← Confessions of an Implementer
Confessions of an Implementer
S2E59 | What Does Alignment Actually Look Like Inside a Growing Organization? with Beth Rusert
01:00:09
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- [00:00]
A
We just stick people who are really good technically into a leadership job and think they're going to know how to lead, which is kind of insane when you think about it.
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B
Sales is another place where this happens. The best salesperson gets promoted and it's like the wrong. It's the wrong decision.
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A
It is absolutely the wrong decision.
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C
Welcome to Confessions of an Implementer. I'm your host, Brian Hogan. We share unique stories of EOS implementers and the companies they've transformed to give you a rare glimpse into the successes and challenges of the system in action. Let's jump in.
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B
Beth, number one. Welcome to Confessions of an Implementer. Super excited to have you. And what's interesting about. So you and I talked like, six months ago, we were introduced through Nancy, which, by the way, Nancy is everywhere.
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A
I know. I love Nancy.
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B
She. So I met her out here because in. She was in my Vistage group. And then, you know, I've had the podcast and I get into other. Other things and then she's like, oh, I know that person. I know that part. And you're nowhere close to la. And she knows you.
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A
I know. Oh, I have a weird story how I met her, actually. But I love Nancy.
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B
Nancy. Nancy is great. Do you know she's traveling right now?
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A
I do. I know where she's at, even. I've even been in text messaging with her.
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B
Oh, that's awesome. That's sweet. All right.
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A
We're all friends. Yeah.
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B
So anyway, when you and I talked, what was really interesting is, like, your background in communications and where you came up, and then you've got this theme and I'm going to. I'm going to bury the lead on the theme for now because I think it's super interesting and worth, like, a deep dive. But, like, just starting with your background, like, growing up, where you're like, I want to be in the communications, in the marketing space. Like, was that your. Was that your dream or how did this.
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A
How.
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B
How did this journey start for you?
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A
No. Well, you're going way back.
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B
Way back.
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A
No, it did not start that way. You really want me to tell you? I was going to do interior design.
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C
Really?
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A
Yeah. And then it's a hobby now. I found out you had to take chemistry, and I hated chemistry. My father, by the way, was a chemist. And so I changed my mind and I went off to college having no idea what I was going to do. Oh, this other piece of that is we toured a paint and wallpaper store, which I was sure if I ever had to work in one, that would be the end of me, you know, so that was. Those two things were the impetus for me. Nope, that's not the right career for me. So my aunt was in public relations doing a lot of events, and I thought, well, that sounds fun. Ironically, when I've had to do events, I hate doing events. It's 10,001 little details. That's not my thing. But it catapulted me into a whole career and clearly it's where I was intended to go. Clearly was God's plan, honestly. And it's been really good to me. I've just loved it. It's such a cool space and it's broadened into all kinds of other things.
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B
Cause like, you know, you hear about this like communications field and there's a communications like degree you can get out of college and you hear about pr. But like, what, what are some of like the common misnomers as you were coming in that you were like, oh, this is what it's going to be like. And maybe it was a little bit different.
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A
Well, I mean, actually I kind of can forward to where I'm at today. One, it's been such a gift. I like to learn. And so the field inherently lets you learn continuously because you're helping other people communicate information. So you have to learn more about what they're trying to communicate to support them. But the other thing is in my career, it's really common in this BET field to start in internal communications, working with employees and other stakeholders that inside the organization because it's safe. Right. They think, oh, she. They can't mess that up too bad. The irony is, and I don't think they say that consciously, but they think
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B
kind of what they definitely think.
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A
Yeah, they do. And you know that because you're in the talent field. So we're. We're kind of have a lot of alignment. Right. It's all about the people. And so it's been an interesting observation as I've been so blessed. I've gotten to do so many cool things. I've gotten to be in leadership roles. I love, love, love being a leader. It's fun. I love helping people grow and connect. But I've also realized I love to help the leaders themselves be better leaders and help them bring their teams along. And so I'd say the real, the interesting thing about internal communications is that it kind of for a long time kept haunting me. I'd go to a different job and there it would be. It still needed help. And I'd be. I'd take A bigger job. And I'm like, now I'm not going to have to work on this. But it still needed help. And because there would be changes and transformations and leaders struggling and a misalignment at the leadership team level, either with me on it or off of it, it didn't matter. That happened. Right. And so if you connect that to EOs that need to have alignment, trust and clarity is exactly the only way that you can actually do a good job with your communication. And so for me, EOS kind of brought it all full circle. Like, I realized I had this insight from my career where I finally just embraced internal calm, knowing I'd go into a role where it was there, but it was not formal, you know, because people minimize the value of it and only for it to show up prominently as one of the most important things I need to work on with any given organization. So it. I think that's one of the misnomers is it's easy because how hard is it to communicate? Which is, I find ironic when you even think about marriages. Right. Like, what's the biggest thing couples struggle with often? Communication. Right. So. But the other thing, that was a cool realization for me with eos, and I'll tell you my story when you're ready. But I. I realized in reading the book Traction that Gino was smarter than all of us professional communicators, because communications is all over that book. But it's not talked about like communication necessarily. It's talking about an operating system that people need to break through the ceiling and grow their business. And yet so much of that, where that model are things I've been doing my whole career to help organizations move forward, teams get aligned, share the why give all the workers the clarity that they deserve to be a part of where the organization's going. And to me, that was the genius of it. I'm like, this is phenomenal. I wish I had known about it 30 years ago. Of course, it wasn't written yet. I don't think Dino knew about 30 years ago, but it's quite a gift. I would have carried a lot of those things, especially ids, into every organization I worked for. I would have totally brought that in. That should have been there. It's great.
