Live Q&A on Your Biggest Challenges: 30 minutes you can’t miss

Summary

No Bullsh!t Leadership Podcast – Episode 324
Live Q&A on Your Biggest Challenges: 30 minutes you can’t miss
Host: Martin G Moore (Marty)
Date: November 12, 2024

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Episode Overview

This special episode features a live Q&A from the No Bullsh!t Leadership event in Sydney, hosted by Martin G Moore. Drawing on his extensive CEO experience, Marty answers a range of audience questions—from handling resource-constrained “Nike bosses” to communicating difficult decisions down the organizational chain, energizing leaders, combating perfectionism, and aligning executives and boards on risk. The advice is candid, practical, and delivered with Marty’s trademark humor and no-nonsense style, offering valuable insights for leaders at every level.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dealing with the “Nike Boss” ("Just Do It" Mentality)

[05:02-09:48]

• Challenge: Prioritizing when your boss says everything is important, refuses to say no, and avoids tough conversations about resourcing.
• Insight:
  • Bosses like this want to be “yes people.” They avoid owning hard trade-offs and may be insecure.
  • Marty’s recommended process:
    • Start with data: Objectively rank tasks/projects by value; present what’s realistically achievable with current resources.
    • Communicate boundaries: “Here’s what we can deliver unless you tell me to drop other things.”
    • Documentation: Follow up with evidence (“keep the receipts”)—send an email outlining what’s agreed and what won’t get done.
  • Quote:

    “Without data, you're just another person with an opinion.” — Marty [07:12]

2. Sustaining Energy & Avoiding Burnout in Relentless Leadership Roles

[09:48-12:55]

• Challenge: Leadership is relentless and requires high sustained energy.
• Marty’s Reflection:
  • Initially turned to unhealthy coping mechanisms but realized their counterproductive impact.
  • Now recommends:
    • Building good habits—meditation, grounding, exercise, time for yourself.
    • Focus on what matters: Don’t do the unnecessary; eliminate others’ work from your plate.
    • Accountability: Let your team own their work.
• Quote:

  “The things we think are doing us good aren’t necessarily.” — Marty [10:45]

3. Setting and Applying Minimum Acceptable Standards

[12:43-15:46]

• Challenge: How do you set and calibrate minimum standards fairly across teams?
• Advice:
  • Know your people and context—be realistic.
  • Minimum standards shouldn’t be set too high in weak accountability cultures.
  • Use clear, detailed templates outlining:
    • Behavioral expectations
    • Performance across key categories
    • KPIs
    • Development plans
  • “Horses for courses”—adapt the structure to organization size.
• Quote:

  “What is it reasonable of me to expect from them? And where I set that minimum standard is going to be higher than other people. I know that, but people always have the choice.” — Marty [13:13]

4. Communication Down the Organization

[15:47-20:00]

• Challenge: Ensuring clarity and consistency of messages through organizational layers, especially about difficult decisions (e.g., shutting down projects).
• Marty’s Framework:
  • Use storytelling—explain decisions’ “why” and the journey.
  • Roleplay explanations at each level to ensure clarity in “their language.”
  • Recognize distortion and dilution at each layer; anticipate and attend to “spot fires.”
• Quote:

  “The most important thing is, what does this project manager tell the on-site project team? What does this executive tell the operational people?” — Marty [17:51]

5. Motivating and Managing High Performers/Perfectionists

[20:00-22:56]

• Challenge: High performers often lean towards perfectionism, which can stall progress.
• Marty’s Tactics:
  • Instill urgency: “That’s good enough; keep going.”
  • Encourage sharing drafts and incomplete work early—build comfort with imperfection.
  • Regular “show me what you have so far” meetings to ease mental blocks.
• Quote:

  “That’s good enough. Keep going.” — Marty [20:38] “He got more relaxed about showing me stuff that wasn’t fully formed.” — Marty [21:29]

6. Avoiding Complacency When Raising Standards

[25:16-25:45]

• Challenge: How to prevent high performers from becoming complacent when the minimum standard is recalibrated.
• Advice:
  • Use minimum standard as a floor, not the ceiling.
  • Stretch individuals one-on-one based on their capacity.
  • Regularly monitor and recalibrate pressure to avoid burning out or under-challenging team members.
• Quote:

  "If I know you can do better than that, I’m going to call you out for it." — Marty [25:57]

7. Aligning With Boards on Strategy and Risk Appetite

[25:45-30:47]

