← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 518 - Brent Hagan – How to Lead Through Feedback, Focus, and Follow-Through
00:44:11
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- [00:00]
Brent Hagen
If you had a really bad Monday, don't let that influence necessarily the entire month review for what went wrong. Unless you believe that what went wrong on Monday can happen on any given day ever again, right? If, if the case is like that broke on that day and that can break every day of the month no matter what, we haven't fixed anything, then we need to action that, we need to do something about it and we need to increase reliability. There's.
- [00:33]
Narrator
Welcome to the Second in Command Podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the second in command podcast we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made him the Chief behind the Chief. And now here's your host, Cameron Herald.
- [00:57]
Cameron Herold
Hey everyone, we've got a great guest on the Second in Command podcast today. Awesome guy, Brent Hagen, who is the Chief Supply Chain Officer at lob. Brent's the guy making sure that billions of personalized mail pieces get to where they need to go, running all the logistics, supply chain and operations for this amazing platform. He's worked at huge companies like Amazon Delivery and Eaton, and he's a pro at handling super tricky logistics situations and systems, making delivery routes faster, and building strong supply chains that mix old school operations with modern tech. Brent also has some serious brain power. He's done a bunch of executive programs at Wharton, has a bachelor's degree in Organizational leadership from Purdue, and he's got a focus on manufacturing and engineering tech. Today he's going to talk about some really interesting stuff like how he helped the 12 year old startup kick off its next big chapter, how he avoids getting stuck in every single meeting, and why feedback is his secret weapon. He's also going to share how he spots up and coming leaders inside the organization, how he keeps teams and projects on track with the company's vision, handle switching between tasks like a champ, and also how he decides what's important enough to tell the board and the CEO. You're going to love this episode. You can also watch all of our on our Second Command podcast YouTube channel. Please make sure you like and subscribe. We'll see you on the inside. So Brent, welcome to the Second in Command podcast.
- [02:22]
Brent Hagen
Hi. Thanks for having me, Cameron.
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Cameron Herold
Yeah, looking forward to doing this with you today. Thank you for making the time clearing your calendar. Why don't we start off with you just walking us through what Lob does. I know you're the Chief Supply Chain Officer at Lob, kind of second in command in the organization. What does the company overall do yeah.
- [02:40]
Brent Hagen
LOB is a direct mail automation platform. So we believe ourselves to be an orchestration engine for customers to have a means to send mail downstream to your, to your home. And so we operate in an entirely third party manner, meaning we leverage a network of third party manufacturers across the United States to execute those campaigns very quickly and cost effectively.
- [03:10]
Cameron Herold
And by manufacturers, those like the print, print houses or marketing agencies. What is, what are those?
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Brent Hagen
Yeah, it's, it would be the print houses as well as the logistics network that's, that's tied to them.
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Cameron Herold
Okay. It's interesting being a Canadian and I've lived and worked in, in a couple of different countries, three different countries now. But when I was in the US sending out direct mail was, was huge. And in Canada, not so much. Why is the Canadian. Do you have any, any glimpse on why the Canadian market is so small? I mean we get one flyer every three or four days and never, never a magazine. And in the US I come back every day with like a stack of, of, you know, unaddressed ad mail or mail.
- [03:52]
Brent Hagen
Yeah, a lot of it has to do with, with postal cost. You know, it's, it's not that different from the, the UK where it's highly restrictive. And I'll give you some context. This year the USPS will probably send 90 billion pieces of, of mail. If you were to look at Royal mail in the UK or Canada Post, you might do 9 billion pieces of mail. So it's definitely way different like you indicated. And a lot of that is because of its cost prohibitive. But we actually have a number of customers that operate in Canada and the uk. I think what's really important is that those messages are personalized and meant for you being very purpose driven. So you're more likely to touch it. You're more likely to hold on and say like what is this? And really is there a call to action for you to do something? You know, and so when, when those sort of pieces work, regardless of the cost structure, attribution modeling shows that actually direct mail has the most likely call to action versus social media, email, any of the other marketing types.