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B
What's been fascinating about your journey is a lot of the stuff, at least from the outside looking in, it looks like. Or people can make assumptions that it's like external communication. And this is some of what we talked about, but it sounds like a lot of what you did was internal communication. And that's. We talked about some of the most overlooked stuff, like when you, like, what does good internal communication look like? If. If there's a business leader out there and they're like, of course we communicate great internally. We've got email, we've got slack, we've got all these different things. Like, what does, what does good communication actually look like?
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A
Well, ironically, I had a role once. I wouldn't take the job unless they. Because this is when I started realizing you got to have internal calm. Right. Or I wouldn't take the job unless it was internal calm. Because one of the misnomers is that you can say one thing inside and something else outside. That's a problem. Because those worlds collide. You know how we just, we started this meeting as we. With this podcast with how small the world is. How do we both know Nancy? I don't live in la. I live in the Midwest. How did I meet Nancy? Right. Nancy knows everybody. Nancy does know a lot of people. So I. It's the same way, like, you cannot. You have to have in sync messaging across everything. And that power of the transparency, being ready to actually share information. Far too many times in my career, I was given some big secret thing that was coming, and then I started asking questions. They had made decisions and they hadn't thought through some of these pieces, and they would say, well, no one's going to ask that. And I'm like, I asked it. Yes, they will. And they don't have an answer. So. So they have to go back and like, think about, well, how are we going to answer that? Right? So it's just people often miss. They make assumptions about what people will want to know and they forget how important it is to, to answer the why. And too often leadership teams are not fully aligned. I mean, I can't even tell you how many times there were. I would always know which leaders were off saying something different because they didn't fully agree. And they were pointing figures at those guys or gals who made that decision even if they were on the team. Some of the worst secret keepers I ever worked with were on these actual executive team itself, you know, So, I mean, it, it's just a very. So the communication, why it's so critical is because if you don't have everything buttoned up, you're going to mess it up. And if, if you don't share appropriately, people, frankly, make things far bigger, even worse than they are.
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B
Yes.
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A
They just do.
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B
I'm trying to be delicate on this one, but I've Worked with people before that have gone in completely different, completely different directions. Like, we all come together and like, I would almost, you know, in the Navy and in the military in general, one thing that we're taught is, like, anytime we talk about a decision or an action or an order, we talk about that as if it's our own and we own whatever it is. So whatever debates and everything else happen behind closed doors when we get in front of the troops, like, you're the one that's delivering it and you're the one that believes in it and that's saying it, even if you didn't agree with it. And so that whole thing of, like, oh, well, you know, I didn't agree with this decision, but here we go like that, that can create toxicity and other things. And I've had experiences directly with, like, people running in a completely different direction after a decision was made. Those are hard.
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A
Yeah, it's. It's toxic and disastrous. It undermines. You know, you're probably familiar that mergers and acquisitions, anytime somebody's buying someone merging with someone else, they always look at culture and they try, well, you're never going to get it identical. And they. I would. I really think 100 of the time, they underestimate the transition and how much they're going to have to work very closely to make the culture shift. On the note on the military, I have not been in the military, but I went to a lot of executive leadership, like, places where you were there for learning. Right. And I was often blessed, frankly, to be able to be with communications professionals from different arms of the military. One I know for a fact they know how to communicate. They know exactly what we said. I'm not saying they get 100% right all the time, but they understand it. And when you think about it, it makes sense. Like we're talking life or death here. Right? And you've got to have that discipline. I mean, I see this all the time. There a lot of even EOS implementers who are formerly military, but the discipline that is trained into you is quite a gift. Now, there's rigidity in that too. Right. But there's also everything. Strength has a weakness. The ability to understand the power of getting everyone aligned, getting everybody on board. And just what you said, everybody's singing the same song that you think about the conductor in the symphony, you want them all. You know, if everybody starts playing their own thing, it's going to sound horrible. It's no different than that. So I, I love military examples. My two favorites are military If I had them personally be stronger personal. But I have to live vicariously through all of you. And then sports teams, you know. Yes.
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B
Yep. How do you believe cultures so on that sports like Netflix has this philosophy that like we are a sports team, we are not a family. And there's. And we're gonna get into this too. Cause I, I know one of the paths that you know deeply and we need to get to is like the DNA of an organization and how it takes on the founders and things like that. Like when you think about how teams operate and how families operate and companies sometimes take different paths. So Netflix is. Some people would look at it as cutthroat, but it's like, you know, you're, you're a star for a certain period of time and then at that point we don't need you anymore. But we'll give you an incredible severance package and we'll wish you farewell. Like, is there a right or wrong answer here? Or what's your philosophy as it pertains to like are we a team or are we a family?