• Challenge: Boards are increasingly risk-averse; management wants to seize opportunities.
• Marty’s Approach:
  • Boards are often more attuned to governance than operational risk/strategy.
  • Build trust swiftly; find and ally with the most knowledgeable director relevant to your point.
  • Let that director carry the argument to the board, increasing likelihood of traction.
  • Accept the reality: Insight is limited for directors; honesty from management is crucial.
• Quote:

  "The only defense you have as a director is a CEO who tells the truth. That’s it, that’s all you got." — Marty [27:33]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On bosses avoiding tough resource decisions:

  “They don’t want to be bored with stuff like ‘it’s impossible.’” — Marty [06:00]
  “You end up with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6… Let’s say you’ve got eight things, right? And then you’re not resourced anymore. You rule a line under it and go to your boss and say, 'This is what we’re resourced for.'” — Marty [07:30]

• On energy management:

  “Stop doing other people’s stuff for them… you’re just doubling your workload.” — Marty [11:15]
  “Do the right things, don't do the shit that doesn't matter.” — Marty [11:47]

• On communication:

  “At every layer down, they’re just a little bit less understanding of the factors... a little less competence in how to communicate.” — Marty [17:20]

• On motivation:

  “We want to be the best team in this company. We want to be delivering faster, better, more value than anyone else can. Because it’s going to be great for your careers, it’s going to be great for the company.” — Marty [23:24]

• On dealing with the board:

  “Boards are hard because you get to see them so rarely. You walk in there, do your dog and pony show once a month, and you’ve got to build trust really fast.” — Marty [28:59]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Topic | |--------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 05:02-09:48 | Handling the "Nike Boss" and priority overload | | 09:48-12:55 | Sustaining energy and managing burnout | | 12:43-15:46 | Setting and calibrating minimum acceptable standards | | 15:47-20:00 | Communicating critical messages through the organization | | 20:00-22:56 | Coaching high performers and addressing perfectionism | | 23:00-25:16 | Motivating teams and the limits of competition-based leadership | | 25:16-25:45 | Avoiding complacency post-recalibration of standards | | 25:45-30:47 | Aligning management teams and boards on strategy and risk appetite |

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Tone & Language

Marty combines humor, candor, and practical advice, often with Aussie colloquialisms ("carrying on like pork chops," "dog and pony show"), making leadership lessons both accessible and memorable.

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Summary Takeaways:
This Q&A offers real-world, actionable advice on some of leadership’s most persistent challenges, reinforcing that clarity, transparency, contextual awareness, and genuine relationships matter as much as good process and data. Marty's no-BS approach strips leadership theory down to what's proven to work in the trenches.

Transcript

[Martin Moore]

Every time you step into a bigger role, or even when you've been in the seat for a while, the same traps show up. Slipping back into old habits, avoiding the hard conversations that actually lift performance, and overcompensating for poor performers instead of leading at level. Now, if any of that sounds familiar, our brand new live workshop is for you. It's called the first 90 days at any New how to Win Trust, Build Credibility and Deliver Results. Marty and I are running it on September 17th live on Zoom and if you show up live, you'll get the Blind Spot Identify Tool, a resource that exposes the hidden gaps holding leaders back. Save your free spot now at bit ly NBL90. That's bit ly NBL90. I can't wait to see you there.

[Em]

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[Martin Moore]

Welcome to the no Bullshit Leadership Podcast. In a world where knowledge has become a commodity, this podcast is designed to give you something more access to the experience of a successful CEO who has already walked the path. So join your host, Martin Moore, who will unlock and bring to life your own leadership experiences and accelerate your journey to leadership excellence.

[Em]

Hey there and welcome to episode 324 of the no Bullshit Leadership Podcast. This week's episode we're presenting a wide ranging Q and A from our recent live event in Sydney. When this episode drops, I'm going to be on a plane somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. On my way back home to Boston. I had a fantastic trip to the Southern Hemisphere, managing to catch up with no Bullshit Leaders in five cities. One of my favorite events was our no Bullshit Leadership Live event which we held a week or two ago in my old stamping ground at Coogee beach in Sydney, just a stone's throw from.

[Marty]

Where I was brought up as a boy.

