← Confessions of an Implementer
Confessions of an Implementer
The Role of Trust and Alignment in Successful EOS Implementation | Nick Bradfield, Certified EOS Implementer
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to Confessions of an EOS Implementer, a podcast by Talent Harbor. We share unique stories of EOS implementers and the companies they've transformed to give you a rare glimpse into the successes and the challenges of the system in action. I'm your host, Ryan Hogan. Let's jump in. Hey. Today's guest, I am super excited to have Nick Bradfield, former Marine. We share the veteran background, but the reason that I'm most excited to share this conversation with you today is because of the things that we talked about. Nick gave guidance on the impacts in his life that coaches have had, finding the right coach, the different coaches that are out there, and the value that they bring. We also talked about things like peer groups, frustrations that he had in his businesses before he discovered eos, and also what it means to hit a glass ceiling. So stay tuned, enjoy, and see at the end. Do we know each other? Because, like, our paths in, like, pbc, the fact that you're in Raleigh, where my old COO is, who's also a.
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B
Former Marine, I know Josh very well.
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A
Okay, well, wait a minute.
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B
How well I know him? Well, he and I went through an initial. One of the first cohorts that Bunker Labs had. He had a fractional CFO business at the time.
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A
Okay, so this wasn't the PBC stuff.
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B
No.
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A
Okay. Did you go to the pbc? Because that's where I met Josh, in Raleigh at PBC back in 2014 in Chapel Hill. Yep.
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B
Yes, I went there, and then I have mentored at it a couple times when they had it at MetLife and one other place.
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A
So then we have to know each other, because I was there as well, and there was only like 15 of us.
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B
Well, I was in and out, so I wasn't there as a participant for, like, the weekend thing. I was, like, kind of around it. So I'm sure we crossed. I mean, I feel like we have to cross paths at some point.
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A
I was looking at our LinkedIn since, like, 156 mutuals or something like that. I'm like, where the hell do you see something like that?
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B
You're in just outside of D.C. right?
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A
Right now, I am in Newport, Rhode island, going through the Navy War College. There's a longer story there because I, like, I'm in the Navy Reserves. I'm supposed to be in the Navy Reserves, but I keep activating for various reasons. But I was born and raised in the Baltimore area, and then Hunt a Killer was basically just outside of D.C.
- [02:24]
B
So we probably interacted at events there as well. So when I was with Bunker, I would go up to D.C. often for events with Emily and Seda and all of them. So I'm sure we have been in numerous places at the same time. But it is fantastic to finally actually meet you.
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A
Yeah, you too. I'm sure we have cross paths. So you're in Charlotte right now?
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B
I'm in Raleigh.
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A
Raleigh, okay. Got it. Yeah. I was just talking to Josh, I think, last week or the week before, and, you know, he went with the nonprofit Soldiers Against Suicide or Stop Soldier Suicide. Stop Soldier Suicide. So one of the things that I was reading about you was your view on coaching. You saw it immediately. You were like, that was the shift. But one of the things that I saw was you talking about coaching and the value of coaching. Talk to me about that.
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B
When I look back over my career or really even over my life, I mean, any successes that I've had, I can pin back to a coach, whether it was a wrestling coach growing up or when I had a business, thinking I knew everything, which obviously I did. And then the coach told me I was wrong. Yeah, I feel like having someone kind of guide you and tell you that you don't know everything. And, hey, maybe necessarily don't go this way, go this way. Because you can't always understand what's going on if you're in the game. I mean, that's why there are coaches in sports to begin with, is because you can't always see what's happening in the game when you're in it. So I've always been a fan of having coaches around, or I love mentors in that group as well. Just other people who can kind of put some guardrails on for you and kind of shepherd your thinking or your path or at least bounce ideas off and figure out what's going on.
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A
When you think back to, like, some of those maybe pivotal moments throughout life and where you did have a coach, like, not necessarily some of the tactics, but, like, what were some of the things that a great coach did? Because having come up through the military and everything else, I'm sure you've seen great mentors, great leaders, great coaches, and I'm sure you've seen the opposite of that. And so what are some things that great coaches have done for you?
