Foibles of an Executive Leadership Team

David thinks firms have too many meetings and offers some solutions, and Blair pushes back.

Transcript

Blair Enns: David, you've titled this episode, I'm supposed to be interviewing you on, "The Challenges of and Alternatives to a Leadership Team."

David Baker: Another great example of a title from me once again.

Blair: [laughs] But that is a cumbersome, awkward title, so I am retitling this episode, "David Baker Hates Leadership Teams."

David: [chuckles] That's not true.

Blair: Now, I'm throwing it over to you for the next 29 minutes. My job here is done. Go.

David: [laughs] I don't dislike leadership teams. I really dislike how leadership teams are constituted, and I do hate the way most meetings are run, so--

Blair: I just want to point out that you run a business of one person, and how often do you find yourself in a meeting?

David: [laughs]

Blair: Once a month? And, you record it, and call it a podcast.

David: [laughs] It's usually a meeting that my spouse calls, and I just have to go to it, and I get chewed out.

Blair: And you don't like how those meetings are run.

David: They usually don't end well, either. Yesterday she told me, "If you keep being yourself like this in your emails, you're going to tank your business." That's what she told me.

[laughter]

Blair: That's why you hate meetings.

David: [laughs] Yeah.

Blair: So, let's back up. You don't hate leadership teams, but there's something about these leadership team meetings that drive you crazy. Is that an overstatement?

David: No, that's not an overstatement. That's absolutely true. It comes from observation, just seeing so many firms that get all excited about establishing a leadership team, and then they-- I don't know when it happens, but after a certain point, they're like, "What was I thinking? This is not a great use of time, and I've got people on here that really shouldn't be, but I don't know how to get rid of them."

The motivations are good. They're really trying to make better decisions, and I feel like input from the right people would facilitate that. They want all the relevant voices in one place, so we don't have to just, "Hey, grab Lori for this meeting." Lori's already here, and we want to hear Lori's perspective on something. But, it just devolves overtime. That's kind of the theme here. If you have a leadership team, you want to listen to this. If you're thinking about having a leadership team, you want to listen to this. If you have no interest in a leadership team, then just skip this episode.

Blair: What does a typical leadership team look like? How are they constructed? Do you have any comments on are the right people at the table, or are there too many people at the table? Who's typically at the table?

David: That's where it starts to-- So, the idea of a leadership team is fantastic, and then the first question is, "Who should be on it?" That's where it begins to be difficult because we've got to have all the partners, and if there's multiple partners here, you probably need to have all of them here. We definitely need to have someone who represents finance and marketing, and if we're a big enough firm that we've separated marketing and sales, then maybe we need both. Otherwise, they'll kind of throw each other under the bus. [chuckles]

We need operations, too, and probably account management. If we got account management, then we've got to have project management. And then, you think, "Okay, finally I'm done constituting this thing. Half the people in the whole firm are on the leadership team." Then, you realize, "Oh my goodness. What about all the skill player heads, like the creative director, the head of engineering, or UX, or media planning?"

All of a sudden, it just gets a little bit awkward because we have all these people on there. I guess that'd be the first recommendation is before you constitute a leadership team, really think about how the makeup is going to work, and whether maybe even some of these people should be on for every other meeting, or maybe on a rotating basis, or something. But that's the big tension at the beginning is how we put this thing together.

Blair: Do you make a distinction between the leadership team and the management team in a firm that's large enough?

David: I'm not a purist there, but when I do see a difference, if there's both, then usually the leadership team is smaller and involves people higher up on the ladder. Then, you have a management team that has more people, includes people who are not quite as high up on the ladder. The only thing worse than a poorly constituted leadership team would be a poorly constituted management team on top of that. So, I don't have any sweeping recommendations here.

I just want people to think a little bit more about, first of all, having a leadership team in the first place, and if you do, how do you manage it? Then, how do you communicate outside of it because if you're going to have a management team, we can avoid some challenges that sift all the way down to the non-leadership people, the non-management people, and their perceptions of a leadership team because--

And, this is what really got me thinking about this. When I was talking with hundreds and hundreds of people who are not on the team, I would ask about this, and so many of them would say, "You know what, I'm not really sure what they do in there, but it feels like the place that if we have a suggestion, or a challenge, or a complaint, we kind of throw it over that wall, and then nobody throws it back. We don't hear. It's just where ideas or suggestions go to die." That's not what you want in terms of constituting a leadership team.