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A
I don't think there's a right or wrong. I think it's how you use it. So it's interesting. I worked for a family owned fourth generation business and I really learned and I arrived in the midst of the family transition which was not going well. There were a lot of lawyers involved and I was a part of all the behind the scenes conversations and had extra help outside navigating all this. And. But I learned a lot. And so that business had operated a lot like a family for a really long time. So the strength of that is the power of the family. Like you can make to this day, I can make an ask. I just did it yesterday to somebody that works there and they will help you because that's in their DNA. Right. But the downside is that they wouldn't always get the right people in the right seats. They would, would put people in roles for too long and it wasn't the right fit because they were like a member of the family, you know. So trying to transition that culture was tricky. I was a business owner. I went into this agency knowing that we were probably going to buy out the founder. That was the hope. Four of us went together, bought out the founder. There was so many strengths in that culture. We had to be really careful, but we knew we needed to make some changes because we were kind of hitting the ceiling. Right. And one of the things we consciously decided is that businesses built kind of work life balance, which we believed in but we also needed to not be like a family. We needed to be like a team. Right? And so that wasn't an easy shift. There were a lot of adjustments for people. Some people just didn't make it in that new mentality, but a lot of people did. And we were particularly good, I think, at right people, right seats. Um, there were a lot of things we were good at. We were not running any us, we would have been even better. And frankly, one of my former business partners who's the CEO, she agrees with me. Like we would have, we would have been faster, better, and we did a lot of things well because we were communications experts. So we, we knew to have quarterly meetings. We knew to be transparent, we knew to get everybody aligned. We knew all that. We did not ids and even as a leadership team, because we didn't know about it, we would have benefited from solving issues at root cause. And frankly, there were things going on that we were struggling with and we weren't as transparent with each other as we could or should have been. Had we had an implementer, they would have helped us a lot. And she and I agree on that. We went through some stuff together and you know, we did really well. We were still growing, but not at the rate or speed we needed or wanted to. So that power of, I think going back, taking it full circle, family versus team, it's really more how you run that business. I have a client right now who really wants to treat his business like a family. But his aspiration, his 10 year target is so cool. It's all about having 100 people who can build their careers at his business. And he's less than 15 right now. How cool is that? It's not about the money. He knows that he cannot do this without being profitable, right? But for him, it's not that he will never get. He knows he has to have the right people in the right seats, but part of the caring is actually putting the right people in the right seats.
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B
I might be stealing that one, by the way, at this point. I'd love that.
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A
You are welcome to. I always have found in my career, like I, I did love leading people. That was the biggest drawback to me going on my own. And I knew that it always struck me as weird when people hated leading people but wanted to be in a leadership role. But that's not a good combination, by the way. But the thing I learned is if you actually did everything us teaches you to do, if you actually were upfront with them, you shared caring feedback, they understood where they were supposed to go, they were held accountable when there wasn't, when it wasn't fitting. And I didn't have all that vernacular back then. But the gwc, you always could tell a culture fit issue fast if you didn't address it to me, that was the least caring thing you could do. I learned that really early in my career. I was with a really big company and one of our colleagues got laid off. He was funny. Everybody loved working with him and we were all heartbroken that he was gone. It did a lot of damage to the team just for a period of time, right. But as time passed, I started to figure out, I think he was funny. And so I think he offended some leaders farther up the food chain. And no one ever told him. And I'm like, I am never doing that to anybody. I'm never. That was my. I carried that the rest of my career. And I was in my mid-20s. Like, it had such a profound impact on me. I'm like. And honestly, I've learned and EOS says this and I. It's true. If you are upfront with people and you're working on this together. I had a woman we hired who beat out all these other candidates who had more experience. She was sharp. Here was our downfall. A year in, guess what? She's bored because she was smart. It was a more of an entry level job, like maybe three years in, right? Three to four years experience. So the person she reports who's struggling. So she asked me to talk to her. So we sit down and talk about. I said, well, describe to me the opportunity you're looking for. And she describes it and I go, guess what? I have that job and I'm not ready to part with it. So in the meantime, I need you to do the job you're supposed to do. And I commit to letting you look around. If you find something out, I'll. I'll support you because she's really sharp. And that's what happened. And it worked. I didn't have to fire. By the way, she went on to have a lot of different careers. She's come full circle and she's now back in communications. But. But she's really smart. And with that, strength is also a weakness, right? You get bored faster, you know. So anyway, I just learned along the way, it's. It's easier, it's less painful, and everybody wins. If you're. You're working on this as a team, trying to get to the best place, right?
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B
Because I love this conversation of the culture Fit and having those conversations because I think a lot of people and put myself in that bucket. I can look back throughout my career where I avoided the tough conversations and it doesn't get any better. And so my pattern has been, and I've stopped with, I would say over the last five years, but just tolerating certain things, not addressing them and then it gets to a place where the only option is they're gone. And, and like in reflection it's like if I would have coached or if I would have, if I would have told them like where I needed them to change or what I needed to see, like it would have one, allowed them to step up to the plate or two, it wouldn't have come as a surprise the minute that, that I had to make a tough decision. When you start seeing. Well actually let's start here because you talked about this transformation that the company went through and you were kind of coming out of this family and more into team mode and you said some people didn't make it, but others did. Was that core values? Did people have to change who they were or were they changing the expectation of the company in which how the company was going to treat. What was that shift and how did it work?
