TLDR;
With over 25 years of experience building multiple scalable businesses worldwide, Garrett Delph observes, “Most business owners and leaders don’t want to solve culture problems just for the sake of solving culture problems” within their organizations.
But Delph is “crazy allergic to bad culture and chaos” and his motivation to solve culture problems remains a priority—irrespective of what it does to revenue and sales.
In this episode of Uncommon Leadership: Garrett Delph, the founder & CEO of Clarity Ops and I, examine the critical role of company culture in building high-performing teams.
We discuss how addressing organizational challenges early on and balancing strategic objectives and operational realities is a must for success.
Delph’s expertise in architecting finely tuned organizational cultures, developing management leaders, and driving business growth at scale makes this a must-listen. Tune in now!
Want to get in touch with Garrett?
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrettdelph/
Website: https://clarityops.co/
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Presented By: UncommonChange
Transcript:
Michael Hunter
Whether you are feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, or that something isn’t quite the way, you know, it can be- you are not alone. I hear the same from leaders every day. Good news it’s not your fault. The real issue isn’t how skilled or experienced you are. It’s the part of you that are tucked away, invisible, inaccessible.
At Uncommon Leadership, we explore aligning personal fulfillment with business success, creating authentic teams, and cultivating the resilience necessary to move beyond simply surviving today’s challenges into thriving. I’m Michael Hunter, and today we’ll uncover fresh insights into what it means to lead with resilience.
Joining me today is Garrett Delph. Garrett has 25 plus years of experience in building multiple worldwide scalable businesses, delivering high value, high profit, and bespoke scalable technology systems managed by humans. Roughly 15 of those years were devoted to building and managing both on prem and
remote international teams. Garrett’s core strengths are in architecting final tuned organizational cultures, developing management leaders, preparing business for growth and scale. Welcome Garrett.
Garrett Delph
Thank you, Michael. It’s really great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Michael
When did you first recognize that integrating your whole self and bringing that into everything you do?
That might be a valuable approach.
Garrett
Probably about, like, I think it really hit me about five years ago. And that came on the heels of the chairman – one of my board of directors, probably five years before that, had sat me down one time and said, you know, Hey, I’ve been doing this a long time and – I’ve, I’ve never seen anybody operate the way you do.
And, he said, I just want to tell you, I think you, you have, you know, I think that’s perhaps one of your superpowers. And I was like, ah, thanks, man. Yeah. I didn’t really think much of it. And then five years went by and I started looking at things and I’m like, well, maybe. Then I recalled his compliment and thought, oh, maybe, maybe there is by God’s grace.
Maybe there is something here. You know, that’s unique and special.
Michael
What took you so long? There was the comment, five years go by and all of a sudden this inspiration dawns. Like, what triggered that? What was going on in between that and it had it quite sunken?
Garrett
I think between him saying that and then the following five years, we had some in one of my businesses, some exponential growth and also exponential, you know, challenges.
And, I had used some systematic frameworks that were homegrown that I applied and over those, you know, that, – season and they worked really well. And I got a tremendous amount of great feedback from our leadership teams and also from customers. And I say, so I think maybe that was the, the thing made me associate the compliment with perhaps the truth of it, you know?
Michael
What were those business signals, the feedback you were getting from customers and others you were working with? Did that change dramatically? What was it that told you, Oh, there’s something going on here to pay attention to?
Garrett
Well, I think it was the nature of how quickly we were able to scale in the wake of our new go to market strategies.
And, that fastness was. accelerated compared to other seasons of go to market, you know, growth strategies. simultaneously with the fast, we had less chaos, significantly less. So, you know, it was smooth and orderly. And, and, – teams had this new level of clarity as the feedback I was getting.
And basically they were coming to me and saying, hey, You know, the quad core management system that we’ve been harping on, Hey, you know, our MSM maintain support and measure, framework strategy. Hey, like, Hey, remember, this thing that you brought to us years ago called Cornerstone, it’s working.
Like, that was basically the signal. It was the validation, audible validation from leaders that like, I know we thought you were a weirdo, but we just want to tell you it’s actually working. Those, those would be, those, – are signals I remember, as they led up to the aha moment.
