3PX Coaching

The Hidden Cycle Destroying Team Morale (D.H.S.H.)

• 3PX Coaching • Season 2 • Episode 4

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 39:37

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode of the 3PX Show, Steve and Wayne dive deep into the relationship between accountability, morale, and company culture. They unpack the dangerous cycle many organizations fall into: Discover, Hunt, Scramble, Hide, and explain how reactionary accountability slowly destroys trust inside teams. Through real leadership experiences, business examples, and practical insight, they discuss why accountability itself is not the problem...late accountability is. They also explore the importance of trust, emotional intelligence, leadership consistency, and creating a culture where people feel safe telling the truth before problems spiral out of control. If you lead a business, manage a team, or want to build a healthier culture inside your organization, this conversation is packed with valuable takeaways.

🌍 Interested in getting one-on-one coaching from the 3PX team? Go to https://3pxcoaching.com

Follow us on Instagram:
Wayne Foreman: @wayne4man
Steve Kincanon: @Steve_kincanon

LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1810132342
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6icTxp0wsvMPmnjZsGtybV

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/3pxcoaching/
📖 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/61575312680020

Intro and outro music by Korshun
https://audiojungle.net/user/korshun

Produced by Quentin White | @quentinlwhite

🌍 Interested in getting one-on-one coaching from the 3PX team? Go to https://3pxcoaching.com

Follow us on Instagram:
Wayne Foreman: @wayne4man
Steve Kincanon: @Steve_kincanon

LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1810132342
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6icTxp0wsvMPmnjZsGtybV

JOIN OUR COMMUNITY
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/3pxcoaching/
📖 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/61575312680020

Intro and outro music by Korshun
https://audiojungle.net/user/korshun

Produced by Quentin White | @quentinlwhite

SPEAKER_00

This cycle, it doesn't happen because you have accountability. It doesn't happen because you have too much accountability. It happens because accountability shows up late.

SPEAKER_02

Because you go into a leadership position doesn't mean you stop doing. Sometimes you got to do more at times. You gotta leave, but sometimes you still have to roll your sleeves up and do.

SPEAKER_00

When discover happens, the team feels like leadership just noticed something that we've all known for weeks. All right. Hey, welcome back to the 3PX show. Thank you for joining us. And if this is your first time, we really appreciate you finding us. And if you're if you've come back, like if this is your second or more time and you came back, like wow. Welcome back. Welcome back. You must Wayne clearly said something that attracted you. And Wayne still looks like Grizzly Adams today.

SPEAKER_02

Look at that. Just this is probably the fullest I've had it in uh probably ever.

SPEAKER_00

It is 100% the fullest you've had it. Yeah. Probably ever.

SPEAKER_02

It is.

SPEAKER_00

And I usually I usually trim mine uh before, but we uh we went on like a vacation and then I like I trimmed it before the vacation. So I'm like actually like five or six days in.

SPEAKER_02

Well you know what this is uh because uh uh Friday we're going to Montana, you know, it's a family kind of family trip. And so we're gonna be out there with grizzlies and all that kind of stuff. You look like you're from Montana. Yeah, I'll have uh I'll have my my Montana look.

SPEAKER_00

I think it's perfect. Does Stephanie like it?

SPEAKER_02

She does like it, yeah. She's always liked for me to have facial hair. Sometimes it's it's it drives me nuts, but yeah. Um it's not bothering me as much now, but it is uh getting into to summertime and you know I don't want it to be too full.

SPEAKER_00

You got more gray in yours than I do in mine.

SPEAKER_02

I got a lot of gray in mine. Especially when it goes out like this. It's I can't I can't deny that. It's uh it's bad gray. And I could I could get that uh uh the stuff for Grecian formula or whatever they call it to put on there and and make it lighter. But uh don't do that. There uh I would never do that because I've had too many friends that I've just called out super hard and and picked on, and I'd never live it down. So and I wouldn't do it anyway. The gray doesn't bother me.

SPEAKER_00

Natural. No, it doesn't bother me either. Landy kind of likes it too.

SPEAKER_02

I've I've we've had to earn this gray, right? That's the truth. Even talking about the topic that we're talking about today, it's uh doesn't come without having gray hairs.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you're right, you're right about that. And the reason being is because we've made all the mistakes and learned everything the hard way. That's where the gray comes from.