- [05:04]
Cameron Herold
Well, it's interesting. I mean I was, I was running an organization 30 years ago called College Pro Painters. It went on to become the largest residential house painting company on the planet. We had 9,000 people painting houses every year, but we were doing, I was doing in Toronto alone, millions of direct mail pieces every summer. And it was because we had no one else to compete with. I mean the flyer was in the mailbox and when the homeowner went out to grab the mail. There were three pieces of mail and my one flyer. So they looked. It didn't matter what the cost was. There was nobody to compete against. I don't understand why cost even matters when there's so many companies could, could really take that over. But I don't know.
- [05:40]
Brent Hagen
Yeah, I think when you begin to, to look at it in terms of attribution, the, the most robust marketing companies out there, they understand the value of, of direct mail and it's, it's. While it's a large investment for them, it's a critical investment for them and they absolutely see that.
- [06:00]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, that was all we ever did with College Pro and I think it was mostly because we had these 800 franchisees that we had to mobilize very quickly and we just took control of their marketing and kind of pushed that out and then we left the rest up to signs and going door to door. So guys, you talked to me just before going live. You said lob's a bit of a 12 year old startup and you're launching your second act. What's your second act mean? And how are you still a 12 year old startup?
- [06:23]
Brent Hagen
We've, we've launched a company which outside of my operating duties as chief supply chain officer, I'll actually be managing that revenue light item as well as vpgm. And that is beginning to be the conduit not just between our existing customer base, but also print manufacturers and a means of distribution downstream to the, to the usps. When you look at that space, it's highly fragmented. There's also, you know, pretty significant barriers to entry, mostly having to do with fixed cost and structure. Those are areas that we believe that we've solved with technology versus large fixed capital investments. And so we're very excited about it. We're signed our first contract this week and we look forward to the long journey ahead.
- [07:17]
Cameron Herold
And is that going to be becoming more of an integrated company? Like are you going to be able to go back to all of your current client base, install them this solution as an add on or.
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Brent Hagen
Yeah.
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Cameron Herold
Is it a whole different customer base?
- [07:27]
Brent Hagen
No, great question. It'll be both for sure. It'll be a complement to our existing customer base. Lob was the first customer, you know, which, which also helps us when we're building this technology to be able to say like what problem are we solving? What areas in the market do we see the biggest challenges and what can help us and our existing customer base solve those problems? You know, and so all of it comes with not just the increase in revenue, but also reduced unit economics to our existing customer base as well as now that, that we're managing those elements of the, the logistics value stream, the downstream reliability will, will go up as well. So it's something that we're not just excited about because of the, the new customers and the incremental revenue, but also because of what it presents to our existing customers.
- [08:16]
Cameron Herold
That makes sense. So in your role, there's an opportunity to get dragged into the day to day in all kinds of different areas that don't necessarily give you the highest roi. And it's not really what you should be focusing on. How do you decide what to focus on and where to give your time and energy?
- [08:33]
Brent Hagen
Yeah, a lot of it comes between a balance of understanding vision and understanding execution. You know, at law we call it operating at multiple altitudes. And so what that means is there's, there's times when I'm going to be at a very high altitude and maybe I'm talking to a board member or I'm talking to an investor of some sort and I'm going to be operating at one altitude, or maybe I'm just driving strategy for the business overall. But there has to be times, and I was actually just talking to our CEO about this yesterday, where you have to go to a lower altitude and you have to be able to get into the details and really sweat the small stuff. The hard part becomes how do you pick which one you're doing? And so do you have the right cadences to be able to raise those flags with your teams to understand when they need help? Maybe they don't even know that they need help, but do you have the right cadences in place for you to have a mental model to say, I need to dig in here and start asking more questions?
- [09:40]
Cameron Herold
And how do you know when you're, when you're kind of crossing the line then from giving them help and then starting to do the work for them, you know, like taking the monkey off their back. How, what's the balance there?
