651: Rise Together to Find Leadership Within Your Organization: Strategic Clarity, Accountability and Systems, Governance, and Rivalty Control with Ron Carucci

Speaker 1 0:00 Marketer of the Day episode 651, rise together to find leadership within your organization, strategic clarity, accountability and systems, governance and rivalty control. With Ron Carucci,

Robert Plank 0:19 Hey everyone, and welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast. We have returned guest Ron Carucci on the show. And if you're curious, or you listen to Ron's and I's conversation today and you want to hear more from him, his past appearance was over at marketer of the day.com. Forward slash 388 and Ron is all about transformational change, a building, a company, culture, leadership, all that fun stuff. So we're gonna dive in and see what happens. How are things lately? You're on

Ron Carucci 0:46 Robert, Hey, Grace, talk to you again, my friend. Things are really,

Robert Plank 0:49 well,

Robert Plank 0:49 awesome. Well, glad to hear it. So just to get everyone caught up, can you just tell us real quick, like, what are you all about, and where's your website?

Ron Carucci 0:56 Yeah. So come hang out with us at navalent, N, A, V, a, l, e n t.com, we've got all kinds of great material, content, videos, white papers, some free ebooks on all things strategy, organization and leadership, the messy stuff of the workplace, where who I want to be and how I organize my work and how I show up to lead All all converge together in some often messy form, and require us to sort things out and do things that sometimes are hard,

Robert Plank 1:26 yeah, and sometimes messy is good, right? Sometimes the chaos is the only way forward and to get us to where we need to go. I mean, I don't know about you, but sometimes I'll make some plans, or I'll want things to be perfect, and it seems to me like perfect equals not getting done, right? Perfect means it's staying in imaginary lands and we're not making progress.

Ron Carucci 1:46 I think, I think we have waste and placed way too much emphasis on on levels of perfection that are just not possible. I mean, sure. Do I want perfection for my heart surgeon? Absolutely. Do I want perfection in my accounting? Yes, but I don't need levels of quality. I mean, we told everybody that, because you can do it perfectly, you should, and that's a great excuse not to do anything well. So I think we all need to learn how to embrace the mess of being imperfect human beings in an imperfect world, and learn a little bit more about grace and kindness in the midst of being imperfect.

Robert Plank 2:20 Amen to that. I don't want to get held up by by just overthinking things. So along those lines, it's been a couple of years. So what in the names of imperfection? What sort of stuff have you been overcoming? What sorts of imperfection and taking massive action, all that has been happening with you lately?

Ron Carucci 2:40 Well, so we have some brand new research out that the ink is still drying on, sort of building on our 10 year longitudinal study that we talked about last time. It's now our 15 year study on one of the greatest imperfections in humanity, lying

Robert Plank 2:56 interesting

Ron Carucci 2:56 and what? What is it inside an organization or a community that will predict whether or not someone will lie or withhold the truth? Withhold the truth. And it's been stunning research. We've already published the research in HBr, and now we're working on a book, and it's it's kind of scary. Robert, you know that that it's not just that people show up at work today thinking, how can I deceive people? It's that organizations are doing things unlimitedly that that give people no other choice but to lie. And so where our hope is that we can, you know, stem the tide on. We just don't need to hear any more. Theranos, wells, Fargo, Volkswagen stories, right? And the seed, the origin, seeds of those travesties, were sown so many years earlier. And so if we can understand the kinds of conditions which we create that encourage people to be untruthful, maybe we can stem the tide much earlier.

Robert Plank 3:52 So when you mention like things like a Wells Fargo, what comes to mind is there was that debacle a few years ago where they kept opening multiple accounts or people, they'd open like eight checking accounts that people didn't know about, and they'd get hit with all sorts of fees like that. And so is that the sort of stuff we're talking about where there's maybe a dysfunctional system and things start innocently enough, and the ethical lines get pushed and pushed until next thing you know, there's this really bad end result.

