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- [00:04]
A
Three questions that help shape transparency. Number one, sharing. What's going on? Hey, we're looking at buying a facility. We're looking at adding this. We're looking at doing that, telling people what that is and then inviting them into being a part. So what's going on? What is the leader thinking about? And that can range from podcasts to I'm concerned about our shipping issues and trying to pull back the curtain on that. And then the last is, what is the leader thinking about you? And keeping really short feedback loops. And one of the things that I think gets really hard for people is they wait to give feedback until performance assessments. And it's weighty and it's heavy and it feels like this really big conversation. It's almost like going to the gym and lifting weights for the first time in five years.
- [00:55]
B
Welcome to the Work for Humans podcast. This is Dart Lindsley. Josh Block became president of his family's medical imaging company when he was only 29 years old, just months after layoffs at the company had shaken trust across the business. Some people he thought were asking, does Josh even know what he's doing? And his answer was, well, he wasn't sure. But he did know what he did not know. And to quote the book, humility isn't passive or weak or insecure. It's courageous. What followed wasn't your regular growth story. It was a shift from what Josh calls the me cycle to the we cycle. Instead of protecting his own position and pushing for performance at any cost, he began living out three commitments. Let's work together, let's be thoughtful, and let's be transparent. And the word thoughtful there doesn't just mean conduct deep analyses. It means let's be thoughtful of each other as humans inside the company. Over time, that leadership approach shaped how people felt at work. They felt safe. They felt seen and successful. And that resulted in a company that grew tenfold to $400 million in revenue. In our conversation, we explore whether leadership alone can truly shape culture, whether performance is the goal or the byproduct, and. And what it really means to believe that people matter at work. All right, if you enjoy the show, please give us a five star rating and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And now enjoy my conversation with Josh Block. Josh Block, welcome to Work for Humans.
- [02:39]
A
Thanks for having me.
- [02:40]
B
First of all, in terms of the show, we're about, I would say 3/4 theorists. And when I mean theorists, I mean, just recently we had a cosmologist on the show. We've had political scientists and we have people from very far away from work, looking back on work, about a quarter of the show is practitioners, because that's the right mix, which is let's talk about ideas, let's talk about how those ideas really land in the real world. And so you've written a book, People Matter at Work. And it's very much a practitioner's view. It's a practitioner's view for practitioners. So it's a leader to leader conversation, interestingly informed by many of the leadership books out there that are more theoretical, but it is very practical. And so I want to talk about your experience of growing from 50 million in revenue to 200 million, of growing from 30 people to 400 people as somebody incredibly, I think, young picking up the job of presidency of block imaging. So let's start at the beginning. What's your business context? Let's just talk for a second about what does block imaging do to the extent that that's going to influence the rest of the conversation.
- [03:57]
A
Just to take us back even a little further, growing up I sold strawberries door to door, worked at Cracker Barrel and just had this interest in business and in commerce and entrepreneurship. And so started a business in college with window washing and all sorts of different labor, power washing and house cleaning, to really employ people in the inner city. And so I began in my 20s to recognize I love work, I love business, and I love people. I could not have said those words at the time, but looking back 20 years later, and then at about 25, I joined our family business, which was in the radiology trade, which is buying and selling imaging equipment around the world, and then became president at 29 in an unexpected fashion. And over the next 15 years, we really continued the evolution from a radiology trade company to a parts and service. And today we have a mobile MRI business. But really everything has been in the healthcare and imaging space over the last two decades.
- [05:00]
B
You went to university for business, you went to business school. Why? What is it about business that just lights you up?
- [05:09]
A
Yeah, I think there's three generations of my grandfather, my dad and myself were in business. My grandfather started a coffee business, coffee roasting, back in the day. And then my dad was in the coffee business. So I don't know. I think some of it's probably in my blood and I think that it's become a unique place to influence people. There's a credibility that comes into play when you're in the business sphere. And so it just seemed like a really unique place to create value, to generate wealth and Ultimately, to serve people.
- [05:42]
B
It's very interesting. Your very earliest work in Muncie really was a community service. In other words, you were creating something even when you were in college, where you saw a big part of the job of business is to create value for the people who work for the business. That's very aligned with the thesis of this show, which is that employees are customers and that they are. And I say they. I shouldn't say they. Actually, I'm very unhappy with the word they in general. I would like it to all be we.
- [06:17]
A
Yeah, sure.
- [06:17]
B
So what I mean is, when we are working for companies and when we are building companies, for those of us at work, we need to be really attentive to what people want. And so you just were thrown into the deep end at 29. You were thrown into the deep end. You became the president at 29. Your father was still there. He was there to advise you, and he'd been running the business for a long time. But one of the things you thought was sort of in the air was, does Josh even know what he's doing? Is one of the quotes. Did you?
- [06:47]
A
Yeah. Yes and no. I think there was more that I didn't know than I did. And so I talk in People Matter at work about forced humility. Well, I'd like to think it was a choice. It really, in many ways wasn't. To have stepped up to the microphone on that Monday morning and said, oh, yeah, I've got a plan, and this is what we're going to do, and this is where we're going to go would have been a disaster. And so, yeah, what did I know? I knew this idea that work was a privilege. Leadership is the stewardship of working people. And so I had some of these deep within my identity. But when we talk about, like, tangible strategy and where we would go as an operation and as a team, I'm thankful that Five Dysfunctions of a Team. That book fell in my lap at the perfect time and really gave me some direction. It was like a compass on the dashboard. That was incredibly helpful. But if you were to ask me to take on one side of the spectrum all that I knew, and the other side all that I didn't know, the latter side would have a whole lot more on the scale than the former.
- [07:50]
B
Yeah. When I was reading it, I was thinking that the right question to ask at that time is, does Josh know what he doesn't know? And one of the things that you made really clear in the book is that you did know what you didn't know. And that's the humility that you're talking about.