- [09:50]
Brent Hagen
Yeah, I want them to be able to solve problems, you know, and, and a part of them having autonomy is also taking ownership, you know, so there's, there's a lot of times where I, I very deliberately pull myself back and help them get to the answer without solving the actual problem for them and certainly not executing it for them. It's something that I really want them to be able to do, but it's, it's hard, you know, it's, and it's it's actually another piece where we've talked to our CEO a number of times, who was the COO before he became the CEO. He was very good at helping teams solve problems. But once he found a solution, he's like, well, I can do this really quickly. I'm just going to do it. And it's like, no, no, no, we got this. Let us do it. It's okay. So it's something that I take a lot of pride in is helping my team get there, but not crossing the finish line for them. You know, those successes should be enjoyed by them, but it's also a part of having ownership that they need to deliver on it.
- [10:57]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, it's interesting. I kind of think of it like a parent's job. Our job is to help grow our children so that they can move out of the house, right? So they can become these happy, healthy, independent adults. And I remember when I was raising my kids, I would tend to try to get them to do stuff and my wife was kind of doing a lot of it for them. And then we talked about it and I said, in many ways, we're doing the kids a disservice. So I went and I found this Age appropriate chores for children age 2. They can put their own toys in a toy box. They can stack their own books. They can put their clothes in a dirty laundry hamper. Age 7, they can make their own lunch. And when I found this, these were all chores like from the 1940s and 1950s. I'm like, we are really helicopter parenting our children, like in making their lunch for them when they're 15 years old and driving them to school when they can get on their bicycle and get their ass to school on their own. We just need to raise children differently. And I think that's the same with growing people inside the company, right? We can always give them the answer and do it for them, but our job is to get results through others to grow them. So what do you focus on growing people when you've got people working for you? Other than making their own decisions, are there other things that you also focus on in terms of growing them?
- [12:19]
Brent Hagen
Yeah, I mean, much like your, your child analogy, which I have an 8 year old and a 3 year old, right. So we're really watching some forced independence, right, like where they want to do certain things, but they want you to do certain things. That, that analogy certainly fits with your, your, our employees as well, you know, So I, I have a number of direct reports, but they're all in very different stages. Of their career. And so much like the child analogy, I need to treat each one of them differently based on, on where they're at. There's some on my team who really need a specific amount of, of help as it relates to talent, talent development and just like we were just talking about enabling their team to be successful. And there's others that really lack an overall kind of macro level business understanding, especially as it relates to like FP&A, you know, and so when we're talking about doing something they might have really, really great instincts on, like, hey, like this is just the right thing to do. And much like we were just talking about before, I'm going to guide them and saying, well, why is it the right thing to do? You know, and they can kind of put it there, but they can't quantify the ROI that's tied to it. Well, if they want my job, the next thing they're going to do is have to go to the CEO and then the CEO is going to say, that's great. If they have the right idea, go explain it to the board. And what's the board going to ask? Right? They're going to see exactly how it's tied back to the pnl. So I really have to help guide them down that, that path without giving them all the answers when I could probably do that work, you know, maybe with the help of chat, GPT, maybe not, but in about five minutes. And it's going to take them, you know, maybe a half a day, but I'm going to guide them down which resources to talk to, how I think about it afterwards and tell them, you know, directionally or they headed the right way. And that, that could be the, that can honestly be the, the hard part because, you know, you could get it done faster.
- [14:28]
Cameron Herold
So have you, have you worked on your skills around things like situational leadership and coaching and, and teaching? Like, are there any specific soft skills of leadership that you've worked on or is it stuff that's come naturally to you over time?
- [14:41]
Brent Hagen
It's not natural. Anyone that's, that's watching this podcast that knows me is laughing their ass off right now because of that, that question. It's an area that I've, I've really had to focus on. You know, there, there was a time in my career where I just wasn't good at it. You know, now I know like who I am and, and where I'm at and I know like, what my triggers are to be able to say, like, can I, I need to pull myself you know, out of this, and it's been a long time company. My, My first role out of school was an executive development program with.
- [15:17]
Cameron Herold
With.