Michael
So you get this comment from a client who says all these weird things you do, this is not what other people do.
You got something special here. Like, okay, thank you. It sort of filters the past. And then over the next five years, you keep doing those same weird things and you get more feedback telling you. And I’m saying weird because that’s the word you used.
Garrett
Yeah, yeah. Fair enough.
Michael
Over the next five years, you keep doing those things and you’re getting kind of the same feedback, but rather than saying, Hey, Garrett, you have something special here.
They’re seeing, giving you specific concrete details of this tool. This is really helping this framework that you gave us. We didn’t quite understand what that was at first, but once you help those grok it, then it’s just become the bedrock of what we do. And this was happening over and over and over with those same tools and frameworks and systems and things.
And so then that’s what then led you back to remember that, oh yeah, five years ago. This person told me that we had something special now, but he didn’t give me the concrete details I needed to understand what it was that he was referencing. So I didn’t have anything to hang that comment onto.
Garrett
Yeah, you’re right. and I think that’s common. You, you know, because operations are, especially, you know, the, the, for. Maybe the top of the small and then the lower side to the upper side of the medium sized business domains. you know, you’re talking a hundred to three hundred employees, maybe four hundred employees, and – The engine of success is very complex.
And so the chairman that said that to me, he was, you know, kind of classic executive founder mentality where he’s just looking at outcomes. So he just goes, if those outcomes are awesome, then you’re doing something really well internally. And that was sort of his gauge, you know, and if the outcomes were not awesome, then I’m, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been a compliment.
It would have been, Something, different, you know.
Michael
Do you know for yourself, how much you tend to focus on the big picture versus details? Where in the long spectrum does your happy place tend to be?
Garrett
Such a great question, Michael. I think I spend more time in the micro, but it is always, in direct proportion of spending 20 percent of my time at the macro because you have to understand where you want to go and what outcomes you want.
In order to adjust all of the thousand moving parts in the engine room. But I would say that’s definitely where I spend most of my time these days in the micro. It’s probably 80, 20.
Michael
I was going to guess that you were on the detailed side of things because this client gave you a big picture feedback and it just blew right past you because it wasn’t in your frame of reference.
And then all the others. Kudos that you got from all these other people were detailed feedback. They’re giving you kudos on all these specific details and that fit right into your frame of mind.
Garrett
Yeah, that’s a good point. It is true. It was the managing leaders that were giving me all of this micro feedback because I think they began to realize that to the degree that, what is historically known, you know, as the messy middle, to the degree that All of that messiness becomes orderly.
The managing leaders are the direct beneficiaries of that order. they’re the direct beneficiaries of new focus, newfound strength, new agility, new speed. Also, they become also a sounding board for all of the people they lead who become sounding boards for. how they’re benefiting. So it’s like this cascade effect, you know, and most businesses are just so accustomed to operating in a messy way, in a chaotic way that they just, it’s status quo.
They just learn to live with all of the stresses and the pressures and the angst that comes with living in that kind of environment. And. What ended up happening is radical transformation internally, which was just like everybody was so blown away. Like, we can actually do business this way? This is freaking amazing.
And then I’d hear stories continually from the different levels about when I used to work here, when I used to work there, when I worked here. This was never possible. It wasn’t even on anybody’s radar. And, clearly this is a new way. And that was pretty darn exciting. you know, go back to the weird thing.
If anything, it empowered me to be a little bit more weird, I think, and go like, okay, I definitely
Because you, there’s, so, to, to bring new ideas to the market or new ideas to an org or operation, that are brand new. You get it. Like. Mostly you’re faced with rejection because we, we tend to reject, humans tend to reject things they don’t understand, especially if they’re not proven. and if there’s a big bet here to put a bunch of time and energy and resources into a new way, and there’s, it’s a full on bushwhack path.
so that was very. Challenging and scary and met with a ton of resistance early on. That’s kind of all the weird word unpacked.
Michael
That’s a perfect lead into my next question, which is how do you build cultures where the teams and people that you’re working with, you’re brought in to help be more efficient, effective, scalable, where they feel safe and empowered to bring their unique talents into everything that they’re doing.
