1124: Foster a Culture of Innovation, Accountability, and Excellence in Organization with CEO of Innovation Junkie Dr. Jeff Standridge

Robert Plank 0:04 Hey, welcome back to the podcast. Jeff stanridge is here, and Jeff is going to tell us about these things we didn't know about, leadership, strategic, growth, innovation and so much more. Jeff's company is innovation junkie.com and his other website is jeffstandridge.com and so we are here to get inspired, to get empowered, to achieve extraordinary living through innovation, through leadership and personal growth. So Mr Jeff, glad to be speaking with you.

Jeff Standridge 0:31 Hey, it's great to be here, Robert. I appreciate you for having me likewise.

Robert Plank 0:35 And so we hyped you up a little bit, right? We introduced you, but in your own words, what are you currently passionate about what's your focus?

Jeff Standridge 0:42 I am focused on helping businesses grow, helping entrepreneurs grow, helping businesses grow. And one of the reasons that it drives me to do that is because the vast majority of jobs in the United States are actually created by startup companies and small businesses, and they generally create about five jobs in their first year of existence, and they they spend about 67 cents of every dollar back into their local economy. So that's what drives me today. Awesome. Well, that

Robert Plank 1:12 is something that we need to be pouring more gas lean on. And this whole idea of growth, it's exciting, right? Because you're creating new things you're not satisfied with just chugging along. You're working on your SOPs and on your people, and on your KPIs and all those other things. And so where do you see the struggle, the hurt? Where are these startups really suck these days?

Jeff Standridge 1:34 You know, the biggest ones that I see is people create a job for themselves. They don't actually create a business. And and they, they, they're, you know, there's a founder's curse that says, the more dependent a business is upon the founder, the less valuable that business is in the longer term. And so, you know, creating a business, putting the right team together, creating the right SOPs and the right processes in place, so that that company can scale and grow, is an absolute critical element of long term success, wonderful,

Robert Plank 2:04 and that's something we definitely want to avoid, right? We want to avoid creating a new job for ourselves, because then our boss is a crazy person, and we end up working these long hours for a little pay, but then it can be tough to jump across that gap. Can't it? Because you say, Well, I want to get my people in place, but then they don't really like think like me, or they don't like do it as good as me, and sometimes you do want to jump in there. So what advice do you have as far as navigating that whole mess of replacing yourself? Because ideally we want a business where we can just jump into fix some little problems. We want to we don't want to hold our team back. We don't want this to take over our whole life. So how do we navigate some of

Jeff Standridge 2:44 this? We help our clients implement a strategic growth system, and it's not enough to have a plan. That plan has to have a regular monitoring and cadence around it, and part of that cadence is around creating a culture of excellence. One of the elements of a culture of excellence is having engaged and committed teammates. Number one, they're bought into where we're going. But number two, they also have 100% accountability. They understand what they're responsible for. There's a sandbox that each person plays in, and they know that they're the owner of that sandbox, and they have 100% accountability to deliver against the expectations in that box,

Robert Plank 3:23 wonderful. And so these are some helpful metaphors, right? There's this need to have the sandbox, to have our boundaries, and you're also saying that there's this habit of revisiting, right? That's not enough to just have a plan, even though, in this day and age, people love to throw out these terms, like automation, but then it's like, then you jump into it, you're like, well, to automate something or to delegate something doesn't mean that it's just there. You never look at it again. We have to sometimes revisit it. And so how do we tap into a mindset like that? Because, like, you always hear like the entrepreneurial ADD where, like you you tell someone to do something, and you're like, Well, I have 52 other things to do. And you'd hope that that person might be, like self sufficient, but sometimes some checking up needs to be done. So how do we make sure that we don't drop the ball with this kind of new thinking, new mindset, and we make sure to follow up and recheck on things? Well, there's

