Getting Stuff Done! | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

PODCAST EPISODE SUMMARY: In this episode Andrea Jones and Matt Zaun talk about the dynamics of change, and how companies can get more done.

ANDREA JONES BIO: Andrea runs Andrea Jones Consulting (AJC), which helps organizations efficiently accomplish impactful projects and change. The AJC team has experienced consultants who focus on Process Improvement, Project Management and Change Management.

For more info, check out Andrea here:
https://www.andreajonesconsulting.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreajones/


MATT ZAUN BIO: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry.

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact.

For more info, check out Matt Zaun HERE.

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors.

 

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Traveling all over the United States, I hear a reoccurring theme and it doesn't matter who I'm talking with.

It doesn't matter if I'm talking with a CEO that runs a massive organization or a team member. It is impact.

That word in different forms comes up again and again and again. People want to have an impact and really ties into them getting stuff done.

They feel like they are having an impact, whether it's within the organization or within their community or even within their own family.

People like to get stuff done and have an impact. That is why I'm so excited for today's conversation because in order to have an impact, we have to understand the dynamics of change.

So today, I am joined by an incredible individual who I feel is doing a ton of stuff. So I'm really excited to unpack that.

Andrea Jones, she runs Andrea Jones Consulting, AJC, which helps organizations effectively accomplish impactful projects and change. The AJC team has experienced consultants from all over the United States and they focus on process improvement, project management, and change management.

Welcome to the stories of traction podcast.

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

Thank you for having me that.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

I have been connected with you for quite some time on LinkedIn and I'm just I'm blown away with everything that you have going on.

I feel like I can't keep up with all the stuff that you have going on. So I want, are we going to break it down for everyone listening?

So tell us a little bit about how you started AJC.

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

Some, maybe some key things your focus on will start there. All right. Well, thanks for asking. AJC started in 2006.

It was just me. The reason I started the business was I had been a process engineer at Intel, which is a great company.

I had been working 60 to 80 hours a week. And when I got engaged, I realized that was not sustainable.

I wanted to be able to make an impact like you're talking about. We continue to offer meaningful work to the world and not have it take over my entire life.

I really started consulting so that I could do that. And the business grew because it turns out other people also can do that.

We have a lot of team members and people in this world who have great experience in terrific education and they really want to focus on serving others, helping organizations really help have that impact and deliver value.

And for whatever reason, they can't or don't want to do that full time or full time plus. And so at AJC, we allow for part time work.

We believe it's a real win-win for mid-market companies. It allows them to focus on priorities, get things done that are important and actually see those results and not push the billables.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

So I like something that you said, there's something I want to unpack with you. So you mentioned you're working 60, 60 to 80 hours a week, which as everyone listening knows, there's a lot of work, but there's a creative aspect.

So you shift it, but you had to be creative about that shift going into the whole thing. And I want people to recognize.

I think in business, we talk so frequently about innovation, but very seldomly, do we really focus on creativity? It doesn't matter who I'm talking with.

I feel like that is the case, especially people running organizations. If you say to someone, we need to innovate for our clients.

No, there's never pushback on that. Now, you can talk about ROI and what you're investing in for that innovation, but I do see a lot more pushback when it comes to creativity.

I think a lot of leaders sometimes they get uncomfortable or maybe sometimes they think different things are silly when it comes to being creative.

For you to make that shift from 60 to 80 hours a week to what you do within the consulting world, how do you embrace creativity right out of the gate?

Is there something specific that you started to do to set the groundwork for that?

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

That's a great question. And you're right about people maybe being intimidated by creativity because something hasn't been done before.

It's hard to imagine how it can be. successful. And I think there needs to be a bit of the, I say the blinders have to be removed.

I actually went to graduate school, I went to business school at Sloan, and that helped remove those blinders for me and let me see what could be possible.

So I think one way to embrace creativity for me was putting myself in a new environment intentionally where I was exposed to something which was at that time the East Coast, a whole bunch of different businesses, these amazing classes and terrific professors and we toured all over the country, different organizations, exposed to things I hadn't seen before.

It allows the brain to realize what is possible and then you can take the next step into something creative.

For consulting, it was a big leap of faith. I had been at a very large corporation with a salary.

They even paid for me to go to graduate school. So to completely dissociate from that and jump into my own thing with a huge leap of faith.

However, I also look at what's the worst that could happen? What's the worst that could possibly have happened? I might never have found work or I might not have found it for a certain period of time and then I would have gone back and found a corporate job.