Ron Carucci 4:21 That's exactly what we're talking about. Robert, that's exactly what we're talking about. And it starts out with, you know, in that case, a very unclear strategy, a very unclear sense of who the who we say we are as a mission versus what we're actually reinforcing. Decision making processes that were not clear, excessive rewarding structures and goal structures and a very competitive work environment. But five, you know, there's over 5000 people, you know, opening up those accounts at Wells Fargo. They all did not wake up one morning on the same day and say, Hey, here's an idea. And so, you know, but, but we remember the story when, for the moment, they got caught right from the moment that the. We started to smell fire and smoke, and then it happened again to them two years later with insurance products, you know. So that corruption was was baked deeply into that otherwise beloved iconic brand. And while it was happening in 2017 they were the seventh most admired company in America. They were the 12th most highest reputation company on barons. So you know you could have stage four cancer while you're running a marathon, and it looks very pretty, but if you don't look deep inside to see where the cracks in your organization are, to see the conditions that you've set up systemically that may be encouraging people to lie or withhold the truth, you find yourself on the cover of newspapers and headlines and stories you never dreamed you'd be in.

Robert Plank 5:45 So you're saying that a lot of this comes from unclear strategy. And then when you're mentioning here about there's the cracks in the organizations, it seems to me that there's just this need for the RE examination again and again, or maybe something else. So like, I mean, what do you think causes this and what's the solution?

Ron Carucci 6:05 So we have, we found four repeatable predictors. The first one was strategic clarity, right? So if I have a mission statement, a vision statement, a strategy statement that says who I am, a statement of my identity, but my actions belie that statement. Or worse, there's confusion about that within my organization or in my marketplace. I have 20 versions of it. You know, go around any leadership team in any company and ask what the strategy is, you get 20 different answers. When that dilution factor is there, you're three times more likely to have people lie. I withhold the truth. Accountability systems so when people perceive that the way my contribution is measured, not rewarded or compensated, but measured, in other words, is the way I'm contributing being assessed accurately. If I feel it's unfair or unjust, you're four times more likely to have people lie, withhold the truth, because, you know, we know I have to embellish My compliments and I have to lie about my mistakes, if my governance so, if the way decision making is happen happens is not transparent, if I have to rely on the underground room rumor mill to get information, because the truth can't be told in public, the truth can't be explored in a healthy governing mechanism, then you're three times more likely to have people lie out with all the truth. And if you have rivalry, so if you have cross functional conflict that's unresolved, if you have border wars between sales and marketing, between R and D and operations, between HR and everybody, you're six times more likely to have people lie out with all the truth. Because when we fragment the organization, we fragment the truth when we create dueling truths. So and it's cumulative. So if you have all those conditions in place that makes you 16 times more susceptible to dishonest behavior,

Robert Plank 7:56 all these factors are working against you. So just to make sure I got all these four right, we have, number one, strategic clarity, which means that there might, there's there's confusion, there might be 20 different versions of mission statement and things like that. Number two, lack of accountability systems. So maybe things are measured in what people think as an unfair way bad governance, where people might have to get their news from the underground rumor mill and these kind of back doorways, and number four rivalry, where we have these different dueling truths and this kind of cutthroat and everyone's trying to get

Ron Carucci 8:31 ahead that you nailed it, Robert, you nailed it

Robert Plank 8:33 well, and you're mentioning all this. And what comes to mind is something that a friend told me just last week, which was like, there's your thoughts and your words and your actions, and it's like, if you're, if your thoughts, words and actions all match up, then you're being ethical, then you're being truthful. But if you're, if you're thinking one thing and saying something else, or you're doing something else, then that's where it breaks. That's where you're unethical. So you could have someone who's on death row, who's ethical, but then a lawyer who's free, who's not ethical, because those things don't match up. And what really struck me, as far as, like, kind of, you know, thinking that, about that, and unpacking that, is that there's in that whole thing with the thoughts, words and actions not lining up. Sometimes we lie to ourselves, right? Like you think of lying sometimes as well, I think this, but then I tell something someone else. But sometimes we can lie to ourselves and be like delusional and just be completely working against our own self interest. And it seems like in our conversation today, when you're talking about an organization and multiple people and multiple moving parts, like it might, it might kind of be its own leaving beast on its own right, it's like it's one thing for us to say, Okay, I'm a person, and I'll figure out my own ethics. But when you have all these departments and people and things doing doing their thing, it's like it's its own living organism, right?