Jeff Standridge 4:13 a couple of ways you do that. One is my experience when I when an entrepreneur and or an entrepreneurial team put together a plan, it takes about 90 days to get off track, to get distracted by a shiny object, to something happens that takes our eye off the ball. And so I recommend those teams not only meeting on a weekly basis to review elements of that plan, but to also build quarterly priorities, which Gino Wickman in the the Entrepreneurial Operating system called them rocks. Stephen Covey called them rocks. Everyone has three to five quarterly priorities that they're focused on for 90 days, and everyone's quarterly priorities add up to the annual goals, which add up to the long term goals of the organization as well. So that's one way. Me, the other thing that I also encourage is this concept of situational leadership. Situational Leadership says that there are four different types of leadership. There's the directive type, where I'm holding someone's hand. There's the coaching type of leadership where, where I'm giving them some direction, but also giving them some reins as well. There's the supporting type of leadership, where I'm giving them more reins and less direction. And then there's the delegating, where I totally hand off something to them and I know that it's going to get completed, and that when you look at that continuum of directive all the way to Delegative or Delegative, the style that I use is dependent upon the risk to the organization of the task and an individual's comfort with performing that task, or competence in performing that task. And so if it's high risk to the organization or their competence is low, I'm going to hold their hand. But once I've held their hand and they've done it a few times, then I'm going to be delegating it. And so I may be actually going back and forth with a single person using directive leadership for one task and delegated leadership for another task with the same person because of the risk or the competence that they may or may not have. And so I really like to push this concept of situational leadership. And people ask me, Well, which one do you know? You know? Which one do you know? Or when do you know which one to use when? And my response to them is, you just have a conversation about, hey, this is the task. This is the risk. How comfortable do you feel, and what type of leadership do you need for me in order to be most successful?

Robert Plank 6:35 This is super cool to think about, because it can be a struggle in figuring out how hands on to be right, how much to micromanage versus how much to let it go. And it's really tempting to think like, oh, here's my one leadership style, or here's like, the one way I'll deal with this person. But I like this idea of, like, these four different types, depending on the risk to your company, on this task that's done, and then the person's experience. And I imagine that it also kind of removes the repetitive monotony of it all right? Because sometimes you do have to have this patience and say, hey, just try it out and do this task, and they don't do it very well. You say, hey, we need to go in and debug the system and change this up a little bit. And I think we're all very we're very used to sometimes revisiting the same thing three or four times with a person until they really have it down. And this whole idea of patience is something that I've been trying to better tap into in the last year or two. So what advice do you have about like embracing the repeat cycle and being more patient with your progress, with your people, with the future, like, how do we just be more patient?

Jeff Standridge 7:44 You know? I will tell you. I've heard it said before many times that patience is a virtue, and I've experienced that in my own life. You know, I have the tendency to be impatient as well. Sometimes I look at a task and say, you know, if, if it would be easier if I just did it myself versus trying to explain it to someone. But my experience is for the longer term good of my own personal health and the health of the organization. If I understand the why behind the need for patients, it helps me to actually exert a little more patience here and there, so to really understand what's, what's the long term benefit that you're looking for here by taking it slower, by delegating more methodically, by encouraging people to to grow it when I understand that, why behind it that over the longer term, it's going to create a more scalable organization, gives me the motivation to actually be a little more patient.

Robert Plank 8:40 It seems like that line of thinking would take the thoughts away, out of, out of the emotional space, and put it more in the logical space, right? Because it's all, all these ideas of, well, I have to do it, or it only gets done quickly because of me. Only gets right doesn't because of me. It all seems kind of a little arrogant, right? Seems a little like emotion based. And then when you say, Well, why am I doing this? And why am I putting myself through this temporary aggravation, frustration, delayed gratification of having someone else do it wrong at first, slow at first, maybe not. The same way you're saying, Well, hey, what's the more? What does this lead to long term, which is, well, this frustrating, this you're feeling now. You won't have this later because someone else know how to do it. You'll have more freedom, more time. Freedom, more scalability, all these other opportunities opening up, versus, or, Hey, you can stay on the same track and still doing more of what you're doing. So that's that's very helpful and interesting to think about to sometimes get out of our own head, get out of our own cycle. And, you know, we're talking about this idea of leadership, and I know that it helps us to get back to the basic bare essentials and kind of define some of these terms. So a lot of people throw out this term, like leadership, and it even seems to have, like even a new meaning the last 10. 15 years. So in what do you think? Like leadership is, when we talk about that, what surrounds that term?

