Understanding Customer Value and Pivoting toward Success through Better Listening with Marcia Daszko

Media Thumbnail
00:00
00:00
1x
  • 0.5
  • 1
  • 1.25
  • 1.5
  • 1.75
  • 2
This is a podcast episode titled, Understanding Customer Value and Pivoting toward Success through Better Listening with Marcia Daszko. The summary for this episode is: <p>In today's conversation, host of The Future of Teamwork and HUDDL3 CEO Dane Groeneveld talks to Marcia Daszko about the power of listening to your customers and pivoting businesses toward their greater potential. Marcia has worked with companies of all sizes to encourage cultures to adopt growth mindsets and self-organizing operation models. She and Dane touch on several aspects of good leadership, how she organizes workshops to benefit participants, and throughout the conversation highlight the importance of continual learning and engagement.</p><p><br></p><p>Episode Highlights:</p><ul><li>[00:12&nbsp;-&nbsp;03:14] Introduction, meet Marcia Daszko</li><li>[03:15&nbsp;-&nbsp;04:49] A commitment to learning and courage</li><li>[04:53&nbsp;-&nbsp;05:33] If you don't unlock the potential of teams businesses die</li><li>[05:40&nbsp;-&nbsp;08:06] Leadership is learning, listening, and engaging</li><li>[08:06&nbsp;-&nbsp;10:59] The courage to observe, connect, and improve</li><li>[11:03&nbsp;-&nbsp;15:27] The value of your teams for the organization</li><li>[15:27&nbsp;-&nbsp;19:27] Growth mindsets and a leader's role to develop their people</li><li>[19:27&nbsp;-&nbsp;22:37] Connections and relationships are what is important</li><li>[22:40&nbsp;-&nbsp;24:37] Leaders creating an environment for self-organizing</li><li>[24:39&nbsp;-&nbsp;27:59] How Marcia's workshops are structured and examples of the ways she revamps customer organizations</li><li>[28:02&nbsp;-&nbsp;32:17] Continual improvement, remaining curious about new ideas</li><li>[32:19&nbsp;-&nbsp;33:21] How Dane's kid's shut down their own ideas, and how it translates to work</li><li>[33:25&nbsp;-&nbsp;36:55] Focusing on learning and engaging</li><li>[37:35&nbsp;-&nbsp;42:17] Simplicity and basic questions that can guide an organization's development</li><li>[42:21&nbsp;-&nbsp;44:28] Show recap</li></ul>
Introduction
03:02 MIN
A commitment to learning, and courage
01:33 MIN
If you don't unlock the potential of teams, businesses die
00:40 MIN
Leadership is learning, listening, and engaging
02:25 MIN
The courage to observe, connect, and improve
02:52 MIN
The value of your teams for the organization
04:23 MIN
Growth mindsets, and a leader's role to develop their people
04:00 MIN
Connections and relationships are what is important
03:09 MIN
Leaders creating an environment for self-organizing
01:57 MIN
How Marcia's workshops are structured, and examples of the ways she revamps customer organizations
03:19 MIN
Continual improvement, remaining curious to new ideas
04:14 MIN
How Dane's kid's shut down their own ideas, and how it translates to work
01:02 MIN
Focusing on learning and engaging
03:29 MIN
Simplicity and basic questions that can guide an organization's development
04:41 MIN
Show recap
02:06 MIN

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork Podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of the HUDDL3 Group, and today, I have Marcia Daszko joining me. Marcia's the CEO of Marcia Daszko and Associates, and also the author of Pivot, Disrupt, and Transform. So, a lot of exciting topics to be walking through today. Welcome, Marcia.

Marcia Daszko: Thank you very much. What a pleasure it is to be here.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, it's a buzz. The conversation we're having before the show was just so high octane, so this is going to be a fun half hour, 40 minutes. Perhaps for the benefit of our listeners, you could give us a snapshot of who you are, how you came to be so passionate and such an expert in this space.