That's probably the worst thing that could happen. And I know that sounds a little cliche that I do think if you're trying to be creative and you wanna get out of the fear mentality, think to yourself, what's the worst that could happen if we try this new thing?

Define that quickly, put it on the shelf and then go and be creative because you've already thought about the worst thing.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

All right, so I'm so happy that you said that. So yes, sometimes it can come across as cliche but that exercise is so unbelievably powerful.

So I wanna talk a little bit more about that. What's the worst that can happen? I actually do that exercise on a quarterly basis where I actually sit down in the comfort of my office and I literally, I have a whiteboard and I also put pen the paper and I literally draw out the worst case scenarios and I get a

Talk about creativity. I go wild. Like I talk about the most destructive. I talk about what if I lose all this money here?

What if this? What if I lose these clients? What if this? What if this? And what's amazing is I've never walked out of one of those sessions where I'm like, that's so devastating.

I can't do it. More than likely it's like, it's really not that bad. It's really not that bad. Maybe I lose.

These clients over here, but here's what I could gain. So is the trade off worth it? And it's an amazingly powerful exercise.

So everyone listening, I actually challenge people dream up the most disastrous scenario you could possibly think of. And then think about it logically, because a lot of times our emotions kick in when it comes to like, Oh, this is going to be terrible.

This is going to affect my family. This is going to all, and then like you actually sit down like, wait, no, logically, the payoff is so much better than what could potentially happen.

So I really want to be able to do that.

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

Very much appreciate you mentioning that. Isn't it funny how to be creative about the worst thing that could happen?

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

It's almost easier. Sure. You need to be creative about the worst thing that could happen.

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

All of us kind of go down that rabbit hole, but you're right. If we can define it and then you look at it with the logical fresh set of eyes like, well, yeah, I could lose everything.

I could lose my home. I could lose my kids. I could lose everything. Well, what's the likelihood of that happening?

Sure. And essentially what's the likelihood of it going down that path and me not course correcting. So I love that.

That's a great idea. I'm going to start doing that quarterly.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Great idea. Very powerful exercise. And again, this goes into the creative aspect because when it comes to ROI with businesses, they're so focused on the innovation piece.

There is a creative element to all right, let's say there's a leader out there that they're really concerned about something regarding change management.

They're going to they're going to implement dream up the worst case scenario. Okay, you have a couple of people that leave.

Okay, this happens. This happens. And you start drawing it out and you're like, wait a second. It's so much better for us to do this than not do it.

It's still. not to do it. So it really goes back to that creative piece. So I do want to mention something though, because you mentioned the East Coast, you said changing your environment really helped you and you mentioned the East Coast.

So you had a fairly big move, at least I'd call it a big move, from Oregon to Florida, which take us through potential culture shock with that.

Take us through like why, why did you do that? Tell us a little bit about that change because that's, I have a map of the United States I'm looking at right now.

And that is one of the biggest moves you can make within the United States is Oregon to Florida. So why?

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

Right, I've gotten much further. We have four kids that I may have mentioned. The oldest is currently a freshman in high school and they're every other year.

From a timing perspective, we wanted to make sure she was in the same high school for all four years.

We've been talking about moving from Oregon, although I was born and raised there for a while. And I won't get into too many of the details, but the pandemic.

Certainly had its influence. My husband's family is from the East Coast. They moved to North Carolina during the pandemic, which is close to Florida.

And Alex and I, honestly, we would complain about things that were happening that we weren't on the same page with.

And so we just up and did it. And from a change management's perspective, I mean, goodness, it is very culturally different in Orlando than it was in Oregon.

However, I see so much opportunity here. People are very diverse and my kids are being exposed to many more cultures here than we were before.

And we have sunshine and no income tax. And I should probably stop or more people will keep coming. It's been very rewarding, but I won't say it wasn't without its challenges.

Sure. Because it's a good, I would say, six months to, and we just moved last summer, so to get there.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Yeah. Wow, wow. So both beautiful areas. I've been all over Florida recently. was in Portland. In fact, I remember reaching out to you asking, Hey, where should I go?

Portland's gorgeous. There's so many areas. And I was, I was in the city. So I did go through the city, great restaurants, but then just some of the waterfalls and the sites and oh, man, it's stunningly beautiful.

But there's many areas of Florida that are beautiful as well. And I love going to Florida is a much it's a quicker plane ride for me.

So going to Florida, it's very ideal for me instead of flying across the entire country. But one of the things that is interesting, and I do want to mention this, and then I want to dive in a little bit more about what you do is it doesn't matter where someone is in the United States.