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A
I think it might have been closer to gwc. The expectations of everybody in the organization was elevating and some people just couldn't get there. We were, we frankly were a bunch of type A women and almost everybody on that team was type A. That's a lot by the way. Like I said, it's a lot. But with that we had a high expectations. We gave people a lot to support them. I mean it's a really high functioning. It's still in existence. It's a, it's frankly one of the best agencies I've ever worked with. I've been their client, I've been, I've worked with them and for them I have nothing but the highest compliment to them. But that transition was tough because not everybody could cut it. And, and we liked these people. People liked these people. Right. They were a good culture fit. That was hardly ever our problem. So occasionally that's happened but it was usually those people, you pick up on it really fast, you know, so. But it's interesting what you say because first of all I don't like having tough conversations either. It's not fun. I have avoided them for a while too. It's not like I've always gotten this right. But if so you can still, even if you haven't done it, you can still do it. It's not like it's too late. I can't have this conversation. You can even fess up and say I should have talked to you a long time ago. That wasn't fair. I didn't. But now we are, you know, and just I think really helping people be clear about what's expected of them. One of the challenges when you're growing the business, our expectations. We were still trying to get clear about what we were expecting because we weren't exactly sure what was happening to us is we wanted everybody. It was. The culture was built out of that. We don't sell. That was the culture. We don't sell. We just help our clients. We were changing the culture, not necessarily to sell, but everybody was going to be expected to look for how to help our clients, which was being heard as now everybody's expected to sell.
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C
Yep.
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A
And so we had, we had to get our messaging and explanation lined up with to help people get there and get clear about what we really were expecting of them. And so going back to clarity, we weren't absolutely clear for a while what was expected. We kind of thought we knew but was it even realistic? Right. So you. And we got there by the way, we got to where the next level would hear the client's problems come back. We with like we were the strategists, the owners and we would sit and talk about how can we help them. And that's how we started to really grow. So grow existing. And by the way they would do referrals and you know, we would. It was a game changer at the time, you know, because everybody started paying attention versus waiting for. We were the high cost people so we didn't show up very often in these meetings. If you wait to only hear then you're going to miss out on so many ways to help your clients. So reframing it that it's not about selling, it's about helping your clients and they could get their head around that, you know.
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B
Interesting. And I love what you said there of like the GWC side to this of like expectations will change and evolve over time and like being able to coach people into that. So it sounds like maybe there wasn't like a core values change or a fundamental shift over there. How do you look at coaching, training? Maybe some of those tough conversations in the get it, want it, have the capacity versus culture is one just an immediate you're gone or do you believe that people can clean up some of their behaviors?
- [25:25]
A
I think it depends on the value and that's just. This is just best opinion, you know. But I've seen people make shifts if you don't. And it's super unfair. I'll go back to the guy I told you who was let go that I think there was a bit of a culture gap for him, but he didn't have clues. So can't fix in something you don't know. Right. And so in all fairness to them, you really owe it to yourself and to them to share what the gap is. Not like in a mean, malicious, but in a helpful way. People can. Can make changes, absolutely. But you have to be aware of it. But sometimes they can't too. It's just not in there. And so I think what's really important is to give yourself peace of mind that you've done the right thing. Share with them what you're hearing, but give tangible examples. This generic. You just not fit in the culture is not actionable. You can't do squat with that and give them opportunities to be able to show that they're either working on or have made that change. And frankly, you got to set some sort of timeline for yourself and them. Or you could be waiting patiently for far too long because that's the other thing. And you know, this bad culture. It's ironic I say this when I'm going through talking about the right, you know, right people, right seats, and the two problems that show up. You have the right people, but they don't have a seat for them. Or you have the right seat, but they aren't a culture fit. They're not the right person. I have observed more people keep the right seat, bad culture fit than the other way around. And I'd never thought about it that way with Eos, but I'm like, that's because it's scary and especially happens in sales. And you're in the space. People are. Are terrified. And I have a client who did this. Took him a long time to get rid of the guy. I was just. I've had conversations with people. Yeah, I don't know if I can get rid of my salesperson. They have all these relationships, but every time they're doing all this damage, the. The wake of damage and the collateral that fall out from a wrong culture fit. The. I mean, they're actually are. People have quantified that. It's terrible, except that you can't see it until it's passed. If you had don't fix it. And I had one organization I worked for. There is a bad. No question the person was a bad Culture fit. I mean to this day I don't think they fixed it because of the GWC side. They're not an eos, you know, business. But I can't imagine that much has changed. I could be wrong, but you know, I'm not there. But it's stunning how often people will keep people further skill set and not realize how expensive it is to have them doing damage every place they go. It, it destroys trust. It destroys trust at the leadership level because they're not doing anything about it. No one will say anything because they're afraid. It's just not a healthy culture.
- [28:39]
B
What do you think? Like when you think back to the timing on that, by the way, 100% see it in sales constantly because it's always the best salesperson that's the gigantic asshole.
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A
Why is that? Anyway, I don't. That's a whole another conversation. But it's true.
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C
Yes.
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B
You know when you think about the time frame, are you, are you thinking like, hey, this is our. So we can use Town harbor as an example and our number one core value is go givers. And so it's like tangible examples in which like we haven't met this go givers core value and going to give you 90 days to kind of clean it up. And here's some of the things that we want to see. Is that, is that how you think about this or, or like how does a conversation like that go?
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A
Well, first of all, you know, I know you run IUs, but not all the values are created can be weighted as the top values. Assuming I don't know what go givers exactly. Tell me what that value exactly means. I'd love to know.
- [29:38]
B
It means we give, give, give with zero expectation of reciprocation and we give to our partners, we give to our clients, we give to each other. We just. And we, we give the. We kind of ripped it from the book, the book Go Givers. And as a part of onboarding, we give you a copy of Go givers and we say this is, this is like in our bones.
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A
Okay. So it's sort of like help first.
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B
It's help first. It's help first.
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A
Okay, so give me an example of what someone, if you can, would be doing that they're not being a go giver are. They don't have the humbleness to do it. They're not the heart. I mean what.
