Vision Meets Execution: Mastering Team Dynamics and Leadership with Jim Bygland

Summary

Confessions of an Implementer: "Vision Meets Execution: Mastering Team Dynamics and Leadership with Jim Bygland"

Podcast: Confessions of an Implementer
Host: Ryan Hogan
Guest: Jim Bygland (EOS Implementer, Integrator)
Date: December 4, 2024

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the integrator’s journey with Jim Bygland, exploring the delicate balance between vision and execution. Host Ryan Hogan and Jim discuss what makes a high-functioning leadership team, the importance of trust between visionaries and integrators, strategies for healthy conflict, and how to systematically prioritize the right ideas in organizations. Jim shares candid stories from his tech and fintech background, lessons learned from mistakes, and practical advice for implementers at every stage.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Jim’s Early Career: Military Precision and Vision

[01:26] – [02:40]

• Jim recounts his formative experience at a fintech startup run by military veterans, highlighting the clarity of mission and strong sense of accountability.
  • “We would get dropped off on the company airplane, we'd have four and a half days to get that bank converted...But we did it…whatever it took, they were now running on our software.” (Jim, [01:50])
• The military mindset led to extraordinary commitment, high standards, and a culture where no one wanted to let the team down.

Leadership Teams: Military vs. Traditional

[02:40] – [03:50]

• Jim compares organizations led by military-trained leaders to others:
  • Military teams operated with clarity and mission-focus.
  • Other organizations sometimes suffered from “self-centered leadership,” resulting in confusion and inefficient changes of direction.
  • “There’s a meeting after the meeting...like, whoa, we just took a 90-degree turn...a lot of wasted effort.” (Jim, [03:20])

The Integrator’s Sweet Spot – Making the Trains Run On Time

[03:50] – [04:31]

• Jim’s natural role in organizations: operational backbone, ensuring alignment with the mission and facilitating execution.
• Success is strongly linked to clarity of mission and team cohesion.

Challenges in Integration: The Danger of “Title Power”

[05:00] – [06:43]

• Jim shares a pivotal story: tried to force consensus in a stalled team meeting by pulling rank (“title power”), only to shut the team down emotionally and set back progress by months.
  • “It was basically cuss word, we're moving this direction and everybody just kind of...shut down at that instant.” (Jim, [05:36])
• Recovery required humility, refocusing the team on the mission, and “eating crow.”

Visionary–Integrator Dynamics

[06:43] – [10:41]

• Integrator is the "tiebreaker," but only works when trust and alignment exist.
  • “If the integrator surprises the visionary too many times, it's not a good fit...they should be seeing around those corners...” (Jim, [08:30])
• The importance of structured "same page" meetings:
  • Relationship first; trust must be absolute.
  • “There can't be any threat of entitlement or titles…it's 100% trust that we're in this to win this.” (Jim, [09:34])
• Saying “no”—well—is a key part of the integrator role, but needs context, relationship, and prioritization.

Building Trust: Recruiting Integrators & Sustaining Alignment

[10:41] – [14:06]

• Trust is the number one challenge—especially when visionaries shift from hands-on to strategic.
  • “It took him about a year and a half…to figure out...my new role is really strategic development.” (Jim, [11:26])
• Pre-existing relationships make integrations smoother; in external hires, use tools like Kolbe, DiSC, Predictive Index to check fit.
  • “Figure out truly what you're looking for. What are those five roles...for your integrator?” (Jim, [13:07])

Prioritization: Balancing Vision and Execution

[14:06] – [16:54]

• Jim’s three core values for decision-making:
  1. The answer is never no: Understand the motivation or root cause behind every idea.
  2. No customer impact: Never compromise customer experience for internal priorities.
  3. Communicate, communicate, communicate: Over-communication prevents misunderstandings.
  • “One of the core values is the answer is never no...Let's get that beginner's mindset. Let's start asking the questions…” (Jim, [15:02])

Becoming an Integrator: Nature or Nurture?

[16:54] – [18:23]

• Jim “fell into” integrator roles—drawn by the thrill of orchestrating moving parts and continuous improvement.
• He can flex between analytics, vision, and facilitation—helped by mid-spectrum personality traits.

Influences: Books and Mentors

[18:23] – [21:18]

• Key influences: Patrick Lencioni, Jim Collins (“BE 2.0”), and habit of “figuring it out” with smart teams.
  • “I had been a Collins fan for a long, long time just because it was so clear.” (Jim, [18:40])
• Hardest management lesson: hanging onto low performers too long; learned to release after giving “time, tools, training.”
  • “If you give them your time, tools, and training, you can look yourself in the mirror the day you're going to fire them.” (Jim, [20:15])

Objectivity and Accountability

[21:18] – [24:33]

• It's easier to see others’ organizational issues than your own.
• Use hard data and “rock completion” to spot accountability gaps.
  • “To me, it's always just rock completion and numbers...are they executing, are they delivering, are they accountable for what they said they'd be accountable for?” (Jim, [22:34])

The “No Surprises” Meeting

[24:33] – [26:03]

• Before big contracts, Jim convened all stakeholders for a plain-language discussion of expectations (“no surprises meeting”), ensuring alignment beyond legalese.
  • “Even though the contract is all T’s crossed and I’s dotted, we would go through and say, here’s what we’re going to end up with…are we all good?” (Jim, [23:54])
• Core value alignment with customers and vendors is critical for lasting partnership.