[Em]

The event attracted a wide audience, some of the longest standing leaders in our community who I met face to face for the first time, but also many who have discovered us much more recently. In the Q and A session that followed my keynote, I fielded questions on a wide range of issues and I provided some practical guidance. So, for example, how do you handle a Nike boss who doesn't want to face the reality of your less than adequate resourcing and tells you to just do it? How do you know if the communication at the lower levels of your leadership team is actually hitting the mark? How do you help high performers to temper their enthusiasm and let go of their perfectionistic tendencies, teaching them instead to focus on consistent performance excellence? And how do you help a board to set and communicate its risk appetite? There is genuinely something in here for leaders at every single level, which is why we've included as many questions as we could into this slightly longer episode. So let's get into it.

[Azir]

Thanks Azir President. It was great. A question probably from both perspectives is an experience that I had few years ago with an exec of mine. So probably some guidance on what to do when you are on each side of that situation. So there's a certain project that was very important for the company that my exec was very focused on it and he was willing to take 80% of the resources of my team to do the project. And then I had a conversation with him and he said, yes, this is really important, it's got to be done. I said, okay, that's fine, we'll dedicate the resources. How about that thing? Oh, that's important too. How about the other thing? Oh yeah, that's important too. And that's where the conversation ended. So basically I left that without knowing what should I focus on because everything was important and he left probably without giving me a sense of priority. So from both perspectives, how can that get better? Because obviously I left.

[Marty]

Your boss is what we call a Nike boss, right? Just do it. So you've got the just do it bosses who just don't want to hear. They don't want to make things hard for themselves. They don't want to have to answer to people upstairs who they have to give bad news to. So spare a thought for the Nike boss, right? The Nike boss is petrified of saying no, has never learned how to do it, wants to be a yes person, wants to Be someone who can deliver, I'm the can do guy. That's what the Nike boss has got in their head. They don't want to be bored with stuff like it's impossible. They don't want to hear that. And if they're a little bit insecure, that's going to complicate things. So that when you say, hang on a minute, something here has got to give, they will simply say, well, that's not good enough. And then they'll walk away and go, oh, he's a stick in the mud, he's not cooperative, he's not a results driven person. This is how they rationalize in their own head. So the dynamic is really, really unhealthy. How do you deal with it? Okay, well, like anything, start with data. Just remember, without data you're just another person with an opinion. So what we do in leadership beyond the theory is we actually take this 10 step value ranking process and say, okay, here are the steps that you need to go through to work out of all of these things you could be doing, which ones are most important, which ones are going to drive the most value for the business, Given the resources I've been gifted, let's work that out. And so if you can do that, you end up with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Let's say you've got eight things, right? And then you're not resourceful anymore. You rule a line under it and you go to your boss and you say, this is what we're resourced for. You can make some choices about this other stuff, but none of that stuff comes free because it ain't going to get done. And it's not really until they understand that the choice is deliver this stuff brilliantly, right, and capture the value in the highest value things. Or the other choice is keep throwing shit on the pile and we'll give it our best crack. But everything's going to get done half assed. You're going to risk the stuff that's the most important and it's probably not going to work out well for you. You can't have that conversation without the data. So do the work first to work out what's most valuable in your team. And use that now doesn't necessarily mean the conversation is going to go well. It's just going to frustrate them more because now you've got a basis for telling them to piss off. They don't like that, right? So the best way to do that is to say, here's what we can achieve. I'm Going to focus my team on these things first and foremost. Unless you tell me to drop them, right? So listen to what you're doing here. Unless you tell me to drop them, here's where the focus is going to go. I hate to say it, but you've got to keep the receipts on this stuff. So the email goes back, the attachment. Here's what I've told you I can do, here's what I can't do. We're going to pursue this, we'll do our best, but blah, blah, blah, all care, no responsibility, right? That's the way you do it. Now, sometimes even that doesn't work. So I had a boss once who was a really good boss. He was a really good guy and he was whip smart. He was really, really bright. And I remember him saying to me once, you know, well, this project is coming in too late. I said, well, it's coming in when it's coming in. And he said, can I give you extra resources? I said, nope, you're just about to start tripping over each other as it is. No resources are going to help. He's going, well, I need it earlier. I went, you can't have it earlier. He's going, no, I need it earlier. It's got to be done by the 30th of June. I said, well, I don't know what to tell you, Robert. It's not going to be done by the 30th of June. And he goes, but it has to be. I go, okay, you'll have it on the 30th of June. And he looked at me and he said, you just told me you couldn't do it by the 30th of June. I said, well, I can't, but if you want me to tell you I can. Shit, I'll tell you I can. I still can't do it. It's not going to change the deadline. But if that's what you want to hear, so I can shut you up, well, let's go for it. By the way, I had a really good relationship with this guy so I could have that sort of conversation. All of this stuff's got to be contextual, right? So I couldn't go to a boss who I had more separation with and say that. Exactly. So just remember everything's in context with the relationship. But that worked really, really well. He just nodded and went away, took his medicine and told the powers that be that they weren't going to get it until the end of August. That was fine. So things like that You've just got to try so many different techniques to try and get around that. Start with the data and start with a good baseline and foundation for what you're working on and what you want to work on. And that's a good place to start. Thank you. No worries. By the way, not every answer is going to be that long. That was just a good question. Or maybe it will be. I don't know. I'll hear what the question is. Go on, Yin. Thanks, Marty.