SPEAKER_02

My goodness, isn't that the truth?

SPEAKER_00

Okay. So don't make the mistakes that we make. That's why we have this podcast. That's why we're having these conversations. Learn from our mistakes. I always I I do like to tell people it's better to learn from others' mistakes than to learn from your own. That's why reading is so important. Listening or watching podcasts is so important, continuously feeding yourself so that you can learn from the experience and the mistakes of others rather than you just having to grind through it and figure it out on your own. Hey, can I give a shout out to a book that we're reading right now? The book is so good. This morning I'm almost scared to say it because I'm I'm in, I was listening to it again. I'm in my third time.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I'm in the second, but I'm uh like last night on the way home, and it's just like you know, it's one of those that uh as you start uh listening to it and and you get into the meat of it, um, it's just and then like coming into work this morning, you can listen to music and it gets your mind off things, which is fine. I I I get that. Um and I I do that sometimes as well. But when you get into this, it just it it makes you it somewhat gets your your creative juices going and you start thinking because it just resonates. But it's called the uh the science of scaling. And it is such a good book.

SPEAKER_00

If you're listening or watching this, it is and you take anything away from this podcast, we we need to do, we'll do a podcast about the book.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And we'll and we'll talk about some highlights of the book and all that. But this has been a transformative book for me.

SPEAKER_02

You know, I will say this too. The what we're talking about today, it probably uh resonates with a lot of things that we've talked about in the 3PX podcast. But what we're talking about today, what we talked about in the last podcast, really there's a lot of that in the book. It absolutely is even though it doesn't come out and necessarily say it, it says it, right? And maybe it even does come out and say it to a certain degree. Raising the floor. Well, yeah, raising the floor.

SPEAKER_00

And we're talking about we're you know we're talking about we're talking about accountability and um how it impacts morale and and and culture. And um, you know, what I want to get into now is is um that I want to expose the culture failure that that kind of makes that that makes morale start to collapse and uh and then accountability feels toxic. Right. Right? Accountability shouldn't feel toxic. But when accountability is toxic, that's when morale collapses, culture fails, and all that. So we're but but we're also gonna name the cycle. I know we we kind of teased it in the last episode. We're gonna talk about the cycle, we're gonna get it a little bit into more detail and what reactionary and unplanned accountability, it's it's a systematic, it's a systemic failure, it's a failure of the system, but reactionary emotional accountability, what it does to morale and then the cycle that it creates inside your business. I mean, we're gonna name it and hopefully it it helps some folks that are listening or watching.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, uh that that's such a good point. I mean, because we just gotta they just work uh you just gotta continue to make them work together. But I mean, you know, it it can be toxic, it can be mess up the entire system, like you said. But um yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_00

So this is what we we we named the um this the cycle at the very end, kind of like a teaser the last episode, okay?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um it was d discover, hunt, scramble, and and then hide. So we're gonna get into it. This is what happens. The the first step, this is kind of that reactionary toxic accountability, but this is what happens inside of a business. The very first thing is discover. Okay. A number turns red.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Performance dips, something happens. Leader, and then leaders get surprised, right? How did this happen? What's going on? Also, side note here, another incredible book I read is actually How Did This Happen. Um, it's a book on accountability, and it's it's talking a lot about it, it talks a lot about what we're talking about last episode, this episode, the next episode. So if anyone's looking to dive deeper into accountability, how to build a system account of accountability, you got to go get the book. I think it's Roger Connor is the author, but um, how did that happen? So the very first step, discover. Number turns red, leaders get surprised, and um they that a report comes out, right? After the fact, report comes out, and then leaders are saying the first thing the leader wants to know is, well, how did this happen?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

What's going on? How did the close rate go down? How did NCRs go up? Okay. That's the very first stage. Discover.

SPEAKER_02

That's all reactionary too, though, right? I mean, because at that point, you're discovering something that uh it's already happened. It's something that's there. Maybe at that point that you're it may have already made that dip and already come back sometimes, like a P ⁇ L. You know, you're looking at something that is already in the past when we're trying to look at things that are going future focused, that we may have already pulled levers, right? It could already be fixed. And so don't react too quickly if uh if if it does dip. You gotta uh analyze the system first, you know. But you gotta have uh you gotta have the the KPIs in place so you know when it's dipping. But you know, we look at ours pretty frequently. So when it when it does dip, we we know it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00

Key leading indicators. Yeah. You should you should have your pulse on the key leading indicators so that you're never surprised when when that happens. So then after discover, so something goes red, leaders, leaders see it, they find out performance is turned, they're they want to know what happened. Then the next stage in the cycle is hunt. So now they're on the prowl. Leaders, managers are asking, who who owns this? And really essentially what they're what they're trying to figure out is okay, whose fault is this?