Garrett
Yeah, it’s a really great question, Michael, and I’ve thought a lot about it. There is a critical path, first step to providing clarity and safety to employees, you know, vertically and horizontally in the org chart. And that first step is whoever is at the top, whoever the head of the org is, that could be CEO.
It could be the founder, president, they must be clear about what the safety and empowerment is and looks like. And they must be motivated to go all in for the business to make it happen. I’m reminded of Jeff Weiner, ex CEO at LinkedIn. I heard him say probably eight or 10 years ago, which still sticks to me to this day, this job as the leader in that org, as the CEO is to be the chief reminder officer, which I just love.
And then he goes on to say, my primary role is to constantly remind everybody and myself about where we’re going, and how we’re going to get there. And, I won’t spend too much more time on it, but he even unpacks it further and talks about, he has to constantly remind the company about what they value.
And so that’s the first thing. First step is – that decision has to be made at the top. from there, it’s just all about architecture, you know. I call it, P3 people, process and performance in that order. And so once you decide we want a safe place for people, we want high happiness, low stress and high productivity.
the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to architect for the people in a way that demonstrates our care for them. And so we’re going to make sure that you have employee handbooks. – that answers all of your questions and manages all of your expectations in a published fashion. we’re going to have core values that are not just sayings on the wall, but permeate into all of the functions in the business, into all of the breakout teams, into everything we do.
We’re going to live by these core values. We’re going to actually, as a business, create and constantly update our career path strategy. So when you show up as an employee, you are, you have a path to growth in title and pay if you want it, we will support it and we will uphold that and maintain it. you know, other, empowerment and, and safety, I think going back to the core values thing, part of safety in an org, in my opinion, for employees.
Is, the human side, it’s like the human side of stuff, like, protecting people from being, blamed, protecting people from being gossiped about, you know, protecting the business and the people from, a culture of lying, These parts, I think, also, I would contend should be upheld by the leadership and guard employees from, you know, drive by guiltings and drive by shootings in these facets.
another way to create great safety and empowerment for people is razor sharp, clear job descriptions that also, At the end of the activities from that job description, define what success looks like so people know where they stand and they know what a mark of success looks like on the daily, on the weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually.
and then probably one other thing I’d mentioned and there are many, but I think this is really important is, employee surveys and doing that on the regular. and you know, there’s different. Opinions about the best play here, but I’m a big fan of anonymous surveys, not because you’re fearful that people don’t have the freedom to say their name or say who they are.
But, I think when you can just have the total freedom to say how you feel and not have to disclose your name, or, you know, your title, then the truth comes out. And then having leadership that receive this information and will act on it. To iterate towards better health, etc. -. So these are some things that, you know, – I would recommend in terms of, how to create safety and empowerment and people.
Michael
How long is the feedback cycle to typically, as you’re making these changes from when you come in or the leadership announces, we’re going to do this, like all the things you just talked about, which are big, like huge life, business changing shifts and employees. Are they likely saying, – uhuh. Yep.
It’s been about six months, time for another of these.
Garrett
Right! Are there, or they’re going, yeah, – huh. Sure. been there, done that scene. It never, never worked.
Michael
Great. What’s the. Typically the feedback cycle for you from when all this starts and then when people start seeing, Oh my gosh, it’s actually changing this time.
Garrett
Yeah. Well, that varies, surely in direct proportion to the nature of the engagement. You know, lots of different levels and investments to get there, but, you know, if I were just to assign a mean, I’d say six months to look back and see, you know, significant transformation, in these areas that said, What I always try to do is remind, remind, remind along the journey and highlight and, and campaign and market the wins and the proof of positive change and to do that, obviously, Integrated into leadership, but then also I ask the heads to ask their leaders to pass along the same campaign, metrics to the people they’re leading as well.
So you, you begin this sort of snowball effect of, you know, the micro changes along the way as they build up to that six month mark, for example. That way people are mindful of the changes that they’re experiencing and seeing.
Michael
And do you do anything to proactively bring along all the doubters and naysayers?
Or do you focus on the people who are engaged right from the start, they love the change, or they love the vision, and help them and let the other people come along as they start seeing the benefits
Garrett
Yeah, you know, there have been a few times in the executive sessions where you have, you know, naysayers and, I try to not get involved in those politics.