Ron Carucci 9:52 It totally is Robert and self deception is sometimes a survival mechanism, right? Sometimes I have to convince myself of a different truth. Just to survive. And so we start, you know, we all have the capacity to mitigate the stories we tell ourselves in our head, but when we don't, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and others suddenly become true, and then I start acting upon them as if they are true, and that you have those now, you have these dueling narratives in the organization, or dueling false truths that really make things very complicated, and we can all feel it. We all walk into meetings where we know nobody's saying the truth or nobody's speaking their mind. We walk and get through the hallways of organizations and we see sideway hallway whispering, well, why does it have to happen that way? So we can sense when we're in an environment where it's completely inauthentic and we know the last thing people are speaking is the truth. And so now to just to survive that environment, I'm going to be compromising my own sense of integrity. I got to justify that some way. So the lie I have to tell myself is why I think it's okay. You know, everybody else is doing it, or it wasn't that bad, or nobody got hurt. And so you know that that that's that, that self monolog in my head is is purely a way for me to endure the environment that if I were honest with myself, I would, I would acknowledge that I really can't stand

Robert Plank 11:12 sounds to me like just survival, just getting by one more day and and it sounds pretty exhausting, too. When you're talking about playing politics, I imagine some people are just thinking, I just want to go to work. I just want to get get my tasks done, and here I am trying to please this person. And, you know, keep that person at bay in light of that person. I mean, it's, it seems like such a, like a toxic down the Herald spiral, and it sounds like, just like a way to to get stressed and die early.

Ron Carucci 11:43 Well, it definitely is. And sadly, we stay in those kinds of environments too long, right? We, we, we, we sort of inadvertently get numb and we quit and stay instead of quitting and leaving and just but then the sad part about that, Robert is that we wake up when we're 35 or 40 years old and suddenly realize, my gosh, where did the last 10 years of my life go, and why did I give it to this place?

Robert Plank 12:10 I mean, and that's a real scary place to be. And so you're doing all this research. And so what has me wondering is, how did you get to the bottom of some of this? Because with all the, I don't know, with all the backstabbing and all the lying, how did you get to the truth with some of this, this bad stuff happening?

Ron Carucci 12:29 Well, so we had, we had, you know, 3300 interviews across a 15 year period that we examined. So we had, we had some great artificial intelligence, some that helped us read and examine the patterns and statistically analyze the probabilities of what we saw. Artificial Intelligence these days is a pretty scary, scary tool, but it's powerful in that it actually reads this data and content in a way that can produce, you know, over a 15 year period of time, some it produced some great insights.

Robert Plank 13:05 And so is there a way out of this, like with all this, these 3300 interviews, 15 years artificial intelligence, it sounds like you guys have really been been putting a microscope to this. Do you have any interesting stories where you went to some organization and you figured out what was going wrong, and you corrected the ship

Ron Carucci 13:24 Absolutely. There are ways you can articulate a strategy and an identity and actually align to it, right? So you can narrow your focus be who you say you are, and make sure that people's individual sense of purpose is is findable in your purpose, right? So when they come to work, they see themselves in the story. Make your accountability systems just make leaders. Hold people accountable to contributions and commitments they make and talk about them honestly in fairness, in fairness and in truth. Design your governance structure to make sure the right information, the right decisions are being made in a transparent, clear way, and explain it to people. And when there's border wars, resolve them, when people, when there's unresolved conflict, bring people together and make them discuss, talk about how we're going to navigate this border, how we're going to stitch the scene between our functions, or between our worlds, so that we're allies instead of adversaries. So it's all really fixable stuff if you actually invest the time to attend to it, but it's when you let it go or ignore it that you eventually, you know, find really, really toxic stuff happening.