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B
Like let's just take a sales example which it's so interesting when you said we were a no sales organization because we're the same Way, which is like we do zero selling, we have great relationships, we put out content and our whole belief is like the universe will give back. Maybe if we had a salesperson that was selling like hard selling, because that's not, that's not what we do. And like I wouldn't look at that as giving, like finding ways to add value, finding ways to give. It's like we're just trying to sell clients and that's, that's not who we are.
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A
Yep, I get it. Okay. Yeah. So in all fairness, like I could see that happening a lot on that side of your business because that's pretty much opposite of a lot of the training. Right. So but if you get the right personality and I'm sure you do assessments, so. Right, right. If they've got high eq, that'll probably be one indicator. But you know, at what point, you know, how far do you go with that? Well, I think if you give them tangible examples of what they did that wasn't a go giver and what it looks like, what, ask them, right. What could you do differently? How could you get to the same place and still do it in a go giver approach? Because I feel like to learn, people have to help come up with their own solutions. And you're going to start to see even by how they give examples as to whether or not that's even feasible for them and give them enough time to practice it, but not so much time that it's not possible. They're not going to get there. It just might not be a culture fit and that's okay. And I think it's good to tell people that, like, it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It just means we have something different than you really are either gifted at or want to do. And there will be an organization that will be the perfect fit for you.
- [32:16]
B
All right, quick break friends.
- [32:18]
C
Do you find it impossible to hire and retain top sales talent? Or worse, are you paying insane recruiter fees who are all using outdated hiring processes?
- [32:28]
B
Yeah, I was too.
- [32:30]
C
At Hunt a Killer, we were spending hundreds of thousands on recruiter agency fees. And after I sold that company in
- [32:37]
B
2025, I started Talent Harbor.
- [32:39]
C
And the whole vision here was to make sales recruiting accessible to small and medium sized businesses. Because the organizations that can hire and retain world class people are the ones that ultimately win. Most organizations rely on things like ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn and they get hundreds if not thousands of resumes. But we find that the best salespeople are already perfectly placed somewhere else. And that's why our approach is to go after them. And we do that through a business model called recruiting. As a service, we do not charge commissions, we do not have success fees, we don't have contracts, we don't have long term engagements. And we become an extension for your team as expert sales recruiters. If you're tired of the same old recruiters and want to actually grow your sales team, check us out@talent harbor.com that's Talent Harbor. T A L E N T H A R B O R dot com. Let's get your next sales superstar hired.
- [33:39]
B
The talk track here is always like we held on to that individual for too long. We held on to that individual for too long. And then I've never really thought about like the counter example of like well then, then what is the right time? And I like what you're, you're talking about here where it's like putting a deadline on this as a part of this conversation. And I, you know that deadline, 30, 60, 90 days. But there's, there's a time frame in which there's going to be another meeting and we're going to talk about the same things that we talked about today and we're going to see if those things improved over time.
- [34:10]
A
Well, and when you think about it's kind of like the quarterly conversation, right? Where it's, this is performance related but it's also to me an a gift to keep, to tie back to see what, how are they practicing it and what are they experiencing. And it might be a little tighter ongoing conversation than you might typically do. If it seems as if they are sincerely in their heart wanting to make that change. If they are negating it, they're defensive, they see zero evidence. It's a good clue. It's probably time to move on. I mean some of this is leadership judgment, right? You've got to. And we do a terrible job of training people how to be lma. Basically terrible. We just stick people who are really good technically into a leadership job and think they're going to know how to lead. Which is kind of insane when you think about it.
- [35:10]
B
See it in sale. Like sales is another place where this happens. The best salesperson gets promoted and it's like it's the wrong decision.
- [35:19]
A
It is absolutely the wrong decision. I mean, you know, we could spend a bunch of time on talking about sales. I could tell, right? So I mean I've led sales teams. I'm not saying so I, and I worked in that family owned business. I Referenced earlier was a sales driven culture. Like I have a whole story about that. There's no culture I've ever seen better at getting a change undermined by going to the CEO than that culture. Because if it affected them, they don't want it. They knew exactly where to go because the CEO family member, but had started in sales. And by the way, all the bread and butter was out of sales like every other organization on earth. Right. So any fear that that could impact the financials was real. Right. So you had to have them. The only time we really had success is we had a huge change coming and we did a major planned kind of influencer strategy that looked at who, who are people that we could potentially move along. And we, we brought a draft of what the plan was and we had meetings across the country with different groups of salespeople. We did not choose people you would never ever be able to move to be a part of that process. But we did choose people we knew who were influential, who we'd want, who would, could, could say, no, I don't want to do that, but they would potentially consider it. And we got input and we made changes. We didn't just say we were going to make changes, took the input. And it was the only time I remember that we truly got this huge change made because we were purposeful about it and we meant it and we were sincere. So we're open, we were honest. We actually cared what they said. We showed them, we showed them where we were starting, we showed them where it landed and they were on board. And those people got the rest of the sales team on board. And the few naysayers were in the minority.
- [37:16]
B
I love that. And what like, when you think about that, because now, now this is, this is super interesting to go down this path with you having led sales teams, like how much, how much salesperson ship, how much sales tactics, how much of that stuff that happens in that department translates into sales leadership. And there's this big debate of like, do people actually need experience in that whatever that competency to lead those type of teams? And I've heard this across like, you know, sales, operations, marketing, things like that. Like when you think about it, how much does someone need to be a subject matter expert in the core competency in the function that they're leading versus an incredible leader.