- [15:17]
Brent Hagen
A, with a Fortune Top 50 manufacturing company. And you spent your entire regular work week, just as anyone else would. And then you also had kind of coursework, multiple hours a month focused on developing yourself. And so I've spent the bulk of my career learning how to take hard feedback about myself and how to grow and develop and understand that feedback, as hard as it is, is my friend, but it doesn't come easy. And I don't know a lot of operators that it does come easy for. You're so fixated on getting that next project done, getting to that milestone, understanding the people skills behind it and the soft skills can be a real challenge. And what I didn't know early in my career or really understand is that it's not just about this project. It's not just about the next project. It's about continuing those relationships over time and watching them build on each other, you know, and so when you start really doing that, teams will come back to you with their ideas. And now you're really, you know, cooking with gas when that sort of, that sort of thing happens. Right. It's not just checking a box like, yep, got this done, got this done, got this done. But now you're working collaboratively to, to build a roadmap and, and execute on it to together. Like, that's, that's when it gets really cool.
- [16:49]
Cameron Herold
Interesting. All right, so you've worked on those skills. You mentioned kind of this stuff around feedback. What was it specifically that allowed you to start accepting feedback as, you know, okay, that's a tough one to really swallow for a lot of people. Me especially.
- [17:04]
Brent Hagen
Yeah. I don't think there was a specific moment in time. I constantly asked for it. When, when you look at my overall career trajectory, I've. I've had a lot of success that I'm really fortunate for, and I've been surrounded by great mentors along the way. Some of my first mentors are still my existing mentors. And I knew, taking a step back, my first job out of school, they had me build what's called a career flight plan, which was, where do you see yourself at the end of your career? What is your goal? And it wasn't just like, oh, I want to be a coo, I want to be a CEO. It was, what steps do you need to take in order to get there? Like, imagine kind of a bottoms up plan, and what skills do you need to develop over time in order to achieve that, which I think is an element that people don't necessarily understand.
- [18:01]
Cameron Herold
Yeah.
- [18:02]
Brent Hagen
The only way for me to achieve the things I have wanted, that I've desired to achieve professionally was to take really hard critical feedback. And it's not just personal feedback. It's feedback about projects, it's feedback about interactions, it's feedback about decision making and how do you think critically about something and the long term impacts of it.
- [18:26]
Cameron Herold
A specific area that you've grown with some feedback. Was there something that, that stands out?
- [18:30]
Brent Hagen
Yeah, there's, there's a moment in time. Very specifically, when I was with Amazon and I was doing what's called the Discover Insights color exercise, which paints everybody into very specific colors and you have a representation of, of every single color. What was interesting about this specific version of that is that you had to do it both for how you interact as a professional to maybe 300 questions and how you would respond to a scenario as a professional, also as a person. And when I was sitting there with the consultant that was doing this with me, she was like, what's really interesting, she was like, you're here as a professional and you're way over here as a person. And I was like, yeah. And she was like, well, why is that? I was like, I'm faking it, you know, Like I, I think my team wants me to interact with them one way and so I go and do that. I know my boss has expectations of, of how I'm going to do that. So like, I, I do those things. And she's like, but that's not who you are. And I'm like, no, not really. She's like, she's like, you must be exhausted. And I was like, I am exhausted. I was like, I'm absolutely exhausted from, from doing it. And she was like, you're, you're never going to make it that way. She's like, just so you understand, she's like, if, if I did this with any executive in Seattle, she's like, they would be within a percentage point of each other in terms of how they act at home, is who they are at work. She's like, we have to find that balance for you and we have to make it work. And that, that is where my leadership approach dramatically changed and really skyrocketed. Terms of my alignment with my team, how we feel about each other. And actually there's a number of people who worked for me on that team in particular that have gone on to new roles with me in different sites different business functions and different companies multiple times since then.
- [20:37]
Cameron Herold
Oh, interesting. Yeah. You talked earlier and written some stuff around people that had worked for you in operations that are now working with you in different roles and they've elevated. How do you find emerging leaders? How do you know, you know who those solid A players and B players are to work on and to, to, to help grow?
- [20:55]
Brent Hagen
Yeah, for, for me it, it really starts with are they a subject matter expert in any specific function? And then do you see them a willingness to become more, a more well rounded leader as well as do they manage up well? Do they manage down well? Do they manage laterally well? Like which one? You know, there's, there has to be there, there has to be at least one because you can begin to polish all the others. And so once you find somebody that has a passion within a specific space and you can align that passion to their job function, they're immediately going to set themselves apart from, from a lot of others. Right. Because their skill set and what they're working on both align to be able to have high potential outcomes. And then once you see that something is working with them incredibly well, whether that's managing down, managing up, you can begin to leverage those points to show them how to execute on the other things. If I manage laterally incredibly well, that means that you should be really great at selling a vision and bringing people around you to support it without having any influence over those people.
