, etc. but in more in the short term, I think it’s it’s just like any other change initiative. And it change initiative. I hate to admit it, but it’s a lot like sales and, somebody told me once that, you don’t sell features, you sell benefits.

00;17;03;23 – 00;17;29;25
Speaker 1
And as a, as a guy like me, an engineer, very, you know, you know, I guess you could say, linear thinker or critical thinker, that really resonates with me. You don’t sell features, you sell benefits. So when you talk about detractors on the team or people that are pushing back, you’re always going to have them. And and the way you overcome it is figuring out what’s important to them and then helping them see how they will benefit from utilizing the process to achieve whatever is important to that.

00;17;29;25 – 00;17;53;12
Speaker 1
Right. So, you know, that’s where the story probably gets a little longer. But what’s important to them? Well, you know, at this point, everybody’s read the book The Love Languages, and apparently they’ve got a professional book now too, that talks about kind of using similar thinking. But I haven’t read the book. Apparently it’s out. My point is, is for years, when you talk about what’s important to somebody, it comes back to the Love Languages book that’s focused on relationships.

00;17;53;12 – 00;18;08;21
Speaker 1
We’ll just take that into the office and just know that physical touch probably isn’t appropriate in the office, but the rest, you know, have a place. And so as you look at your employee, figure out what’s important to them. Is it words of affirmation? Is it being celebrated publicly or privately? Is it compensation? Is it rewards? Is it gifts?

00;18;08;21 – 00;18;31;15
Speaker 1
Like what is? What is it that motivates them? Is it a job well done? Is it feeling like they had success at work and and then tying, that motivation, that individual motivation for them back to back to the process is is really the best tool I found. To take somebody that doesn’t naturally kind of trend that way and kind of bring them over to the dark side.

00;18;31;17 – 00;18;47;22
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting that you you mentioned hiring, right. And so how does having strong, strong processes change? Hiring, training, performance? You know, especially in high turnover industries, I mean, which is basically every industry at this point.

00;18;47;25 – 00;19;09;08
Speaker 1
Yeah, high turnover, every industry. But I got to say in the trades specifically right now, turnover is brutal, right? Hiring people and hiring good people is tough. The talent pipeline in the trades is a huge challenge. It’s a challenge that I’ve spoken to two of my most recent clients about. Both of them are in the trades and, both of them are struggling with talent pipeline and retention.

00;19;09;08 – 00;19;37;28
Speaker 1
So, yeah, that’s a good question. We established already that standard work or strong process that establishes an objective standard for performance. Right? So if we take that same thinking into hiring team members, if we have an objective standard for for performance that’s written down, we can have a literal scorecard from which to evaluate candidates when they submit to resume.

00;19;38;00 – 00;19;58;05
Speaker 1
Right. And if they pass that initial screening based on their resume, then we have what would used to be called a phone screen. Now it’s a Google screen, right? It’s a video meeting. Now we have a video meeting to screen that candidate. So a one hour video meeting to screen that candidate against a second level scorecard based on these objective criteria for the role.

00;19;58;07 – 00;20;23;20
Speaker 1
And if that’s successful, we then interview them with a final scorecard to, to make sure that they either meet or don’t meet the objective criteria for the role. And what this does is this allows us to screen out most of the bad resumes, then have a video screening for a half hour, ideally an hour max, but a half hour ideally.

00;20;23;22 – 00;20;46;09
Speaker 1
And we video screen maybe 3 or 4 people. As soon as we find somebody that passes that objective criteria on the video screening, we invite them in for an in-person or onsite interview. And if we follow this process of having objective criteria and then scoring people against the objective criteria, we’ve taken away the relative comparison. We don’t care about the rest of the candidates.

00;20;46;09 – 00;21;07;15
Speaker 1
We just care about the first guy or the first lady that we talked to that meets the criteria at each step. And if we do that, we commonly wind up interviewing less than two people for the job and hiring one of those two people. You know, in comparison, I think what a lot of organizations still do today is they say we need 25 interviews or we need ten interviews.

00;21;07;18 – 00;21;32;22
Speaker 1
And to get to those ten interviews, God knows how many resumes they look at and how many screenings they do. But can you imagine ten interviews? It takes, you know, somewhere between an hour and three hours each that’s like 30 to what, 90 hours of interviewing for one position that might turn over a year? To the contrary, if you have standard work that you’ve created a objective measure of what good performance looks like, an objective standard, and then you screen against that objective standard.

00;21;32;25 – 00;21;55;14
Speaker 1
And, what we found is that with with that kind of process on the HR side of the business, you typically interview less than two for each role, and then you hire that person and retention is through the roof. Now other things influence retention. To be clear. But first impression and hiring the right person. Those two things are the first opportunity to to positively impact retention.

00;21;55;14 – 00;21;57;04
Speaker 1
And and we see a huge mix.

00;21;57;04 – 00;22;30;15
Speaker 2
So, I’m wondering, you know, I have this theory about process inside an organization that when you hire team members and especially from a small business standpoint, right, because small businesses are chaotic, right. Like the longer you’ve been in business, the more solidified you are in your way of doing things right. And but young but smaller businesses, especially younger businesses, it’s just chaos like and and we’re even though we’ve been you know, I’ve been doing this for 12 years now.

00;22;30;15 – 00;22;43;11
Speaker 2
Realistically my current company is only a couple of years old because coming out of Covid, we had to restructure, we had changes. All the different things happened. So it’s like we basically had to start over and not even basically we did start over.