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Now the nasty emails start happening, the text messages, the teams messages, the phone calls, the leader, they're we're they're hunting, you're hunting for answers. You're trying to understand whose fault, what happened, what's going on. So you go on this on this hunt. And what that what that does to your team, that's part of the cycle alone is ultra, ultra toxic. It puts people into a frenzy.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my gosh, right? Well, because it it's it's it's like you said, you're hunting, but you're hunting for who's responsible. You're funny for who it is. Sometimes you gotta look in the mirror, right? Most of the time. Yeah. You gotta look in the mirror. Got to look in the mirror. Because it's uh you know, it's all about leadership as well and how you do it. And uh go back to that last episode of having those conversations at the very beginning and and just making sure everybody knows what the standards are so you know what the accountability line is.

SPEAKER_00

The um after right after the hunt stage, okay, is is scramble. Now, what scramble is, this is where when the the manager is hunting, looking for answers. Now the team is scrambling to justify what happened, try to reframe the data, you know, distract, talk about something else. Well, yeah, yeah, yesterday was really rough, but if but look, if you look at the entire quarter, right, you know, we're okay kind of thing. Well, yeah, yesterday was yesterday was bad or last week was bad, but year over year, we're only, you know, we're still up three percent.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

So the team starts to reframe the data or reframe what's happening to try to to try to push it away.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Or now we start trying to come up with last minute fixes. So now we're we distract a team, we pull levers, we zigzag. One minute we're saying one thing, the next day the numbers look a certain way, now we're saying something different. So now we go into this last minute fix mode because hey, I gotta have an answer to the boss. What am I gonna do differently? You know? So you cause your team to go into this scramble, and that's a real problem for morale, and it devastates accountability. Okay. Then the last part of the cycle is hide. Because the next time the you're probably not gonna find out about it as a leader. So now what your team does is when they recognize that there is a risk or when they recognize that there's a performance issue, they may start manipulating the data. Well, I don't want to talk about close rate or send close rate anymore. So I'm gonna send out, I'm not gonna send out daily close rate, I'm gonna send out monthly close rate. Right. So I can skew the number a little bit. I'm gonna skew the data. I'm gonna reshape what I'm sending out. But what happens is the team starts to hide the problems from the leader because they don't want to have to continuously go through this cycle.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, they don't want that. They they take trying to take the pressure off of them to where it's just not there all the time. Because especially when they get called out to where it where it is, and if there is an issue or whatever it is, hey, we got to fix this. Well, magically all of a sudden it gets fixed within the next time there's reporting. You know?

SPEAKER_00

So amazing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. It is. It's amazing. You know, whereas you know, you get called out and hey, this is why why are we this low, uh, whether it's close rate or whether it's something else, and then magically the next day, oh well, here's here's here's what the root real number is. Well, why didn't I see the real number yesterday? Right. And and now all of a sudden this is how does how's that? As a leader, you look at that and you think, okay, that number just got skewed a little bit because it changed so quickly, right? And so that um has a lot of that. And and then the people they they hide because they're they're hiding behind that number or they're hiding where it is. And then you said it a second ago, where they're hunting or they're scrambling, at the end of the day, especially on the scramble side, because I've seen us do this before at this high at times, and it it it happens, uh, no matter probably how good of a company you are or how good of a culture you have, is at the very end of the month, you know, we're low on invoicing or we're low on whatever. And the the next thing you know, we have this $400,000 day kind of thing where it just all of a sudden we hit that number. Well, how'd that happen? You know, how do we have such a great, awesome number at the very last day? Well, why don't we have that number every single day? If we can do it in one day, why can't we do it just every day? What what what what changed to make it happen? Or everybody's uh scrambling, the whole sales team is like, man, we've got to hit this number, we've got to hit it, and we're pushing, pushing, pushing, and then those last few days just knock it out of the park, and then the first couple days of the next month, well, what where'd that go? You you it's not like you're pulling it all up. Does are you getting a breath of fresh air and it's like, okay, we can relax now because we don't have to wait, we gotta wait until the end of the month. We we're we're good right now. We can start and getting back on track. Well, no, what you're doing is you're you're putting yourself in a bigger hole at the beginning of the month, and now you got to really fight forward to get anything to happen.

