PAPod 542 - "Workers Are Not the Problem: A Revolutionary Leadership Perspective"

Mr. Conklin. Que pasa, Calabaza? What are you up to?

Oh, trying to make the world a better place. What are you up to? The same. That's right. That's what we have in common. The one same thing. Hello, everyone. Music.

Welcome to the Pre-Accident Investigation Podcast. I'm Todd, your host, and I'm so excited to be with you. Wow. So you heard Jenny and I chatting, which means that Jenny and I are going to chat on this podcast because we have so much to talk about. Things are great here, without complaint at least, which is probably a pretty healthy thing to say nowadays. It's spring. I hate to say that because I'm so scared because we still probably have one big snowstorm left.

That's how it works in the mountains. But maybe not. But lots of bike riding and lots of hanging out. And I'm about to get the front yard set up with the outdoor TV. It's all going to happen, you guys. So I'm excited about that. I hope you are, too. Do you have big plans? Anything good going on? Any excitement? it, any giant things that you can't wait to do, that you're excited, that you're chomping at the bit to get done? I hope so.

So today's pod is a very interesting conversation, and it really probably needs a little backstory because I think the backstory is pretty important. So Jennifer Long and myself, we've known each other for a really long time, but a whole bunch of years. And we always kind of wanted to do a project together, but we're sort of in different worlds.

So Jennifer works a lot with leadership. She works a lot with big organizations with like leadership and leadership strategies, that kind of stuff, which is super important work. I mean, there's no question about it. And I'm kind of more on my little side of the house. You know what we do is kind of the safety and reliability, that kind of side of the house. And so we've always known of each other and lots of places where I'll go, Jenny will have been there and we talk about it a bunch.

But we didn't start crossing over until Jenny wrote her first book, which was really around, it's called Own Up, and it's really around the notion of accountability. And we've talked about it before. In fact, Jenny's been on the podcast because that was the moment in time when Jenny said the words accountability is an act of clarity that our two worlds collided. Boom. Schmack. We collided.

And then we started thinking, well, you know, there's a lot of crossover here because the accountability part of this equation is the part of the equation that's often kind of a big sticking place. Organizations struggle. In fact, I just had a phone call yesterday with my friend Todd Hone, Medium Todd, and he was talking about talking to an organization that, you know, was really anti-human performance.

In fact, called it drank the Kool-Aid, which I always think is kind of an icky metaphor when you think about the origin of that. And so Todd was saying, you know, I talked to the person quite a while, and it really boiled down to this notion of accountability. That if you don't have accountability, you'll have people running with scissors. No one will follow procedures. No rule will matter. The world will be a crazy place. It'll be horrible, and that's dangerous.

Well, so part of that is really because I think generally speaking in the human performance community, we've done a less than adequate job of really talking about accountability. Because accountability matters. But the problem is, is that accountability reads as discipline when in fact what it really is, is a form of clarity. Who is going to do what? Who is going to be held account to doing what they do?

And so that conversation became a really great conversation, and it's changing slowly but surely the way everybody kind of talks about accountability. That's all good, man. That's great. Out of that, Jenny and I started talking, and we said, well, we should do a project that kind of talks about that discussion. And so we decided we were going to put together a book because a book's a good thing to do.

We can both do it individually, and yet collectively we can bring it together and come up with a product. That's where this story gets interesting because the book we set out to write was not even close to the book we wrote. Now, the book's called Workers Are Not the Problem, Workers Are the Solution. A Guide to Leading Differently. And you can get it now. It's available. I actually think it's a pretty interesting book.

The reason it's interesting is because what we started to learn really quickly, we observed seven different organizations in kind of a cultural observer way. So not really using a classic quantitative scientific method, but more of a qualitative observation. We interviewed and talked to people, and these are people that allowed us access to kind of understand what was going on.

And it became really clear in the conversation that what mattered was the uncertainty around employment and not necessarily workers, although workers are certainly what the story is, but how the employment environment has changed so much. And you guys know all this because you deal with it every single day. But when you looked at it collectively, when you started to amass all these stories together, you started to really see a very interesting bit of information appear.

And that's kind of what this book discusses. I'll just be really honest with you. I went into this book with a what I would have told you was a relatively clear understanding of leadership and leadership qualities. Right. I left this project realizing that I have a strong bias towards a form of leadership that probably is no longer nearly as effective because of uncertainty.

Now, we didn't have a clue that the world would turn topsy-turvy and that uncertainty would become such a huge part of the conversation, especially this rather toxic uncertainty. You'll hear me talk more about that in a podcast coming up. But this uncertainty became really a big part of the story.

And what's crazy and super interesting is that all of a sudden this book kind of starts to make sense because it not only addresses how we see workers in an organization, but how we see workers in an organization that is quite honestly facing enormous uncertainties around the future. And that's what this book did.