EOS Implementation and Client Selection

[26:36] – [28:25]

• Early on, it’s tempting to take every client; as a seasoned implementer, Jim is more selective and intentional.
  • “Now I'm much more focused on very intentional types of discussions...if this isn't you, let's don't start.” (Jim, [26:53])

Graduation Rate and the Need for Outside Perspective

[27:42] – [31:15]

• About 40% of Jim’s clients “graduate” from EOS, but many remain for the accountability and candor an implementer provides.
• Issue: Some teams (esp. “Midwest Nice”) avoid direct feedback, which slows decision-making and blinds progress.
  • “If you truly care about somebody, you have to challenge them, expose that blind spot...” (Jim, [29:37])

Fostering Healthy Team Debate

[31:15] – [35:01]

• Healthy conflict is about passion for ideas and the organization, not personal attacks.
• Danger sign: discourse shifts from the issue to someone’s “behaviors, attitudes, work ethic.”
• Teaching curiosity:
  • Exercise: Frame your response with a question starting with the last letter of the prior speaker’s last word.
    • “It makes you think a little bit...you have to take a pause to formulate that question.” (Jim, [33:15])
  • Use talking sticks/bats to enforce attentive listening.
  • Stay rooted in the “why” by repeatedly asking "why" to get to the root cause.

Discovering EOS and the Power of Structure

[36:09] – [39:03]

• Jim’s first exposure to EOS was to unite two teams with different backgrounds—saw success in months.
• “Holy crap, I've been doing this my whole career!” (paraphrased reaction after reading EOS books)
• Finds that problems in any industry invariably come down to “numbers, people, process.”

Geographic Focus and Referrals

[39:03] – [39:35]

• Most clients are in central Oklahoma and Missouri; open to traveling for compelling cases.
• “If it's a business that fascinates me and I want to see about it. Okay, I'll hop on a plane.” (Jim, [39:18])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On team trust:
  “If the integrator surprises the visionary too many times, it's not a good fit.”
  Jim, [08:30]

• On accountability:
  “To me, it's always just rock completion and numbers...are they delivering?”
  Jim, [22:34]

• On healthy debate:
  “If you truly care about somebody, you have to challenge them, expose that blind spot so they can see their shortcoming.”
  Jim, [29:37]

• On project management:
  “We would get dropped off on the company airplane...and by the end of the four and a half days, whatever it took, they were now running on our software.”
  Jim, [01:50]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Military Precision in Early Career: [01:26]–[02:40]
• Integrator Challenge – ‘Title Power’ Story: [05:00]–[06:43]
• Visionary-Integrator Dynamics: [06:43]–[10:41]
• Recruiting and Relationship Building: [10:41]–[14:06]
• Prioritization and Core Values: [14:06]–[16:54]
• Advice for Spotting Performance Signals: [22:12]–[24:33]
• Healthy/Unhealthy Debate: [31:15]–[35:01]
• Listening and Curiosity Exercises: [33:05]–[34:28]
• EOS Discovery and Implementation: [36:09]–[39:03]

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Resources & Recommendations

• Books Mentioned:
  • “BE 2.0” by Jim Collins
  • Patrick Lencioni’s works
  • “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink
• Tools for Team-Fit Assessment:
  • Kolbe, DiSC, Predictive Index

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Final Notes & Contact

• Contact Jim Bygland:

  • EOS Implementer profile or jimbiglandosworldwide.com
  • Answers to both “Jim” and “James” (in EOS system)

• Dream Coffee Guest:

  • Mark O’Donnell (EOS) for his deep experience and unique insights ([40:19])

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This episode provides actionable truths for both visionaries and integrators, blending theory, tactics, and lived wisdom—essential listening for any leader serious about executing vision, building trust, and growing healthy teams.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Confessions of an Implementer, a podcast by Talent Harbor. We share unique stories of 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.

[B]

Hey.

[A]

Joining me on the show today, we've got Jim Beigeland, EOS implementer and an amazing career full of integrator. Jim is an integrator through and through and some of the concepts and the principles and the things that he has done throughout his career, helping visionaries, helping a team, becoming that glue, things like prioritization. How do you prioritize the tens, if not hundreds of great ideas that are coming from organizations that may be great, but it may not be the time to actually implement? So how do you think through, how do you prioritize? How do you push back? Jim also shares some of his trials and tribulations and so areas where he may not have gone in the right direction and in retrospect, what he would have done differently in those situations. But what an incredible recording episode. A lot of great advice and hope you enjoy the show. Speaking of long careers, one of the things that you had talked about when we were on the discovery call was you were in a tech startup that was led by military entrepreneurs. What was that?