- [22:11]
Cameron Herold
Right.
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Brent Hagen
Because you have no direct control over those people. Like that is a very, very powerful skill set to have.
- [22:17]
Cameron Herold
Yeah.
- [22:17]
Brent Hagen
You know, and so, and so now you can polish that and help them go and deliver for the, the broader business. So you start, you start bringing that attention for them. Now that person can, can work more, more cross functionally on, on roles that maybe they, they haven't before and so they get broader business perspective. It can be very powerful.
- [22:37]
Cameron Herold
You've spoken a couple of times around vision, specifically like vision for the organization and vision with the CEO. How do you align your teams and people and the projects to the vision? How do you make sure that people are working on the right stuff?
- [22:51]
Brent Hagen
Yeah, for me I think there's, it starts with first having a vision and having a North Star or a series of KPIs tied to it from the top. So I like to go tops down from that approach and establishing a vision after that exercise is done. It's all bottoms up, you know, and so it's not that it doesn't work, it just, it doesn't work for me. And I think that it's. While it could take longer doing bottoms up planning and tying that back to your vision, it accomplishes a few things. One, you're going to begin to establish metrics at every level of the business that begin to tie back to your North Star. So now you've instantly gained insights into am I winning or losing? Two, you've now driven ownership, and with ownership comes accountability to every level of your organization, tying that back to your North Star, you know, and so, so now when you've done those things, you can start establishing projects, roadmaps, action plans, and all of those elements to drive the business deliverables that you want. But so much of it with that bottoms up planning, it's so important to establish that ownership and accountability with every level of the organization. Once they get bought into it, you kind of go on cruise control to a certain degree. Yeah.
- [24:19]
Cameron Herold
It's funny, I was thinking about a former mentor of mine from years ago and he said there's nothing worse than watching a group of highly skilled, highly motivated, highly productive people working on the wrong things. Hey, it's Cameron. I hope you're loving today's episode. Quick question for you. Does your company have a strong leadership training program in place to grow the skills of everyone who manages people? If you want to help yourself and your company grow, get everyone who manages people learning from my invest in your leaders online training program. There are 12 core leadership skills that I cover online and they're all going to really grow. CEOs pay me $78,000 a year to coach them one on one, and now you can all benefit for 1% of what they pay me. These are the same leadership skills that I created and certified everyone in at 1-800-got junk when I was there as COO. Go to investinyourleaders.com today and use promo code podcast10 before the end of the month to get 10% off each manager you sign up. Now back to the show.
- [25:32]
Brent Hagen
Oh, no doubt. I mean, we've, we've run into it here before, you know, one of, one of the pieces. Talking about our CEO again. He will, if you bring him an idea, he's going to give you all the Runway in the world to go and to go and execute on it for a little bit. And it's a piece where in a world in which resources are finite, not every idea is a good idea and we can't run with, with all of them. Well, how do we take the creativity of those teams? Not deflate them by saying no, but channel that creativity that Delivers business results that we. That we want. Well, that starts with casting a vision that all of them can get behind. Right. Because now their mental focus is going to be, oh, this is the direction that we're going. And so it has to start with vision casting.
- [26:28]
Cameron Herold
So how do you say no? Because at times we have to say no, right? At times we have to say no more often than we say yes. So how do you say no without deflating? Is it tying it to the P, L? Is it tying it to the vision and the goals? Is it.