What I do is I’ll just keep note and keep it on my radar if I, if I see that perhaps you, you have, you know, people that are challenging or in disagreement or, you know, whatever it is they’re facing and then I’ll go to whoever hired me. And, typically it’s somebody at the head and just say, Hey, here’s a potential risk call out.
there may be an opportunity to kind of have a one on one and figure out where that’s coming from. but that’s what I’m seeing. Of course, you should validate that. but, you know, I haven’t seen it to the degree where I need to kind of step up and start having those conversations. I think it’s happened a few times at max.
Michael
As you are introducing these changes and then as you progress, how much are you focusing on all the signals that you talked about initially of safety and joy and things like that? And how much are you focusing on or highlighting the shifts in all the typical business metrics source, revenue, call volume, whatever the metrics are – that business is caring about?
Garrett
Really great question. So the signals. Early on, I pay attention to our, first, just confirmation and validation from the business leaders that the C suite nominates to participate in the transformation. And, I look to get a consensus across the board that, hey, these are the problems and challenges we’re looking to solve and transform.
From then, I like to validate those through surveys to the rest of the company and see if there is alignment so that that survey is built based on the problems and challenges. The leadership has been diagnosed. and then I seek to validate those. I like the word signal, by the way, through surveying that is in line with those and see if the people come back and validate. If they don’t, then we circle back to the leadership and say, All right, here’s what here’s the feedback we’re getting.
It seems that There’s some disagreement here, what have you, So we quickly iterate there to, finalize the problems and, and the opportunities. And then, you know, a couple of outcomes I typically like to focus on is, gross profit because you know, historically people hire me. it’s, so this is interesting, Michael.
Most, most business owners and leaders don’t want to solve culture problems just for the sake of solving culture problems. This is what I found, which surprised me because I was always not, I was the opposite. I was like just crazy allergic to bad culture and chaos. And so my motivation was just to solve those irrespective of what they did to revenue and to sales.
But what I found is most businesses, they’re struggling to scale, their gross profits are down. They have, you know, they’re, they’re losing people, their customers are being affected. So they want to solve the problems. , so my whole point there was typically they’re struggling with revenue, their revenue has gone down and they’re struggling with CSATs, their CSATs have gone down.
And so those are two big markers that I’ll go after in terms of signals of success. Did the gross profit go up? Because We went in and found a bunch of inefficiency and waste. We optimized that inefficiency and waste, and now you’re faster. You’re leaner. And, your cogs are less, and those, and, so typically when you solve those, costs go down, profit goes up, and because you now have better control around your outcomes, specifically in product or service, and they’re probably being delivered faster too, your CSATs start going up.
So those are the two signals I look for the business outcomes. And then culturally, two things, I’ll go back to the survey. So I’m a big fan of these anonymous surveys because people tell the truth because they don’t have to worry about identifying. and then the other is I like to get in and skip levels.
So, to the degree that the business thinks it’s, that it’s okay with them too, for me personally to go in and participate, I’ll just do some Q&A. And just kind of really matter of fact, unemotionally attached, start popping around and, getting to lay the land and seeing what people are actually saying if they’re willing to share.
So like, so there’s two business outcome signals I like to focus on, and then those two internal cultural signals I like to focus on.
Michael
All of this brings, even when the shifts are relatively small, you’re still bringing so much change into everyone’s lives.
Garrett
Yeah.
Michael
Some of them probably feel as being inflicted on them.
Others might welcome it or, and this is on top of all of the change and certainly the overwhelm that is. I’ve already been there in that business is everywhere else around us, it seems without end these days. How do you help all these people find their way through all this in a way that feels safe and comfortable enough to them that they can handle all this?
Garrett
Yeah, it’s tricky, Michael, and so for you know, obviously for,
I have finite resources in terms of my personal time. And so I reserve most of my energy and focus for the leader that hired me and the leaders that they are, locking arms with to facilitate the change throughout the org.
That’s where I put my primary focus. And then, and so my message there constantly is, listen, this is the an expectations management game. This is all about integrity. Actually use an acronym called “pie” if you want to be a great leader, and my encouragement to them as we go through the transformation journey, is you need to rise up as a leader, and it needs to be as easy as “pie”.