00;22;43;11 – 00;22;59;27
Speaker 1
You’re not alone. I mean, I can’t tell you how many small and mid-sized companies either went out of business or restructured and survived, but kind of had to start over. I mean, that’s a real I help a lot of organizations through that exact struggle, you know, so that’s yeah, you’re not alone. And I’m assuming a lot of listeners have faced it too.

00;23;00;02 – 00;23;15;03
Speaker 2
Yeah. It’s, it can be pretty rough. I, you know, like especially, where I’m at my career and how long I’ve been doing this, I, I anticipated being further down the path at this point. Right. And Derek and I talked about this a lot, too. And it’s just like, you know, we had to start over. What are you going to do?

00;23;15;03 – 00;23;41;22
Speaker 2
But I’m just, you know, so my theory about process in business is that it just like with kids, you know, giving kids structure is good for them. They can count on things, right? They feel better about their lives. And I feel the same way. But I don’t really have any evidence to this, that having structure and process in a business gives your employees like a feeling of security.

00;23;41;25 – 00;23;55;18
Speaker 2
Totally. And and can help with retention, right? Because who wants to be a part of an organization that’s just chaotic and stressful? All the time, and everything changes every other week? And can you speak to that a little bit? I mean, do you see that with the kind of work that you do?

00;23;55;20 – 00;24;13;27
Speaker 1
Yeah, I see it 100%. And I could certainly share stories that I’ve seen, but I think the one thing that I realized best sums that up. So and I think we talked about this in some context once before, but slightly different. The Gallup organization has a two book series, and I’m a big fan of, and these books have been around now.

00;24;13;27 – 00;24;41;01
Speaker 1
The have been around for, I don’t know, 20 years. I think I read these 20 years ago, but it has a two part book series and the the titles have changed subtly over the years and like the latest incarnation of each, but it’s it’s the books are first break all the rules and now discover your strengths and and again, there may be subtle title changes in the latest publication of the book, but essentially those are the two books you can Google and find them in a heartbeat in now discover your strengths.

00;24;41;03 – 00;25;02;17
Speaker 1
Or excuse me and first, break all the rules. The Gallup organization did this huge study to determine, like, what makes a great organization, what makes great leaders and and boil it down to and I forget it’s ten, 11, 12, something like that. Things. And one of those things is a simple question to your team, do I know what it takes to succeed in my job?

00;25;02;19 – 00;25;22;09
Speaker 1
Right? And do I have the tools I need to succeed in my job is one of the complementary questions to that. So if you think about standard work in the context that we’re talking about, do I know what it takes to succeed in my job? Well, if there’s an a written down, objective set of criteria that says this is what success looks like, that checks that box.

00;25;22;12 – 00;25;38;18
Speaker 1
And if it’s written down and if it’s clear on how to engage it and use it, and presumably if you took the time to write it down, you probably took the time to put the tools in place to write to do it. Yeah. That checks the second of the boxes in this Gallup organization kind of poll.

00;25;38;18 – 00;25;57;12
Speaker 1
That’s again, it’s like the top ten or top 12 things that make the difference, you know, if you will, in employees being successful in retention and all that. And, so do I know what it takes to succeed in my job? And do I have the tools that I need to do it? And, and standard work is a big piece of checking both of those boxes that the Gallup organization to this.

00;25;57;12 – 00;26;07;08
Speaker 1
You know, I don’t know, you know, bazillion people surveyed or companies surveyed, found out they were there are two of the top ten critical things to, to be successful and to retain employees.

00;26;07;11 – 00;26;20;14
Speaker 2
So I’m actually writing this down. I’m like, I’m like, I know that I, I’ve heard you say this before, but like it you said that. Do I know what it takes to be successful and do I have the tools to do it? Like.

00;26;20;16 – 00;26;21;02
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;26;21;04 – 00;26;29;03
Speaker 2
I’m just thinking about I’m like, you know, I don’t know if I spend enough time with my team members describing what success looks like.

00;26;29;05 – 00;26;52;11
Speaker 1
Yeah. As a so and it’s funny too, because now let’s take that. And you know, you’re the leader of the organization. But as a leader in an organization, whether you’re the the top guy or the second or third, you know, wherever you are in that hierarchy, if your role is to lead. I personally believe that, making what success looks like crystal clear is your number one responsibility as a leader.

00;26;52;14 – 00;27;10;11
Speaker 1
And your second responsibility as a leader is to remove all the roadblocks and help the people on the team win. Like, you can make sports analogies as the coach and the team. You can look at military analogies, you can look at a whole bunch of things. But as a leader and there’s some presuppositions here, to be clear, you know, you have to be a you have to be well-intended.

00;27;10;11 – 00;27;28;06
Speaker 1
You have to be, you know, kind and genuine, you know, all of those things. But once all those presuppositions are met, you know, don’t be an asshole. Then making what success looks like crystal clear. So the sports analogy, if we’re going to run a race and if we don’t decide where the finish line is, how do we know if anybody won?

00;27;28;12 – 00;27;46;21
Speaker 1
You know, it’s that simple. So we line up Mike, I’ll race you across the yard. Well, what does across the yard mean? Does it mean until we hit the fence or to the pool? Or like what is across the yard, you know, nobody knows. Right. So we need to make what success looks like crystal clear. One of the ways we do that is through standard work for daily operations.

00;27;46;23 – 00;28;03;05
Speaker 1
And then, we need to remove the roadblocks and put the tools in place for people then to be successful. So, you know, what does that mean? If we’re going to race across the yard and if there’s kids Legos spread out across the yard, we need to move the Legos because we’re not going to have an effective race if we’re barefoot, running over Legos, you know?