Robert Plank 14:34 So it seems like you're saying that that just acknowledging the problem early and taking some action early, just to get get people talking, seems like, seems to be half the battle and when. And like, you know, you always hear about all the, all the sort of cheesy business stuff, right? Like having the having the mission statement, or having the company culture, or, like, making sure everyone's happy. But why make it more complicated than that? Right? And. Why? What? Why? Just downplay that and then just let things go whichever way they go, and then wonder why they ended up in a place that you don't want to go. Well, it's because you didn't, you weren't proactive about it, right? You didn't have the strategy. You weren't making sure that everything was running smoothly, and so it so you said that you you fix this problem quite a bit. Is there one particular like organization or story that really sticks out as far as really hammering the point home and making us all understand, like, what can be done here?

Ron Carucci 15:34 Well, I think the reality is that, you know, a lot of those mechanisms. It's not bad to have a mission statement. It's not bad to have value statements. We're going to have some type of performance management process, right? So these are parts of life. It's what you do with them and how you allow them to be embodied that that's really what's critical. So we we put these mechanisms in place. We all go to meetings and we hate them, right? So the stuff of of governance and accountability and cross functional collaboration and strategic identity are already in place. The question is, are they doing are they really doing what you want them to do, or are you just convincing yourself that they're doing something you think they're doing when they're really not. And so the question to start with is, let me go examine them. Let me understand. Are they producing the results I want them to? Are they having the impact I hope they have? And if they're not, how can I make them better? So we've thrown the pendulum, for example, in the complete opposite direction on performance management. Performance Management hasn't worked for decades, so now companies have just stopped doing it. Well, that's stupid, because people need to talk about their contributions. People need feedback. People need to be acknowledged for the work they're doing, and they need to be told when they're when they're falling short. The problem is you can't do that as an annual event. Right at the core of accountability is the intimate relationship between a leader and her followers. The accoutrement to document that stuff is just the stuff. But if at the core of that, that of what accountability really means, it's not a relationship where we can be honest about what I did, honest about what I didn't do, honest about where I fell short and how I can improve, and honest about why you believe I belong here and how I am, why I what I contribute, matters. Then who cares about how you write it down, or what ranking you give people, or what box you put them in, or, you know, what slates you put them on, all of that stuff, or what awards you give them. All that stuff just covers up, you know, or tries to sort of do the sleight of hand deflection from the fact that my relationship my boss, sucks,

Robert Plank 17:38 yeah. And so what I'm hearing from from you saying all this is that it's important to think about, like, not just ignoring some of this, like accountability, performance stuff, and not just going through the motions, or not getting fixated on the details, but focus on what's the point, right? What's it trying to get you? And if people in the past have been frustrated with some of these things, or they haven't taken it seriously. Well, then don't just throw it all out, but re examine it and redo it, and in a way that that gets the result you want, which, which, in this case is make people excited, make people value, make everyone pull in the rope in the same direction, right?

Ron Carucci 18:19 Exactly, exactly,

Robert Plank 18:22 cool. And so as far as people kind of getting back on track, or making sure that you don't end up with with, like a Wells Fargo or a BP, or something where people aren't getting along, or there's almost like, like an evil, some evil actions that work, like, where do you see people getting stuck when, if they hear some of this stuff and they say, Okay, well, I need to maybe get back to the basics and and re examine some of this stuff, where do people get stuck just along the way of getting things working again?

Ron Carucci 18:54 Well, the first thing they get stuck on is continue to perpetuate an illusion, right? So let's refresh our values. Let's refresh our mission statement. Let's change the categories on the performance management process. Let's let's do meeting technique and have better agendas and better meeting or we'll do stand up meetings so they try and impose superficial solutions over the problem rather than rooting out the real problem. So they get stuck because they try and put band aids on major surgery rather than, rather than stepping back and asking the honest question about, why do people not understand who we are? Why do people roll their eyes when they see our values? Why does our mission statement sound cosmetic? Why are our performance? Why is our employee engagement scores so low, you know? So look at the signals for what they are, and look at the mechanisms that are really causing the behavior you want changed, and then be honest about what it's going to really take to change and stop looking for the quick fix.