- [38:03]
A
Yeah, because of street creds. Right. Credibility within the organization. That's a really good question. I could probably build a strong case either way. I have seen where you have like subject matter experts who come in to Be the subject matter expert and then leave and the salesperson brings the right expert depending on the topic at hand. This doesn't get to leadership but
- [38:38]
C
I
- [38:38]
A
really feel like it's more important to have a really strong leader who isn't egoist. This is another the many, many reasons. I love EOS because it emphasizes being humble and honestly you cannot work with a leadership team. You can't really get the changes done if they're not humble enough to take input. And so if you have a really strong sales leader that has listens is humble, not a wimp, doesn't just do, you know, can't make decisions, but can build that confidence. I don't think people care as long as they demonstrate that and they bring, they listen, they bring those that expertise to the table and they're rallying everybody toward a greater cause. That's to me what's most critical in every leadership role. You know, there's sometimes there's this so much emphasis that coming out of industries because as if that's the only industry with people and I, I feel like it's over overemphasized and that the ability to rally and lead. I just, I'd taken work. I just read working genius.
- [39:48]
B
Yeah.
- [39:48]
A
And you read it so it's on top of mind. So sorry about that. But I galvanize is one of my things. And I'm like well that didn't surprise me. The other one did. But I won't get into that. But the people who can rally people and get them excited about where you're going, you kind of need those kind of leaders in my opinion because you, you gotta. You get. You want people to be. Who wants to work somewhere where too many people hate their jobs? You know, who wants to work somewhere where it's not, you know the goal is to like your job more days than you don't. You're not gonna have every day. That's great. Right. But if you're. Listen if you feel like you're heard, you feel like you're making an impact. One of the things I've, I've shared with some of my clients or even prospects and we've had conversations is the power of that EOS brings to have everyone own a rock at least one everyone own a measurable doesn't matter what your role is and everyone being able to participate in ids. I believe everyone wants to be valued and bring value. And I've had people argue with me. Well no the, you know my earlier they just want to come in and get out of there on time. This isn't change that they want to go home. But while they're there, who wants to feel like what you're doing is irrelevant? And ironically is those very people are typically the ones that have the most interaction with your customers. Like and so if they're so complacent, is that really who you want to show up? And the answer is always never. And I go and who do you think knows where most of your problems are? Your issues, the people that are actually working. So now this is a win win for everybody if they're feeling like if I identify an issue and I get to be a part of help solving it, guess who's going to actually do it the way they just said to do it? The people who got to help solve it. So it's, it's like so logical to me and so exciting. I mean honestly, Gina Wickham is like big genius. Honestly, to recognize that the power of that. Because so few businesses, I don't care what size company you are, are very good at, you know, really bringing along everybody on the journey and letting everybody be a part of the solution comes back to humble your ego gets in the way. Well, you can't possibly know. You don't have as much experience, you don't have as much line of sight. You don't. You're not in as big of a position, important position. And I'm like, I actually think those people are in probably some of the most important positions that exist.
- [42:37]
B
How do you think about. Because like we, we had something like this at my last company, Hunt a Killer. We had a full team in a warehouse and probably maybe somewhere between 25 and 32 people. And one thing that we always had a hard time reconciling is like where to stop with L10s, where to stop with quarterly pulses. And this whole notion of like push everything down as far as possible. What's interesting is I agree with you. I agree that the people that generally have the best solutions are the ones that are doing the actual work. They're living it day in, day out. And most of the time they're getting frustrated because they're like, why do we keep doing like this when it doesn't work? And so how can you effectively push things down into an organization where. Where sometimes there's just like no time for the folks that, that are actually doing the work.
- [43:31]
A
Yeah. And I definitely see people struggle with that all the time. Actually. It's probably one of the biggest struggles is getting us into the organization. I think I Would like to challenge that with another question. How can you not afford to bring that down? Right.
- [43:49]
B
Yeah.
- [43:50]
A
I mean, yeah, it's different way of thinking. And you, you, you're not going to do a 90 minute L10 at every level of the organization every single week. But if you, I don't know if you have exposure to customer experience, but I was, I brought customer experience into another organization and was a chief experience officer, but more the. And I was not the deep expert. I hired a deep expert because I was learning too. But I'm leading teams. And what I observed is we had identified a problem with customers for that customers were having. We brought a cross functional team together. This is very much IDS without the term terminology. And we brought these teams together at all levels. They found the problems, they came up with the solutions. That team, there were two. And we found a big list, narrowed it to the two most impactful that we could actually impact as an organization. And those teams into these two teams that worked together that normally did not partner that closely. I believe that we moved the needle on this customer utilization of a product by 129% and in not quite two years. Wow. All because they came together and solved the problems. And I mean, we had at one point convince our general counsel to let us do something that we had never done before. But we made the case. She said okay. And it was a game changer. I mean this was a fair. And that was a third function. They weren't even in the. You know, lawyers show up everywhere. But, you know, she's my friend, so it's okay. But you know, I, it's, it's stunning when you actually bring everybody and you know how proud they were of that work. They were there. This is a great culture in terms of service and serving, serving the customers. And they were doing it out of their heart because they knew these people weren't getting. They weren't fully utilizing this product and they weren't really getting the benefit and they wanted them to. So how cool is that to be able to rally around that, be excited about it? Right.