00;28;03;08 – 00;28;03;28
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;28;04;00 – 00;28;20;27
Speaker 1
So you can take all these kind of simple examples. And it really is it’s that simple from a vision standpoint, rolling it out first and then staying true to it over time and executing to it day in and day out is where the challenge comes in, right? But the concepts or the concepts are there.

00;28;20;29 – 00;28;44;16
Speaker 2
And I’m literally sitting here thinking like, I’ve got a I try I basically got rid of, meetings in my company and we do a quarterly meeting. Team meeting here’s, you know, like we just did our, first one of the year and here’s, you know, here’s the things we’re trying to accomplish. So in that case, I was detailing out, like, here’s what success looks like.

00;28;44;16 – 00;29;00;17
Speaker 2
If we’re able to do all these things at the end of the year. But what we have implemented now is instead of doing team meetings where like once a week, we used to bring everybody onto a zoom and we, you know, have an hour long meeting, which probably could have been an email and, so we got rid of that.

00;29;00;17 – 00;29;20;20
Speaker 2
But what we do now is we do and not only when it’s absolutely necessary. We do a, we do a huddle. So it might be a five minute huddle, it might be a 15 minute huddle, like so today I’ve got a 15 minute huddle with three of my team members to talk about some work we’ve got to do for a client that all three of these team members are going to be touching in some fashion.

00;29;20;22 – 00;29;41;07
Speaker 2
And I’m thinking about it right now. I’m like, I’m going to add that to my discussion. Is here’s what success looks like with this project. Love it. Because it’s not something that I typically would say in that fashion. I would just say like, here’s what we need to do. But I think saying, here’s what we need to do, and then here’s what success looks like when it’s done.

00;29;41;09 – 00;29;44;24
Speaker 2
You know what our objective is? I think that’s and that’s.

00;29;44;26 – 00;30;02;28
Speaker 1
Yeah, there’s a big difference between saying, here’s what we need to do and here’s what the outcome looks like if we win. Right? Yeah. It’s very different in the communication. I’m glad you picked up on that. 100% with you, you know, to the meeting thing. I’ve really strict rules for myself on on how and when, and we hold meetings and why.

00;30;03;00 – 00;30;22;29
Speaker 1
But at the end of the day, another little nugget, if you will, as a leader, if I’m calling a meeting. It’s my unspoken goal that everybody in that meeting feels better when they leave the meeting. Right. So they’ve taken away value from being in the meeting. I have some other, you know, kind of guidelines or rules as well, but that’s one that I try and bring to the table in.

00;30;22;29 – 00;30;44;07
Speaker 1
The work that I do is every time, if I pull people away to meet with me, they need to leave. They’re saying that time was worthwhile. And, that’s really hard to do. It’s taken years and years of polish and practice to try and get to that. And I will say the way I measure the success. So what does success look like as a leader that’s trying to do this?

00;30;44;10 – 00;31;04;04
Speaker 1
It’s people show up to the meeting that we’re invited. So somebody in another department or on another project or whatever the case says, hey, I’ve heard about that meeting you have every Monday. Do you mind if I pop in? I think it would help me be successful. Right. And that’s the measure of success of of leading a good meeting.

00;31;04;04 – 00;31;16;00
Speaker 1
And, so if you’ve had people kind of self invite, then you know that you’re doing it right, right. Because other people are talking about the meeting outside of the meeting and talking about it in a favorable way that’s helping them win.

00;31;16;02 – 00;31;20;03
Speaker 2
Yeah, I feel like my team is trying to get out of meetings. I got some work to do.

00;31;20;05 – 00;31;24;02
Speaker 1
Yeah. Look closer to that. You can talk about that offline. That’s a whole nother one, right?

00;31;24;02 – 00;31;31;06
Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, I was just writing down, too. We’re gonna have to do an episode on bills rules for meetings.

00;31;31;09 – 00;31;37;24
Speaker 2
Because I’m into. I’m like. I’m like, I want to know all the rules that you have for meetings. And I’m like, well, if I want to know, I’m sure our listeners want to know. So.

00;31;37;24 – 00;31;48;04
Speaker 1
Well, somebody somebody is in the comments right now going, Mike and Bill are going to have a meeting to talk about meetings. Yeah, right. Yeah. So, we got to be a little careful with that, but yeah, I’m on I’m in for it. So we’ll, you.

00;31;48;04 – 00;32;07;22
Speaker 2
Know, there’s, a great book called Death By Meeting. I don’t know if you ever read that by Patrick Lynchian. I’m a big fan of his work. He’s good. Yeah. Yeah, I love his stuff. But, Anyway, a good book. Not not to go off on too much of a tangent here. So, you know, we talked about what process can do for your organization.

00;32;07;22 – 00;32;26;16
Speaker 2
We talked about what to do when employees resist. The question I have is, why do small businesses resist process so much, even when the chaos is clearly causing them time and money? They know that process can help their organization. Why do people resist it?

00;32;26;19 – 00;32;52;23
Speaker 1
Yeah. So there’s a there’s a little handful of reasons maybe. Right. Like so four or 5 or 6 reasons. I think that that businesses resist. But they all come back to the leaders fundamentally flawed in their understanding. Right. And when I say the leader, it doesn’t always mean the formal leader. There’s also informal leaders in business. There’s people that have a heavy a heavy influence on the momentum of the organization.