- [08:05]
A
And humility, as I talk about in the book, I mean, there's this beauty of me bringing my skills to the table and yet someone else bringing their skills to the table. And in my awareness, which has only grown over time, that if I were to walk through the facility today, which There are about 200 plus people here in Lansing, Michigan and about 200 nationally, so we have about 425. There are people in this building and in this organization that are doing things that I couldn't do in 10 lifetimes if my family depended on it. No way. I mean, things in engineering and things in finance and things in information technology and all that sort of thing. And so this humility of not just appreciating my own skills, but appreciating theirs, not just appreciating my own weaknesses, but appreciating theirs, I think that is such a beautiful place to lead from, is this idea of looking at others and being totally stunned with who they are and what they're capable of. I think is just a powerful reflection of humility.
- [09:07]
B
We're going to walk through your leadership approach and how it leads to ultimately trust, ownership and generosity in an organization. The story starts though, I think with saying what your approach is, the opposite of which is the me cycle. What do you describe as the me cycle? And we're going to get to the we cycle that leads to trust, ownership and generosity.
- [09:30]
A
Yeah, I love you mentioned that we instead of they because language matters. Both the me cycle and the we cycle is this reverse engineering of what we're seeing and experiencing. So when we look at the Gallup surveys and the disengagement and the way people talk about work as more of a have to than it get to. And so I just designed the me cycle. As in most organizations, the bosses, they begin setting the culture by looking out for themselves in pursuit of performance. They just load on tons of pressure and they're focused on their own position, their own prestige, their own pay, their own power. And then employees, because they respond to that by really returning the favor, they do the same. Right. They look out for themselves. And so bosses and employees, everyone looking out for themselves. And when you do that, I have a 16 year old right now. Right. So whenever you have teenagers, they tend to live a little bit more in the me cycle until they develop into interdependence where they begin looking out for others. And so if you look at a business or any marriage where everyone looks out for Themselves. You can imagine where it ends. Right?
- [10:36]
B
It was interesting. One of the writers that you didn't mention was Adam Grant.
- [10:41]
A
Yes, I'm a fan of Adam Grant. I just, I didn't mention it. I actually, I think somewhere in. People matter at work. But maybe not. Maybe not.
- [10:49]
B
Maybe, maybe you did, maybe you did. But he has a book, Give and Take. So most of the companies that I've worked for have been 50,000 plus, and I think the largest was 180,000. And first of all, not everybody in an organization of that size is going to be in the we cycle. And also you don't know them well enough in many cases to know whether or not they are. And so there's always this sneaking suspicion that some proportion of the people that you're working with are, are on their own side. And the biggest concern is that the leaders of the company might be on their own side.
- [11:25]
A
Sure, sure.
- [11:26]
B
That is absolutely one of the largest concerns. And so let's get into the we cycle, how you arrived at it and what the components are.
- [11:36]
A
The shift from the me cycle to the we cycle starts with a name change. So the boss becomes the leader. That's a tantamount shift. And then the employee becomes the team member. I actually, personally, nothing against it, nothing wrong, but we don't use the word employee or we do it as rarely as possible in handbooks and things like that, because I really think that team member expresses we and does so. Less of a us them mentality. So we have team members and we have leaders. And there were three T's that I came across. And the three T's, it's serendipitous that they all started with T. And that was a gift. But the first was this idea of together is that because there was so little that I knew and so much I didn't know, and because most of the leaders were older and more experienced than I was, together was an absolute necessity. And when I talk about together, it's this idea of sharpening any decision of consequence. And if that's an early stage decision, if that's 97% baked in, we need some help sharpening the last 3% is how do we invite others into speaking in and weighing in on decisions. That first T was probably the earliest one and I wouldn't have been able to name it until five or eight years into living it out. And then the second t was this word, thoughtful. And at 29, and those insecure questions of did I just get the job because of my last name? Do I have what it takes. Do people really think I'm credible? The word thoughtful was deep in my belly. And a lot of years later I looked up the definition of thoughtful. And it's careful consideration for the needs of others. And so it's very we cycle esque. Right. It's focused on the other person. Because sometimes we as leaders diminish the significance of a decision on someone else. And frankly, we would have cared about it 10 years ago in our career. Once you become president, titles aren't that important anymore. Right. Because you have the apex title and yet there was a time in your career where moving from team lead to manager or manager to director or director to vice president, those are all meaningful things. And so this thoughtful, careful consideration of the needs of others on all sorts of decisions, big and small, really was the second T and then the last was transparency is instead of saying how little can I share with the people so they can do their jobs, entrusting them and recognizing that if I want them to act like owners, I should treat them like owners. And that's by sharing absolutely as much information as I can, from financial performance all the way across to performance feedback, which is something that I talk a fair bit about in the book.
- [14:17]
B
I have specific questions about each of those together. Thoughtful and transparency, first of all, together sounds like it could be slow, everybody working together to figure things out all the time. Might not be as fast as just you making a decision.
- [14:31]
A
Yeah. Walk through our organization. I don't think you'll see a lot of organizations with 400 people who are making calls quicker. I'm not talking about democracy if we have dictatorship on one side and democracy on the other. What I'm talking about is when I'm getting ready to launch an idea. Yeah. I think of who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Who's your hot phone that you're going to call? And just I'm going to talk you through this and you're going to give some objective feedback to what it's going to be like to be on the other side, given that you have a lot of experience. I'm not asking random people. I'm not asking people who, I don't care what they think. I'm asking someone who I think has a unique perspective either inside of the company or outside of the company. And I will tell you, leaders spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning up issues that could have been fixed on the front side. And so that slow is smooth, smooth is fast. I think that when we bring people in early to ideas and then we eventually, six weeks later, launch something. We actually get to carry the momentum forward from the decision as opposed to dealing with the 49% of people who are disagree or maybe don't even disagree. They just don't understand.
- [15:40]
B
One of the things I really liked about that is I think that there are a lot of leaders who ask for advice, but they already know the answer and they stick with their answer. And you told several stories where you changed your mind, where you had an idea of what was the right idea, and when you heard the other perspectives, you saw it differently.