[Martin Moore]

Right in the beginning you mentioned leadership is relentless.

[Marty]

Just wondering.

[Martin Moore]

That's something I, you know, I face with as well. It's just ongoing and you need a.

[Marty]

Lot of energy to keep up. Like, what kind of strategies do you.

[Martin Moore]

Employ to keep that energy up to be, you know, that relentlessness of it.

[Marty]

It's a really good question because in my old days I thought substance abuse was a good idea. And I. I'm only, I'm only half kidding. But, you know, I used to. I used to. Seriously, my high performance coach is there. She'll tell you. But no, but I found that the best thing for me, although I thought was the best thing for me, was to go home and crack a bottle of red, by the way, nothing stronger than alcohol, guys, just so you know. But I go home and I crack a bottle of red and share a bottle of red with my beautiful wife, whatever. And that would be my right. That was my drawing a breath to come down. And then I started to understand how absolutely counterproductive that is and the effects that it has on you in terms of cortisol production and things like that. It's just increasing the stress in your body. So the things that we think are doing as good aren't necessarily. So it's all going to come back to good habits and space, right? And it's different for everyone. Meditation is great. I'm also a shit meditator as well as a substance abuser. Just so you know, I. But I've been working on meditation so that I actually clear my head and just get everything out of my head and just center myself. People take ice baths. People do grounding where they'll go outside. One of my clients in New Zealand, he grounds every morning for 15 minutes. He just goes outside with no shoes on, stands in the grass and watches the sunrise. And that to him is a centering thing that really helps him. So whatever it is for you, exercise is always good. That burns off excess energy. It's always a good thing. It stimulates endorphins and things like that. So exercise is always good. But I suspect that when I talk about burnout, the real keys for me are do the right things, don't do the shit that doesn't matter. Do the right things. And that's going to reduce the amount of work that you're dealing with, the number of problems you're dealing with straight away. So if you can scope that down and make it smaller and happy days, stop doing other people's stuff for them. So stop. Stop interfering with your people's work and getting in and trying to grab control of it, because that's just, you know, doubling your workload. And as long as you're doing that, you're not doing your own job. So do that and then hold people accountable and that will really lift the way you think about your work. Because people are going to be doing the things they should be doing. They'll be getting satisfied by achieving difficult things. You won't be working 70, 80 hours a week. You'll be doing something that's fairly normal and still having time to have those outlets that you have, whether it's, you know, Netflix, binges, exercise, whatever it is.

[Martin Moore]

This may be an offline, but tell me if it is. You've talked about setting the minimum standard a number of times. Is there some guidelines you can give around setting that standard or is it too variable?

[Marty]

It's extremely variable, Jane, but I think the number one thing about setting the minimum acceptable standard is you've got to know what you're dealing with. So you've got to look and listen and learn about the people you have. You can't be too countercultural. So if you're in an organization of weak accountability and no one's held to account, there are no consequences and so forth, it'll be inordinately harder for you to set that minimum acceptable standard, but not impossible. So you've got to work out what you feel as though is a reasonable ask. So when I think of the minimum acceptable standard, I say, what's a reasonable ask? What is it reasonable to say? This person is getting paid this much money a year. What is it reasonable of me to expect from them? And where I set that minimum standard is going to be higher than other people. I know that, but people always have the choice.

[Martin Moore]

So it's kind of like their KPIs.