00;32;52;23 – 00;33;13;07
Speaker 1
And it’s important as the formal leader, the leader that’s titled on the org chart in the leadership role to recognize who those influencers are. And, you know, years ago, we didn’t have social media, the word influencer, we would talk about these people in the organization that have heavy informal leadership or influence. And we need to identify who those people are.

00;33;13;07 – 00;33;37;12
Speaker 1
So as I talk about the leaders being fundamentally flawed in their understanding, leading to resistance, it’s not just the formal leader, but it’s also those key people that have that heavy influence on organizational momentum. But what are those handful of ways? So, I’ll try and start off with like kind of the basics and then end with like the real zingers, you know, the, the, you know, and it’s never forget the big one.

00;33;37;12 – 00;33;52;22
Speaker 1
Right? So, you know, basic ones like, we hear all the time, process takes too long. Like, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard that. Yeah, yeah. When you look at the data, process doesn’t take too long. Screwing up all the time takes too long because you’re redoing work, right? So, process takes too long.

00;33;52;22 – 00;34;15;10
Speaker 1
And that’s a common kind of basic one. Processes don’t make us money. That’s your typical sales guy, right? Or sales person? You’re on the sales, marketing business development side of an organization. I can’t tell you how many. Or maybe they’re the president today, but they came from the sales marketing side. Process doesn’t make us money. Well, like I said, you know, doing the wrong thing good doesn’t make you any money.

00;34;15;10 – 00;34;39;28
Speaker 1
Let’s get everybody doing the right thing. Good makes you money. Right. So again, kind of simple stuff, but common, common things I hear. And then as we start to pivot, like the first real good one is great teams don’t need process. And you know what? You’re right. If the team is small enough, you’re right. But you know, we know through sociological whatever studies, exams etc. like a great team.

00;34;40;05 – 00;35;01;04
Speaker 1
As soon as you get above six people, it’s really hard to have a great team. Like with one leader. Yeah, that great team starts to get too big. And if you look at classic examples of hierarchy, there’s a reason the hierarchies there. And like, you know, whether like the military for example, the military has different units, they get bigger and you know, your battalion company, etc. you start getting really big.

00;35;01;04 – 00;35;22;22
Speaker 1
But the reason the hierarchies there is because we know at the team level you can only be successful leading like a half dozen plus or minus a few, you know, people. So you know, great teams don’t need process and not really the case. And then as we get into like the real winners, I think we’re special. We can’t have a standard process.

00;35;22;22 – 00;35;25;19
Speaker 1
That’s one of the real winners. Right. And I’ve been doing this.

00;35;25;19 – 00;35;26;23
Speaker 2
My business is unique.

00;35;26;26 – 00;35;47;08
Speaker 1
Yeah. Because this is unique. I’m special. You’re not right. You’re not. It’s it’s the 9010 rule if you’re lucky. But it’s really the 99 one rule most of the time. Right? So, you know, we’re special. We can’t have standard process. And then like, my favorite. And the one that I think, you know, a lot of people listen to this might relate to is we’re too entrepreneurial for process.

00;35;47;12 – 00;36;07;10
Speaker 1
Right. That’s one of my favorites. And, if you look at the statistics on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial companies, there’s a lot of failure in those statistics. And it kind of makes you wonder, right? Did being too entrepreneurial for process work out for the lion’s share of the people being entrepreneurial? The answer is absolutely not right. Because if your statistics are through the roof.

00;36;07;12 – 00;36;37;12
Speaker 1
So, so yeah, like a handful of what was that six, five of things that, that really, really what it comes down to. And like I said there, in my experience, they’re fundamentally flawed viewpoints, right? That that are, you know, there’s a reason why they got to where they got to, but you can pretty easily dismantle that and show how how process would really be beneficial and make the difference.

00;36;37;12 – 00;36;50;08
Speaker 1
Now emotionally, did you win them over, and are they ready to charge into a process based continuous improvement culture? Maybe. Maybe not. Right. But but it’s pretty easy to argue those and, supported with evidence.

00;36;50;10 – 00;37;09;25
Speaker 2
So I know we, we’ve got to jump over to the Patreon side of things as time gets close. But, before we do kind of a two part question, first part is when is the right time to start building process? And then the second part is, what kind of real outcomes have you seen when businesses are fully committing to process?

00;37;09;27 – 00;37;23;06
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I’ll try. And I think by default I tend to be long winded, so I apologize. I’ll try and keep these a little shorter for this time and making the timeline. The first one was when was the right time to start building?

00;37;23;13 – 00;37;24;15
Speaker 2
Yes, sir.

00;37;24;17 – 00;37;51;17
Speaker 1
So. The right for this audience. I think the right time to start building is when you realize that you don’t want to just be self-employed, but you want to own and run a business and lead a business. There’s a big difference between being self-employed and having a helper to and, and leading a business and a business is something that can scale and grow and ultimately run without you at some point.

00;37;51;17 – 00;38;14;09
Speaker 1
Right. So I think the first opportunity to ask yourself, is this the right time to start building standard work process, etc. is do I want to be self-employed or do I really want to grow and run a business? And and I don’t think that one is better than the other. I mean, to be fair, I am self-employed as part of my income, and I run a business as part of my income right now.

00;38;14;09 – 00;38;38;07
Speaker 1
Right. So I it’s only me in 1 in 1 of my businesses, and it’s more than me and one of my other businesses. So, not throwing shade in either direction, but I think that’s the first opportunity. And then for people that are listening, that are maybe unconsciously made the decision to run a business and they’re already there, but yet things are kind of hectic and chaotic and they’re, their team is regularly disappointing them.