It's called workers are not the problem workers are the solution leading differently right and and that actually is a really important thing for us to discuss so without any further ado i'm just going to jump into the conversation and you'll hear us talk specifically about this book i encourage you if you get a chance pick it up the audio book's not out yet but it will be we have to record it. This just happened. The timing on this is exceedingly good, if that's a word I can use.

The timing seems lucky to me. That's probably a better word. The timing seems lucky. Listen to what we say and see if it's interesting to you at all.

So what do you think about the book? Are you excited? I am excited about the book. What do you think? All I can see are the errors I told you that always happens, Like, oh, oh, I missed a period. Oh, there's a word there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that always happens all the time. I mean, that's part of the joy. Part of the joy. Yes. Yeah. No, I actually feel pretty good about it. That's good. Yeah. I haven't seen it yet, but it looks amazing.

Oh, you should have a copy by now because I got one and I ordered one for you at the same time. Oh, no, it's probably fine. It's just, you know, I live in New Mexico. Yeah. I had to go to your P.O. box. Yeah. Well, and there's a gap somewhere between mail and my P.O. box. I don't really know what happens. They've probably fired those people because they were on probation. That's right. They were probationary, so they're gone. They're gone. They're gone. It's over.

And we don't really need the post office, do we? No. No. Let's rethink the whole thing. Let's get out of the box. Let's jump out of the box. That's right. That's right. So that's exciting. Yeah. It's exciting to have it in your hand. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And start to move it some. I think it came out great. I mean, it seems good to me. Well, and it still seems very timely, if not more so, in a weird way. Tell me more about that, because that's interesting to me.

Because this really is, I'm so excited about Harvard, right? Like the leadership at Harvard was like, no, we stand for something and we're going to lead that. That's what we do. And I think so many people in leadership right now are worried, afraid. And so not only is it the how am I going to get my performance happening, it's also what am I doing strategically? And so they've got the double whammy. And so I think that leading differently just has so many meanings in terms of how you are.

Leveraging your workforce feels way more doable than being susceptible to the winds of whatever's happening. Well, it's interesting you'd say that because the one thing I think this book does a fairly interesting job at discussing is the ability to look at uncertainty and somehow create a strategic path into it, which is really difficult.

I mean, that idea – and that's really what came out of this book project is that we had to learn that the traditional strategic methods we use to think about managing the future have to change or being forced to change. And that change has made a huge difference. What was the original goal for writing this book? Why did you do this? I mean, did you get hit in the head? Were you hypnotized or my favorite word, mesmerized?

Mesmerized. I was mesmerized. I think the reason to write the book is because there was so much frustration around the work environment for leadership in terms of the coaching work and facilitation work. And the experience was just turning into so much conversation around employees and the frustration that getting leaders to, when I started doing massive training programs, when I would start with, this is it, no one's coming, right? This is the workforce you got dealt.

How are you going to handle it, right? And the more I started going down that path, the more I thought, God, they have to really start to get their mindsets into what this is. It's not the same work environment. But the crazy thing to me is that when we started this project, the book we started out, writing i'm trying to think how to say this the book i thought we were going to write.

Is nothing like the product that we ended up with i mean yeah it's not 180 out but it is it is way way way different than i thought it would be completely different than i thought it would walk me through your memory of when we started the conversation because our heads were so different well so i think i think ultimately the thing that attracted me to doing it would be it would be really fun to do a project with you.

So that seemed fun to me. So I didn't really, I wasn't really too freaked out about what the project was because, you know, it's going to be something interesting. And I thought, and if it's interesting enough, you know, we could maybe do some workshops together, which would really be the ultimate, that would just be fun. So, right. Yeah. So I thought we were going to write this book on just classic kind of, not classic, that's wrong, But kind of normal leadership junk, you know what I mean?

Like, hey, be a good leader, care, try hard, you know, be on the right side of an argument that, you know, don't say stupid stuff and your workforce likes you and don't screw it up and that kind of stuff. I mean, not to downplay those books, they're probably relatively important.

But what's interesting is that once we started the discussion and once we started looking at the kind of the, I wouldn't call them case studies, but we started looking at the companies that interested us and how they were leading, how they were strategizing, how they were handling sort of this new worker environment. It just, it totally turned in a different direction. This became much more a book about how our traditional leadership biases are no longer serving us well.

To me, the lesson I took out of this book, and it'll be interesting to see if people who read it have the same reaction, was just how traditionally biased my concept of leadership was. Like it was kind of, well, we did it together. Yeah, I remember sitting there and then we'd go, oh, oh, we're doing that.

We're having that moment. I know. I was just I really had to struggle with the fact that, holy crap, almost everything I hold true as a fundamental positive tentative leadership kind of no longer applies. It's weird. At least that's that's kind of where I was. I don't know. Same with you or Diff. Yeah, because I think even in some of our thinking was we were writing things down, we would fall into the traps and then we'd be like, wait, is that how?