- [16:00]
A
Yeah, yeah. Sometimes the best thing you can do in leadership is not do something. So you're going to spend all of this energy launching something and someone looks at you and goes, why are you doing this? You're doing it because you're compulsively active or because you're bored or because you want to feel like you're in control. And I'll look at some of our leaders and just say, like, what if we never talked about this again? And so sometimes when we ask people for feedback, it sharpens. And that's what most of the stories in my life would be. Just that last little touch of frosting on the decision that really made a big impact. And when we do it together, it's also iterative, is that people can look at me and they can say, wow, we made a last second change and did it go better? Did it go worse? And I will just tell you that when I use that definition, sharpening any decision of consequence, there's not a lot of stories where I walked in the room, thought we were going to move in one direction, and we went the entire opposite direction. That certainly can happen. But I think the reason I use the word sharpen is because it's just that last little tweak. That's the difference between hitting the bullseye and missing the whole target.
- [17:08]
B
That's very interesting. One of my favorite points in the book was when somebody in an all hands asked you essentially what your pet peeves were and you said failing alone. When I see people failing alone, that's one of the most troublesome things.
- [17:24]
A
I think that was around 2013 or 14, where smartphones were ubiquitous and we had people around the world. And a lot of the decisions we're making with an MRI has helium inside of it and so very, very expensive. And so just there are times where you would stop and we have made a mistake and it was made in a vacuum. And it was like when I look around the organization, so many other people had so much knowledge that if five of us come together or two of us come together and we have a pretty clear perspective of what's going to happen and we miss the mark, we can look at each other and just say, hey, we're imperfect and we move on and we bite the bullet. And there's a cost to that. But when someone makes a decision in a vacuum, there's a cost, not just to them, but to the team. It's just one of the micro behaviors that I really struggle with the word thoughtful.
- [18:14]
B
When I read the book, I'd missed a nuance that you just said about it. And the nuance is it's not analytical. It's not purely analytical. It has an analytical part to it. But what you're really talking about is thoughtful in the sense of thinking about others. And that's a much deeper statement, I think, than think it through.
- [18:36]
A
Sure. Yeah. Nobody looks to make haphazard decisions. Right. So when you say use careful consideration. Oh, yeah. Thanks so much, Josh. Can I get my $25 for the book back? Because everybody tries to use careful consideration. Consideration. But when you stop. And even there are times where with my leaders, as we continue to try to cascade the we cycle through our entire organization is how would you have felt 10 years ago if you were in the person's position that you're getting ready to make a decision that's impacting, if you were to actually turn the tables and it was you and the look on their face. It's very interesting. Oh, wow. I would not like it. But I don't have time to slow down and change my path. And I'd say, I don't think you have time not to.
- [19:19]
B
Just before you became president, block imaging had some layoffs. How did that affect you as a leader?
- [19:27]
A
I took over as president about four months after there was roughly a 10% layoff of the organization. And the negative side was that I was dealing with broken trust shortly upon becoming the president of the organization. The positive side was I understood at a much deeper level the security that's created in work that the tumult that happened during these layoffs, not just for the people who departed, but for the people who were still here. Because the natural question they were asking is when will it happen again? So I just think it was one of those decisions. Well, I have apologized to a number of those people over the last 15 years. It was something that I learned a ton through both my facilitation of that decision before becoming president and ultimately just seeing the broken trust and the real cost to that decision.
- [20:23]
B
And it felt to me like it hurt you reading the book. It felt that way.
- [20:28]
A
Yeah. We live in a small community here in Lansing, Michigan. We're a capital city. But in a family business, especially the size that we are at the time, you have relatives and you have people who are in community together, and kids go to school together and people go to church together. And so I think that it was a situation that continued to surface that I'll run into these individuals every now and again. And so that kept it at the forefront. It was a decision that, if you read the story, I was facilitating the leadership team as a sales rep. And there was a lot of years that I just kind of saw myself on the outside of the room, that I had just facilitated a conversation, and I didn't really make the decision. And only years later, and as you grow as a leader, do you recognize that, well, it may not have been 98% my responsibility. There was a chunk of it that, had I asked a different question in that moment, it would have led to a different decision, and it most certainly would have led to a different season. For me to lead the next stage
- [21:27]
B
of the company through the third T is transparency. What are the data elements of transparency? What's contained there?
- [21:36]
A
If you ask a thousand people in the United States or around the world, what's their number one challenge? Whether it's a company of 50 or a company of 50,000, they are going to say communication. Huge percentage of the time, it's there's an exchange of information. And while people may not always have all of the information that they need or maybe that they want, transparency is the antidote. And it really does solve so many issues. And from a transparency perspective, from macro strategy all the way to micro feedback, the reason why we chose to lead with transparency is it's just how I wanted to be led that I thought, hey, if I want to be a leader worth following, I should exhibit the traits and behaviors and characteristics and attitudes that I would want if I were following someone else. And so that led to transparency, and it's really drawn. You mentioned Adam Grant earlier, Brene Brown. The words clearest kind. One of our core values has those words included in it. And, man, I really think those three words pack a real punch when it comes to transparency.
- [22:41]
B
I really want to open up the box of transparency. So, like, on one end, there's kind of a radical candor or a compassionate candor version of transparency. We're going to communicate with each other clearly about our expectations for each other and how we're living up to each other's expectations. That's one version of it. Another version is we're going to open up the general ledger and we're going to make this a public document that we can use so that everybody understands the financials of the company. It can mean something sort of in the middle, which is we tell the truth to each other.
- [23:13]
A
Sure, sure.
- [23:14]
B
Where on the scale do you land in terms of that transparency?