00;38;38;07 – 00;38;59;18
Speaker 1
You know, that those are all signs that we don’t have substantial process or sufficient process. I think the next opportunity to ask yourself, do I want to grow or sell? Right. Because if you want to grow or if you want to sell, I think, you know, standard work goes back on the table again. Or you can continue to to work in the chaos that you work in, assuming it pays you the money, you want to be paid.

00;38;59;18 – 00;39;26;24
Speaker 1
And it works for everybody on the team. You know, however big or small that team is, you could kind of continue to hover in that, in that chaos and be okay. But as we know, when it comes time to sell, it’s based on typically multipliers of EBITDA. That’s what you sell on. That’s how you’re valued. And and we know that those multipliers go up the more stable and standard that business is, and the more that business can grow without you and scale and all at the core of all that is the standard work.

00;39;26;27 – 00;39;29;08
Speaker 2
Standard work.

00;39;29;10 – 00;39;30;27
Speaker 1
Yeah. What was the other question?

00;39;31;00 – 00;39;36;00
Speaker 2
Other question is what real outcomes have you seen when businesses are fully committing to process.

00;39;36;03 – 00;40;03;28
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I think the best case study for that and everybody this is another Google bullet thing. Everything I talk about is easily googled. Although these days Google is kind of polluted with some good stuff and some not so good stuff. So you got to be careful, I guess, what you read on the internet. But, yeah, if you want to Google what’s the best, example of positive outcomes from process, there’s a company that’s little known unless you’re in the space or you’re an investor.

00;40;04;01 – 00;40;33;01
Speaker 1
And that company called Danaher and their stock ticker is Dr.. So if you look at a story of how Danaher came to be, Danaher grew out of the mid 80s, and within less than a handful of years, less than five years was on the fortune 500. And today is like 180 ish in the fortune 500. And if you read the case studies on how Danaher did that, they did it leveraging something they developed called the Danaher Business System or DBS.

00;40;33;04 – 00;40;58;16
Speaker 1
And the Danaher Business System is simply a collection of standard work that it governs how the business operates. And it allowed Danaher to acquire mom and pop manufacturing companies, industrial companies and deploy the Danaher Business System, which again, is just a collection of standard work into those businesses and get those businesses performing, you know, five, six, ten acts better than they were when they were mom and pop owned, because they have the standard work.

00;40;58;19 – 00;41;12;27
Speaker 1
So Danaher success and its success story is probably the best single example that I know or been exposed to that, that demonstrates the power of standard work and power process.

00;41;13;00 – 00;41;24;20
Speaker 2
Love it. Bill, we got to jump over to the Patreon side of things. But before we do, if people want to, talk with you, maybe they want to work with you. Or maybe they just got some questions. How did they find you?

00;41;24;22 – 00;41;43;24
Speaker 1
Thanks, Mike. So it’s Bill at the op x shop. Xcom. That’s op X, short for Operational Excellence. Shop.com. Or you can find me, on LinkedIn. That’s kind of the old standby. So it’s William in parentheses. Bill Tansey Jr on LinkedIn. And I should pop up and I’d love to talk to him.

00;41;43;27 – 00;41;47;11
Speaker 2
You got that epic stash in your, profile picture on it.

00;41;47;11 – 00;41;59;12
Speaker 1
You know, I feel like you can’t have a video call without mentioning it because it is, you know, yeah, it is blessed to be here until Suntanning season comes. And then I got to shave it before I catch a tan.

00;41;59;16 – 00;42;07;21
Speaker 2
Did you guys shave it up? I just I wish that I could have just a stache like that, but I just the way my facial hair growth just doesn’t work out for me.

00;42;07;26 – 00;42;16;05
Speaker 1
Well, my beards gray. So that’s what’s discouraged me from continuing to grow the beard in the way it once did. So? So the porn stache it is. Here it is.

00;42;16;08 – 00;42;27;21
Speaker 2
Well, All right. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Jump on over to the Patreon side. We’ve got a few more questions for Bill that are going to get, into the nitty gritty here. So, we’ll see you on the other side. Thanks for listening, everybody.

00;42;27;21 – 00;42;55;21
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;42;55;21 – 00;43;08;01
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;43;08;01 – 00;43;23;11
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

00;44;06;29 – 00;44;22;09
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

00;44;22;21 – 00;44;41;23
Speaker 2
All right, so we’re back with Bill Tansy from the op shop here talking about process and the power of process. Few questions here for the Patreon side of things. Bill, what is one process every business should document first that will immediately reduce stress or mistakes?

00;44;41;25 – 00;45;08;14
Speaker 1
Document first. So unless there’s a critical problem that you’re trying to solve first, I would document the value stream. The value stream is what makes the company money, right? So it’s the cross-functional series of activities that make the company money. So I would start with the old adage, follow the money, and I would document the process that makes the company money.

00;45;08;14 – 00;45;38;09
Speaker 1
Now, I said, unless there’s a problem. So maybe a natural follow up question is like, well, what’s a problem that would derail us from that? We talked earlier before coming over to Patreon about the problem that a lot of, industrial, commercial blue collar organizations are having right now. And that problem is, is recruiting and hiring. So if you’re if you can’t recruit and hire effectively right now, you don’t stand a chance of executing on the value stream because you don’t have any people to execute.

00;45;38;11 – 00;45;48;25
Speaker 1
Right. And so that could be a problem that might come before, digging in and doing standard work on the value stream. Okay.