No, that's exactly what we're talking about. I know. I remember thinking, this seems like morally – these ideas we're talking about 10 years ago would have been morally questionable. Like, you know, make short-term commitments to people. You know, yeah, like I got them. Yeah, exactly. I come from a world where, you know, you bring them in young, you mentor, you mold, you shape. There's an arc. There's a development path. When you do this, then you get to be this.

When you're a deputy, you get to be the real and then you get to be. And all those ideas just kind of were just crumbling around us. And it freaked me out a little. Well, what freaked me out was my bias was so strong. Yeah. Yeah. Especially because we have so much exposure to these organizations where the learning curve, the curve to succession and promotion is 15 years, right?

There's just so much to be so big and there's so much. and that how ingrained into a system and into a culture that goes. And when you no longer can find workforce-ready people to bring in at any level, right, you're forced to rethink the whole thing. And I think that was the hard kind of part because when we started talking about workforce readiness and the frustration around that and what that really means to an internal structure of an organization.

It's crazy. They're not even recognizing. Yeah. Well, it's crazy. It's crazy that we started coupling easy onboarding with easy offboarding. Like, I don't think I ever imagined I would sit and talk about making it easy to leave an organization, making it effective, to make it easy to off board because people are going to leave you and they'll probably be back.

And so you don't want to break your pick off voting him the first time because – but it's like the old joke, be nice to everybody because eventually you'll work for him. It's kind of the case here. But to me – and I think that's what this book sort of tries to tackle, at least at an initial response, is that shift in the bias around what we think of as leadership. And I think the timing on it, there was no way we could have guessed that the world would switch this much.

I mean, like I had no inkling at all because had I known this was going to happen, I think probably would have been a completely different book. Probably more of like a guide to cocktails. More of a cookbook for – Day drinking without really having to deal with the rest of the world. Try these two. They're good together. So I think that's interesting. And in a way, that's kind of exciting about this book. I wouldn't say this book is a safety book, but I also wouldn't say it's a leadership book.

I don't really know what it does. If I were to encompass it, is it helps redefine what a worker is in a contemporary workspace. I would think. I mean. Yeah. Look at your paradigm of worker and look at your paradigm of leadership response. And realize that the way you think is wrong. No, not wrong. It's just, it's no longer, it's a bias. It's no longer. It's really, find your bias and is your bias helping or hurting? Yeah.

And what do you want to do with that? Because I think that group think at the top is so prevalent. But to really get leaders to question each other and ask deeper questions and call on their biases and out themselves of where's my blind spot, my thinking. And we came up with this little list of characteristics that seemed to be pretty helpful. What do you think about that? I thought it was good. Are you talking about the table where we talked about

leading and how it's changing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I thought that was helpful. And shocking at the same time. Yes. I mean, to be honest, I mean, I've talked more about this project probably than any other project I've ever done with people just because. Doesn't it keep coming up? Yeah. It just keeps coming up.

I mean, I was at this meeting with all these big industries, this big global meeting, and I talked a ton about how what we learned, what we saw, what we observed, and how it shocked us. And the leaders I was talking to were just like, are you kidding me? Is that true? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Money's not a very big motivator. And they were like, what do you mean? I'm like, I mean, money's not a very big motivator. Motivator, yeah. And our bias is you pay them, they'll come.

That's not true anymore. And that freaks me out. Yeah. That whole, I was kind of cruising through some of the subtitles and the whole thing about your performance is not as important as my experience. Yeah, which is crazy. I mean, I keep saying the same thing. It seems crazy to me because of my bias. The one thing you could manage with an employer as an employee, as a worker, was you sort of provided the performance, right?

I mean, the whole idea that it's the relationship with the peer that's more important than the relationship with the organization is really interesting to me. Yeah, because the connectivity, right? The whole how I'm connecting at a whole other level in a whole other way than inside and outside the company. And the company is just second consideration. And maybe it's just that ultimately there's just a different motivation to work now. And maybe that's what I'm struggling with.

Among other things, I got plenty of things to struggle with right now. I got a full menu of crap to struggle with, including dessert and appetizer. That's right. No shortage of opportunity to struggle. So why should people pick this book up? It's available now, so why should they pick it up? It's available now because now's the time to really, leadership matters right now. It matters more than anything because people don't feel secure.

There's so much going on, right? Especially with all of the way the job market is shifting, the way businesses are thinking, the elimination of DE&I. I mean, just the, what are we doing? Where are we going? What are we focused on, right? And today we're having tariffs, tomorrow we're not having tariffs, right? Like how that's impacting strategic thinking and what it's doing to businesses.