You need to be professional, and we define what a professional is. Got to be a great planner. you need to be organized. You need to, you know, be, be clear. I stand for integrity. So you gotta do what you said you would do and what you promised you would do. So you gotta keep showing up in that way.
You have to be dependable, faithful, and timely. You know, these, those first two alone, give any leader major street cred and respect in the org. Just as a side note, there’s a great book called The Trillion Dollar Coach, about Bill Campbell. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He was the executive coach to, you know, the big guys, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Schwartz, who was the CEO of Google.
so, so anyways, he said, you cannot be a great leader unless you first demonstrated you were a great manager, and that is just all about the “pie”. And so, you know, be professional, have integrity and then lastly, E stands for EQ. You have to be emotionally intelligent as a leader too and you have to, along with the accountability you bring from the professional side, you also have to have grace and care and sympathy, and empathy.
And so if you wrap “pie” into your output, as you move into transformation, my message to leaders is you will get the respect that you need and you will create the safety you want, but you have to be at first and then you just keep showing up. With your “pie”, with your slice of “pie”, you keep showing up and over time, you will prove to them, not say to them, you will prove to them, this is a safe place.
What, tactically, like, you know, you’re like, all right, how does this tactically work? Well, for example, the new transformation from an old culture to a new operationally is, you don’t, As, as the new leader, there’s no blaming of employees for not achieving outcomes.
There’s going to employees and looking at the new rails that were architected, the new processes that were architected, the new SOPs that were architected for what a job description does and together with your employee that looks like maybe they’re falling short. You take your eye off of them and now you both put your eyes on the process.
And we look at the process together and figure out what happened in the process that we built caused the outcome to not be what it should be. And now we’ve taken our eye as a leader, we take our eye off. I’m like, I’m pointing my finger at you cause you failed and we get to analogize and then they’ll self select.
The person that’s being led will go, Oh, okay, yeah, I see. I didn’t do this. I didn’t, Right?. And so there’s an example of a tactical application of providing safety in a new culture where the old way was you did a bad job, you’re bad and you redirect the tactic for a more safe approach. There’s just like one tactic of many in terms of establishing safety.
Michael
And when that doesn’t work, where do you go from there?
Garrett
Yeah. Well, give me context around like, what, like what are you thinking didn’t work in that scenario? And then I’ll do my best to answer it.
Michael
So you do all the things you just took us through and the person you’re working with or summer, all of the people under them still don’t feel safe.
Garrett
Oh, still don’t feel safe? Okay. And are we assuming that the leadership got it right? They’re professional. They have integrity. They have empathy, but the employee has a problem with still feeling safe.
Michael
That’s half the question. And the other half is what if after all of this, the leader still doesn’t feel safe to make these changes and how they have been so that they can’t model that new way of being that is going to radiate out to everyone else.
Garrett
Yeah. It’s great. So based on this use case that you’re sharing, If I were being hired to advise the scenario, I would go back to what did the top of the org decide? What was best for the business and its people and if the top of the org decided this is our new future because of all of the benefits is going to give us and they’re finding that a leader is incapable of adopting the new, you know strategic components of what is you know behavior that provides for a safe environment And the business has done its part to set up that leader for success and give them every opportunity to transform and they still won’t.
Then I would advise the head. I think you perhaps are in a situation now where the leader that you used to have that was in the messy middle is not suited for your future and so you’re going to have to make a call. Are you going to permit that? And here are the consequences of permitting, allowing the old way to try to coexist with the new, or do you want to come up with perhaps a new plan to make sure that your goal for the new future of safety, let’s call it culture safety is upheld and established because you know, changes hard.
I think your question is valid. There’s going to be leaders that irrespective of the business actually hitting a home run on setting everybody up for success, there’s still going to be leaders that disagree, aren’t capable, don’t like it, you know, all of these things are in bounds in terms of the kind of responses.
That might be given by leadership. You know, I’m reminded when there are takeovers in organizations by CEOs and they come in and what do they do? They generally clean house, clean leadership house because they understand, or at least a seasoned CEO that takes over understands often.