[B]

Well, it was a fintech before it's such a thing as fintech. And it was a company that was the actual CEO of the company. This is back when we used titles before EOs and being a military company, it was really about vision. I mean, we had a vision and every time we went out to implement our software into an organization, and this was banking software, financial software. We would go basically on a mission. We would get dropped off on the company airplane, we'd have four and a half days to get that bank converted from their old software to the new software. And it truly was the clarity of a good vision and mission came together. We didn't want to let our teammates down. I mean, we were all 22 to 25 year old, probably didn't have any business taking over a bank for four and a half days and converting software on them. But we did it. We came in our suits and had our briefcases, we looked official. And by the end of the four and a half days, whatever it took, they were now running on our software. And typically those were 75 to 90 hour weeks that we would run getting them cut across. So it was a fun experience, but it truly was the value of a good mission. Nobody wanted to Let anybody down.

[A]

Have you noticed? Because I'm sure you've worked for other organizations that didn't necessarily have a leadership team that had military backgrounds. Was there something different? And obviously this is a little bit near and dear to my heart being in the Navy. But what are some of the differences that you had between organizations where it was not kind of that military experience, military background, different times?

[B]

I'll be honest, I've been very fortunate through my career, most of my experiences, I've had fantastic mentors. We've been able to put together great teams to be able to achieve what we wanted to. Sometimes though, I've been in organizations where the leadership, for lack of a better term, is a little bit self centered. It's about them. And so those organizations are a little bit tougher because you're always kind of second guessing what truly is our mission here. Because we might have a plan when we walk out of the meeting, but four hours, six hours, 12 hours later, the plan changes. There's a meeting after the meeting, or there's a thought process that happens somewhere along the lines like, whoa, we just took a 90 degree turn here from what happened. It's just a lot of wasted effort.

[A]

A lot of the things that you're already talking about remind me very much of the integrator role. Like, has that historically kind of been where you find your sweet spot in organizations?

[B]

Yeah, that was me. I was the guy who liked to make the trains run on time. I was the guy who put together kind of the back end. My back end or my background is technology and operations. And so that's typically the seat that I would fill, sometimes at the integrator level in EOS language, but always on the executive team, making sure that we were rowing in the right direction. And some groups were definitely more successful than other groups, but it was always about figuring out what that mission was, what the vision was and where we wanted to go.

[A]

Got it. Helping to keep those trains running on time. Like, what has been some of the challenges throughout your career of being able to effectively integrate? Because I'm sure some of that has to do with the team that you're working with, the vision that you're following. And some of these, you were talking about back channeling, this notion of after the meeting's complete, whether we call them quarterly pulses or the level 10 meeting, but all the back channeling and side conversations that are happening, where decisions are kind of being unraveled. What are some of the challenges that you've dealt with in that role?

[B]

Probably the Biggest one that I can recall is we took over a data center. It was in a need of management turnaround and so we came in and we brought in a team of consultants. I was with a consulting company at the time and everybody was experts, everybody had decades of experience, they were good at their jobs. But we had been working in this particular data center from about 7 in the morning to 11 at night for months on end. And we were in a passionate version of a level 10 meeting, trying to decide. And we weren't getting consensus, we weren't moving it forward. And this is one of those cringe worthy moments that you kind of look back on and it kind of shapes you. Because I tried to use title power to push it over the finish line. That does not work. It was one of those things that still sticks with me to the day because it was like basically cuss word, we're moving this direction and everybody just kind of, you saw the whole room shut down at that instant. And it took actually months to pull that team back together after one just kind of heated moment of frustration.

[A]

What were some of the tactics or strategies that you used to help kind of rebuild cohesiveness again?

[B]

I'm going to sound like a broken record, but it really was just getting back on the mission. What were we trying to do here? We were trying to build a great data center. We had a bunch of unhappy customers, we had regulators who were knocking on our door. And that's why we had come in to take this thing over. And so we had to put the pieces back together to achieve happy customers again. And so we just had to kind of go back through. I had to kind of come back with my hand and eat some crow because it was on me. Totally. It was my bad. And you learn from that. It still sticks with me to this day.

[A]

And so it's interesting because one of the philosophies behind EOS and this whole visionary and integrator role is that the integrator is the tiebreaker. And as a visionary, sometimes that's been hard for me to swallow because I'm like, well, wait a minute, like I feel like that should eventually come to me. And how it's been explained is that the idea of same page meetings, the idea of like perfect alignment between the visionary and the integrator, the integrator kind of naturally, instinctively knows the right path or like as a team, as a duo team, the direction we should be going. And so one of the things you just said there was this notion of title power. And to me that Sounds like you were trying to be that tiebreaker. You weren't getting to the consensus. So how should an integrator kind of deal with that?

[B]

Well, in that particular case, this was way before eos and we had not really given again that we were working a lot of hours and we were getting kind of a little bit frayed. We hadn't probably had our beginners mindset on quite as well as we should have and sought to understand. It was just frustration. Everybody was hot. We should have backed away in hindsight and kind of regrouped to rethink about it and just slow down. I was trying to force something through that shouldn't have been forced through and go back to that mindset of understanding. You know, you're talking on the topic of visionary and integrator and to me, you know, the integrator is a person who is there to execute on the visionary's desires. And you guys have a lot of phenomenal ideas. You have some that are probably aren't quite as good, but a lot of them are good. And so we have to discern which ones we can prioritize in on which quarter, what we're working on and kind of go from there. But what I tell my teams is if the integrator surprises the visionary too many times, it's not a good fit. They're saying page meeting, they should be kind of seeing around those corners, figuring out what's coming at them, figuring out what the things are of how they're going to put the dominoes in place for how they're going to fall. And we've all read the books, we know there are teams that have had two and three and four integrators before you finally get rocket fuel. And so yes, I totally agree that the integrator makes a call, but it's in very tight conjunction with the visionary and executing what that visionary is seeing. You know, I think a lot of the first that comes into place is bad same page meetings. They're just not having the discussions that they need to to figure out what has to happen.