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B
I think a couple things. I actually think being in the military, this kind of ties into entrepreneurship as well. But part of my path in the military, we were around so many great leaders. I mean, yeah, there were some that were. But I'm an internally glass half full person. So I really tried to focus on all of the great leaders that were around me. And I think what they did as coaches was one, they showed me what was possible and two, they push me out of my comfort zone. Those are the two most important things that I gathered from that. Now on the flip side of that, focusing on all these great leaders that were around us in the military makes it really difficult to be an employee when you get out of the military because you're comparing every leader to some great leader that you had in the military. And that is one of the things that made me a terrible employee. One of the many things that made me a terrible employee.
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A
That's so interesting. And as I was coming up through the ranks, I started as an E1. I was an E1 twice. I don't admit that to many people, but I made E2 and two days later I made E1 again. It was fantastic. But it's interesting. And when you talk about kind of the glass half full, because I felt like a lot of my learning and journey and experiences, like when I think back to the notes that I took, I always took notes of bad leadership and I had this running list for probably about 10 years of things not to do, things to avoid, things not to forget. But you looked at things differently and it sounds like you would look at what are these leaders doing great. And let me take note of that so that I can emulate that.
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B
Yeah, I don't know that one way is right or wrong for me. That's how my brain has to focus on things like that. Because I tend to drive towards things that my brain focuses on. So if I focused on what not to do all the time, for me personally, that would probably be a self fulfilling prophecy to do all of those things. Because that's where my energy would be, that's what I would be thinking about and focusing on. So I had to focus on the positive stuff.
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A
When you think about coaches throughout your life, you said your first coach or some of your first coaches in life were sports, wrestling, things like that. Have you actively set out to seek and find coaches at this point or are they naturally.
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B
Well, it's some of both. Some just kind of naturally happened where I kind of stumbled into a situation and found a coach and some I actively sought out. I mean, there's the coach for about everything now. So last year I had hired a facilitation coach. I didn't even know that was a thing. I thought there was this giant umbrella of executive coaches. And then someone told me about this facilitation coach. And that's the work I do. So I wanted to hone in on the craft of facilitation. And of course it makes sense that there's a facilitation coach, but I would have never known that had somebody not told me about. I would have never even thought to look for a coach on that. But there really is a. There's a coach for anything you can think of. There's probably a coach for it.
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A
So I have no idea what a facilitation. I mean, I'm sure I could probably piece it together. But what is a facilitation coach?
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B
So my default answer here is it's a coach that teaches you how to facilitate better. But what they do is they teach you how to ask better questions, how to listen for different cues that you can use various techniques. There's a whole bunch of different facilitation techniques. And so you can listen for different cues on when to use this technique or when to use that technique. I mean, it's really fascinating. There's a whole bunch of. It was like a rabbit hole that I dove down and it was like Alice in Wonderland where it just kept. I was like, wow, this is amazing. It's amazing. And yeah, it's really just learning all these different techniques because sometimes you might have a room that needs to be pushed harder. Sometimes you need to have a room where you just need to kind of be this person up in the corner observing everything and just saying, hey, here's what I'm observing right now. How do you want to proceed? And sometimes there's techniques you need to use to really try to break through to people. There is just a whole. I scratched the surface of it. I mean, there are people who have. The guy I worked with had a PhD in this stuff. I didn't even know that was an option. I mean, it's all psychology stuff, right?
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A
The facilitation. So when I think about coaches that I've utilized in the past, if we're speaking about like leading companies or leading leaders, it's less about kind of the group dynamics and the facilitation of how to bring more than one party together versus just trying to lead a single individual. Like, is that really. The focus is understanding the psychology and understanding group dynamics and how to take a group of people to a place that you want them to go versus one on one and then the follow up is what's one or two things that you're considering in the back of your head that's different between those two.
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B
So what I was focusing on was the group piece, not the individual piece. And so with the group facilitation, it's not taking them where I want to take them, it's taking them where they want to go. And I do think there's a difference in that because I'm not a consultant coming in. Nothing wrong with consultants. They're. They can add a ton of value to an organization because they can point out blind spots and help you figure out how to fix them. That's not my role. So my role is figuring out where they want to go and then corralling all of these different personalities and viewpoints to get alignment on that direction. So it's not necessarily where I want to take them. It's where they've said they want to go and helping them figure out how to all get there together. Does that make sense?
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A
Got it. That makes complete sense. If people are interested in coaches and they're trying to find the best coach for them, where do you even find that? Where do you start that search? And how do you know when you've found the one? Is this something that's searching for integrator or searching for an implementer? Or is this something that kind of goes much deeper when you're looking for different things?