Marcia Daszko: I'm a natural teacher. I think I learned that ever since I was a little kid and growing up in the snowy winters in Iowa, I would grab my little brothers and sisters and say, " Okay, you're students. I'm the teacher." So away we would go. So, that has evolved. My first career was in corporate communications and marketing, and then I started working for a small consulting firm owned by Dr. Perry Gluckman, who was great friends with Dr. W. Edwards Deming. They were management consultants. Perry taught me and helped corporate or business teams learn and apply Dr. Deming's philosophy of management. Dr. Deming had been invited after World War II by General MacArthur to go to Japan and help Japan become a global competitor. That's what they did. Then he came back, worked with the CEOs of Ford and General Motors, and then began to spread his philosophy across North America and as far in the world as we could. So, long story short, the two of them mentored me. I attended 20 of Dr. Deming's four- day workshops, co- founded the Bay Area Deming user group, and the End- to- End Thinking organization. We met monthly for about 16, 17 years. Then we had end- to- end thinking for 17 years, and we had annual conferences. So, it's the foundation. Dr. Deming taught a philosophy of leadership and management, and people think, " Oh, he's the quality circles guy. He's TQM, he's all of these things, Six Sigma." He's not. He gave a foundation about leadership transformation with a focus on quality, continual improvement, innovation, and it's all about the relationships, the quality of everything, not just products and services, but the relationships and the communication that you have and essentially the leadership thinking. If you get that wrong, you're going down a slippery slope.

Dane Groeneveld: That's a really neat space to be into so early on before a lot of the tech changes that came through and making things like pivots fashionable, because clearly, that's what Deming and a lot of your work was, coming in and helping companies think about embracing different ways of growing businesses, transforming businesses and products.

Marcia Daszko: Exactly. It takes two things. What I've seen over the decades, it takes an openness and a commitment to learning, thinking that I don't have all the answers. I'm not the greatest leader I can be. There's more that I need to develop about myself and inspire and develop in my organization. So, that's number one. If that commitment to continual learning doesn't exist, I can't help. Secondly, courage. It takes courage to apply this new thinking because it challenges the management fads, the trends, the buzzwords, the" best practices" that have infiltrated so many of our organizations and broken our systems. We see broken systems in education, in healthcare, in corporations, in nonprofits that has to transform. It's got to pivot and transform. Or like Dr. Deming said, America will decline.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, and it's interesting because I read a great article the other day on Boeing. When I say the other day, it was probably a year ago. Time blurs. But it was talking about how Boeing's been one of the leading organizations in aerospace and R& D and that they were slipping. They were sliding. A lot of the best talent was leaving Boeing. To your point, you just shared on Deming's view, if you don't unlock the potential of teams, if you don't invite them to come up with better ideas than you do, this whole openness and commitment to learning this courage to not be the one with all of the ideas, businesses die, economies suffer with a lack of innovation and stagnation. So, I think it's true. It's clearly true. It's proven, and it's continued to be proven over time.

Marcia Daszko: Yes. One of our major sponsor when we started in In2In Thinking Network down in Southern California at Canoga Park was Boeing. They were our sponsor for many years for our annual conference. Then over time, they were bought several times. The more they were bought, the less they were interested in transforming. But I remember some of the greatest executives at Boeing and their commitment to learning. For example, one of them, an executive from Boeing, left and went to be the CEO of Ford, Alan Mulally. When he first got there, the first thing he did was he went out and listened and listened and listened to his people, his customers, and his car dealers, because they were the closest people to the end customer and what were their issues. I was so impressed with that when I saw what he was doing, because that is a true sign of leadership is when the people get out of their office. I remember working with one of the largest school bus companies in the nation in Georgia. I was talking to the executive assistant one day and she was so frustrated, because she said, " I'm always having to go out and find that CEO. He's always out on the manufacturing floor, on the assembly floor." Sure enough, that's where he was.

Dane Groeneveld: But it was a good thing clearly.