[A]

And admittedly I don't think I've ever had a great same page meeting. I think the integrators that I've worked with in the past, I guess what I mean by that is more of like a structured same page meeting. Like I feel like we've always been on the same page, but it's because we talk so much about what's happening, the direction, what goes into a great same page meeting.

[B]

From my vantage point, it's relationship. It's going back to Lencioni's vulnerability based trust. You're kind of two halves of the same coin. And so starting at the relationship level, if you've got something going on in your personal life or health wise or whatever, either direction that starts it. So everybody kind of understands where they're making the decisions from. The other thing is there can't be any of that threat of entitlement or titles. If I don't like you, I'm going to get rid of you type of approach. That whole feeling has to go away and it has to be a hundred percent trust that we're in this to win this. We're in it to build a great company. We're in it to figure out what is the next step. And sometimes the integrator does have to come back and say okay, I love the idea. However, we got these seven rocks that we're working on right now, great idea, can that hold until next quarter? Now if it's and I'm sure as a visionary you've had some ideas that you've had to move on. They were timely. And so sometimes you do have to say, you know what, we're going to shift gears and we're going to execute and take advantage of this. But that's the exception, not the rule.

[A]

Yeah. You mentioned earlier that sometimes it takes four integrators to find the right one. Do you think that's more of a product of just crazy visionaries and not a good relationship or do you think there's like a fundamental trust issue that hasn't been able to been overcome yet?

[B]

I would say it's a fundamental trust issue. I see that pretty much with all my teams. I want to make sure that they re rocket fuel and they take the assessment. Some visionaries, I mean they built these companies from the ground up. It was their baby, they know all the moving parts and now they're bringing in this person who's going to take over the day to day and start to move it forward. That's uncomfortable. I had one visionary. It took him about a year and a half to kind of get his head back on straight to figure out where he was adding value to the company. Because before it was turning the dials, it was doing those things and it was a case of he had to figure out that no, my new role is really strategic development. I'm going to find the new street corner or the next business we're going to acquire. And that's where my value is. It was truly on the Big relationships on the culture, but it took him a year and a half. Luckily in his case, his integrator was a son, so there wasn't a firing there. But they had some good heart to hearts and there was a lot of discussion figuring out what the true superpower of that visionary was. And once they figured that out, they've grown about 4x now in the last year and a half, they've just exploded. And it's fun to watch, but a lot of I do think is are you ready for it? And sometimes you're not.

[A]

Sometimes you're not ready to be told no, or you've got bigger things or more pressing things to worry about, or your idea sucks. When I think back to a lot of my successful integrator visionary relationships, there was a pre existing relationship there. There was already some sort of commonality. And it's interesting because like when you just talked about even though there was tough conversations between the father and the son, there's ultimately a relationship and inescapable relationship that is there. And so for the most part, they're always going to find a path, hopefully, if nothing more than to save the relationship. Where have you seen like successful visionary integrators where they're just running a normal recruiting process and how does that relationship get built? Kind of the right way out of the gates outside of preexisting relationships.

[B]

And that one's tougher there, I'd have to say. You better start looking at some of the profiling tools, whether it's Colby or disc or predictive index, to figure out what is the match. And like with anything within the accountability chart, figure out truly what you're looking for. What are those five roles that you truly want that integrator to do? Yes, we have some pre figured out ones, but what do you want that person to really do for you? And a lot of folks, they kind of skip that step. Visionary is like, oh, I'm going to hire an integrator, let's go do it. And if they don't spend the time figuring out exactly what they're looking for and figuring out if they're ready for it, I see that as the most conflict. Again, the relationship ones that have lived and have grown and nurtured together pre eos, probably the ones that are the strongest out of the gate. Not saying that they can't be developed, but it takes time. I would say most of the time it's probably a year and a half, two years of figuring out what everybody's going to do.

[A]

And one of the things that you mentioned earlier, which is spot on, is this notion of prioritization. And that could be seen as like saying, no, like we're not going to do that right now. Great idea or just terrible idea, we're never going to do that. But you, as someone that has been in this integrator role, which I'm sure many of times not only has had to prioritize, but also say, like, that's great, but we can't do that right now. How do you think through the prioritization of like what the organization should be doing right now and then what should go on the. We used to call it the parking lot. And so like there's a whole bunch of great ideas and the great ideas we would throw in the parking lot, that was mostly for the creative team. The parking lot in a true kind of EOS structure is you just put it on the long term issues. You look at it each quarter and you say, is now the right quarter to do that? But how would you think through the prioritization of everything that the organization had to accomplish?