Blair: It seems to me when I look at this typical makeup, there's two categories. The first one is partners, and then the second one is just a long list of whatever would be considered to be managers or heads of department. I haven't thought about this deeply, but it seems to me that once you get to a certain size, you're going to have these management teams where a meeting where you want every department represented.

There are firms of a certain size where it makes sense to have a smaller leadership team, and it usually starts with the partners. But on the subject of partners, it begs the question. I think this has come up in a previous episode. Just because you have equity in a firm, does not necessarily mean you are A, a manager, or B, should be on the leadership team. Would that be correct?

David: It would be correct, but there are a lot of people who just heard your statement, which I agree with, who would react against that. They're like, "No, there's no way a meeting is going to happen without me at least hearing, and maybe even contributing to the discussion." But I agree with you. It is a strange industry in that we don't separate leadership and ownership. We don't in this industry. The reason I can say that is because you look out at the landscape, and you would struggle to find a single example of that, where somebody owns a significant chunk of a firm who doesn't lead it.

That's because it's generally poor investment. Nobody in their right mind would invest in a firm like this, and not also be involved in it. That just carries over into the leadership team, and then slowly, what happens-- They all start for the right reasons, and it's exciting to the rest of the team too, who's not on that leadership team because they think, "Okay, more is going to get done. We're going to get over some of the hurdles, and we're going to get clearer decisions and quicker decisions." But it becomes a social club too early in the process where you look forward to just checking in with other people, and it moves away from a pure decision making leadership team into a social club. Here's where that second danger comes into play because if you're on the leadership team, you feel like you have talked through an issue when you have just with the smaller group, but the people outside of that team haven't been a part of the conversation.

Whatever the decisions that you're thinking about making or have already made, those haven't necessarily been socialized, but emotionally, you feel like you've dealt with the issue because you've talked about it on the leadership team, when in fact the people who weren't there, they don't really feel that way because it's just been more of a one-way thing. We throw a suggestion over the wall. We're not sure what happens to it after that.

Blair: So, as usual, this podcast has really selfishly, now turned into me getting some free advice from you, and me lying on the couch, because I'm thinking about my own business and experience. My wife's my business partner. She's been active in the business for a number of years. But it's only the last five years or so that she's been in this role that we call, "The Integrater," which is an EOS or Entrepreneurial Operating System term.

We used to have meetings-- She started to take a bigger role beyond finance, and we would have these meetings, and I would feel like, "We talked about everything. That was a good meeting," and she was always frustrated by the lack of outcomes and accountabilities coming out of those meetings. I thought, "I don't know what you're talking about. That meeting felt great. We talked about everything."

[laughter]

But at some point, in hindsight, I was able to look back and go, "Yes, there's not a lot of action [laughs] that comes out of these meetings. We just all feel like, 'Okay, we better understand things.'" And then, she brought the framework, the EOS framework, to the meeting, and immediately it was obvious that that's what was missing. We were missing a framework for how we conduct our meetings, how we go through the issues, how we record progress on these issues, what we're going to talk about, and when we're allowed to talk about them. I look back on that pre-framework, and I'm not-- You know, I liked the EOS framework. I'm not married to it. But I look back on those meetings that were pre-framework. I think, what the hell we were doing? It's exactly what you just described. It's like, emotionally, it feels like that was a good meeting, but you stack up enough of them and it's like, what are we really doing in these meetings? We're just talking and agreements are not coming out at them.

Is that part of your frustration? Is that what you mean by social club? It's like we're talking about things, but there aren't these definite actions and immeasurable accountabilities that are coming out of them?

David: Yes, exactly right. That's why I like frameworks, EOS is one of those, obviously, where we have a specific purpose and an outcome for this meeting. We're also checking on the progress we've made from now back to when we made those other decisions. I just think it's a good idea. Something that's made this more acute is we're recording this in the middle of 2020, and here we are in a situation where meetings are not as easy to do. Everybody's in the same room before or in the same building before, and they can just meet somewhere. Now, it has to be more planned, and people resent meetings more over Zoom than they did before. They hated them before, but they really hate them now because it just feels a little bit more intrusive and the meetings feel too long now as well.