And cultures are different. I've spoken to audiences all over the US, and I will tell you there are differences within audiences, but it doesn't matter based on what people want regarding impact.

That's part of like us being human being. So it doesn't matter if I'm talking in the south, it doesn't matter if I'm on the west coast, if I'm on the east coast, everyone wants to get stuff done.

Everyone wants to have an impact. Everyone wants to feel like they belong, like they're part of a team. And a lot of stuff that we need to do is we need to continue to change.

And if the last few years have taught us anything, it's sometimes we have to change, even if we don't want to, we're forced into change.

So what would you say if there's leaders that they need to do something, they need to implement a change, but they don't know where to start?

What would you take them? What would be maybe an exercise or a thought that they should have? Or where would you tell someone they know they need to change?

They want their, they're like, they're, they're on the brink of, should I do this? Should I do this? I need to dive in.

Go. What would you say for them to do?

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

That is exactly what our executed agility model addresses. There are a lot of opportunities in this world, and there are a limited amount of resources.

And to your point, everyone wants to have an impact and they want a high value impact because time is the one thing we cannot buy more of.

Can't buy more time. And we have to put the time in something, we'd rather have it be something that is impactful, which will help our organization and help our team and help the world more than other things.

So the first thing I would encourage a leader to do is to consider what we call three different criteria about what you're trying to do right now, about that goal or that impact.

Are you trying to earn more top line? Are you trying to decrease your operating expenses? Are you trying to retain your employees?

There are various questions that you are always evaluating everything by and we define and we help them define three very important ones for their organization at the time that we're discussing it.

And then we will list everything they could do because there are so many things and nothing is off the table at this point.

Brain storming, blue sky, this doesn't take a lot of duration, it's a couple hours session, but you do get the opportunity to put it all out there.

or everything against those criteria. And the reason we score, and we like to do it with a leadership team if possible, is because not everything will have the same impact according to the goals you were trying to achieve at this time.

So we give things a numerical score, and we have based this tool that we created off of failure mode effect analysis.

It's an engineering tool that engineers in the audience will recognize. But what it does is it multiplies scores so that you can see, you know, you have a five, a five and a one on your three categories at the score of 25, you have a five, a five and a five, that's a score of 125, that obviously that thing is gonna be more impactful than the other thing.

According to your own categories and criteria. And it's not anymore just who's the loudest voice in the room, who had this novel idea, who is the most influential person or who's not willing or is willing to speak up.

It makes it a bit more objective. Because people do want impact and they also do want impact and they do want impact.

So don't want to sit in analysis paralysis or at least we'd like to think they don't want to sit in analysis paralysis.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Interesting. All right. So let me let me unpack this a little bit more. So you said three different criteria.

You said, bring it on paraphrasing, bring in cut or attain top talent.

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

Right. Yeah.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

So I was recently talking to someone and we were talking, it was more focused on the way businesses run customer service and something that came up is they said, great customer service, price or speed.

Companies typically have two of the three. It's very rare that you can have great customer service, awesome pricing and fast speed.

So you pick two, would you say the same is true with what you do is you can't have all three of these at the same time or, I mean, would companies really focus on one or two?

Can you focus on all three?

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

Is it detrimental to focus on all three? What are your thoughts with that? Well, that's a great question. And the trifecta you're talking about is similar in project management or a budget duration and scope.

Right. You can't have all three. What you can do is you can relative prioritize them. And if, for example, you're in an organization where you are cash flow neutral and you don't have a huge budget, let's say that you know you can't spend a ton.

So one of your considerations that might be even more important than increasing your net promoter score would be is this budget neutral.

We can give them multiplicative or an exponential effect of that particular score to do what you're saying effectively weights things differently.

However, when you relative prioritize all your ideas compared to others against your categories, it will turn out that there are one or two that come to the top.

And those are the ones we move forward with immediately.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

What do you consider success within those one or two? You score that right out of the gate on what would be considered successful.

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

Yeah. That is a great question and that moves into the getting things done. If the initiative is to implement a new CRM because you recognize if you do that, you would be able to follow up with your customers more regularly in a methodical fashion and you don't let things slip through the cracks.

Let's say that was the top scoring for your criteria. Well, gosh, you can't just turn around and tomorrow you have a new CRM.

Now you have to execute, but the successful result is everybody is using this thing. Two great success. So what we do at that point is we come up with your leadership team.

We come up with a cross-functional team who are all the people that would care about a CRM. You've got people in sales, you've got people in marketing, you've got people in operations, people answering the phones, you've probably got even some executives and your accounting team will care.