00;45;48;28 – 00;46;07;17
Speaker 2
It’s interesting, I so I always called that process the life of the sale. So I would, I would document like from the first generating interest all the way to the work is performed and completed and and we’re done. I would always call that the life of the sale.

00;46;07;20 – 00;46;23;03
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. So and that’s exactly what I’m talking. So when I say the value stream, that’s exactly what I’m talking about is, is the stream that creates value. Right. So, yeah, if it sells exactly at,

00;46;23;06 – 00;46;35;01
Speaker 2
Here’s a good one. Who inside of business should actually own process. And why does that ownership matter? And maybe as a part of that, we should probably talk about what owning a process means.

00;46;35;03 – 00;47;01;26
Speaker 1
Yeah. So ownership is super important. And I, I think ownership super important across business argues without being too feels like ownership is really important across life, you know, so what do I own means? What am I accountable to at the end of the day, the buck stops with me. Like, what? What is it? So whether that’s in my family or with my friends or with work or sport or athletics or anything, you know, where does the buck stops with me?

00;47;01;26 – 00;47;27;08
Speaker 1
So that’s really, really important. And it becomes increasingly important in a business. And before we talk about who owns, I think it’s also probably important to mention that the person that will own the standard work once it’s developed, they may not be capable of developing the standard work. Right. So, so that’s an important distinction as well.

00;47;27;08 – 00;47;44;13
Speaker 1
So there for folks that are listening, thinking, I got to start developing standard work in my organization and whoever owns it should develop it, which will you know, I agree with that 100%. Whoever is fundamentally going to own it should develop it, but they might not be able to develop it on their own. They may need support to help them get it developed.

00;47;44;13 – 00;48;10;09
Speaker 1
Once it’s developed, they’ll very likely be able to operate to it and continuously improve it, but they may need help developing it. So who owns at the end of the day? Every bit of standard work in an organization is owned by somebody, and typically it’s owned by the person sitting in the standard role that has this process called out on the job description.

00;48;10;09 – 00;48;32;13
Speaker 1
So, for example, if the, standard work we’re talking about, you mentioned sales a minute ago. If the standard work we’re talking about is the sales funnel, the standard work that guides the sales funnel from prospect to close. Who owns that. Well it’s the it’s the person whose name is tied to the standard work on the org chart for that, for that process.

00;48;32;13 – 00;48;56;00
Speaker 1
So the sales funnel is that process is likely owned by the leader of the sales department. Right. So it’s that the vice president of sales or the director of sales or whatever, that’s likely the person that owns the standard work around the sales funnel, because at the end of the day, if the sales funnel does not produce the outcomes the business needs, that’s the person who’s responsible for it, right?

00;48;56;00 – 00;49;03;28
Speaker 1
So they’re incentivized to continuously improve and and make that standard work successful. Okay.

00;49;04;01 – 00;49;29;23
Speaker 2
All right. Next question. How can an overwhelmed business owner start building process without slowing the business down? This is a tough one. I mean, because I, I mean, I’m suffering through this and I don’t know that I did it correctly, but like, you know, essentially what it means is nights and weekends when I’m not running my business, I’m working on the business totally.

00;49;29;26 – 00;49;52;27
Speaker 1
Totally. You’re absolutely right. And, I think the first step in this is treat it like the huge project it is. Right. So, Some people think they’re going to, you know, work Saturday and Sunday on their own and have all this done kind of thing. Right. And it’s absolutely not the case. This is an absolutely huge project.

00;49;52;27 – 00;50;17;13
Speaker 1
So treat it like the huge project. It is what does that mean? In my mind, any huge project needs to be broken down into reasonable milestones that ultimately get us to the goal, right? So treat it like the huge project is. Break it down into milestones. And, break those milestones into activities that need to be done and assign those to people on the team.

00;50;17;15 – 00;50;46;19
Speaker 1
And, and then once we’ve done that, just like any huge project, it’s absolutely critical to build early momentum or early wins against that project schedule. That we just talked about it milestones. So in this case, my biggest recommendation after acknowledging that it’s huge, breaking it down into bite sized pieces that can show progress, then get out and make that early win or make that early progress.

00;50;46;26 – 00;51;09;24
Speaker 1
My best, my best suggestion is instead of doing nights and weekends to start is pick a few days and do a multi-day kickoff off site with no distractions, and build that early momentum and get those early wins on that on that huge project. I think that’s that’s the best way to do it. Okay. All right.

00;51;09;26 – 00;51;38;07
Speaker 2
And I know I mean, I gotta say. When I look at the process work I’ve done in the past compared to what I’ve done in the last few months, that org chart was a huge. I keep coming back to that org chart, but I, you know, I, I and in other episodes without you I mentioned the work. You’re like just how important and how helpful having that locked in has been, but also in helping me figure out like, okay, what processes do I need?

00;51;38;07 – 00;51;40;26
Speaker 2
What don’t I have? It.

00;51;40;26 – 00;51;54;11
Speaker 1
Really think about it. That was probably one of the first major milestones when you acknowledge when you acknowledge it’s a huge project. And what do we do for a second, third, and how do we build early momentum. Yeah. That squared away was was one of those first big milestone I think. Right.

00;51;54;13 – 00;51;58;03
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah absolutely is or was was yeah.

00;51;58;03 – 00;52;00;02
Speaker 1
Now you’re using it. It’s it’s working for you.