While we've been talking about leadership team, I really think we ought to be talking about meetings as much. There needs to be really specific purpose for them and a specific outcome, and then communication to other people. We're all over the place in our discussion here. But one of the things that I would like us to do less of is to get less filtered information from the layer right below us that answers to us. I want us to talk more directly with everybody, and that's another one of the disadvantages of a leadership team is that you get filtered information. I know it's more efficient to do, but it's still filtered information.

Leaders check that information. They have to get filtered information, obviously through others. It's just impossible to coordinate with everybody, but they need to be checking that and making sure that that's accurate because the other thing I want to happen in these, I'm just ranting now, but is, I don't want somebody on a leadership team where two things aren't true of them. They listen well and they contribute well. Somebody who is always contributing gets tiresome. Somebody who never contributes and just listens, you just wonder why they're in the meeting. I hear these happen quite a bit. In my consulting practice, a lot of it ends up being with the leadership team. Afterwards I'll say, "All right, I don't have any perspective on John's role here because he just didn't contribute at all. Tell me more about." And that's the kind of thing that shouldn't happen in-- You need to save me from my ranting here.

Blair: Then the flip of that would be somebody who's dominating a leadership meeting. "Sue, wouldn't shut up. Let's talk about her role. What is it exactly you do here, Sue?" That's the obligatory office space reference. The more things are talked about in the executive team gathering, generally speaking, the less they're discussed with the people who most need to hear it. Basically it's, "Oh yes, yes. We'll take it up with the leadership team," and then it's taken away out of the public conversation realm into the private conversation realm and the discussion-- I guess that's the purpose of the leadership team. The discussion group is smaller, but you're saying basically, it's an impediment to appropriate firm-wide communication.

David: Yes, and if the public, by the public, I mean anybody not on the leadership team. If the public knows about an issue, then you should be obligated to communicate to the public. Let's say you have a leadership team to talk about meeting, to talk about something pretty significant, but it requires a little bit more research and maybe some more thoughts so you're not ready to make a decision. Well, tell people that.

Then once the decision is made, explain the decision, give people a chance to ask questions. In many cases make a provisional decision pending feedback from the team. Then after you hear it, then you can finalize the decision or adjust it because good leaders don't make pronouncements from towers. They listen really carefully and they let other people absorb the implications. Like, look how many laws are passed with unintended consequences.

Blair: Every one of them.

David: [laughs] How many leadership team decisions are made not understanding unintended consequences? Just be humble and open to being wrong, open to adjustment and so on.

Blair: You have that framework for us. We're going to get into some bullet points on your rules for leadership meetings and meetings in general. But before we get to that, I wanted to ask you about smaller firms. Maybe it's only tangentially related, but do you think small firms where it wouldn't make sense to have a leadership team, what are your thoughts on Board of Advisors for small firms?

David: I get asked to be on those. I presume you do too. I'm not on any of them. I just doesn't feel all that appropriate.

Blair: Nobody's ever asked me to be on their Board of Advisors, just for the record. I would welcome an invitation just so I could say no. You've been asked, you've declined. I know lots of firms where they talk about their Board of Advisors and my initial reaction is always, "Well, that's interesting, I wonder if that's necessary." But I don't have an opinion on it.

I actually think some of the more successful firms that I've worked with now that I'm thinking about it a little bit, it wouldn't be the norm, but I think the ones who generally have Advisor Boards, my guess would be they tend to perform better, I think, based on reaching back into my memory for some anecdotal evidence. What do you think?

David: Yes, I agree with that from my own experience. When I think of these-- I guess it depends a little bit on the makeup of that Board of Advisors. If you look at the names on there and you think, "Wait a second, there's no way that person has the time. They're just on there because they're somewhat well-known and this is going to give us--"

Blair: Lending their name.

David: Yes. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about somebody that probably is going to be somebody I've never heard of who is hands-on and has been in these places before and has the time to provide feedback. I can think of half a dozen firms that I know of intimately who have those types of Board of Advisors. There'd be two, three, four people on them and they get a lot of benefit from it. Yes, I think that's useful.

Maybe the best Board of Advisors would be to just find peers on an informal basis really. You're on my Board of Advisors. We have an open book relationship with each other. We don't have any financial connection, but I listen to what you have to say. I'll bounce ideas off of you all the time. That to me is just an informal Board of Advisors.