Marcia Daszko: Excellent, because you have your pulse really on what is going on in the organization. I remember long ago, I worked for FMC in Minnesota, and we had 4, 000 employees. Well, they finally gave me a title of special projects because I think they didn't know what to do with me, but I was always out with the people to learn. I was doing a lot of the projects and writing and writing the president's speeches and things like that. So, I felt like I had to listen first, and I was shy back then. So, it was easy for me to do.

Dane Groeneveld: It's hard being thrust into some of those environments and listening if you don't have the deep knowledge of the product or the service or how they're using your product or service. But in some ways, going back to your point on courage, having the ability to go out there and say, " Look, my role is to make this product, this service, this team as powerful as it can be for you. Tell me what you are seeing. Tell me what we're missing." It ties into this theme that we're seeing a lot of in social media right now about the three most powerful words being I don't know and leaders needing to embrace those three words.

Marcia Daszko: Yes, and can you help me understand?

Dane Groeneveld: I like that.

Marcia Daszko: That's another powerful one. One of my first clients was a president of a chain of car dealerships. I asked him to go out and find out what was going on in his organization. Every morning at 10: 00, he would go out and walk and listen. He would talk to his people and he would get to know them really as person, the family, everything, the work, what are the barriers, how can I help, on and on. I had already done this. My phase one when I'm working with an organization is to assess. I'm out and I talk to every possible person I can and really get the overview so I have a good understanding. So, it pushed him out the door. So, a month later, I go back to work with him and I said, " How's that going?" He said, " Oh, Marcia, I don't like this." I said, " Really? Why is that?" He said, " I'm just not used to the this." I said, " Are you doing it?" Because oftentimes if they don't like doing something, they stop.

Dane Groeneveld: They stop.

Marcia Daszko: Yes. He said, " Oh, yes, I go out every morning, 10: 00. I go out for at least 30 minutes, sometimes an hour." I said, " Really? So, you don't like doing it, but you do it. Why is that?" He said, " Oh, my gosh." He said, " I learned so much. I'm never going to stop." It was out of his comfort zone because he is a quiet guy, an introverted person, but he was learning so much. Then a few months later and he was still doing it maybe not every day, but often, he said, " Now, Marcia, the problem is it's very hard for me to get from my car into the office because everybody wants to talk to me." He said, " It's very comfortable now," but he said, " They want to tell me everything that's going on, good and bad, and the family."

Dane Groeneveld: It's a big role. It's interesting, you mentioned on a podcast of yours, I was listening to the other day, The Change Podcast, that leaders need to stop and think about the value of their teams. If you're hiring 1, 000 people or 100,000 people and you're paying them these salaries, what are you relying on them to bring to you? Actually, even if it's not bringing to you, where can you rely on their talents and their passions to lead the organization? There might be things that happen outside of your purview too. Have you seen that phenomenon when it comes to innovation and really changing direction? Have you seen that phenomenon with any customers in recent times coming through COVID, where there's been a real shift from the fringes of a team or not the central leadership group?

Marcia Daszko: Huge shifts. Huge shifts. Because yes, if there are going to be pivots and I've written articles about this, cover articles for the Silicon Valley Business Journal, for example, about innovation and pivoting and how, for example, the pandemic demanded that people pivot. They either are going to thrive and survive or they're not. So, we saw that with organizations such as the core manufacturers becoming ventilator assemblers and then we had beer breweries creating the hand sanitizers. So, another pivot. The key with all these pivots that were able to happen, I was talking to a healthcare team and I said, " Well, Louis Vuitton makes high- end luxury handbags, et cetera, and they pivoted during that time to make the gowns and the masks and everything that we needed in the healthcare world." So, all of these pivots come about, but it means it can take one person or one executive team, one idea to say, " Here is a need. It's a brand new need. We've never seen it before. These are the skills we have. We can shift our focus. We can shift our aim and our purpose temporarily or maybe for good. Maybe we're creating a new market. We're going to pivot." But once they have that aim, then they need to communicate it. It's powerful that they have to communicate to everyone on the team. They pull the team together. They say, " Here is our aim." By what method? What's the strategy? How can you contribute to make this come about? So, this is the result. We need to make millions of ventilators or millions of masks and gowns or millions of something services. How can we work together to accomplish this? And then step back, don't tell the teams what to do, but where can they contribute? Get out of the way of your people because they will take you where you've never been before.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, I like that.

