← The Ops Experts Club Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript37 lines
- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the Ops Experts Club. If you're at all interested in anything we talk about here in this episode, go ahead and check out the description down below and click any of the links there. Or if you just want to know more about us, click the links below. Now on to the episode. Yes, Ops Experts Club coming at you. Hot. Yeah, spicy. How you doing today, my man?
- [00:24]
B
Doing good. Thanks, man.
- [00:25]
A
Thanks, man. Savannah, how are things? How's your day? Break us out of this, man.
- [00:30]
C
Good. Not a man. So. So I can break us out of the man. Yeah. Very, very chill over here. No, no surfer language to be had over in these parts.
- [00:40]
A
The good thing, because you are landlocked by quite a few states. I'm saying, like, you are not a surfer galley long, but not always, right? Because you. They still surfing up in there in that Washington region, right? Even though it's fricking cold and there are sharks that are just, like, fierce there.
- [00:55]
C
There are some crazies who. Who swim year round in Puget Sound and, you know, and. And like to go jet skiing and stuff. I don't understand them, but it happens.
- [01:06]
B
Yeah, it's cold.
- [01:08]
A
When I used to live in Missoula, there was a whole crew that would surf the Clark Fork River. There was a spot where they had put in some, like, water features that created like a. Like a back eddy with some with that would continue to be pulling like a curl. And so they would just swim out to it and they would just surf the curl and they come out of it and surf the curl and come out of it. And I'm like, dude, look at these guys. Dedicated. Two states, landlocked, and they're still surfing it up. It's pretty, pretty ba.
- [01:33]
B
Wow.
- [01:33]
C
And you know, that water, like, never gets warm, so they have to really want it.
- [01:38]
A
Never gets warm. Awesome. Hey, so today I thought we could talk about, you know, we talk a lot about on the show, how to invest in people. Especially when it comes to onboarding, recruiting, all those different things we talk about, you know, Collab team helps clients all the time. We're always in the middle of recruiting projects, helping folks find people to do tech work, to do EA work, to do finance work. I think that's a lot of the things we specialize in things around operations. But something that we don't talk about a ton is how do we develop our people, right? Because I think a lot of times as. As business owners, the visionary will say, we need help, or the people maybe say, maybe the other employees say, hey, we need help with this. And so Visionary is like, great, go and hire. And so we kick off a recruiting project and we go and search out the perfect person based around a job description and all that's very mechanical. Can they do these duties? Do they have this skill set? Have they done it before for big enough names, you know, do we feel like they have the chops? Taryn, you always are really good about putting people through like a gauntlet of tests to make sure. Yeah, this one has been battle tested. They know what they're talking about. What we don't talk about a lot is once you have them on board and maybe you've done some training around just basic job description duties, like what do you do with them then? Like, how do you continue on growing your people? How do you continue to culture them through further onboarding, through further like team development? So I thought we could talk about that a little bit today. Taren, you maybe want to kick us off and tell us what you think about that?
- [03:01]
B
Yeah, I think it's an important step in your company culture to continually invest important to the people. And like you said, it kind of starts at the beginning. An overlooked spot for it is an onboarding just having trainings. People use project management tools and just throw somebody in there without thinking about, okay, what are we going to give them in order for them to learn how to use this project management tool and how we as a company use it as well. Because those are two different things. It's how is it supposed to be used and then how do we use it as a company? So that right there, just starting starting with your onboarding and continuing on to team development. Just having a learning culture pouring into them with budgets too. Giving them budget, hey, if you want to take a course, here's the amount we can offer you per year. Just excellent ideas like that.
- [03:49]
A
You know, I Savannah, maybe you could speak to this a little bit. But I think that sometimes what I've seen is teams or businesses not doing a great job at communicating what is their culture like, what is it about them that makes it unique? Why would somebody want to work here? You know, like they could go pull a tech job anywhere. You know, they could go get hired on at Zapier. I mean they could go, they could, they could do anything. Why would they want to come in underneath a small to medium sized entrepreneurial business that's, you know, either brick and mortar or online only, you know, remote. But I feel like what they need within their onboarding is that development of. No, no, this is why you want to work here. This is what makes us unique. And I found. And Savannah, I know that you have really experienced this. Sometimes we don't even have it written out. Sometimes we're just expecting our people to, like, pick it up by osmosis or like, maybe, hey, consume enough of my content that you get my vibe, and then you'll just kind of pick it up while you're here. And maybe that's true and maybe it's not, but at the same time, leaves a pretty big window for people to kind of come up with their own version of what it is you're trying to communicate to them. And I don't feel like it makes a very good first experience with the company. Svanni, want to speak to that a little bit?