- [23:18]
A
I would take d all of the above. And the only thing that I would warn people from is there's probably some personal and private information. You've got health issues in a company, you've got individual performance issues, you have some owner's box issues, you maybe have some legal or some confidentiality issues. But other than that, whether it be the financials. So there are three questions that I talk about in the book, and this is probably some of the content that I learned and reverse engineered later in the writing is three questions that help shape transparency. Number one, sharing what's going on from the biggest picture possible is, hey, we're looking at buying a facility, we're looking at adding this or we're looking at doing that. We follow Patrick Lencioni's six questions from the Advantage. And one of the questions, the fifth question, is what's most important right now? It's called a thematic goal. And so we have six to nine month thematic sprints where our leadership team focuses exclusively on that, telling people what that is and then inviting them into being a part. What's going on? What is the leader thinking about? And that can range from podcasts to I'm concerned about our shipping issues, I'm concerned about receivables, I'm concerned about, you know, whatever that is. I'm excited about the growth we're experiencing in our parts area. And so that's what the leader is thinking about and trying to pull back the curtain on that. And then the last is what is the leader thinking about you? And keeping really short feedback loops. And one of the things that I think gets really hard for people is they wait to give feedback until performance assessments, or they wait to give feedback until the fifth time. And it's weighty and it's heavy and it feels like this really big conversation. And when we shorten those feedback, it's. It's almost like going to the gym and lifting weights for the first time in five years and how sore you're going to be for the next six days. You're not going to be able to put A fork to your mouth. But when you do little weights or you do consistent lifting, we grow feedback delivering muscles, they grow feedback receiving muscles and vice versa. And we actually create a culture where feedback is desired because growth is central to who we are.
- [25:34]
B
I like that analogy of weights. One of the challenges I've faced with transparency is, is that oftentimes what you need to be transparent about is unknowns. And so it's one thing to say you as a leader have knowledge. I'm a team member. I want you to tell me all your knowledge. And if you do that consistently, I will assume that that's everything. But there's this world of unknowns where if you are transparent about the unknowns, it can just increase uncertainty in the organization. I'm not sure, honestly, if you face that working in a large organization, a lot of the unknowns are lack of transparency from other parts of the organization, especially upward. So you don't know what's going on in the decision making in other parts of the organization. And so you have to say, I don't know, we may be reorged or we may not be, and there may be layoffs or there may not be. And just opening up the door to the unknowns can be destabilizing.
- [26:37]
A
Yeah. And I think in any of these situations, when you expand it out to a culture of 50,000 people, you begin to have micro cultures within them. And so I would say, and I talk about to be careful to compare people's situation to my situation, because it's different industries and different sizes and different life cycles and different ages and different types of leaders. But instead of comparing which is riding in a bike next to someone, you can actually draft to slide behind someone else and have our story encourage and inspire you along the way, recognizing you could actually be in a hospital setting, you could be a part of an organization that's fairly unhealthy, and you could still create a micro culture in the radiology department or in the cardiology space or oncology, there are cultures within cultures. And even in our team with more than 400, there are people who are not living out the we cycle. There are leaders who don't get it fully. And it's probably the one thing that keeps me awake at night when I think about scale. But this idea, I would just encourage people that your circle of concern and your circle of influence, you know, you're always choosing how you grow them and manage them and what you focus on. As a leader, you cannot control what's happening at headquarters or you cannot control what's happening in communications. But what you can control is the controllables, the things that you know. You can be transparent around what you know, and even there's transparency around what I don't know. It's beauty in sitting down and saying to your team, I don't know what the senior leadership team is thinking about this. And so we're going to continue operating in such a way with what we know until we're given more information.
- [28:17]
B
In the book, you identified three pitfalls. One of them was comparison, which is essentially obstacles people throw up to say, I can't do what you're doing, Josh. My situation's really different from yours. And to some extent that strikes me as an agency problem, which is, do you find when you talk about this, that there is a proportion of your readers or listeners who are quick to say why it can't happen?
- [28:50]
A
Well, sure, there's going to be that anything visionary is going to have the cynic. I would say that the thing that has stood out the most as I talk about the we cycle and really talk about people and performance, because both matter. This isn't just the soft, cushy stuff. I find that the men have the hardest time grabbing onto both of those. How do I care for people and care for performance? I'd like to keep them separate because if I kind of dehumanize the person, I can then drive performance without a lot of worry. My main focus is my family, and these people are cogs in a wheel I do appreciate. And one of the things that I see when in engaging with women leaders is they can more quickly. Oftentimes it's a generality, but they can oftentimes grab on to care for people. It's native to who they are and also moving an organization forward. And so, yeah, I would say that that's something that stands out. When people compare, the first question that gets asked is, but, Josh, what about performance? And I'd say, well, that is like if I said to you, it's really important that you breathe. And someone said, what about blood flow? And I'd say, yeah, of course, without blood flow, nothing's going to happen in the body. Right? They're both important.
- [30:09]
B
It's one of the main fallacies, I think, in thinking in general is that there are certain causal loops. And everybody wants to say one end of the causal loop is the causation, but it's a causal loop. It's a complete boondoggle. That discussion you were just talking about, which is which end of the loop is really responsible for. It's a loop. And so you. I'm going to get into deeper and deeper questions, by the way. So I want to talk about the we cycle. Structurally, the three T's land under what the leader lives out. The next part is how team members feel. Team members, because of what the leader is living out, feel safe, seen, and successful. And then as a result, the team responds with trust, ownership, and generosity. Many of the people who have influenced your thinking are I o psychologists. One of the troubles I have with IO psychologists is it can be summarized as, what state of mind do I need to get you into to be productive for me?
- [31:12]
A
Sure.
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B
And the biggest problem with that for me ethically is, is if my objective is be productive for me and I find out that I can do it by treating people poorly, that would be okay.
- [31:28]
A
Sure.
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B
And so what I want to explore is, is there a set of values under leader lives out together, thoughtful and transparent, that is deeper than how the team responds.
- [31:44]
A
The mission of our organization and the title of the book is People Matter. So I mean that everything is drawn. These three T's are not how to manipulate people to get what you want. They're not how to drive shareholder wealth. They're not primarily focused on cannibalizing the people. The three T's are an embodiment of our belief that people matter more. Performance matters, puppies matter, cars matter, boats matter, houses matter, all those sorts of things. But this idea that when we start with people matter. So yesterday I found out one of our team members, there was a really tragic situation that happened in our city on February 13, just a couple of days ago. And it just so happened that the police and the whole situation ended up on one of our team members front yards. And so one of our leaders reached out to me yesterday and he said, would you help me walk through how you see this situation and how you would support this person given the fact that they've had a traumatic experience this week. When I think about the embodiment, the walking out, the short answer to your question is if you believe that people matter, this is not a book to teach you how to manipulate people to get what you want. This is actually how we take an intention. Because when you ask leaders if they care for their people, they oftentimes say they do. Now how do we embody it well?