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B
For me, this particular one found me, but it found me through a mentor. I think the easiest place to find any sort of coach is. Is who do you look up to the most in your field and just start asking them questions. So figure out who that person is. Hopefully you have a good relationship with them and they can serve as sort of a mentor for you, and they can just kind of tell you, hey, here's some of the things that have worked for me, here's some things that didn't. Here's some people you should get to know. Oh, there's this thing about a facilitation coach. I didn't even research a bunch of them. I just looked at one because my mentor had used him a long time. So for me, it's a referral for sure. I mean, as with anything, a referral is always going to be more solid than, you know, just looking somebody up on the Google machine. But I think that's the best place to start, is find a mentor who is a little bit ahead of you or maybe further ahead of you and figure out what worked for them and just try to do that, and they're more than likely going to have some sort of coaches in that quarter.
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A
Have you ever read the ego is the Enemy? No, I think it's Ryan Holiday. But my skipper in the reserves recommended it to me and he said it was a life changer for him. And I was like, wow, if he's saying it's a life changer, then I'm going to pick this book up. And I just read it a couple weeks ago. Why listen to it? So maybe that's cheating. But one of the things that he talked about is this idea of 360 coaching. You find someone that's further ahead or where you want to be in five or 10 years, you find peers, and then you also coach down and one is someone that's ahead of you or in the future. It's more about discovery and that's more about learning. Your peers are more about accountability and then coaching going in the opposite direction of up. It's really about practice and putting that into practice and learning through teaching and really kind of mastering that art. And I found that the fascinating principle because I never looked at it in those terms. I'd always looked for people that were already where I wanted to go because I wanted to learn from them. But I think there's a lot of interesting kind of nuggets or value in kind of that more holistic approach.
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B
I love the peer group piece. I think that's. That's a huge point to tap on because it realize that you're not actually going through things on an island or you don't have to anyway. If you have a peer group that can kind of call you out on your BS because they're going through similar stuff, I actually think that's hugely helpful. And you can get, I mean, as far as the coaching thing, you can probably get some sort of recommendations from them as well. What kind of coaches do they have? Because you're all kind of mentoring each other, at least from an accountability standpoint, and pushing each other to be better. Now, finding the right peer group is, I think, key to that puzzle. You want to find a peer group that's going to push you.
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A
I'm not familiar with all of the things that Bunker Lab does for veterans, but I know a couple of them. And would you say that peer group or mentoring or resources like, how do you think about bunker labs when it comes to things like coaching and accountability?
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B
I think as a peer group, it's fantastic because they have a couple different stages and at the earlier stage, the peer group helps you figure out what questions to ask. I mean, you know this from when you started your business. When you just start, you're kind of Just fumbling through and trying to get some customers and trying to figure stuff out. But as far as a peer group, you don't even know what questions to ask or a mentor or a coach because you're still trying to find, does my product even belong in the market? And so I think it helps with the earlier stages of getting people together and letting them not build businesses on an island and figure out what questions to ask. And then the later stages, the peer group is gold. So the later stages, they get these companies together and they'll bring in these high powered speakers and all that. And those are cool. But the most value they get is from just talking to each other, you know, because they're dealing with hiring issues or they're dealing with expansion issues or kind of dealing with the same stuff. Even though they're in different industries, they're still figuring out how to scale a company. And so those peer groups, it's a different value because they're getting so much value from each other.
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A
How did you learn or discover this thing called eos?
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B
I had a fintech company and actually when I went through the first cohort that Bunker had in Raleigh and we had a speaker come talk about eos, it was a guy named Brent Sprinkle, who great friend of mine and lives like a mile away from me. And he is, if he ever listens to this, he may not know this, but he's a mentor of mine for sure. But he came and gave a talk and it was that timing of it was perfect because I was like, oh, this stuff is cool. I like all this accountability stuff and I like this simple system. And I was at the beginning stages of being frustrated. And so when he spoke, I was like, yeah, this stuff's really cool. And then of course, you know, we left the meeting and I forgot about it for six months until I was really frustrated. And then I was like, oh, wait, there was this EOS thing that that guy talked about. Let me look more into that. So when I got really frustrated, Cause I remember that was one of the things he said in his talk, was that it helped relieve a lot of frustrations around people, profits, time. And when I hit the ceiling, as we say as implementers, that's. I checked all those boxes. And the biggest frustration was time. I was frankly being a jerk to everyone in my life because I was so frustrated with what was happening in the business. And so that just resonated with me one day. And then I implemented in my business and I loved it.