Marcia Daszko: In that pivot, through that disruption, the people and then the organization transforms, and that's the title of the book, Pivot, Disrupt, Transform. It's not going to be comfortable. It's not going to be easy, but it's going to be so invigorating, so self- satisfying, so meaningful.

Dane Groeneveld: I'm going to repeat that. So, get out of the way of your people because they're going to take you where you've never been before. It resonates with me because we've come through this great resignation. As you said, through COVID, a number of companies did some vast pivots and really scaled into new markets and new products, but we've also seen people leaving because they don't feel like they have a good relationship with their boss, their coworkers, their company's purpose, because they don't feel like they're being empowered to grow. You talked about growth earlier or that they're working with a team that's actually energized to do something together, to solve problems together. A lot of people felt I think in COVID that they were just stuck in their role doing their small piece. So, maybe you could touch on where you saw that the relationships, that human connection to help embrace that whole growth mindset and achieve some of those shifts.

Marcia Daszko: Yes. So, I think that leaders sometimes forget that one of their major roles is to develop their people, develop their teams. They don't give them the time or the commitment in the education. They don't give them the time to build the team. They don't give them the education in order to develop the teamwork and to teach them what are the parts of teamwork. It's about relationships. It's about communication. There are a lot of tools that working together they can problem solve together. For example, they can improve processes, but if the leaders say, " Oh, we don't have the budget," well, okay, if you want to cut the budget, cut, cut, cut, cut, fastest way to cut your budget is to put the closed sign on your door and just shut down the website. Because if you're not going to invest in your people, then that tells me immediately you're not a leader, because that's the major responsibility of leadership is to invest in your people, create the workplace where they are self- motivated, and can contribute. Because a lot of leaders also think, " Oh, I have to motivate my people. I have to incentivize my people." That is the worst things that you can absolutely do. Plus, you will demotivate them. You mentioned the word empower and I'm going to yank that word away out of your vocabulary, because empowering is giving permission to people and that is not your job as a leader. Your job is to create the workplace so that people feel they have power with, with their colleagues, with you as the leaders, so that you don't have power over. The leader's job is to have better control of the business. That's what everyone seeks is better control of their organization, but they do it with the people. They do it with their teams. Over time, teams become self- organizing. Once the leaders have invested in them and given them opportunities to come together as teams and work together and learn together, it's learn together, work together, and improve together, innovate together. If they have those four things, that is part of transformational change. Some organizations want to stay stuck. They want to problem solve and they want to improve processes. Those things happen in their boxes. They will make some improvement, but the big challenges and problems that they face will never change if they don't transform themselves, their thinking, their leadership and their teams and organizations. They do it. They need to do it all the way through the organization. So, that's why I work with an executive team. I've had so many team leaders, CEOs, or presidents say to me after their two- day education, " Marcia, everybody in the organization has to go through this because it's a different thinking. It's different vocabulary, it's different mindset, the different processes, different tools." I teach them that in two days. If they have intensive, complex problems, maybe I suggest a three- day education session, and then monthly, we do refresh, refresh, refresh. But then if they take that through the organization, that education and they invest in it, then you are mentioning the relationships, the connections. They learn what's important, and there's a lot of things we need to teach like work ethics and giving two- week notice. There's things that are not being taught, whether it's at home or this commitment to work, whether at home or at school, whatever. People are just ready to just, " Oh, I don't like this."

Dane Groeneveld: I'm done.