- [33:08]
B
So I think importantly, that's something you might do for your neighbor who's not in your organization. In other words, it is independent from the business cycle that People Matter is a more global value. Set than the company itself. Do you think this is a hypothetical? May not be able to answer it. Do you think that together thoughtful and transparent can be effectively achieved cynically? And so I've had somebody whose book you would love, by the way. Kim Clark and his two kids wrote a book, and it's called Leading through, and it's about the difference between power over and leading through people. One of the things he said is that if you pretend to care for the people in your organization, everybody can smell hypocrisy a mile away. And I'm wondering how you feel about that. Again, it's a hypothetical, but do you think it can be done cynically?
- [34:10]
A
It's absolutely true what was said there. And every team member who joins Block Imaging reads leadership and self deception. And it basically highlights this idea that people know what you're thinking or what you feel about them before you've said anything. And so I would say that there's a little bit of a both and one. People are going to see your true intentions over the long haul. And the good news is for someone who's genuine and heartfelt, they can make a mistake and they can recover. They can apologize, they can actually restore the relationship and move forward with more trust than was there before. There's also the idea that you could embody the three T's and grow to believe them more and more. So your cynicalness would actually change and you could grow to become a true believer. I like to think of that as a possibility, but it is absolutely impossible to fake together. Transparent and thoughtful. Thoughtful by its definition, is care for other people together, is by its definition, refining ideas together. And if you're just there to use people, you're not really going to oftentimes think very highly of their ideas. And then transparent. The only way that you're oftentimes transparent in most cases is to honor the other person.
- [35:23]
B
That's great. Another point on transparent is in your mind. Is it transparency about information, or is it transparency about what's in your heart?
- [35:32]
A
I think it's all of the above. I think the transparency ranges from I'm concerned about the way that you interacted with that customer. I'm concerned about the way that you're treating your team. I'm concerned that you're working too hard. I'm concerned that you actually, your calendar is not sustainable and you're not approachable to the people you lead all the way across to. As I was walking in the door just before this podcast, someone who is a team member knows my daughter so my daughter's almost 19 years old, and she has just gone to college. And so this team member, Allie, asked, how's Annalise? And so I got to share something that was going on with Anneliese this last weekend. And so that spans the whole spectrum. And how much a deeper connection do we have once we really start to bring family into the picture?
- [36:24]
B
One more question about these three, and then we're going to go on to Safe Scene and successful. I just had Elaine Howard Eklund on the show, and she speaks about faith at work. She writes about it. She's a sociologist at Rice University. You went to a Christian liberal arts college. Would you say that faith has any role in the foundation of People Matter? I mention it in part because Kim Clark developed his philosophy of work in part by speaking to the elders of his church.
- [36:57]
A
Sure.
- [36:58]
B
And it can create a framework that's bigger than the company.
- [37:02]
A
It's a great question. And faith really is the foundation of everything for me. It's where this idea that people and their value is really driven from. And so it's been a powerful expression of both authentic to who I am as a person and what I believe about God and what I believe about people. But it also is accessible to people. Accessible and safe to people who maybe see the world differently than I do. And so that's my deep desire. And that kind of takes us into the safe scene and successful space. Right.
- [37:34]
B
Let's move into that space. Just a parenthesis. I was raised without any faith, so I was raised without religion. This is one of the themes of the show that I'm starting to explore. I have also a scholar on Islamic business who's going to come on the show. It's going to be very interesting.
- [37:49]
A
The beautiful thing about the faith side of things for us is. And it's very hard because when people grow and they become leaders in our organization and someone says, well, they're a person of faith, I would say, whether or not you want to say they're a person of faith, they are someone who believes in a world bigger than themselves. They do not believe themselves to be the center or the gun safe of the living room. They are orbiting around a larger reality than themselves. And that does happen to overlap well with People Matter just inherently.
- [38:23]
B
Let's move into Safe scene and successful. I think we understand safe and psychological safety because of Amy Edmondson. Seen is something that I think is so important, but what it is and how it's created, I think some of it is. And this is partially based on your book is asking people what they think and listening to them and changing your mind. But what else is there in seeing.
- [38:48]
A
Yeah, seeing people as whole people. I think that we expect people to sometimes take a phone call about work at 8 o' clock at night, but we don't think they're bringing their home life into work. The situation I shared earlier about the traumatic situation that happened in the person's front yard, one of my favorite questions. It's drawn from the coaching habit and it starts every one on one I've done for at least a decade is what's on your mind? And Tuesday at 9am what is on your mind? And it is a beautiful openness to I'm not just seeing you as someone who can move something from A to B for me or someone who can accomplish a task. Sometimes they'll say, my daughter has a regional soccer game tonight or my son's birthday party or my mother just had a bypass surgery. Man. When we can see people beyond what they can do for us into who they really are as a human being with all sorts of needs and wants and desires and hopes and fears and challenges, I think that something really, really powerful starts to happen.
- [40:01]
B
On Work for Humans, we've been exploring the principles of multi sided management, which is the belief that work is a product that every company designs, builds and delivers to employees. Along the way, people started asking how they could put these ideas into practice. So I founded the work design firm Elevenfold to help your company create the kind of work that makes teams feel alive and engaged instead of dead and dull so you can reduce turnover and build commitment. We're doing something revolutionary here. Learn more@elevenfold.com that's 11fold.com it's easier to see the people who report directly to you than it is to see the people who report to them and the people who report to them. How do you manage the depth of your organization? And has it gotten a lot harder as you grew?