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A
We didn't even talk about if anything's off limits. And so if we do jump into something like that, what specifically was frustrating you in the business?
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B
Me. I mean, I was rattling off several things in my head as you were saying that, but really it was me. I wanted to have so much control over it that I didn't have any control. And so that caused frustration with people. When you're micromanaging people. That is a horrible recipe how I communicated with people. Profits were not where I wanted them at the time, and then time, it was just always, always thinking about it. So the time piece. You oftentimes start a business because you want freedom and then your own worst enemy and don't have any freedom, and you just work and work and work and work and work, and you get exhausted and you're an asshole to everyone in your life. And so there were several factors in there, but really, the bottleneck, the frustration point was me and I needed to do something to figure out how to better take care of me while I was doing this thing. And then that provided an opening for everybody else to do better because I wasn't in the way.
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A
Yes, I've been through that. And what do you think the root cause of your micromanagement? Like, one of the things that comes up to me or comes to mind immediately for me is the five dysfunctions of a team. And so the core that it's a lack of trust. And the lack of trust, like, pushing us, whether it's the mentality of I can do this better, or it's, you know, I don't believe that this person can be effective or whatever the case may be. I've been through a lot of those things before. What do you think the root cause of your micromanagement was for your team?
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B
It had to be trust for sure. Because even though everyone tells you no one's going to care as much about your business as you, it's hard to realize that and let go. And so you want everyone to care. You're the only one that has all the risk. Or if you have partners, they have risk too. I mean, they're contractors or employees. And there because it's fun and it's cool and you're doing something neat. And, you know, maybe there's this upside, but it's a job. And for us as business owners, it's not like we're creating this thing. We have this idea, we put it into motion. We created this thing. Now we have all these other people, and I need you to care as much about it as I do. Well, they probably don't for one and two. I mean, you have no. If you don't have the right people in the right seats and you have no idea what you're doing when you're bringing people on and you're just kind of like shooting from the hip and figuring it out. I mean, now looking back, of course you're going to have all these problems. Trust was ultimately the answer. But, I mean, it was probably my fault for not putting the right people in the right seats to begin with or even identifying what the seats were. You're just like, oh, I need a marketing person. Okay. Do you know you need a marketing person? Maybe. But I mean, I just kind of did that because I thought I was supposed to do it, you know? So if you don't actually take the time to figure out what the seats are and then get the right people in them, of course you're going to have trust issues because they're not going to do it as well as you want them, because they're probably not supposed to be in that seat to begin with.
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A
I agree.
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B
And I feel like you're smiling. So you've, like, you've had some of these things happen.
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A
Yeah, I've been through all of that. I mean, that's why. Because one of the things that I was actually going to ask, and I've tested this out several different ways and still have not been able to kind of solve this issue. And maybe it's not solvable, but I do think that there's ways to help with it. But what really resonated with me from what you just said was nobody will care as much as you do. And for 90, 95% of the people inside of the organization, it's just a job. And they may be right person, right seed, and so, and they may get it and want it and have the capacity to be able to accomplish it. But at the end of the day, like, are they going to put in as much effort that you do? And the answer generally that I have found is a resounding no. Nobody's going to put in the effort. They don't have enough at stake, or they don't have enough to really have anything to lose. They can go to the next job. And that's not a flaw. Like, someone can still be an amazing part of the culture and believe in what you're doing and be passionate about coming in each day, but it just doesn't necessarily mean that that translates into an ownership mentality. And some of the things that I've tested, like My question for you is, have you tested or done things to be able to maybe not get them to 100% ownership, but be able to kind of increase that data point? And one of the things that I've seen, certainly not perfect, but different types of equity plans via maybe it's phantom equity, maybe it's profit sharing, maybe it is options. It could be a lot of different things. But have you tested, experimented or found things that help kind of move the needle on that ownership when you do have the right person in the right seat and you just want them to be a little more committed?