Marcia Daszko: I'll walk away. People ghost too. But when people learn and I think leaders in the workplace are going to have to begin there. They're going to have to begin to teach the young people about commitment to work, quality to work, dedication to work, not just get it done the fastest. Oh, slap it together and push it out. Do you have quality? Did you meet the customer needs? Things like that. They're not always thinking about that, but the relationships I think are developed too when there's the two- way communication, there's clarity of purpose. What I'm seeing though a lot is people leave when they are never appreciated. They never get a thank you. I mean, how hard is it even if it's Zoom or an email saying thank you, I really appreciated you stepping up to take care of that customer? Whatever it is, where is the appreciation? If people felt appreciated and recognized for the work that they're doing, it will become contagious and will get more and more and more healthy relationships in the workplace versus the toxic relationships or the dysfunctional ones and dysfunctional organizations. We have so much potential.

Dane Groeneveld: We do have a lot of potential.

Marcia Daszko: We have so many opportunities.

Dane Groeneveld: What's interesting, I like the way that you yanked empower from my vocabulary, because that's been one of my go- to words. I thought I was very progressive with that, but I like the way you did it because you said that's too micro. I like the way you explained that. That's giving permission to people, which would suggest that it's very paternalistic. It's authoritarian.

Marcia Daszko: Yes.

Dane Groeneveld: So, this whole power with rather than power over, I've spoken to some of our guests about that before, read about it a little bit. It seems to be more about leaders creating the environment rather than this is how we're going to run a meeting or this is how we're going to give each other appraisals and feedback or here's the new app that lets us give kudos to each other. It's creating that environment, creating that work culture where people can be in these teams that become more self- organizing. Is that a fair reflection?

Marcia Daszko: Yes. There's so many things I want to speak to in your words there.

Dane Groeneveld: Please.

Marcia Daszko: I want to also give a shout out to Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer over at Stanford. One of his books is about communication and the power with and power over concept. I might have picked that up from him or I know he talks about it. So, he's the one I'm giving credit to at the moment. Yes. So, I would like to hear you talk a little bit more about what you just said, so I can take-

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. So, I'm getting the sense that it's not about how a leader creates a team that's going to chase innovation or creates a continuous improvement group or writes new policies. It's more about how they create an environment where people can feel that the team is given opportunity, not through permission, but in fact, they're what they're hired to do. You're being hired to come in and learn with us and raise your hand when you see something that can be done better, because that's not how most organizations work. So, when you do your two- day workshop and your monthly check- ins, is it more about changing that environment of how people work together rather than putting in more rigid processes and checklists?

Marcia Daszko: Yes. I mean, the organizations definitely have process improvement teams. They have innovation teams. Some of them are called sprinter teams, but there's one organization that I started working with and they had lots of problems, lots of dysfunction. Not really a management team pulled together even though there were multimillion- dollar company. So, it pulled together that team and began the work. So, they were under$ 50 million. They went to$ 200 million, I think. That was just almost the cleanup, creating the foundation, having the process improvement teams, and doing some problem solving and connecting with customers and looking at the data and making better decisions. That was the first part. Then when that was stable and people could say, " Oh, here's an issue. I need a few people together with me to work on improving that process," or" We need a system here," or whatever. So, I asked them for their improvement ideas, more and more improvement ideas. Then one day, they had an offsite sale. They were selling their products. I said, " Okay, I'm going to bring in some people from the outside who don't know any of you. I brought in a TV producer, a president of a company outside of their industry." At the time, my son, I think he was 15 or 16 years old at the time. All the employees were there. Customers were coming and going all day from 8: 00 in the morning till 2: 00 in the afternoon. I said to the three people, " I want you to talk to the employees as you can, observe, take notes like crazy, write down every idea you can think of to improve this process, and also talk to the customers." So, they did. At this time, the leadership team and the employees were pretty good. We are making money hand over fist, and there's not much more we can improve. So, that was a Saturday. On Monday, I walked into the management team meeting with over 300 ideas from the three people about how to improve. The management team, they were blown away. Then we created the innovation system. So, we took a lot of these ideas and went through them. Yes, some were improvement ideas, some were in process, and some were totally innovative. They had never thought of them. So, we created that new system and it took them another$ 100 million.