- [40:56]
A
It's certainly more difficult the values that have been unearthed from me and together with our executive team and Jason Crawford, who we were co Presidents actually for 15 years together before he stepped forward as CEO and I've begun the launch of People Matter at Work. But it is more difficult to invite people into the values that were unearthed in me. However, the goal is to start with a strong organizational identity with really clear values. And when we do that, we begin to become a magnet that draws people who want to grow toward that and repels people who don't. And then we also promote people based on Those values. So we just had an ALTAM meeting last Thursday and someone asked the question. We're a question asking culture. We take questions in every meeting we ever do. And there were two ways for someone to expand their influence in our organization. One is excellence in their role as a technician. The second is embodiment of our organizational identity. So excellence and embodiment that you can excel in your role, but if you don't think that people matter, if you don't walk in, honor, integrity, growth, if you don't exhibit transparent, thoughtful together, you will not take on more influence and you will not be promoted in this organization. And that's one of the differences between our organization and lots of others. Where they take the best salesperson, put them into a leadership role, and all of a sudden you build a culture that's very different, built by your rainmaker.
- [42:27]
B
There's a difference between seeing people and people feeling seen. What has made you feel seen in life and is there a difference? Are they the same?
- [42:40]
A
I think that it's one of the reasons I like the Platinum Rule better than the Golden Rule is trying to understand people not treating you as I'd like to be treated, but treating you as you'd like to be treated. In our industry, we have a lot of engineers, so a lot of field service engineers who fix ct scanners and MRIs and mammography and X ray and all those systems. What drives them is different than what drives me for them. My understanding of field service engineers over the course of my career is they want to be appreciated for their knowledge. They love learning. The currency of their life is knowledge. If you said, hey, I'm going to give you a pair of tennis shoes or I'm going to give you two credit hours to go learn at a technical training institute. I mean, these people are voracious learners. And so I think that when I think about seeing other people, it's understanding them, knowing what is important to them, and then ultimately seeing them in that space or in that place versus what I like to be seen by.
- [43:41]
B
Do you have an example of that?
- [43:43]
A
So I was talking with our VP of communications yesterday and she has a wonderful family and they have some unique challenges. So I just ask her about her son and his favorite restaurant these days. I knew a while ago his favorite thing was pancakes. And I said, is it still pancakes? And she said, no, it's right now it's a Happy Meal. Right now it's Chick Fil A and gave a couple other options. And I think that there's two elements to this one is actually knowing her family at a deeper level, understanding the things that are going on in her life. And then also it creates an absolute alley oop of an opportunity to provide gift cards or to send dinner to their house or whatever it is. And so that's just an example that came to mind that just through the course of business. So the people who say, like, I don't have time to care. I have too much on my plate. This was just through the course of a normal conversation. And a lot of times these moments of safe seeing and successful or transparent, thoughtful, and together we're talking about 30 second moments.
- [44:45]
B
Yeah. I have a quick story about John Chambers. I don't think I've told this before on the podcast Friend of Mine. Honestly, the real story is he pulled up at a urinal next to John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco Systems, and he was like, I should say something, hi or something. And so he thanked him for his work in dyslexia because John Chambers was dyslexic. And he'd done a lot of work toward that. He said, because my son is dyslexic. And John said to him, talk to my people. I'd like to talk to your son. And he spoke to my friend's son on the phone for 30 minutes. Company had 100,000 people in it at the time, or at least 80,000. And so quite amazing.
- [45:24]
A
I love that.
- [45:25]
B
It was very good. As a leader that way. Incredibly good. You have to have a great memory, it seems to me. And if you care, you probably are better at memorizing, at remembering.
- [45:36]
A
Sure. And that moment for him is it was both strategic from a retention perspective and all that sort of stuff, but it was also authentic. I love those stories. And you're not going to do everything for everyone. It's not every urinal moment is not going to turn into a half hour conversation with a young person. But I just think the book was actually the initial title before People Matter at Work was Momentous Leadership. And it evolved to People Matter at Work because that's our mission. And it just felt like it was more proper. But the thing I love about Momentous Leadership is it's this big impact that's rooted in the word moment, which is this brief point in time. And it's drawn from Chip and Dan. He's the power of moments is like we humans have the ability to architect, to orchestrate, to author moments. And it's a moment just like that that I bet you that CEO he didn't do it once. He didn't do it seven times. It was just part of who he was. And Sometimes it took 30 minutes, and sometimes it took 20 seconds. Sometimes it was a handwritten note. Sometimes it's a voicema and I send a text message. But when it's actually just flows out of who you are and your identity as a leader, I do a keynote I'm leading from identity. It really becomes incredibly powerful.
- [46:51]
B
I had to look up momentous. It's an event of great importance or significance, especially in its bearing on the future.
- [46:57]
A
I love it.
- [46:58]
B
It's nice.
- [46:59]
A
Love it.
- [46:59]
B
It's nice. I like the tie to moment. Move on to how the team responds. The team responds with trust, ownership, and generosity. I'll say one thing is that trust in particular is one of those things that you have to be incredibly consistent in your behavior because trust can be lost. It's lost once, and it's incredibly hard to get back. And so there's together thoughtful and transparent, which creates teams who feel safe, seen and successful, which leads to trust, ownership, and generosity. I think my first question is, you give so much of your attention and your mind to the people in your organization. Do you feel burned if they don't appreciate it?
- [47:47]
A
Yeah, it's a good question. I think in the early days, there were times where we did something generous, whether it be hams at Easter or bonuses. And the first time you do it, there's more appreciation and then entitlement starts to set in. And I think that right now in this season of life, getting ready to turn 45 is I'm focused on who I am as a leader and not doing it for the celebration. I know that they are expressing their appreciation for the culture we've created by caring for customers and by working hard and taking risks and learning and doing all sorts of incredible things. It just might not come in the form of a thank you or as much graciousness, and that's okay. Right now we have a team of people who are doing a great job moving this business forward every single day. And I probably take that as the thank you for the fostering a culture where they feel safe, seen and successful, where people bring their best, you know?
- [48:40]
B
Yes. And I agree with that, which is that you're not doing it for you. It's still true that you can feel a bit of a twinge if it doesn't come back in some way, but ultimately you're doing it not for you. You're doing it for we.