[B]

Well, I'll go back. In my companies, I had three core values and I've used them over and over. One of the core values is the answer is never no. And what that comes in handy is, yeah, that's a great idea, I love it. But what are you truly trying to accomplish? Help me understand what you're trying to develop. Because so often an idea comes out and it's not clearly articulated or something comes in from a client and they're asking for something and the sales rep says, no, we don't do that. It's like, no, the answer is never no. Let's get that beginner's mindset. Let's start asking the questions, truly, what are they looking for? And so that's one of the techniques I've always used, is to fall back on that core value to figure out what they're truly trying to accomplish. Because, you know, sometimes there is a root cause issue that we're trying to figure out. My second core value was no customer impact. So whatever we did in the companies, and coming from a tech standpoint, we never wanted to impact. And so we were always very well executed. And so if something was going to interrupt that execution and not allow me to succeed or potentially cause customer impact, we came to a hard stop because we don't do that. If you put your customer at risk, they're going to leave you. And so we made sure we never had customer impact. And the last one was communicate Communicate. Communicate. Because again, what went along with that is we are better as a team over. Communicate, talk amongst your people, figure out how we're going to get this out to achieve the other two core values, and those are the three that I always kind of came back to in my organizations is to figure out how we did that and then at times work with the visionary to figure out how we're going to balance all of those out. And typically when you have those discussions, you typically can build a better product or better outcome because we now then have our clear vision, we know when we're going to execute on that vision and now we move forward to achieve it.

[A]

And how did you start? Because you were an integrator before, I'm sure you read Rocket Fuel and you were already doing many of these things. Like how did you get into being an integrator? Whether it was a CEO role or president role or whatever your seat was on the executive team.

[B]

I don't really know, to be honest with you. I just kind of fell into organizations that project management and timing and execution was just paramount. And I loved it. And that was where I, when I got into those moving components, that's what I really loved. Now, did I have visionary traits? Yeah, but it was typically it's going to be within my vertical of technology. How do we do things better, smarter, faster, how do we put these pieces together? And that's where we played quite a bit in that space. But again, it was always objectives that match the outcome of what the corporation is trying to do. Why were we putting into this technology? Well, we're trying to grow and we're not trying to do customer impact and all those types of things. And it's just how I was wired. When I take the personality test, my personality test is either right at the line or right at the center of the quadrant, whatever you want to say. Because depending on what role I was in, I would drift into analytics or I'd drift into visionary. I'd drift into whether it was social needs or whatever it was, I would kind of move around on that. And so I was always very close to the centers of any of those personality tests. And I think it probably bode me well through the different companies I have been with.

[A]

And when you think back like pre Rocket Fuel and you doing a lot of these glue type roles where you're bringing the organization, making sure the organization is staying focused, what type of media or content or books, what were you consuming at that point to be able to help you think through these types.

[B]

Of Things I always loved Lencioni and I always loved Collins Collins. Well, his latest redone book, BE 2.0, is a great visionary handbook. That was, I think, his first book that he had ever done and it was all done based on theory when he was out at Stanford. And then he went back through during COVID and he put in new chapters or additions based upon everything that he did. Good to great, the mighty fall, et cetera, and he wove all those back in. And it's just a very powerful book. But I had been a Collins fan for a long, long time just because it was so clear. And again, though, I had really good mentors and it goes back to my earliest. Fintech is that particular company. They felt they hired smart people. We didn't invest in a lot of outside education. It was like, you're smart, figure it out. So we ended up writing software from scratch, figuring out what, working with the client to see what they needed. But we didn't do a lot of studying. And so that mindset of just figure it out stuck with me. Whether it was in technology or operations, it's like, okay, let's put our hands together and move forward. Just like what we talk about in the OS journey is, 95% of the answers, 98% of the answers are in the room. It's the client's business, they know it. It's just you got to figure out what thread you want to pull to get them all going the same direction. And so it probably was a form of facilitation a long time ago of trying to build these teams. And that was probably one of the things that I grew a strength to and that was building teams, putting people together, getting them in the right seat. Now, I made lots of mistakes. My biggest mistake was always keeping people around too long. They were really great people, they had great core values. I loved them, but they just weren't good at their seat. And I was always trying to fix them and I kept them around too long. I can probably have half dozen examples of that. But I finally got a mentor and she helped me out quite a bit. She was head of our HR group and she and I became good friends. And she basically said, you know, Jim, if you give them your time, tools and training, you can look yourself and look yourself in the mirror the day you're going to fire them. You've done everything you needed to do. And so that was kind of the thing I always did is when I had to move somebody out, did I give them my time? Did they have the Right tools? Did I train them to do the job, how it needed to be done? If I can answer yes to all three of those, then it became a much easier discussion. Now, did I keep people around too long after that? Yeah, I still did, but that's just part of being human.

[A]

I was going to say the same thing. Like, it's just as humans, it's very hard and also outside perspective. Like, the other thing that I've noticed, especially with some of the things I'm working on today, is like being able to go into organizations and look what's going on. It's so easy for me to see where they're going wrong and what they should be doing. But it's so hard for us, like being in the day to day, to say, like, these are the decisions I need to make. I'm assuming that's the human nature behind this.

[B]

It is. And that's just it. You know, we walk in a lot of my clients, I mean, you've heard lots of different people talk about this, but you can walk in and you can see, okay, I got a six member leadership team. That person over there, they will make it. But there's nothing we really can say other than set the right rocks, help them get to where they need to go and they'll figure it out and at some point in time the light bulb will come on and maybe there's a better seat for them or sometimes you got to move them out.