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B
I had a couple experiences with equity stuff. Couple went well, a couple didn't. I do think most of the time something like that is going to get you closer to having a piece of ownership. I think the mission oftentimes is not explaining the why. So if you're trying to build, and so maybe that's a, you know, having a financial planner come in and talk about hey, 10 years down the road when this thing hits, here's what that means and here's how you can kind of start to plan for that. So if you're trying to build a hundred million dollar company, me as an employee, I want to know what this could mean for me. I mean, yeah, you're giving me this phantom stock that whatever the percentage, you know, some small percentage of equity, I'm like, this is not even that much. I'm not going to, it's not going to mean anything to me. And you're like, well it can. I mean our vision, our 10 year plan is to sell this for a hundred million dollars. So getting everybody aligned, rolling in the same direction type thing, you're like, guess what? You have a percent of that. I mean, you don't want to talk about percentages, you want to talk about shares. That's a whole another conversation. But you know, the, the math in that is, well, would $500,000 making meaningful impact in your life? Yeah, probably. Even if your goal is to sell it for $10 million and that number is now all of a sudden $50,000, I mean that's a bonus that is there. And if we all work together and row in the same direction, then we can all participate in this upside. But I think oftentimes we miss explaining the why and what this could potentially mean and then also not explaining what it looks like to actually exercise those things that you're doing that causes nobody knows about that until it's too late. They don't read the 100 pages that they're Supposed to, and that causes some problems. The shorter answer to your question is I think you can get closer to having the ownership mentality by sharing in some of the upside. However you do that, you know, whether it's equity or ESOPs or whatever the vehicle is, I do think you get closer to it, you're never going to get 100% because there's not risk. So the risk is what drives the ownership.
- [22:53]
A
That's a great point. And we've done stock option grants quite a few times. We did it with Hunt a Killer. I think we did it with Run for your Lives as well. And like I've seen it time and time again where they become worthless or the person leaves the company for whatever reason, whether voluntary or involuntary, and they can't afford to vest or they don't want to take the risk to vest. I mean if you don't get a penny strike price and it's real meaningful money and they've got 90 days post exit to exercise their stock options like it's just kind of a rigged game. And so, you know, I agree with you. And that's, you know, this probably starts with a conversation with the teammate to understand like what are they trying to get out of this? Maybe they're money motivated, maybe they're free time motivated and really trying to align those incentives around the type of lifestyle that they want. Some people want to work 15, 18 hours a day and others want to work four day work week. Some people want to work remote, others want to be around people five days a week and really starting to align those things. You've talked a lot about right person, right seat or right people, right seat. And you said that at this fintech company you had implemented eos and it was at a time in which like frustrations were building. I feel you there. The worst day of the month for anybody on my senior leadership team was always the day after Vistage. Because after Vistage I would come in and I would just completely turned the tables up with all of these new great ideas from my CEO peer group. And one of those was eos. And so you know the book, we had a professional implementer come in, certified implementer come in, gave the training, gave the brief, ran us through the process and we got a book and then I came in, I was like, we're implementing this and certainly did not have the type of buy in I think that I should have had out of the gate. Did you self implement or did you get a professional implementer?
- [24:40]
B
Both. So I started out self implementing because you know, smartest guy in the room type thing. It's so simple. And yeah, I can do this on my own. The problem I did. So I made every mistake possible twice Somehow my problem was I took a little bit of this, then some of this, then over here, and then did it in this order, you know. And then I wondered why I was struggling with it. It's because I created Nick's operating system, which had no merit for anything, and then got on the right track with an implementer and it all worked out.
- [25:15]
A
Got it. That was gonna be my question was. Cause we went through the same thing. I was like, oh, we could just take pieces of this. Like we'll have some measurables, we'll try and follow this Level 10 meeting cadence. But we didn't have like necessarily everything put in. We didn't all understand the vocabulary, we were all speaking different languages and it was a. Just a gigantic mess. Um, and two years later we were still a gigantic mess. And so we went out and we found someone to help undo it. But it sounds like if I were going to ask, what was your biggest struggle with implementation? It sounds like at least during the self implementation, it was using bits and pieces and not the holistic approach.
- [25:50]
B
It's a proven process for a reason. Nick's operating system just didn't, didn't work. There's a lot of things in there and I actually think so. I actually had a client tell me this at the end of a session maybe six months ago, and it was so true, it blew my mind. It was a very hairy session, like lots of fireworks in the middle of the session. The reality was they weren't committed to the process or to each other. And that to me, the secret sauce of EOS is if you commit to the process and you commit to each other to be open and honest, there's nothing you can't work through. If one of those are off, it's going to be hard. Both of those are off. If you're not committed to the process and you're just kind of going through the motions, you're not committed to each other to be open and honest, it can wreak havoc in your organization. And that's what somebody said at the end of the session. And I was like, that is so true. Because if you're just sort of doing things all over the place, there's no alignment on anything. It just messes a lot of things up. And it's so simple to, to just commit to the process and just commit to each other to be open and honest. But that does not make it easy.