- [04:58]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think especially if a company is, like, running a mile a minute and they're trying to replace someone really quickly and they haven't, like, built kind of their little onboarding, like, system, something that can happen is there's not even enough time really, for the person to, like, consume that information that's really necessary for them to do their job well. So they might be answering customers and trying to solve problems from a place of not really, you know, like you said, like, their own kind of version of what the company is, and you're going to get some wrong answers, and you're going to get things done in a way that you don't really want them done. Yeah, sorry. Puppy, puppy. Interruption there.
- [05:43]
A
Okay, tell me, supposed to be taking a nap. Like, he. Doesn't he know he's supposed to be taking a nap right now? We're. We're. We're live.
- [05:48]
C
He heard me. He heard me talking. So now he's excited. So now he's trying to eat the zipper on my jacket and. And be very much involved. But I've. I've seen it happen in companies where someone is just kind of, like, thrown to it. And then the other thing that happens as part of that, um, which I guess is it's good if you. If the person that you hire is asking more questions than not, because if they're just. If they just go dark and they're just doing their thing and they're not asking you questions and they haven't been onboarded, then you're probably going to have some cleanup that you have to do later. But if they do have to do now, we have squeaking in the background for everybody. It's great.
- [06:25]
A
I love it. It's amazing.
- [06:27]
C
But even if they're great and they do ask questions, which you want them to be if you haven't been able to properly train them, but then you're no longer. You don't have that person that you hired to be the choking point. Now someone else on the team has to be the choking point because you're going to have to answer a thousand questions on like what it is that they're supposed to be doing, how to do it, the proper, you know, like cadence and stuff to do it with to make sure that you are carrying that company culture onto your customer base and so on.
- [06:52]
A
And I think EOS has a great tool, Entrepreneurs operating system from the book Traction by Gino Wickman, something we talked about a lot here on the show. They have a great tool called the vto, which is the Vision Traction Organizer, which I think is a great thing for any company to have. You can find that online, you can find it for free. If you want it from us, you're more than welcome to ask. You can hit us up on any of our socials, just put VTO in the comments or direct message us. The Vision Traction Organizer is great because it gives you a good plotting for how do we roll out culture. But a lot of visionaries haven't even thought about it. Like, okay, so what are our key differentiators? You know, what makes us unique? Like what is our one year goal, our three year goal, our ten year goal? Where are we going? Like if I want to get people going on an adventure with me, I need to get them psyched up, right? Like, because there's probably going to be a lot of things on this adventure that isn't going to be super fun when they're in the middle of it, right? So how do I give them the good energy? How do I give them the good. Atta girl. Attaboy. At the beginning of. No, no, you want to go on this, this is going to be epic because this is uniquely us. And then people can get on board and rally alongside you and really get excited. You know, I think a lot of visionaries start with their most rating fans, you know, so maybe somebody who's already consumed their products or heard them speak or whatever it is to bring them on board. And so those early entry people, they, they probably already get it because they've been tracking with you since the beginning. But what about the people as you come midstream or lad that haven't been tracking with you a long time now? They're just attracted to you because you're a big name and you are attracting key talent. But what makes you different you know, and I think key differentiators in something, you know, and there's all kinds of EOS implementers out there that you could hire to come alongside you and help you create it if you don't want to do that on your own. I know we do some of that here at the CodeLab team, just to integrators, you know, as we come alongside and realize that people haven't pieced that together, we'll maybe help them. We'll lean in a little bit on annual plannings and help them kind of loosely come together with it. But usually the biggest heads up I see that companies haven't put much time into this is that when we go to start recruiting projects, usually we want a job description and we usually want to start it with some sort of vision statement or like, hey, this is us. This is why you want to work with us. And we come to the teams and we say, hey, we'd like to put this out to recruit. Do you have something that we could put in that blurb? And they don't like, they, or they try winging it, you know, and they come up with something and it's like, you can feel, it feels fragmented or like forced. And so I think putting some time in so that you can get people on track, that you can develop them down a road that's uniquely yours. Aaron, what are your thoughts on that?