- [48:57]
A
If you live for the praise of men, you'll die by their Criticism, that's something that I'll be spending the rest of my life learning. But ultimately that my response is my responsibility. And right now with a 19, almost 19 year old and 16 year old is inviting them into that is live out of who you are. Irregardless of people's response.
- [49:21]
B
It's something that I've said about being a middle manager is that if you really want to do the right thing, you have to not want what they have to give you. And really what I'm saying is that so much of the structure of companies is around we'll give you more money or we'll give you a promotion if you do these things. And you have to keep yourself independent of that because they can't see all that you can do. In other words, there are going to be parts of your job that are beyond what are visible to management. And so to some extent you have to detach yourself from the extrinsic motivations and focus on the bigger thing.
- [49:59]
A
Yeah, I think starting with intrinsic, the power, the prestige, the pay, those things tend to flow with influence. And the challenge in our culture is when you look at short term returns. Oftentimes you can game your way to the other side of a quarter, to the other side of a fiscal year. But the high tide races all ships that over the long haul, the people who are faithful, who care for their people, they will retain, they will create, they will take risks and they will accomplish things that those who are looking at 90 day cycles just won't. In some companies, that's going to be a good environment to do it in. In some companies it's not.
- [50:38]
B
I can't remember if you use this word in the book, but one of your team members did. And by the way, one of the great things about the book is that it's just shot through with essentially stories from team members talking about their experiences at Block Imaging, how they feel like it's different from every other company they've worked for, why they feel it's different, with specific examples of why it makes the book very much a we production as opposed to a me product. I love that and that's very nice.
- [51:08]
A
Best compliment I've heard this week.
- [51:10]
B
Yeah, and so what this one team member said is if I have to sum it up, I'd say people matter. Culture at Block is born from love, real love. That's what makes it different and that's what makes it worth being part of. And I can't remember if you used the word love. It's something that I Asked Fred Reichelt, who invented the Net promoter score and customer loyalty, and he's all about, love your customer. And I said, should leaders love their team members? And he said, yes. And so did you say it? I can't remember. Did you use the word in the book? And if not, did you think it was just too much?
- [51:52]
A
Yeah, I mean, we obviously just came out of Valentine's Day. It kind of has romantic implications. And so the word probably that resonates most. Although I do agree with love, I really do think that the way we get to trust. If I were to define trust today is, will this person look out for me, that if I wasn't in the rooms that people are talking about me in, even if I didn't know a decision, would I trust that they have the best interest of the team and our customers and all that sort of stuff? But that really is rooted in love. The word that we use that just. I don't know if it's. Maybe I'd say a professionalization of love would be the word. Honor is. One of our core values is honor. And so we live in an industry where people are critiquing customers and complaining about competitors. And so instead of being a world that preaches tolerance, like, oh, I just want to tolerate the people around me and the choices they make and the beliefs they hold, what does it look like to actually activate it into going out of our way to honor people is probably our version of love.
- [52:54]
B
I think that's a good word. I mean, the key element of it is, I want good for your own sake. I want good for you for your sake. And I think both of them capture that.
- [53:05]
A
And maybe as I get older, I think of, like, becoming a grandparent. And when we have this podcast conversation in a couple of years, I'll be like, I really like the word love. I think that one actually captures it as I get older. But for right now, I'd probably use honor more. I love that our team uses love in their keeping it real sections.
- [53:23]
B
Yes. Yeah, no, that's right. That's great. And it's tricky writing a business book if it has sort of heart signs over it.
- [53:31]
A
Sure.
- [53:31]
B
You worry you won't be taken as seriously. This is a small thing, but one of the get real sections or keep it real sections included somebody mentioning a book club inside the company. Was that a formal thing that was created and what were the books? You may not have even known about it.
- [53:50]
A
Yeah, I don't know about that specific situation. Over the years, we've had book clubs where people meet and walk through a book. And sometimes it's been aspiring leaders, sometimes it's been new leaders, sometimes it's been women in the workplace. I think that the book club that's mentioned there is some women who gathered together and moved through books over the course of seasons. But I don't know the specific situation. It was not organized or orchestrated at a company level.
- [54:15]
B
One of the challenges I face as somebody who talks all the time about great management is my memories of my shortcomings and failures as a manager. I had a lot of good things. I'm not saying I didn't, but there were times. It's a tricky thing about writing a book like this because does it bring that up for you? It's impossible to be perfect.
- [54:38]
A
Yeah, it's a really challenging mission. And we talk about it frequently when we talk about people matter and we even celebrate some of our engagement results is that we're imperfect. And the only thing worse than working in a toxic company is having a poor experience in a healthy company because you're like, I'm. Wait a second. I'm the only person down here who. Does anybody see my boss and how they're treating me and whatever it is. And so, yeah, we talk about that. People matter pushes us. And we will never arrive in a way that just trying to have an EPS or a quarterly result or if we just said money matters more, it's way more simple because you can put it in a spreadsheet and you can sum it at the bottom. Right. People are complex, and it is a challenging mission. And yes, of course, we know that people at any time or any meeting could say, but if people mattered, you wouldn't have done this or that. We understand that. And yet it's still an invitation that if you see us doing things that are not expressing our mission or walking our values, we're asking you to hold us accountable.
- [55:44]
B
Right. Right. What does it mean to be a principal's first leader?
- [55:49]
A
I've talked about the organizational identity, but having a picture of my identity and then having an understanding of our values, when we have that in place, it actually makes a lot of decisions for us. And some of the situations that feel complex or feel emotional can be distilled down to, hey, what is the true north that our values or our mission or our vision are calling us into? And so when I think about principles, I think about a decision comes across, and then I get to decide what do I feel like doing or what do I want to do or what would be convenient and Then I think about what does our organizational identity or what does my personal leadership identity invite me into becoming? And that is the decision I want to make in the moment. Not the convenient one, but the aligned one. Because ultimately I want to be a leader, I want to have an organization. I want people to feel a certain way in 2029, 2035 and beyond.