00;52;00;04 – 00;52;36;18
Speaker 2
Now I’m using it. And then the next part is you know, I’ve got the functional accountabilities in there. I feel like I need a little refinement on them. So my, my next milestone is to make sure that those are locked in, and then building the documentation around them, which then in turn also tells me, okay, if this person in this role in the org chart has these functional accountabilities, what are the things that they’re going to be doing on a day to day basis that’s going to help them be successful in each one of those functional accountabilities and each one of those things needs to have a written process for how we do it.

00;52;36;20 – 00;52;42;10
Speaker 1
Work instructions exactly in that hierarchy. That’s the work instruction. You bet you back.

00;52;42;12 – 00;52;57;05
Speaker 2
The fun stuff. All right, well, one more question here. Well, last question and I’ll, I’ll let you get out of here. If someone’s looking to improve one process in the next 30 days, what are the exact steps that you would tell them to take starting tomorrow?

00;52;57;07 – 00;53;15;07
Speaker 1
So this is this is good timing because you just brought up the org chart again. I know you’re a huge org chart fan. That’s awesome. So let’s since we just talked about the org chart as perhaps the first major milestone, let me answer this question with the second major milestone. Right. So once the org chart is stood up, and by the way, it’s evergreen.

00;53;15;07 – 00;53;34;28
Speaker 1
And as you continue through this process, you’re going to revise it, just like you said, continuously improve it. What I would do is I would get a thought partner to and I would go off site with no distractions. And with that thought partner to I would, teach each other the eight wastes. Again, you can Google eight ways.

00;53;34;28 – 00;54;00;13
Speaker 1
There’s easy graphics and the images return for Google. I learn the eight waste and then I would document the as is process that you want to improve. And I would use eight wastes during the documentation of the as is process to identify all the areas that we could improve. Because if we date those waste we improve. Right. So if you highlight where the waste is, then it’s pretty easy to say, okay, we’re going to come back and solve this later.

00;54;00;13 – 00;54;18;18
Speaker 1
Right. So theoretically you’re a thought partner to your off site. I like to visualize it on a wall in front of us so we can stand up and move around. I’d like to visualize the process and then take the eight wastes and apply it against each step in that process and say, which of the eight ways do we see at this step?

00;54;18;21 – 00;54;41;09
Speaker 1
Step one, step two, step three, all the way out to step 50 or step 150. Which waste are we seeing? And then we can then decide if we eliminate those wastes where the biggest impact is. And we can quickly prioritize where we go next. Right. So I think that once you have the org chart, I think that’s probably the next big milestone or next big step to make a difference.

00;54;41;12 – 00;55;20;15
Speaker 2
I know I said last question, but I just as, as we’re talking, just one thought occurred to me that I feel like we should touch on. And that is and speaking from experience of, I’m in the middle of this. I’ve been going through it now for a while. It’s sometimes the idea of the structure that I’m trying to create for my business and improve as well, because it’s like it takes such a long time to do this process right, of bringing structure your business, building org charts, building processes, refining them, and then as you’re building through it for the first time, you also have to go back and refine older processes to make

00;55;20;15 – 00;55;42;15
Speaker 2
sure. And it it at times seems to me like, Holy shit, man, this is just a staggeringly huge thing that I’m trying to accomplish, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to get this. I’m just one guy, you know, trying to do all this work as well as what I have to do on a day to day basis and all the things in life.

00;55;42;17 – 00;55;48;22
Speaker 2
Do you have any words of wisdom for for people that are trying to do this and feeling that way?

00;55;48;24 – 00;56;07;24
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think maybe two thoughts. And this is something that I regularly work with my clients on exactly what you just said. So now I’m sitting in the room with a three person leadership team or a one person leadership team, right? And they’re like, you know, this is an absolute ton of work. You know, how do we get it all done and what happened?

00;56;07;24 – 00;56;29;14
Speaker 1
And so before we talk about how to do it just briefly, what happens and what’s likely happening to you. And the reason you’re asking or seeing this is once we start thinking and operating with the idea of standard work and eliminating waste and creating structure and having the system that kind of works together. Once we start learning about that, we now see problems we never saw before.

00;56;29;16 – 00;56;48;20
Speaker 1
So you and the clients I work with early in the process respond with, Holy cow, now I see all this mess. I was happy a year ago I just had. But now I have, you know, a million problems. I need to get fixed to go fix the one problem I asked you to help me fix so you can see problems in a new way.

00;56;48;20 – 00;56;58;12
Speaker 1
You’re looking through a new lens, or, you know, you’re looking through a new glass at this stuff and you see more problems so that that creates frustration.

00;56;58;15 – 00;57;31;18
Speaker 1
Two components to one, is in most small businesses that I support or medium sized businesses, I support the one, 3 or 5 person leadership team, is, spending a lot of their time doing and not a lot of time leading. So we have to find out quickly how to offload some of that daily execution, that doing that’s that’s on the execution part of the org chart, not on the tactics or strategy part of the org chart.

00;57;31;20 – 00;57;52;16
Speaker 1
And if people go back and listen to our other talk, maybe you can link it in here. I don’t know what number it was, but we talked about strategy, tactics and execution. The org chart as a leader, if you’re most of the leaders that I get engage with that are working in these mid-sized companies, they’re spending a lot of time executing and not a lot of time on strategy and tactics.

00;57;52;16 – 00;58;11;25
Speaker 1
And what we’re talking about here is strategy and tactics. So number one, how do we offload that execution to free up mindshare space time to go do this work. That’s number one. Number two is when we acknowledge this as a big project and we look at the year ahead of us, we have to decide what we’re going to say no to.