- [09:17]
B
Yeah, what's the, what's your company's mission? To make money? You know, that's always a classic one.
- [09:23]
A
Right?
- [09:25]
B
Definitely haven't made it that far. I mean, yeah, I totally agree. And that's a great place to start too. And once you can figure out, you know, your mission, your vision, where you want to take everything, then it is key to start pouring into your people like that and then start saying, okay, now this is our vision, this is our mission, this is what we want to invest in, our people and this is the direction we want them to go with us.
- [09:48]
A
Yeah, I think people find in their unique identifiers is so key, even when you're starting to think about who your avatar is. How do I find my avatar? You know, it's not great to get out there and start yelling in the wind, you know, I mean, hoping that you're going to attract the right people. Like Pedro Adeo talks about it a lot, you know, who was a client of ours for quite a few years on. No, no, micro niche down like, and when you begin to micro niche down, you begin to very clearly find out who your people are and then Be a, be a specialist that deals with specifically that, you know, and I, I always use an example he, he had talked about. You know, Pedro is really big into challenges and teaching people how to market through challenges. And just because it's an easy on ramp, it doesn't cost a lot of money. You don't have to run a bunch of ads to it. You can just do it organically through your own socials, Invite people in to take a two day or a three day or five day challenge with you. Meet, consist after day. You're doing it for free, they're consuming it, and pretty much, pretty soon they get addicted to hearing from you every day. And then you make them an offer, a pitch at the end. But one of the people that I always like to talk about, he had a gal who had been just a veterinarian who was trying to grow her veterinarian base. And it's like, well, how, how different can vets be? But this lady began to really specialize in. It was like, like goats and using organic food choices or like some very, very niche down, like specialty medications on goats as a veterinarian. And I'm like, that sounds so freaking niche. But the crazy part about it was she was experiencing all this renewed success because instead of now just shouting out there that she's taking care of animals as an animal doctor, she's niched down and said, hey, this is my specialty. This is what I'm really good at, organics for goats. And so it was like. And when people began to find her, they're like, this is my person. This is what I've been looking for. I was hoping there was somebody out there that really knew what they were talking about in this. And you know, it made it so that she could find quite a big following in it. So I think not being afraid to micro niche down and say, no, no, this is what I'm really good at for this very specific type of people. That's great. Something we've been doing here at the collab team this, this year. I actually just started. It was mentoring, mentoring younger leaders, you know, like we have at the collab team. You know, I, I heard a speaker, I can't even. That sounds terrible. I'm not gonna be able to even quote who it was who said it, but talking about how you're only as strong as your third row, your, your third tier, you know. So like a lot of people think, I think about here at the collab team, you know, we have a leadership team and then we have a grouping Underneath them that I would call secondaries, people that come up underneath those guys. And then underneath that we have a whole nother tier of people that are the doers behind the secondaries and behind the primaries who are our leadership team and that's who our third tier. And I'm actually really impressed with who our third tier is. But he was talking about, man, really investing in that third tier because those are the people that are coming up. And so just this past year I've started doing book club. You know, just started like a mentoring three of the guys on that third tier. I'm just pouring into these guys because those are the future leaders. Like I love my leadership team. I feel like we spend a pretty good amount of time with each other. We, you know, do annual meetings every year or annual planning sessions together. Every year we do bi weekly meetings that are just the leadership team and then we pull the rest of the team into it on the other two weeks. But a lot of times that like next level a couple levels down isn't getting the same kind of attention that your top level is getting. And so I've really enjoyed book club and book club. I know Taryn, you've loved book clubs in the past where that you've been invited in, you've done a lot of them yourself where you take a book, you consume it, you have a conversation around it. And so for me that's what we've been doing is just taking a book, you can read it, you can do the audio, I do audio, listen to it, pick out the pieces that really stick out to you that week, meet together that you know that week and just talk for half hour about the things that stuck out to you, things that stuck out to them and just give them that one to one mentoring time. I feel like that's a great way to invest in people. Aaron, maybe speak to that, maybe some of the ways you've experienced that.