[Marty]

The standard is encapsulated in so many different ways. You done your module 8 work yet? Nearly, nearly halfway through. The only reason I asked, Jane, is because in module 8, I've got the all singing, all dancing performance standard. Template which actually says, here's what people need, right? They need to understand what you need from them behaviourally. So what are the behavioural standards we expect? You've got to keep up with those. What is a reasonable performance across multiple categories in your job, at your level? So for example, the executive team that reported to me in CS Energy, they had a standard that they all had to meet that said good looks like this, commercial safety, leadership, management, working at the right level or working across boundaries. So we actually prescribed what good looked like. We had descriptions for, okay, if you want to be at full performance in the commercial category, here's the sorts of things I'll be looking for. Here's the sorts of things that I expect from you. And so it gave people a pretty clear idea. And then we'd have, you know, derailers. What are the things that are going to take you out of your performance zone? And then we had KPIs. What do we want from you this year? Two or three KPIs. Nail these. And then we'd have a development plan which was, okay, how do we take you from where you are to get your next role? What can we do to help you? What experience do you need? What training, what capability do we need to build? What on the job assignments can we give you to bring you through so that all singing, all dancing, I'm not recommending that everyone use that. Of course. Right. Horses for courses, make it fit for purpose. But that's as big as you would need to run, you know, a multinational 100,000 person enterprise. And it would also be enough to run a startup, but you just scale it down in a startup to make sure it's fit for purpose so you're not just drowning in paperwork. Brilliant.

[Martin Moore]

Thank you very much.

[Marty]

Thanks, Jane. Yeah, thanks, Marty. I'd just be interested in hearing you talk a bit about communication down the various layers of the organization. Because the organisation that I lead, the senior team, crystal clear on why we're doing, what we're doing, what not, yeah, that program's got to go, we're going to shut that down. But then by the time we get down to the people most best in that program, they hear it shutting down and they're like, these people don't know what they're doing. This makes no sense. So just getting that clarity of communication throughout the organisation. Yeah, really good question. Because what often happens is that the communication is crafted at the level the decision is made and that's most often the case. So for a start, that's got to be clear. And a lot of companies, CEOs, executive teams aren't good at telling stories. This is about storytelling. So I had this experience when I had to shut down a large project that had already sunk 70 million into this renewables project. We had 70 sunk. And we had a lot of people on the board and in our ownership group who didn't understand sunk cost. So the problem is you've got people working on that project, you've got people who believe in renewable energy. And it was a renewables project. It was just never going to work. Technology was bad, the economics were bad, it was awful. So when I crafted the message for the company, I put it in a way that said, here's the story, here's where we started. Here were the factors in this project getting approved. Here's why it got approved in the first place. Since then, we've learned some stuff because we've been working and trying to implement it. We've learned this, we've learned this, we've learned this. Oh, here's a roadblock. We found this out about the technology. We had to go into litigation with our supplier. And then we did this. And we did, and then we found this. And so I was walking them through the story of all the things that happened. And then we got to the stage where we were presented with a few options. We could keep going and keep investing money, at least an extra 50 million, and we carried most of the risk. Or we could do this, or we could do that. This is why we've decided to kill it. And there wasn't a person in the company that didn't go, yeah, okay, fair enough. I don't agree with it, but fair enough. And that's what you want. You want everyone to be able to see that it's at least not irrational. Now, that was just communication from me with all these sorts of things that's got to go down through the layers. So you've got to be able to get that communication set. And it dilutes at every layer, at every layer down, they're just a little bit less understanding of the factors. They have a little less exposure to the process. They have a little less competence in how to communicate. So every layer you go down, it gets harder. But when we did this thing and when we did any communication, it was a case of, okay, this is going to come from the office of the CEO. It has to be done. Everyone gets the same story. But that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is, what does this project manager tell the on site project team. What does this executive tell the operational people who are just trying to work out how to implement this? And so it works its way down. And. And I used to role play. So I get my executives in, I say, how are you going to explain this? And they go, well, you've already explained it. I've gone, no, I haven't. I've just said from my perspective why the company's done it. How do you explain this to your people in their language? So they understand it. And I used to make them walk me through it and then I'd say, okay, what I've just done with you, you go and do that with your on site gm. And this started a process where we got used to actually saying, we've got to communicate the story. How do you communicate it in language that your people understand? And still the communication was shit. But that was as much as we could do to try and push it down. And then you're fighting spot fires, right? You find a spotfire and you go, hang on a minute. These guys are carrying on like pork chops, by the way. I can't say that when I speak in the U.S. it's good, isn't it? These guys are carrying on like pork chops. Let's go down and see what's going on and try and give them some better information. So keeping your eye out for the spot fires. Thanks.