Dane Groeneveld: That's a big lift.

Marcia Daszko: So yeah, that organization grew times 10, but they had the foundation so they could do it pretty rapidly and they never believed in the job's all done. It's continual improvement. It's continually thinking. What else? What's different? What's bold? What's something that customers wouldn't even ask for because how could they know?

Dane Groeneveld: When those teams go about pairing down that list of 300 ideas into, let's say, the three biggest innovative prospects, how do you set the team? Are you picking a tiger team or like you said earlier, a sprinter team that's cross- functional, is going to come together and work on this 100% of the time, or is it borrowing from people like Google do with their 20% projects? What's your view on what works best in getting those teams energized to come together and think about where they're going to take the business or the product?

Marcia Daszko: I've seen it multiple ways, different ways work with different companies. We start out with identifying some of those natural out- of- the- box thinkers and asking them if they want to be part of the team. Sometimes the executive team know of people that they for sure want on the team. Then an important part is to open it up.

Dane Groeneveld: So, you make it open.

Marcia Daszko: Yes, so it might be every week, every two weeks, once a month. Oftentimes it's led by the president of the company. He or she might be the team leader. But whenever they come together and if they have a list or they create their list, they're open, they're bold in their thinking, they're okay with really questioning back and forth. They don't take things personally. Well, hopefully, people don't say, " That's a stupid idea."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. We've seen it before. Yeah.

Marcia Daszko: Yeah. Tell us more about that idea and how it would work and so forth. But I will say that most of the time that team members in general will shut their own ideas down faster than anyone else. I remember decades ago, one of my first clients was PBS, and the Senior Vice President of Operations who brought me in was a very progressive thinker and great leader, very well respected by his organization and in the industry. He had a meeting and he was asking for improvement ideas to make the organization better and so forth. It was very interesting. People were shooting down their own ideas. Some young families were asking if they could have a daycare center on site, and someone said, " No, we can't do that because of this, this, and this." He said, " Why not?" He said, " If you want something and it's a win- win for all, he said, " Do your research. Make a plan. Give me a proposal. Let me know what it will cost and what we need to do to make it happen." He was the biggest proponent of let's try it or let's at least explore the ideas. If it's because of some reason, liability, or whatever that we really research and check out the answers and those things, then okay, what else? What's next?

Dane Groeneveld: Got it.

Marcia Daszko: But here they were shutting down their own ideas for something they really valued and wanted and would make a difference and would be a win- win in many ways.

Dane Groeneveld: It's funny, I have that with my kids sometimes. They'll come to me and they're shutting down their idea while they're asking for it. Maybe they want to go to play their Xbox, and they're like, " Hey, dad, I was thinking, but you probably won't want to, but I was wondering..." I'm like, " Just ask me the question. Tell me that I'm not going to answer it first." Do you want to play Xbox with me? I'm like, "Cool."

Marcia Daszko: They're setting it up. Oh, my God.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, but I see that with employees too.

Marcia Daszko: Yeah. So, you have to think, " Where did they learn that? How do you pivot that? How do you create something they want? They need to see that this is a want and how are they going to get it?" So, teaching them strategy, right? This is one thing I want to share since now I know you're a parent. How many children?

Dane Groeneveld: Three.

Marcia Daszko: What are the ages?

Dane Groeneveld: I've got an 11- year- old, a 9- year- old, and a 5- year- old. So, we're right in the midst of negotiation.

Marcia Daszko: That's so funny. Okay. There is an author that is going to become your best friend. His name is Alfie Kohn, A- L- F- I- E K- O- H- N. He's got powerful books. If you think I'm a transformational thinker, you see nothing yet. He wrote a book, No Contest: The Case Against Competition.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, wow.