- [13:35]
B
Yeah, book club's awesome. You know, it's getting everybody together and looking at the same topic together but with their own different viewpoints and opinions about it because we're all coming from different places. So it's a fun way to experience the same idea with a group of people and then just kind of share what we took away from it. You know, I love book club.
- [13:56]
A
Super good. You know, we have something here, I mean just a shameless plug. We've got Ops, Experts Academy, you know, which is 35 modules of content, level one, level two, level three, that kind of build on each other. So if maybe you're looking for something and you're like, I don't know where to start. If you want to see your OPS team get better, I would say give them the tools and have conversations about the tools. The nice thing about something like Ops Experts Academy is they can consume it. You can, all of you, watch it come back with thoughts and questions and think about how do we apply this and make our organization better. I think what we try and do here at the Colab Team most is create things that are just easy, right? Enough. Enough of what we do is hard. Like, so try to go out and find a new curriculum that you're going to consume with your team or go through to better the culture of your business. Why don't you just choose something that works, that's out there, you know? And so Ops Experts Academy is something we really believe in here. Whether it's our content or somebody else's content. I think it's always good to have something that you're consum that's leading you towards something you're wanting your team to get better at. I've also noticed the nice thing about a book club is you're able to get at things without having to directly address them as a leader. You know, like the last thing you want is every time you get on a call to have to be telling your people where they're doing things wrong. Like that's, that's not a healthy culture like that. People don't want you critiquing them every time you meet. You know. And I think sometimes the nice thing about a book club is no, no, the author is going to get at that. I don't have to get at that. The author just said that. You know what I mean? And that way it's like you're allowing a third party to speak into the lives of your people and then you can talk at that without you having to talk at them. You know what I mean? Hey, I really appreciated this. This is where I feel like I could do better at that. What are your thoughts on that? And pushing it back and forth. I think having just a third party just helps a lot.
- [15:37]
C
If you keep picking the. Picking the same kind of book though, for your. For your team, they might start getting a little suspicious. Problem.
- [15:47]
A
I definitely think you want to be mindful of books that you're picking for. Sure. Make sure the theme isn't too strong, isn't too much. I love that.
- [15:55]
B
Yeah. And letting people give book club ideas too. That's always been fun.
- [16:01]
A
Recommendations and I would say too empowering your team to do that without you, I don't think it necessarily even always has to be you. You know, I would like to see that kind of blossom even within Colab Team, where different leaders, different people in the organization begin to do book clubs around content that they want, they're interested in, that they would like to learn. Obviously, I would love it to be something that's going to better them as professionals. You know, I think that if they want to read, you know, their own fiction, books on their own time, I think that's great, you know, But I think that something that's going to better them as humans, better them as people, better them as somebody that's going to be able to pull alongside of people. But I think that there's always those opportunities to say, hey, I'd love to see our team get better at this. What's the way we can do that? I think a lot of times visionaries take that all on themselves and they feel this incredible pressure that they've got to be excellent at everything instead of realizing, no, no, nobody expects you to be excellent at everything. The beauty is find another expert that's already covered a topic that you would be edified to learn about as well, and read it out alongside of somebody and have good conversation about it. It's easy, it's simple. You actually engage a different part of your brain because it's not you having content, it's you allowing other people's content to be the source of what you're developing your people in. And I just think it. It just creates a holistic, better experience, I think, when it comes to how we build into teams, because otherwise doing the deal just becomes all you do. And that's just. It's just not very exciting, right? It's not very exciting. Especially, you know, we'll help folks with, let's say, a process like retention, and all they're doing is trying to collect on people who have fallen behind on payments like that. That's not a super exciting job, you know, so how can this person feel connected to the team? How can we make this exciting and enjoyable? I'd also say find ways that you can celebrate team. Right. If you're looking for things in culture where you can celebrate people, like, how can we find rallying points? You hear a lot of people complain about virtual environments and working on virtual teams because you don't have that time around the water cooler is what they call it. I mean, like the office spaces where everybody goes to the kitchen, grabs a cup of coffee or grabs Water at the cooler or is able to wander into people's offices. How can you create those opportunities within your organization in a way that's not forced? And I think that consuming something together and having something like a book club is a really. A really great way to do that.