SPEAKER_00

I've always questioned the same thing. It's um it's amazing how at the very end, and regardless of the business business, and I'm not just talking about here, but for for years and years, what the any sales environment, account accounts environment, collections environment, that kind of thing that you know, which a world I came from, the last couple of days of the month, it's just amazing what people find they're able to accomplish.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You know, but that goes back to this kind of toxic accountability. Now all of a sudden we've only got two days left. Darn it. Now all of a sudden we only got two days left, and now we're gonna push really hard.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right. And then it it tails off right at the first of the month because it's not sustainable, right? So really what we're talking about with this cycle, discover, hunt, scramble, hide, that this cycle, it doesn't happen because you have accountability. It doesn't happen because you have too much accountability. It happens because accountability shows up late. Accountability is a system, should be a system that is designed with clarity, communicating expectations for behaviors, activities, and performance, and then holding people accountable through conversations and managing KPIs and metrics on a daily, hourly, depending on your business, even a minute-by-minute basis, if that's if that's your business. But when that communication and clarity happens consistently up front and it's fair across the board, whether team members are performing at a high level, low level, accountability applies to everyone, that's when accountability, it's impossible for accountability to show up late and you get off this cycle of discover, hunt, scramble, hide. It's it's not that accountability is the problem, it's that accountability is showing up too late in your environment and it's emotionally reactionary to whatever report or issue just hit your desk. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

And we've got lots of stories we can tell about that. Well, um, and mistakes that we have made. We taught we had a podcast where we talked about like losing almost losing our soul. If you remember, this was from uh it's hard to believe we've been doing this for over a year, but this was one of the first episodes we did that we we were talking about accountability and how we, you know, you can grow and how to not lose your soul while you're growing. And um, so we've got lots of examples where we have made this mistake and the numbers come in and you instantly you get red-faced and you're frustrated, and then you just want to you feel like you're going on attack. You know, that's and that's how people perceive it. That is the reactionary accountability that's extremely toxic and devastates morale and it reshapes your culture where you can start to lose the soul of your business, and that's what we're talking about. And that's hard to recover from when you get down that that pipeline.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I was about to say the exact same thing when you said uh reactionary um accountability kind of thing, because uh that I I've seen it, I've done it. It's uh and that's and it's hard not to sometimes because you you see it and there's an issue, and then you re-react to it instead of uh being proactive and and always monitoring it and always staying ahead of it, um, the reactionary can be can can have a a bigger, not uh a worse effect, I guess you could say, because you're reacting and you're uh and you're and you're just going at it the wrong way.

SPEAKER_00

So now I just kind of talked about what you know, what leaders are doing and what it causes. I'm gonna tell you what what now what that cycle, discover, hunt, scramble, hide feels like. This is what it feels like to a to a team member. When discover happens, the team feels like leadership just noticed something that we've all known for weeks.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Or for months. You're just now seeing on a report or you're just now noticing, but we that what we have all known or felt at the frontline level for weeks or months. Right. So now you're coming after me and you're getting upset as a team member about something that I've already known is not a surprise to me and I'm already working on.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. That's what that's what your team members feel like when discover happens. Then when you go into this hunt mode, team members feel like, or your frontline leaders, they feel like it's not about fixing the issue. It's about finding cover. You you want answers, you want a reason because every every leader that's doing this, you're either reporting to a CEO or you're reporting to a board of directors or you're reporting to somebody, and you know that the whoever's above you is going to come knocking and answer and answering, asking questions. And you need cover, you need answers, you need solutions that you have to deliver. And that's what it feels like to your team. That you're really not, you're not hunting for a fix. You're you're just trying to find cover. That's what it feels like. Now, scramble, when your team is in the scramble mode, they feel like we're we're just optimizing the story. We're not actually fixing the problem. That's what they're feeling like. They've already been trying to fix the issue because they've known what's been going on, because they're the ones operating it every single day. Now they're trying to just optimize or change the story that they're telling you so that it takes the pressure, the heat off.