Marcia Daszko: Then he's written books about the myth about homework, which I absolutely buy into. I remember when I was on my high school journalism team, I wrote an op- ed for the school newspaper against homework. But the one I really like is Punished by Rewards. This is the case against gold stars and grades and incentives there. It's for parents, it's for leaders. I've taught MBA classes at six different universities, and sometimes I'm a guest speaker at different universities. When I have my class, the first evening, I tell them, " If you do these things, everyone gets an A." Sometimes it takes them a little while to believe me, but then I say, " Okay, now that we're setting the grade aside, what are we going to focus on?" I still remember this manager from Intel quietly saying, " Learning?" I said, " Yes, let's focus on learning. Secondly, you can all put your computers away. We're not going to use them here because we're going to focus on learning." I've been a guest speaker before where they want to just take the notes. So, all I see are the tops of the heads, which gets me crazy, because-

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's not fun.

Marcia Daszko: ...I want to engage. So, you can put those away because we're going to have robust conversations. We're going to ask tough questions. We're going to think differently. I know that a lot of the teams focus on projects and on gathering the analytical data, and they can bury themselves because they're doing too much. They're looking at way too many measures, and they need to step back and start with, " What question are we trying to answer? Who are we trying to serve? Who are the customers? What are the markets? What do they care about? What do they value?" When I think about calling a telephone company or a cable company or an airline where I get stuck on hold and I'm routed and rerouted and they won't give me a live agent, I'm supposed to do everything now with... I don't know if it's a bot or what it is, but let me tell you that my questions they don't have answers for. So, I want a person.

Dane Groeneveld: Me too.

Marcia Daszko: So, I use with all the teams a strategic compass. It's in my book and it's on my website, because whether it's an executive team, a process improvement team, a project team, this is your template, these five basic questions, you can run a billion- dollar company or you can run a small team of eight people, but it will help you focus and answer the right questions.

Dane Groeneveld: That's exciting, because it's funny, you and I were talking about this before the show about when I first came into this job and I had 37 priority initiatives that I wanted to run out in the business, because you go and do your balance scorecard and you're like, " Right, we want to improve margin in these accounts. We want to expand into this territory. We want to build out a better onboarding process for this talent. We want to build out a better training." You come up with these 37 things, and then the team's sitting there going, " Oh, my gosh. In what order should we do this? How are we ever going to have the resource to get there? What if it changes by the time we finally get that thing done?" I mean, it's a challenge.

Marcia Daszko: Okay. You do all that I would call analytical work, and you're answering the wrong question. So, you're so deep in it, you don't see that" What are we trying to accomplish where we can support each other and serve customers? What do the customers care about? What are their values? What do they consider quality?" When you go to a restaurant, you know what's important. If you want to go out to dinner for a romantic evening, those qualities are going to be different than taking the three kids to their favorite fast food or to wherever they like to go. So, that's where you start. Many, many, many times for decades, I ask the teams, whether executive team, process improvement team, start your conversation about quality. Start there so that everything you're discussing, you're focusing on makes a difference to each other at how you support each other and how you serve your customers. Whether it be patients, whether it be students, whether it be constituents, the system delivers and the system can only deliver if all of the parts of the system are working together. So, when you think about a bicycle, when you think about a school system, when you think about a corporation, all of the parts have to work together. One important thing that Dr. Deming taught in Japan to summarize, get rid of the org chart. This is a real twist for HR people too, but you can have an org chart stuck enough file or something that only shows who reports to who. So, that okay, if I report to you and I want a week off for vacation, who do I go to discuss, " Is this week okay?" So that's for the purpose of the org chart. But if you want to lead a healthy, sustainable organization, you don't use an org chart. You use a system diagram and you create a system diagram. The purpose of that is to connect the dots, show how everything else relates to everything else. It's like a relationship diagram, and then draw the arrows. That also helps you see if you've got a part or many parts that have a lot of arrows, bingo. That's where your complexity and waste is. That's where you need to free-

Dane Groeneveld: That's the bottleneck.