- [26:42]
Brent Hagen
For me, a lot of it ties back to the P and L. Honestly, I think that the more objective that you can be in saying no and something that a person's emotions tied to this sort of thing, it generally is fairly subjective, right. So when you can move that into objective, it's going to be a benefit. And that's where a lot of it comes. Like we just talked about with one of my employees, let's understand total business impact. One of the tools that I'll often use is a prioritization matrix or a C and E matrix and understand what problems are we trying to solve right now as a business? Is it speed? Is it cost? Is there quality? Right. Like, what outcomes do we want to come to? And when all of us can begin to agree on what those are, we can then very objectively say, okay, here's our list of all the things everybody wants to work on. What begins to deliver on the things that we agreed are the key priorities for the business. Now it becomes very objective of, hey, we've got a finite amount of resources. How many of these things do you think we can do? This many when our list is this long? Great. Here's the first ones that we're going to do. And hey, if one of these fails, we're going to do the next one on the list. That's. It becomes pretty challenging for. For people to not get behind that methodology.
- [28:09]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, it makes sense when it. It always drove me crazy when my mom and dad would say, no because I said so, or no because it's my house or like, yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Like, why don't you just say no because we can't afford it, or no because it's going to ruin your dinner, or no, like a reason that I can understand to wrap my head around, but no because it's my company, or no because I'm your CEO is just a stupid way to lead.
- [28:32]
Brent Hagen
So, yeah, I saw there was a. There's a comedian telling a story about when he was a kid and he asked his dad for $3 to go to a dance, and the dad said, sorry, I'll have $3. And he's like, then how are we here, dad? Like, how are we here? How are we living in a house right now, eating dinner? We don't have $3, you know. And so he was like, well, if you can go find it in the change jar. He's like, it's all yours. And he's like, and you know, there was, there was my $3. And it's, it's something that, that joke always makes me laugh.
- [29:00]
Cameron Herold
But it's important to show people the P and L and how a P and L works. Like, they don't understand. A lot of employees focus on revenue coming in, but they don't understand the cost of goods sold. They don't understand gross margin, they don't understand overhead. They don't understand the cash conversion cycle of when we actually get paid or prepaid it. Like, they don't understand. Like, they don't understand taxes. So they just. Yeah, unless we show them they don't understand that. One of my big kind of pet peeves has been that early stage managers, people that are managing for their first or second time, their answer to every problem tends to be hire more people. And that's rarely the answer to the problem. How do you push back on people when it's, we need to hire somebody else? You know, I go back to like the stop optimize, automate outsource. How do you, how do you approach that before saying yes to a new hire?
- [29:47]
Brent Hagen
It's actually really funny that, that you bring this up. So I joined one of Lobster strategy off sites with the executive team before my actual start date. The CEO was like, hey, you know, I think you should come out here. I was already talking to them about, about joining the team. Like, see, see what we're all about? And every executive leader was, was presenting their, their project plans for the year, what their strategy was. Every single one of them wanted more people. And I was like, man, this is a lot. Like, I kind of spoke up, which the new guy who doesn't even work here yet, sitting in the corner. And I'm like, hey, hey, do we all, do we really need these people? Like, is everyone completely constrained now? Or these skill sets that were missing? And I think, and these are highly tenured executives. And so this isn't first or second level managers. And I think what it comes down to is like, what problem are you trying to solve? You know? And has that problem changed over time? And how did we establish these skill set gaps where this is the thing that the business has to have right now in order to achieve it?
- [31:07]
Cameron Herold
Well. And yeah. And can we solve that problem without adding headcount? Can we solve that problem? Because what always tends to happen is we end up saying yes to the head count and then we have to go get more sales and revenue just to get back to break even again. That was stupid.
- [31:21]
Brent Hagen
Like, well, the headcount doesn't go away, right? That becomes, that becomes the biggest problem. Is, is this a short term problem or a long term problem? You know, and so I'll give you a really good example. We have a need in our business for product marketer. Like absolutely, unequivocally. We need a person that is that conduit between product and marketing and understanding go to market strategy tied to the things that, that we're building. That's a skill set that we've lacked for a long time now. And that's okay. Like those things are going to, are going to come up now. Are we going to take the, the hit from a cost perspective that's going to be associated with that headcount? Do we think that this is going to lead to incremental revenue? Well, it should. You know, and so now we start getting into this productive conversation of yes, like this role exists because we should close more deals as a result. How many more deals? Right. And so, and it's not about for me, it's not about like we need to establish a number for what this role is going to achieve as a result. It doesn't mean that we're going to be right, but at least we're flexing the muscle like you and I talked about to be able to tie it back to the P and L. To say this headcount's gonna have this result. Were we right or were we wrong and we're gonna get a better batting average over time of, of predicting those things.