SPEAKER_02

Because they know it's coming, because they see it, and it's the last minute fix to uh, okay, I can deflect the the issue at this point.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. And that's how they feel.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That's how they're feeling. And then in that final step, hide what team members are feeling like when uh when when they're in this this hide phase, which is their tr they're basically the truth is now dangerous to them. Yeah. So now they're they're hiding the truth, and honesty becomes really expensive. It's a price that nobody wants to pay. So they feel like truth is dangerous and honesty is way too expensive. That's how the team feels. That's why this cycle is so dangerous, why reactionary accountability is such a problem. And I can't stress this enough. Accountability is not the issue. It's the system of how you are holding people accountable that is the problem. That's the biggest key takeaway here. Don't run from accountability.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And you got to hit it head on. There's no doubt about it. One thing that I think that uh that has really helped us grow as a company over the past several years is uh we've we've implemented uh I guess a few years ago now, uh fall, which is a Ford Academy of leadership legacy where we actually are training our people, not not just uh the the executive team and not the the leading managers. It's it's going all the way down to the leads on the floor and to the sales department, and it's and it's just helping everybody, teaching everybody. It's uh one of the books that we have, uh, Emotional Intelligence is one of the things that we went through as a as a team. And and it just allows us to number one, how to have conversations. Uh number two is when you have those conversations on both sides, it's how to had have the conversation, but it's also how to accept the conversation, right? Because that's a big portion of it is as uh if you're growing in a company and you're wanting to move up as a leader or you're wanting to do different things. Because a lot of people, when they get into a job, as they grow in their career, well, they they want to advance. Well, the only way to advance is to be able to be a leader and and uh and if you start learning how to have those have those conversations, you also start learning how to handle them when somebody gives you a criticiz uh criticizes you. Be open to it, be be you receptive to it, uh, because that's the way you're gonna grow, is to have that constructive criticism. And that's part of that accountability where people struggle with and and have a hard time with, is because they don't look at it as constructive criticism. They look at it as an attack, right? And then and and then it causes friction and it and it causes everything that you said here is uh, especially at the end, is a is a scramble and hide because now they're trying to hide from it. And and that's so many companies are in that mode because they don't do a good job having those conversations. Uh but quite frankly, for for me, for the longest part of my career, that's where where we were. We didn't have those conversations and we'd let it just slide or wipe it or push it under the rug kind of thing, and that's the worst thing you can do as well. Uh one thing that you've always done a good job of is being able to have those conversations with people. Actually, you embrace that. Uh not many people embrace those conversations.

SPEAKER_00

And you too. Yeah. Like I'm tell I'm telling you, hey, something's not looking good. Right. Not because I enjoy that, but because well, I don't want to get ahead of myself because I'm gonna talk about truth latency right after this. And that that that's a that is a this that'll be a powerful takeaway, but I know I gotta go gotta go fast here. I want to talk about four things that that leaders make the mis the make the mistake of, they kind of fall into this trap. And the very first thing is you're only asking questions when results are bad. That is like the quintessential Nick Saban example from the last podcast. Right. That dude is on fire. Whether times are good, times are bad, it doesn't matter. He's asking questions, he's pushing players. He's when leaders only ask questions when the results are bad, that is a very reactionary form of accountability.

SPEAKER_02

You ever see some of these coaches that um uh are so good that even like Coach Kay, when he was at Duke before he retired, he kind of was one of those that dominated the college basketball kind of thing. I'm I'm I love sports, so I'm I'm these are my analogies that I use. But if you didn't look at the scoreboard and you just watch them coach, whether they're winning or losing, they don't change. You'd never know you would never know.

SPEAKER_00

You'd never know the scoreboard by watching Coach Kay or Nick Saban how they act on the sideline. You you you couldn't tell if they're winning or losing.

SPEAKER_02

Because there's been times I've I've watched it, because Stephanie, I will we'll sit back and watch uh uh sports and and you'll see some of these guys and and you're you're you're looking at it like, man, they are like just passionate. They are like hard going after it. And and and dude, they're up by 40 points. And you're like, this game's over.

SPEAKER_00

And it is all the starters are still in. Yeah, all the starters are still in. Right up until the last minute and a half of the game.