[Martin Moore]

You often say that it's easier to rein in a stallion than flog a donkey. I'm very fortunate. I have a team of stallions. They're fantastic and as part of that, they have uncompromising standards. So sometimes that's good. Sometimes it can come out in perfectionism, which obviously, when you are a leader of people, perfectionism is probably not something you're looking for. Do you have any tips on how to maybe rein it in a little bit without making them feel like they are compromising their standard?

[Marty]

Great question, Michaela. Yeah. So a couple of things, right? One of the most spoken sentences when I was a corporate executive was the following. Ready? You're going to write this down or are you going to memorise it? No, it's an easy one. Right, that's good enough, Keep going. That's good enough, Keep going. And of course, having the opportunity to say, this happens in one on one territory, right? So I'm having one on ones with people, they're saying, but I'm doing this and I'm doing that and, well, hang on, that looks like it's slow. Yeah, well, we're trying to get this right. And we want this information blower. That's good enough. Keep going. Keep going. Don't slow it down just for that. What, you're waiting for someone else to give you their opinion. Keep moving. Don't wait for that. So it's this constant awareness of speed. And I wanted to be unreasonably focused on speed. Not irrationally focused, but unreasonably focused, because I knew that no one would go faster than my expectation. So I'd set my expectations way out here, knowing that people are going to try and get a bit closer to it. So that's good enough. Keep going. I'll tell you another tip. That was just awesome. I just sort of stumbled upon it. I had a guy who was a real perfectionist. He's a good guy. And he said to me, well, I'm developing this strategy for this piece in my part of the business, blah, blah, blah. And I said, okay, when am I going to see it? He said, well, it'll be ready in three months. I've got the consultants coming in. They're going to do this and that. We'll have this ready in three months. I said, okay, no worries. Three months. I can live with that. But guess what? I want to see a draft next Friday. One week. I just want to see what you're thinking. I just want to get a rough idea of where you're heading. So I don't care what you bring me, like, put it on the back of a beer coaster. I don't care. But we're just going to sit around my whiteboard. I just want to make sure that you're directionally going the right way. And so what that did, and I did this week, week, week, like four or five weeks in a row with this guy about this strategy. It did one really important thing that I wasn't expecting. He got more relaxed about showing me stuff that wasn't fully formed. He just got more relaxed about bringing in a couple of scratchings on an A4 paper and saying to me, well, you know, I was thinking this, and I was thinking that, how about we change this? And we'd scribble on the whiteboard and take a photo of that. And that was how that worked. And so doing that really helped them to get over that mental barrier of I can't show my boss something that's not fully formed or, you know, at its best, standard, that worked really well. Hi, Marty. You spoke a little bit about accountability and resilience. What about any words of advice around motivating and Inspiring teams. Oh, that's a good question. Rightly or wrongly, my motivational technique was pretty stock standard. Perhaps in retrospect I should have made it a little bit more tailored for the different teams and circumstances I had, but it was pretty stock standard. It was, here's why we're here. I would try and link it to purpose. Right? Here's why we're here and here's who we're serving. Because of that, we've got a strategy that says X and we're going to do this. And our job is not to question the purpose or the strategy. Our job is to execute brilliantly. So I rallied them round the, you know, execution piece. I rallied them around being. And I know this brings out my deep dark secrets about my competitive nature, but you know, we want to be the best team in this company. We want to be the best team in our field. We want to be delivering faster, better, more value than anyone else can. Because it's going to be great for your careers, it's going to be great for the company. We're going to post the results and the types of people who are dysfunctional enough to like working for me, that sort of lit them up. But that technique won't work everywhere. And if I had different team compositions as I did in my younger years, I suspect that was probably much less effective for them because, you know, particularly we've got some of our business owners here today who are part of our business accelerator program. They'll be going to themselves. Yeah, I've tried that and I've said, you know, you've got to work harder because I need to make more money. I'm the owner. No one's getting fired up by that. Right. And we talk about that sometimes. So different circumstances, different environments require different techniques. I was probably a bit too much of a one trick pony, but here I am. That went okay. Thanks for the question. It's a really good one.

[Martin Moore]

Just a question around the minimal acceptable standard. So say you're recalibrating, right, and you bring that in. I guess I'm anticipating potential complacency in some ways because that standard is probably maybe somewhere mid level, right around where certain people are and behind where others are. So do you have any tips or ingredients sort of that have to follow that in order to stave off complacency?