00;58;11;27 – 00;58;30;18
Speaker 1
And there’s ways to support doing that effectively. But at the end of the day, I don’t care how you get there. You have to decide what you’re going to say no to in favor of saying yes to building the momentum and starting down this road of being continuous improvement or process based. So I think those are two big suggestions.

00;58;30;18 – 00;58;49;10
Speaker 1
One, how do we offload the execution so that you have more literal, actual time to devote to this? And there’s always going to be other competing priorities. So what do we decide that we are going to say no to into a future date. And we stay true to that and say no to those things while we get this going and while we build the momentum.

00;58;49;10 – 00;59;14;21
Speaker 1
And once we build the momentum, it’s easier for us to pull other people in. So now you’ve got like lower level supervisors or leaders in your organization. Once we’ve built momentum, we can pull them in and get them helping us build. Right. So as time goes on, you as a leader is now setting the vision, and those other leaders under you are carrying that vision forward and creating, you know, more standard work or whatever is necessary to them to continue down and be successful.

00;59;14;23 – 00;59;36;08
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I it’s getting rid of the execution side of what I do in my business has been a big focus for me the last few months. And, I, you know, again, I’m going to bring it back to the org chart, but it’s not something I could have done had it not been for that org chart and for the.

00;59;36;10 – 00;59;37;05
Speaker 2
What are the three levels?

00;59;37;05 – 00;59;39;10
Speaker 1
Execution strategy and.

00;59;39;13 – 00;59;55;13
Speaker 2
Strategy and tactics. And looking at and, you know, for me on my org chart like it’s like execution and I’ve got in parentheses doing it strategy what’s being done. And then tactics is the.

00;59;55;15 – 00;59;59;26
Speaker 1
Flip flop them so so strategy the top tactics in the middle execute at the bottom. Yep.

00;59;59;26 – 01;00;23;03
Speaker 2
Yes exactly how we do it. What’s being done and doing it. Because I always, you know tactical. When I look at tactics strategy and execution I in my brain I would get confused. So I had to like throw a little cliff note in there for each one. But not only did those three levels help me to understand what roles should be on the organizational chart, that was huge, by the way.

01;00;23;03 – 01;00;43;22
Speaker 2
I’d never seen that before until you showed that to me, and it was really helped me put that org chart together. But then also looking at like, okay, I’m actually on the execution state. I’m in all three levels of my business right now and I it’s not sustainable, not scalable. So the first thing I need to do is get out of that execution stage.

01;00;43;22 – 01;01;14;22
Speaker 2
So I started looking at anything I was doing in the execution stage and would and now I immediately delegated. Yeah, it’s if I’m being asked to do something for a client, I’m like, all right, who on my team is the one that, according to the functional accountabilities in the org chart, who should actually be doing this? And now I’m going to focus on being the, the what’s being done guy as opposed to the doing it guy and delegated over to them, still supervising them and coaching them through it.

01;01;14;22 – 01;01;26;07
Speaker 2
They haven’t done it yet, but, it’s been it’s been I can’t even tell you how helpful it’s been with trying to just wrangle that beast of a business of mine with all the moving parts we have. So,

01;01;26;10 – 01;02;02;12
Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s awesome. And actually, for anybody that’s lost on Patreon that they didn’t listen to the or design discussion that we had should like, we should probably come back to it right now. Yeah. You just said because, because, yeah, that, that we as a leader of the business and being sucked into execution, which makes a lot more sense after presumably people listen to that prior podcast, will get in the way of, of moving this stuff forward, which gets in the way of getting your business ready to grow or ready to sell or not being, you know, self-employed and having a business like that.

01;02;02;13 – 01;02;05;11
Speaker 1
The decision points we talked about before. Yeah.

01;02;05;13 – 01;02;13;20
Speaker 2
I love it. Bill, one more time, I know I gotta jump on a huddle here at 1015, but, if people want to find you that are on the Patreon side, they want to get in touch. How do they find you?

01;02;13;22 – 01;02;29;22
Speaker 1
Cool. So, Bill at the Apex shop.com, that’s op x shop.com. You can email me or if you’re if you want connect on LinkedIn just the same and it’s William Parentheses. Bill Tansey Jr on LinkedIn I should pop up pretty quick.

01;02;29;24 – 01;02;45;02
Speaker 2
Awesome. Thanks Bill. Really appreciate the time you spend with us and our listeners. Appreciate the all the information and help and knowledge. And, you know, of course, I appreciate the mustache. You know, I’m going to mention that as well. And, looking forward to our next chat. Man, we got some good stuff coming up.

01;02;45;05 – 01;02;49;19
Speaker 1
Maybe the mustache comments will get people over to the YouTube as opposed to apple pie. All right.

01;02;49;21 – 01;02;51;11
Speaker 2
That’s why I put that’s why I slip it in there.

01;02;51;11 – 01;03;06;17
Speaker 1
But I like it, I like it, yeah. So I, Yeah. I appreciate you guys. Thanks for the opportunity to be here and talk to the space and, as you know, I love working with, you know, industrial companies, blue collar companies, that kind of thing. Hands on. So I love the opportunity to come talk to you guys.

01;03;06;18 – 01;03;07;12
Speaker 1
I appreciate it.

01;03;07;15 – 01;03;09;08
Speaker 2
Awesome. Thanks, Bill. Appreciate it.

01;03;09;08 – 01;03;37;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.

01;03;37;08 – 01;03;49;16
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;03;49;16 – 01;04;04;28
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.