Jeff Standridge 10:06 So I have a definition on my wall that I have begged, borrowed and stolen elements from various definitions. And so I tell people that it's, it's, it's mine now, so that no one could really accuse me of plagiarizing it. But I say that leadership is the most important requirement for business and personal success in simple terms. We define it as the willingness to be held accountable for results and then to deliver on that responsibility no matter what the situation. Circumstances are, outside pressures, and that's it. It's the willingness to be held accountable for results no matter what, I had a employee who worked for me one time. He said he was a director, and we were running a roughly $100 million organization, and we were projecting that we were going to come in at 99% of our plan. So $99 million versus 100 and and I was pressing on the team, look, guys, we got to go get that other 100 million, or that other million. We got to go get that other million. And one of my directors came to me and said, Look, 99% is an A in anyone's book. What difference does it make? And I said, 99% is not an A in anyone's book. I said, Go pick seven people out off the floor out there, whom you're okay telling them, if we don't hit that other million dollar, get that other million dollars, you're okay telling them that they may not have a job and be able to put food on the table, because that extra million dollars equates to about seven fully loaded salaries in that organization at the time. And if you're okay picking those individuals out. Then, then you have the right to say, What difference does it make? But if you're not willing to go identify those people, then it makes all the difference in the world, particularly to those

Robert Plank 11:50 wonderful and I love this accountability idea, right? Because there's so much baked into this idea where, as far as, like, the integrity aspect, and doing what you said you would do, and going the extra mile, and just all these things. And it seems like you know when, when you hear about leadership, like the kind of the interpersonal aspect is important, like the people skills and the communicating, but it's also from your definition, there's a lot of, like, the the inner drive, right in the self motivating, self sufficiency in like, kind of follow through, in what it is that that we all need, need to be doing. And so, like, I like that story about the 99% but as far as, like, your own struggles, like, Where have you struggled? As far as the leadership accountability, all those areas.

Jeff Standridge 12:36 So I actually studied success academically for a number of years, and then got the opportunity to study it practically over, over about five continents, in multiple countries. And when I boil it down, is that that leadership really boils down to the ability to balance results and relationships. Results and relationships, if I focus on results at the expense of relationships, I will experience wild success very, very quickly, until I alienate everyone around me who's responsible for helping me maintain those results. By the same token, if I focus on relationships at the expense of results, people will love me until they lose respect for me because I can't do what I say I'm going to do when I say I'm going to do it. And so I'm a results guy. I am a guy who I still like relationships, and I'm pretty good at relationships, but when it hits the fan, so to speak, I'm going to focus on delivering those results. And so I've had to struggle. I've struggled with that some in my career, and I've had to surround myself with people that I've given permission to hold me accountable for the relationship aspect as well, and I had to be vulnerable in doing that. And that was a little bit of a challenge for me. That's interesting

Robert Plank 13:47 to think about the results in relationships sort of, sort of balance, right? And no one said that it has to be 5050, but that's definitely something to navigate and and we've definitely all been or known someone who can go on one extreme of that teeter totter, right? We've known those people that are like so cutthroat, and if they can make $100 over here instead of with you, then, then they'll cut you off forever as a friend. And we've also maybe hung around too long and then maybe been a doormat and say, Hey, I like this relationship, and I'll like sacrifice the results. And so that's interesting to think about, like, where, where does the the ball fall on the balance beam for you? And then also, when push comes to shove, when it comes to some kind of situation where it's about results or relationships, is there something that kind of can tip the scale a little bit in there? So that's that's interesting and helpful to think about. And so we talked about leadership, and also that you're big on innovation and the definition of that, and so what does innovation mean to you? So innovation

Jeff Standridge 14:44 is really planned change, planned change that's directed toward either a better way of doing things, more efficient, more effective, more pleasant, or directed at reducing the transaction cost of doing a business. And. So it's really the operative word. There is planned change. It's not change for the sake of change. It's change directed at making things better. That can be making an organization better, or it can be making society better by creating new products and services. Three different types of innovation. There's incremental innovation, which is kind of the continuous improvement side, where we're making small, incremental changes that, in the moment may not seem big, but over time, could have drastic effects. There's breakthrough innovation where we take a an existing technology, and we apply a new business model to it, like the cordless or the wireless phone, right? So we used to have the flip phones, the razor phones, and it was an existing technology, the same lines and the same networks, but we put the smartphone behind it, the new business model in the smartphone behind it in 2007 or it could be a new business model with an existing technology, like Uber, where we had The taxis had been around forever, but we wrapped around at a new business model. And then finally, there's disruptive innovation, where something gets displaced because something better came along and displaced it, like cable TV versus web streaming and streaming services