[Marty]

You mean if people are above the minimum standard, how to not let them become complacent? Yeah, that's a really good question. I didn't make that clear at all. When you have people In a team like that, the minimum standard says, this is my low water mark, no one drops below that. But that's all. You use that for the motivation. And stretching happens one on one with individuals. So I'm constantly talking to the people who report to me about, you can do better than that. It doesn't matter if they're 10 times the minimum standard. If I know you can do better than that, I'm going to call you out for it. I say, come on, you can do better than that. Let's go. Like, what are you here for? Let's do it. And that really pushed people through. And this is why leadership is hard and it's so individual, is because you've got to know which individuals can stretch how far. And a lot of it's trial and error. So you start and you go, oh, this person can probably use a bit more. And you put a bit more pressure on them, they just flake like almost instantaneously. Whoa, that was too much, sorry, let's wind it back a bit. And other people, you think you're putting a huge load on them and they just lap it up and you're going, oh, give you a bit more next time. And so you're constantly calibrating to see where each individual can go to. And that requires a lot of one on one time. It requires a lot of, you know, a lot of sensitivity to seeing people's changes in mood or performance or joy or energy. Like you've got to watch out for those things. And if you see someone's energy dropping or their level of joy dropping, you're going, you know, maybe I'm just pushing a little bit hard. And the last thing you want is to break someone. So you're constantly looking for that. Okay, I've got to ratchet this back a little bit, but that's a one on one individual thing. Really good question. Thank you. Let's keep going on the topic of tensions and I'm curious about your experience in broadcast rooms in particular, aligning your exec team and the board around strategy and risk appetite in particular. This seems to be off from a perspective of boards or risk averse, and management wants to take more risks. So how do you kind of navigate that tension point? A really good question, Christophe. Because boards have been forced into a position of being more risk averse, particularly in Australia, but also Europe, very much a little less in the us but definitely forced to be more risk averse because of the penalties. So directors liabilities and direct accountability. For example, if an employee is fatally Injured, the directors of the company can be held liable for negligence legally in New South Wales and Queensland, at least. I don't know how far that spreads. So directors absolutely become risk averse. Being able to articulate what the risk is that they're taking is the hardest thing. So most boards that I've come into contact with. Please, anyone who has an alternative experience to mine, please put your hand up and tell me. Because most of the boards I've come into contact with are quite weak in both strategy and risk. They're good on governance, but they're weak on strategy and risk. They simply don't understand it well enough. And to find a board and it's reasonable, right? I'm not having a crack at boards. It's reasonable. They don't have enough exposure to the business to really know about it. So they meet once a month for four hours or something. Right. How are they going to get a real insight into the business except for what the CEO chooses to tell them? So the only defense you have as a director is a CEO who tells the truth. That's it, that's all you got. And most boards find it difficult to articulate what their risk appetite is. And so management is constantly testing it. This is supposed to be resolved in executive compensation. It's generally not. Right. Generally, executives get compensated for not doing the smartest things, either strategically or in a risk risk adjusted basis. So, so it's a, it's a real quandary. What I used to do when I was dealing with boards was that I would find the most literate director in terms of whether it was finance and I had to talk finance, whether it was safety, I'd talk safety. Whether it was risk, I'd talk risk. I'd find the most literate director and get them on board and have a proper, robust conversation with them and then let them take it to the rest of the board. Because the rest of the board knew who was who, they knew who was good at different bits and they would listen more to an ex CFO who was saying, well, this is a really good investment because blah, blah, blah, and they've got all their I's dotted and T's crossed and I'd work through that director to get the outcome. But boards are hard because you get to see them so rarely. You know, you walk in there and you do your dog and pony show once a month and you know, like, you've got to be able to build trust really fast. Like really fast. If you want to get anything done, they've got to trust you and you've got to be able to do that like that. I'm not sure they answered your question, but it was fun. Thanks, Crystal.

[Em]

All right, so that brings us to the end of episode 324. I really hope you enjoyed this Q and A from our inaugural no Bullshit Leadership Live event. Em and I are planning to run more of these in the future in different cities. Thanks so much for joining us. And remember, at your CEO mentor, our purpose is to improve the quality of leaders globally. So please share this with the leaders in your network. I'm really looking forward to next week's episode. Slow productivity, Doing more with less. Until then, I know you'll take every opportunity you can to be a no Bullshit Leader.