[A]

If for someone that's a visionary or someone that's sitting in the integrator role at this point, what signs should they be looking for? Like, what affirmations? Like, what are the different signals that they're receiving? Where they're like, I need to make a change here. Like, are there things that they can look for early on to help with the affirmation of like, a decision is needed at this point?

[B]

To me, it's always just rock completion and numbers. If your data component strong, if you're seeing the scorecard, if their names are tied to it, that's a piece. Or if the rocks aren't getting done in the quarterly debriefs, when you start listening to these folks and they start talking about all the reasons this didn't get done or that didn't get done, that's when you have to start pulling the thread back to see, okay, was it a good rock? Was it the right rock? Was it truly smart? And if it wasn't, then you kind of have to say, okay, well, that one may. Does that need to go on the issues list. Let's talk about that a little bit more. But to me, it's just taking the blinders off and really seeing are they executing, are they delivering, are they accountable for what they said they'd be accountable for? To me, that's probably the first sign I see is just an accountability problem. There's somebody else's issue again, coming up from a tech side. And I realize this probably sounds pretty hard, but we took control. One of my favorite books, by the way, is Extreme Ownership. But we would take control of the vendors. I was like, okay. One of the last things I would always do before we signed a big contract was we would have a no surprises meeting. And so we would sit down with our team, we'd sit down with their team, and even though the contract is all T's crossed and I's dotted, we would go through and say, okay, here's what we're going to end up with. Correct layman's language, you're going to do this, we're going to do this, and we're going to have it by this date. Right? We're all good. And so that could be an hour meeting or it could be an all day meeting. But we called it no surprises. And there was enough people on that room that everybody knew that if we had a problem somewhere down the road, we were going to go back and say, no. We had this discussion. This is what you guys said you were going to do. This is what we said we're going to do. Let's figure it out, let's handle it. And so we would always take over and drive accountability. To me, it's not, well, I can't do anything about the vendor. Well, yeah, you can better still work, figure out how you handle that vendor to get what you desire.

[A]

And was this no surprise meeting, Was this before or after you had discovered eos?

[B]

Long before. And the reason was I had too many surprises, that that's not what the contract said. Okay. And so we just got to the point where I'd have five or six of my key team members and they'd have their key key team members, including the salesperson, and we would just go through and figure it out. And the other thing is the types of vendors that we dealt with, typically in my companies, they had to kind of match up to our core values. Even though this was pre EOS and there wasn't four or five core values. They heard about my three core values. Hey, guys, here's what's going to happen. And they had to kind of Embody that a little bit, because if they weren't going to do that, we knew it wasn't going to be a great relationship. And so we kind of shied away from those guys.

[A]

So what you just said, I am learning the hard way right now. Bill Huber had said something a little similar to this as well. And it took, like, actually doing it to understand what that meant. But the alignment of core values is incredibly important. And I think for companies that are in the early days, like, you're just, yes, yes, yes to everything. And then you very quickly realize that it was never going to be a fit. You knew it wasn't going to be a fit. And now everybody's lives are miserable, like, not just yours, but the clients as well, because nobody's meeting each other's expectations. Everybody's on different pages. I 100% agree. And now getting into B2B, like, living through a lot of those experiences, well.

[B]

Anything a person's ever done, you've always taken on clients or employees or fill in the blank that you had kind of a gut feel it wasn't right. But you either fell into what we call wbs, the warm body syndrome. I need somebody in that seat, or I need that client. They got a big paycheck, and so we will take them on, even though there's some pretty big gaps of our offering. And it's just not fun doing that. And when you can get to the point where you don't have to do that and you can go slow and say, no, here's what we do, it's so much better.

[A]

Do you use that today as you're doing EOS implementation and getting clients and things like that? Like, are you still using some of these principles today of alignment and how you see life?

[B]

Oh, yeah. And, you know, I broke the rules, too. When you first start your practice, you're trying to get clients because you get so much better as you are exposed to situations and working with various types of clients. I'm a strong believer that you learn in every situation, good and bad, but you want the right type of client. And so now I'm much more focused on very intentional types of discussions, like, hey, guys, this is a hard journey that we're going to go on together. It's going to take two years, most likely. This is what's going to happen through this process, and this isn't you. Let's don't start. It's not where we want to be. And when I've been able to do that, which has been pretty consistent the outcomes are so much better. I mean they're mentally ready to go, they're bought in, they know what they're up against and the obstacles disappear much quicker. So you get down the wind factor a lot quicker because is like, okay, yep, it's just an issue, let's solve it.

[A]

I've always heard this notion of the graduation, the two years in the graduation, we could never bring ourselves to do that. The outside perspective, like even though we had graduated and we feel like we had learned a lot, the outside perspective that implementers bring to the game and the level of accountability, it's just different. It's different than what the visionary or the integrator can do. Like we can hold people accountable, we can do a lot of different things, but we all have blind spots. And to the point earlier of now being able to go into organizations and like see kind of the mechanics and how things are working, it's like all of these things need to change. It's so incredibly powerful to have somebody even after graduation that can come in and just help put on quarterly pulses and the annual planning.