Robert Plank 16:17 very cool. And so I like this discussion, because some of these buzzwords just get thrown out there by Hilo that, like, it sounds cool, and like even they themselves have not broken down or thought about, well, what does it mean to not have it? What does it mean to have it? When is it good a time for it? But even more importantly, like, what's the breakdown? What are these subtypes? And you hear about a lot of these, like, cool times when things have been innovative, like Wright Brothers, right? When they made the airplane, they just made little tweaks. They said, maybe the fin should be like, bigger, and the wings should be this way. And just through all the this iterative process, they figured it out. And like, you know, smartphone, the the glass is from 1960 right? 1960 they had that gorilla glass, and they just couldn't make it work for cars. And they and then decades later. Well, hey, you know, this is a perfect fit for a cell phone without buttons. So that's really interesting to think about, like, these different types of innovation. And so as far as innovation fitting together with leadership, like, what's the intersection there? Like, where does leadership and innovation come together? Well,

Jeff Standridge 17:18 if you look on my LinkedIn profile, you'll see that my profile banner says that leadership and innovation are inseparable, and what I mean by that is, if I'm leading or I think I'm leading, but I'm not innovating, I'm not constantly looking at plan change to make things better. I'm not going to be leading for long. Someone's going to come and take my job or take my position in the market? Secondly, if I think I'm innovating but I'm not leading, then I'm not going to be able to get people to adopt my innovations, because they don't have faith and trust in me as a leader. So leadership and innovation truly is that truly are inseparable.

Robert Plank 18:01 I can tell you that you've thought a lot about this, and this is exciting to think about, right I mean, especially some of these ways where we might have been going on the right track, on accident, we want to more like deliberately grow our company and be a better leader and be a better people person. And everything goes with that. And so where do these leaders and organizations get off track when it comes to innovation? Oh, the

Jeff Standridge 18:25 biggest place they get off track is they fall in love with their idea versus falling in love with the business problem that they're really trying to solve. And that's why I say that it's planned to change large organizations. I can't tell you the number of times this someone gets an idea, they spin up an initiative, they start running down the path to try to implement this initiative, and no one's really quantified or qualified the actual business problem they're trying to solve in startups. It happens as well because 34 to 50% or 34 to 40% rather, of all new startups fail because they create a product that no one wants. Another way of saying it is they create a product or a solution that not enough people will buy at the price point required for it to be a profitable ongoing concern. What happens is, they got this idea. They went into their basement every day after work for three months, they cranked out this very elegant piece of software, and then they can't figure out why no one will buy it, and it's because they talk to no one. And so really getting very specific about here's the problem we're trying to solve, here's the quantified size of that problem, and, oh, by the way, we're going to talk to some key stakeholders to get some qualitative validation that this, in fact, is a problem as well. Then and only then, should we start trying to design a solution

Robert Plank 19:46 that I think that is very helpful, and that that line of thinking can maybe up in some of our marketing and our ideas of how it's so easy to fall in love with the idea have a little bit of the sunk cost the moment. Momentum, like, just because you personally sat in the basement for six months doing that, that's great. But did you beat up your idea? Did you run it by the key stakeholders? What do other people think of it, and is, are you focused on the problem? I think that's huge, right? Because that plays a lot into your messaging and your marketing and all these other and the kind of the the emotion, the passion, the storytelling, the copywriting, just thinking about the problems, and that leads back to the people and the customers, right? Because now you're dealing with people that they they're frustrated getting a taxi, but then an Uber is their solution, or they're frustrated with the BlackBerry and the tiny keys and the smartphone is something way better for them. And so that's really useful and helpful is thinking about the problem, and not just the solution that we ourselves love, but it's only one little piece of the puzzle. And so speaking of solving problems, my understanding is you have this framework called the culture of excellence that solves many problems. So can you tell us about that? Yeah. So