- [32:46]
Cameron Herold
When, when leaders get into this kind of role that you're at this like second in command role and, and this level in an organization, you're never doing the same job day in and day out. It's. You call it context switching where you're doing something, you get a switch, you're leading somebody, then you're doing something, you're leading a different style, you're in a meeting, you're talking to the board. Completely different things that you're working on. It's different skills, it's different ways of being. It's different communication styles. How do you context switch? What do you, do you have a way to, to be able to kind of like shake it off and start into the next thing that you're working on in new frame? How do you, how do you get rid of whatever you were working on five minutes before and show up in the new meeting set for that one? Can you walk us through some of that?
- [33:32]
Brent Hagen
I had, I, I just, I just did this on Friday. I had a, a really brutal call that I didn't enjoy very much. And my next call was somebody on my team and I asked him a question, it was a very short question and he was like, yeah, yeah. And he gives me an answer. He's like, is everything okay? And it would have been so easy for me to be like, no, it's not, you know, and, and just gone sideways. And that's an area where I very deliberately focus on myself is like, you got to pull yourself out of this. Right? Like, don't let that pressure influence your next conversation, your next call, your next day, your next week. I also call it being the shock absorber. I'm going to have calls with the board, with our investors, with our CEO, maybe with my peer group. And I think the further up you go as an executive, you know, into those conversations, the more direct that they become. Almost always much more results driven, much more focused on exactly what problem you're solving. Not, not that there isn't, you know, camaraderie and dynamic, you know, funny back and forth, but the meetings are much more purpose driven. How do you take that and take that context and deploy it to your team, your customers, your partners, and in a way that is going to put tremendous value on the relational rents that you've built, you know, and so go ahead.
- [35:08]
Cameron Herold
You're also like a two sided funnel where you've got all this information that you bring down to the direct reports, but you also have a lot of information that you bring up to the CEO and the board. How do you, how do you decide what to filter and what they don't need to hear from you at the CEO and board level? Because if you come up to them with all the problems and stuff you're working on, it becomes overwhelming and not productive that way as well.
- [35:31]
Brent Hagen
Yeah, So I try to eliminate, this is true on both sides, unnecessary noise on either, on either side.
- [35:40]
Cameron Herold
Right.
- [35:41]
Brent Hagen
If, for example, when we're launching LOB Logistics, it's important for the team to understand how the board views this initiative and the amount of investment that, that we're going to make and how we gauge success, because that's what we're going to be measured on. But they don't need to understand who agrees, who disagrees, and, you know, what details are happening in between. Same when I'm talking to the board about LOB logistics. They don't need to understand the challenges inherently with one partner that's different from the other and why one takes longer to close a contract than. Than the other. Those are all unnecessary distractions that we need to be capable of, of solving on our own. You know, and so it, it's one of the pieces that I probably didn't understand early in my career that like, I'm fairly firmly grounded in now is doing that, that context switching and what's actual noise. And it's an area where every leader should be able to challenge themselves. It's, it's one of the things that I actively do. I'm highly reflective coming out of meetings, coming out of action plans, not just in terms of my interactions, but entering the meeting or exiting the meeting. How did people feel about that? What questions are they going to ask me? And I really challenge myself to say, like, if I'm them, like, what question am I going to ask as a result of this? And I'm going to go solve that. Whether somebody asked me that question or not, I'm going to go solve that problem and be able to answer it. That helps you start framing your dialogue a lot better.
- [37:22]
Cameron Herold
That's interesting. I like that. So in your prep notes, when, when we'd asked you a couple of questions, you talked a little bit about some questions that you ask yourself on kind of a weekly basis. That seems to be a little bit of a debrief. Like, what went well last week? What didn't go well last week? How often do you do that debrief with your teams? Is it on a project by project basis or is it part of your, you know, your weekly meeting rhythms?