I think it's a really valuable thing to do. But we're talking about somebody on the outside who has brought experience, who's not afraid of me. Some of the best internal leadership teams are comprised of people who listen really well, who can provide feedback to you on a non-emotional basis and who are not afraid of you. Those kinds of leadership teams are really valuable.

Blair: Yes, I hear you. As your advisor, we're going to talk about your performance last month after this recording.

David: Okay, thank you.

Blair: You don't hate leadership teams, but I'm just thinking of this line, a favorite line of mine and author unknown. "All strategy is autobiographical." You're a loner, you're a Unabomber, autocratic solo person. How much of this is like David Baker, "We don't need leadership teams. Just tell everybody what to do." How much of that is going on here? Lie on my couch, Mr. Baker.

David: I will grant you that, that kind of thinking does pervade much. But I don't think that's the case here because I see well-constituted, very valuable leadership team. I'm not against them in general. I'm against poorly constructed, poorly run leadership teams. I like the idea of leadership teams. I just don't like the way they're usually done.

Blair: I would agree with that. As we talk through it, I'm imagining that there are agency principals listening to this who had, like you said, at the beginning, had all the right motivations, and they look at their leadership team and think, "I was expecting more effectiveness out of this team." Do you think that's true?

David: Yes. Oh man. The people listening to this now who have a leadership team, they are identifying with what we're talking about and they're hoping that nobody catches them listening to this episode because this is real for people. I've talked with enough principals. It's definitely real.

Blair: I often imagine it agency principals saying, "Hey, okay, team. We got to listen to this 2Bobs podcast. Let's listen together," and then we have these awkward moments.

[laughter]

David: I thought we'd start with this one.

[laughter]

Blair: We start talking about but you need to fire that first. Let's get to your rules for executive meetings and meetings in general. You've got a lengthy list of to-dos and not to-dos here. Where do you want to start?

David: First, regular meetings need a specific outcome. I think we need to be really careful about any regular meeting, but no regular meeting should happen without a very specific outcome. When we don't necessarily know what the outcome will be, I can't look ahead and say, "Three leadership meetings from now, this is what we're going to work on." It's not that. It's just, "Whatever we're talking about three meetings from now, we are going to have a specific outcome from that and we're going to communicate that outcome." That's the first thing.

Blair: What would some examples of specific outcomes be?

David: Specific outcome would be "we are going to make a decision on two of the most important issues that are facing us at that moment," whatever that is.

Blair: I just wanted to push you on this because you have this note about check-in meetings. You want to say something about check-in? "Hey, let's check-in."

David: Yes, I think they're a waste of time.

Blair: Is that an outcome? Checking in?

David: No, it's not. The idea of having a stand up meeting at 9:00 AM for everybody, back when those were things, back when we were seeing real people. That's a silly idea. You're basically just accounting for the fact that you don't have a good system in place and if that check-in meeting didn't occur, then nobody would know what everybody else was doing. That's just poor management.

Blair: I'm going to challenge that. I have a requirement to challenge that because we have a stand-up meeting every morning at 9:00 AM.

David: Of course, you're going to challenge.

Blair: [chuckles] No. It's actually at 8:45 and we're all sitting. The reason we do it is most of us, we're in different places. We're a small organization. I can go the whole day without talking to Shannon or other members of my coaching team, or Leanne or whoever else. The whole day. It's our chance to just say-- We start with two agenda items and this is me defending my meeting.

David: Go ahead. I'll destroy you in a minute so just take your time.

Blair: [laughs] It's basically, what's your win for the day from yesterday or this morning and what are you doing today? The third question is, do you need any help? It's really just a formal way of a bunch of people who are working in the same organization to the same goal, who it's possible might not actually look each other in the eye and have a conversation that day. It's just a way for everybody to check-in.

David: Oh, man, I would detest working for you. What a waste of time.

Blair: [laughs] You're hired. An attitude like that, you're exactly the type of person I'm looking for in my team.

[laughter]

David: The first day we had that meeting, it'd be fantastic and after that, I just feel like, "Oh my God, this is like somebody who's asking me stupid questions at the beginning of a social conversation."