Jeff Standridge 21:01 when I've worked with organizations at the team level, the individual level and the institutional level, so large to small, I have found that the most successful organizations really create this culture of excellence, and that culture of excellence has six elements to it. First and foremost, they have strong leaders. They have strong leaders who are committed to to the core values of the organization. They're committed to the employees of the organization, and they're committed to the second element, which is creating clarity and focus. We know where we're going. We know how we're going to get there, and there's a plan to get us there. And multiple people in that organization own different elements of that plan that leads to the third element, which is engaged and committed teammates. So they hire people based upon their engagement, and they keep them engaged by keeping them motivated in the work that's being done. Empowering communication is the fourth element that is the word Empower means to make someone stronger and more confident in dealing with the circumstances that they're facing. So the communication in an organization where there is a culture of excellence, generally, the communication is focused on making some making everyone stronger and more confident in dealing with the work that they have to deal with. Doesn't mean you can't, you can't have a tough conversation, but at the end of that conversation, we focus on trying to make someone stronger and more confident. The Fifth Element is 100% accountability. Every single person knows what their box of responsibility is. They know the sandbox that they play in. They are 100% accountable for that, and when they say that they've got a task that they're going to deliver by noon on Thursday. What they're saying is that I'm going to deliver that to you come hell or high water, and if at the first moment I see that that's at risk, I'm going to bring it up and we're going to talk about it, versus waiting until two days later, and you ask me about it, and I say, Oh, I didn't have a chance to get that done. And then finally, the sixth element is organizational agility. The great management philosopher and Guru Mike Tyson once said that everybody has a plan till they get punched in the mouth. And organizations get punched in the mouth. Teams get punched in the mouth, individuals get punched in the mouth. And having this organizational resilience and this organizational agility to bounce back, to adapt quickly and move forward, is critical. Those six elements really constitute what I have observed in very successful organizations as being this culture of excellence,

Robert Plank 23:37 very helpful. This gives us a nice little bit of a checklist or criteria of what we should be doing in order to to accomplish all these things, right, to have a team that works together, to have a company that grows and have this happiness and fulfillment. And so we've, I think we've done exactly what we're supposed to do on a podcast, is to give people some ideas to stop them in their tracks and say, hey, you know there are some things that you really need to be focusing on and up my game, and especially get help from this guy, Mr Dr Jeff D stanridge, in order to get my company to where I need to go. I know that you have many best selling books, right? You have the innovators field guide, you have the top performers field guide. You have creating startup junkies. And so if someone here is saying, okay, like Jeff has given me a lot to chew on, but a podcast only gets me so far. I want to listen to his podcast, check out his website, contact him. What are some next steps here?

Jeff Standridge 24:33 So they can reach out to me on LinkedIn. They can email me at Jeff s@innovationjunkie.com or they can visit me at Jeff standards.com our podcast is called the innovation junkies podcast, and so love to have them reach out, give me some feedback, and let me do, do what I can to help. Very

Robert Plank 24:50 awesome, and you're here listening to a podcast. So the next logical step is to go and tune into this other podcast. That way you can kind of dial in on what it is that you. Need to know, and so as people are kind of taking the path that's right for them, right? You mentioned email, LinkedIn, website, podcast, it helps me as a podcast host to end with a bang instead of a whimper, right? To have a fun sound bite, a fun quote or lesson that just really gets this excited, amped up, charged up. So what comes to mind, as far as wrapping up our conversation and thinking about a fun quarter lesson.

Jeff Standridge 25:23 Well, the biggest one that I would say is that anything is possible when you have the right people focused on the right vision in the right organization, and so being intentional about your people, being intentional about the culture you create, and being intentional about the clarity and focus around the plan of what you're trying to accomplish. It produces great things. So I encourage people to keep the faith and keep the work going

Robert Plank 25:51 amazing. So focus on the people and the vision and the organization. And as we're doing that, as we are thinking about that, innovation junkie.com Jeff s at Innovation junkie.com Jeff D standard ridge. Ed D on LinkedIn, very wonderful and exciting speaking with you today, Jeff,

Jeff Standridge 26:09 it's been my pleasure, Robert. I appreciate you for having

Robert Plank 26:14 me. This is Robert plank from dfypodcast.com. Forward, Slash Free. Me and my team are super excited to jump into your podcast, whether it already exists, whether it's brand new, whether it's just in the idea stage, set up a call and contact us today. Claim your free gift at DFI podcast.com/free, and we will see you there. You.