Change is so difficult for leaders that have already been in the old culture, that to get them to transform into the new is nearly impossible.
And, or the runway needed, the amount of time and energy and resources needed to convert them is not sustainable and so what do they do? They take people that from their old regime that trust them and know them, they bring them in and then clean house. So that’s not something. I’m suggesting I would advise, but I’m just sharing that, you know, as a sort of standard thing that happens because transformational change is difficult.
Michael
And it raises the point that some people are not going to fit or want to fit into the new culture, and that’s okay. And then it’s, as you said, it’s up to the leader to decide, am I okay having people who aren’t going to be part of this new culture still hanging around, which will have benefits and will have downsides, or do I want to help them find a new position?
Inside the company or outside the company where they will be a perfect fit and then things will be so much better for them and for us because neither of us are, have this added friction going on between them and the rest of the company. Managers, leaders can get locked into this idea that any attrition is bad attrition. Obviously, if they’re doing horrible, we don’t want them around, but still, I should be able to make everyone, my idea perfect and the reality is, no, we’re all have different strengths and if what you are uniquely great at, isn’t something that the company needs right now, if the way that you want to work, isn’t the way that the company wants you to work, then you finding you somewhere else where you can use your unique gifts and work in the way that you want to work is probably way better for everyone. That’s actually being a way better manager and leader than trying to fit them into this new regime.
Garrett
I’m with you, I’m totally with you and I think, you know, simultaneously to play devil’s advocate that often is really difficult, you know, because, like we have a new engagement here, just up the freeway working with a construction company. And as we’re getting into transformation, they have a key leader.
That is in charge of a division within the company, that is bespoke to painting. And part of the transformation is they don’t have a succession plan, they’ve not had a succession plan in place and so they have a leader that’s struggling to transform into the new future that the CEO wants and the threat there is he may leave if the CEO is stout about the requirement for cultural and operational change.
But if he leaves because he’s never invested in a succession plan, he doesn’t have anybody in the company that can fulfill that SME position. Right?
And so that’s a real life conundrum where it’s not as easy as just going, all right, well, if you disagree, then, you know? Let’s try to find you another place in another company where you do fit because it could, you know, financially harm the business when it comes to that part of their service, you know, so it’s like, I think you and I both agree, it’d be nice just to wave a magic wand and solve these problems just like that.
But now when you get into these delegate situations, you have to really be strategically, you know, you’ve got to really strategically finesse the scenario.
And work with it and come up with win wins, you know.
Michael
That’s a great example of how it’s often not a yes or no answer.
Garrett
Yeah.
Michael
I’m willing to put up with it or I’m not willing to put up with it.
But there’s always, there’s almost always, it’s somewhere in between there and so then where do we go from that?
Do we go to the person and say, I know you aren’t really happy with the direction we’re going. This is the direction we’re going. I value you being here. I want you to stick around. How can we make this work together? That oftentimes can be very productive and sometimes it’s making the potentially even more challenging or harder decision to say, well, I’m just going to put up with this bird in my saddle because that’s what’s best for the company.
And I know it’s dragging other employees down in these ways and I’m going to pay that cost or conversely say, I know that helping them leave is going to hurt the company short term and I know that long term it’s worth it. So I’m going to pay the short term and now how do I buffer against the cost that’s great.
Garrett
Yeah. I love the, I love the question and the use case because, you know, it really opens up a can of real life scenario. when it comes to these concepts of establishing safety, and creating cultural operational transformation, like, you know, so let, let’s explore for a second. If you don’t mind, the CEO says to this person, this leader.
All right. Well, I appreciate it. Let’s come up with a hybrid. Let’s, let’s do a win win that way, you know, we’re going to safeguard the company from losing a great person and we’re going to safeguard the revenue. That’s attached to that and all of the customers that depend on that service that’s attached to that.
And so if it just stopped there, we’d be like, Oh, well, well, that’s great. We totally avoided a catastrophe here and everybody’s winning except for actually there’s more. What about the mixed signal it sends to the rest of the leaders who bought into the CEO’s vision and so now you have one person that gets to do whatever they want in a hybrid fashion.
And then you have all of the other leaders and employees going, Okay, he just made, the CEO just made consolation for one person and they’ll connect the dots.