- [18:17]
B
Yeah.
- [18:17]
C
Another track I've seen that's kind of in a similar vein, but like, a little bit less, like, deadline pressure is I've seen leaders of teams bring up a book that they're really, really enjoying that's like business centric, like in one of the L10s. And then for Christmas that year or birthday or whatever, they send that book out to their team. So when it comes back around again, you know, kind of figuring out, like, what members of the team, you know, it's not as organized. But then there are members of the team who did read through it, you know, immediately or that are picking up pieces, and you'll see them like, chime in, in the zoom chat and stuff on the side of an L10 where they're like, you know, bantering about, you know, what they read in the book that they shared and stuff. So that's kind of another way that's like, maybe a little bit lower pressure if you're not ready to, like, organize a book club with your team. Maybe just gifting your team the content that. That you found really helpful and encouraging them to, you know, find what's helpful for them too.
- [19:09]
B
Yeah, I love that. I think there's some other good ways to equip your team with consumables.
- [19:15]
A
Yeah, I think that probably something I've seen Savannah do that I think she does really well is finds courses that are out there. Finds. Finds content that's out there. You know, I had, you know, Kimberly from the Rainmaker team is great at sending me just things that I see that she's consuming. Just consumables, you know, that she's coming up against and wanting to share with people. And so she'll send me little clips from YouTube videos, I mean, that are like, it's like a nine minute long YouTube. And she'll be like, hey, tune in here around like minute four. He really addresses something that I think you'd really enjoy. You know, just things. I don't think it has to be something so meaty and beefy if, like at every budget, then. Right. Because maybe you've got a large team, you're like, I don't really want to buy something for everybody. And you're able to just give out free content until you're able to. Savannah was being very kind to me because there definitely were some years that I gave out books or gave away books, but wasn't doing book club yet. And so I think that is a kind way of like Savannah saying, hey, I'm glad you kind of elevated us and got away from just giving books. But I do think, like, giving out content to people is really good and then giving them time where they can talk about that. I think all those things add to a culture. I know so many people, they bring in culture experts and they bring in speakers and they bring in keynotes. And a lot of times your people don't need them, need more people preaching at them. I mean, a lot of times they just want that one to one time with their leaders, you know, to develop.
- [20:35]
B
Yeah, I know we've started here at the club to use sometimes some of our monthly huddles, you know, in different. Different categories. And so that's been really helpful because it's. It's a voluntary thing. If you're interested in marketing, just join our monthly marketing, you know, meeting. And we just talk about marketing, you know, whether it's pointed at some specific or it's just questions we have, or it's new things or it's trends, you know, same with a finance. And I feel like that's been good because it's given people an opportunity to learn. They don't necessarily need to know to join the meeting. They can just join just to learn. And I think that's something really easy you can. You can do for your people as well.
- [21:16]
A
Yeah, tech too, right? Like, there are a lot of people that are stuck on tech. So I know the tech huddle has been cool too, to see people who maybe get a little more are more prone to get stuck on tech that can just show up and Ben will just show up or you'll show up or David will show up and they'll just kind of walk people through some of the things they've been going through and let people ask questions or if people have specific questions that become the fodder for the fire the conversation piece. I think that that's. It's another good one, Taryn. Good. I really like the huddles too. I think those have been really cool to watch develop. Awesome, guys. Well, I think. I hope you guys enjoyed Ops Experts. I hope you enjoyed some content around developing your people around, onboarding your people around creating culture. I think it's an important thing beyond just hiring somebody on, but getting them excited to work for you and giving them a way that they can really develop themselves within your organization. So, Taryn, Savannah, thanks so much for joining again this week for OPS Experts. And I will see you guys next week. Yes.
- [22:08]
B
See you later.
- [22:09]
A
See everybody.