- [46:08]
B
In the Navy we call it a tiger team and pull a whole bunch of people together. So did you. Was that this specific problem? Did this team come together and you said, hey, here's the problem set, go solve it? Or is this a team where you're
- [46:21]
A
just like the team identified the problems, then we prioritized the problems. Actually it was very ids. I just didn't know about IDS then. And we narrowed it to two problems and we Worked. They worked on fixing those two problems as best they could over a period of time. And then we started measuring, we measured, we had a baseline and we measured where we, where we got to. It was stunning. The difference.
- [46:47]
B
Have you ever. I mean, this is, this is brilliant. Is there a. Because this, this sounds like a cross functional team. There were people from different.
- [46:57]
A
Yep.
- [46:59]
B
So when you think about, when you think about like L10s, you've got the leadership team and then you've got the core function areas that meet on a, on a weekly basis? Like, is there an argument here that there should always be like a small cross, cross functional tiger team that meets bi weekly, monthly, something like that.
- [47:18]
A
And I don't know if they'd have to be that formalized. I would say, you know, again, this is just best opinion. So it's not, you know, every business is different, but when you think about it, you start seeing common issues that keep showing up. Maybe part of the solve is that tiger team concept to go work that issue and figure out how the heck do we solve it. So it couldn't be. It might not have to be that you always have these tiger teams to come together and look for problems, but rather, as the leadership team sees issues and they come back together, they're seeing some commonalities. Often this is around process. And by the way, it was a lot of process that we had problems with that were causing this in this particular organization. And so it's often around process. So if you see, why wouldn't you want the best experiences you can bring to helping solve it instead of getting in the room with the senior people who, yeah, they might get to the solution, but now you've missed out on all these other people who get to bring their real life experiences to. It builds trust, it builds openness, it builds that culture you're trying to build where if somebody sees something, they bring it forward. I mean, I worked in the chemical industry a long time in manufacturing and that's a dangerous industry. And you have to have people operating like that. They have to say something. It's life or death. And so, so it's just like the, it's like the military, right? Yeah, you better. Right. But when it, when you're not living in a world that's life or death, you operate differently. And I'm like, okay, but maybe we shouldn't. Maybe we should. We don't have to act like you might die from it, but what a gift to have these people who care enough that are actually helping you make your business better.
- [49:21]
B
I love that. And one of the, this is going to be, this is going to be a hard, a hard shift. One of the things that you've been talking about, and I did want to touch on this, was the idea of like core values and, and the DNA of, of a founder and transitions and, and also like you've kept coming back to this topic or this notion of alignment and alignment at the leadership team and how critical is that? Like, what are some, what are some things that a leader might see today that is misalignment, but they can't. Like, they don't know what it looks like. Like, like what are some signs and indication that there's misalignment across the organization?
- [50:01]
A
Good question. Well, you want to make a change and you're getting, you have whole teams coming. To the CEO pushing back, that's a good clue, right? Or to the founder that there's misaligned, somebody is not aligned somewhere. There's no way that would happen. You think you're moving forward, but it's like you have this drag on what you're trying to do and you don't know why. I, I feel like what's super important is to put listening mechanisms in. So like the different levels actually, you know, some organizations, the founder has established kind of a culture where they sit down with people at all, no matter the size. From the moment the business is founded, everybody knows they can talk to that person openly without risk. Right. And they're less likely to have surprises. The ones where there's, where the culture is, there isn't a comfort or there's a certain leader that it's scary. I worked in an organization that the person was absolutely a bad culture fit and the detriment was stunning. Like that organization was afraid to bring things forward. People literally wouldn't say something because to other leaders, just because they were afraid of the repercussions if ever got back. That's just so much damage. So I would say the things you see are, you're not able to get the thing you're trying to get done done. You're. You have people doing workarounds, you have people coming to you directly, not willing to share fully. But hey, there's a problem. You've got leaders complaining that these people are no good. We need to get rid of the managers. None of them are making the changes we need to make. Right. So they're all indicators of a lack of alignment somewhere. And frankly, it starts at the top. It just does. You know, we say, you know, the EOs, you know, you know, as a leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the organization. That is so true.
- [52:17]
B
So if there's a leader out there and they're, they're identifying, what is it? Identification is the first step to, to solution or. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a saying. There's a saying out there that's better than how I worded it. So now there's a leader and they're like, oh crap, I've got four out of seven of, of those things that Beth just talked about. Like what's, what's step two? If step one is acknowledgement of the
- [52:37]
A
problem itself, start with your leadership team. Put it on your issues list. Look for root cause. Like I, you know, it's funny, I love how eos I reflect a lot and carry my learnings forward. Probably obvious from what I'm doing today, but I've, I've learned about things that I hadn't observed previously. From now my work with EOs, like, huh, that's fascinating. But even within my own clients, like sometimes I can't see things there till later. There's an indication there's clearly some misalignment. Even though in the room they act like they're aligned or some of the things that are happening wouldn't be happening.
- [53:19]
B
Happening. Yep.
- [53:22]
A
So I don't know if people are always open and honest with themselves, you know, especially if they're friends. They all like each other. How hard is that? Right?
- [53:34]
B
Should, should you not hire your friends?
- [53:37]
A
I'm not saying you shouldn't hire your friends. I think you should hire your friends if you're going to be open and honest with each other. Right. I was friends with my business owner, former business owners and we're still friends, all of us. It was hard sometimes, right?