SPEAKER_02

It's like, dude, you know, you can bring the other guys in, but that's just what it is. It's it's I'm teaching these to be uh to to know that there's accountability to finish what you started. And that's a lot of it is being able to finish. If this is what we say we're gonna do, we got to go all the way through and finish it and do it. And then when the other players get in and and and do the mop-up or the cleanup, well, the the they're the other the players then at that point, they're just as passionate as the coach because they're like, yeah, let's go. You know, and and when one of the guys is on the bench and all of a sudden hits a three, the the players erupt more than the crowd does. Yeah. And so it's just because they they bought into the whole system. But uh that that's a that's a great point you said. But that that gotta stay consistent. And whether you're winning or you're losing, you're still coaching the exact same way. And and as a leader, you're a coach is what it is at the end of the day. You're you're you're doing the same thing they're doing. You're just doing it at a at a at a company instead of on the court or on the field.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Second thing, second thing leaders gotta stop doing, you gotta stop treating updates like status reports and instead of learning moments, just know you you should want the bad news. But whenever you treat bad news like it's like it's a real serious problem, like it's just a status report, and then you go into this reactionary mode, what you're doing is you're teaching people to not give you bad news, and then you extend the truth latency, which we're gonna talk about uh in just a little bit. So you got to stop treating updates like status reports instead of learning uh moments. And then the third thing is this is this is huge. And this is gonna be so counterintuitive when I say it. So please, like after I say this, maybe just push pause and let this sink in. Okay. You have got to stop rewarding firefighting and heroics. Every sales organization or or really high performance, like a performance type organization that's very KPI driven. You come into that last day of the month, and that one salesperson who delivers the one big sale that gets you across the finish line, and then we we go into celebrating the heroics of how they they pulled it off. That creates an extremely toxic environment when you glorify heroics because now you're taking the performance management out of the system and you're putting it into this firefighting heroic mentality. Do not reward firefighting and heroics.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. Well, it's a team effort, right? It's a team effort all the way through. So that one right there is the is the latest, it's the last score that puts you over. But if you didn't have all the scores from previous when all the other players are doing their job, you know, if you're gonna celebrate, celebrate the entire team. Don't celebrate just that last final score and the heroics of of that.

SPEAKER_00

That's absolutely. And then the uh the the last one is you got to stop ignoring early indicators. Okay. Yeah. Don't just believe or hope. Like I say this all the time, I feel like a broken record. Hope is not a strategy. If you are, you should be connected enough to your business where where you are seeing or feeling, like the terminology I use is spidey senses. You know, I'll say, like, my spidey senses are just telling me something's off. Don't ignore early indicators and then wait for the weekly report or the monthly or the PL report to come out. Whenever you see some early indicators or you feel like you've got some early indicators, that's when you need to just go start asking some questions. Not putting people in the discover hunt, scramble, hide mode, but you're asking early questions early on to get the feedback from your frontline leaders of what they're seeing and what they're feeling. It's an opportunity to learn. And what you might find is you might find some validation by asking those early questions that your leaders already see it, they already feel it, and they're working on it as well. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

So let me ask this. Don't ignore early indicators. Let me ask you this. So where have you seen leaders unintentionally train their people to hide uh bad news?

SPEAKER_00

In my previous job, I did it all the time. I did it all the time because I didn't want to deal with it.

SPEAKER_02

So you just hide the bad news and that way just keep it away from the uh uh from the management team. Yep.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

That's true.

SPEAKER_00

And it's and it's devastating.

SPEAKER_02

Aaron Powell It is, yeah. It makes it hard for the whole uh team, right? But you also know who you're working for and working with, and you and then you have to uh um it it just takes away the firefight at that point. It just uh it takes the pressure off, takes the heat off at that point. And you are you you know it's there, and more than likely they know it's there because they're asking, that kind of thing, but it does make it a tough situation. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00

You you spend more time trying to create this this facade that things are okay than you do actually addressing the issues that are going on and spending your time focused on that. Yeah. You know, is is ultimately what what I feel like ends up happening. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02

Well, you know, you're trying to deliver a number or a result to somebody that at at the end of the day, that number or result may not even matter.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And it's not like uh what it's not like we were intentionally trying to hide things.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It becomes the culture. Like you just know the phone call is gonna come.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So you're already preparing for the answer to deflect or kind of change the conversation away from what's what's really going on.

SPEAKER_01

Sure.