So we come up with a cross-functional core team, we break it down and this is where we use agile, hence the word executed agility.

We break it down into kind of chunky tasks or steps. And then we start running, that we start running sprints.

And people will say to me, we can't do the agile scrum thing because that is full-time dedicated teams. I don't have five people.

I can give you 40 hours a week. There's no way I could keep the lights on in my business if I did that.

And that's okay because that's not what we do. Executability is different. We will take those five people and we will say, hey, this is a project your organization has prioritized, has to get done.

We're gonna run these two weeks sprints and here's the task and you'll help us even break down the task even further for the first major step, let's say.

Then they pull off the top what they can commit to in two weeks. So let's say that there's 20 tasks that this team of five thinks they can get done in two weeks of time, right?

We run these 15-minute virtual huddles where we ask them, what'd you get done yesterday? What are you doing today?

Are there any roadblocks in your way and we'll try to help solve some of those roadblocks. block issues on their behalf.

And we just keep them accountable. And at the end of two weeks, we will run a review so they have an opportunity to showcase to all those leaders who really care about this CRM or whatever it is we're implementing what they've actually accomplished.

And they will then have a retrospective because we know from experience that when they first start something like this, they'll pull off more than they can actually accomplish.

That's just reality. But it's okay because every two weeks we're improving the process. It's just like Agile Scrum and that perspective.

But what is not is forcing them to work 40 hours a week. If they can't commit to 10 hours a week, maybe we say, well, let's see what you can accomplish in the five you really have, right?

And then we move forward from there and we're constantly course correcting. I hope that answers a question. But that helps us to get things done and realize success.

And it does take time to finally accomplish things. But at least every two weeks, you can see what we've actually accomplished.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

So I want to talk more about this sprint analysis. So clearly there's a difference between a sprint and a marathon, right?

There are many differences, but I do like this analogy specifically, because I was recently talking with gentleman named Ryan Avery.

He is, he's actually my favorite speaker ever. He's phenomenal. He's speaker. He does workshops. He's incredible, but he said there's a huge difference between a building phase and a maintaining phase.

And one of the things that he says is a lot non paraphrasing what he's saying, but he said in essence, there's a lot of leaders that what they'll do is they, they latch on too much.

They lean too much into the building phase when they're in the maintaining phase, and they can burn everyone out because obviously we know to build something.

That's that sprint, right? It takes a little bit more grit than the maintaining. So how do you gauge back to your criteria?

You said the three criteria, right? Bringing in more cutting and retaining top talent. Well, if you're, if you're constantly having your people in a building.

phase. You're not going to retain top talent. They're going to want to jump ship and leave because they're going to be burned out.

So how in the world do you have a happy medium between the sprint and the marathon between the building phase and the maintaining phase?

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

Yes, you're absolutely right, that building is different than maintaining. I appreciate the acknowledgement there. For the work that we do with the sprints, I mentioned it's a cross-functional team.

Often when we finish one building phase for something, the last sprint will be on how do we train the rest of the organization to maintain this thing.

Maybe it's the last two sprints, it doesn't really matter. The point is we're done building, this has been improved, this has been established, and now the company needs to maintain it.

And so we do training and we do documentation and processes and things like that. We move into another project and the people are different.

So the idea of having a cross-functional team, what that means for the organization is it's not the same. five people who did this first big sprint building thing.

Now we've moved on to next priority and those people are different. And in fact, we can even reconsider that when we re-prioritize.

Can't, you know, these first five people that are burnt out. Let's prioritize something that doesn't include them because we don't want to lose them.

And that leads us to the third portion of our executed agility model versus prioritization. The second is running these sprints.

The third is the change management piece. And I know you wanted to talk about change, what we have found is it's very hard to go into the company and expect people to jump up and start running and be super enthusiastic about your new initiative without any awareness of what it is.

Any personal buy-in or what the heck is in it for me, right? Why should I help you with this?

You're throwing this new flavor the month down my throat. And I don't even know how to do it. Now you told me I've got to join a sprint.

What does that mean, you know? So we incorporate change management as we go so that everyone in the organization understand why we're-

prioritizing and how we're doing that, why it's important to the organization, why it should be important to them, how to do whatever it is, the sprint mechanism so that they don't feel like they're a fish out of water when their name is called.

And again, what's in it for them will answer and address these questions. So we employ the change management over everything so that people can rotate and you don't burn any individual human being out.