- [56:46]
B
And you describe a pathway why, what, how? What's the relationship between being a Principles First Leader and the first question why?
- [56:58]
A
When you start with why. Simon Sinek it does guide. I spoke recently in a session where I talked about Future memories is when I think about who I want to become that is driven by why, that when I have a clear why, my where it goes from there and then what we decide to do just again, it's very similar to the principles based pieces, right? It kind of tells me what to do. And I believe the same thing is true of future Memories, that when you have a picture of who you want to be or how you want to be perceived as a leader, whatever it is in five or 10 or 20 years, or that you might want to write a book someday, or whatever it is that is powerful and guiding. Because if you make decisions when you're hungry in the Oreo aisle, it's very, very difficult to find yourself over to the vegetable aisle right when you're hungry and you're staring at Oreos. And so that's what happens in a lot of our decisions, especially when we get busy. I think that's the killer, is we have some sort of a high stakes conversation or a decision or someone isn't performing very well and we're just too busy to slow down. Is when we keep our why at the forefront. We move at the pace of people, we slow down and we make wise decisions that build trust in an organization and that changes everything.
- [58:15]
B
Two last questions. The first one's weird. I asked these two questions at the end of every show. What job do you hire your job to do for you? So your company needs something from you? What do you hire your company to do for you?
- [58:31]
A
For me, I believe that work is transformative. We spend almost 80,000 hours of our life in work. And so what work allows for people to become, to create is so cool that I just, I don't see work as a have to. I see it as a get to. And so when I think about why I do what I do or maybe the question of like why, what we buy the company to do, it's to create meaningful change in the lives of people is That a cop out answer?
- [59:06]
B
Not a cop out answer at all. Not a cop out answer at all. And I actually think that I heard two transformations in there. One is to grow yourself as a human, which if you weren't being self conscious about how you yourself were growing, this book wouldn't exist. Right. And then the second thing is to create what in my world, we would call it a transformation offering for the people in your organization. And a transformation offering can be personal growth, it can be getting degrees, it can be growing a family potentially and becoming a good parent. And these are all things that can be part of the transformation offering of work.
- [59:48]
A
Absolutely. And they manifest themselves in stories. And my dream would be that they would say it themselves. Five years ago when I came here, I didn't know anything. And now I'm a very, very knowledgeable parts repair person or something along those lines. Or I'm a better dad, or I'm a better community member or whatever that is.
- [60:09]
B
Yeah. One of the people I asked this question said, I hire my job to see others shine.
- [60:15]
A
Oh, it's great.
- [60:16]
B
Isn't that nice? That one made it on the list
- [60:19]
A
that was more eloquent and maybe more distilled than mine.
- [60:23]
B
No, all responses to that question are correct.
- [60:27]
A
Good, good. I love those questions.
- [60:29]
B
The second question is, and you may have answered that it doesn't have much cost, but what does your job cost you?
- [60:35]
A
Cost me?
- [60:35]
B
Mm.
- [60:36]
A
Oh, it costs me staring in a mirror all day long and just fulfilling my own desires and my own near term comfortable desires. I'd say that it costs me that which it's a cost I'm happy to pay.
- [60:52]
B
That's part of being principles led, isn't it? That the idea that my principle is going to take me beyond the near term comfortable thing.
- [61:00]
A
Sure, sure. And I think the piece that stands out that if I were just to circle back on anything in our conversation is this generosity. The last piece of the we cycle is that it stirs people forward and they're giving back. That this isn't just leaders do more, carry more and more bricks in your backpack. That if you live out the three T's and you have people who feel safe, seen and successful, the got, they're generous, they own and they trust you got it. They will give back and they will run through walls for you. And that's not why you do it, but it ultimately does pay a return that then perpetuates you living out the three T's and it becomes a virtuous cycle.
- [61:43]
B
That sort of answers one of My other questions that we didn't get to, which is how do you take care of yourself? You're one of the people who matters in your organization.
- [61:52]
A
Yeah, I mean, one of the ways that I think the. The. One of the biggest sections in any bookstore is the self help one. And I'm curious what would happen if the bestsellers were in the help others section. And while that can have its limitations too, believe that leadership is about giving it away. Giving it away. If you're someone who is taking on more and more and hoarding and you are endlessly busy, it is no longer the company's fault. It is no longer your leader's fault. It is your fault that if you have capacity problems over the long period of time. And so for me, at the end of the book, I have this quote by Lao Tzu that says of the best leaders, when the task is done and the job is complete, that people will say, we did it ourselves. And so I believe that leadership is meant to be given away. And when you give it away, you live with more balance. You live with more pride in what other people are accomplishing. The main function of leadership is accomplish things through other people. That's one of the basic functions. And so for me, that leads to a balanced life for me. An appropriate workload for me, an opportunity for me to care for my family and go to my son's basketball games and those sorts of things. Working out's really important. And leadership, managing stress through working out. But yeah, those are a couple things that come to mind.
- [63:10]
B
Where can people learn more about you and your book?
- [63:12]
A
Yeah, there's a couple of places. Social media, so Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, they can poke in more. You can buy the book on Amazon or anywhere that books are sold. And then People Matter at work gives a little bit more information about me, keynotes, coaching, consulting, and so forth.
- [63:30]
B
So People Matter at work. It has a little at symbol in it. Is it usually spelled a T for the book if I'm searching for it.
- [63:39]
A
It's spelled at whenever. It can be written at in a pretty way. But when it's www, it's the peoplematteratwork.com and I probably search People matter at work without the at as the best way to find me.
- [63:54]
B
Fantastic. Thank you so much for taking the time to be a guest on our show.
- [63:59]
A
I've enjoyed our time. Thanks so much for having me.
- [64:02]
B
Thank you. Thanks for joining me for another episode of Work for Humans. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with one person you think would get value from it. Believe it or not, this really helps us grow the show and reach more people who want to build the kind of work that people really want. As always, thank you to my producer Jason Ames at 9th Path Audio for his insights into content and his high standard for quality. Final note, the opinions shared here are my own and not the views of Google or Cisco Systems. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.