- [26:56]
A
And I'm sure you've seen this a thousand times, like when you're implementing, how do you get a leadership team when you can identify immediately out of the gate, someone sits down, you're like that person. They don't believe in the system or trying to do. They may be great person for the company, they may believe in the mission, the vision. They embody those values. Like they check all the blocks of right person, right seat, they just don't believe in the system. And like you said, that can jack up trying to fully implement this inside of the organization. When you see that with teams, this probably gets back to your facilitator coach, by the way. But when you see this with the team, like what's the secret sauce? Like how do you bring those people along and get them to believe without losing them?
- [27:38]
B
So a couple things, I mean, one, it's pushing them to be open and honest in the moment. So pushing everyone in the room to be open and honest at the moment. I mean, at the end of the day it's not my company, so I'm not there to tell them what to do. The people issues will solve themselves. So what I tell people early on is we commit to the process, commit to each other, tell them that piece of it that's a secret sauce. And then I say, hey, about a year in, this is going to get really tough, give or take. I mean, it might be a few months earlier, late or whatever, but about a year it's going to get really tough. And they're like, oh really? Why? And like, because in the early days, EOS is going to fix a lot of problems, a lot of low hanging, simple problems. And then there's not going to be a place for people to hide. And so it might be someone who's been with your company for 10 years, you love them, they got you here. But they're not going to be able to hide anymore and it's going to be glaringly obvious. And so you need to push them to just be open and honest and deal with that. That doesn't mean they're a bad person, doesn't mean they're fired immediately. It means you have to have a conversation and figure out what the next path is for them. Maybe there's another place in the organization, maybe you can introduce them to a client or something or someone you know in your network. But everybody wants to be the right person in the right seat. And so after that, that year, it's going, people problems are going to happen and it's going to get messy. So eventually they'll figure it out and they'll solve early on. There's always a couple, you know, there's always one or two curmudgeons in the room who are like, I don't know about this thing. And everybody else is like, ah, just go along with just how he is. I'm like, all right, okay. You know, so I'll just kind of ask some questions, like, what are you unsure about here? Okay. And so just get them. Do whatever I can to get them talking. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I mean, eventually over time it will, but in the moment, it doesn't always work.
- [29:27]
A
Do you think that there's any. Because you self implement this and because you were running a business and like, you saw the successes of this, like, that would naturally make you a great implementer to be able to help others navigate this. Are there any skills, experience, expertise, things that happened while you were in the Marines that you look back to now and you say, like, this has actually helped me be a better implementer. This has actually helped me help other companies out this specific thing.
- [29:59]
B
Yeah. So I think a couple things. One, being comfortable, being uncomfortable. Oftentimes people want me to have the answers, and I don't always have the answers. I have a lot of questions. So I just kind of approach everything with curiosity. But I'm not an expert in your business. I know EOS really well and I can teach you the tools and coach you on them and facilitate, but I don't know the answers on what's the best thing to do for your business. That's really hard. So being comfortable, being uncomfortable with that and then being calm under pressure. I mean, sometimes in sessions things get heated and the ability to just be calm, figure out what's happening, and, you know, reading the room, reading the situation and saying like, all right, clearly we need to take a break right now. Or Ryan, you need to go stand over there and Jimmy, you need to go stand over there for a little bit. Yeah. So I think several. Being comfortable, being uncomfortable, being comfortable with an 80% solution. So much of what we do in EOS is working towards an 80% solution. 100% is great, but we're looking at making progress, not perfection, and then just remaining calm under pressure. I mean, I've had people scream at me in the middle of a session. I've had people scream at each other. I've had tears and lots of laughter. I mean, so many things happen in a session room that you have to be able to remain calm and be that calming force for the rest of the room.
- [31:18]
A
Was it ever the visionary that yelled at you?
- [31:20]
B
Oh yeah, of course, crazy visionary.
- [31:25]
A
We're all crazy.
- [31:26]
B
So I'm very much an integrator, not a visionary.
- [31:30]
A
Interesting.
- [31:31]
B
I was just going to reiterate that. I mean I'd say probably this is, I have nothing to base this on, just my observations. I'd say implementers are probably 70, maybe 80% of them are visionaries and the rest are, are more integrator minded.