The people closest to the work are so important that how you're thinking about this from a leadership perspective. This feels like this book, I'm talking a lot to get to a short, thought on you have to rethink how you're leading to weather this because you're going to make decisions both long-term and short-term, and you're going to have to make a lot more of them now than you have had to just because it's so volatile. And they're going to come at you fast and nothing's permanent.

Right. Which is just amazing to me. I mean, it's just so different. So we're now looking at strategic thinking as kind of an impermanent solution for a short-term motion. And I guess you'd say, what direction is the organization vectoring? Not where are we headed, which is how we traditionally do strategic thinking. This is where we want to be in five years. What way are we moving? And, God, that's crazy. Well, and, yeah. And yet I would say this book's encouraging.

It's not depressing. I mean, it didn't come out depressing, which surprises me. It didn't make it sad. We didn't come out going, oh, crap, no one's going to read this. This is going to be a total downer. It really, it was bolstering. It was that adversity is the mother of invention. And this is how we're reinventing, right? This is the moment of reinvention. Right. And it's not we're not given a choice whether to reinvent or not.

This is what we have. No one is coming. This is no one. This is it. The people who will survive will survive because they'll change and then they'll change to sort of see what's ahead. And that's kind of the discussion this book has. It's it was a very fun project. I enjoyed doing it with you immensely. Yes. Yes. Although you're too busy to do a project with. Although they say, if you want to get work done, go to a busy person.

And I mean, the great thing about this book is it's done. It's published. It's available.

It's ready. That's the great, that's the good part of this. So it's exciting. What'd you learn out of it? What's the ultimate lesson?

The ultimate lesson is that you have the oh god i don't know what i would say there's so many lessons in there todd well give me the give me your top 47 or something 47 in order right that self-reflection number one where where are you in your own way based on your based on your bias right that's so funny because that's exactly what i would say is that if i if i had to pick Like the one thing I'll take out of this project, it was that my bias was completely in the way.

And I didn't even realize, I guess that's why it's a bias, right? Is you don't, you don't know. Well, yeah, it's a shortcut. It's an experience, like, you know. But the paradigm I had for work, and more specifically the paradigm I had for workers, is no longer really a viable strategic leadership strategy. I mean, it's not working. That's amazing. Because once you kind of have that moment, then you start looking at all the processes and systems differently.

You're like, oh, this has to change completely. Totally. So it's a must read, must buy. It is. It is. It is. And I think people, it's a quick read, but you might have to sit with it a minute. Yeah, that's a good way to say it. That is a very good way to say it. Well, thank you for that project. It was fun. Thank you, Todd. I think it was excellent.

So what do you think? I told you. It was definitely an interesting conversation. The whole project, you guys, was so different than what I thought it was going to be. I remember talking about it at a meeting, I guess, last month with a bunch of people And just kind of telling them the big news for me, and it really was huge, was that I came into leadership with such a bias of what I thought leadership should do.

And I had to really relearn that that bias on what leadership should do was no longer really matching the contemporary world in which we were being asked to lead. And that was a little bit painful to me. I mean, not that I'm a baby or anything, but I kind of reacted like, holy crap, what's going on here? The world's flipping around and nobody told me. And I guess those moments are good.

They're certainly not bad. I mean, once you realize you have this strong bias, I guess that's the thing about bias is that it's really helpful because you realize, wow, the characteristics that we generally look for, you know, long-term relationships, loyalty, development paths, maturity, those kind of things, those aren't necessarily as important now as they once were.

And then couple that with this current sort of place where it's almost like, I mean, maybe the best way to say this, Jenny said it earlier, is getting better is no longer a priority. And that's really a strange thing to say. And I'm not sure that's right. I mean, I think that's where we currently are. I don't think we're going to be there a long time.

I think improvement matters. But yet, what we see in the face of just dramatic uncertainty is really a place where traditional strategies don't work. And in fact, big companies, United Airlines is one that comes to mind, are coming out with parallel strategies. This is what happens if X takes place. This is what happens if Y takes place. That's really interesting and completely tracks what we learned in looking at and developing and writing some ideas around for this book.

I think this book's a worthwhile read. It's not academic by any stretch. It's not even meant to be academic. It's really just the beginning discussion to what's going on in the world and how the world's changed. It's kind of worth looking up. It's called Workers Are Not the Problem, They're the Solution. A Guide for Leading Differently. And it's really, if we could retitle it, we didn't know at the time, I think I'd retitle it A Guide for Leading Differently in the Face of Toxic Uncertainty.

See what you think. I'd be really curious your impression on it. See if it makes an impression with you. That's pretty much the pod for today. Have as much fun as you possibly can. Learn something new every single day. And I think you will. This book is going to help you learn some new stuff. It's uncomfortable, but you're going to learn it. Be good to each other. It matters a lot now. Check in on one another because, well, that's a huge deal. And for goodness sakes, you guys. Music.