- [53:49]
B
I love what you just said. So when I talk about my first company bankrupted, it was called run for your lives. It was the first ever zombie infested 5k obstacle course race. It was great and it scaled but it ended in bankruptcy. And, and so like my go to line, like, oh, how did that fail? I was like, oh, I couldn't spell P and L and I hired all my best friends and both of those things are, both of those things are, are true. I agree with you. If you can have those conversations with your friends and they GWC and their right culture and all those things like
- [54:17]
A
yeah, yeah, it's not about them being your friends. They gotta be bright people. Right seat.
- [54:21]
C
Yes.
- [54:22]
A
And then your friends are perfect first. And if you, but if you can't if they're your friends and they're not gwc, I mean, great people, right? See, you got a problem and you better hope your friendship is really strong. Right? But that happens in families too. All the time. All the time, Right. Family businesses.
- [54:40]
B
So I kept one friend out of it. So we're still. We're still. We're still rocking. Yes. I still have one.
- [54:48]
A
I have a feeling you have a lot of friends.
- [54:50]
B
So he's still my best friend, I guess, is the. Is the thing. We. We've been through everything together. We went through that bankruptcy together. We launched Hunt a killer together. See, he's a good guy.
- [55:02]
A
You know, the reality is you learn so much from stuff like that. Right? I mean, I hear you. I've heard you tell that story before. It's powerful. I mean, honestly, one of my challenges when I became an implementer is I didn't have that story. Like, dang, how am I going to tell how I. What I learned and grew out of that? I have stories. They're just not like my business didn't go under, you know?
- [55:26]
B
You know, you don't have to have
- [55:27]
A
a business, but you would be surprised how many, how many entrepreneurs have had that. And that's how they. That the power of the learnings from that. Because you learn way more from things that didn't work than you do from the things that work.
- [55:40]
B
So true.
- [55:41]
A
And the trick is to keep learning when something's not working. You said as a learning opportunity to make improvements, not see it as a negative. Which is easier said than done, of course, but it's true.
- [55:52]
B
Yep. You know, Beth, I. We're. We're down to the last two. I can't believe we got. We got here. We're down to the last two questions.
- [56:00]
A
This is such a blast.
- [56:02]
B
This was a lot of fun.
- [56:02]
A
Thanks for inviting me.
- [56:04]
B
Thanks for coming on.
- [56:04]
A
I could do this for hours, sadly for you, but that's exciting for me.
- [56:09]
B
What are you.
- [56:10]
A
Yeah, it's really fun. It's really, really fun. You make this easy. So I appreciate that.
- [56:14]
B
Thanks. Okay, so last two questions. Number one, what do you look for in a client? Are you. Are you vertical based? Mindset based, Geography based? What does a perfect client look like?
- [56:28]
A
So I'm in St. Louis, so I. A lot of my clients to here are here. Now. I am willing to work outside of St. Louis, but I, it's really mindset. Like, I just, I want a client who's open to making change, humble enough to, you know, they have to have confidence, of course, but to to say, yeah, I need some help and it's okay. You know that client I described that has that 10 year target? He's, he's a great client and he loves, he started the self implementing, had a different approach to getting there. But we, we were introduced by a former colleague. This is right time, right place and he's just fantastic because he really wants to do it the right way. He wants to implement EOs. So somebody who says like I'm, I have a lot of ideas but I'm going to trust the process because the process is proven and it does work. I'm going to let, let this play out and actually take it to the full depth of its capability. So for me it's a lot more to do with mindset and the right kind of clients. You asked about verticals. I have a lot of background in manufacturing because I've worked in the industry and I had a lot of clients in it, in, in that industry or related verticals. So I have a lot of interest in it. But to be honest, I find every industry interesting. So, so, but if I were gonna say a space. I'm really good at complexity. I've worked a lot with a lot of complex businesses in my career and I really like to help if it's complex. I feel like I'm really good at kind of helping organizations sift through that. And so, you know, the biggest thing is mindset. Like they just wanna, they wanna work, they wanna, they wanna get this into the whole organization. I think I do have some unique experiences to help take the EOS process and help them really work their way to get it into all the way to the front line. I'm very passionate about the importance of that.
- [58:33]
C
Yeah.
- [58:34]
B
By the way, I, I've never, I haven't had a conversation yet where we've talked about like the tactics, the strategies to push it to the front line, the benefits of that. And so some of the topics that we covered today like super useful and like tactics that business owners can take right back into their, into their organization and see immediate change. So thank you for that. And then last question. So someone just listened to this whole thing and they're like, I need to talk to Beth. How can they get ahold of you
- [59:04]
A
about my email? What do these people usually give?
- [59:08]
B
Some people fly there. Listen, we don't, we don't get a million downloads a month, but some people just fly their numbers. And I'm like, wow, that is, that's bold.
- [59:15]
A
That's brave. Yeah. Well, so first of all you can find, you know me on the EOS Micro EOS website if you just search my name and or you can email Beth rusertosworldwide.com both of those work. I'm on LinkedIn. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Send me a message. That works, too. I have people do that. So are you still taking clients? And I'm like, yes, I am. Especially if you're really if you really want to do this and you're excited about it and willing to go the journey.
- [59:48]
B
Thanks so much. And we'll make sure we have those in the show notes as well. But, Beth, thanks for taking I mean, this, we went a little bit long. So thanks for taking an hour and 10 minutes to to come on and share your journey.
- [59:59]
A
Thanks for inviting me. This was absolutely so much fun.