- [31:48]
A
Interesting. So my buddy a couple weeks ago, he told me one, I can't get any of my friends. So my peer group is this community that I put together full of amazing direct consumer operators and I can't get any of them to push the button on eos, but they at least hear me talk about it all the time. And so they're very kind of familiar with the terminology and how things operate. And one of my buddies a couple weeks ago said, you know, integrators make the best CEOs. And listen, I get it, like in EOS There are no CEOs, there are no COOs, there are core function leaders and there are visionaries and integrators. But I've thought about that question. It wasn't a question, it was a statement. But I've thought about that statement so much it kind of gets back to like what is the job of the CEO? But like there has to be someone kind of pulling all of the pieces together. And so if your organization is operating with like a CEO and a president, maybe you can get away with a visionary in a CEO role. But if you don't have a president, it's a really interesting thing to think about of like then does a visionary belong in that seat where you gotta keep the trains running on time, you gotta be in the day to day operation which all of those things are a distraction from what you're best in the world at. So anyhow, I don't know if you have an opinion on this. You might just say hey dummy, like EOS doesn't have titles, so that comment doesn't matter. But I'm curious, what do you think about the statement integrators make the best CEOs.
- [33:11]
B
That's tough. As a blanket statement I can only think about me personally. I mean I can think about people who, I have a couple clients who the visionary and integrator are the same person. Now that is an incredibly rare thing and it probably something that won't last a long Time, it's a temporary solution until they fill one of them. There's some ego involved. It's the integrator mindset. If someone is more of an integrator and you know they're the majority owner, there's some ego involved in them not being the visionary, even though there doesn't need to be. It's all about functions and doing what you're best in the world at. I think about me personally. For me, it depends on how many people I'm leading or managing. I spent about five years with Bunker, and there was a time several years ago, pre Covid, if we can remember when that was, where I said, hey, in about six months, I'm not going to be the right person for this role. And everybody's like, what? And I was like, yeah, I know that there's an element of self awareness where I know that I can lead a small group. I'm not good at leading a big group because what happens is in a small group, I can come off like a jerk. But people know that I have enough time and effort to build relationships with the people, so they know that it comes from a place of good. If I'm leading or managing a large group, it overwhelms me or whatever to build relationships with all those people. So I just come off like a jerk without good intent. So I don't know the answer to your question. I think it probably depends. I think I see the logic in it why an integrator would potentially make a great CEO, because they're, you know, an integrator's role is manage P and L. You know, remove obstacles and ensure people hit the rocks. I still think you need some. I mean, you have to have that big crazy visionary person out there. I think you have to have the visionary. Otherwise you might be leaving money on the table. You might be shooting yourself in the foot a little bit. I mean, people could have visionary traits. You know, you can have. I don't think anybody's 100% visionary or 100% integrator. You probably have some characteristics that you can play the role for a little bit if you need to. But the beauty of the visionary is their craziness. I mean, it's that wild idea that they come with 20 and one of them's good. And you're like, yes, let's go. Okay. As the integrator? Yes, if so. I worked with a visionary a while ago. He was definitely a build the plane as you fly it type person. And what I found out was when he would come to me and say, can we do this? And I would say no, because again, I'm. My brain works like an integrator. It's the execution, the glue piece of it. So he would say, can we do this? I would say no, and he would get pissed. And so we would just always fight. And so I learned to say yes, if. So I'm saying yes, so he's not getting mad, but I'm saying, if, hey, here's the landmines. And once we figured that out, once we got on the same page with how to communicate with each other like that. So he'd come with this crazy idea. I'd say, yes, if we can accomplish this, this and this, and watch out for this landmine, this landmine and this landmine, yes, we can do that. And so that provided me the opportunity to not be negative, but say where I thought the potential problems could arise. And it allowed him to hear me say yes.
- [36:26]
A
I love that. Yes if.
- [36:28]
B
Yes, if. It was probably one of the biggest things I learned in working with people, working with crazy visionary yes if yes if.
- [36:35]
A
Not yes, but like my kids say, or yes and it's yes if. Okay, when you've got a leadership team that's like you talked about this notion of like 12 months and like in 12 months it's going to get kind of rough. And it's because at the 12 month mark, you've got a senior leadership team that's really starting to hit their stride as far as like, you've got your rocks, you're not going to the rock buffet anymore. You guys are now starting to rock buffet. My goodness, how many times we have went. But you've got all these different things that are like finally starting to click. And like you said, like, nobody can hide anymore because you have finally, after 12 months, have realized the right things to measure inside of the organization, which can be challenging in and of itself because most organizations measure lagging indicators. And what you really need to do is hone in on those things that you can move the needle on a weekly basis. When should a company start thinking about like global rollout? Because there's the notion of you roll it out to the senior leadership team. Is your recommendation like, hey, day one, as you're rolling this out or implementing it inside of an organization, take it all the way to the bottom. Or you have the mindset that like, hey, give the senior leadership team some time to really let this sink in.