- [37:45]
Brent Hagen
Yeah, it's probably another one of those questions. If somebody's listening to this, they're going to say, like, oh, like, you know, here we go. Every day, every week, every month, every quarter, my teams know exactly what to expect from me. So a lot of companies will call it gimba, you know, for, for the most part. And my approach doesn't change regardless of what team I'm with or what problem we're solving or what industry we're in. Every day, every week, every month, every quarter, what went right? What went wrong? What did we learn as a result about it of it and what are we doing next and how do we know if that's going to work? When you get on that cadence of being able to look at your day, your week, your month, your quarter like that, the sky's the limit in terms of, in terms of your potential, you know, and, and the way in which you're answering those questions and the way in which you're actioning those questions should change with the length of time in which you're reflecting on it as well. Right. If you had a really bad Monday, don't let that influence necessarily the entire month review for what went wrong. Unless you believe that what went wrong on Monday can happen on any given day ever again. Right. If, if the case is like that broke on that day and that can break every day of the month, no matter what, we haven't fixed anything, then we need to action that, we need to do something about it and we need to increase reliability there, you know. And so that's where I really challenge my team to think now my cadence with my existing team, we're doing that every single week, month and quarter, not necessarily every single day.
- [39:37]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, I like that a lot. And I think it also goes back to just coaching individuals that if you start with getting them to tell you what went well, they're more apt to take any of the feedback of where they can improve. And if they get themselves the areas to improve second before you give them the feedback, then they're really apt to learn. Right. They're getting self reflective on their own.
- [39:58]
Brent Hagen
Well, it's just like we talked about, like how do you take critical feedback like missing. This is operations.
- [40:04]
Cameron Herold
Yeah.
- [40:04]
Brent Hagen
This is running a business like this is happening, you know, it like we shouldn't look at this as, as a failure. You know, every time that something goes wrong, we learn something as a result of it. We, we shouldn't be scared of that sort of thing. We shouldn't look at that kind of as the worst possible gift where you know, we're going to get better as a result, like that's absolutely winning and in every, every sense of, of the word, you know. And so when you can reflect on that yourself and be, be critical, you shouldn't be worried about how the rest of the, the world does it because very few companies and, and leaders solve problems that way that religiously and the ones that do are hyper successful, you know. And so everyone should be very encouraged about that approach and that helps you start taking feedback from, from others without taking it, you know, overly critical, being overly critical about it.
- [41:09]
Cameron Herold
I tried I tried covering that in my invest in your leaders training. There's three, three of the modules are really kind of tied together there. One is situational leadership, another's around coaching, and then another is around running the one on one meetings. And the ability to deliver that kind of feedback is critical to people. So, Brent, I'd like you to go back and give yourself some advice. If you were to go back to the younger you, the 21 or 22 year old Brent Hagen starting out in his career, what advice would you give the younger you that you know to be true today?
- [41:34]
Brent Hagen
Say yes a lot. Take on, take on the next project. This is, this is the piece. So I, I do, I do courses with universities pretty often, especially Purdue where I went to school and I'll often talk to like senior level engineers, senior business students. And the question that's always asked, I don't care what school you're at, which audience, it is like, hey, do you have any regrets? And I think it's super easy for a successful executive to be like, yes, I wish I didn't take that phone call. I wish I set my cell phone down on the weekend. I wish, you know, I didn't do X, Y and Z with while not contextualizing the idea that they got to where they are as fast as they are as a result of doing those things, you know, and so there are certainly elements, you know, in, in my, in my life, personal and professional, where it was like I could have, I could have done this better, you know, and how you go and, and execute on something. I talked to you about that a little bit, you know, early in my career, like I was so focused on task management versus building the relational rents that are going to make executing those tasks easier. That led to me having to do more work than I needed to do because I was doing it by force, you know, and not by leveraging the people around me. Like those are the sort of things that people should really reflect on.
- [43:21]
Cameron Herold
Love it. Brent Hagen, Chief Supply Chain Officer for lob. Thank you so much for sharing with us on the Second in Command podcast. Really appreciate the time today.
- [43:30]
Brent Hagen
I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.
- [43:32]
Cameron Herold
That was great.
- [43:36]
Narrator
You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Herald. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com.
- [44:04]
Cameron Herold
SAM.