Now, respect for the CEO goes down, and now they distrust the vision. So now you end up in this culture debt situation, potentially, right? And that’s really tricky, right?
So we went from, Oh, we got a win-win scenario. Perfect. Like, wait, hold on. There are unintended consequences here.
Michael
Yes. In ideal situations, you can be open about what’s going on and let everyone in on. What the full calculus is here so that they can understand that and yeah, even then, then you still have a potential for everyone like those gears start turning like, well, I’m unique in this, I have unique value to the company in this way.
So that means I can now leverage that and do whatever I want. And suddenly you have a million people going in a million different directions.
Garrett
Yeah. I can, I can tell you what I would advise if, if you’re interested?
Michael
Yes please.
Garrett
I would advise the CEO going to this person saying, I know this is tough for you, but we’ve been working together for a long time.
I value you, I really do. We have to go in this direction. Would you trust me? And would you try this way for six months? And see, and you know, let’s you and I stay in constant contact but would you consider just trying for six months and let’s see what happens? Then what I would do is I would advise the CEO to go start planning in the background.
In the event, this doesn’t work out and start lining up potential candidates, qualifying potential candidates and have them in the wings in the event that he needs to send somebody in because it doesn’t work out.
That’s what I would advise because you know, then you, you don’t compromise the vision and you don’t create accidental culture debt. You also give somebody an honest opportunity to lean in. Maybe it’s even attached to an incentive. I don’t know. Right? Maybe not.
But then you’re also responsible to protect the business, you know, in the background, that’s, that’s what I would advise.
Michael
So if I were to paraphrase, you’re saying, treat this the same as any other performance problem with an employee, you make clear expectations.
This is where we’re going. I’d love to have you come along with us, really value everything that you bring and the relationship we’ve built up over time. Will you please give it a try? And then it’s up to them. If they say yes, great. Worst case, six months down the road, you’re back to having the, well, this isn’t working out discussion.
In the best case, they’ve come along far enough, if not all the way, the vision to, there’s not an issue anymore.
Garrett
And, I think I would advise the CEO to campaign a little bit there, knowing the nature of the relationship. I’d say like, Hey, bring to the table all of the different ways during their relationship that you have proven to this leader that you are faithful, dependable, timely, and trustworthy. And you know, campaign with those and if, if they’re true, let’s assume they’re true.
Yeah. And then be earnest with your ask. Yeah, I would advise them to be earnest and say, I’m actually asking for a favor here because I really think you’re going to be better and I’m going to be better and everybody you lead, they’re going to be better at the end of this transformation.
And I know you can’t see it right now, but would you trust me? Because I want to work with you and there are huge benefits in compensation, in growth, in scale and job title as we progress into the future. But we got to go this way. Would you join me? Could we try it out? You know, I’d recommend a full on campaign, you know, cause this is somebody that they really like and trust and have loved working with.
So there’s a great relationship there, at least in the use case that I’m referring to.
Michael
Yeah. If someone would like your help running that campaign, or even just to go a little deeper into the P3 you see mentioned earlier, what’s the best way for them to get ahold of you? Get more details on those three Ps.
Garrett
Oh yeah. Thanks.
Thanks, Michael. Well, it’d be my privilege. It’s like Disneyland for me. So, they can find me, anybody can find me on LinkedIn. Garrett Delph is my handle, or they can go to clarityops.co
That’s my website and between those two places, I’m here.
Michael
Sounds great. What would you like to leave our audience with today?
Garrett
I would leave this, the management of expectations, operationally and culturally in a business are the best gift you can give your people and the best gift you can give the future success of your business and to the degree that you plan for and manage expectations vertically and horizontally, I really believe will be the degree to which you get the success that you want and get it in a way that is more smooth than you would have otherwise.
Michael
Perfect. Thank you, Garrett, for being on Uncommon Leadership today.
Garrett
Yeah. Thank you, Michael, for having me. It’s been really great. I’ve enjoyed the conversation.
Michael
It’s been a great conversation. And thank you, audience, for being with us today. What is the success that you want? What’s holding you back from having that?
Garrett and I would love to know. Thanks, and have a great day.