SPEAKER_00

Or I've also seen this too, where from a from an like an employee relations perspective, oh, don't call HR. We we'll we'll handle this in-house. Right. Right. We don't want this to get outside of the store or the region. We don't want to get out this to get outside the department or whatever it is. You know, I'll take care of it. You come to me before you go to HR kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02

Oh gosh, how many times have you heard that?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, dude.

SPEAKER_02

All the time.

SPEAKER_00

I know. Like I got too many examples of that one. Um, all mistakes that I've made and cultures that I have created myself by having to learn the hard way. Right. You know. So I mentioned truth latency. So that is basically the distance and the time it takes between you to figure out what's going on. So I'm I'm gonna butcher this quote, but it was 50 cent. That that's a rapper in case you don't know that, Wayne. Uh 50 cent. Well, he's my age. But but is he really? He is. Oh wow, I've we've I feel old now even. But but 50 Cent basically said that that the greatest drug that he that he could get high on is reality. He's like, I can't get enough of reality. It's from that book. He wants to oh, it is from the book. It is. That is right.

SPEAKER_02

I just I guess I just passed that part of it.

SPEAKER_00

Go ahead and that's where I got it. It was from the book. Okay. See, science is scaling. Read the book. Um Truth latency is it's the delay between reality and leadership awareness. This is where you have to close the gap of time between the truth of what's actually happening in your business and the time it takes for leaders, whether that's your frontline leaders or you, if you're a higher level leader, to be aware of the truth that's actually happening. Shrink the time of truth latency. When you're managing a system of accountability like what we have been talking about, you are extending the truth latency. The discover, hunt, scramble, hide, that creates a longer distance between the truth of what's happening and the awareness of the leadership team. And you want, you have to reduce that. The longer truth takes to surface, the more emotional accountability comes. The longer it takes you to find out that something bad is happening or something is wrong, if it's been going on for weeks, typically you are going to emotionally overreact to that issue. Then when you already know about it, the minute that it's happening, you're removing the emotion. It's very fresh, and you're competent your leadership team is addressing it. But when you don't find something out for weeks and weeks, when truth latency is extended for a period of time, that's when leaders have a tendency to overreact emotionally.

SPEAKER_02

I'm trying not to be uh uh you know chasing a rabbit here real quick. But uh the uh the latency part of it, I I relate that to uh our aura ring. So if you have the sleep latency, if you if you fall asleep within 10 minutes, that's usually really good because you just fall asleep and then you're you're good, and that helps your overall sleep score, all that kind of stuff uh and and readiness and everything. Sometimes you have that latency that's uh like an hour long, but then you sleep decent throughout the night, but your scores are really bad and you and you don't sleep nearly as good and all that kind of stuff at the at the end of the day when you get up the next day. Well, part of that is because your latency was was so long and it and it affects everything else, right? And just like what you said there, if you don't have the right latency to take care of it, to fix the issue right when it's going on and happening, and you let it drag on, you let it just extend further out when you already know and when you should address it sooner, it just it just affects long term down the road, right? That's the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00

So that the really the key takeaway here is high high culture or organizations, high trust cultures don't eliminate bad news. In fact, they shorten the distance between the reality of that bad news and leadership awareness. So you can't just think I'm you know, as a as a leader, if you're not finding things out in time, yeah, you can't just go to your team and then be mad, why am I just not finding out about this? That's where you have to look inside yourself and you have to look inside and say, okay, let me assume that I'm the problem here. Like I said in one podcast, I said you're the problem. Remember that you don't have a high trust culture.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