- [37:44]
B
They need some time for sure. I don't recommend day one rolling it out to everyone. Eventually you need to roll it out to everyone to get the maximum impact. And there are exceptions to that, but for the most part that's true. So the biggest reason why I think the leadership team needs to be a little bit fluent in it. So at least past the focus day, vision building, day one, vision building, day two, you've got that foundation laid. Once you start to get, get into the quarterlies, you can come up with a plan on how to roll it out. Usually kind of one level at a time. But the biggest reason why I think the leadership team needs time to kind of bake it is the L10s are clunky. I mean, at first. I mean, you remember when you first start doing the L10s, it's very clunky. And so you have to get used to it. You have to just commit to the process and get used to the rigor of it and then eventually you love it. But if you roll that out in day one to the rest of the team when it's clunky, they're not going to take you seriously. So you need to be comfortable running L10s so that you can show them how to properly run L10s. So there needs to be a comfort level in you showing what good looks like because otherwise they're just seeing like this clunky kind of messy thing and they're like another idea from Ryan. They're not going to take it seriously until it's baked out a little more.
- [39:02]
A
I love that. And like, you know, back to the whole coaches or even maybe like mini implementers. Like, it's almost like the senior leadership team, each member of it, because they're sitting in two L10s each week now, but they almost need to be like the mini integrator or the mini implementer of their leadership team. And you can only do that, like once you've experienced it, have asked the questions that you know they're going to ask yourself and understand the rhythm. So I love that. Okay, how can someone find you? If someone's like, nick is going to be my implementer, how do they find you?
- [39:37]
B
I'm pretty easy to find. LinkedIn, Nick Bradfield, my microsite eosworldwide.com nick-bradfield or just ask you. I mean, there's a good number of people. I've been fortunate to build a decent network, so I feel like I'm pretty easy to find, especially in the veteran community. I think I have navigated that fairly well where I am not too many degrees removed from a lot of people. So I feel like I'm pretty easy to find.
- [40:04]
A
Nice. I love that. And that's why this one was like really kind of near and dear to me, just because of our shared veteran background and what you've done for the community and veteran entrepreneurs and things like that. So that's incredible. Last question is if you could take any EOS implementer out for some beers. Or maybe you don't drink now you're a Marine, you definitely drink beers and eat crayons. But if you were going to take any implementer out for beers, who would it be?
- [40:28]
B
My T group, we call it T Group and Accountability Group. And there are so many amazing people in the US community, you've probably interviewed some of them already. My accountability group, there are six or seven of us total. We're spread out across the country in different locations and we have our own L10 every Monday morning. But those guys are. I love spending time with them. I mean, so as far as a peer group, my suggestion to everybody is find people who you love spending time with that will push you. Because all of them, we all kind of have this weird imposter syndrome around each other because they're all very high performing people, but they're just the salt of the earth like good humans. And I absolutely love them. I love spending time with them. I laugh harder than with them. Then I can remember laughing. When we get together, it's not very often because we are scattered all over the country, but every time we end up laughing so hard we cry sometimes. So yeah, there's six or seven of them in that group that are just amazing.
- [41:30]
A
Yes, it's so lonely building. The whole notion of it's lonely at the top. But like, if you're building out as an EOS implementer, if you're building your own company, like finding people that you can surround yourself with. The community that I started, like, a lot of them are like, this is my therapy. This is where I come just to kind of get everything off my chest and yeah, I couldn't agree more. So, but anyhow, thank you so much for. I actually don't want this to end, but they tell me that if we go over an hour, then they can't chop it down to what they needed to. But we could go on for quite some time. But thank you so much for coming on and we'll talk soon.
- [42:04]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [42:07]
A
Confessions of an EOS Implementer is brought to you by Talent Harbor. To find out more about Talent harbor and our fractional services and talent search solutions for businesses that operate on EOS, visit talentharbor.com and then make sure to search for EOS Implementer in Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are found. Make sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. And on behalf of the team here at Talent harbor, thanks for listening.