Marcia Daszko: Those bottlenecks in order to... I just got a new book. I don't know where it is. It's I think called Flow or Workflow, and it's written or put together by Dr. Goldratt's daughter. Of course, that's the first book actually that I recommend to all of my clients, is the book The Goal, a fiction book, been out for more than 30 years. It is the first most powerful book that people can read or listen to if it's audible. There's a movie you can buy or rent the video, but make sure that it's not the 20- minute version because you won't get anything out of it. It's got to be at least the 45- minute version.

Dane Groeneveld: Okay. I'll make a note of that and we'll put that up with the show notes. Well, this has been a great conversation, Marcia. We've touched on so many good things. I'm looking at my notes here. I love the way that you stripped empower from my vocabulary. I love that challenge. This concept about being open and committed to learning and then being courageous for leaders that are really looking to unlock the potential of their teams is huge. I really, really like this whole statement around starting with quality, because the quality allows you to think about not only how you serve your customer, but how your team members serve each other in the operation of the business. So, that is cool. The system diagram versus the org chart, I did read a quote once that said, " A bad system beats a good person every day." That really rocked me at first, because I'm a humanist first. I'm all about the value and power of people rather than systems and technology. But the reality is going to your system diagram, if you look at how the system works, you can find a way for more people to work better together. You're not having an organization that's relying on these key people who are bottlenecks.

Marcia Daszko: The role of leadership is to create and optimize and transform the system. In one sentence, that's the role of leadership and then develop the people. Dom Peterson, who was the CEO, now retired CEO and chairman of Ford Motor, said, " Everything we do, we do through people."

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Now I love that. I love that. So, you can use the technology to support people, but it's still the people that do the real horsepower.

Marcia Daszko: Exactly. Yeah. I'm not huge on technology stuff, and I use it probably way too much. I mean, my iPhone is my little buddy, and I don't go anywhere without it. But otherwise, I'm definitely more about the relationship. I'm not-

Dane Groeneveld: Me too.

Marcia Daszko: ...dependent on that.

Dane Groeneveld: No, me too. Well, for any of our listeners that want to reach out and learn more about working with your consultancy or the book, how do they best find you, Marcia?

Marcia Daszko: My website is m-go.com, so they can come through that. My phone number is( 408) 398- 7220. I'm on LinkedIn. LinkedIn message is a fast way to also reach me. Please subscribe for my newsletter, because I put that out every week. I write a weekly column for the Silicon Valley Business Journal called Ask Marcia. It's a leadership Q& A.

Dane Groeneveld: Cool.

Marcia Daszko: Anybody can ask me a leadership question, and I answer it in that column. It's the Dear Abbey of leadership, and the book is available on Amazon through Barnes and Noble and so forth. I was excited one day when it first came out, and I walked into Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue in New York City, and my book was there.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, that's cool. That's got to be a buzz. That's got to be a buzz. Well, I'm definitely going to go and grab a copy. I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, and we're going to keep talking about that next book per our conversation before the show.

Marcia Daszko: Yeah, definitely that. Now you've got your homework to do to explore Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards.

Dane Groeneveld: I do. I'm going to call my wife and tell her that's on our next reading list.

Marcia Daszko: Yeah, because no more bribing the kids if you stop crying in the grocery store, I'll get you a candy bar. No more of that.

Dane Groeneveld: No, you're encouraging the wrong stuff. Well, thank you, Marcia. I've had a great time.

Marcia Daszko: Thank you.

Dane Groeneveld: We'll talk soon.

DESCRIPTION

In today's conversation, host of The Future of Teamwork and HUDDL3 CEO Dane Groeneveld talks to Marcia Daszko about the power of listening to your customers and pivoting businesses toward their greater potential. Marcia has worked with companies of all sizes to encourage cultures to adopt growth mindsets and self-organizing operation models. She and Dane touch on several aspects of good leadership, how she organizes workshops to benefit participants, and throughout the conversation highlight the importance of continual learning and engagement.

Today's Host

Guest Thumbnail

Dane Groeneveld

|HUDDL3 Group CEO

Today's Guests

Guest Thumbnail

Marcia Daszko

|CEO of Marcia Daszko & Associates