[B]

My ratio is probably about 40% graduate. I truly want them to graduate. 60% don't. And it really depends upon the composition of the team. If you have teams that have those passionate L10s and they're willing to have almost knock down, drag out type discussions within those four walls but walk out as friends, those companies seem to do fine. The companies that tend to posture or wrap a little bit again, one of the terms, and I probably shouldn't use this term, but I call it Midwest. Nice. Everybody here in the Midwest, we're nice folks, we love each other. I mean we'll do anything for anyone, but we really won't do that hard conversation. And so that's the part. And I think a lot of implementers now are spending time on radical candor. If you truly care about somebody, you have to challenge them, expose that blind spot so they can see their shortcoming. That's the thing I loved about eos when I discovered it was the intentionality. I mean we're telling you what you have to do to be good in your seat. We're telling you how you fit in the organization with the core values. We're giving you processes to follow, we're giving feedback loops in there with the quarterly conversations. Everything's very intentional. And so you're taking away all the bs. It's like in part of this, where this comes back to is one of the companies is I did have the CEO and that this is pre eos. If I ever started to whine, he said, I don't think I held you down to take this job. It is called work for a reason. And so he just had a good way of putting you back to getting your headspace back on square. And so that's kind of what I fall back on is to asking those questions of how do we get their head screwed back on straight? How do we get them to have those tough conversations? Because this one client, I'm just thinking about them, just with them a couple weeks ago, again, they wrap everything. They're just such a nice team and they're so nice, they solve issues, but it takes too long. And one of them at the end, he said, why do we get through so much more when you're with us than when you're not? And we dove into it. It's like you guys put a lot of wrappers on stuff. You put a lot of context to stuff. That particular session we actually had to shut the visionary off because he loved providing context. And I said, okay, I'm going to stop you team. Do you need this context? Are you guys all up to speed on what the topic is? They all want thumbs up. Okay, we don't need to spend any time there. Let's move on to discussion. We just went around the table and we just tightened up what they were doing. They were in a habit of providing a lot of information. It could border on politicking, but I think really it was just more a high detail person who wanted to make sure everybody had every tidbit of information they needed and they didn't need that.

[A]

You talked a little bit earlier about this idea of knockdown, drag down fights. And like, everybody comes in, there's passion and everybody's fighting theoretically for the greater good of the organization and then they're able to walk away as friends. I'm sure you've seen a variety of these types of heavy debates during sessions and things like that. Like, what's the difference between healthy and unhealthy? Because I think a lot of teams, like, they want to engage and they want to have these knockdown, drag down fights. How can you tell, like, when it's starting to cross the line of like, all right, well, now we're in an unhealthy level of engagement typically there.

[B]

It's just when you start seeing the little openings of personal attacks, that's typically my warning sign that I'll kind of say, okay, timeout. Most teams are pretty respectful though. But I do think that level of discussion because we're not wired that way. We're not wired to have those types of debates in most meetings when we walk into them. And I truly think that takes really about a year, year and a half to really start to develop that trust level with each other. So they know that, hey, they're not out for my job. They're not here to undermine me. We're all going for this one thing. And so go from there. A lot of my clients, I do have to work with them on seeking to understand because too many folks, they're thinking about the rebuttal versus actually listening. And so there's some tips I've been focusing on lately to really try to help my teams to get that curiosity to get to understand where that person is coming from. And sometimes it may be a legitimate place, sometimes it may not be, but at least we're exposing it to help clarify, to move this thing on.

[A]

Well, you brought it up. So I have to ask, what are those tips? Like, how do you help people become curious? How do you help people engage?

[B]

Well, one I just learned about a month ago, I was at a. At a seminar and a guy was doing a breakout session, and what he did is he said, okay. When you respond to your person that you're working with, your question has to start with the last letter of the last word that they said. So that way you knew, you listened to every word right down to the last letter. And so your question of how you asked your clarifying question or come back was from the last letter of that. And I thought that was a really cool idea. When you're put on the spot like that, you have to think about what was the last letter. And hell, do I form a question out of that. It makes you think a little bit. It makes you take a pause to formulate that question. And that was one. I just thought it was cool. It worked well, but it really made you think a little bit. We've used talking sticks or talking bats, depending on the team, just to make sure folks are listening and they're listening.

[A]

To understand when you put in the talking sticks or the talking bats will at times, will you hand those to people that are not talking to help them engage? Or is it just this person that's talking and now everybody listen who's ever got it?

[B]

The theory is, whoever has it, they have the floor. But if they're pontificating, if they're politicking, then yes, we'll help them move the stick on. But typically that slows everybody down to think about it that I love the.

[A]

Last letter, by the way, and I wrote it down in all caps because I want to bring that into the show and try and develop questions from the last letter statement. So I'm going to try that. One of the things that you talked about a little bit was this idea of like the personal attacks. And so when you see it getting personal is this like when someone's using the language of you instead of something that has to do with the company, like, are there things that are happening in that moment where it's not about the KPI or for the betterment of the company, it's more about that person as an individual or their capacity within the role that they fill?