Robert Plank 19:55 I like it. So you're saying, Ask a lot of these. Why questions, and it also. Teams in these why? Questions that you're listing, you're it's focused on the people, not the stuff, right? Not the system. It's not, it's not. Well, should the meetings be stand up or sit down? Or should the font on the agendas be better? You're like, Well, why do people roll their eyes? Right? Why is there these emotions, and once you get the why, then take a step back and then look at the mechanics, and then be honest about what needs to change. That seems like a way better way of going about it than either option number one, doing nothing and just letting whatever happens which isn't good. Option number two keeps coming up in our conversation here, which is just throw everything out and say, Well, I tried, it's just not working, and that. And then option number three is to try the quick fixes and try the band aids, which either you say, well, the quick fix didn't work, or maybe it appeared to work, but then things of behind the scenes aren't working. So you're saying is the you need to root out the real problem and not be in such a hurry and know that there might be some kind of growing pain, some some kind of patience and, and I'm just hearing a lot of you know, keep things simple and do the right thing, and don't try to just add all the complexity now, all the stuff, and hoping that it's work. I mean, it like, naturally, all the complexity has been in there. Maybe it's time to just, like, strip things away and get back to basics. Here

Ron Carucci 21:23 absolutely

Robert Plank 21:25 All right, so we mentioned that their website is navalent.com so can you tell us a little bit about that? And also maybe tell people like, is there a course, a book, a coaching program, or some other way that, if people say, you know this Ron guy, I think he can really help me. I want to reach out to him and contact him and get this conversation going. Where can people get more help from you and your organization towards fixing some of these problems?

Ron Carucci 21:52 So a couple of options. So navalent, n, a, b, a, l, e n, T. COMM is the place you can come and find a lot of great content. We have a free ebook. So if you're learning to if you have a significant amount of change, you have to lead your organizations. We have a free ebook called leading transformation. You can find that navajo.com/transformation if you're a leader and you're rising up in your organization and you're looking to assume a broader perch or have a bigger impact, and you're you're headed for that Vice President job one day, we have a great cohort called Rising together. And it's a specially selected cohort of a small number of people we take on a year long journey to help prepare them for that broader perch so that they can succeed. And you can come find that on our homepage, look for the rising together cohort under leadership, and you can find the information about the cohort when the next one starts, which is we're taking applications now through the fall, and it will start at the end of this year. Again, there's only 12 spots. So you know, lots of applications. So apply early. And you can also find me on LinkedIn and Twitter as well. So if you want to continue to engage with ideas and content that I'm sharing, love to love to do that, stay in touch.

Robert Plank 23:01 Fantastic. Lots of good stuff. And what I'm hearing from from you, as we're winding down here, Ron, is that people don't have to go it alone, right? People don't have to guess. People don't have to have the weight on their shoulders of all these things going wrong around them. And so if people are trying to fix that organization, or if there's a rising star in that organization. They don't necessarily have to figure it out as they go along. They can get advice from people who've been there before, who know what to expect, and maybe nevolent can be people's secret weapon as far as reading those articles and seeing all that free content on the strategy and the leadership, it can be people's secret weapon. As far as grabbing that free ebook at navalent.com/transformation or even joining that rising together cohort of 12 people, or at the very least, just adding you on LinkedIn and Twitter, that's Ron karuchi, that way people have the the additional knowledge, right? There's no downside in getting some outside opinions or getting some extra facts. So that way we don't all have to reinvent the wheel every day, right?

Ron Carucci 24:07 Absolutely. And in fact, none of us can go it alone, right? We all need help. Listen, I'm, I'm, I'm 30 years into my career, and I have a coach, so we all need somebody to help us along the way. And why would you want to go it alone when you can have help,

Robert Plank 24:25 right? Seems like the more logical and and less stressful, less work way to do it like a more smarter strategy. So the place for everyone to go right now is navalent.com, that's N, A, V, A, E, l, n t.com and we'll see you there. And thanks so much, Ron for making a return visit and dazzling us with your wisdom and your brilliance here.

Ron Carucci 24:48 Robert, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it a

Robert Plank 24:51 lot. Subscribe to us right now, while it's still fresh on your mind at marketer of the day.com/itunes, you.

Robert Plank 25:00 Competition.