Blair: Here's what we're going to do. We don't do the check-in on Monday, because that's when we have the lengthy staff meeting. But next Tuesday, you're sitting in on the wind without pitching daily huddle, and it's going to be, "David, what's your win? What are you working on today and what can we help you with?" Then maybe we'll talk about in the subsequent podcasts, only if I win, you can share your point of view on how that feels.

David: See, I think a daily meeting at 8:45 is fine, but not a check-in meeting. Anyway, how did we get on this? We were talking about executive team and now you're throwing all this nonsense at me that has nothing to do with what I was talking.

Blair: I'm just feeling pokey and feeling the need to challenge the agenda as you've laid it out here.

[laughter]

What's the second thing on your list?

David: Is don't start any regularly occurring thing without making it a trial first. Before you set a daily meeting at 8:45, try it for a week and see how it goes. It's just easier to get out of things that way. Before you increase, I just think you need to be really careful about building your meeting load, your regular meeting load because those are the regular obligations that can make you tired of running the firm and you don't feel the freedom that you would otherwise feel. That's the second one.

Blair: That's a good point. We got to move quickly here because it's 8:35 and I have a daily huddle in 10 minutes. What's next on your list?

David: Next is that owners need to own-- and I'm just going to pick an arbitrary number here, but somebody needs to own at least 20% of a firm to be a permanent standing Politburo member of the executive team. If you have a 5% owner, they don't necessarily get included in that. I'm trying to come up with smaller, more efficient decision-making bodies.

Blair: Are you saying that if you own a significant amount, and that amount being roughly 20%, do you think at some level, that person has to have a seat on the leadership team?

David: Ideally, no, but I just can't see that working in our industry, because anybody that owns 20% of a firm is going to want to be on the leadership team. I just don't know how we say no to them. It's one of those weird elements of the industry you and I serve. I'm going to have to say they get a right to be on a leadership team that they want.

Blair: Better question is, what the hell are you doing giving somebody 20% of the firm that you don't see as a leader?

David: Well, that's another question. That's another episode.

Blair: I'll quit derailing here. What's next on your list?

David: Next is everyone else who comes who's not a standing member of the Politburo has to be invited for specific meetings only. It's not the creative director is at every meeting. The creative director is at the meetings where it's important for us to hear or to speak to the perspectives of the creative director.

Blair: I like that idea.

David: Next, this is not always a good idea, because I could see some problems with it. Consider having one rotating spot on your team where you invite somebody that you wouldn't otherwise invite, who can observe and then if you want to, they can comment. Just observe how decisions are made and you get slightly different perspectives from time to time. What I don't like about that is there are some things that need to be discussed that that person shouldn't necessarily be privy to, but I like that.

Next, meeting should always start on time, all devices off and all meetings should end on time. I would say a 90-minute meeting should be crazy unusual. I would much prefer a 15, or a 40-minute meeting, and even 40 minutes would be long. That's just expectations about being efficient there. I have been to so many meetings where after about 90 minutes, what you're really accomplishing, you're just starting to repeat yourself, and it just devolves into less and less efficient decision-making.

Then, except for emergencies, meetings occur within an agreeable block of time on certain days. Let's say that we don't want any meeting on a Friday. You and I would be in favor of that and we probably only want meetings, either in the morning or afternoon. I would probably want them only in the afternoon because I want to get really big things accomplished in the morning and I don't consider a meeting a big thing. Whenever a meeting can be scheduled, it has to be within this block so that's next.

Then we've got no meeting unless there's a written distributed agenda, probably by email, that precedes a meeting. If that doesn't happen, then the meeting stops unless it's an emergency. After the meeting, there's a posted or distributed impact statement that explains to the people who weren't in the meeting what we talked about, how far we got, what we decided if we did the implications, the feedback we'd like from you.

I don't mean this to be super formal. The one thing I want is just rethink leadership teams and how you run meetings. There's too many meetings, and they just aren't all that useful in the organization. They're not as useful as they could be. That's my main point.

Blair: This has been a good topic, I think. The next topic is on how Win Without Pitching runs these incredibly awesome daily huddles. Your invite will be in your inbox in the next couple of minutes. I can't do it Tuesday, so it's going to be next Wednesday. You're going to sit in on the team. Then right after we'll record a podcast episode on how these daily huddles are great and Win Without Pitching is an incredible organization.

David: It changed my life. Thank you, Blair.

Blair: Thank you, David.