[B]

Yeah. It goes personal from a standpoint of their behaviors, their attitudes, their work ethic, whatever it is it is now has transcended from the problem to them. And that's where you just got to pull it back up and say, okay. And sometimes the person may be the problem, but there's different ways to say that and say okay. Did we do a good job of idsing? Are we truly up the root cause here? Why did that occur? Why did that occur? Why did that occur, et cetera. To get down to the root to see what it is. And I would say that probably is when you see it go personal because somebody in the room wasn't open and honest. They didn't state the true root cause. But during the discussion, that root cause starts to come out in some way, shape or form. And if it's a person problem, you'll see it Now. I had a team down in Alabama, they just had one guy who was a jerk. He always went personal. That was his makeup. He had gotten away with it for years. And it was a case of timeout. That's not acceptable for what we're doing here because it was a good team. It's just he was a bully and he was getting away with it.

[A]

And when did you discover eos? So you had a long, amazing career where you were already sitting in the integrator role. And then how did you discover it? And then I'm sure you had this moment of like, holy crap, I've been doing this my whole career and came.

[B]

Across it with a oil and gas company, the industry related oil and gas. And we were putting analytics in and we were kind of had an early mover advantage. But we had a group of data scientists, we had a group of just the rank and file from 20 years and they weren't talking. I mean, we were losing our First Mover Advantage, because we had two companies and we were trying to make them one company. So we found eos. We implemented eos, and in that particular case, when we implemented it, within about 60 days, we had the leadership team as one. But another six months we had it pushed out into the organization. Now it worked wonderful. It was fun to watch. It was fun to be a part of. We learned some great lessons. We also learned that folks don't want to pay for analytics in this particular field. But the other thing is that it really taught me the psychographic component of the leadership team. This particular case, we had a majority owner. He was still owner. He wasn't really an employee. And he had all the answers and those just, it's not a good fit. But I saw the power of eos, and you're right. I had that holy crap moment that, you know, I read the book on a vacation and it was like, man, this is great. Went through it like, okay, this will help us. And it started out great, but then again, both tendencies came back. It wasn't the journey that we all wanted to go on together. And so we went different directions and I went off and became an EOS implementer. Had a look back.

[A]

Yeah. And do you have a, like, niche focus? Like, I know some implementers out there are like, law offices or family businesses, because your background is a lot of banking and technology and all these other things. Like, have you found a niche or are you like, any client that fits with my core values. Let's roll.

[B]

I'm the latter. I love learning. And again, when you boil it down, it's the same problems. It's numbers, it's people, it's process. When you start ripping the layers back, the companies aren't that different. Yeah, the nomenclature might be a little bit different. The structure of how they put together their accountability chart might be a little bit different. But I was fortunate, I think.

[A]

Sherry Kuhn and I were talking yesterday and we were talking about the companies that don't want it. And it's almost like a cult. Once you retraction and implement, you're like, God. Life just became so much easier. And all you want is everybody else to understand how easy their lives can then be, but they got to want it. It's an easy process to put into place. It's a very hard process to get the consistency and do the work. But it always boggles my mind of, like, if you implement and do the work, like, the machine just turns. Do you take clients from all over the United States or do you focus regionally. How do you have that structure at.

[B]

This point, most of my clients are from central Oklahoma to central Missouri. I do have a few outside of that, but I'm at a stage where I don't mind picking all over the country. If it's a business that fascinates me and I want to see about it. Okay, I'll hop on a plane. Not a problem. Because I am getting referrals now and it just depends where those referrals come from. And that's really where most of my business comes from. I don't want to let them down. So I'll jump on planes or drive. I'll drive up to typically four hours. Otherwise it's a plane trip.

[A]

Second to last question. If someone wants to get ahold of you, they've listened to this podcast and they're like, what an amazing integrator. A career full of integration and like, he would be amazing as an implementer for our company. How would they find you?

[B]

Just go to the EOS website, go to my microsite, or they can catch me@jim biglandosworldwide.com.

[A]

Awesome. And then are you in the system also as Jim in the eos? Because I know there was a James in there too, and I think I might have been sending wrong emails. So it's Jim.

[B]

It goes either way. They can go James or Jim. The God given name was James, but been Jim my whole life.

[A]

There you go. Last question. For real this time. If you could have coffee, tea, wine, beer, your drink of choice with any EOS implementer, who would it be?

[B]

Probably Mark o' Donnell mod. I've been on calls with him and I mean, he is just a cool guy. His wealth of experience and the way he looks at things is just pretty phenomenal.

[A]

That's awesome. I'm actually interviewing Mark in two weeks, so it should make for an incredible conversation. We'll see. We'll see how it goes.

[B]

You've had some good ones. You know Sherry, she is a sweetheart. She is a superstar. And I mean, what she does is phenomenal.

[A]

That's why I'm happy to be back in Seattle at this point because she's like 20 minutes up the road from me. So she's on vacation right now, but we're going to get together later this month. So very excited about that. Jim, thank you so much for coming on. I've got a whole page of notes now and I don't know how I'm going to consolidate this for an intro, but I know I got a lot of value. I know the audience will get a lot of value. And just the work that you've done, both as an integrator and an implementer. Huge. So thank you so much for coming on.

[B]

Thank you Ryan. Have a great fourth of July.

[A]

Thanks. You too.

[B]

Yeah, bye.

[A]

Confessions of an 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, visit talent harbor.com and then make sure to search for Confessions of an 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.