High trust cultures mean that you can shrink the time between reality and awareness from a leadership standpoint. And that's where you've got to focus is building the high trust culture, which we are gonna start talking more about in the next pod in the next podcast as we kind of wrap up a little miniseries here on morale, accountability, and culture. We're gonna talk about creating that cultural and accountability flywheel to continuously generate momentum without having to have the extended period of latency between reality and awareness or the overreaction of accountability showing up late and then creating the fl this the negative flywheel that that discover, hunt, scramble, hide cycle that we were talking about um earlier.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I and I love what you said just a second ago, because you can have all the accountability in the world and it and it can work great and it can't work great. But if if you don't have high trust with accountability, you're gonna go nowhere. I mean, your people have to trust that you're looking out for them, that you have their best interest as well, that you have the best interest of the company. You know, it's uh one of those things. It's if it's gonna make me look good, if it's gonna make make uh the boss look at me a certain way and I'm gonna hold my team accountable and I'm gonna really just, you know, take care of this right here, but I don't really care about the team, there's no trust. Yes. And you have to have trust with accountability. And when your team understands and they trust you that they that you have their best interest, that's gonna mean everything in the world to them. And then they're willing to do more for you. But trust, that's that's the first part of anything that you're gonna have, is that they got to be able to trust and know that you're that you're gonna go to bat for them all the time. You know, there's been times that we've looked at different things, and I've always said this over the years uh with different people is, you know, if if it causes me to have to do more of something, but it's better for the team, then so be it. I'll just I'll have to figure it out and I'll have to do it because it's not about me at the end of the day. It's about us as a team. And if I can get that over to my team and they see that, hey, you know what, he's not just doing what's best for him, he's doing what's best for us as a team. There's that trust, and then there's a lot stronger accountability in that.

SPEAKER_00

Nobody knows this, except maybe you and maybe one other person. But for the last week or so, I've been I've been in my office agonizingly working through all of these hardware skews. Yeah. 30,000 hardware skews that I have to break up into a um, I have to provide definitions for how parent skews are defined, the and then the variable attributes of how the children's skews are are formed under the parent skew for our our our next major uh website release.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And somebody asked me, why are you doing this work? And it goes back to what you're saying, because I don't want to this it's it's grinding difficult work. It's a big deal. Who in this organization do I want to take away from their value-added job to do this right here?

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

So, yeah, the president of the company sitting in his office with spreadsheets all over the place and going through these variables and attributes and configurable options and defining parent skews and all that kind of stuff. Because the team right now, it is more important for them to focus on what they're doing and driving savals, driving sales, restoring margins, executing operationally than for me to distract them with a project that is going to take them away from bringing the business home. So, yeah, sometimes as leaders, we just have to do a little bit more to protect the team.

SPEAKER_02

Right. Also teaches that leader uh everything about what's going on with that. So when it comes out and it gets implemented and it goes live, there's not much that when you start looking at that hide part of it, brother, you can't hide too much from me because I know exactly what it's like. And I know everything that's going on. I help design it, help build it, help do it, or not help, did it. Yeah. You know, involved in it all the way.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So there is there is a benefit to uh you know, to to you know, grinding through all that stuff. So for the next episode, I promise you, we're gonna deliver you an operating system that is gonna prevent the cycle that we were talking about, discover, um, discover, hunt, scramble, hide. We're gonna talk about the um accelerating your cultural and accountability flywheel. We're gonna get into that. So the the key takeaway here from this episode really is you cannot sustain morale when people are feeling surprised, hunted, or unsafe telling you the truth. You cannot sustain that morale. Remember, like we talked in the it in the in the previous episode, morale is the exhaust that comes out of the system. It is not the thermostat that you influence from day to day. It's the culture and the system of accountability that creates the morale environment. Morale is just a signal to you. So, next episode, we're gonna define accountability as a preventative tool to help you build culture and build the culture flywheel. So I hope you join us for the next episode. And uh hopefully you've you've you've liked uh you know, listening or watching up to this point. Any final words before I send us home?

SPEAKER_02

No, I think that's good. Uh biggest thing is uh, you know, we talked about one of the biggest things, but it's a b a big thing is uh is trust. You know, you got your team has got to be able to trust you, you got to be able to do it. And sometimes as a leader, just because you go into a leadership uh position doesn't mean you stop doing. Sometimes you got to do more at times. You know, you got to lead, but sometimes you still have to roll your sleeves up and do.

SPEAKER_00

Trust always comes before accountability.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Accountability has to follow trust.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

You come in and you earn trust, and then accountability is free. You don't have to come in and earn accountability. You earn trust first, and then accountability will come natural, especially when we talk about putting in the right uh the right system in place. Yeah. So hopefully you enjoyed this episode. We really appreciate you watching or listening to the 3px show. And hey, if you enjoyed it, please tell somebody like, share, subscribe, all the things, engage with us on social media. We love we love to uh you know see some comments, the likes, the shares. We really appreciate that. Or as always, text us.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

Most of you have our phone number. That's fine. So hey, thanks for watching the 3px show. Have an amazing day, and we can't wait to talk to you again soon. See ya.

SPEAKER_02

Thanks a lot. See ya.