If that makes any sense.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

So if I were to and I'm not thinking of a specific company, but if I were to throw it a company and just say this company is terrible at change.

What would you think is behind the scenes that is keeping them from being good at change based on all your experiences?

What why are some companies great at change and why are some companies terrible? What would you without walking in the door?

What would you think? Bomb, bomb, bomb, here's what's probably happening in that company. That's one of the reasons why they're terrible at change.

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

I fall back to Patrick Blanchione in the five dysfunctions of a team. Probably the most fundamental thing is they don't trust each other.

We don't trust each other. They're not having open conversations about issues and actually airing out their conflicts and their opinions.

You don't have to and you actually cannot run with everyone's personal opinion in an organization. It's impossible. However, you can listen to people and acknowledge that they do have an opinion and weigh that out the decision maker can when he or she is making the final call so that they will feel as though they were heard and then they can commit to whatever it is that a decision is even if it wasn't their idea.

I would say the first thing is they probably don't trust each other.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

That's my guess. Does a lot of that fall on the shoulders of leadership?

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

It starts at the top. Of course it starts at the top.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

And what would be a couple of things, maybe one or a couple of things that a leader can do if trust is already eroded is the focus not on retaining top talent because the

those individuals are going to leave and then you need to hire people that don't have the history of the mistrust.

Like, how would you, how would you coach an organization, which the leaders, maybe they made some bad decisions. Maybe they acknowledge they made bad decisions.

Maybe there's actually humility where they realize that they made bad decisions and they're willing to change themselves, become better leaders.

But the trust is lost and the people, they're just, they're never going to trust them the same way that they did.

How would you coach a leader through, through navigating that terrain?

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

Well, the thing you said that leads me to believe in this particular example is not hopeless is if they've acknowledged they made a mistake and they're willing to change that is the first thing.

If they've acknowledged they've made a mistake, they're willing to change and they've been vulnerable to their team, then what it takes is time and consistency.

Rebuilding trust, who is given the bank analogy? You know, there's that whole analogy. to the bank and if you, every little piece of things you do that are good adds to the deposit amount, but then the one big egregious fault pulls it way, way, way down.

You just have to keep adding back to the bank account and it's unfortunately there's no best fix for that.

But acknowledging that you've had this gigantic debit from your bank account is absolutely step one. If you haven't, then you think, oh, I've got a retention problem.

We've got to worry about that. You don't recognize that you're a dictator and nobody's willing to give you their opinion and they're just going to leave as soon as they find a better job, well, then you're just going to have a revolving door.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

I like how it really speaks to leaders that say they want to retain top talent. Often it goes much deeper than that.

So the deeper is, are there trust issues? Are there communication issues? Have there been really bad mistakes when it comes to change management that that leader has pushed?

It goes much deeper than, hey, we just need to retain top talent. You know, why do we ever evolve into our business?

It goes deeper than that. So I appreciate you mentioning that.

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

I think that's really important for people to hear. Maybe people don't want to hear it, but they need to hear it.

So I appreciate that. Well, another analogy that I like to use is in your parents, and I'm a parent.

And you don't have to be a parent to follow this analogy. But let's say you want your kid to pack their lunch every day.

Because your stick of doing it, you want them to pack it. You give them some guidelines around the nutritional value they should put in their lunch.

You make sure that type of food is available in the refrigerator. But at some point, you got to just back off and let them pack the lunch.

Because if they pack chips in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and they refuse to put in the carrots and the apple, but they've packed it and you didn't have to do it.

Well, that's saying something, right? And so maybe we slowly educate and encourage around nutrition. But the point of making is if you're a leader and you want to retain top talent, you've got to trust the top talent.

You give them the guidelines. You can course correct. You absolutely want to have a conversation. However, if you're going to just go and redo everything they do or tell them exactly how to do it.

Good luck keeping the top count. You've got to let go and let them do it themselves.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

So let's let's talk about this scenario because one, I'm fascinated by it as a father. But also I think there's there's some there's some pushback from leaders or you might get some pushback from from from leaders.

I'm thinking C sweet. So let me let me run through this with you. So I have three children. My oldest is eight.

And I got I feel like really sound advice from a really good friend of mine. And he said that right now as my oldest is learning a lot about the world around him and I feel you know people listening that are parents like they soak stuff up like a sponge.

You know, I sometimes I'm just so proud and almost in the wilderness with some of the things that come out of my eight year old's mouth and a good way.

Like he knows a lot about the world a lot more than I may think about the world around. Right.

But I got really good advice from a friend saying right now you have an opportunity to let. at this kid fail under your guidance and under your resources, under your roof, because God forbid he gets to college one day and he's not able to fail at the level he can now, because he doesn't have the security of your roof.

And I was like, that's awesome. You know, if the kid wants to wear shorts in the winter, he's going to learn it's probably too cold to wear shorts in the winter.

So he's going to not wear shorts anymore. If he's going to do this, like little things, right, to learn.

It's different sometimes when it comes to employees from the ROI perspective. So how do you, if you were to coach, let's say C-suite, or you're telling them, hey, allow your people to fail because they need to learn.

You know, you said you're really concerned about retaining top talent. Everyone's saying you micro manage all these different things.

People are going to be leaving. How do you coach that from an ROI perspective, knowing that mistakes cost money?

Is it like short term versus long term?

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

when it comes to an art, like literal ROI from a business perspective. Yeah, that's a great question. And I think the kid analogy is a good one because we love our children.

It's almost harder emotionally to let them fail. And so if you can handle it with your kids, you can probably handle it in business and let's continue with the analogy.

Are you going to let your, let's say you're four year old, right? Are you gonna let that child just go outside on a busy street and walk him or herself to the grocery store down at the corner?

Probably not because maybe you're she is no longer, not yet able to recognize I've got to wait for the stoplight, I've got to look both ways when I cross the street.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

You're not gonna let them do something that actually could kill them.

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

Sure. Right? So at some point you do have to put that in place, some parameters and business is similar and it's back to the trust and it's back to the creativity and it's back to the what's the worst thing that could happen.

All of those things come together here. You hire a new employee that you don't yet know as an employee you have the resume.

You've interviewed them, you've talked to their references, you think they're gonna be great. So you give them some level of responsibility that if the worst thing happens, you come up with what is the worst thing that could happen if they completely own this, right?

And you're comfortable with that. You can go guide and you can coach, and then they build the trust over time in their capable performance.

And the thing I love about the sprints that we talked about is you get to see that without micromanaging.

You get to see every two weeks what they've finished. It's a great tool too, actually, determine how much you can trust somebody and how much you let them grow and how much you let them run with.

But you start with giving them something that, if they failed, it wouldn't cost you the business. It might cost you some money for sure, but does that make sense?

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Like it's not a very common thing. Absolutely, absolutely. But even back to the money piece, if it's gonna cost some money here in the now, if you're gonna retain that individual that this person's a rock star, that's worth it, right, to lose a little bit now.

get them trained, build that trust with them. So from the long haul, you make out. So I appreciate you mentioning that.

I also really like how you tied everything back together. So thank you. And I got a ton out of our conversation.

I really did. And I know a lot of people listening did as well, but I got three specific things that I'm going to remember from our conversation.

One of the first things that you said that stuck out to me was what's the worst that can happen?

Not just the cliche version of it, but really thinking about it, processing, maybe even writing stuff out. What is the worst?

And think of the most disastrous scenarios. So because a lot of times we bring our emotional brain into it, how do we look at this logically?

Boom, boom, boom, go through that. I really appreciate that. The second thing, I appreciate you mentioning those three different criteria pieces.

You mentioned bring in more cut or retain top talent and trying to focus and prioritizing one or two of those before you'd move on to the third one.

I appreciate that. And then the third and final piece of that. I'm going to take away is I appreciate what you said about trust.

And it was during our conversation that when someone throws something out there like retaining top talent, more than likely there's something deeper going on beneath the surface and there could be some type of element of a trust issue, right?

So we need to dig deeper and that was that bank, bank analogy that you, you mentioned. You keep the positive in and in and in the whole bank could get wiped out, right?

Based on something terrible or egregious that a leader does, they could lose all trust, right? So I appreciate those three things that you mentioned.

Now, someone wants to get a little bit more information about what you do. I mean, all the services that you and your consultants provide, it is stunning.

I highly recommend people check out your website.

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

But is there anywhere else someone can go to learn more, maybe about you or what you do outside of your website?

Yeah, thank you for asking. I would love to connect with people on LinkedIn and feel free to just message me internally on LinkedIn and connect there.

I'm trying to think if there's anywhere else I've been doing some podcasts that I will always be posting them on LinkedIn.

So that's the best place for asking.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Awesome. I will include your website and LinkedIn account in the show notes. And thank you again for your time.

It's amazing how busy you are just looking like preparing for this podcast, looking into what you do.

 

Andrea Jones (andreajonesconsulting.com)

And it's stunning just all the things you do. So I very much value and appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Matt.